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Recommended Readings: August 2012 Archives

Atlantic_Goldberg.jpgIsraeli officials may see a "zero hour" for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, but it could backfire.

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Foreign_Affairs186x140.jpgby Daniel Byman and Natan Sachs

"The rise in settler radicalism stems from several key factors: the growth of the settler population over the past generation, the diversification of religious and ideological strands among it, and the sense of betrayal felt by settlers following Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005."

Yedioth Ahronoth : The New Settlers

Settlement_Graphic186x140.jpg(p. B4) by Ofer Petersburg
translation provided by Israel News Today.  Article not available online.

It is doubtful if this was the solution envisioned by the leaders of the social protest when they went out to demonstrate over the cost of housing in Israel.  But the impossible real estate prices and the unfreezing of land over the Green Line have created a new and surprising trend in the past year:

Ha'aretz: West Bank settlement isn't irreversible

Israeli settlement of the West Bank is untenable, and framing it as inevitable just makes matters worse.

By Elia Leibowitz

In honor of the Ninth of Av, my friend Yossi Sarid wrote a lamentation for the State of Israel. He included excerpts of the writings of another intellectual, Meron Benvenisti, who preceded Sarid in making gloomy predictions about Israel's future. Indeed, Israel of 2012 should be the subject of regret, as in "Weep sore for him who goes away" (Jeremiah 22:10). In this case, the ones going away are the passengers aboard the modern-day Titanic, better known as Israel, whose captains do not see the iceberg ahead if they stay on course. While the gloomy mood and sorrow in Sarid's essay are fully justified, his lamentation is based on two mistaken theories.

read more at Haaretz

The Israeli Government's Bonus for Settlements: NIS 1,059,988,790

On August 2nd, 2012, Yedioth Ahronoth (Hebrew print edition) published a powerful article looking at the financial bonus that settlements enjoy compared to areas inside the Green Line.   The article comes on the heels of Peace Now's publication of an analysis of the budget and a plan to save billions by reducing some benefits to settlements. 

The translation is by Israel News Today (INT).

Bonus for Settlements: NIS 1,059,988,790

Yedioth Ahronoth (p. 4) by Gad Lior and Yuval Karni -- While the middle class is bowing under the weight of  rising taxes and an expected cutback in the budget of the government ministries, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was asked about the special budgets transferred every year to the settlements.  "These are negligible amounts," Netanyahu said, "it's a drop in the ocean."  But an examination of the data shows that the amount in question reaches over NIS 1 billion per year--hardly a "negligible" amount.

The New York Times: Why Not in Vegas?

By Thomas L. Friedman

I'll make this quick. I have one question and one observation about Mitt Romney's visit to Israel. The question is this: Since the whole trip was not about learning anything but about how to satisfy the political whims of the right-wing, super pro-Bibi Netanyahu, American Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, why didn't they just do the whole thing in Las Vegas? I mean, it was all about money anyway -- how much Romney would abase himself by saying whatever the Israeli right wanted to hear and how big a jackpot of donations Adelson would shower on the Romney campaign in return. Really, Vegas would have been so much more appropriate than Jerusalem. They could have constructed a plastic Wailing Wall and saved so much on gas.

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