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Israel Has Its Faults, But Apartheid Isn't One of Them
by Richard Cohen
 Google "Israel and
apartheid" and you will see that the two are linked in cyberspace. Yet
the Israel of today and the South Africa of yesterday have almost
nothing in common. Israeli Arabs, about one-fifth of the country, have
the same civil and political rights as do Israeli Jews. Arabs sit in
the Knesset. Whatever this is - and it looks suspiciously like a
liberal democracy - it cannot be apartheid. Yet Israel's critics continue to hurl the apartheid epithet when
they ought to know that it is a calumny. Interestingly, they do not use
it for Saudi Arabia, which maintains as perfect a system of gender
apartheid as can be imagined, or elsewhere in the Arab world, where
Palestinians sometimes have fewer rights than they do in Israel. (Washington Post)
The Dubai Police Chief's Outlandish Claims
by Jackson Diehl
 Lt. Gen. Dahi
Khalfan Tamim, the police chief of Dubai, certainly knows how to milk a
good story for all it's worth. It's now been six weeks since Hamas
operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his hotel room. Yet day
after day Tamim continues to make headlines, issuing grandiose
pronouncements. The general has an eager audience for these
increasingly implausible declarations - especially in the Arab and
European media, which revel in excoriating Israel for deeds those media
routinely excuse or ignore when practiced by other governments. Washington Post)
New Study: Women's Rights in the Middle East 2010
by Sanja Kelly
 As the governments of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) undertake the difficult process of enacting social and political change, the unequal status of women presents a particularly formidable challenge. Women throughout the Middle East continue to face systematic discrimination in both laws and social customs. Deeply entrenched societal norms, combined with conservative interpretations of Shari'a (Islamic law), continue to relegate women to a subordinate status. Women in the region are significantly underrepresented in senior positions in politics and the private sector, and in some countries they are completely absent from the judiciary. Perhaps most visibly, women face gender-based discrimination in personal-status laws, which regulate marriage, divorce, child guardianship, inheritance, and other aspects of family life. Nevertheless, important steps have been made to improve the status of women over the last five years. (Freedom House)
How to Handle Hamas
by Adam Ingram
 A year after the Gaza operation, Hamas still refuses to reconcile with Fatah, recognize Israel, renounce violence, accept previous Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements or release Cpl. Gilad Shalit, kidnapped from Israeli soil in June 2006. There are those across the political spectrum who consistently call for diplomatic engagement with Hamas, comparing it to the IRA, the South African ANC or even the Palestinian Fatah movement. However, all those movements had their roots in deep-seated nationalism. Crucially, Hamas has a strong religious and specifically political Islamist dimension, prohibiting it from making deals over the land it regards as holy and tasking it with imposing theocratic rule over the people of that land. We must therefore ask ourselves whether Hamas is capable of reform that is compatible with a negotiated peace. The writer is chair of the Labour Friends of Israel "Handling Hamas" project. (Guardian-UK)
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Syria Will Not Abandon Its Alliance with Iran
by Michael J. Totten
 Syria has been cunningly outwitting Americans and Europeans for decades. Syria will
not abandon its alliance with Iran, nor will it cease and desist its
support for terrorist groups, until at least one of the two governments
has been replaced. The alliance works for both parties. Syria's and
Iran's lists of enemies - Sunni Arabs, Israel, and the U.S. - are
identical.
Syria is no more likely to join the de facto American coalition than
the U.S. is likely to defect to the Syrian-Iranian-Hizbullah axis. It's
as if the U.S. were trying to pry East Germany out of the Communist
bloc during the Cold War. No basket of carrots Barack Obama or anyone else can offer will
change Assad's calculation of his own strategic interests. (Commentary)
Challenges of Middle East Peace
by David Makovsky
 I think the
prospect of the Israelis and Palestinians reaching a grand agreement on
all the core or so-called final status issues is very unlikely at this
time. The four core issues are: the rights of refugees, control of
Jerusalem, security, and territory/borders. The first two issues seem
unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. It is vital that we concentrate
our efforts on areas that are amenable to progress and focus on what is
attainable. The U.S. is smarting from the fact that the Arab states were
supposed to match Israeli moves on settlements with gestures towards
Israel, but failed to do anything. The Arab states may say that the
settlement moratorium is not 100% of what they would like. No
negotiation is what one side wants. Yet, even if they think Netanyahu
only moved 70%, they have responded with 0% reciprocity. It is unlikely
the U.S. will go down this road again. From testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 4.
(Washington Institute for Near East Policy)
Action Needed to Combat Campaign Delegitimizing Israel
by Martin J. Raffel
 The organized American Jewish community and our non-Jewish allies, with broad representation from across political and religious lines, are poised to launch a major initiative to counter the global campaign to delegitimize Israel. The sky is not falling. President Obama and the U.S. Congress remain firmly committed to Israel's fundamental security, and opinion polls consistently reflect broad American public support for the Jewish state. But there are clouds gathering on the horizon. We must act now to prevent the clouds from becoming a full-fledged storm. The writer is senior vice president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. (JTA)
During Sderot's Calm, Life Still Not Back to Normal
by Anav Silverman
 Hila Barzilai, the
new director of the Sderot Resilience Center, told me that in the
months after Israel's Gaza operation, 364 new patients have turned to
the center for therapy. "These kids come to us with their parents to
seek therapy for the trauma built up from years of rocket attacks,"
said Barzilai. "We are talking about eight years of constant rocket
attacks whose psychological effects are now emerging during this period
of calm." The average recovery period for a child can take up to eight
months or more. One of the challenges is the sporadic rocket attacks
that continue to hit Sderot and the western Negev region. Barzilai
noted that "it takes one rocket attack to destroy any progress in the
patient's therapy. The siren alert will trigger the flashbacks of
terror and fear in the child or adult, which means that the therapy
process has to begin anew." (Bangor Daily News)
The Israeli Field Hospital in Haiti - Ethical Dilemmas in Early Disaster Response
by Ofer Merin, Nachman Ash, Gad Levy. et.al.
 Within 48 hours after the massive earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on January 12, the government of Israel dispatched a military task force consisting of 230 people. The force's primary mission was to establish a field hospital in Haiti. In its 10 days of operation, the field hospital treated more than 1100 patients. From the outset, our hospital functioned at full capacity. It was impossible to treat everyone who needed care, and thus the first triage decision we often had to make was which patients we would accept and which would be denied treatment. We were forced to recognize that persons with the most urgent need for care are often the same ones who require the greatest expenditure of resources. Therefore, we first had to determine whether these patients' lives could be saved. (New England Journal of Medicine)
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