News Nosh 12.01.15

APN's daily news review from Israel
Monday December 1, 2015 
 
Quote of the day:
"You are not Van Damme, not the police, not judges, and not God."
In a lecture to high school studentsabout human rights, Israeli State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan warned that people must not take the law into their own hands and attack a Palestinian assailant who no longer poses a threat.

You Must Be Kidding: 
"If I knew that you're a stinking Arab, I wouldn’t have accepted your order.” 
--What the customer service representative at 'Class Deal' website told Fadi Grace, an Arab Israeli, who called because he did not receive his shoe order.

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Michael Koplow, the Policy Director at the Israel Policy Forum, this week added his voice to those suggesting that the US should drop its 48-year-old policy of opposing all Israeli settlement construction, and replace it with one that in effect green lights some such construction - or in Koplow's words, a policy that "distinguishes between kosher and non-kosher settlement growth." Koplow joins Brookings' Natan Sachs and others, all of whom follow in the footsteps of Dennis Ross in supporting such shift and predicting that it would help pave the way to peace. And Koplow - like his predecessors - uses words like "realistic" and "pragmatic" to describe his approach, suggesting that those who disagree are anything but.

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Since the beginning of this year, an unprecedented but little-noticed campaign has been waged in Congress—backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and others—in support of Israeli settlements. At the core of this campaign is an effort to legislate a change in U.S. policy, which since 1967 has remained firmly opposed to settlements, under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

Backers of the campaign, both in Congress and among outside groups like AIPAC, are promoting numerous pieces of legislation that redefine “Israel” to mean “Israel-plus-the-settlements” and make supporting settlements an integral and mandatory part of American support for Israel, as a matter of policy and law. They pass off their efforts as an entirely non-controversial matter of countering boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) against Israel in general, countering BDS policies adopted by the EU and some European countries, in particular.

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News Nosh 12.02.15

APN's daily news review from Israel
Wednesday December 2, 2015  
 
Quote of the day:
“An act of this kind, in addition to being non-normative and in contradiction of IDF values, is liable to lead to a weakening of the moral strength of the IDF and even of the State of Israel.” 
--IDF court writes in ruling on trial of soldier who beat a detained Palestinian on the back of his neck and yelled, 'Death to Arabs.' The IDF has seen a rise of violence by soldiers against Palestinians. 

You Must Be Kidding: 
Asked why he asked for a tattoo of the Islamic State flag and why he has an al-Qaida flag tattoo, the Israeli man said he saw the terrorist groups' flags on the news and "thought they would make pretty tattoos."

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Help us SPREAD THE LIGHT and receive "Thirteen Days in September"

The following message from Tom Feldman and Michael Walzer is the first in a series of messages that you will be receiving from members of APN’s Board of Directors and staff during the eight days of Hanukkah.

These messages are our way of exchanging gifts: offering you the gift of learning -- for you or a loved one -- in exchange for your contribution to APN.

We call it Spreading the Light. It’s a celebration of ideas and learning to nourish our hearts and minds and bring some much-needed light into our lives and into the lives of people we love.

For us, the best way to spread the light, to enlighten, is through books that we find eye-opening. The books that we will be offering you during the week – gifts to convey our appreciation for your support -- include fascinating chapters in the history of Israel and the Palestinians, and the conflict between them, as well as an Israeli-Palestinian cookbook, a book by Israel’s leading modern poet, and a whimsical book on the role that words play in Jewish tradition, co-authored by Israel’s leading contemporary novelist, a founder of Israel’s Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) movement, and his daughter.

Thank you for all that you do to support our efforts to counter the darkness of war, violence, intolerance and extremism, and advance hope for a better future for Israel and its neighbors.

Happy Chanukah,
Jim Klutznick, Chair, and Debra DeLee, President and CEO,
Americans for Peace Now

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Happy Chanukah - Spread the Light with APN!

 

Click on each image to read letters from previous days and see what that day's "gift" is!

 

Over the holiday of Chanukah, APN sent out a series of messages from members of APN’s Board of Directors and staff.

These messages are our way of exchanging gifts: offering you the gift of learning -- for you or a loved one -- in exchange for your contribution to APN.

We call it Spreading the Light. It’s a celebration of ideas and learning to nourish our hearts and minds and bring some much-needed light into our lives and into the lives of people we love.

For us, the best way to spread the light, to enlighten, is through books that we find eye-opening. The books that we have offered you – gifts to convey our appreciation for your support -- include fascinating chapters in the history of Israel and the Palestinians, and the conflict between them, as well as an Israeli-Palestinian cookbook, a book by Israel’s leading modern poet, and a whimsical book on the role that words play in Jewish tradition, co-authored by Israel’s leading contemporary novelist, a founder of Israel’s Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) movement, and his daughter.

Thank you for all that you do to support our efforts to counter the darkness of war, violence, intolerance and extremism, and advance hope for a better future for Israel and its neighbors.

Happy Chanukah,
Jim Klutznick, Chair, and Debra DeLee, President and CEO,
Americans for Peace Now

Help us SPREAD THE LIGHT and receive "Killing a King"

Gunther/Nir Day 2

 

The current Israeli-Palestinian violence demonstrates how damaging national-religious incitement can be. But it’s not just Palestinian incitement. The extremist rabbis of the ideological West Bank settlers are as responsible for Jewish violence as Muslim clerics are for Palestinian violence.

The most blatant case of incitement-inspired Jewish political violence since the establishment of the state of Israel was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

Donate Dan Ephron’s Killing a King is a must-read book that follows both Rabin and his assassin, Yigal Amir, through the year or two that preceded the murder. It invites the reader to continue following these two lines – the progressive, peace-seeking Israel that Rabin led and came to represent, and the extremist, reactionary Israel – beyond the disastrous point of their intersection on November 4, 1995.

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Help us SPREAD THE LIGHT and receive "The Unmaking of Israel"

Freedman/Friedman/Lewis Day 3

 

We are living in the first era of Jewish independence since the time of the Maccabees. It was over 2000 years ago that Jews last controlled their own destiny before the creation of the modern State of Israel. The independence the Maccabees gained lasted about 80 years. Modern day Israel is 67 years old.

DonateIt was internal divisions and rival factions amongst ourselves that led to the loss of sovereignty then and we may well be heading in the same direction today.

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News Nosh 12.03.15

APN's daily news review from Israel
Thursday December 3, 2015  
 
Quote of the day:
“Donald Trump is an (MK) Oren Hazan who has made money. He is rude, quick-tempered and addicted to the noise he makes as if it were a drug. Ben Carson is a (MK) Bezalel Smotrich with a PhD. He has dark views, screaming ignorance and problematic credibility. The possibility that one of these two will hold world peace in his hands is as scary as ISIS's sleeper cells in Molenbeek.”
--Yedioth’s top political commentator Nahum Barnea writes that it's harder to understand the extent of the damage posed by those who don't dress like extremists, but think like them. 
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APN mourns the passing of Samuel (Sandy) Berger

Americans for Peace Now mourns the passing of Samuel (Sandy) Berger Z”L, a former member of our Board of Advisors and a friend of APN. As President Clinton’s national security advisor and in other capacities, Sandy served America’s national security interests. He also played a pivotal role in advancing Israel’s security and wellbeing, and was an avid advocate of the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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