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This week, Alpher discusses what we can expect in Israel and Israel-US relations in 2016; the notion that the Palestinian issue increasingly will become an internal Israeli affair; how the Arab and Muslim worlds will respond to this and if we will witness external aggression against Israel; and prospects for some sort of international political agreement regarding Syria, spearheaded by the US and Russia

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Washington Post: A danger to Israeli democracy

ISRAEL, SURROUNDED not only by threats to its existence but also by governments and movements that practice tyranny, is a stubbornly free society.

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Peace Now report: Who is Funding Israeli Right-Wing NGOs?

News from Peace Now's (Israel) Settlement Watch:

94% of the donations of 9 well-known right-wing NGOs are nontransparent

 In light of the NGO bill, a Peace Now study examining the funding sources and transparency of 9 right-wing pro-settler NGOs finds that 94% of the donations to these organizations in the years 2006-2013 were nontransparent, meaning that there is no possibility to identify their original donor. The study also finds that the majority of the funding to the organizations examined originated from private individuals abroad, arriving mainly through U.S. organizations with a tax-deductible donations status. Many other millions of shekels originated from Israeli taxpayers' money through government ministries and an local municipalities. 

Peace Now: The NGO bill, also known as the "transparency bill" has nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with the delegitimation of organizations criticizing the government's policies. If the Minister of Justice is truly interested in transparency, she must first and foremost promote legislation requiring right-wing organizations to expose the millions they receive from private donors abroad and from the state budget.
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Secular Revolutions and Religious Counter-Revolutions:  
 The Case of Zionism
Wednesday, February 3, 2016, 7:30pm - 9:00pm
A program of the Foundation for Jewish Studies
Kol Shalom, Co-Sponsor 
walzer-headshot100x100APN Board Member Professor Michael Walzer will speak about the years after WWII as three secular, leftist national liberation movements in Israel, India and Algeria succeeded in winning independence and establishing states.
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On January 6, 2016, APN hosted Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer of the Israel Democracy Institute for a conversation on the current state of Israeli democracy, as it faces new government measures to enhance the Netanyahu government’s hegemony and to stifle dissent.

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Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer is Vice President of Research at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) and Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law, where he served as Dean. He is an expert on criminal, military, and public law, and widely considered as a leading expert on Israeli democracy and democracy education. At the IDI, he has been leading the following projects: Constitutional Principles and their Implementation, National Security and Democracy, Arab-Jewish Relations, and Proportionality in Public Policy.

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PAST ACTION- Tell Congress to Tell Knesset to Reject Anti-Democratic NGO Law

Knesset

Update: this action, now closed, ran in January 2016. 

Israel is on the verge of adopting an openly anti-democratic law seeking to stigmatize, delegitimize, and ultimately silence Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Peace Now.

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News from Peace Now's (Israel) Settlement Watch:

Two important settlement developments in this update:

1. Appointed Attorney General proposes to confiscate private Palestinian lands for settlements

2. A new settlement established south of Bethlehem

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Gary Rosenblatt in The New York Jewish Week: Frustration With Israel Is Growing Here At Home

The hard fact is that Israel’s leadership is moving in a direction at odds with the next generation of Americans.

Even as Israel endures daily “lone wolf” attacks from young Palestinians prepared to die for the cause of spilling Jewish blood, American Jewish leaders confide that generating support for the Jewish state is becoming increasingly difficult these days — even within the Jewish community, and especially among younger people.

In contrast to the widespread emotional identification shown for Parisians and others around the world who have been attacked by Islamic militants, it is hard to find much empathy out there for Israelis seeking to go on with their lives amidst the prospect of violence they face each day.

In a series of private conversations in recent days with a variety of professionals who make their living advocating for Israel and Jewish causes, I was struck by a consistent theme I heard: deep concern about Israel’s future and its relationship with diaspora Jewry. There was a feeling that the political and diplomatic situation is getting worse as Israel is increasingly isolated on the international scene — even spied on by the U.S., we learned last week.

Closer to home, efforts by the last Knesset to liberalize positions on personal religious status — on such issues as conversion, marriage, divorce and women’s prayer at the Kotel — have been reversed by the current coalition in Jerusalem. That is one more signal to the great majority of American Jews, who are not Orthodox, that they are seen as second-class Jews in the eyes of the State of Israel they are urged to support.

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Ben Nun- Newsweek- 1-2016Unable to deliver real solutions to the ongoing violence, Israeli governments have been trying for years to blame the messengers rather than take responsibility for their own policies. Last week, this practice was taken to the next level when a ministerial committee approved the NGO bill, proposed legislation targeting specifically peace and human rights organizations.

Under the pretense of increasing transparency on donations received from foreign governments, the bill’s actual intention is to delegitimize any organization that criticizes the government's policies. According to the proposed legislation, members of left-leaning organizations, who already submit quarterly reports on donations from foreign governments, will be obligated to wear special badges and to identify themselves as “foreign agents.”

If the proposed legislation is truly aimed at increasing transparency, it must require all NGOs to expose their funding sources, instead of denouncing left-wing organizations, which are already held to higher transparency standards.

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APN's Lara Friedman for JTA: No comparison between Israeli NGO bill and US law

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is trying to sell the argument that her pending “NGO transparency” bill is no different than a U.S. law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. In reality, the two pieces of legislation are worlds apart in intent and effect, and the differences go to the heart of the problems with Shaked’s bill.

First, FARA applies to all foreign funding – governmental and private – of U.S. persons or organizations, ensuring transparency about any foreign donor’s efforts to sway U.S. policy. The Shaked bill applies only to funding from foreign governments – funding that is already transparent under existing Israeli law. The measure does not apply to funding from nongovernmental foreign sources.

This distinction is neither accidental nor trivial. Israel’s progressive nongovernmental organizations are the main recipients of funding from foreign governments that support the progressive, democratic values embodied by these NGOs. Shaked, who has made clear her desire to quash dissent, has crafted her bill to target only these NGOs while permitting those that promote agendas more in line with her own views to continue to operate as always. The discrimination implicit in this bill is so clear that even Israeli Knesset member Michael Oren, a former U.S. ambassador, has criticized its “one-sided exposure, which ignores the funding sources of extreme-right nonprofits.”

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