--Zionist Camp MK Zuheir Bahloul said during a cultural event in Acre amid the uproar over his statement that a Palestinian who attacks a soldier is not a terrorist.
--Senior Yedioth political commentator Sima Kadmon writes that last week, Israel showed that it cannot call itself an enlightened country or people.
You Must Be Kidding:
"It's like cockroaches. When you see a cockroach, you put a pot over it, so it won't escape, and then you all the time afraid of more, because you don't see it, you don't know if it escaped or didn't escape. Same with the Arabs. If you see them more, you are scared of them less."
--An Israeli female religious seminary student explained to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin why she supported cooperation with the Arabs. Top Yedioth political commentator Nahum Barnea reported that President Rivlin, who came to speak with Jewish religious and secular students and Arab students about co-existence, was disheartened.
WASHINGTON — With the Obama administration in its final year, several officials have said that the president has grown so frustrated with trying to revive Middle East peace talks that he may lay down his own outline for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state peace agreement, in the form of a resolution in the United Nations Security Council.
If that happens, count on two reactions: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will oppose it, and a chorus of American politicians and commentators will suggest that it would be unprecedented — even unthinkable — for an American president to support a Security Council resolution that Israel opposed, rather than veto it.
--Excerpts from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's 1986 book about terror, which Yedioth revealed to show that once, he, too, made the distinction.
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.
This week, Alpher discusses how, at the far right and far left extremes of any prospective Likud-Labor coalition, we encounter views considered by many Israelis to be extremist: anti-Arab racism on the one hand, and a readiness to label some varieties of “terrorism” as legitimate resistance to occupation on the other; What the significance is of secret Netanyahu-Herzog unity government negotiations, a year into Netanyahu’s current right-wing coalition government; and what the backdrop is for the PLO's plan for the UN Security Council to vote on a motion to condemn the settlements on Pesach eve, April 22, and then reportedly backing down.
--Haaretz+ commentator Uri Misgav writes that the time has come to recognize the phenomenon of a Judeo-Nazi movement that exists in the margins of Israeli society.
News from Peace Now's (Israel) Settlement Watch:
Advancement of Plans for Housing Units in the Settlements up by 250% in the First Quarter of 2016 Compared with the Same Period Last Year
While the government's declared policy in the settlements is that of a "planning freeze," during January-March 2016
plans for 674 housing units in the settlements were advanced (all over the West Bank and particularly in isolated
settlements), as opposed to 194 housing units in the same period last year.
During 2015, plans for 1,665 new housing units were promoted (1,044 of them were retroactively legalized after
having been built illegally and without a plan). This number constitutes a substantial decrease from 2014, during
which 8,606 new housing units had been promoted (801 of which retroactively legalized). The figures of the first
quarter of 2016 illustrate an upturn in the approval of plans, and sharply increase the total number of units
promoted by the current Netanyahu government. Additionally, as illustrated by the numbers above, while the
government states that it currently approves plans for already existing construction only, in reality in 2016 only
26% of the plans advanced constituted retroactive legalizations (compared with 63% in 2015).
Update: this action, now closed, ran in April 2016.
For years right-wing critics – Israeli and American, inside and outside Congress – have maligned President Obama for supposedly failing to sufficiently defend and support Israel. In particular, they have warned that if President Obama were to allow the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to pass a resolution criticizing objectionable Israeli policies, or a resolution weighing in on the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would be an unprecedented betrayal of Israel – a betrayal that a true friend of Israel would never consider, let alone permit.
Now, the truth is finally out – in this op-ed in the New York Times, by APN Director of Policy & Government Relations Lara Friedman. And the truth is: President Obama is the only president since 1967 who has shielded Israel 100% from critical resolutions in the UNSC.
As a true friend of Israel, it is time for President Obama to stop shielding Israel in the UNSC, just as his predecessors in the Oval Office – Republican and Democrat alike – did numerous times over the past 48 years.
--Far right-wing former MK Moshe Feiglin supports the statement of maligned Zionist Camp MK Zuheir Bahloul that Palestinian attacks on Israeli security forces is not terror.**
--Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said in a meeting with religious leaders of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
You Must Be Kidding:
"When the midwife brings a just born Arab baby to the nursery, they say to her, 'What did you bring? Another terrorist?’”
-Dr. Lina Qassem spoke at a Knesset hearing on the subject of the illegal practice of ethnic separation in Israeli hospital maternity wards.**