Barbara Green has been a volunteer for Americans for Peace Now for many years. She lives in Washington, DC.

Korach gathers 250 ‘princes of the assembly’ and confronts Moses and Aaron: “You take too much upon you…seeing that each of us is holy.”   Moses, abject, tells his challengers to bring offerings to the sanctuary the next day so that God can determine who is holy.   God’s punishment is swift and violent.   He immediately kills Korach and his followers; the 14,700 souls who stood with them are swallowed by an earthquake.   Imagine a 13-year-old having to deconstruct this parsha for his/her bar or bat mitzvah!

            What are we modern readers to make of this tale and what relevance does it have for us today?  The answer is that it depends on the way one views Korach.   Was he a jealous competitor, miffed because Moses passed over him, a first-born son who lost the priestly leadership to Aaron, the younger son of his uncle?   Or was his a legitimate challenge to Moses’ perceived failures of leadership?    Was he rebelling against God who made the choice? Did Korach posit a more democratic form of leadership? If everyone is holy, each person can decide for himself how to act.  No supreme leader is needed.

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Americans for Peace Now (APN) joins its sister organization, Israel's Peace Now movement, in strongly condemning the recent deadly terrorist attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and in pointing out that ultimately, the only way to end such violence is ending the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by achieving a two-state solution.

This imperative was further underscored in today's report by the international Middle East Quartet, the body that brings together the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace.

It’s been eight years since APN first partnered with New Story Leadership (NSL), a program that brings Israeli and Palestinian fellows to Washington for six weeks of leadership-skills development. The program includes an internship with a Washington-based nonprofit or a congressional office and intense dialogue to foster a better understanding of the other side to the conflict. For most fellows, this is the first chance they have to engage in intense conversations with young people from the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, to listen, reach out, forge relationship and often make friends. The program has given birth to several Israeli-Palestinian nonprofit partnerships.

Each summer in the past eight years, APN has hosted a couple of NSL fellows – an Israeli and a Palestinian – sometimes in partnership with the American Task Force on Palestine. And each year, we host the group for an introductory meeting to tell the fellows about APN and Peace Now. On Friday, July 1, we got together at our office with the NSL fellows and staff for what was supposed to be a short introductory meeting, and turned into a fascinating two-hour discussion about efforts for Israeli-Palestinian peace and prospects for a two-state solution.

Israel’s prime minister is fighting hard to weaken the most important moderate force in his country. Which is why he’s going to be a big problem for the next U.S. president.