Review by Jo-Ann Mort

Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers
Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation
by Yossi Klein Halevi
Harper Collins, 2013, 608 pp.

Growing up in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Yossi Klein Halevi was a devotee of the ultra-rightist rabbi Meier Kahane, an experience he chronicled in an honest autobiography, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist. But after moving to Jerusalem in 1982, he broke from this hardcore and hateful ideology to become one of Israel's most generous-minded journalists and analysts. Once a fellow at the right-wing, Sheldon Adelson-supported Shalem Center, he now resides at the more ecumenical Shalom Hartman Institute as part of a special unit that promotes deeper understanding of Israeli society to the Diaspora Jewish community. Click here for more

Op-ed: To prevent a 'Palestinian spring' Israel must create hope, and prisoner release is part of that

The Arab Spring did not bring, as of yet, stability to any country in which it occured, but it did bring forth a new gospel that's impossible to ignore - the gospel of "The democracy of the masses, and not necessarily of the majority." Mideast nations suddenly realized their strength and their ability to cause coups and change regimes. The public realized that if there's a critical mass of displeased people - even if they are not, by definition, a majority - the regime will struggle to rule.

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(Translated to English and provided by Israel News Today)

I want to tell you a few personal words. Words written from my heart.

Let me introduce myself briefly: I was the personal secretary of five prime ministers. Almost half of the prime ministers in Israel since its establishment. For many years, I sat next door to the prime minister, and I saw a lot. Mostly, I heard.

The Jewish National Fund has in the past been caught lying about its role in East Jerusalem evictions of Palestinians. Now its role in Israeli land policy in the Negev is revealed to be much larger than it admits. A former JNF board member demands the organization take responsibility for its actions.

For many years the Jewish National Fund (KKL/JNF), the group known largely for planting trees in Israel, has denied any involvement in taking Bedouin land as part of its efforts to Judaize the Negev. Its website says, "KKL-JNF develops land only in areas designated in the master plans as instructed by, and as requested by the ILA (Israel Land Authority), which are state lands or KKL-JNF lands."

Putting it simply, they were just taking orders.

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Negativity Hands Iran a Victory -- and Isolates Jewish State

As the world's leaders converge in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is encountering an unusual confluence of activities and initiatives concerning nonconventional weaponry in the Middle East. Some of this activity appears to be working to Israel's benefit, some of it against Israel. Netanyahu is working overtime to emphasize the negative, in ways that could prove counterproductive for Israel.

by Jake Wallis Simons

The "enough blood and tears" speech, which Yitzhak Rabin, then prime minister of Israel, delivered on the White House lawn on Sept 13 1993, is widely regarded as his finest. The Oslo Accord negotiations had been concluded, and a declaration of intent to end hostilities had been signed; he and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, had just made history by shaking hands, to thunderous applause.

Two years later, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to territorial compromise. In 2000, a bloody Intifada erupted across the region, claiming the lives of about 1,000 Israelis and 3,300 Palestinians. Israeli politics came to be dominated by parties from the political Right and the settlements on the West Bank continued to be expanded.

The Levy Report has generated an astonishing number of responses.  Having trouble keeping abreast of all the important details? APN is your one-stop resource for information and analysis.

We will update as new items become available. Check back periodically and see what's fresh!

Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a board member and past president of Americans for Peace Now.  (originally published in Peter Beinart's ZION SQUARE blog on The Daily Beast, February 14, 2012).

In Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf wrote, "As a woman my country is the whole world."  I used to believe this; I thought divisions of nation, race, class, and faith could be trumped by a universalist vision of gender equality, justice, and peace.

Then came the UN's Decade for Women. In 1975, its first international conference famously produced the "Zionism is racism" resolution.  Five years later, when the second conference saw virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric, threats, and violence, I asked myself, why am I working to liberate women if they're going to turn around and  attack Jews?

Hagit Ofran is Director of the Israeli Peace Now movement;s Settlement Watch Project. (7/19/11) There is a sense of outrage within the Israeli public following the passing of "the boycott law" in the Knesset last week. The law allows any individual or institution who faces possible damage as a result of any person's call for boycott settlement products to sue that person. Evidence of actual damage will not be required. Organizations calling for such boycott could lose their legal standing as non profit organization.