I'm proud to be one of the thousands of Israelis and Palestinians who joined the demonstration on Saturday night in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The crowd, mobilized by a broad range of groups (including the Israeli Peace Now movement), is united in our opposition to settler groups who are evicting Palestinian families and moving into their homes there.

The demonstration was a powerful show of force by the Israeli peace camp. Indeed, the headline on the front page of today's Ma'ariv, which conservatively estimates the crowd at 3,000, reads: "There is a Left in Jerusalem." 

Congress is now considering two pieces of legislation that will limit the Iranian regime's ability to crack down on freedom of speech within Iran.

This is a great opportunity. Empowering the Iranian people must be a vital part of the American strategy to deal with the threat posed by Iran to Israel and to key American national security interests.

Video footage (with English subtitles) from Saturday's demonstration is now available.

Check it out:

On Saturday night hundreds of Peace Now activists will converge in Tel Aviv to make an important statement: Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak may talk a lot about peace, but - when it comes to actions - they are implementing an anti-peace agenda.

In recent days, Peace Now activists have been posting flyers about the demonstration all across Israel. Here is an English version of the flyer:

I thought about it for a while. I came to the conclusion that it's not so funny.

On Tuesday, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon essentially called J Street an organization of liars. Yesterday, the Israeli media reported that Ayalon intervened to prevent a Congressional delegation from meeting with representatives of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and other senior governmental officials.

As a political analyst, I understand that Ayalon wants headlines that appeal to his hard-line constituency. Sooner or later he will have to face re-election and to fight off other politicos eager for his senior rank within his party's Knesset list. Headlines like this probably help his political career.