The ADL came out last week with its Top 10 list of "Issues Affecting Jews in 2012,"a list that conspicuously omits mention of many of the most troubling issues affecting Jews this past year. Below is a list of the most glaring omissions.

Recently, the European Union adopted harsh new Iran sanctions, strongly supported by Israel. Shortly thereafter, Israel announced new East Jerusalem settlement construction. The EU's top official Catherine Ashton, who was about to visit Israel, condemned the announcement in measured terms; Israel's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, publicly told her, in effect, to shove it. Imagine if in response, Ashton had indefinitely postponed her trip. Imagine that Israeli ambassadors in EU capitals were summoned to the local foreign ministries and read the riot act. Imagine that Israeli press had been alerted, leading to headlines about how Prime Minister Netanyahu and Lieberman were squandering the friendship of the EU and European support on Iran for the sake of settlement expansion.

Machon Dahaf / Smith Consulting (December 2012)
Contains findings of two polls showing that roughly two-thirds of respondents (67%) support a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with land swaps; a demilitarized Palestine; and Jerusalem's Old City administered jointly by the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, with Israel maintaining control of the Western Wall. Read More >

The Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development / The Program on International Policy Attitudes (November 2012)
Finds that majority of Israelis say that they are ready to at least accept as the basis for negotiation the Arab Peace Initiative, whereby Israel withdraws to 1967 borders and a peace agreement is established with all Arab states. However, there is growing pessimism that a lasting peace with the Palestinians can be established. Views are mixed about the consequences should prospects of two-state solution collapse. PDF >

Itamar Rabinovich | Brookings Institution Press (2012)
Book Review (Foreign Affairs) | CampusBooks

At the invitation of the New York Times "Room for Debate," APN's Lara Friedman weighed in with analysis of what President Obama can and should do to address the Gaza-Israel crisis and to ensure that any new ceasefire does not become simply an intermission between rounds of violence.

---------------------------------------------------------
APN Resource Page on the Gaza Crisis
---------------------------------------------------------

For the second consecutive year, the Palestinians are seeking enhanced status at the U.N. It feels like a re-run of 2011, but there are significant legal and political differences that should not be overlooked.

Suppose Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told an interviewer that he'll never recognize Israel or accept any agreement that doesn't give the Palestinians every inch of historic Palestine, including all of Jerusalem.  He insists on full Palestinian right of return - including his own right of return to his native Safed, which since 1948 has been part of Israel -- and maintains that it is the Palestinians' right to use all means, including violence, to achieve their goals.

Today's announcement that the Israeli government if moving full steam ahead with the construction of nearly 1300 new settlement units should surprise nobody.  The announcement paves the way for construction in Pisgat Zeev and Ramot (settlement neighborhoods of East Jerusalem), as well as in the huge and extremely controversial settlement of Ariel - a settlement located smack-dab in the middle of the northern West Bank, in a location that makes its inclusion as part of Israel under any realistic borders scenario pretty much impossible.