The Gaza war, as of late Monday afternoon Israel time:
This week, Alpher discusses whether the latest ceasefire will last; whether Israel's war aims changed in the course of the fighting; if ignoring the strategic potential of the Hamas attack tunnels an Israeli intelligence failure; why is there such extraordinary solidarity among the normally divisive Israeli public during this war; regarding a ceasefire, what happened with the Egyptian agenda and a Turkish-Qatari agenda, and in between what appears to be a failed US mediation attempt; if all this means that Hamas has not, or not yet, registered a sufficiently significant accomplishment in this war to "declare victory;" whether Hamas is part of the regional and global militant Islamist movement currently led by ISIS/Islamic State and the likes of Boko Haram as Netanyahu argues, or if is it a faction of the Palestinian national liberation movement and in the long term, what this seeming Hamas membership in two such distinct Middle East groupings means for Israel.
--Number of Gazans, mostly civilians, who have been killed in Israel's Operation Protective Edge as of last night. the Israeli papers told no stories about the individuals.
--The number of Palestinians killed in 19 days of Operation Protective Edge. The majority are civilians. One Israeli civilian and one Thai worker were killed by Palestinian rockets and another 42 Israeli soldiers were killed inside Gaza.**
-Israeli author Etgar Keret on the increasing incitement and violence by right-wingers against left-wingers in Israel.**
by APN's summer intern Hannah Ehlers
Early in my Jewish education, I was taught that, as Jews and as human beings living in an imperfect world, we are obligated to stand up and speak out in the face of injustice. However small or large the perceived wrong, and despite our shaking legs and cracking voices or a powerful and vocal opposition trying to silence us, it is our duty as Jews to confront injustice. As a Reform Jew, I was taught to question and to think critically about the world, my faith, and my personal views and perceptions. And yet, when it came to Israel, there existed in the Jewish community a sort of unwritten rule, an unspoken promise not to question Israel or its policies. I would later discover that this attitude reflected the larger American and international Jewish community and many communal institutions. Although my Hebrew school classmates and I were encouraged to struggle and wrestle with God and Jewish theology, and to have a complicated relationship with American society, we subconsciously subscribed to the attitude, based on fear, that any criticism of Israel was a threat to the Jewish people.
--Israeli human rights organization, B'tselem, asks the Israel Broadcasting Authority why broadcasting on the radio the names of the Palestinian children killed in Gaza was 'politically controversial.'**
--Number of Palestinians killed as of last night.**
--Meretz party chairwoman MK Zehava Gal-On on Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Facebook post calling to boycott Israeli Arabs who made a general strike to show empathy for Gaza residents and against the military offensive.**
Americans for Peace Now (APN) is horrified by the spiraling death-toll of the war between Israel and Hamas. Having urged a ceasefire for the past two weeks, APN welcomes the Obama administration’s efforts to achieve an immediate ceasefire, and urges it to resume diplomatic efforts toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
APN strongly supports Israel’s right for self-defense and its government’s obligation to provide security for its
citizens. As a Zionist, Jewish organization and as the sister-organization of the Israeli grassroots movement
Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), we fully share the security concerns of the people of Israel and the yearning of
Israelis for peace.
We mourn the death of Israeli civilians and of Israeli soldiers in the current hostilities. We also mourn the
alarmingly spiraling deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip – over 500 so far.