APN's daily news review from Israel

Wednesday January 1, 2020

Number of the day #1:
30%.
--Amount of Israeli children living under the poverty line, according to new national report.**

Number of the day #2:
100 million.
--The amount of shekels (= $29 million) that the settler organization, Amana, received from taxpayer funds between 2013 to 2015, to promote Jewish settlement on occupied lands, often acting illegally to achieve this goal.*

Quote of the day:

“The justices’ decision is a dramatic and significant step that sets bounds, at least for now, on the rampant criminality in the settlements and the illegal outposts. We hope that in this spirit, the court will rule that no public money should be transferred to Amana ... A situation in which Israel backs the transfer of public money for illegal activity is intolerable, and we urge the government to put a stop to it.”
--Peace Now reacts to the High Court decision forcing settlements to ask for government permission to transfer funds to the Amana settler organization.*

APN's daily news review from Israel

Tuesday December 31st, 2019

Quote of the day:

"And perhaps the most terrifying fear of all: the fear that, in fact, all the rules have changed and nobody writes new ones in their place. Because Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Bashar al-Assad, and Binyamin Netanyahu may have nothing in common, except for one rule: there are no more rules. Everything goes."
--In a pre-New Year's Op-Ed, Yedioth commentator Raanan Shaked writes a review of the last decade.*

Breaking News:
Iraqi mourners, supporters of US-attacked militia, storm US Embassy after US airstrikes kill 25
The mourners held funerals for the 25 Iraqi fighters of the Iran-backed militia killed in US airstrikes in a Baghdad neighborhood, after which they marched on to the heavily fortified Green Zone on Tuesday and kept walking till they reached the sprawling U.S. Embassy there. Iraqi security forces fired teargas to disperse protesters. US ambasador and staff evacuated. (Ynet, Haaretz)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

APN's daily news review from Israel

Monday December 30, 2019

Quote of the day #1:

“The truth is, Jews in Israel are trying to convince themselves and the whole world that ensuring their own rights necessitates the elimination of the Palestinians’ national rights. According to the deluded conception prevailing among right-wingers, the establishment of a Palestinian state means the negation of the fulfillment of Zionism. Since in their eyes, assailing Zionism is tantamount to anti-Semitism, Palestinian nationhood in an independent state is perceived as anti-Semitic.”
—Prof. Zeev Sternhell in Op-Ed in today’s Haaretz.

Quote of the day #2:

“I have come to the realization that Trump is one of the most important presidents in US history. In a world where boundaries are blurred, where it is unclear who is good and who is bad, it is good to know that that the world's superpower is led by a person with moral clarity…”
—Israel Hayom Editor-in-Chief, Boaz Bismuth, writes in an Op-Ed in today’s paper.

A piece of so-called art - a banana duct-taped to a wall - garnered the public’s attention when it sold for $120,000.

Was it a publicity stunt? Was it satire? Whatever it was, it certainly made the headlines and probably succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.

Well, $120,000 ain’t bananas to us here at APN. In fact, at the time, we needed just about that much more to meet our 2019 budget target. We are now down to $50,000, and that still ain't bananas!

APN receives three stars on Charity Navigator, in no small part because of our fiscal responsibility. No bananas and duct tape for us. So rest assured, we do all we can to put your donations to work toward more programing and less administration.

* $50,000 more to our budget means expanding APN’s support for Israel’s Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) movement.

* $50,000 more to our budget means updating our materials, including a new 2020 map of Israeli West Bank settlements, which is an essential and highly demanded educational tool.

* $50,000 more will allow us to maintain our map-app, found on the Apple app store, produce more podcasts, renew News Nosh for which there are over 4000 subscribers, promote Yossi Alpher’s popular weekly Q and A, expand our social media presence, produce regional events, and much more.

As we head into 2020, an election year with many fundraising challenges, please do whatever you can to help now. Because fighting for a two-state solution is no publicity stunt.

Happy New Year and a peaceful 2020 from the staff of APN.

APN's daily news review from Israel

Sunday December 29, 2019

Quote of the day #1:

“Even if its intentions are otherwise, by closing the center the university is joining the murky wave of directing fewer and fewer resources to peace research, democracy and humanist values.”
—Prof. Izhak Schnell of the Department of Geography and Human Environment at Tel-Aviv University reacts to the university’s decision to shut down the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research.*

Quote of the day #2:

"Netanyahu, with no authority or responsibility, keeps promoting more construction in the West Bank settlements all the while sacrificing the possibility of an agreement with the Palestinian people."
--Peace Now reacted to the latest government plan to approve 2000 more settler homes.**

Professor Nurit Shnabel is a psychologist at Tel Aviv University, who researches the way in which empathy can diminish the sense of exclusive victimhood that each side feels in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Some of her findings could be leveraged by leaders and other members of both societies to help find a way toward peace and reconciliation.

Listen to the full episode