(UPDATE: As of January 15, Senate Majority Leader McConnell has tried to advance S.1, the bill that includes the so-called "Combating BDS Act," three times. Each time, McConnell's motions have failed to clear the 60-vote hurdle to advance, thanks to the vast majority of the Democratic caucus voting against cloture. And each time, immediately after his cloture motions have failed, McConnell has filed for a subsequent vote, in the apparent belief that putting Democratic senators on record voting against advancing S.1 will enable Republicans to paint the Democratic party as insufficiently "pro-Israel."

The vote tallies are as follows. On January 8, S.1 failed to advance by a vote of 56-44. On January 10, the tally was 53-43. And on January 14, the vote was 50-43. During the first two votes, four Democrats joined with Republicans in voting to advance S.1: Senators Manchin, Menendez, Sinema, and Jones. In the third vote, Senator Menendez, dropped his support because “I don’t like the Majority Leader using the US-Israel relationship as a political pawn.” McConnell has entered a motion for a fourth vote to advance S.1, but as of this writing that vote has not yet been scheduled.)

Americans for Peace Now (APN) opposes any bill that encourages state and local governments to adopt legislation which penalizes citizens who boycott Israel and/or Israeli settlements.

The Senate’s first piece of legislation in the 116^th session, dubbed S.1, does just that. Referred to as the “Middle East Security Bill” by its sponsor, Senator Marco Rubio, S.1 incorporates the Combating BDS Act of 2019 into a larger bill that would appropriate security funds for Israel and reauthorize defense cooperation between the US and Jordan.

Rashida Tlaib of Michigan is the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress.

Public attention focused on a profanity that Tlaib used in reference to President Trump shortly after being sworn in to the 116th Congress. This episode, instead, focuses on the significance of Tlaib’s coming to Washington for the Palestinian-American community, a community that has never enjoyed much political clout in the U.S.

Hanna Hanania, a prominent leader of the community, talks about what it means for Palestinian-American to have a progressive young woman in Congress who proudly asserts her Palestinian identity.

The state announced this week to court that the Lahav 433 police anti-fraud organization, as well as the State Prosecutor's Office, will be “examining” Peace Now’s complaints of two cases of illegal construction in the Binyamin Region Council area of the West Bank. The announcement came following two petitions that Peace Now filed to the High Court demanding that the Police and the State Prosecutor open investigations against the heads of the Binyamin Regional Council, the Amana settlement movement and other bodies that were involved in big projects of illegal construction in settlement outposts. One petition was about the establishment of the illegal outpost of Kerem Reim (west of Ramallah), and the other petition was against the construction of 21 housing units in the illegal outpost of Hayovel (south of Nablus).
 
The hearing of the petition concerning Hayovel will take place this Monday (7/1/19).
 
Peace Now: For 50 years now, a handful of settlers have been using public funds through the settlement councils and Amana to put facts on the ground that affect the future of all of us in violation of the law and of the government's decisions. The hesitation of the State Prosecutor's Office and the police to investigate the organized crime of illegal construction in the settlements is tantamount to granting immunity to the offenders and shows a lack of respect for the rule of law. The message the government is sending to the settlers is that they are above the law.

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.

A new report by Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) analyzes Israel's relations with American Jews through the prism of Israeli national security.

The report is chiefly directed at Israeli policy makers, and therefore has so far only been published in Hebrew. The English translation will be published soon. Dr. Michal Hatuel-Radushitzky, one of the report's authors, talks about the chief observations and recommendations of the report.