Americans for Peace Now (APN) strongly condemns efforts by the Trump administration to end the refugee status of millions of Palestinians prior to the achievement of a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

A recent report in Foreign Policy reveals that the Trump administration – and Special Advisor to the President Jared Kushner in particular – have sought to end U.S. support for the United Nation Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon with education, health care, food, and other services. Kushner is quoted as writing in an email to White House colleagues: “It is important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA.” Furthermore, the report reveals that Kushner and US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley advocated ending all funding for UNRWA in January of this year. The report also cites an unsuccessful attempt by Kushner to push Jordan into stripping the country’s Palestinian refugees of their status.

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.

When you crusade with the claim that Israel does no wrong, you drive students into the arms of the BDS movement.

As a young Jew, I owe gratitude to many donors. As a graduate of Jewish day school, participant in multiple Jewish summer camps, Hebrew school teacher, and member of two wonderful Jewish communities at home and at college, I have many of generous donors to thank for the wonderful Jewish education and experiences I have had the privilege to receive. These donors enabled me to lead an enriching and meaningful Jewish life from kindergarten to college, and every single one deserves my deep gratitude.

So I hope that these donors will not take offense when I ask: Do you know what you’re paying for? For many donors, the results of their funding are clear and tangible; they can see the wing of a synagogue they funded, or receive numbers of how many people were helped by their generosity. But many other Jewish donors fund programs and organizations whose labors they will never be able to experience first-hand or quantify. Some of the most controversial of these funding recipients are organizations tasked with the elusive goal of “defending Israel on campus.” It’s not as easy to quantify how many students these groups help, or quite how effective they are in counteracting the menace of BDS on campus.

Topics for debate: Amb. David Friedman's settlement condolence call, continued uproar over Israel's Nation-State Law particularly from the Druze community, poet Dareen Tartour and (in)equality of Israel's treatment of incitement, and President Trump's offer to meet Iranian leaders without preconditions.

Guests appearing with Debra Shushan (APN Director of Policy and Government Relations): Vivian Bercovici (former Canadian ambassador to Israel) and Aaron Klein (Breitbart).

"I'm ashamed of Israel's Nation-State law" video from Peace Now going viral

In response to Israel's new anti-democratic, anti-peace Nation-State law, which includes downgrading the Arabic language from "official" to "special status", Peace Now has started a campaign encouraging Israelis to make a video saying in Arabic "I am ashamed of the Nation-State law."