The Trump administration yesterday dealt another blow to America’s leadership on the global stage and to the US commitment to multilateralism by withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).  

One of the chief reasons given for the US decision to withdraw is the UNHRC’s treatment of Israel. This is the second time the Trump Administration has announced it will pull the US out of a UN body over alleged anti-Israel bias. The first was the US withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), announced last year. The pullout fits a broader Trump administration pattern of abandoning multilateralism for an America First approach, evident also in its exit from the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord.

In this episode, the second in a series about the collective emotional state of the Gaza Strip’s population, APN’s Debra Shushan and Ori Nir speak with Dr. Brian Barber, a psychologist, who in the past quarter of a century has been studying the psyche of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Barber is a professor of child and family studies and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Conflict at the University of Tennessee, from which he recently retired. He is now a scholar at the New America Foundation and the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington, DC.

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.

This week, Alpher discusses Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt's trip to the Middle East, during which they will not meet with the Palestinian leadership or release an “ultimate deal” peace plan; whether Israel, the Palestinians, and other Arabs should be pleased or concerned with Trump’s performance in Singapore; whether bringing investments to Gaza’s two million inhabitants will be good for peace; Hamas and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas's anti-Semitic gospel; Netanyahu's meeting in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah II; how tuned in the Israeli public is to all this maneuvering; and current events in Gaza.

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived

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