Washington, DC - Americans for Peace Now (APN) commends Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his staff for acknowledging the important role that Israel’s civil society and particularly Israeli progressive non-profit organizations play in Israeli society.
The “Entry Law,” adopted by the Israeli Knesset on March 6, 2017, bans entry to Israel of foreign national who support or publicly engage in boycotts of either Israel or West Bank settlements, whether they do it individually or are affiliated with organizations that endorse such practices. This law uniquely affects APN, a Zionist, pro-Israel organization that advocates for boycotts of the settlements and the occupation while strongly rejecting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel.
APN's President and CEO Debra DeLee said: “This new draconian law is a severe blow to Israeli democracy. It is aimed at a basic civil liberty, the freedom of expression, and will severely harm Israel by keeping out some of its greatest supporters, including Americans for Peace Now…We are a Zionist, pro-Israel organization, which cares about Israel's future as a democracy and a Jewish state. As such, we oppose the occupation and the settlements and call on our supporters to express this view by boycotting settlements. It would be absurd for the government of Israel to block us from visiting the country we love and care so much about because we chose to express a legitimate view in a legitimate way.”
APN commentary & analysis
- 1/8/18 APN Opposes Israel’s Entry Law Blacklist
- 7/19/17 APN briefing call on anti-democratic legislation in Israel with ACRI's Debbi Gild-Hayo
- 7/17/17 Sign Our Petition: Don't Ban Americans Who Peacefully Oppose Israeli Policies
- 6/14/17 APN "Entry Law" Testimonials
- 4/20/17 Annual Study Tour Canceled – Letter to Prospective Participants
- 3/17/17 Thought that Israel’s new “Entry Law” was bad? Well, it’s worse!
- 3/09/17 Haaretz: Am I Too Dangerous to Enter Israel? By Letty Cottin Pogrebin, APN Board Member
- 3/06/17 Press Release: APN Condemns New Israeli Law Banning Entry of Foreign Nationals who Call for Settlement Boycotts
- 1/31/17 (Updated 3/06/17) Israel’s “Entry Bill” – Indefensible & Undemocratic
- 1/31/17 Take Action: Tell Amb Dermer – American Jews Appalled, Outraged by “Entry Bill”
- 1/30/17 (Updated 3/06/17) Israel’s “Entry Law”: What It Is and What It Means
Media coverage & other resources
- 1/7/2018 Israel Publishes BDS Blacklist: These Are the 20 Groups Whose Members Will Be Denied Entry
- 7/28/17: Ha'aretz Editorial: Israel's anti=BDS Blacklists
- 7/28/17: LA Times Editorial: Israel should stop trying to wall out its critics
- 5/03/17: New York Jewish Week: Travel Ban Law Roiling Birthright, Liberals
- 4/26/17 URJ: URJ President Rabbi Rick Jacobs Asks Prime Minister Netanyahu About Israel’s Entry Ban And Reform Judaism’s North American Trips
- 4/24/17 JTA: Americans for Peace Now cancels annual Israel trip over anti-boycott law
- 4/23/17 Haaretz: First Jewish – American Group Cancels Trip to Israel Over Travel Ban Against Boycott Supporters
Israeli NGO Honenu has been providing thousands of dollars in grants to Jewish murderers and terrorists, including to Yosef Ben-David, who abducted 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir from his E. Jerusalem neighborhood, beat him and burned him alive.
--Channel 10 chief international correspondent and Yedioth political analyst, Nadav Eyal, writes about Israel’s poisonous political discourse.*
--German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gave him an ultimatum.*
Our father, Arthur Stern (z”l), was a Holocaust survivor, so like many Jews, today’s Yom Ha’Shoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – touches us personally.
Dad was born and raised in Hungary as a highly-educated and traditional religious Jew, whose father was a prominent leader of the Budapest Jewish Community. While he studied law at the University of Budapest in 1944, the Germans occupied Hungary, and our father and his family were deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Near the end of the war, he and surviving family members were sent to a refugee camp in Switzerland where he began to put his life back together. He continued his education, and best of all, met our mom Edith (he was her bridge instructor!), who had arrived in Switzerland as a refugee from Germany after Kristallnacht. Since we were young, our parents shared many stories about their upbringing in Germany and Hungary, the war, and its implications to their families.
Like many survivors, dad was able to miraculously “move on”, and spectacularly so. He became an accomplished electrical engineer and inventor, and was the first Jewish president of the International Association of Electrical Engineers, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology.
Dad applied lessons from the Holocaust to a commitment to human rights, equality and justice in the US and in Israel.
While he saw Israel's survival and security as supremely important for the Jewish people, he believed that Israel's conduct was just as crucial. As a Holocaust survivor, he saw both of these as fundamental. He started the California-Israel Chamber of Commerce to help strengthen Israel’s economy, and his most central commitment to Israel became his leadership role with Americans for Peace Now, where he served as a Board and Executive Committee member and as co-chair, and then chair of its regional activities in Southern California.
His experience had led him to hold the Jewish people and Israel to the highest of standards with regard to their use of power and treatment of others, believing we should rise above the tendencies and inclinations towards suppression when confronted by obstacles. Dad found particularly abhorrent those in the Israeli settler movement and their supporters who elevated land over human rights and peace, and particularly those who did so using Jewish religious justifications. He would not sit idly by while such arguments were made and such actions taken. We are loathe to imagine his disappointment in the recent “Regularization Law” that transfers ownership of private Palestinian land in the West Bank to the Israeli Jewish settlers who took the land and established outposts contrary even to Israel’s own law.
On this Yom Ha’Shoah, it is profoundly troubling to think about dad in the context of the “Entry Law,” recently passed by the Knesset. This law, which prevents entry to foreign nationals who support peaceful protest by way of a boycott, including a targeted boycott of Israeli settlement products, is beyond the pale for a democracy. It ostensibly bars people from visiting Israel because they have different political views from those currently in power. In this most absurd reality, our Holocaust survivor dad, who cared so much about Israel, would actually be prevented from visiting Israel.
Americans for Peace Now has just decided to cancel its Israel Study Tour in June because of the "Entry Law." This trip has particular significance to our family. Dad participated multiple times, a couple with our mom and with one of us. Our parents gave the experience to a granddaughter as a college graduation gift, and soon after dad died, we all made plans to join the next APN Israel Study Tour. The joy that dad experienced and enrichment he received from being in Israel, meeting with leading Israelis and Palestinians from the political and activist worlds, the media, and other areas, was a highlight in his life.
Today, as we remember the Holocaust and our dad who was so fortunate to survive it, we also remember the lessons he learned and passed on to us, and we redouble our commitment to working for a better Israel, which proudly manifests the best of Jewish values, and for a better world.
Sincerely,
Claude Stern, Daniel Stern, and Jacqueline Stern Bellowe
The annual day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust and of heroism, is today, Monday, April 24.
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 the assertions of a Hezbollah spokesman that Israel is now on the defensive, fearing Hezbollah attack; whether Israel should have launched a punitive attack on Syria after Assad's Sarin gas attack on his own people; and the recent spat in the Knesset between a mother who blamed the Netanyahu government for not retrieving the body of her son, which has been held by Hamas in Gaza since the summer 2014 war, and two Likud MKs who answered her with brutal language.
--In a speech on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin rejected the approach by which Israelis relate to the Holocaust, whereby it “becomes the lens through which we view the world.” He also rejected the approach that deals only with the universal aspects and lessons of the Holocaust.*
--Americans for Peace Now notified prospective participants that its 2017 Israel Study Tour won't take place as planned this summer due to fear participants will not be allowed entry into Israel following legislation banning people who support the boycott of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The popular tour has been taking place annually for some 30 years.*