Greetings from Jerusalem! I’m here to prepare APN’s Israel Study Tour, which will be November 12-17, 2016. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve met with Israelis and Palestinians, and discussed plans for the tour with my friends at Israel’s Peace Now movement. 

I grew up in Jerusalem, spent most of my life in Israel, and usually travel here twice a year. Still, I’m always amazed at how much I learn each time I come here, particularly when I accompany an APN Study Tour group. Israel is incredibly dynamic. It’s full of contradictions. It’s ever-changing. It’s both exhausting and comforting. It’s troubling and inspiring. It's both emotionally and intellectually provoking. At APN, we try to pack this complexity into five overloaded days of tours and meetings with Israelis and Palestinians throughout Israel and the West Bank.

Our tours typically end with a meeting with Peace Now’s young activists. I had a chance to meet with seven student activists at Peace Now’s Tel Aviv office. They came in for a briefing and left with “activist kits” – t-shirts, flags, stickers and more -- to use on campus (I snapped a photo of a couple of them on their way out). Some will march today, Thursday, in Jerusalem to show solidarity with participants at Jerusalem’s Pride and Tolerance Parade, to protest the homophobic violence that led last year to the murder of 16-year-old Shira Banki, a Jerusalemite high-schooler, who marched in solidarity with her gay friends and was stabbed to death by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish zealot.

I spent several hours with Peace Now’s young activists. There’s nothing better if you’re looking for a dose of inspiration and hope for Israel’s future. 

I can’t wait for our November 12th-17th tour. I hope you’ll join us. We know that, as usual, it will be an engaging, fascinating tour. And as you'll see below, our home base, the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem, offers the chance to unwind in the heart of this unique city.

Please feel free to write to me or to my colleague David Pine with any questions you may have about the tour. Below are links for more information and how to reserve your spot. We’d love to see you in Jerusalem in November.

Ori Nir
APN Director of Communications and Public Engagements

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Go HERE for more about the Study Tour, and HERE for a working schedule of this year's trip.

To secure your place on this unique, small-group tour experience, print out and complete this FORM and return to APN by mail or email with the deposit (payable by check or credit card). Deposit deadline is August 31, 2016, after which we will be able to accept participants if space allows.

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 what it will mean if Netanyahu’s ruling coalition's move in the Knesset to apply Israeli law to the settlement of Maaleh Adumim is approved; if last week's Saudi delegation visiting Israel, led by a retired general, was a breakthrough; whether, in the aftermath of the abortive military coup in Turkey, President Erdogan's purging of tens of thousands of ostensibly disloyal officers, educators and civil servants is an Islamist counter-revolution; how this development could affect Turkey domestically and how it could affect Israel and the region; and if Netanyahu, similar to what Erdogan is doing in Turkey, is attempting to clamp down on media.

Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, LCSW serves as Rabbinic Director of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in New York City, working with individuals who are ill,  bereaved, or survivors of trauma, through Jewish spiritual counseling, support groups, workshops and printed materials.  He has been deeply involved in human rights advocacy, Jewish-Muslim relations, interfaith exchanges, and the nexus of spiritual resources and mental health for over thirty years.

This week’s  Torah portion is named for a man –Pinhas-  who represents both heroism and horror in our tradition. It is, to say the least, complicated in terms of role models for leadership. In contrast, Moshe,  recognized as the greatest of the Jewish people’s leaders, and who in this week’s portion is engaged in the search for his impending replacement,  ‘advises’ the Almighty regarding his successor and in so doing, offers a prescription for a good leader. 

And Moshe spoke to God, saying, Let the God of the spirits of all flesh set a man over the congregation, who may go out before them, and who may go in before them, and who may lead them out, and who may bring them in; that the congregation of God be not as sheep that have no shepherd. (Numbers 27:15-17)

Moshe’s counsel as set out in these three verses and elucidated by a number of Torah commentaries, points to the leadership challenges the state of Israel faces at present, with a current leadership that has  failed to take the actions that would result in the much desired goal of security and peace for Israel, and for the Palestinians as well.

On Thursday, July 21st, Americans for Peace Now received one of two inaugural Narrative Champion Awards from New Story Leadership. NSL brings together young emerging Palestinian and Israeli leaders in order to train them into a team ready to help build a better future for their two communities by giving them an experience of living, working and learning together over a summer in Washington DC using the transformative power of stories. 

Yedioth Ahronoth
by Nahum Barnea

The failed coup in Turkey holds many lessons for Israel. One of them, and not the least of them, is that we do not sufficiently appreciate the regime bequeathed to us by the state’s founders, and mainly—we are not doing enough to preserve it.

The Turkish Air Force officers who were involved in the attempted coup spoke in the name of democracy; their enemy, Erdogan, also speaks in the name of democracy, and both sides bear the name of democracy in vain.  Ataturk, the founding father of modern Turkey, imposed a secular dictatorship on the Turks, in which the army is the supreme source of authority and the guardian of the constitution; Erdogan posed his alternative to this legacy, an Islamic and Ottoman dictatorship. He is photographed with the picture of Ataturk in the background because officially he is still the father of the nation, but his life’s mission is to destroy Ataturk’s legacy. This week’s events bring him another step, an important step, closer to fulfilling his goal.