APN's daily news review from Israel

Thursday April 30, 2015 
 

Quote of the day:

"Sadly, even when the Nepal coverage dies down, Israelis will probably still not be interested in the Gaza crisis. How is that possible? Can people truly be selectively compassionate, and if so, are they really compassionate, or are they just fooling themselves and everyone else?"
--Haaretz+ commentator Asher Schechter asks why Israel is more concerned by people thousands of miles away than the 100,000 people still homeless in Gaza.**

APN's daily news review from Israel

Wednesday April 29, 2015 
 

Quote of the day:

“I was scared. It was my first time in Ramallah, and before I entered her home, I was really afraid of what I would say, how I would speak with her mother. I had a lot of fears. And then, when I went in, I saw an elderly, tired woman, and the first thing she did when she saw me was hug me. I saw behind her a huge poster of her dead daughter, and during this hug I suddenly felt her daughter, the one she didn’t have. It was all mixed in my head. I was suddenly her daughter, who wanted to kill me, and this confusion — the understanding that all is one, and suffering is suffering, and that a woman who loses her daughter is a woman who loses her daughter no matter where, and that I can be anyone’s daughter — is basically one of the things that brought me to writing the script.” 
--Israeli filmmaker Shira Geffen tells about her visit to the home of a Palestinian suicide bomber in a fascinating interview in Haaretz+.**

APN's daily news review from Israel

 Tuesday April 28, 2015 
 

Quote of the day:

“They were chanting ‘Muhammad is dead’ and ‘Death to the Arabs.’ It’s painful to witness, because these aren’t just chants, it’s incitement that becomes ecstatic. Guys were jumping up and down, adults as well as youngsters. Every year this day brings out the bad in people.”
--Neta Polizer, 26, Hebrew University student, part of a group strategizing how to prevent a 'bad' Jerusalem Day.**

This week, Alpher discusses whether there is any chance former US President Jimmy Carter will succeed in generating Palestinian unity where everyone else has failed when he arrives in the region this Thursday to mediate between Hamas and Fateh, in cooperation with Saudi Arabia; if Israel’s northern front is heating up or if recent incidents are connected to events in the Syrian civil war; how US involvement in the Saudi-led effort in Yemen, directed against Iranian intervention squares with the US-led nuclear talks with Iran; why Israel couldn’t observe the centenary of the Armenian genocide on April 24.

APN's daily news review from Israel

Monday April 27, 2015 
 

Quote of the day:

"It is dangerous and irresponsible to deposit the education portfolio in the hands of Naftali Bennett. We are at such a critical time. The video going around the Internet yesterday of young people brutally abusing a helpless dog, the violence and racism that long ago left the Internet comments and reached the street, the absolute indifference of so many people to the pain of people living in poverty, of refugees, of Palestinians - those things are closely related to the image of the education system, to the values or lack of values that it bequeaths to the citizens it raises. We must not give its reins to the leader of Messianic nationalism, who has never been ashamed to instigate and incite."
--Meretz party leader Zehava Gal-On fears the likely appointment of far right leader of Habayit Hayehudi, Naftali Bennett, as the next Education Minister.**

APN's daily news review from Israel

Sunday April 26, 2015 
 

Quote of the day:

“In truth, it’s wrong for them to dare to spoil the Jewish homogeneity, and on the eve of Memorial Day yet. Arrogant bastards.”
--Omer Senesh wrote cynically on Facebook after witnessing three young Arab men being barred from entering the posh Tel-Aviv shopping mall where he works.**

Watch the video below.

The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the Conflict Management Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) are pleased to host Lara Friedman (Americans for Peace Now), Ghaith Al-Omari (WINEP), Ilan Peleg (MEI) and Shibley Telhami (Univ. of Maryland) for a discussion about the policy options confronting key players in the peace process following the re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  

Is the peace process over, as critics of PM Netanyahu allege? Depending on what kind of a government Netanyahu forms, what are Israel's options for dealing with the Palestinian issue? How might Israel's settlement policies be affected by the formation of a "right-wing" government versus a "national unity" government?  Will the Palestinian Authority accelerate its campaign for state recognition in global organizations? And finally, what influence can the Obama Administration exert on the two sides?   

Washington, DC – APN Today released the following statement regarding pro-settlements legislation in the House and Senate:

“As a pro-Israel, pro-peace organization and the sister organization to Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), Israel’s veteran grassroots, Zionist peace movement, Americans for Peace Now (APN) rejects and condemns efforts in Congress, backed by AIPAC, to legislate U.S. support for Israeli settlements. We urge Congress to recognize the danger and folly of this approach and to hold firm in its well-established support for Israel and its equally well-established refusal to endorse Israeli settlements – and to reject HR 825 and efforts to pass similar language in the Senate.

Israeli author Amos Oz likes to say that he loves Israel even when he can’t stand it.

Israel’s public sphere has in recent months given Israelis such as Oz, and their friends overseas, many reasons for frustration. The growing gap between rich and poor (the widest in the world), overt expressions of racism, intolerance and xenophobia, anti-democratic ultra-nationalist legislation, government policies that pull the rug from under the pro-peace rhetoric of its leaders. And rhetoric that doesn’t even presume to be pro-peace.