Tisha B'Av (the 9th of Av), which is observed beginning the evening of August 4th this year, is a fast day commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. It is considered the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become a ritualistic obscenity. It offends the conscience of humankind.

August 2, 2014

RAMALLAH, West Bank — I HAD held off coming to Israel, hoping the situation in Gaza would clarify — not in terms of what’s happening, but how it might end in a stable way.

San Diego Jewish News - July 29, 2014
APN press release reprinted in entirety
http://www.sdjewishworld.com/2014/07/29/apn-ceasefire-now-desirable-israel/

Haaretz - July 29, 2014
APN's Ori Nir quoted in Emily Hauser's article on progressive American Jews' discomfort with Israeli policies and practices
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.607841

The Forward - July 30, 2014
APN among US Jewish progressive groups not critical of Israel's Gaza incursion
http://forward.com/articles/203111/j-streets-gaza-war-support-wins-moderate-praise--/?p=all

Arutz 7 - July 30, 2014
Peace Now's Yariv Oppenheimer criticizes Benett over call to broaden Gaza war
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183500#.U9v1TPldWbp

The following interview with Amos Oz, a co-founder of Israel's Peace Now movement and an icon of Israel's peace movement, was published in the English edition of the German Deutsche Welle

Oz: 'Lose-lose situation for Israel'

30 July, 2014

Israel's ground offensive against Gaza is excessive, Israeli writer Amos Oz tells DW. But he also criticizes Hamas' strategy, in which both Israeli and Palestinian victims boost the organization's standing in Gaza.

Amoz Oz: I would like to begin the interview in a very unusual way: by presenting one or two questions to your readers and listeners. May I do that?

Deutsche Welle: Go ahead!

Question 1: What would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?

Question 2: What would you do if your neighbor across the street digs a tunnel from his nursery to your nursery in order to blow up your home or in order to kidnap your family?

With these two questions I pass the interview to you.

Listen to APN briefing call from Monday, August 4.  

Walzer, a longtime member of APN's Board of Directors, is America's leading expert on ethics in wartime, and one of America's foremost political philosophers. He is the author of the iconic Just and Unjust Wars, a practical analysis of the Just War doctrine, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, the co-editor of Dissent, and contributing editor to the New Republic, where he published a new analysis of the ethical dilemmas of the Israel-Hamas war.