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

1. Bills, Resolutions & Letters
2. US Law, TFA, & Palestinian aid — Facts vs Fiction
3. Hearings & Markups
4. On the Record

Special shout-out: On 3/25, a group of 200+ scholars working in Antisemitism Studies and related fields, including Jewish, Holocaust, Israel, Palestine, and Middle East Studies released the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) — a direct response to the IHRA “working definition” of antisemitism, intended to “improve on it [the IHRA definition] by offering (a) a clearer core definition and (b) a coherent set of guidelines” as well as “(1) to strengthen the fight against antisemitism by clarifying what it is and how it is manifested, (2) to protect a space for an open debate about the vexed question of the future of Israel/Palestine.” You can read the JDA text, FAQs and more here. Also recommended reading: op-ed by JDA signer Professor Trachtenberg (Wake Forest University, who testified in Congress about the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act) – Why I Signed the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

March 2021

Dear Friend of APN,

One of the first lessons imparted by the Haggadah, the telling of the story of Passover, is that the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years before they could reach the promised land. The other lesson imparted is that this legacy commands Jews the world over to tell this story, every year, as they gather around the seder table.

We are storytellers.

This year, Americans for Peace Now is marking 40 years of working towards securing a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and we are going to use this celebration as a chance to tell our story.

We hope you will join us by making a gift today to support the path to peace we have been paving for 40 years.

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

1. Bills, Resolutions & Letters
2. AIPAC 2021 Lobbying & Hill Agenda
3. Hearings & Markups
4. On the Record

On March 23 Israelis go back to the polls (again) — and Jewish Currents will be hosting live coverage and analysis on election night, with Peter Beinart, Contributing Writer Elisheva Goldberg, and Assistant Editor Joshua Leifer, and “a range of guests to discuss what, in their view, is at stake, including: political analyst Michal Sella; Jaffa city councilmember Abed Abu Shehadeh; former MK Stav Shaffir; policy analysts Lara Friedman and Yousef Munayyer.”

When Israelis go to the polls next week, they will be voting on – among other things – whether to bring followers of the late Meir Kahane into the Knesset and possibly into the government (since the Kahanists are in partnership with Netanyahu), on 3/18, FMEP convened a webinar entitled, “Mainstreaming the Extreme: How Meir Kahane’s Vision of Jewish Supremacy Conquered Israeli Politics.” The webinar featured featuring Amjad Iraqi (+972 Magazine), Professor Rabbi Shaul Magid (Dartmouth College and author of the forthcoming Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical), and Natasha Roth-Rowland (University of Virginia) in conversation with Lara Friedman (FMEP). Video and resources shared during the webinar are here; podcast version – Spotify, Soundcloud.

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.

Washington, DC -- A day after the fourth round of general Israeli elections in two years, with most of the votes counted, Israel seems still stuck in an ongoing, almost endemic political crisis.

But the real crisis is not the absurd cycle of elections. The real destructive crisis threatening Israel's security and democracy is its 53 years of occupation and de-facto annexation of the West Bank that pushes Israelis and Palestinians farther still from an eventual settlement to their conflict.

APN's daily news review from Israel - Sunday March 21, 2021

Quote of the day:

"The racist Netanyahu thinks we Arab people are idiots. He thinks that we can be lied to our faces and that we will buy it."
—Joint List lawmaker Aida Toma-Suleiman said after Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told an Arab-Israeli newspaper that the Jewish Nation-State Law is not against Arab-Israelis. (The controversial law seeks to define the character of the state as Jewish, but does not make an explicit commitment to equality for all citizens or declare the state as democratic. It downgraded the status of the Arabic language in Israel and it includes a clause establishing "Jewish settlement as a national value," which could lead to discrimination on the basis of nationality in the allocation of land and resources.)*

APN's daily news review from Israel - Thursday March 18, 2021

You Must Be Kidding: 
“I know there is a real religion, the Jewish religion. A religion of peace, love and tolerance…And there is a religion, unfortunately, of violence, of terror, of jihad. That is the religion that Mansour Abbas represents."
— Leader of Jewish supremacist party, ‘Religious Zionism,’ MK Bezalel Smotrich compares Judaism and Islam. **

Update: this action, now closed, ran in March 2021. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said that “the Biden administration enthusiastically embraces the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism,” known by its acronym as IHRA.

Join us in asking Secretary Blinken to curb his enthusiasm.

Twelve Democratic members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the Biden administration to embrace policy that supports the human rights and dignity of the Palestinian people. The letter lists past letters sent to the Trump administration regarding such matters. Following is the full text of the letter: