During a recent Shabbat, I had a memory flash. Reading the haftorah, Amos 9, I remembered something that happened 70 years ago. I was 13, in middle school, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. We started every morning with the Pledge of Allegiance and then the Lord’s Prayer (my parents told me to stand silently). Then one of the students would read a few lines from the Bible. Sometime in the spring of 1948, I chose a few lines from Amos 9:

And I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel,
and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them;
and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; and
they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which
I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.

I didn’t believe all this would be God’s doing, but I did believe it was being done by the Jews of the Yishuv, and I was incredibly proud. It was, it still is, their project, but it is also our project, and it isn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

A version of this essay also appeared in The Forward on August 29, 2018

By the time you receive this letter, I will have stepped down from my position as President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now (APN), after serving in this capacity for 21 years. However, I’m writing this with six weeks left in my tenure at APN, and I’m anxious to share my thoughts and feelings with you, this being the last time I will have this forum through which to speak to you.

I was hoping to put into words the many feelings I’m experiencing at this time:

Gratitude: for having the honor to serve the dedicated and supportive APN Board, my talented APN colleagues and you, our generous and committed supporters.

Pride: in the important work that APN does both here and in the Middle East.

Awe: at our colleagues in Shalom Achshav (Peace Now, the Israeli peace movement) — many of them among the signers of the original officers’ letter establishing the organization in 1978 — who work tirelessly for a future that their children, grandchildren and those of their Palestinian neighbors deserve.

Excitement: about new possibilities ahead.

But, sadly, I am also feeling rage. The targets of my rage are those who know right from wrong, yet have chosen wrong for personal or political expedience.

Ten Israelis – five Arab citizens and five Jewish peace activists – were victims of hate crimes over the weekend. All ten were hospitalized with cuts, lacerations, fractures, and other injuries of various severity after being attacked by Israeli Jews.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) condemns the decision by the Trump administration to slash $200 million in aid appropriated by Congress for humanitarian projects in the West Bank and Gaza. According to a leaked report, this action will shortly be followed by a Trump administration announcement that it will cut support for programs of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the West Bank, ask Israel to consider restricting UNRWA's activities there, and dramatically reduce the number of Palestinians the United States recognizes as refugees.

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.

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