Americans for Peace Now mourns the passing of Samuel (Sandy) Berger Z”L, a former member of our Board of Advisors and a friend of APN. As President Clinton’s national security advisor and in other capacities, Sandy served America’s national security interests. He also played a pivotal role in advancing Israel’s security and wellbeing, and was an avid advocate of the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Since the beginning of this year, an unprecedented but little-noticed campaign has been waged in Congress—backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and others—in support of Israeli settlements. At the core of this campaign is an effort to legislate a change in U.S. policy, which since 1967 has remained firmly opposed to settlements, under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

Backers of the campaign, both in Congress and among outside groups like AIPAC, are promoting numerous pieces of legislation that redefine “Israel” to mean “Israel-plus-the-settlements” and make supporting settlements an integral and mandatory part of American support for Israel, as a matter of policy and law. They pass off their efforts as an entirely non-controversial matter of countering boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) against Israel in general, countering BDS policies adopted by the EU and some European countries, in particular.

Michael Koplow, the Policy Director at the Israel Policy Forum, this week added his voice to those suggesting that the US should drop its 48-year-old policy of opposing all Israeli settlement construction, and replace it with one that in effect green lights some such construction - or in Koplow's words, a policy that "distinguishes between kosher and non-kosher settlement growth." Koplow joins Brookings' Natan Sachs and others, all of whom follow in the footsteps of Dennis Ross in supporting such shift and predicting that it would help pave the way to peace. And Koplow - like his predecessors - uses words like "realistic" and "pragmatic" to describe his approach, suggesting that those who disagree are anything but.

This week, Alpher discusses whether the opening of a diplomatic mission in the United Arab Emirates is a breakthrough; is the Palestinian issue being pushed to the back burner internationally despite the current protest wave of violence that reflects a high degree of Palestinian public despair; and how we should read the fallout from Turkey’s downing of a Russian combat aircraft last weekend.