Yesterday, President Trump announced his choice of former Republican Congressman and current CIA director Mike Pompeo to be his nominee for Secretary of State. This is a potentially catastrophic decision that could lead the U.S. to war against Iran and threaten Israel’s national security.

Pompeo is an ultra-hawk on Iran and fierce critic of the Iran nuclear deal. After Trump was elected in November 2016, Pompeo tweeted, "I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism." He has used his post as CIA Director to push for the demise of the agreement, and we expect him to continue to do so as Secretary of State. This is despite the continued support for the deal from numerous U.S. and Israeli security figures.

On March 5^th, 2018, Senator Schumer stood before 18,000 AIPAC activists and told them what they wanted to hear: Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not an obstacle to peace. This ridiculous statement brought the AIPAC crowd to its feet, but it further damaged the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

As a seasoned politician, Senator Schumer knows that settlements are a chief obstacle to peace. Settlements are not only an obstacle to a two-state peace solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are a tool that extremists use to torpedo two-states. Yet he chose to misrepresent the facts and pander to AIPAC.

Sign our petition! Ask Senator Schumer to tell the truth about the occupation, West Bank Settlements and Israeli-Palestinian peace.

President Trump says he wants to broker the “ultimate deal,” a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. But since taking office in January, he and his aides have failed to offer a framework for negotiations, have failed to assert positions that are vital for securing a peace deal, such as sternly opposing settlement construction, and have refused to endorse the only viable formula for a deal: the two-state solution. 

In a speech at the Zionist Organization of America’s annual dinner, David Friedman showed, once again, why he should be removed from his post as US Ambassador to Israel.

The shamefulness of Friedman’s appearance stems in part from the despicable company with which he associated himself. Featured prominently at the ZOA gala were the likes of Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka. In his speech, Bannon proclaimed himself to be a “Christian Zionist” even as he employed common anti-Semitic dog whistles, like characterizing his opponents as the “permanent globalist class.” Bannon received enthusiastic cheers from the ZOA crowd, who represent the far-Right fringe of American Jewry, and was “proudly” welcomed by the organization’s president, Morton Klein. Sebastian Gorka, formerly a prominent Trump adviser who The Forward has identified as a member of extremist Right-wing Hungarian organization Vitezi Rend, was seated at the head table. Other notable attendees included Sean Spicer, who famously dubbed concentration camps “Holocaust centers” and claimed that Hitler did not use chemical weapons against his own people, conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, and alt-right gadfly Laura Loomer.

As contemptible as the company Ambassador Friedman kept at the ZOA fête was, it was his own remarks after receiving an award for “outstanding diplomacy” that illustrate – once again – why he should be fired.

Apparently, no one has told Friedman that ambassadors are diplomats who represent the interests of the countries they serve, rather than engage in partisan attacks. Friedman used his platform to attack former President Barack Obama, referring to “the dark days of last December” when Obama committed “perhaps the greatest betrayal of Israel by a sitting president in American history.” This is a patently false smear, as APN pointed out when President Obama took the courageous decision not to exercise the US veto against UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which reaffirmed the status of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territory and urged countries to maintain a distinction in all their dealings between Israel within the Green Line and West Bank settlements. On the watch of every other American president since 1967, the US abstained on or even voted for multiple Security Council resolutions critical of Israel. In eight years, Obama did it once.

One would think no one should have to tell Ambassador Friedman that his job is to represent the United States. Yet, Friedman seems confused on this point. He had no trouble rehearsing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top three foreign policy priorities (hint: Iran, Iran, and Iran). And Friedman took pains to brag that “there is no daylight between the United States and Israel” when it comes to Bibi’s anti-Iran agenda. By contrast, there was no discussion about an American foreign policy agenda or strategy, no indication of what a Trump peace plan might look like, and certainly no embrace of the two-state solution, to which Friedman has been doctrinally opposed.

Sign our petition calling on President Trump to endorse the two-state solution.

A long-term supporter of settlements, Friedman declined to utter this word in his remarks. Using the Biblical terminology of Judea and Samaria when referring to the West Bank, Friedman spoke of “building a house in the Samarian village of Halamish” as a quotidian act. In fact, this settlement deep in the occupied West Bank near Ramallah and others like it threaten the prospects of Palestinian statehood and thus a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

At an event at which prominent figures with ties to the alt-right were well-represented, Friedman used the Holocaust to establish beyond question the pro-Israel bona fides of himself and others in the Trump Administration. Because Jared Kushner is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, “he doesn’t just understand the importance of the US-Israel relationship, he feels it profoundly within his heart,” said Friedman. And Friedman began his speech with the story of his 15-year-old daughter who had just sent the family a picture of herself on a class trip to Auschwitz, wrapped in an Israeli flag. Said Friedman, “No picture better represents who we are, what we are, and what we are fighting for.” Just who is the “we” to whom Friedman refers? Is it the American people, who are not only Jews, of course, but people of indigenous, Italian, Irish, German, and (dare we say) Arab heritage?

In focusing on the outrageous presence of Bannon and his cronies at the ZOA gala, it would be easy enough to miss the significance of Ambassador Friedman’s appearance and remarks there. That would be a mistake.

APN is proud to lead the way in calling on President Trump to fire him. Join us.   

Click here to tell President Trump to fire Ambassador Friedman.

President Trump says he wants to broker the “ultimate deal,” a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. But since taking office in January, he and his aides have failed to offer a framework for negotiations, have failed to assert positions that are vital for securing a peace deal, such as sternly opposing settlement construction, and have refused to endorse the only viable formula for a deal: the two-state solution. He won’t even say “two states.”

Sign our petition: Tell President Trump to Say Two States

Only the two-state solution – two states living side by side in peace and security, each exercising sovereignty and political independence in part of the land that both peoples claim as their exclusive national homes – is a reasonable, viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is the only viable option for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because neither Israelis nor Palestinians will, nor should be expected to, give up their desire for self-determination in their own state and because neither side can, nor should force the other side to, relinquish its national aspirations.

Successive U.S. administrations, Republican and Democratic, have recognized these basic facts. They therefore made the two-state solution America’s official policy – a key position guiding U.S. policy in the Middle East – for over 15 years.

The two-state solution has become a matter of consensus in the region and internationally. The parties, under their own successive leaderships, have committed to this vision and negotiated to realize it. Even Prime Minister Netanyahu, who heads the most hardline government in Israel's history, has explicitly endorsed it. For the Trump Administration to eschew it is disastrous.

Without a concrete vision for peace, negotiations are fruitless punctuations to perennial violence. Extremists on both sides have been trying to discredit the two-state vision since it was internationally adopted. Now they have a partner in the White House.

President Trump, don’t play into the hands of the anti-peace extremists. We call on you to endorse the two-state solution. Say two states!

As we expected, President Trump decertified the Iran nuclear deal on October 17th but declined to kill it outright by imposing new sanctions. Instead, he dropped the fate of the deal in the lap of Congress, hoping to make lawmakers complicit in US violation of the terms of the JCPOA.

This would give Iran the green light to resume its nuclear program and increase the risk of escalation to an armed conflict with Iran. But that’s not all. It would mean that as the US and Israel seek to combat Iran’s nefarious activities in the Middle East we could be up against a nuclear-armed state. Further, the US would rupture relations with our allies and undermine our credibility, such that North Korea would have no reason to negotiate its nuclear disarmament.

We can’t let this happen. Tell Congress to preserve the Iran deal.

Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, was controversial from the get-go. Friedman, in a column he ran at the extremist right-wing Israeli publication Arutz 7, referred to our J Street colleagues as “far worse than kapos,” accused President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry of “blatant anti-Semitism” and called the two-state solution “a scam” and “an illusory solution in search of a non-existent problem.”

Then, at his confirmation hearing, he promised concerned senators that things will change once he enters the embassy in Tel Aviv.

That did not happen. In two recent interviews, one with the Jerusalem Post and one with Israel’s Walla news site, Friedman expressed views and positions that are a blatant departure from long-held US policy positions. In his September 28^th Walla interview, referring to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Friedman said: “I think that the settlements are a part of Israel.”

Tell President Trump that this is not acceptable: he must fire David Friedman.

Last week, any remaining pretense of US leadership in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was dealt a serious blow when State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert declined to recommit the United States to a two-state solution to the conflict. Strikingly, Nauert rejected the vision articulated by successive US administrations since 2002, Republican and Democratic, by suggesting that endorsing a two-state solution would "bias one side over the other."

Two members of Congress, David Price (D-NC) and Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA), released a statement in response calling on the Trump Administration to "stop equivocating on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and imploring it to "reaffirm the United State' support for a viable, lasting, and mutually-agreed upon two-state solution and to make this support clear in public and private statements."

President Trump is again sending his two Middle East envoys, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, together with Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell, to the region.

The three will meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to explore prospects for resuming peace talks.

In past meetings, Trump and his aides reportedly criticized Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his government for hate speech and incitement. He also asked Prime Minister Netanyahu to “hold back on settlements,” but seems to have done very little to get Netanyahu to restrain West Bank settlement activity and other anti-peace actions. Indeed, Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition have scoffed at Trump’s call and plowed ahead with the settlement enterprise.

If the Trump Administration is serious about facilitating peace, it must call out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for their share in hindering peace efforts. 

Click here to tell Trump to Demand that Netanyahu’s Government Stop Actions that Hinder Peace Efforts.

The House of Representatives and the Senate are considering the “Anti-Israel Boycott Act,” measures that would criminalize boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel and its occupation of the West Bank.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) opposes BDS targeting Israel.

This legislation, however, intentionally blurs the distinction between Israel and the occupation. It clearly states that under this bill, measures targeting West Bank settlements and the occupation would be regarded as targeting Israel. APN opposes the occupation and supports boycotting West Bank settlements, the most visible physical manifestation of the occupation.

While opposing BDS, APN believes that boycotts are a legitimate non-violent expression of protest, which should not be criminalized.

These measures do just that: they criminalize free speech, as pointed out by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

For the Senate version of the bill see here. For the House version see here.

S.720 and H.1697, if passed, will set a terrible precedent. They must be opposed.

Click here to send your Representative and Senators a letter urging them to oppose these bills.