Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann and settlement expert Hagit Ofran of Israel’s Peace Now movement were APN’s guest on an August 25^th 2016 briefing call on the latest settlements-related developments in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

On May 25, APN hosted a briefing call on the political development in Israel, following Prime Minister Netanyahu’s signing a new coalition agreement with right-wing firebrand Avigdor Lieberman, appointing Lieberman to the position of Minister of Defense. Eldar, a senior columnist with al-Monitor, spoke about the implications for Israel, its security, and its relations with the Palestinians and the world.

The pro-Netanyahu newspaper Israel Hayom, a political daily distributed free of charge and funded by American billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is the main reason for Israel’s dropping to the unflattering “partly free” category in Freedom House’s 2016 Global Freedom of the Press report. Vanessa Tucker, Freedom House’s vice president for analysis, explains in the following interview why her organization is concerned about the impact of the Adelson-funded daily on Israel’s public arena.

Not all of Shalom Achshav’s activities make news. Some of them go under the radar. To learn about some of Peace Now’s recent activities, we called Maya Glassman, Peace Now’s activities coordinator. Maya (27) grew up in Haifa, served in the IDF as an instructor at a missile unit, and then graduated from Ben Gurion University in Beersheba with a degree in political science and public administration. On campus, she was a leading political and feminist activist. Maya joined Peace Now a year ago. Maya narrates this slideshow.

On March 2^nd 2016, APN hosted Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, a leading expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on efforts to resolve it for a briefing call on the state of the two-state solution.

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Oded Adomi Leshem, a doctoral student at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution is an expert on hope. One of his areas of expertise is strategies for impacting Israeli public opinion to be more supportive of peace. A new study that he recently published shows that messages of hope from Palestinians can go a long way in  fostering and enhancing hope among Jewish Israelis. Listen to our February 16^th 2016 conversation with Leshem.

On January 14, 2016, APN, together with New Israel Fund (NIF), J Street, Ameinu, T’ruah, Partners for Progressive Israel (PPI), Foundation for Middle-East Peace (FMEP), and B'Tselem USA, hosted MK Merav Michaeli, former Deputy Knesset Speaker Naomi Chazan, and Attorney Michael Sfard,  moderated by Matt Duss, President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace for a conversation on the legislation now being considered by the Knesset that targets progressive NGOs for extra scrutiny of their foreign donations, but does not require similar scrutiny of right-wing or settler groups.

This legislation is part of a long-term effort by some Israeli hardliners, backed by the government, to weaken Israel’s democracy by stifling dissent. While its supporters attempt to liken it to existing US law, it has drawn significant opposition from many quarters, both within Israel, from the US State Department and among the American Jewish community. And still, there is a real possibility that the bill will pass in the next few weeks.

On January 6, 2016, APN hosted Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer of the Israel Democracy Institute for a conversation on the current state of Israeli democracy, as it faces new government measures to enhance the Netanyahu government’s hegemony and to stifle dissent.

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Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer is Vice President of Research at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) and Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law, where he served as Dean. He is an expert on criminal, military, and public law, and widely considered as a leading expert on Israeli democracy and democracy education. At the IDI, he has been leading the following projects: Constitutional Principles and their Implementation, National Security and Democracy, Arab-Jewish Relations, and Proportionality in Public Policy.

Warren Spielberg is an associate teaching professor at the New School for Public Engagement in New York and a fellow at the Child Institute at al-Quds University in the West Bank. On November 24, we talked to him about his recent study on young Palestinian men in East Jerusalem. We focused on the causes for frustration and anger among them in order to better understand some of the background causes for the current violence in Jerusalem. Prof. Spielberg also spoke about his newly published book, a study of young African-American men, and about the parallels between that demographic and young Palestinian men in East Jerusalem.

Author Dan Ephron, whose new book documents the events that led to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the assassination’s aftermath, was APN’s guest on a briefing call on November 2, 2015.

In Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel, Ephron tells the parallel stories of Rabin and his assassin, Yigal Amir, during the two years leading up to the murder, and sets the scene to the two decades that followed.

Ephron is an award-winning writer, who has served as the Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek and the Daily Beast, and now lives in New York City.