Americans for Peace Now (APN) welcomes the Palestinian Authority's decision to summon its ambassador to Chile,
following anti-Semitic comments that Ambassador Imad Nabil Jada' recently made in Santiago.
According to a statement issued by the Palestinian Authority last night, the PA's Foreign Minister, Riadh
al-Maliki, summoned Jada' to Ramallah "for consultation and clarification" in regards to the statements he made in
May, which were made public earlier this week.
Americans for Peace Now (APN) strongly condemns vile anti-Semitic statements made by the Palestine Liberation
Organization’s ambassador to Chile, in which he denied the existence of a Jewish people, accused the Zionist
movement of striving to “dominate life in the entire planet,” and hailed the forged “Protocols of the Elders of
Zion” as recommended reading.
APN calls on Mahmoud Abbas, the Chairman of the PLO and the President of the Palestinian Authority, to repudiate
the statements of his ambassador to Santiago, Imad Nabil Jada’, to dismiss him, and to remind Palestinian officials
of the terrible impact of hate-speech on the cause of peace.
This week, Alpher discusses the strategic significance for Israel of last week’s sweeping Islamist attacks on
Egyptian army installations in Sinai, near the border with Israel; the regional implications, shared by Israel with
some of its neighbors and with Europe, Russia and the United States; defines Israel’s dilemma in strategic terms,
and what the ramifications are; how West Bank-based Hamas and lone-wolf terrorism affect Israel’s relations with
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas; and what this portends for the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace
process.
This is another in a series of reviews of new books on Middle Eastern affairs. We asked Dr. Gail
Weigl, an APN volunteer and a professor of art history, to review Sandy Tolan's new book about young
Palestinian using the power of music to transform their lives under occupation.
APN's Ori Nir interviews Sandy Tolan.
Sandy Tolan, Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land (New York, 2015). 438 pages.
$28.00.
Sandy Tolan’s Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land reads like fiction, but is
a meticulously documented work of non-fiction, as the author makes clear in his introduction to the extensive
source notes. While the book remains focused throughout on the main protagonist, Ramzi Aburedwan, his musical
training and successful effort to bring the healing power of music to the Palestinian communities of the Israeli
Occupied Territories, equal – if not more attention – is devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the
founding of Israel to the present. The stage for Ramzi’s story is never-ending physical and emotional
violence perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Israeli government and IDF. That history is
interconnected with the more or less extensive stories of many Palestinians, Europeans and Americans devoted to
music as the means to assuage Palestinian suffering and restore Palestinian honor and identity.
Why is Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to Washington, launching his vicious attack against President
Obama now?
Oren says he
asked his publisher to go ahead and publish his new book “Ally” in order to influence the debate in the US over the
deal that Washington and its international allies are negotiating with Iran. Some, including Jeffrey Goldberg of
Atlantic, buy
Oren’s explanation.
I don’t. Had Oren sought to weigh in on the Iran debate, he could have done so without an ugly ad-hominem attack on
President Obama, without the outrageous attacks on Obama’s aides (particularly the senior Jewish aides), against
American Jewish journalists and against the American Jewish community at large, as he did in his book and in his
Wall Street Journal,
Foreign Policy and Los Angeles
Times articles.
On July 1, 2015, Prof. Ami Pedahzur of the University of Texas at Austin, an expert on Israel's radical right,
briefed APN on his recent research regarding the West Bank settlers' power and influence in Israeli public life.
Washington, DC – Americans for Peace Now (APN) today welcomed the Obama Administration’s June 30 rejection of
legislative language conflating Israel with West Bank settlements (full text of the State Department statement is
copied below). APN Director of Policy and Government Relations Lara Friedman commented:
“We welcome the State Department’s statement that U.S. policy regarding settlements remains unchanged. For months
we have been warning of ongoing efforts by some in Congress, led by AIPAC and supported by various right-wing
organizations, as well as by some in the current Israeli government, to change U.S. policy on this issue by
stealth. These efforts seek to exploit concerns about boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel –
concerns APN shares – as cover for legislation the true purpose and effect of which are to protect and promote
settlements.
Shortly before I ended my sophomore year of college, I found myself in my advisor’s office with an important
question:
“How can I participate in an activity when I profoundly disagree with much of its goals?”
You see, I was just about to leave for my Birthright trip, a free trip to Israel–all expenses paid–intended to
strengthen the bond between young American Jews and Israel. I’d signed up because a lot of my friends were going,
the Birthright coordinator at my school is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, and I wanted to get back to
Israel after having been there for a teen tour at the age of 17.
Yet I had a lot of second thoughts. Since my last time there, I’d educated myself about the complex realities of
the conflict. I understood that Birthright trips seek to promote an image of Israel among American Jews which, in
addition to being dangerously inaccurate, disregards Israel’s democratic character in favor of promoting
exclusionary nationalism. I am extremely proud of my Jewish heritage and believe the Jewish people have the right
to self determination in our ancestral homeland. However, I find it difficult to reconcile myself with a
conceptualization of Jewishness that contradicts both the Jewish values I grew up with and the progressive values I
have come to cherish.
Doron Rosenblum, one of Israel’s leading satirists, recently wrote on his Facebook page: “I got
it. They (members of the ruling coalition) are defeating criticism and satire through using satire’s own power,
as judokas do, by taking themselves beyond the absurd. Today, no satirist can outdo the insanity of" Benjamin
Netanyahu’s government.
Indeed, Israel’s leading television satire show, Eretz Nehederet (What a Wonderful Country), recently ran
a humorous quiz on its web site, in which participants were asked to guess whether quotes attributed to Likud
Knesset Member Oren Hazan were true or false. I took the quiz and failed miserably. Hazan’s real quotes were much
more outlandish than the made-up ones.
Please join APN for a briefing call on Wednesday, July 1, at 12:00 noon Eastern Time with Prof. Ami Pedahzur, an
expert on Israel’s radical right. The author of recent articles on the power of Israeli West Bank settlers,
Pedahzur will discuss the political power of the settlers as a chief constituency of Benjamin Netanyahu’s
right-wing government. He will also analyze other ways in which the ideological settlers built their influence
inside Israel’s establishment.
An expert on Israeli right-wing violence, Pedahzur will be available to comment on extremist West Bank settlers’
use of violence to advance their agenda.