Interview with Kelsey Davenport, Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association, upon her
return from Vienna, shortly after a deal has been reached with Iran to block it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The
interview is about ten minutes long.
Americans for Peace Now (APN) today welcomed news that the Obama Administration and its P5+1 partners – France,
Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China – have reached an agreement with Iran to radically roll back and
limit Iran’s nuclear program. APN President and CEO Debra DeLee commented:
“We heartily congratulate President Obama and his P5+1 partners, and their indefatigable teams of expert
negotiators, for the historic achievement announced today – an agreement that, when implemented, will
verifiably roll back Iran’s nuclear program, limit Iran’s nuclear activities going forward, and prevent Iran
from obtaining a nuclear weapon. It will also ensure that should Iran decide to break the terms of the
deal and try to 'sneak out' to a nuclear weapon, both that the U.S. and international community have a far
greater chance of detecting such an effort and are in a far stronger position to quickly determine the most
effective course of action.
Following a Peace Now petition, the Israeli High Court of Justice
ordered the demolition of 17 homes built on private Palestinian land at the illegal outpost of Derech Ha'avot.
The State now has 90 days to appeal and it is considering a proposal by the Gush Etzion Regional Council to
retroactively legalize the construction through a "re-parcellation" procedure. This proposal is a kind of legal
acrobatics meant to confiscate lands without calling it a confiscation and it is clearly not legal. If this idea
would be approved, the settlers could build anywhere, being sure that the land will be given to them eventually.
Follow us as we continue the fight against illegal settlement construction.
Our annual conference will take place on July 24th 2015 in Tel Aviv.
To register and see the conference's full schedule, click here. Notice: the conference will take place in Hebrew.
This week, Alpher discusses what are the issues that bear the most intense scrutiny regarding the upcoming nuclear
deal with Iran; why is there a commotion in Israel over two Israelis that decided of their own free will to cross
the border into the Gaza Strip; how could they have entered unhindered? What was the reason that that the
authorities initially acted indifferently to Mengistu’s flight in terms of their contacts with his family? And what
will happen now?
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.