For the first time, the government is requesting to officially take over private Palestinian land
in order to legalize an unauthorized outpost, which is built, in part, on private Palestinian land. The request
was presented to the Supreme Court as part of the State's reply to a petition filed by Peace Now and Palestinian
land owners, against 17 houses built on private Palestinian lands in the Derech Ha'avot Ouptost, near
Bethlehem. The first hearing of the case will take place next Monday, 22 June at 9:00am.
Americans for Peace Now (APN) strongly condemns the murder of Dani Gonen, an Israeli citizen, in the West Bank near the settlement of Dolev, north west of Ramallah. Another Israeli was injured in the attack. APN sends its condolences to Gonen’s family and wishes quick and full recovery to the young man who was injured.
What would you say if I told you that the most recent right-wing initiative to stifle progressive organizations in Israel is a Knesset bill that would compel members of such organizations to wear a special badge, “visibly, on their clothing,” when they are in the Knesset?
You’d probably tell me that it’s an ugly joke, and that even satire shouldn’t use such loaded symbols for the sake of ridicule. And I would completely agree with you.
The problem, you see, is that this is not a joke. This is not The Onion. It’s yet another example of grotesque legislative overreach by right-wing Knesset members – in this case the Jewish Home’s Bezalel Smotrich – intended to delegitimize progressive Israeli organizations, to humiliate them and to stifle them. That, of course, includes representatives of our Israeli sister-organization, Israel’s Peace Now movement, the nemesis of extremist West Bank settlers who are chiefly represented in the Knesset by Smotrich’s party.
Raysh Weiss holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Minnesota and is currently entering her final year of Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is the founder and director of YentaNet, a pluralistic matchmaking organization, currently serves on the Board of Directors of T'ruah, and is a co-editor of the progressive Jewish blog www.jewschool.com.
With the unrelenting blitzkrieg of violent images flooding the media from the Middle East and
beyond, it can be hard not to resort to a sense of fear and hopelessness. Such images, coupled with political
leadership built upon collective fear and defensiveness, engender a society that cannot move beyond immediate
threats and anxieties. In constantly speaking of security, we all too easily lose sight of other rights,
relegating them to a tragically secondary status.
Today, as we join our fellow Americans in mourning the victims of the hate-crime in Charleston, South Carolina, and as we re-commit to fighting political violence, racism, and bigotry, Americans for Peace Now (APN) also condemns the torching and vandalizing of the Church of Loaves and Fishes in Israel.
When: Tuesday, June 23
9:30 AM to 11:30 AM
Where: Room 2168 (Gold Room)
Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC
Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected after walking back his support for a Palestinian
state, the viability of the two-state solution has yet again been called into question. As the Israeli occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza nears its fiftieth year, there is a complete lack of trust between the Palestinian and
Israeli leadership. The goal of "two states for two peoples" has never seemed more distant, despite decades of U.S.
support.
As we all know, a picture is worth a thousand words. This is our aim: to make people think and to act for peace.
This week, we bring you a new cartoon, asking who is a Jew ...and who recognizes a Jewish state: “Jews in Glass Houses...”
This week, Alpher discusses why Israeli Druze leaders are lobbying the government to help the Syrian Druze; does Israel have any special reason to get involved; if the Syrian Druze friendly to Israel; what Israel should do; and if there are other minority issues in Syria that should concern Israel.
Tel Aviv is enchanting. As I wandered through the artistic, sun-soaked streets of Neve Tzedek,
walked on the glistening beaches of the Mediterranean, and meandered through its bustling downtown on my most
recent visit to Israel, I became entranced. With its balance of relaxation and excitement, I couldn’t help but
be lured in by the magic of the city.
However, I wasn’t in Israel for vacation. I was there as staff with Americans for Peace Now on its study tour to Israel and the West Bank to learn about the complexity of achieving a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Usually, the tour is based in Jerusalem, a contentious city that many consider the epicenter of the conflict. Though staying in Tel Aviv distanced us from the heart of the issue, it taught me an important lesson about the attitude of Israelis toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how difficult it is to persuade the Israeli public that the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip threatens Israel’s existence.
By obscuring the uniqueness of the Israeli colonialist regime, BDS is giving Israel an escape hatch; instead, boycott movement must focus on occupation and settlements, stop blurring lines between Israel and Territories.
If the BDS movement didn’t exist, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of occupation and settlement would have had to invent it. For contrary to the popular notion in Israel, on the international scene BDS is serving as one of the most effective factors in perpetuating the Palestinians’ national enslavement.
Both the boycott movement and the present Israeli government – as made clear in Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely’s fundamentalist speech to Israeli diplomats – are striving to imprint in international consciousness the inherent identification between the State of Israel and the Israeli military regime in the occupied territories, a single organic Israeli unit. Put another way: There is basic consent between the BDS movement and the Israeli government regarding the conception of the geopolitical space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, as a single state called Israel.
The dispute between the boycott movement and the occupation and settlement government has to do with the moral character of that single “Israel” between the river and the sea. While BDS describes it as a criminal colonialist entity whose international legitimacy is in doubt, the Israeli government sees it as a legitimate partner in the family of nations that gives just expression to the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.