Americans for Peace Now (APN) joins its Israeli sister organization Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) in condemning the current wave of vicious right-wing attacks on leaders of Israeli progressive nonprofits, on peace and human rights organizations, and even on Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin.

This week, the incitement against Israeli progressives reached new heights, with the launch of a new campaign by Im Tirtzu, an extremist, McCarthyite Israeli group. This campaign also marks a new low in Im Tirtu’s campaign of incitement against the Left – a remarkable feat given that Im Tirtzu has for some time been plumbing the depths of incitement, including with a vile campaign targeting the New Israel Fund, featuring Der Sturmer-style images of a veteran Israeli Knesset member on whose head they had drawn horns. Im Tirtzu’s new campaign – which includes a video, an ad running in Israeli media, and a website – targets our colleagues in the Israeli human rights and civil society movement, labeling them foreign “plants” and suggesting that they support terror against Israel. The imagery of the campaign calls to mind militant anti-abortion websites in the United States that, until blocked by U.S. courts, included details and photos of targeted individuals and then placed an “X” over the faces of the targets that had been killed.

At a TED-styleStyle session, APN"s Lara Friedman spoke on the question  “What do WE (Israelis) need from the relationship with YOU (American Jews)”?

This week, Alpher discusses who is the real Reuven Rivlin and how much influence does he wield back home in Jerusalem; does Yossi Cohen's appointment as new head of the Mossad tell us something about the future direction of Israel’s overall security strategy; what will be Cohen’s primary intelligence collection and operational priorities in the Mossad in the years ahead; how can one explain Tehran removing most of its Revolutionary Guards Quds forces from the Syrian battlefield and sending them home to Iran.

One of the many things that Israelis and Palestinians have in common is the role that poetry plays in their popular culture. For both Israelis and Palestinians, poetry is a bridge that connects their personal experience to the national, collective narrative of their people.

Yehuda Amichai is Israel’s most prominent modern poet, widely considered the country’s poetic voice of peace. When Yitzhak Rabin was invited to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, he asked Amichai to join him and read a couple of poems. One of his selections was his piercing anti-war poem, God has Pity on Kindergarten Children.

Recently, amidst the recent outbreak of violence in Israel, a restauranteur offered a 50 percent discount on each plate of hummus ordered by Jewish and Arab patrons who dined together. This story went viral. It reminds us that food can bring people together.

Food brought Yotam Ottolengi and Sami Tamimi together. They are the chefs behind the runaway bestseller Jerusalem: A Cookbook. It highlights an odd mix of flavors drawing upon recipes indigenous to Jerusalem. But the truly pleasing odd mix is that Yotam is from West Jerusalem—an Israeli, and Sami is from East Jerusalem—a Palestinian. They are the best of friends and food is their common bond.

Jews are called “the people of the book” for a reason. Over thousands of years, despite endless persecution, adversity and exile, we have remained a people, linked to one another and our history by our sacred texts, ideologies and teachings. The words in these texts—interpreted anew with each generation—are what binds us together, nourish our Jewish identity, and inspire provocative, mind-expanding (occasionally maddening) discussions in our communities and at our dinner tables.

As it is said: ask two Jews, you’ll get three opinions.

We use music in a variety of ways – to teach, to learn, to inspire, to heal. We can use it to help get through life’s troubles or to delve deeply into them.

Sandy Tolan’s Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land explores many of these dynamics through the story of Ramzi Aburedwan, a West Bank Palestinian who uses his rare musical talent to bring the healing power of music to his community in the West Bank. Tolan, the author of the bestselling book The Lemon Tree, powerfully documents Ramzi’s experiences, from his childhood under Israeli occupation to becoming a master viola player in the concert halls of Europe to his return to Ramallah in order to teach and perform.

Very few Palestinians have written political memoirs documenting their people’s struggle for statehood and liberty. Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a Country is a rarity and therefore a must-read for anyone seeking to see the conflict through the eyes of a brilliant Palestinian, to comprehend and to empathize.