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:

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.

Listen to the call here

This week, Alpher discusses the key dynamics from Israel’s standpoint of the ten-year anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip and a low-key interception and thwarting by Israel of a flotilla trying to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza; regarding the publication of a UN report on human rights aspects of last summer’s Gaza war, whether there is anything that Israel can constructively build on as it looks to future conflicts; whether it made sense that the Netanyahu government refused to cooperate with the Human Rights Commission and refused to allow the latest flotilla to approach the Gaza coast; and why the Gaza Strip is relatively quiet, with Hamas seemingly collaborating with Israel by pursuing the occasional more extreme Islamists who fire isolated rockets at Israel.

This week, Alpher discusses whether former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren is just trying to sell his new book, or are his attacks on President Obama part of some sort of larger plan to widen the gap between the two countries; if Obama knowingly and deliberately violated previously sacred bilateral principles of “no daylight” and “no surprises;” what the American Jewish angle is; what the likely ramifications of Oren’s attacks for US-Israel relations are at the current juncture.