This week Alpher discusses whether there is any chance of replacing Assad with a
transition regime as discussed at the Geneva I talks, who else agrees with Israeli Defense Minister
Yaalon's labeling of Kerry by as "obsessive and messianic," or if this is "last week's news," and
whether there is anything really new on the Israeli-Palestinian scene.
There is a story in the Talmud of a man who was walking along a road, and came upon an elderly man planting a
carob tree. Seeing how old the gardener was, he asked him, "How long does this tree take to bear fruit?" The
old man said, "70 years." The first man asked the gardener if he expected to live that long, and the man
replied, "What I am planting, I am planting for my children, just as others planted for me."
Washington, DC - Americans for Peace Now (APN) urges American Jewish organizations to join it and its Israeli sister organization, Israel’s Peace Now movement, in condemning Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon’s offensive comments, lambasting Secretary of State John Kerry for his efforts to broker peace for Israel.
Yaalon was quoted this morning in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth as criticizing Kerry for “acting out of
misplaced obsession and messianic fervor” in his efforts to advance a peace agreement between Israel and the
Palestinians. Yaalon did not deny the quotes, and in a public appearance later in the day continued to criticize
the US peacemaking efforts, stating that Israel’s government strives not to resolve its conflict with the
Palestinians “but to manage it.”
State Department Spokesperson, Jennifer Psaki, called Yaalon’s remarks "offensive and inappropriate, especially
given all that the U.S. is doing to support Israel's security needs." She added that “to question Secretary Kerry's
motives and distort his proposal is not something we would expect from the defense minister of a close ally."
Several members of the Israeli cabinet also criticized Yaalon’s comments, as did Israel’s Peace Now movement,
Shalom Achshav.
APN, the US sister-organization of Shalom Achshav, is outraged at Yaalon’s comments, and urges fellow American
Jewish organizations to join it by speaking out against his tirade.
APN’s President and CEO Debra DeLee said: “This is a moment that calls for American friends of Israel to state
clearly: We support peace for Israel. We recognize that it is in the national security interest of Israel and of
the United States. We support our President and Secretary of State’s efforts to advance this goal. We do not
support the vision of Israel living by its sword and ruling over another people in perpetuity, by ‘managing’ its
conflict with the Palestinians.”
To read more about Yaalon’s comments, click here
To read the State Department’s reaction, click here
To read Peace Now’s statement, click here
Washington, DC - Responding to news that the Obama Administration and its international partners had reached an agreement with Iran to implement the Joint Plan of Action signed in November 2013, Americans for Peace Now (APN) is calling on Congress to support President Obama’s diplomatic effort and is urging fellow American Jewish organizations to stop their campaign in support of new Iran sanctions.
This week, Alpher discusses how the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships are positioning
themselves in anticipation of being presented with some sort of framework agreement by US Secretary of State
John Kerry, the story of Ariel Sharon's meeting with Alpher in 1994 to discuss his use of the settlements to
"divide and rule" the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, what he thinks of the Palestinian allegation
that Israel could do far more to prevent settler attacks, and whether there is a broad strategic significance
to the internecine fighting in Sunni areas of both northern Syria and western Iraq.
This is the tenth in a series of reviews of books on Middle Eastern affairs. We asked Dr. Gail Weigl, an
APN volunteer and a professor of art history, reviewed David Ehrlich's new collection of short
stories.
David Ehrlich, Who Will Die Last: Stories of Life in Israel, edited by Ken Frieden (Syracuse University
Press, 2013). 147 pages. $19.95
Sardonic, witty, poignant, resigned, this extraordinary collection of short stories is a welcome addition to the
canon of Israeli literature in translation.
Israel-Palestine pundits often seem to compete over who will be more skeptical, if not dismissive, of new diplomatic initiatives. Given past peace-making failures, they know that predictions of failure are their best bets.
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer got it wrong when they laid blame for the Iraq War on the "Israel Lobby" (in their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy). However, a war with Iran could be a different story. As I warned back in March 2012, a much clearer line can be drawn between the efforts of U.S. Jewish groups and hawkish Iran policies. "For more than a decade," I wrote, "the same forces that Walt and Mearsheimer erroneously blamed for America's Iraq debacle have openly led efforts to convince Washington and the American people that war with Iran is necessary and inevitable."
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is known for the quip "If you can't solve a problem, enlarge it." Opponents of Israeli-Palestinian peace have their own spin on that quip, best summed up as, "If you don't want to solve a problem, pile on more problems." As a result, a valuable metric for gauging how seriously things are going in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts - or, at least, how worried anti-peace folks are getting that things are going seriously - has long been the extent to which opponents of peace are ginning up discredited, specious, or disingenuous arguments. And a look at current headlines indicates that opponents of peace are taking the Kerry peace effort very seriously, indeed.
Today, Peace Now's Settlement Watch issued the following update regarding new settlement-related developments in Hebron: