Americans for Peace Now (APN) is deeply concerned by the current developments in Israel, including Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement today that he intends to continue pushing his government’s anti-democratic initiative to weaken the state’s judiciary, his support for the establishment of a “national guard” that will report directly to Itamar Ben Gvir, and his continued scorched earth practices both domestically and internationally.

Netanyahu and his government have brought Israel to the brink of dictatorship. And the Prime Minister’s speech today failed to pull the country back from the brink. By stating in his speech today that “one way or another, we will bring about a reform” of the judiciary, Netanyahu made clear that he is not backing down from the government’s push to eviscerate Israel’s Supreme Court, he’s simply buying time.

This government’s so-called “judicial reform” is not an effort to streamline Israel’s judiciary but rather an aggressive, anti-democratic coup, intended to change the very nature of Israel’s government, away from a liberal democracy and toward a dictatorship of the corrupt.

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived.

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) strongly condemns comments by Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who in a speech in France absurdly asserted that “there’s no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people.” APN calls on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to condemn Smotrich’s outrageous statement and urges the Biden administration to do the same.

Smotrich said that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people, Palestinian culture or Palestinian history, and added that this “truth” should be heard “at the Elysee Palace and the White House." To make things worse, Smotrich’s lectern carried a schematic map of so-called “Greater Israel,” which included the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Smotrich’s speech triggered justifiable fury among both Palestinians and Jordanians, including a statement by the Jordanian Foreign Ministry, noting that the map constitutes a violation of Jordan’s US-brokered peace agreement with Israel.

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived.

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

When the APN trip to Israel-Palestine, originally planned for last November, was postponed, little did we know that by rescheduling for early March we would be arriving in the middle of the largest protest movement ever seen in Israel.

It was powerful to join the hundreds of thousands of Israelis in what has become a weekly, and now even daily, show of anger and protest against the ultra-right-wing Netanyahu government. We also went to the weekly Sheikh Jarrah protest, which took place down the block from our hotel, only to quickly turn back in the face of police violence including the use of Skunk Water and water cannons that left protesters battered and bloody.

In recent years, many have depicted the Israeli public as politically apathetic, as dormant. And in some way that was correct. Much to our chagrin and concern, Israelis have not been turning out in droves to protest the Occupation and its woes. But the public protest of the past ten weeks in Israel proves that political indifference does not characterize current Israeli society.

For the past ten weeks, large segments of the Israeli public have protested in the streets against the anti-democratic policies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist, ultra-nationalist government. For ten weeks, both on Saturday night and on weekdays, hundreds of thousands have turned out to protest, often clashing with police forces. Members of Netanyahu’s cabinet assumed that the protest would subside just as it had erupted, but the opposite happened.

On recent Saturday nights, in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem Haifa and other towns, the overall number of demonstrators reached 400,000 or 500,000. If the same proportion of Americans took to the street to demonstrate, there would be almost 18 million people protesting in US cities. According to some estimates, 20% of Israelis have participated in some act of protest against their government’s legislative coup in the past three months. This coming Saturday, protest action is planned in 170 sites across Israel.

Photos by Gili Getz: