On January 17th, Martin Luther King Day, Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), issued a statement saying that “the continued occupation in Palestine/Israel is 21st-century slavery.” In his statement, he expressed “hope that the Jewish community in the United States would influence the call to join the U.S. government in ending the immoral enslavement.”
We at APN are disappointed and concerned by this framing.
Americans for Peace Now (APN) joins its Israeli sister organization Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) in protesting yesterday’s demolition of the Sallehiya family’s home in the East Jerusalem flashpoint neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
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.
“Israel’s right to exist as a state is incontestable.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote these words in a letter to the then-president of the Jewish Labor Committee in 1967, after the Six-Day War.
Each year on MLK Day, this one small sentence is shouted from the rooftops of almost every Zionist organization in America. It has become a way for some Jewish groups to deflect the actual legacy of Martin Luther King and focus the day on Zionism, rather than on justice for Black people. It also exploits Dr. King’s words, as though they provide legitimacy to all Israeli government actions. News flash: Israel’s “right to exist” is not synonymous with a right to occupy and subjugate another people. Dr. King’s words mean what they say: he supports Israel’s existence. They do not mean that we should blindly support every action by the Israeli government.
with Maysoon Zayid and Dr. Hanna Hanania
Washington, DC -- Americans for Peace Now (APN) welcomes the decision to indefinitely postpone plans for settlement construction in the strategic West Bank area known as E-1.
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.
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.
The Biden administration last week issued a joint statement with the Palestinian Authority announcing the resumption of the U.S.-Palestinian Economic Dialogue (USPED).
In a virtual meeting, administration officials and senior representatives of the Palestinian Authority “recognized the importance of restored political and economic relations between the U.S. government and the Palestinian Authority and pledged to expand and deepen cooperation and coordination across a range of sectors,” the statement said. The re-activation of this body reverses one more component of the Trump administration’s sweeping anti-Palestinian policy.
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.