The world laughed at Donald Trump yesterday. In response to his ludicrous assertion that in less than two years his administration “has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country” on the world arena, the assembled diplomatic representatives to the UN General Assembly did not conceal their amusement.

Trump earned the ridicule of the United Nations, in particular regarding his administration’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather than advancing peace, the Trump administration has caused more damage than any government in US history.

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics today published data on construction starts in Israel and the West Bank, indicating that in the second quarter of 2018, 794 new apartments were built in the settlements, compared with only 279 in the first quarter. In the first half of 2018, construction began on 1,073 settlement housing units, compared to 870 in the first half of 2017. Peace Now: The Netanyahu government continues to destroy the chances for peace. Further construction in the settlements undermines Israel's interest in reaching a two-state solution, as such a solution will not be stable without a viable Palestinian state, which settlements increasingly threaten. Unfortunately, since Trump's election, we have seen a sharp increase in the approval of the plans and tenders, and now we are beginning to see the consequences of these approvals on the ground.

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 Trump administration's latest measures against the Palestinians and their leadership are an attack on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. They are not only anti-Palestinian, but also anti-Israel and anti-peace. They do not serve America's national security interests – or Israel's.

The Trump administration's attack on Israel's Palestinian partner for peace negotiations, the Palestine Liberation Organization, is an attack on the framework for peace that the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships have created in the past quarter century. This framework was sustained with the blessing of the international community and the active support of past US administrations, Democratic and Republican, even under right-wing Israeli governments. This framework envisioned a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security.

There are no adults in the room, anonymous or not, diligently frustrating Trump's cruel, disastrous Mideast policy, only arsonists - Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman - dousing the house with kerosene

New revelations in recent days from inside the White House provide yet more evidence of the disaster unfolding at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

One of the most astonishing stories told in Bob Woodward’s new book, "Fear," is that of President Donald Trump’s senior economic adviser Gary Cohn, who reportedly swiped a letter from Trump’s desk which - had the president signed it - would have withdrawn the U.S. from a trade agreement with South Korea. (According to Cohn, Trump never realized it was missing.)

More amazing still is the complementary claim by an anonymous senior Trump administration official that s/he and many others are "working diligently from within to frustrate parts of [Trump’s] agenda and his worst inclinations."

Such subversion of presidential authority is certainly problematic. But given an amoral president with a fifth- or sixth-grader's understanding  of world affairs (as Defense Secretary James Mattis is said to have described Donald Trump), one can be forgiven for wishing for adults in the room.

During a recent Shabbat, I had a memory flash. Reading the haftorah, Amos 9, I remembered something that happened 70 years ago. I was 13, in middle school, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. We started every morning with the Pledge of Allegiance and then the Lord’s Prayer (my parents told me to stand silently). Then one of the students would read a few lines from the Bible. Sometime in the spring of 1948, I chose a few lines from Amos 9:

And I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel,
and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them;
and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; and
they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which
I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.

I didn’t believe all this would be God’s doing, but I did believe it was being done by the Jews of the Yishuv, and I was incredibly proud. It was, it still is, their project, but it is also our project, and it isn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

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A version of this essay also appeared in The Forward on August 29, 2018

By the time you receive this letter, I will have stepped down from my position as President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now (APN), after serving in this capacity for 21 years. However, I’m writing this with six weeks left in my tenure at APN, and I’m anxious to share my thoughts and feelings with you, this being the last time I will have this forum through which to speak to you.

I was hoping to put into words the many feelings I’m experiencing at this time:

Gratitude: for having the honor to serve the dedicated and supportive APN Board, my talented APN colleagues and you, our generous and committed supporters.

Pride: in the important work that APN does both here and in the Middle East.

Awe: at our colleagues in Shalom Achshav (Peace Now, the Israeli peace movement) — many of them among the signers of the original officers’ letter establishing the organization in 1978 — who work tirelessly for a future that their children, grandchildren and those of their Palestinian neighbors deserve.

Excitement: about new possibilities ahead.

But, sadly, I am also feeling rage. The targets of my rage are those who know right from wrong, yet have chosen wrong for personal or political expedience.

Ten Israelis – five Arab citizens and five Jewish peace activists – were victims of hate crimes over the weekend. All ten were hospitalized with cuts, lacerations, fractures, and other injuries of various severity after being attacked by Israeli Jews.