For tthe third in a series of ads from APN, this week's message is from Rabbi Michael Melchior, an internationally renowned Jewish leader, thinker and activist. Rabbi Melchior is a former Minister of Social and Diaspora Affairs, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and a former member of Knesset for Meimad. For his outstanding leadership in The Knesset, Rabbi Melchior was awarded with the prestigious Knight of Quality Governance Award and the Green Globe Award of Israel's National Coalition of Environmental NGOs.

The Rabbi of a vibrant community in Talpiyot, Jerusalem,and the Chief Rabbi of Norway, he is a recipient of The Norwegian Award For Tolerance & Bridge Building in the Nobel Institute, The Church Of England’s Coventry International Prize For Peace & Reconciliation, the Liebhaber Prize For The Promotion Of Religious Tolerance And Cultural Pluralism, and the 2015 Annual Peace Prize for the FRRME (Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East).

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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.

This week, Alpher discusses Israel and Turkey's formula for reconciliation and normalizing of their relations and what this entails; if it is a somewhat one-sided deal: Israel seems to have achieved much more than Turkey; what are the Turkish weaknesses that Netanyahu leveraged; the Israel-Egypt-Turkey triangle; if there is a broad Israeli regional strategy at work here signaled by last week's deal with Turkey and this week's expansion of Israel’s ties with the countries of East Africa; and if Ankara’s quest to become the effective regional patron of Hamas in Gaza isn't potentially a problem for Israel.

Israel’s prime minister is fighting hard to weaken the most important moderate force in his country. Which is why he’s going to be a big problem for the next U.S. president.

Barbara Green has been a volunteer for Americans for Peace Now for many years. She lives in Washington, DC.

Korach gathers 250 ‘princes of the assembly’ and confronts Moses and Aaron: “You take too much upon you…seeing that each of us is holy.”   Moses, abject, tells his challengers to bring offerings to the sanctuary the next day so that God can determine who is holy.   God’s punishment is swift and violent.   He immediately kills Korach and his followers; the 14,700 souls who stood with them are swallowed by an earthquake.   Imagine a 13-year-old having to deconstruct this parsha for his/her bar or bat mitzvah!

            What are we modern readers to make of this tale and what relevance does it have for us today?  The answer is that it depends on the way one views Korach.   Was he a jealous competitor, miffed because Moses passed over him, a first-born son who lost the priestly leadership to Aaron, the younger son of his uncle?   Or was his a legitimate challenge to Moses’ perceived failures of leadership?    Was he rebelling against God who made the choice? Did Korach posit a more democratic form of leadership? If everyone is holy, each person can decide for himself how to act.  No supreme leader is needed.

It’s been eight years since APN first partnered with New Story Leadership (NSL), a program that brings Israeli and Palestinian fellows to Washington for six weeks of leadership-skills development. The program includes an internship with a Washington-based nonprofit or a congressional office and intense dialogue to foster a better understanding of the other side to the conflict. For most fellows, this is the first chance they have to engage in intense conversations with young people from the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, to listen, reach out, forge relationship and often make friends. The program has given birth to several Israeli-Palestinian nonprofit partnerships.

Each summer in the past eight years, APN has hosted a couple of NSL fellows – an Israeli and a Palestinian – sometimes in partnership with the American Task Force on Palestine. And each year, we host the group for an introductory meeting to tell the fellows about APN and Peace Now. On Friday, July 1, we got together at our office with the NSL fellows and staff for what was supposed to be a short introductory meeting, and turned into a fascinating two-hour discussion about efforts for Israeli-Palestinian peace and prospects for a two-state solution.