This week, Alpher discusses lessons learned by Israel's center-left following its defeat to Netanyahu; Low likelihood of a Netanyahu-Herzog unity government; The state of US-Israel relations following Netanyahu's statements on the two-state solution and on Arab citizens' voting. 

Update: this action, now closed, ran in March 2015. 

The recent Israeli elections definitively unmasked the real Benjamin Netanyahu.

• Netanyahu cynically campaigned as an adversary of President Obama
• Netanyahu brazenly ruled out a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians
• Netanyahu flagrantly incited racism and intolerance in the Israeli body politic
• Netanyahu shamelessly stoked divisions within the American Jewish community
• Netanyahu recklessly turned Israel into a partisan issue in Congress

Tell President Obama:  Stand up to Netanyahu.

On March 18, 2015, the day after Israel's general elections, Israeli political expert Yossi Alpher was APN's guest on a briefing call analyzing the election results.

Washington, DC – Israel’s general election results are a disappointment for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans. They will undoubtedly make our objective even harder to attain.

Pre-election polls and the overall atmosphere in Israel preceding the elections provided us with hope for a government that would embrace the policies and values that we support. It now seems like Israel’s next government will provide us with more of the same, if not worse.

Moments like this are not new to us. Yes, they disappoint us, but we do not succumb to the disappointment. We know that our fight to secure peace for Israel and its neighbors is a long-term fight.  We care too deeply about Israel’s future as a democracy and a Jewish state to cede the struggle over Israel’s future character to the bullies and the bigots, the racists and the ultra-nationalists. We know that the only way for Israel to be loyal to the vision of its founders, to be both a secure, morally sound Jewish state and a democracy, is to end the occupation and reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians and the Arab world. Together with our Israeli sister organization, Peace Now, we will therefore redouble our efforts to advance this objective, serving as a bulwark against the rejectionists and the zealots, true to our core values.

 This week, Alpher discusses what happened in these elections*; what the next government is likely to look like; how Netanyahu engineered such a dramatic come-from-behind victory, despite the polls giving Labor (Zionist Camp) an advantage almost until election day; whether there are winners here, besides Netanyahu; how Herzog and Lapid are likely to respond to their setbacks, and what “losers” on the right who are nevertheless likely to join the coalition are going to do; how to explain the phenomenon of Israel's seeming to be set on a right-wing course, with no end in sight; and assuming Netanyahu now forms a fairly cohesive right-wing coalition, what are the main challenges it will face.