Americans for Peace Now (APN) is alarmed by reports that the Jewish National Fund intends to start officially purchasing land in the West Bank to expand Israeli settlements. Such a step would be a dramatic change in the JNF's policy, with potentially dramatic repercussions. It could significantly bolster the Israeli settlement enterprise, which is aimed at thwarting a future two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
APN's daily news review from Israel - Thursday February 11, 2020
Quote of the day:
"The four candidates with a chance of being elected prime minister are all painfully similar. Don’t believe
the fairy tales about a great ideological chasm between them. Fundamentally, they are identical: All are Zionist
Jews who support the occupation, devotees of Jewish supremacy in Israel."
--In an Op-Ed, Gideon
Levy on the four candidates vying to become Israel's next prime minister.*
Thirty Eight years ago, on February 10th 1983, Peace Now activist Emil Grunzweig was murdered by an extreme right Jewish terrorist at a Peace Now demonstration in Jerusalem.
Not far from the Prime Minister’s Office, the terrorist, Yona Avrushmi, lobbed a hand grenade at the front row of the Peace Now marchers. It killed Emil and injured nine of his friends.
Our Israeli Peace Now partners organized a demonstration at the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan to protest the dispossession of Palestinian families by extremist Jewish settlers. Peace Now activists demonstrated shoulder-to-shoulder with Silwan’s Palestinian residents, and then marched with them to join the weekly anti-Netanyahu demonstration opposite the Prime Minister’s residence in West Jerusalem’s Balfour Street.
This was a first.
APN's daily news review from Israel - Wednesday February 10, 2021
You Must Be Kidding:
45.
—Percent of illegal settlement outposts erected in the Jordan Beqaa Valley of the West Bank that are in an Israeli
military firing zone and to which the military turns a blind eye. However,
soldiers prevent Palestinian shepherds from even letting their cattle graze in the firing zone.**
The international Criminal Court (ICC) over the weekend ruled that it has jurisdiction over the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip -- territories under Israeli occupation since 1967. This opens the path for the ICC to launch formal investigations against Israel and against Hamas for alleged war crimes.
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.
APN's daily news review from Israel - Sunday February 7, 2021
Quote of the day:
"In less than a year we have moved from a state of unprecedented American normalization of the settlements
(remember Psagot Winery's "Pompeo" wine?) and almost annexation, to the possibility of investigating those involved
in the settlement enterprise as war criminals."
--Yedioth analyst Shimrit Meir
writes that the decision of the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate Israel on war crimes
for establishing settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories returns the Palestinian issue to the
international and Israeli discourse, after years of it being marginalized.*
1. Bills,
Resolutions & Letters
2. Senate Budget Resolution
Amendment-Palooza
3. On the
Record
Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.
The following Article was published in the London-based New Statesman on February 4th, 2021
How should US anti-Semitism be defined in the Biden era?
The US’s Jewish community is debating whether the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition should be enforced as government policy.
BY EMILY TAMKIN
“Do we need this definition?” Hadar Susskind, the president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now, put that question to me in response to a growing debate in the US over how the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) defines anti-Semitism.