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

This is an awkward time of the year for some secular Jews like me. We know it’s a time of renewal and perhaps even symbolic rebirth, but what does that mean if you don’t really think the supreme ruler is sitting in judgment and deciding your fate for the coming year? Well, it could mean a lot of things. For me it’s a time to take stock: to look back on the past year and own up to things done which shouldn’t have been, or not done which should have been, and everything in between. What could I do to put those things to right? And what do I hope to change in the coming year? A small aspiration of mine is the intention in the coming year to dial back my propensity for righteous indignation. Hardly a day passes when I’m not upset – if not downright angry – about events in the world but I’m learning that indignation no matter how righteous sometimes may be counter-productive.

Maimonides teaches the blowing of the shofar is intended to waken us from our mindless slumber, our symbolic sleep which allows us to turn away from blatant injustice. He admonishes us to “….look to our souls and better our ways and actions.” For me this means doubling down on my efforts to pursue an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of a Palestinian state. We Jews weren’t meant to be occupiers. Forty-nine years of holding another people under occupation is more than enough. Israeli security professionals have weighed in on this issue and concluded that the occupation does not provide security. It is a national security liability. The occupation is hurting not only Palestinians but Israelis as well – not equally but significantly.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) mourns the death of Shimon Peres, the former president and prime minister of the State of Israel, an icon of Israel's founding generation, a visionary of peace and security for Israel, a dedicated leader who led Israel through wars and in the quest for peace.

Over the weekend, more than 70 American intellectuals - including members of APN's Board of Directors such as Michael Walzer and Edward Witten - published an Open Letter in the New York Review of Books calling for a targeted boycott of “all goods and services from all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, and any investments that promote the Occupation.”

APN warmly welcomes and endorses this letter. Its message echoes and validates the position that APN has proudly advocated for years, often as a lone voice of sanity in the pro-Israel Jewish community. You can find out more about our position - expressed in policy statements, opeds, advocacy documents, and more - here.

Like the signers of the Open Letter, we oppose boycotts of Israel. And like the signers of the Open Letter, we have long argued for activism targeting settlements and the occupation, which we believe to be an important and effective way to fight the occupation and fortify the foundations of a two-state solution.

We are pleased and encouraged to see that this position is gaining greater traction in the American intellectual community, especially given the fact that the conflation of Israel and the settlements is becoming dangerously mainstream. Now more than ever, we must fight to uphold the distinction between Israel and the settlements. We must reject the creeping legitimization of settlements. And, with our rhetoric and our activism, we must target the pro-settlement and anti-peace policies that fuel the occupation and endanger the two-state solution. This Open Letter is an important step in doing all of those things, and we commend its authors and signers. We also hope their action will inspire others to act as well - click here for some actions that can be taken today to fight settlements and the occupation.

Back in April 2016, the New York Times published an oped I authored regarding President Obama and the United Nations Security Council. The genesis of that oped was the assertion - made repeatedly by policy experts and pundits, by journalists, by Jewish leaders, by members of Congress, etc - that no U.S. president has ever gone against Israel in the UN Security Council.

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 where Israel positioned itself in the Middle East during the outgoing year; how the Israel-US relationship appears to have suffered; how events in the surrounding Middle East affected the mood of Israelis; how the so-called “lone wolf intifada” affected Israelis; and the prospects for progress between Israel and the Palestinians in the year ahead .

As part of an ongoing series, APN ran this  message in the Washington Jewish Week and the Baltimore Jewish Times from Major General (res.) Gadi Shamni, a former military secretary to the Prime Minister, former military attaché to the U.S., and top commander of IDF forces in the West Bank .

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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 books! The best book on the Arab revolutionary wave, books on additional causes for the current chaos in the Arab world, books on the Arab revolutions that add a more human dimension, on the US role in the Middle East before the Arab revolutions, and on Israel and the Palestinians.

Rabbi Susan P. Fendrick is an editor, writer, teacher, and spiritual director. A graduate of Brown University, she received rabbinic ordination in 1995 from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship program. Her writing appears in numerous books and publications.

There is very little language of personal prayer recorded in the Torah, and even less prescribed liturgy for future Jews to recite. But one rare example of a liturgical text appears in this week’s Torah reading—a prayer that supports the pursuit of conflict resolution and peace-seeking.

The entire book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ swan song, his last chance to convey everything he must to the Israelite nation before they enter the land of Israel without him. In Parshat Ki Tavo, he offers a formula that each Israelite should recite when bringing the “first fruits” offering on the holiday of Shavuot.  That recitation was discussed in the APN Peace Parsha last June, and I want to offer a further reading of its opening words, which speaks to all that we have to bear in mind as we work for a peaceful and secure future for the state of Israel.