Progress

In 1988, Israel decriminalized homosexuality, and within five years, the country had begun allowing openly gay soldiers to serve in the military and instituted a ban on anti-LGBTQ employment discrimination. Since 2006, Israel has recognized same-sex marriages performed abroad; 2008 marked the year that Israel began allowing same-sex couples to adopt children together; and, in 2014, Israel lowered the minimum age requirement for gender-affirming surgery for the transgender community. Just this month, incoming Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz announced that he would remove all questions about sexual activity from questionnaires for prospective blood donors, thus allowing gay men to give blood.

Over the past twenty-three years, LGBTQ rights have progressed at warp speed in Israel. In Tel Aviv, a city where only twenty or thirty years ago gay men were harassed on the streets by bullies both civilian and police, there is now a Municipal LGBT Center. Funded by the city government, this center aims to support, educate, and empower the city’s LGBTQ residents. The idea that taxpayer funds could go toward such an effort – especially in a state so influenced by intolerant religious attitudes – is nothing short of revolutionary.

Several Israeli peace and human rights organizations, including Peace Now, took part on Tuesday, June 22nd, in a Knesset event titled ‘After 54 years: Between Occupation and Apartheid,’ hosted by MK Aida Touma-Suleiman of the Joint List and MK Mossi Raz of Meretz.

The event ruffled feathers in Israel. Many were offended by the use of the term “Apartheid” to depict the reality in the West Bank under Israeli occupation. Avner Gvaryahu, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, addressed these sentiments in the following speech, translated from Hebrew by APN:

UN Secretary General António Guterres and the United Nations point-man on antisemitism Miguel Moratinos, the UN High-Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, have been under pressure from conservative US Jewish leaders and the Israeli government to endorse a definition of antisemitism which APN – among others – finds problematic. APN’s President and CEO and the organization’s Chair of the Board sent the following letter to Mr. Moratinos and SG Guterres, urging them not to adopt the IHRA definition as the UN’s official definition of antisemitism.   

Israel’s Peace Now movement was one of several Israeli peace and human rights organizations that participated on Tuesday, June 22^nd, in an event titled ‘After 54 years: Between Occupation and Apartheid.’

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.

Supporting Peace, Conditioning Aid

Listen below to the recording of a webinar discussing that new position. 

Washington, DC – Americans for Peace Now (APN) today rolled out a new policy position supporting the conditioning of the military aid Israel receives from the United States. The new policy position is laid out in an article published today in Time Magazine by APN’s President and CEO Hadar Susskind.

By: Hadar Susskind

When I served as a combat soldier in the Israeli military, I carried an American-made M-16. I drove American jeeps and fired American missiles.

As a dual American-Israeli citizen who has spent years in both countries, my commitment to Israel did not end with my army service. From my home in the U.S. the past 20 years, I’ve been in the trenches of the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement for nearly all of my life. It is from this vantage point of caring deeply for both Israel and the U.S., and in my capacity as President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now, that I am calling on the U.S. government to condition its annual 3.8 billion dollars of military aid to Israel. We are the first progressive Zionist organization to endorse conditioning aid, and we do not take this step lightly. But what has become abundantly clear, underscored by the horrifying images coming out of Gaza, East Jerusalem and inside Israel last month, is that continuing to give Israel military aid without conditions neither serves U.S. policy interests—nor, I would argue, does it serve Israel.

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.