November 2020

Dear Friend,

Thirty-eight years ago, when my wife Kathryn and I were expecting our first child, we went to Israel to research the movie Yentl. I stayed at an Orthodox Yeshiva, and Kathryn at The American Colony Hotel. The next day we spent a beautiful day in Hebron, surrounded by curious children happy to meet visiting Americans, and went on a tour of a vibrant neighborhood, guided spontaneously by a sweet stranger at the Cave Of The Patriarchs and Matriarchs. Our baby boy moved fiercely when visiting this tomb, and we decided that was a sign that he should be named Isaac. Fast forward almost 40 years, when I was filming an episode of Homeland, and I traveled to Israel and Palestine. Once again, I visited Hebron. But this time, traveling with Israeli peace activists from Shalom Achshav, those thriving streets Kathryn and I had seen were no longer.

This “sterile” main street was the vast market of Hebron, known as Shuhada Street. It served the city and surrounding villages and was shut down by the Israeli army. Separation measures were imposed to protect the settlers against attack and further reduce friction between Arabs and Jews. Palestinians’ access to the center of town was severely restricted, their shops closed, a few stores taken over by settlers, and most were boarded up.

The main street looked like a ghost town, its crumbling buildings scarred with Hebrew graffiti: “No Arabs, No Mice.” “Death to the Arabs” and worse.

A nauseous sense overwhelms at the hate-filled words but even more so at the sight of all the boarded-up stores that were once a vibrant marketplace. With Israeli soldiers on guard over this area, Palestinians, because they cannot use the street, must reach their homes via their neighbors’ rooftops or by climbing through windows.

Think about it: Only Jews are allowed on that street, even though Arabs live in the apartments over the boarded-up shops. The very word used to describe this street division, “sterile,” conjures images of unthinkable crimes.

I have long sat on the board of Americans for Peace Now, and Kathryn and I both believe deeply in the prospect of peace. But this experience rattled us to our core, and I began to understand the profound complications for both Jews and Palestinians in a new light.

Update: this action, now closed, ran from November 25, 2020-January 20, 2021. 

CLICK to read and sign the petition

On January 20, when President Joe Biden and his foreign policy team enter the White House, they will have the work of restoring America’s leadership abroad cut out for them.

The Trump administration is filling its last days by starting fires and laying land mines that Biden’s team will have to remove one-by-one.

Americans for Peace Now sent a letter to President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, addressed to incoming Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, with some specific recommendations that President Biden should take action on in order to clear some of the wreckage left behind by Trump.

They heard from us. Now they need to hear from you!

Go HERE to sign the petition urging President-elect Joe Biden to reverse Trump’s course of endorsing occupation, annexation, settlement construction and apartheid, and to instead commit his administration to advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace in earnest.

23 November, 2020

Dear Mr. Blinken,

Congratulations!

Like many US advocacy organizations that focus on foreign policy, we are delighted at the promise of change that your new administration brings. 

While we are well aware of the challenges and priorities that your administration faces, both domestically and overseas, we urge you to keep Israeli-Palestinian relations high up on your agenda. Should you conclude that the time is not ripe now for a full-fledged Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, we urge you to consider that time is running out on the two-state solution that President-elect Biden strongly supports. Developments on the ground – sanctioned and even encouraged by the outgoing administration – are severely jeopardizing a future two-state solution to the conflict. They must be reversed.

We at Americans for Peace now, the sister-organization of Israel’s peace movement Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), are writing to share with you our alarm at the current state of US policy on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, to offer some initial actions to address the wreckage left behind by the Trump administration, and to affirm our commitment to work closely with the Biden-Harris transition team, and subsequently with the new administration, to advance the cause of Palestinian-Israeli peace. 

This webinar on November 24 featured strategic affairs analyst Yossi Alpher providing a view from Israel, as part of our series examining the Middle East policy impact of transitioning from the Trump to the Biden administration.

LISTEN

• How is the transition from Trump to Biden viewed in Israel, both by its leaders and the public?
• How might dealing with a Biden administration alter Israeli government policies and priorities?
• How would Israel’s conservative government and the Israeli public at large adapt to a liberal administration with a worldview diametrically opposed to Trump’s and very different from Netanyahu’s?

These and other questions were addressed by Yossi Alper, one of Israel’s leading strategic affairs analyst, and the author of APN’s Hard Questions Tough Answers, our weekly analysis of Middle East policy, politics, and strategic affairs. Alpher 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.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) strongly condemns an initiative by four Republican Senators to label products made in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank as being “Made in Israel.” 

The four, Tom Cotton (AR), Kelly Loeffler (GA), Marco Rubio (FL), and Ted Cruz (TX), sent a letter Monday to outgoing President Trump, with copies to the Secretaries of State, the Treasury, and Homeland Security, urging Trump to allow “Israeli goods produced in Judea and Samaria to be labeled as ‘Made in Israel.’” Judea and Samaria is the biblical term used by Israeli religious nationalists and their supporters to refer to the West Bank.

The resumption of security and civilian cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and the government of Israel is good news for Israel, the Palestinians, and all stakeholders in the conflict.

Following media reports that outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo intends to visit an Israeli settlement on an upcoming trip to the region this week, APN urges Sec. Pompeo to cancel this detrimental gesture.

The seventy-day transition period to a new administration is not the time to break with decades of bipartisan American policy and set diplomatically consequential precedents. An official visit by a US secretary of State to a West Bank settlement – the first ever – is damaging in several ways.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) sends its deepest sympathy to the Erekat family and to the Palestinian people as they mourn the death of Dr. Saeb Erekat, the Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO, and the former chief Palestinian negotiator in peace talks with Israel.

A proud Palestinian patriot, Erekat was one of the leading voices in support of a diplomatically negotiated peace agreement with Israel. He often noted that no other Palestinian diplomat had spent more hours negotiating the terms of Israeli-Palestinian political relations and the terms of a future Israeli-Palestinian two-state peace accord.