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Gilo construction part of larger settlement expansion plan

Netanyahu willfully engineered a confrontation with the U.S. over announced plans to build in the West Bank town of Gilo, according to Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now and Danny Seidemann of Ir Amin. They make a persuasive case that the plans were a deliberate provocation of the U.S., as Netanyahu had many other […]

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The kids are alright at J Street

It was Palestinian suffering that got me engaged with Israel and concerned about its future. I had attended Habonim camp and had grown up in an ardently Labor Zionist household. But when I was in my twenties, I didn’t have much to do with Israel until the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla […]

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How to prevent another conflagration in Jerusalem

At long last, I’ve found some sensible sentiments on the scary, sad situation in Jerusalem. They come from Americans For Peace Now’s Lara Friedman and Daniel Seidemann of Ir Amin, who have a piece in Haaretz. They note a few other times when battles over Jerusalem’s holy places threatened to turn a nationalist conflict into […]

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Who cares who represents the “American Jewish majority?”

Is it more important for American Jewish peace groups to prove that they speak for most American Jews, or to be right? I vote for the latter. Last week, sighs of relief could be heard in the organized American Jewish establishment. A new American Jewish Committee poll showed that a majority of American Jews favored […]

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The perils of American incrementalism

The pro-Israel peace camp, my camp, has been content to settle for incremental American diplomacy. We’ve rallied around the Obama team and its call for freezing settlements, for small but friendly policy changes from the Arab states, for “confidence-building” measures. That incremental approach didn’t work in the 1990s, but we are hoping beyond hope that […]

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Within organized American Jewish community, dovish groups fight back on Jerusalem

American Jewish groups are engaged in another internecine struggle about the ongoing tiff between Obama-Netanyahu. The latest tussle was prompted by a statement about Jerusalem last week from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the most important umbrella group in the community. That statement, addressing the controversy over East Jerusalem housing that […]

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Netanyahu cynically plays the civil rights card to explain Jerusalem housing

On the Americans for Peace Now blog, the relentlessly smart Lara Friedman and attorney Danny Seidemann refute Netanyahu’s faux civil rights arguments about Jerusalem housing. To fully appreciate the post, you must have a willingness to wade through the details of arcane real estate law, but the devil, quite literally, is in those details. Here […]

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Preferential treatment for settlers continues…while soup kitchens expand in Tel Aviv

Americans for Peace Now’s Ori Nir describes a new Peace Now report on the preferential treatment still being doled out to Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Lately, Israeli right-wingers and their supporters here have been insisting that “the settlements are not the problem” and are a kind of minor detail in Israeli-Arab relations. Of […]

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Peace Now & APN: Freeze construction in the “settlement blocs,” too

Belated praise for Top Five Bogus Excuses for Opposing a Settlement Freeze, a detailed refutation of several canards by the estimable Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now and Hagit Ofran, who run’s Peace Now’s Settlements Watch progam. All five responses to these “excuses” are worth perusing, but I found one of them to be […]

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Dan Fleshler, without his glasses, on Press TV…

Before the Iranian elections, I was interviewed for a show called “The Autograph” on Press TV, the Iranian English language network. It focused on me and is about 20 minutes long. You can find the link to the network archive here. Then click on “Autograph” and you’ll find the interview with Dan Fleshler. It was […]