Eight out of the 22 players on the current Israeli soccer national team are non-Jews, of them 7 are Arabs and one, Bibras Natkho, is an Israeli Circassian Muslim. He is also the national team captain. That is unprecedented. Never before have so many non-Jewish players played for the national team. 

The soccer field in Israel serves young Arab men as a tool for upward mobility while it also serves as a platform for anti-Arab bigotry and racism. 

Tomer Fadlon, an expert on the politics and diplomacy of soccer at Tel Aviv University explains the apparent contradiction and much more. 

Jim Gerstein is a pollster and a founding partner of GBA Strategies, a DC-based firm that provides research-based strategic counsel for candidates running for office, non-profit organizations, and for arts and cultural institutions.

Since 2008, Gerstein has been conducting national polls of American Jews on election nights, commissioned by J Street.

In this episode, J Street's Jessica Rosenblum and APN's Ori Nir talk with Gerstein about his November 6th, 2018 poll.

This episode marks a new partnership between Americans for Peace Now and J Street on PeaceCast.  

The data files of Gerstein's poll are here.

This episode is an edited down version of a November 15th 2018 briefing call with strategic affairs expert Yossi Alpher, a former senior Mossad official and the former director of Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. 

Alpher is the Author of Hard Questions Tough Answers, APN's weekly news analysis.

For past PeaceCast episodes on Gaza, see here. 

for the full recording of the briefing call, see here. 

This episode, like several episodes we’ve produced in the past, focuses on the Gaza border. It features a conversation with Ose Oyamendan, a documentary filmmaker whose film A Bridge Over Blood documents efforts by Israeli peace activists in southern Israel and Palestinian activists in the Gaza Strip to build bridges of understanding and friendship to advance peace.  

Check out the film’s web site here 

This episode features a conversation with Dov Waxman, a Professor of Political Science, International Affairs, and Israel Studies at Northeastern University, and Director of Northeastern’s Middle East Program.

We talked with Dov about one of his fields of expertise: the growing shift in American Jews’ attitudes toward Israel.

Dov is the author of Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel.

You can find the book on Amazon here.