Dr. Zachary Foster is a scholar whose PhD dissertation analyzes and explains why people began to think of themselves as Palestinian in the late 19th century and early 20th century. He surveyed the history of the name "Palestine," combing books, documents, and maps.
Zachary's dissertation: https://dataspace.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp01g732dc66g
Zach's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIo4D_bprrYYO8cWFP4odAg
Zach's video explaining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00-Wr-HxZk4&list=PLqo73VwqA14Q7X8wctxZ53eKeT7vwPaiV&index=7&ab_channel=ZacharyFoster
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Tal Schneider is an award-winning Israeli political correspondent and analyst - one of Israel’s leading journalists. Currently with The Times of Israel – she just started there last week -- and formerly with Israel’s economic daily Globes, Schneider was also the Washington bureau chief of Maariv.
In this episode, a recording of an APN January 11th 2021 webinar, she takes a snapshot of the Israeli political sphere two months before the fourth round of elections in two years.
APN webinar with Daniel Levy -- another in a series on the impact on Israel-Palestine of the transition from the Trump administration to the Biden-Harris administration. Levy is the President of the U.S./ Middle East Project (USMEP).
Daniel Levy's bio: https://www.usmep.us/daniel-levy/
USMEP's report, co-authored with the ICG: https://www.usmep.us/media/filer_public/c4/5b/c45bb6dc-5073-4c4f-a920-cd865d6b93bd/icg-usmep-statement-15xii20_0.pdf
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Veteran Israeli journalist and social activist Eliezer (Gezer) Yaari talks about his efforts to Make East Jerusalem's Palestinian population accessible to Israeli Jews, and speculates that Israeli-Palestinian peacemakers may want to leverage Jerusalem's coexistence mechanisms as a launching point for future peace.
Yaari's book Beyond the Mountains of Darkness: https://smile.amazon.com/Beyond-Mountains-Darkness-Eliezer-Yaari-ebook/dp/B00ZUWYBRQ/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=beyond+mountains+of+darkness+Yaari&qid=1609796766&sr=8-2
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Write to Ori: onir@peacenow.org
John Lyndon is the executive director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP) and Kevin Rachlin is ALLMEP's US director.
In this episode they talk about ALLMEP’s recent success: passing the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act, a law that provides a large infusion of funds for Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding organizations and initiatives.
ALLMEP's web site: https://www.allmep.org/
Tamara Cofman Wittes is a co-author of a new report, a blueprint for a new policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the Biden administration
To view and download the Center for a New American Security report: https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/a-new-u-s-strategy-for-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict
To make an end-of-year donation to APN: https://peacenow.org/donate
A recording of a December 22nd 2020 webinar with Anders Persson, a professor at Linnaeus University in Sweden, an expert on the European Union's policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Persson has written four books on this topic. His fourth was just published. It’s titled EU Diplomacy and the Israeli-Arab Conflict, 1967–2019.
Write to Ori: onir@peacenow.org
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A conversation with Vera Baboun, the former mayor of Bethlehem (2012-2017) about the challenges facing her town this Christmas season, and about peace: the yearning for peace, and the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Mayor Baboun's Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Baboun
Contact Ori Nir: onir@peacenow.org
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Dr. Ashrawi discusses the Palestinian perspective on the transition and examined the state of US-Palestinian relations after Donald Trump’s four years in the White House. She commented on the Palestinian leadership’s efforts to push the reset button on the relationship with the US as President-elect Biden prepares to enter the Oval Office next month, and the Palestinian expectations from the Biden administration. Toward the end of the conversation, she shared some thoughts on what motivated her to resign from the Executive Committee of the PLO.
Hagit Ofran of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch Project, is one of the world’s leading experts on the subject. In this webinar, she examined the Trump administration’s legacy regarding settlements and what the Biden administration will need to do to reverse Trump’s radical shift from America’s traditional policy on this issue.
This webinar is part of APN's series on the Israel-Palestine implications of the transition from the Trump administration to president-elect Biden’s administration.
A recording of a webinar with Yossi Alper, one of Israel’s leading strategic affairs analysts, addressing how the transition from Trump to Biden is viewed in Israel, how dealing with a Biden administration might alter Israeli government policies and priorities, and how Israel’s conservative government would adapt to a worldview diametrically opposed to Trump’s and very different from Netanyahu’s.
This webinar was a part of APN's series examining the Middle East policy impact of transitioning from the Trump administration to the Biden administration.
Contact Ori Nir: onir@peacenow.org
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Dahlia Scheindlin is an Israel-based public opinion expert and an international political and strategic consultant, as well as a scholar and a writer.
She is also a podcaster. Her latest project is a mini-series of podcast episodes on West Bank settlements, titled Israeli Settlements 360: What Everyone Needs to Know.
On this episode, Dahlia talks about her takeaways from producing the series.
Here is the link to the podcast series: https://open.spotify.com/show/4NG1pkSYlOWcrwaEbbHoOZ
To write to Ori: onir@peacenow.org
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Palestinians don’t see Joe Biden as a savior. Far from it. But the end of the demise of the Trump administration, the worse period ever in US-Palestinian relations, is viewed by many Palestinians as an opportunity to push the reset button not only on their relations with Washington but also on intra-Palestinian politics. Discussing Palestinian policy and the Biden administration is Khaled Elgindy, formerly with the Brookings Institute and now the Director of the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute here in Washington. He is also the author of Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump. He has been a guest on episode #78 of PeaceCast in April 2019.
Elizabeth Campbell is director of UNRWA’s Representative Office in Washington, D.C.
Prior to joining UNRWA, Campbell was the senior humanitarian policy advisor in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, where she worked on refugee and humanitarian issues in the United Nations system.
In this episode, Campbell discusses the reasons for UNRWA's current budgetary crisis, since the Trump administration defunded the agency, and expresses hope for re-funding UNRWA under the Biden administration.
Relevant links:
* The range of UNRWA services: https://www.unrwa.org/what-we-do
* A map of our where UNRWA operates in the region: https://www.unrwa.org/resources/about-unrwa/unrwa-fields-operations-map-2020
* Misconceptions about UNRWA: https://www.unrwa.org/who-we-are/frequently-asked-questions
https://www.unrwa.org/resources/strategy-policy/demystifying-unrwa-approach-curriculum
An APN webinar featuring Mira Resnick and Ilan Goldenberg to analyze the general election results and what they mean for America's Middle East policy.
Gadi Gvaryahu is the founder and Chairman of Tag Meir.
His organization's web site: https://www.tag-meir.org.il/en/
Shortly after the eruption of the second intifada, a veteran senior Israeli intelligence officer, Brig. Gen. (Res.) Yossi Ben-Ari, was appointed to examine whether PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat had planned in advance to ignite the violent flames and actually did so.
His conclusions: Arafat did not. His report was never shared with Israeli decision makers, and the narrative regarding Arafat's role in "launching" the second intifada became a part of the fabric of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict's set of conventional wisdoms.
A link to Ben-Ari's Haaretz article (Hebrew): https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.9184053
Contact Ori: onir@peacenow.org
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Rafi Nets-Zehngut’s new book (currently in Hebrew only) focuses on the collective memory among Israeli Jews of the question of the Palestinian exodus from Palestine during the 1948 war, the war that Israeli Jews refer to as the War of Independence and that the Palestinians refer to as the Naqba, the catastrophe.
One of his most intriguing and surprising findings is that the biased “official” Zionist narrative regarding this experience has been challenged in Israel and then lost its grounding much earlier than one may think.
How did this happen? Why is it important? How may it impact efforts to advance peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians?
Dr. Nets-Zehngut addresses these questions and others in this episode of PeaceCast.
Eran Singer covers Arab affairs for Israel Television Channel 11 and for Israel Radio Kan Reshet Bet, Israel’s public broadcast services.
His most recent project was a TV news series on the status of the Arabic language in Israel, among Israeli Jews, and the way in which Arabic is taught in Israeli schools.
This episode discusses this topic.
Questions? Comments? Email onir@peacenow.org
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This is a slightly edited version of an August 27th 2020 APN webinar.
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and a media activist, a leading independent analyst and commentator on current events, and an activist working to advance the freedom of the press in the Arab world. He is currently the director general of the Community Media Network (CMN), a nonprofit media organization dedicated to advancing independent media in the Arab world.
Yossi alpher is the author of Hard Questions, Tough Answers, APN’s weekly analysis of political and strategic affairs. Now an independent security analyst, 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.
In this episode, he assesses the various aspects of the Israel-United Arab Emirates normalization deal.
In a rare decision, Israel's Supreme Court accepted the petition of a Palestinian family against an IDF order to punitively demolish its West Bank home. Jessica Montell, the executive director of the Israeli human rights organization Hamoked, which helped file the petition, talks about the case and about the doctrine and practice of house demolitions in the West Bank.
Hamoked's web site: http://www.hamoked.org/home.aspx
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Michael Sfard is one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers and the legal counsel of Peace Now (Shalom Achshav) and of the organization Yesh Din.
Yesh Din recently commissioned Sfard to prepare a legal opinion on whether the current situation in the West Bank, the occupation -- regardless of Israel’s intention to de-jure annex parts of the West Bank -- can be defined as Apartheid. Michael issued a report titled “The Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal Opinion."
In this episode, a version of an August 10th 2020 webinar, Sfard talks about his report and what it means.
Eran Nissan is a key orgnizer and activist in the current Anti-Netanyahu, anti-corruption and pro-democracy protest movement in Isreal. He is a former staff member of Peace Now, and currently works for Mehazkim, a progressive Israeli activist nonprofit.
What is the role of the Israeli peace movement in the broader context of the protest movement? What opportunity does this mass protest movement grant to the Israeli peace camp to advance its advocacy? Does the protest movement open a door to highlight the relationship between the occupation and the erosion of democracy in Israel?
Eran addresses this and other questions.
Eran's story on a past PeaceCast episode