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Every Friday at 9:30amAbout the Show
Understanding Israel Palestine
This show is inspired by Citizens for Justice in the Middle East, a local group that has advocated for 20 years for a fair and even-handed U.S. foreign policy that recognizes the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis. Our program offers interviews with journalists, scholars, policy experts and activists to offer multiple perspectives, and to clarify the underlying issues that are often obscured by headline news.
Madeleine Cereghino, director of government relations for Americans for Peace Now, a non-partisan non-profit that defines itself as a Jewish pro-peace organization, talks about settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and why APN is now calling for the United States to condition aid to Israel on Israeli behavior. APN is the first Zionist organization to back this. A sister organization of Peace Now, Israel’s oldest peace movement, Cereghino discusses the threat settlements pose to a two-state solution, which APN still maintains is possible despite the hundreds of thousands of settlers now living in the West Bank. Amnesty International’s recent 280-page report finding Israel an apartheid state has been rejected by many Jewish groups as biased and even anti-Semitic. While APN does not believe that the word “apartheid” applies, Cereghino says Palestinians are subject to massive injustice and too many groups are focusing on the word “apartheid” rather than the overall findings of the report Amnesty International published. APN does not itself embrace the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement but strongly supports free speech, which includes the Constitutional right to boycott. Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic and should not be regarded as such. APN often criticizes Israel and does so out of love.
