International Policy

MERETZ MK ABU VILAN: RELEASE MARWAN BARGHOUTI TO PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

07/10/2008 - 4:00pm
07/10/2008 - 6:00pm
Etc/GMT-4

Marwan Barghouti On Thursday July 10th, Meretz USA hosted Meretz party MK Avshalom (“Abu”) Vilan at Beit Shalom in New York City. The briefing was also attended via conference call by participants from across North America. Over the past years, MK Vilan has been a keystone for bringing first-hand, up-to-date information about the internal and external current affairs of Israel and its government.

MK Vilan’s talk covered a gamut of issues, from the expected prisoner exchange with Hezbollah and efforts to effect a similar deal with Hamas for the release of Gilad Shalit, to peace talks with Syria and the Palestinian Authority, tensions with Iran, possible upcoming elections in Israel and America, and the status of imprisoned Palestinian political figure Marwan Barghouti.

COLUMN LEFT: Left Turn at ‘J Street’: New ‘Israel Lobby’

By Ralph Seliger:

 

After a year and a half of planning and preparation, “J Street,” a new progressive Jewish lobby, was launched in the middle of April as a counterweight to the increasingly conservative American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). There is no physical J Street in Washington, DC, but the name conjures up K Street, the actual hub for lobbying on Capitol Hill.

... Click here for the Meretz USA Weblog interview with Jeremy Ben-Ami.

Review: Advising the Next President on Mideast Diplomacy

Thomas Mitchell, Ph.D.
The Much Too Promised Land by Aaron D. Miller, Bantam, 2008, 385 pp., $26.

Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East  Edited by Daniel C. Kurtzer and Scott B. Lasensky, the US Institute of Peace, 2008, 190 pp., $16 (paperback).

The first ... lesson is that the US is indispensable to progress in the Middle East peace process.

Miller argues that successful Middle East diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict .... would have to employ the deviousness of Kissinger, the missionary focus and attention to detail of Carter, and the ruthlessness of Baker.

Meretz USA Condemns British Academic Resolution Fostering Israel Boycott

06/10/07

The Executive Board of Meretz USA adopted a resolution on Sunday, June 10, opposing a recently passed resolution of Great Britain's University and College Union (UCU) promoting the boycott of Israeli academics and academic institutions.

Joint Statement on CUPE and NATFHE by Meretz USA and Ameinu

06/11/2006

New York, New York...Meretz USA and Ameinu, progressive Zionist organizations which support an end to the occupation and a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have historically and consistently opposed economic boycott, divestment, or other methods of economic pressure against Israel as a means of influencing the Arab-Israeli conflict. In simple terms, such efforts are polarizing, indiscriminate and inappropriate methods of impacting a complex conflict in which rights and wrongs obtain on both sides.