Kudos to JTA’s Uriel Heilman for posting this video of Israel’s Channel 2 News covering the volunteers and staff of Peace Now’s settlement monitoring crew. It’s a good day when a bit of Israel’s vibrant press corps penetrates the dull and defensive Diaspora Jewish media. Thanks, Uriel.
While Brit Tzedek v’Shalom and J Street receive much attention as the peace movement’s Washington representatives, the question “What does Americans for Peace Now do?” comes up quite frequently. Among the most important of their valuable work, including also being a force behind the Washington scenes, is funding the settlement watch program. In 2006 the Israeli government discovered Peace Now had more detailed information on settlement activity than the government, which led them to appoint a special investigator to build a settlement database, later leaked to Haaretz. Their findings? Palestinian claims of expropriated land and settler activism are absolutely, without a doubt, true.