Meretz USA for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace is a US non-profit organization that supports a genuine peace between the State of Israel and its neighbors (including the Palestinian people) based on a negotiated land-for-peace solution.

Meretz in Israel

Meretz’s Summer of Renewal

Meretz renewal campaign logo
Still smarting from the drubbing it received at the polls in the February 2009 elections, Israel's New Movement-Meretz party has marked the summer of 2010 as its time of renewal. 

Spearheading a membership drive that ends on August 30, Meretz leaders - including MKs Chaim Oron, Nitzan Horowitz and Ilan Gilon, and former MKs Naomi Chazan, Abu Vilan and Mossi Raz - have been crisscrossing the country, addressing crowds large and small, seeking to solidify the party's base and re-grow its rank and file.

It won't be easy, but it's crucial that the party succeed, since Meretz today represents the last true bastion of progressive Zionism in Israel's Knesset (notwithstanding the smattering of progressives in Labor and Kadima).

Meretz demands pluralism and equality at the Western Wall

New Movement-Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz has presented a new bill that would amend the "Holy Places Law" and allow for tolerance and pluralism at the Kotel, the Western Wall, among all streams of Jewish practice.

Meretz speaks out against deportation of children of foreign workers

Child of Foreign WorkerThe Israeli Cabinet's decision to deport 400 children of foreign workers, many of them born in Israel, has caused a stir in the country, and beyond, including criticism from Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel

Although the decision represents a reduction from the 1,200 originally slated for expulsion, opponents of the move, such as Meretz chair, Haim Oron, argue that the number is still 400 too many:

MK Nitzan Horowitz: Knesset violence undermines Israeli democracy

 Scuffles in the Knesset, June 2 

June 2, 2010

Today the Knesset plenum witnessed an embarrassing display.  The most important arena for public debate in Israel became an arena for brawling and verbal abuse.

Meretz: East Jerusalem construction makes a mockery of Netanyahu’s professed desire for peace

The Meretz party's Knesset faction will be submitting a motion of no-confidence in the Netanyahu government over its ongoing massive construction in East Jerusalem. This week, Israel authorized the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, creating a diplomatic crisis during the visit of US Vice President Biden. The Meretz faction termed the Netanyahu government's moves, "the policy of a pyromaniac".

Meretz chair, MK Haim Oron, attacked the government in a press release: "This is an inebriated government ["Adloyada government", in Hebrew], which, by its own hand, is making a dangerous mockery of its professed desire to renew diplomacy."

Only Meretz is united for Israeli democracy

The Meretz party's electronic bulletin this week boasted, sadly, that Meretz is the only party in Israel that has been united in defense of Israeli democracy, following the attack on the New Israel Fund and its President, Naomi Chazan. Here are sections of the bulletin:

This week, we mark a full year since the Knesset elections that dealt us a sharp blow. The McCarthyist campaign of lies and hatred of the last two weeks against the New Israel Fund and ... its President, Naomi Chazan, clarified the meaning of last year's election results: A dangerous and frightening erosion of democracy in Israel.

Meretz USA Publications

Preview new issue of ISRAEL HORIZONS magazine!

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Meretz USA Weblog

New at the Meretz USA Weblog
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  • Success of a 'dancing Arab'
  • A Response to Thomas Friedman
  • Are West Bank settlements actually waning?
  • South African lessons for Labor & Meretz?
  • Peace process stalled, but US can't walk away
  • Reflections on conflict and intolerance
  • In memory of Art D'Lugoff
  • Goldstone: Flawed but correct in call for investigation
  • The case for Israel as a 'Jewish state'