Meretz USA | For Israeli Civil Rights and Peace

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.

Featured Event

MARCH 13-20, 2010: The Israel Symposium

03/13/2010 - 9:00am

The 2010 Israel Symposium

March 13-20, 2010

Presented by Meretz USA and the World Union of Meretz

The Israel Symposium is an intense one-week trip to Israel that allows participants to meet, learn from and build bridges with progressive Israelis, Jewish and Arab.

It is a perfect experience for someone who cares not only about the security of Israel's people, but about the moral character of its society as well.

Israel faces complex challenges. The Israel Symposium won't dictate the solutions. But it will provide you with new perspectives - ones that you normally don't get in the mainstream media - and encourage you to pose the tough questions that need to be asked.

Clck to view/download the registration brochure

Featured

Meretz USA: The “Im Tirtzu” attack on Prof. Naomi Chazan – an ominous hour for Israeli democracy

On February 2, Meretz USA President Lawrence Lerner and Chair Theodore Bikel issued the following statement to the press:

This is an ominous hour for Israeli democracy. The recent attack on the New Israel Fund and its President, Prof. Naomi Chazan, by the Im Tirtzu organization - base and reprehensible as it is - is just the most recent in a frighteningly consistent series of events in Israel that evokes the McCarthy period in America, and worse.

The State of the Union – and the State of Israel

In his State of the Union address Wednesday night, President Obama assured the American people that he would continue to aggressively pursue his domestic agenda in 2010. He summed up his determination at the end of the speech with a rousing, "I don't quit" guarantee.

But does the same tenacity and steely resolve apply to his Middle East peace initiative? Is the President still in it for the long haul? Or is Mr. Obama getting ready to let Israelis and Palestinians "stew in their own juices", as Israeli political analysts are fond of saying? Will he throw them off like excess baggage, weighing down an Administration already saddled with challenges enough for the next 3 years?

The first month of 2010 has provided several alarming signals.

Israeli human rights community to Prime Minister Netanyahu: Establish independent inquiry into Operation Cast Lead

On Tuesday, January 26, nine human-rights organizations in Israel re-issued a call to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, asking him to, "establish, without delay, an independent and impartial investigation mechanism to thoroughly examine the allegations raised regarding violations of international law during Operation Cast Lead" - the Gaza war of December '08-January '09.

Between Haiti and Israel

The importance of this week's top Israeli news stories seems to pale in comparison with the humanitarian catastrophe in Haiti, and the urgent relief effort there.

As a result, I discarded the idea of writing about the intentional humiliation of Turkey's ambassador to Israel at the hands of Avigdor Lieberman's Foreign Ministry. Any other week, perhaps, the crude, highhanded bungling of a not-unreasonable Israeli diplomatic protest by Lieberman and his deputy, Danny Ayalon (and the public reprimand of them by President Shimon Peres) would have been fodder for discussion in this column. Just not this week.

And I've also chosen not to write at length on remarks made on Tuesday by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who seemed to deflate recent hopes about an imminent return to negotiations. In a statement issued by his bureau, the Prime Minister denied reports that he had come to an agreement with Egypt on declaring Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, maintaining instead that Israel would never compromise on "united Jerusalem". Netanyahu's denial caused Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Ali Aboul Gheit to reverse his previously upbeat assessment of the situation.

Meretz in Israel

Meretz chair calls for release of East Jerusalem protesters

Meretz chair, MK Haim Oron, has called on Israel's Minister of Public Security to release from jail the protesters who demonstrated against Israeli settlement activity in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Asking the Public Security Minister to defend their freedom of expression, Oron complained that, "each and every week, demonstrators from the Left are prevented from expressing a legitimate protest, while demonstrators from the Right, who are crassly and wildly violating government decisions, are being indulged."

Click here to read more about the issue in YNet.
Click here to see this item on the Meretz party website.

Meretz declares no-confidence after Netanyahu government ups incentives for settlements

The Meretz party has submitted a motion of no-confidence in the Binyamin Netanyahu government. This came after his Cabinet revised Israel’s list of “national priority zones” on Sunday to include more West Bank settlements. Inclusion within a ‘priority zone’ guarantees preferential governmental treatment and tax incentives for education, housing, infrastructure and employment. Over ¾ of all West Bank settlements will now be eligible for this treatment.

Meretz chair: Netanyahu’s settlement moratorium “too little and too late”

In a recent op-ed, Meretz party chair, MK Haim Oron, termed the Israeli government's 10-month freeze of new West Bank construction (excluding East Jerusalem and construction already underway) a "minor" development that was "too little and too late" and apparently born of Netanyahu's tactic of "playing for time".

IDF: Gazan student may not study in Bethlehem

Citing a complete ban on residents of Gaza studying in the West Bank, "due to security concerns", the IDF has expelled Bethlehem University student, Berlanty Azzam, to Gaza after soldiers at a checkpoint discovered that she was listed as a Gazan resident. Azzam had been living in the West Bank under an expired temporary permit and was to complete her BA this January.

Gisha, an Israeli NGO that works to protect freedom of movement for Palestinians, took Azzam's case to Israel's High Court of Justice. The Court yesterday ordered the IDF to hold an administrative hearing next week at which Azzam could challenge her removal from the West Bank. The Court also rejected the State's request that Azzam not be allowed legal counsel at the hearing.

To read Gisha's full press release, click here.

Meretz calls for inquiry into Gaza War events

The Meretz party has called on the Israeli government to set up an independent commission of inquiry that would investigate possible human rights violations committed during "Operation Cast Lead" - the Gaza War.

The chair of Meretz's board, former MK Mossi Raz, explained: "The government needs to correct its mistake and swiftly establish an independent inquiry commission, in accordance with the timetable laid out in the Goldstone Report. It is entirely in Israel's interests to investigate the events of ‘Cast Lead'."