Friend --
With only 50 days until the inauguration, both Trump and Netanyahu are racing forward with a spate of final actions designed to strengthen the settlement movement and undermine the prospects for a just and lasting peace:
- The Israeli government moved closer to building Givat Hamatos, a hugely-controversial illegal settlement intended to cut off Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem from the West Bank;
- During the first-ever visit to a West Bank settlement by a Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo announced that settlement products must now be labeled "Made in Israel," another step in the administration’s erasure of the Green Line and legitimization of creeping annexation;
- Pompeo also announced new guidance that could lead to major human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch outrageously being labeled antisemitic for documenting activities in the occupied territory.
These actions can all be blocked or reversed. It’s too late to stop other outrageous steps -- like the recent near-total demolition of Homsa al-Baqia, a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley -- but a number of slated demolitions across the West Bank can and must be prevented.
That’s why we need your help this Giving Tuesday. We need to be ready to begin the fight on day one to reverse these policies and usher in a new era of US engagement with Israel and the Palestinians.
With so much at stake, some of our top donors have agreed to match all gifts that come in today. Can you chip in and help us reach our $50,000 Giving Tuesday goal?
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Friend, it’s more important than ever to have a strong pro-Israel, pro-peace movement with the ear of Congress and the White House.
The Biden administration will enter office with a huge array of urgent priorities -- foreign and domestic. We need to make sure that the above actions are reversed swiftly, and that the US makes its firm opposition to creeping annexation absolutely clear.
Our success in reversing these policies is essential, but of course not sufficient. Our goal is not a return to the pre-Trump status quo -- "status quo" being a poor label for a state of affairs marked by regular violence and terror, dispossession, settlement expansion and declining hope.
Our goal is a just and viable peace that ends the occupation and secures Israel’s future as a truly democratic homeland for the Jewish people. Getting there will require focused and sustained movement-building, advocacy and engagement. And it will require a new approach to US global leadership grounded in a commitment to diplomacy, human rights, democracy and peace.
J Street is ready to help lead the way. Can we count on your continued support?
Thank you for standing with us this Giving Tuesday,
Jeremy Ben-Ami
President, J Street
