Podcast appearances and mentions of debra shushan

Avner Gvaryahu is the executive director of Breaking the Silence, an organization of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. APN’s Debra Shushan and Ori Nir spoke with Avner on October 30th, 2019. Breaking the Silence’s web site: https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/ Avner’s Twitter handle: @AGvaryahu

This episode features the panel discussion that Americans for Peace Now sponsored at the J Street National conference in Washington DC on October 27th, 2019. Included are the full presentations of the three panelists -- former Palestinian ambassador to Washington Maen Areikat, Peace Now's director Shaqued Morag, and Yesh Din director Lior Amihai --  well as the introduction by Debra Shushan, APN’s policy and government relations director.  

In this special episode of PeaceCast, APN’s Debra Shushan and Ori Nir are the interviewees rather than the interviewers on the Bill Press Pod. A co-production.  With any comments or questions, please email onir@peacenow.org

Debra Shushan, descendant of Holocaust survivors, Ori Nir, dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, both of Americans for Peace Now, say Trump's messaging on Israel is aimed at Evangelicals, not Jews. Netanyahu is taking Israel in directions that are destructive. Synagogue shooters have been "encouraged and inspired" by Trump.

This week AIPAC came to town for its annual policy conference in the capital, with speakers including Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But the biggest name at this year’s event wasn’t even in the room. Speaker after speaker took turns taking veiled (and not so veiled) jabs at freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar for comments she made on Twitter in February about the nature of AIPAC’s influence in Washington. Yousef Munayyar of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Debra Shushan of Americans for Peace Now join Mehdi Hasan to discuss AIPAC’s obsession with Rep. Omar and its Islamophobia problem.

This show features two experts on Washington Middle East policy and legislative affairs: Debra Shushan, APN’s Policy and Government Relations Director, and Lara Friedman, who preceded her in this position, and is now the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Together, they drill down on the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act, better known by its acronym ATCA, a piece of legislation that tells a fascinating story of how policy on Israeli-Palestinian affairs is being made in Washington. Links: The text of ATCA:  Debra Shushan’s op-ed in The Hill on ATCA  Scott Anderson’s article on ATCA Lara Friedman’s Forward article on efforts to use legal action in the US against Palestinians  APN’s (Ambassador David) Friedman File   

Abdallah Hamarsheh is the acting director and co-founder of Zimam , a Palestinian civil society organization working to enable and empower youth to take a leadership role in creating a pluralistic and democratic Palestinian State. Zimam is the outgrowth of the Palestinian chapter of One Voice and is still supported by OneVoice . Together with Mara Lee, the Global Executive Director of OneVoice, Abdallah Hamarsheh spoke with Ori Nir and Debra Shushan at APN’s office in Washington. Please include APN in your end-of-year giving. To donate click here and write PeaceCast in the comments field. Thank you!  

August 30th, 2018 was Debra DeLee’s last day as Americans for Peace Now’s President and CEO. As she was packing up her office, Debra sat down with PeaceCast’s host Ori Nir and with APN’s Director of Policy and Government Relations, Debra Shushan. We talked about Debra’s frustration with America’s Jewish establishment’s inability to confront the moral challenges related to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. We talked about the leadership role of women in Jewish organizations. We talked the wonderful people that comprise the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement in the United States.  And we talked about hope. Debra led APN for the past 21 years, through thick and thin, and has been one of the most influential figures in the movement. In addition to her professionalism and her leadership skills, Debra is a mensch. Her humanity and charm clearly shine in this conversation. Read Debra’s farewell letter here: http://peacenow.org/entry.php?id=28808#.W4ihA-hKiUk Read Debra’s tribute to her mother, Ruth Epstein, here: https://peacenow.org/entry.php?id=16950#.W4ihaOhKiUk  

In this episode, the second in a series about the collective emotional state of the Gaza Strip’s population, APN’s Debra Shushan and Ori Nir speak with Dr. Brian Barber, a psychologist, who in the past quarter of a century has been studying the psyche of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Barber is a professor of child and family studies and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Conflict at the University of Tennessee, from which he recently retired. He is now a scholar at the New America Foundation and the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington, DC. He is working on a book documenting the lives of three Palestinian men, all Gazans, who spent their entire lives under Israeli occupation. The book is an extension of Barber’s large study of young Palestinians, documented in the important article “Whither the ‘Children of the Stone’? An Entire Life under Occupation” published in 2016 in the Journal of Palestine Studies. Here are links to some of his other publications: This Is Why Gazans Won't Back Down; The Politics of Development; After the War;   (Photo: New America) 

Omar Shaban is the founder and director of PalThink for Strategic Studies, a Gaza City-based think tank, or as Shaban likes to call it, a “think and do tank.” Debra Shushan, Stephanie Breitsman and Ori Nir sat with Shaban at APN’s office in Washington on Friday June 8th, for a long, fascinating conversation on the economy, society, and politics of the Gaza Strip. This is an unusually long episode. PalThink’s web site is www.palthink.org His most recent Foreign Policy article is here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/29/gazans-are-protesting-their-economy-not-israels-existence/ Thank you for your feedback and ideas. Please contact Ori at onir@peacenow.org

PeaceCast is back after a long hiatus. Ori Is back from Israel and the West Bank. Debra Shushan is back from AIPAC's policy conference in DC.  In this episode, Ori and Debra talk about AIPAC, about APN's Israel Study Tour, and about the Encounter program that Ori attended in February in Israel. The featured segment of the episode is an edited version of a conversation that APN's Board of Directors had at Haaretz's office in Tel Aviv with Editor in Chief Aluf Benn.