The headlines in Israel today are all about cottage cheese. I'm not kidding. See for yourself. The story is about Israeli popular protest over the rising price of dairy products. Cottage cheese became the symbolic focal point for the protest, and for weeks it has been in the headlines.

Our colleagues in the Israeli Peace Now movement took advantage of the public debate to make the point that Israel's economic situation is directly impacted by the economic costs and the fiscal burden of settlements.

Peace Now released ads in print and through social media channels with the simple message: "This Cottage Costs You More!"

The ad is based on a picture of cottage-style homes under construction in the settlement of Revava. The photo was taken by Peace Now's Settlement Watch team earlier this year.

Peace Now opposes settlement expansion because it undermines the prospects for resuming peace talks, burdens Israel's limited security resources, and makes a two-state solution more difficult.

Shock jock Glenn Beck is planning to hold a rally in Jerusalem in August.

He's calling the event "Restoring Courage." But the location he's chosen shows that what he really wants to do is foster conflict. He's decided to hold the event in East Jerusalem, just outside the Old City, one of the most politically sensitive locations in the world.

[see Jan 7 update at the end of this post]

In response to criticism over yesterday's Knesset decision to investigate "left-wing" groups in Israel, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon - often the leading edge of Israeli hasbara efforts to the English-speaking world - wrote/tweeted the question "who's afraid of transparency?" Coincidentally - or not - one of the Israeli Right's most loyal voices in the U.S. had tweeted hours earlier, "When a simple transparency bill is being denounced as McCarthyism, you know the NGOs have something to hide."

This hasbara effort is so ham-handed it almost defies belief.  It comes on the heels of last weekend's stunningly inept (and wholly ineffective and ultimately counterproductive) hasbara effort trying to convince the world that, even without any investigation, Israel had determined that it bears not even the tiniest responsibility for the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah of Bili'in.  Now, days later, Israeli officialdom - which eagerly threw out all sorts of ugly rumors that demonstrated nothing more than a total disregard for the dead and her loved ones - has had to back off its accusations and innuendo.

Given this very recent failure, you might think that the "Israel-right-or-wrong" folks (in Israel and the U.S.) would have considered their strategy carefully before jumping to the defense of this latest Knesset action.  But apparently they didn't.
 

APN today released new policy language on the recently increasing growing public criticism of Israel, including the efforts to boycott Israel, divest from it and sanction it (known as the BDS movement).  The purpose of the new document is to clarify the often foggy discussion over this issue in America's pro-Israel community and to make clear what APN supports and opposes.  the full text of the policy is included after the break.

Today a friend asked if I thought the story of Israel's recent deportation of Jared Malsin - the American (and Jewish) editor of a Palestinian news outlet - was important.  I responded that if you consider it important that Israel arrests a working journalist, holds him in virtual solitary confinement under miserable conditions for a week until he can't stand it anymore, and then deports him under highly dubious legal circumstances - then yes, it is.

But that is not the whole story.  Because this is not an isolated issue.

It is clear to all of us who work on issues related to peace, human rights or Israeli civil society, that the government of Israel is deliberately and systematically upping the ante and increasing the pressure on those who do not toe the Israel policy line.

Last week (January 7), Defense Minister Ehud Barak issued an order "mitigating" the settlement freeze - in effect revising the terms of the settlement "moratorium" imposed earlier by military order.  The order was immediately denounced by settlers as meaningless, but the headlines told the real story, at least in terms of how the decision is viewed politcally:  Haaretz: "6 weeks into settlement freeze, Barak eases restrictions"; YNet: "Barak orders settlement freeze mitigations" and Maariv (Hebrew) "Following the Freeze: Eases in Construction." 

Now, in the "adding insult to injury" category, it is being reported today that the Israeli High Court of Justice has decided to re-examine the cases of two illegal outposts - outposts that in the past the government of Israel has admitted are completely illegal and promised to demolish.  In the words of Peace Now Secretary General Yaariv Oppenheimer,  "The government of Israel is thumbing its nose at the rule of law and granting immunity to illegal building by settlers. On the same day that the Civil Administration destroyed 14 Palestinian buildings, the settlers are again being granted a judicial gift, as the process changes from evacuation to authorization. The defense minister ensures protection of the status of the Supreme Court within the Green Line - but decides to ignore the law and submit to settler pressure beyond it."

Background on both stories after the break.

On November 17th Danny Seidemann and I wrote about how Netanyahu had chosen the "nuclear option" when it came to Gilo.  We meant that in this instance, when the issue of the approval of new settlement construction in East Jerusalem came up, he and his government opted for a strategy that was guaranteed to cause the biggest possible explosion politically, leaving diplomatic scorched earth in its wake.
 
Today we have another example of Israeli officialdom "going nuclear" on Jerusalem, this time in response to a leaked EU draft document that (gasp) implies that under a peace agreement the capital of a Palestinian state would be East Jerusalem.  As quoted in Haaretz, the draft EU document notes:
 

 "The Council is deeply concerned about the situation in East Jerusalem.  In view of recent incidents, it calls on all parties to refrain from provocative actions.  The Council recalls that it has never recognized the annexation of East Jerusalem.  If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the capital of two states.  The Council calls for the reopening of Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem in accordance with the Roadmap.  It also calls on the Israeli government to cease all discriminatory treatment of Palestinians in East Jerusalem."

Judging from the Israeli reactions of shock, dismay, and outrage, an ignorant (or forgetful) observer might assume that nobody had ever suggested such a thing in the past.  
 
That observer would of course be grossly mistaken.  What we have here is not the case of anything remotely new or shocking being said by the EU (or of the EU trying to prejudge the outcome of final status talks, as opposition leader Tzipi Livni stated, apparently viewing EU words as more problematic than Israeli settlement activity and home demolitions in Jerusalem -- Tzipi, meet irony. Irony, meet Tzipi.  You clearly are not acquainted.).  What we have here is a cynical Israel reaction designed, it would seem, to re-set the diplomatic clock back by at least a decade, to a time when politicians and negotiators were still forced to speak in code (not referring explicitly to the fact that a peace agreement would mean the creation of a Palestinian state, let alone the location of its capital). 
 
Below is a compendium of Jerusalem-related data points, drawn mainly from the not-at-all-lefty Jewish Virtual Library, for those who are following this and care about the facts involved. 
 

American baby-boomers will always remember where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated.

Israelis, who today are marking the 14th anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, will always remember where they were when Rabin was murdered by an Israeli religious-nationalist Jew, determined to undermine the peace efforts of Rabin's government.

Today's Haaretz features an article headlined "U.S. drops demand for Israel building freeze in East Jerusalem."  A surprisingly authoritative-sounding headline, given the leak-free approach of the Mitchell team thus far. 

Savvy consumers of the news - including members of the peace camp who may be fearful that the Obama Administration, like so many US administrations that have gone before it, will eventually give in to Israel on these key issues - would do well to remember that in this kind of high-stakes political poker, a lot of what we hear in the press is spin (and bluffing). And we would all do well to wait and see what is actually agreed before passing judgment. If the agreement is good - however it is framed - then we will praise it.  If it is bad, there will be plenty of opportunity to criticize it at that time.

Israeli Minister Moshe Ya'alon's rhetoric equating the Israeli Peace Now movement with a virus have drawn reaction from across the political spectrum in Israel. Here's a small sample: