| | | | | A joint struggle against Israel: Neve Gordon, Gadi Algazi, Abeer Baker "Before it’s too late: moving from protest to ongoing activity" | | Thursday 22.07.2010 10:00 – 17:00
The conference calls on Jewish and Arab human rights, protest and peace organizations to make a clear joint appeal and work together to:
* Stop the siege on Gaza
*Stop incitement towards Palestinians in Israel, and the policy of racism towards them.
*Stop the persecution of critics and opponents of - - Government policy.
*Strive for the ending of the occupation in a persistent and effective way.
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| | In support of Haifa conference for return of Palestinian refugees: Iris Bar, Elia Zomot, Tirtza Tauber, Ilan Pappe, Omar Barghouti, Oren Ben-Dor, Yael Korin | | Iris Bar, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa
Elia Zomot, Department of Biochemistry, Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem
Tirtza Tauber, Computer Services, The Unit of Medical Education, Tel Aviv University
Omar Barghouti, MA student at Tel Aviv University
We, the undersigned, support the call of the preparatory committee of the 2nd Haifa conference for the return of the Palestinian refugees and for the establishment of a democratic secular state in historic Palestine.
• Stop ethnic cleansing. For the return of the Palestinian refugees to all the areas from which they were expelled.
• Put an end to all forms of occupation, Apartheid, racism, discrimination and oppression. The Palestinian people should re-unite and live as a free nation in their homeland.
• The returning refugees and all the residents of Palestine will live in one democratic state, without discrimination. This state will ensure human rights, equality, prosperity and full participation in building the new society for all its citizens. To ensure these rights, the prospective state will adopt a constitution that will prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, class or any other reason.
We support the call for building an international coalition to achieve these goals. |
| | Michael Sfard and Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan participate the 'Russell Tribunal on Palestine' to pressure governments to change their policies | | The recent war waged by the Israeli government and the Israeli army on the Gaza strip, already under a blockade, underlines the particular responsibility of the United States and of the European Union in the perpetuation of the injustice done to the Palestinian people, deprived of its fundamental rights.
It is important to mobilize the international public opinion so that the United Nations and Member States adopt the necessary measures to end the impunity of the Israeli State, and to reach a just and durable solution to this conflict.
Following an appeal from Ken Coates, Nurit Peled, and Leila Shahid, and with the support of over a hundred well-known international personalities, it has been decided to organise a Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
Based on the Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued on the 9th of July 2004 and on the relevant resolutions of the United Nations Organisation, this Russell Tribunal on Palestine is a civic initiative promoting international law as the core element of the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Further than Israel’s responsibility, it aims to demonstrate the complicity of Third States and International Organisations which, through their passivity or active support, allow Israel to violate the rights of the Palestinian People, and let this situation be continued and aggravated.
The next step will then be to establish how this complicity results in international responsibilities. |
| | Israeli anti Zionist left parties SOAS debate- [BGU] Ahmad Sadi: Israel "characterized by its racist infrastructures" with Pappe, Shalon-Chetritt, Machover | | This section focuses on the different anti Zionist personalities or political parties inside Israel, whether Arab Israeli or Jewish. Those very courageous individuals or groups have to confront in their daily activism an Israeli society becoming increasingly intolerant and racist, as suggested by many of the speakers and as observed with the composition of the current Israeli government.
Firstly, Ilan Pappe, an anti Zionist Israeli from Exeter University, and author of the famous book “Palestine: ethnic cleansing”, started speaking about the contradiction in the narrative history of the Zionist left. ...
Ahmad Sadi, from the Ben Gurion University, brought another historic dimension on the troubled legacy between the Israeli Communist Party (ICP) and Zionism, which infuriated Issam Makhloul, Member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI). He claimed that Communists and Zionists relations are based on a basic common trust for ideological and historical reasons going back to 1948. At this period, the USSR actually supported politically and militarily the creation of a Zionist State, while describing the Palestinian national movement as racist and of being an agent of foreign powers. The PCI ,on its side, accepted the Israeli state, characterized by its racist infrastructures, but wanted to create a notion of class struggle in Palestine against Fascism and they had not in mind a colonial project. |
| | Arab academics in "Legal Action: Aspects, Goals, and Challenges" on the involvement of Palestinian citizens of Israel in waging the struggle since 1948 | | Dr. Yousef T. Jabareen, lecturer in law at the University of Haifa
Prof. Nadim Rouhana, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Professor Michael Karayanni of the Law Faculty of Hebrew University
Dr. Hala Khoury-Bisharat, of the Tel Aviv University Law Faculty
Dr. Raif Zreik, of the Minerva Center for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University
The workshop was the fifth and last of Mada’s series of workshops in the framework of its Political Participation Research Project. The objective of the project was to study the various tools of political participation, among them the involvement of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and their effectiveness and effects in waging the struggle they have been engaged in since 1948.
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| | Israeli participants at Israel Apartheid Week: Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Dr Jamal Zahalka in Oxford and TAU student Shir Hever in Holland | | Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an annual international series of events held in cities and campuses across the globe. The aim of IAW is to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.
Mark your calendars - the 6th International Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) will take place across the globe from from the 1st to the 14th of March 2010!
Oxford Arab Cultural Society
amal Zahalka is a Member of the Israeli parliament and Chairman of the National Democratic Assembly (Balad), the largest secular Palestinian party in Israel. He holds a PhD in Pharmacology from the Hebrew University
Speaker: Professor Ilan Pappé Chair: Professor Avi Shlaim
Shir Hever is economic researcher for the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli organisation with offices in Jerusalem and Beit Sahour. Shir researches the economic aspects of the Israeli occupation of Palestine |
| | UK Goldsmiths College hosts a seminar by Adi Ophir & Sari Hanafi "The Power of Inclusive Exclusion". Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian at GMU, March 3rd | | The seminar, with co-editors and contributors Adi Ophir and Sari Hanafi and chaired by Eyal Weizman will take place on Monday March 1st at Goldsmiths' Research Architecture studio RHB312 (main building, second floor) between 1400-1600.
The Power of Inclusive Exclusion analyzes the Israeli occupation as a rationalized system of political rule. With essays by leading Palestinian and Israeli scholars, a comprehensive chronology, photographs, and original documents, this groundbreaking book address the fundamental and contemporary dimensions of the occupation regime—its unpredictable bureaucratic apparatus, the fragmentation of space and regulation of movement, the intricate tapestry of law and regulations, the discriminatory control over economic flows and the calculated use of military violence. In a time when military occupations are emerging globally, political disasters abound, and protracted control over groups of noncitizens has been normalized, The Power of Inclusive Exclusion provides a new set of categories crucial to our understanding of emergency regimes and identifies what is at stake for an informed and timely opposition.
The Middle East Studies Program will present Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, who will lecture on Wednesday, March 3, at 1 p.m. in the Johnson Center, Third Floor Meeting Room A.
Her topic is “Trapped Bodies and Lives: The Politics of Everydayness in Palestine.”
The protracted historical experience of occupation, annexation and displacement of Jerusalem’s Palestinian inhabitants has shaped relationships between place, space, identity politics, nationality and gender constructions in the city.
Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s presentation will shed light on the ways in which individuals and their families perceive their trapped bodies and lives as lying both “inside” and “outside” the contexts of violence, displacement and eviction. |
| | Watch a short video with Neve Gordon, Dalit Baum and Omar Barghouti at "United in Struggle Against Israeli Colonialism, Occupation & Racism" | | United in Struggle Against Israeli Colonialism, Occupation and Racism
November 06, 2009
The joint Israeli-Palestinian Alternative Information Center presents the International Seminar on Economic Perspectives and Advocacy Struggles: United in Struggle Against Israeli Colonialism, Occupation, and Racism.
The Seminar was held in Bethlehem, Occupied Palestinian Territories, on October 24th-25th 2009 |
| | [BGU] Neve Gordon: "The Art of Israeli Homeland Security" [TAU] Uri Hadar "Insubordination & Mental Health"on draft-dodging & Anarchists Against the Wall | | January 5 at 8:00pm
This is the third conference in the framework of the exhibition "Evil to the Core" at the Israeli Center for Digital Art. The exhibition and accompanying conferences seek to raise issues for discussion concerning obedience to authority, conformism, individual and social responsibility, non-compliance, and nonconformism in general, and in Israeli society in particular. This conference asks how utopia is implemented and what tools enable the creation of a utopia in the geographic, political, security and social spheres, according to the model play-written by Herzl and directed by Ben Gurion. Their joint production created a Hebrew speaking country defined by Jewish ethnicity in the territory of the Middle East through the binding establishment of intimidation, the economy, social engineering, planning and construction, to create a harmonized project in which every citizen (and non-citizen) is a partner in a social experiment on the stage of history.
The Art of Israeli Homeland SecurityDr. Neve Gordon is a senior lecturer and head of the Politics and Government Department at Ben Gurion University. His areas of research include political thought, human rights, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
December 8 at 8:00pm
At the Israeli Center for Digital Art, 16 Yirmiyahu Street, HolonThis conference is the second of three conferences accompanying the exhibition "Evil to the Core." The exhibition and conferences seek to discuss issues concerning obedience to authority, conformism, individual and social responsibility, non-compliance, and nonconformism in general, and in Israeli society in particular.Civil disobedience, unlike criminal disobedience, does not lead to anarchy, but moral and conscientious action. Therefore, while the state can suppress criminal disobedience, it should restrain against suppressing civil disobedience. The right to non-compliance is a natural right related to self-respect. With this, the limit of civil disobedience is its use of violence – once it breaks out, it is transformed into criminal disobedience. Another possible distinction is between offensive and defensive non-compliance; the first is done against laws whose violation expresses protest and insurrection against the state, the second involuntarily against laws that impair human dignity. In any case the restriction of violence is key and is what lends legitimation to civil disobedience.The conference will address the boundaries of non-compliance and obedience in the local context of Israel precisely in a period in which this question becomes relevant in light of a new phenomenon of military disobedience. These phenomena, from the right side of the political map, recently made headlines and raised questions about the place of the individual and the military in a democratic society. Despite the phenomenon of refusal on the left as well, it has never managed to produce such resonance. Against this backdrop, the conference will discuss civil disobedience and insubordination.Brief information about the speakers and their lecture topics:Prof. Uri Hadar – Insubordination and Mental HealthProf. Uri Hadar will describe how refuseniks are being released on the basis of psychological maladjustment. A professor of Psychology at Tel Aviv University, a member of the parents’ forum of refuseniks, active in the organisation "Psycho-active. Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights ", Prof. Uri Hadar also teaches a course on the psychology of occupation. |
| | Yesh Gvul (Campaigning against the occupation by backing soldiers who refuse) associates include Zeev Sternhell, Yossi Dahan, Ilana Hammerman | | Yeshayahu Leibowitz Prize 2009 - 30/11 , Tel Aviv
Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz - If he were alive, what would he say about operation "Cast Lead", and the ensuing Goldstone report?
Following the Qibya raid in 1953, in which the number of innocent civilians slain was not even a tenth of the number of innocent civilians slain in Gaza ! - Leibowitz shouted out the compelling question:
"Where did we get such youths, who sense no moral impediment to committing the atrocity, when given an internal or external impetus to retaliate?"
Leibowitz is no longer with us, and we cannot determine his reaction to recent events. But in these dark times, we, those who cherish his memory, will commemorate his legacy by awarding the Leibowitz Prize, for public activism in the spirit of his political and philosophical teaching.
The prize committe (Dr. Yossi Dahan, Dr. Ilana Hammerman, Dr. Yehuda Meltzer, Prof. Zeev Sternhell, Mr. Mordechai Zeldon) has awarded the prize to :
Alice Shalvi (educator,recipient of the Israel prize)
Rabbi Arik Ascherman (Director of Rabbis for Human Rights).
We invite you to the awarding ceremony, to take place on Monday, 30/11/09, at 20:30, at Tzavta (Ibn Gvirol street, Tel-Aviv)
Best Wishes
Yesh Gvul |
| | Anti-Israel conference in Gothenberg, Sweden, 07/2010 "Sociology on the move" with two representing Israel: Lev Luis Grinberg and Avishai Ehrlich | | Session 5: Whither the Israeli-Palestine conflict?
Chair: Michael Burawoy, Universdity of California, USA
Violence and normalcy
Salim Tamari, Birzeit University, Israel
Destruction of communities, trauma and violence: The Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Avishai Ehrlich, Academic College of Tel Aviv Jaffa, Israel
Spacio-cide as a form of a colonial violence
Sari Hanafi, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Politics and violence in Israel/Palestine, past, present and future
Lev Luis Grinberg, Ben Gurion University, Israel
Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not exceptional but has dominated the history of the relations between the two nations. In this context the deployment of violence is generally without legitimacy among the targeted populations.
The objective of this panel is to analyze political developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, exploring how ongoing violence constitutes a danger to future mutual recognition and reconciliation. Internal Israeli and Palestinian politics will be examined, showing how they influence the conflict and explaining the central role of military organizations in shaping the relations of each side towards the other. |
| | Mada Al Carmel (Prof. Nadim Rouhana & Dr. Nedera Shalhoub-Kevorkian) in "Outrage over 'rape' poster that demonises Israel" | | Prof. Nadim Rouhana
General Director
Nedera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
Leader of Geneder Studies Project
The poster publicising the conference, held in Haifa on Monday, shows the hand of an IDF soldier grasping the breast of a woman wearing a traditional Palestinian dress.
The poster reads: “Her husband needs a permit to touch her. The occupation penetrates her life everyday.”
The groups behind the event received NIF funding last year. Mada Al-Carmel was given $100,000 (£59,000), the Arab Forum for Sexuality was given $23,000 (£14,000) and Women Against Violence was given $217,000 (£129,000).
The conference, My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality: Palestinians in the Shadow of the Wall, was part of a campaign in 11 countries highlighting the attack on sexual rights in Muslim societies. |
| | Neta Ziv, Michael Karayanni, Yousef Tayseer Jabarin, Mahmoud Yazbak, Yousef Rafiq Jabareen, Hala Khoury-Bisharat & Abeer Baker speak in Adalah's anti-israel conference | | Over three days, from 6-8 October 2009, Adalah held its 4th Annual Arab Law Students Conference at Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salaam. Seventy law students from Israeli colleges and universities and Al Quds University and 25 human rights lawyers, academics and activists participated in the event.
Dr. Neta Ziv, the Director of Legal Clinics at the Faculty of Law Tel Aviv University, proposed a new model that is completely different from the traditional judicial action taken in defense of human rights. This model is based on encouraging private sector, commercial institutions to develop projects that would alleviate the suffering of the people and achieve their rights. Dr. Yousef Tayseer Jabarin, lecturer at Haifa University and Director of the Arab Center "Dirasat" spoke about the political dilemmas of submitting certain petitions to the Supreme Court that concern the Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as Palestinians in the OPT, as well as problems with the states lack of implementation of court judgments. Attorney Hassan Jabareen, Adalahs General Director, asked the students to imagine constitutionalism in Israel in the year 2020, and opined that this future thinking could only be very speculative due to the extreme instability of the political situation and Israels lack of defined borders.
The second panel chaired by Adalah Attorney Fatmeh El-Ajou was entitled State Responsibility, War Crimes and Remedies for the Victims. Attorney El-Ajou spoke about the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, and the recommendations that it issued, as well as the latest developments concerning the Palestinian Authoritys initial withdrawal of the resolution concerning the Goldstone report from consideration by the UN Human Rights Council.
Dr. Hala Khoury-Bisharat, a lecturer in international criminal law and a member of the Board of Directors of Adalah, spoke about international criminal courts, and the basis of their jurisdiction and the statutes that govern their work. Attorney Michael Sfard, a legal consultant to Yesh Din, talked about the possibilities of bringing cases involving war crimes in national courts abroad including tort cases for compensation against Israel.
The third panel focused on land rights and the states expropriation of Palestinian refugees' properties. This panel was chaired by Dr. Mahmoud Yazbak, the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Adalah and a senior lecturer in the Middle East History Department at Haifa University. Dr. Yazbak spoke about the states confiscation of Arab-owned land and key historical points in the Arab citizens' struggle against land confiscation since the Nakba to the present. Hana Hamdan, Adalahs Urban and Regional Planner, discussed the various methods used by Israel to expropriate Arab-owned lands. Attorney Awni Banna from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel elaborated on the Absentee Property Law-1950 and its implications for Palestinians, and explained the tactics used by the various authorities to exclude Arab citizens of the state from land distribution. Attorney Osama Halabi introduced the students to the methods used to confiscate the refugees' properties over the years and the legal procedures used to seize these properties, particularly in East Jerusalem. In his presentation, Dr. Yousef Rafiq Jabareen, a senior lecturer at the Technion, emphasized how Israeli land planning policies have worked to erase and/or conceal Palestinian architecture in the country. |
| | [Ben Gurion U, Politics] Neve Gordon in "United in Struggle against Israeli Colonialism, Occupation, and Racism..." 24-25 October 2009, Bethlehem | | The seminar is taking place on 24-25 October 2009 in Bethlehem,
Palestine, and gathers Palestinian, international and anti-colonial Israeli activists, researchers, and others interested in advocacy issues toward ending the Israeli occupation and achieving a just peace. The seminar will place a special emphasis on the economic interests behind the occupation and the potential impact that the international campaigns of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) can make in promoting justice for the Palestinian people.
The seminar aims to review, develop, and document the Palestinian advocacy mechanisms locally and internationally, to determine the impact of such efforts so far, in addition to raising the level of cooperation and coordination amongst the various related actions and activities....
12:15-13:45 Session II: The Economy of the Israeli Occupation in
a Global Context.
1. Global Neoliberalism and the Occupation of Palestine:
A Theoretical Overview
Speaker to be announced
From Individual Prosperity to Communal Stagnation:
The Economy as a Form of Social Control
Dr. Neve Gordon, Ben Gurion University of the
Negev |
| | [Tel Aviv U, Psychology] Uri Hadar, and [IDC, Psychology] Nissim Avissar to speak in "Sites of Conflict: Psycho‐Political Resistance in Palestine‐Israel" | | Uri Hadar is professor of psychology in Tel Aviv University.Our distress, no doubt, was partly the result of the fact that we had personal acquaintances there. Psychoactive includes both Israeli Jewish and Palestinian mental health professionals and maintains extensive connections with colleagues in Gaza and the West Bank, including professional relations, personal-professional encounters through joint activities, and social relations. All these connections occur within the reality of the Jewish - Palestinian/Arab conflict, and the asymmetry of Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands.
We pictured our colleagues and friends, mental health professionals in Gaza, with whom in recent years we had developed a working relationship, and our friends, Palestinian citizens of Israel who were concerned about the fate of their relatives in Gaza. We believed that progressive processes of dehumanization and objectification of Palestinians had generated the implicit demand, which became widespread in Israeli society, to eliminate empathy for the Gazan people as fellow human beings - relatives, friends, children, women, men. Between our national identifications and our opposition to dehumanization, a serious crack appeared.
The group has set itself the goal of being active in areas of social-political concern, and notably the Jewish-Palestinian conflict. Much of our activity relates to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the ongoing war between Jews and Palestinians, and the psychological consequences of this situation for the occupied and the occupier. We try to set ourselves challenges as regards the accepted notions about the neutrality of the therapist in the mental health professions and to examine how we may suggest a type of practice that engages with the communities in which psychologists live and work, while safeguarding professional standards and ethics. In doing so, we join therapists worldwide who regard their profession as offering tools for engaging with oppression and violence - whether this is in the clinic or in the public space. |
| | Mary Totry [Oranim College]: The Palestinian minority is in danger of being transferred. Khaled Furani [Tel Aviv U]: Israel's normalization of killing | | | Today, there are 1.4 million Palestinian citizens in Israel. However, since the establishment of the Jewish state 61 years ago, this minority continues to struggle for their civil rights and equal rights as citizens of the self-declared "only democracy in the Middle East." A delegation from The Mossawa Center, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel, explained the challenges and the triumphs of the Palestinian citizens in Israel. |
| | Professors Yousef Jabareen, Manar Hasan, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadim Rouhana participate Palestinian Conference on the future of Jerusalem | | [University of Haifa] Yousef Jabareen, [Tel-Aviv University] Manar Hasan, [Hebrew University] Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, [Ex-Tel Aviv University] Nadim Rouhana participating a Palestinian conference on Jerusalem "History Of The Future"
Panel 1: The Political Horizon Chair: Samera Esmeir
10:00- 10:20 US policy towards the Middle East Rashid Khalidi
10:20 - 10:40 The Palestinians in Israel and the proposed political solutions for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. Nadim Rouhana
10:40 - 11:00 The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: future scenarios
Ahmad Sameh Khalidi
11:00 - 11:30 Discussion
11:30 - 11:45 Coffee Break
Panel 2: The Judaization and Israelization Policy Chair: Suhad Bishara
11:45 - 12:05 Judaizing spaces and places: a feminist critical perspective Nadera Shalhoub- Kevorkian
12:05 - 12:25 The walls of Jerusalem: new and old Manar Hasan 12:25 - 12:45 The state of the Palestinian landscape, 1948 - 2009 Yousef Jabareen |
| | Radical Leftist Speakers Dominated Bar-Ilan University Conference “Networks of Peace and Security: Gendered Perspectives" | | The organizers of the conference, which took place in late May—among them Prof. Tova Cohen and Dr. Orna Sasson-Levy—insisted that information about the gathering had been circulated well in advance and maintained that the only responses were from the political left.
The conference invitation identified the speakers as members of the academic community, but omitted their affiliations with radical-Left organizations. For example, Erela Shadmi was presented as a researcher in Beyt Berl, although she has not been connected to that institution for two years, nor does she seem to have any other current academic affiliation. As much to the point, she is an activist in "Nashim BeShachor" ("Women in Black"), and in 2001 she was interviewed about her initiative for a joint activity with Palestinian women.
Reflective of the hostility to Israel and the IDF exhibited at the conference, in several of the presentations the establishment of the State was referred to as a “catastrophe,” and terms like the “Nakba” and "Occupation" were repeatedly used as factual descriptive. |
| | Arab money sponsors Cambridge 'Arab Jews' conference which is based on denial | | Dr. Ami Elad-Bouskila, head of the Arabic Department of Beit Berl College.
Prof. Yosef Tobi, Literature, University of Haifa.
Almog Behar, Literature Department, Tel Aviv University.
Prof' Sassoon Somekh, Literature Department, Tel Aviv University.
Yonatan Mendel is a PhD student at Queens' College, Cambridge, currently working in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. His doctoral research deals with Arabic language and security in Israeli society.
The conference has deliberately chosen to focus on Israel, where most Jews of Arab culture have ended up. Its message is clear: Israel has 'de-arabised' Jews from Arab countries. They have been stripped of their Arabic culture. (For good measure, the conference throws in a couple of sessions on Palestinian literature in Israel. No doubt, the conference will also show how Israel has suppressed Palestinian Arab culture.) Conclusion: Jews must re-connect with their 'Arabic roots' and throw off the oppressive Zionist yoke.
Several of the Jewish lecturers are well-known leftists or advocates of Jewish-Muslim coexistence on Arab terms |
| | Israel academics to play prominent role in York University conference considering one-state or two-state "solution" | | The purpose of the event, as stated in an official announcement, is to "explore which state models offer promising paths to resolving the Israeli-Palestine conflict...."
The announcement asserts that "despite the diplomatic focus on the two-state model, the continued failure to achieve peace...highlights the necessity of rigorously examining whether the two-state approach is indeed the only way...." There is a "need to explore alternative political futures in the region."
A number of Israeli academics, most identified with the far Left of the political spectrum, are among the scheduled speakers. |
| | Building Palestinian Civil Society within Challenging Realities
Mr. Jafar Farrah, Dr. Mary Totry and Dr. Khaled Furani from the Mossawa Center. | | | Today, there are 1.4 million Palestinian citizens in Israel. However, since the establishment of the Jewish state 61 years ago, this minority continues to struggle for their civil rights and equal rights as citizens of the self-declared "only democracy in the Middle East." A delegation from The Mossawa Center, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel, explained the challenges and the triumphs of the Palestinian citizens in Israel. |
| | Bar-Ilan University Blasted for Conference ‘Befitting Bir Zeit’ | | A two day conference at Bar-Ilan University on “Gender and Security” is causing an uproar in Zionist and religious circles. The two-day conference that ends Wednesday evening features a slew of anti-Zionist and radical leftist lecturers and appears to hint that IDF soldiers are comparable with Nazi soldiers. The critics charge that none of the lectures “balance out” the anti-Israeli slant or offer a pro-IDF angle, in what is supposed to be a non-political academic conference.
Orna Sasson-Levy of Bar-Ilan University was to speak about “The Military as an Over-Gendered Institution.” Israel Academia Monitor, a watchdog site that follows extreme leftist academics, lists her as a signatory of a petition calling for the release of Tali Fahima, who was convicted and jailed for aiding terrorists.
...Nimrod Shavit and Tamar Katriel of Haifa University were to speak about the “discourse” used by “Breaking Silence” – an organization that encourages soldiers to give damning testimony regarding alleged IDF misdeeds in Judea and Samaria and which conducts left-wing “tours” of Hevron. Israel Academia Monitor dubs Katriel and her husband Jakob (a prominent communist activist) “the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of Israel.” ...
Merav Amir and Hagar Kotef of Tel-Aviv University would focus on the activity of anti-IDF group “Machsom Watch” in a lecture called “Mothers, Mistresses and Whores: When Resistance Collapses into Gender – The Case of Machsom Watch.”
Dr. Erella Shadmi of Beit Berl Academic College was to address the idea of “The Gift Economy” – a concept often linked with an ideology called anarcho-communism. |
| | [Tel Aviv U] Rachel Giora, [Haifa U] Dalia Sachs, [Haifa U] Dalit Baum and [Tel Aviv U] Merav Amir "Free Gaza: 10 Days Against the Siege 5-14.6" | | Everything you always wanted to know (and never dared to ask) about the campaign for BDS (Rachel Giora)
Corporate Responsibility on the Israeli Occupation (Dalit Baum and Merav Amir)
Closing Session: Feminist Networks of Action and Knowledge
(Dalia Sachs) |
| | Omar Barghouti, Michael Sfard, Merav Amir, and Dalit Baum speak for "Bil’in Village Popular Committee Against the Apartheid Wall and Settlements" | | In the wake of the Israeli atrocities in Gaza it is vital that we continue to resist against the Israeli occupation. This February has marked the fourth anniversary of the weekly non-violent protests against the construction of the Apartheid Wall in Bil’in.
Bil’in has become a symbol both of the theft of land across Palestine and of the power of non-violent grassroots movements in building local and international resistance to Occupation.
We invite you to participate in the fourth Bil’in conference on grassroots popular resistance in April 2009.
The International Conference will be held on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of April...
The BDS movement: challenges and perspectives
Coordinated by: Lubna Hammad (Adalah-NY), Muhammad Jaradat (Badil), Omar Barghouti (PACBI)
Legal Accountability for War Crimes
Coordinated by: Shawan Jabarin, General Director, Al-Haq, Michael Sfard, Israeli legal counsel to Bil’in Village Council, Merrav Amir/Dalit Baum, Project Coordinators, Who Profits? Exposing the Israeli Occupation Industry |
| | The growing belief of Israeli academics in a one-state solution, says Palestinian analyst | | even if two states are established, Israel cannot continue to be a state that privileges its Jewish citizens over its non-Jewish citizens. So either one or two states would mean the end of a Jewish state - although not of the state of Israel...
Omar Barghouti [Tel Aviv U, Phd candidate], As'ad Ghanem [U of Haifa, Political Science], Ori (Oren) Ben-Dor [Law, Southampton U], Gabriel Piterberg [History UCLA], Smadar Lavie [International Studies, Macalester College], Ilan Pappe [History, U of Exeter], Dr. Meron Benvenisti, Nadim Rouhana [Law and Diplomacy, Tufts U] |
| | Anat Biletzki, Gabriel Piterberg and Meron Benvenisti provide information to a Palestinian symposium for Gaza | | The second annual Gaza symposium, this year jointly organized by MIT and Harvard, will host a series of panels on the role of U.S. and international actors, as well as human rights and international humanitarian law in the wake of recent events in Gaza. Bringing together experts in the fields of human rights, history, political science, U.S. foreign policy and law, the two-day symposium will include a range of views from US, Israeli, Palestinian and UN/NGO perspectives.
International Law & Human Rights
Moderator: Susan Akram, Clinical Professor at Boston University School of Law
Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Anat Biletzki, Former chairperson of B’Tselem—Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories and Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University
Craig Mokhiber, Deputy Director of the New York Office for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights |
| | Israeli academics to participate a Palestinian conference 'One State for Palestine / Israel: A Country for All Its Citizens?' | | Dr Meron Benvenisti, Prof' Oren Ben-Dor, Professor Gabriel Piterberg, Professor Nadim Rouhana, Professor As’ad Ghanem, Professor Smadar Lavie, (PhD candidate) Omar Barghouti, Professor Ilan Pappe.
..In recent years, with facts on the ground changing, many scholars and commentators have questioned the feasibility of a truly just and enduring two state solution to the Palestinian Israeli conflict. Increased discrimination against Palestinians in Israel, continued growth in the expansion of settlements in the 1967-occupied territories, the erection of the separation wall, are just a few of the factors making the current two state solution option seem to many no longer a truly tenable offering. Scholars, commentators and citizens have begun to look at other ideas, and most to the idea of the creation of a comprehensive single state as the solution. Over the past year, support for that idea has been growing with conferences held in the United Kingdom, Spain, Israel and the West Bank. Still, this alternative is left firmly off of the official agendas. Yet in the months following the November 2007 Annapolis meetings, the Israeli Government announced tenders for the construction of thousands of new housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, suggesting it has no intention of releasing its hold on the territories. |
| | Canada Conference Plans Israel’s Demise | | One of the perks of being Israeli is that people in far-off places seem to take an interest in your problems. For instance, Queen’s University and York University of Canada are planning a conference for June 1, 2009, on “Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace.”
There’s already a website that’s issuing a call for papers and setting forth the “vision” of the conference.
“The purpose of this conference,” the “Welcome” to the website
informs us, “is to explore which state model would be the best to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” It refers to the recent “failure” of the “two-state model” to “bring peace to the region” and says: “The conference seeks to systematically measure the two-state model against the promise of alternatives; very specifically the potential in the model of a single binational state.”.....
That’s not to say, of course, that the Advisory Committee isn’t
“balanced”—in addition to the ex-Israeli Dorit Namaan it has four
currently-Israeli members: left-wing author and journalist Meron
Benvenisti, left-wing research associate Daphna Golan-Agnon of Hebrew University, left-wing law professor David Kretzmer of Hebrew University, and left-wing sociology professor Sammy Smooha of the University of Haifa. |
| | London U. event likens Gaza to Ghetto
| | | The situation in Gaza will be compared to that in the Warsaw Ghetto under the Nazis, at a prestigious London university next week. |
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