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ART AS RESISTANCE

Please join us for a panel discussion with videos and presentations by representatives from the Jenin Freedom Theatre in Palestine. The panelists will discuss the following:

What is it like to make theater in Occupied Palestine and why is this work important?

What is the relationship between theatre and politics in Palestine as practiced at The Freedom Theatre?

How does the theatre continue its work under severe repression, murder and arrests?

What are the similarities/differences in acting education between the U.S. and Palestine?

Panelists

Faisal Abu Alheja is 23-yr-old Palestinian actor trained at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin. He has performed in Animal Farm, Fragments of Palestine, Men in the Sun, Sho Kaman and is currently in rehearsal for The Island. Faisal was a member of the Playback Theatre troupe in 2012 and has toured in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Ahmad Al-Rokh is a 24-yr-old Palestinian actor trained at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin. He has performed in Animal Farm, Men in the Sun, Journey, Sho Kaman and is also currently in rehearsal for The Island. Ahmad was a member of the Playback Theatre troupe in 2012 and has toured in Luxembourg, France, and Belgium.

Gary English is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, Professor of Theatre, of the University of Connecticut. He is also the Founding Artistic Director of Connecticut Repertory Theatre, as well as the current Artistic Director of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin.

This event is co-presented by the Friends of the Jenin Freedom Theatre (www.thefreedomtheatre.org) and the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University and co-sponsored by the Network of Arab American Professionals - NY (NAAP-NY), ArteEast, and Alwan for the Arts.

This event is free and open to the public and on a first-come, first-seated basis. RSVP recommended to palestine@columbia.edu.

APRIL 14, 2013, 5PM
Room 501 Schermerhorn
Columbia University
Enter Gates on 116th Street & Amsterdam or Broadway
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/441878539223779/

Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East

Join critically acclaimed historian Rashid Khalidi, as he discusses his latest publication Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East.

For more than seven decades the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people has raged on with no end in sight, and for much of that time, the United States has been involved as a mediator in the conflict. Khalidi zeroes in on the United States's role as the purported impartial broker in this failed peace process.

Khalidi closely analyzes three historical moments that illuminate how the United States' involvement has, in fact, thwarted progress toward peace between Israel and Palestine. The first moment he investigates is the "Reagan Plan" of 1982, when Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin refused to accept the Reagan administration's proposal to reframe the Camp David Accords more impartially. The second moment covers the period after the Madrid Peace Conference, from 1991 to 1993, during which negotiations between Israel and Palestine were brokered by the United States until the signing of the secretly negotiated Oslo accords. Finally, Khalidi takes on President Barack Obama's retreat from plans to insist on halting the settlements in the West Bank.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies and the Middle East Institute.

Monday, April 1, 2013, 7:30PM - 9:30PM
Room 501 Schermerhorn Hall
Columbia University
Enter gates on 116 and Broadway or Amsterdam

Where Should the Birds Fly?

In December of 2008 Israel launched a devastating attack on Gaza. A month of bullets, bombs, rockets, white phosphorus, tanks and bulldozers left 1400, mostly civilians, dead and this section of Occupied Palestine in rubble. Where Should the Birds Fly? is a compelling and moving Palestinian film based on the story of two remarkable young women, the future of Palestine, who personify the struggle to maintain humanity, humor and hope, to find some degree of normality in the brutal abnormality that has been imposed on them and Palestinians.

FIDA QISHTA is a Palestinian filmmaker/videographer who was born in Rafah, Gaza. She began her video work as a wedding photographer in the Gaza Strip, and then began accompanying human rights observers in Gaza, documenting their work. Her reporting, photography and video journalism has appeared in the UK Guardian, the Observer, and the International Herald Tribune. Fida is also a qualified teacher and, in 2004, co-founded with her sister Faten The Lifemakers Center, an after school and tutoring program which serves several hundred children in Rafah. Her first full-length documentary, Where Should the Birds Fly? is a powerful reflection of her work and life in Gaza from 2004 through 2009.

Screening followed by a discussion with Fida Qishta. Moderated by Noemi Artal, CPS Visiting Scholar.

Palestine | 2012 | Fida Qishta | 58 minutes | Arabic with English subtitles

Monday, 25 March 2013, 7:45PM
501 Schermerhorn
Columbia University
Enter Gates on 116th Street & Broadway or Amsterdam Avenues
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/356310244483612/

Archaeology and Identity in Modern Israel and Palestine

Please join the Center for Palestine Studies and the Center for Archaeology for a discussion on the controversial excavations in Jerusalem by Israelis.

Professor Raphael Greenberg, Tel Aviv University
Moderated by Brian Boyd, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology & Program Director at the Center for Archaeology, Columbia University

Raphael Greenberg is a senior lecturer in the field of archeology at Tel Aviv University. Currently, he is working on the West Bank and East Jerusalem Archeological Database Project (http://crcc.usc.edu/initiatives/shi/resources.html), which lists the archeological sites that have been excavated by Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967. As part of this project, he published a book entitled Israeli Archeological Activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem: A Sourcebook. His research focuses on two distinct fields: Early Bronze Age research, and the impact of archaeology in the present. His research covers questions such as the formation and dissolution of early urban societies in the Levant, long and mid-range interaction, migration and trade, and social and economic aspects of ceramic industries (most recently, the Kura-Araxes interaction sphere). Moreover, his work on archaeology in the present includes teaching and writing about community archaeology and the politics of the archaeology of ancient Jerusalem. These interests are brought into relation with one another through a commitment to critical archaeology and to the investigation of perrenially relevant questions such as time, migration and transmission of culture, and material culture and its agency. Greenberg is also the founder of an alternative archaeological tour of ancient Jerusalem called Emek Shaveh (http://www.alt-arch.org/).

Friday, 15 March 2013, 1-2:30PM
Scheps Library, Room 457
Schermerhorn Extension
Columbia University
Enter gates on 116th & Broadway or Amsterdam

SEEKING PALESTINE, New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home

Contributors Rema Hammami, Suad Amiry, and Lila Abu-Lughod will read from Seeking Palestine and Mayssun Sukarieh will reflect on the ethics and social impact of speaking for Palestinians in Shatila, an over-researched refugee camp.

How do Palestinians live, imagine and reflect on home and exile in this period of a stateless and transitory Palestine, a deeply contested and crisis-ridden national project, and a sharp escalation in Israeli state violence and accompanying Palestinian oppression?

In Seeking Palestine, just published in the U.S., fifteen Palestinian writers, essayists, poets, novelists, critics, artists, memoirists respond with their reflections, experiences, memories, and polemics.

How can exile and home be written? Who speaks for Palestinians?

Distinguished Panel Speakers

Lila Abu-Lughod
Columbia University

Rema Hammami
Birzeit University

Suad Amiry
Author & Founder of the Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation

Mayssun Sukarieh
Arcapita Visitng Professor
Columbia University

Sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies, Anthropology Department, Institute for Research on Women & Gender and the Middle East Institute.

6 March 2013, 6:15PM
754 Schermerhorn Extension
Columbia University
Enter Gates on 116 and Broadway or Amsterdam Avenue

The Strangest ~ a staged reading by Betty Shamieh followed by discussion with James Schamus

Midway through Camus's classic The Stranger, an unnamed Arab is killed. Leaping from this moment and working backwards through possible histories of tangled romance, ethnic conflict, and random violence, playwright Betty Shamieh has crafted a new play inspired by this unknown character. Infused with elements of Middle Eastern oral storytelling traditions and dance, The Strangest is an absurdist murder mystery about two Algerian brothers who vie for the love of the same woman. Their bitter rivalry ends with one brother being inexplicably gunned down by a French stranger.

Following the reading, the writer and director will be joined in discussion by moderator James Schamus.

Betty Shamieh, Playwright: Shamieh is a playwright, author, screenwriter, and actress. She is the author of fifteen plays. As a playwright, her off-Broadway premieres are The Black Eyed (New York Theatre Workshop) and Roar (The New Group), which was selected as a New York Times Critics Pick and is currently being taught at universities throughout the United States.

May Adrales, Director: Adrales is a freelance director based in New York city, working primarily with new plays and new play development. She helmed the world premieres of Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at Actors Theater of Louisville, Mary at The Goodman Theatre and In This House at Two River Theater Company. Recent and upcoming Productions include Katori Hall's Whaddabloodclot (Williamstown Theater Festival); Katori Hall's The Mountaintop (Milwaukee Rep); Stefanie Zadrevec's Electric Baby (Two River Theater) and David Henry Hwang's Dance and the Railroad (Signature Theater).

James Schamus, Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University & CEO, Focus Features: Schamus is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, producer, and film executive. His long collaboration as writer and producer for Ang Lee has resulted in eleven films, including Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Ice Storm; The Wedding Banquet; The Hulk; Taking Woodstock and Lust, Caution. As CEO of Focus Features, Schamus oversees the finance, production, and distribution of numerous films, including Oscar winners Milk, The Pianist, Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Schamus has also produced or executive-produced many of the most important American independent films of the past decade (among them Safe and The Brothers McMullen), including four Grand Prize winners at the Sundance Film Festival. He is also a widely published film historian and theorist.

RSVP Suggested:
http://fs3.formsite.com/soaweb/form31/index.html

Free and open to the public. First come, first seated.

For more information please visit: http://heymancenter.org/events/the-strangesta-staged-reading/

Sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities and co-sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies, the School of the Arts, Noor Theatre and Alwan for the Arts.

27 February 2013, 6:30PM
Miller Theater, Columbia University

Indigenous (In)Justice, Human Rights Law and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab/Negev

Please join the Center for Palestine Studies for a book discussion with Ahmad Amara, John Sheehan and Brinkley Messick.

Indigenous (in)Justice addresses property issues related to indigenous Palestinians and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab/Negev from a comparative and international legal perspective. In addition to the Bedouin-Palestinian experience, this book discusses the Australian, Canadian, and U.S. cases of indigenous treatment and land expropriation.

The indigenous Bedouin Arab population in the Naqab/Negev desert in Israel has experienced a history of displacement, intense political conflict, and cultural disruption, along with recent rapid modernization, forced urbanization, and migration. This volume of essays highlights international, national, and comparative law perspectives and explores the legal and human rights dimensions of land, planning, and housing issues, as well as the economic, social, and cultural rights of indigenous peoples. Within this context, the essays examine the various dimensions of the "negotiations" between the Bedouin Arab population and the State of Israel.

Indigenous (In)Justice locates the discussion of the Naqab/Negev question within the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict and within key international debates among legal scholars and human rights advocates, including the application of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the formalization of traditional property rights, and the utility of restorative and reparative justice approaches. Leading international scholars and professionals, including the current United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, are among the contributors to this volume.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race (CSER) at Columbia University.

AHMAD AMARA is a PhD candidate in history and Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University. Before pursuing his PhD degree, Amara served for three years as a clinical instructor and global advocacy fellow with Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program. His work at Harvard focused on social, cultural, and economic rights in the Middle East and on the Law of Occupation, and he has published a number of reports and articles in this area. Amara holds an LLB and LLM from Tel-Aviv University, where he also served as a teaching assistant and a coordinator of the Street Law Clinic Program at the Faculty of Law. He is a member of the Israeli Bar. In 2005, he completed a second master's degree in international human rights law at Essex University in the United Kingdom. In 2005, he co-founded a human rights organization, Karama (Arabic for "dignity"), in Nazareth, where he served as a senior staff attorney. Amara's current research focuses on the legal history of property law in Palestine, including Ottoman, British, and Israeli legislation.

JOHN SHEEHAN is a leading Australian property theorist and expert on compensation assessment arising from compulsory acquisition of native title in Australia. He is deputy director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Complex Real Property Rights, and adjunct professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is a former acting commissioner with the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales, and previously a member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Tribunal of Queensland. He is also a life fellow of the Australian Property Institute. In November 2010, Sheehan was one of the invited members of the expert meeting "Land Tenure Issues and Requirements for Implementing Climate Change Mitigation Policies in the Forestry and Agriculture Sectors" convened in Rome by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The report of the meeting, which focused on traditional and customary tenures, was submitted to in-form the subsequent Cancun Conference.

BRINKLEY MESSICK, co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies and Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. He specializes in the anthropology of law, legal history, written culture, and the circulation and interpretation of Islamic law.

For more information or to purchase a copy of the book, please click here.

Monday, 25 February 2013
6:30PM-8PM
Room 208, Knox Hall, Columbia University
606 West 122nd Street, New York, NY
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The Great Book Robbery, Screening & Discussion with Director Benny Brunner

The Great Book Robbery, a new film from director Benny Brunner, tells the story of the looting of 70,000 Palestinian books during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Five years in the making, the 57-minute film interweaves various story lines in a structure that is dramatically compelling and emotionally unsettling. The film's interviews center on eyewitness accounts and cultural critiques that place the book plunder affair in a larger historical-cultural context.

70,000 Palestinian books were systematically "collected" by the newly born state of Israel during the 1948 war. The story of the "collected" books is at the heart of our film.

Following the screening, there will be a discussion with Director and Producer Benny Brunner.

Tuesday, 5 February 2013, 7:45PM

Schermerhorn Building, Room 501
Columbia University
Enter gates on 116th and Broadway or Amsterdam
FACEBOOK

Military Justice? Palestinians in Israeli Courts

How do courts render justice for Palestinians as residents of the Occupied Territories and as citizens of the State of Israel? We will examine litigation before both military jurisdictions in the West Bank and before the Israeli civil courts, including the High Court of Justice.

PANELISTS:

Lisa Hajjar, Associate Professor of Sociology, U.C. Santa Barbara, author of Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (California, 2005.

Yael Berda, Ph. D. Candidate, Department of Sociology, Princeton University; author of The Bureaucracy of the Occupation: The Permit Regime in the West Bank (Tel Aviv, 2012).

Hedi Viterbo, Visiting Scholar, Harvard Law School; PhD in Law, London School of Economics (The Legal Construction of Childhood in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict); LLM (Tel Aviv).

MODERATOR:
Katherine Franke, Professor of Law. Columbia Law School;Director, Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

DISCUSSANT:
Darryl Li, Postdoctoral Fellow, Committee on Global Thought (JD, Yale) (Ph.D., Anthropology, Harvard).

Monday, 3 December 2012
3 - 5:30 PM
Heyman Center, Columbia University
Second Floor Common Room
74 Morningside Drive (Enter through East Campus dormitory)
RSVP on Facebook!

Disputed Waters: Governing Water and Struggling for Citizenship in Nazareth

The Center for Palestine Studies invites you to a seminar on "Disputed Waters: Governing Water and Struggling for Citizenship in Nazareth," a paper by Dr. Leena Dallasheh, historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Palestine Studies.

This paper uses the processes of water management in Nazareth from the late Mandate period in the 1940s through the early years of Israeli statehood to consider how struggles over the control and development of this basic resource shaped the interaction between the new state and the locals, defining not just the reach of the state but issues of citizenship and identity for the Palestinians.

Following a brief paper introduction, the seminar will open up to discussion.

Kindly note, "Disputed Waters: Governing Water and Struggling for Citizenship in Nazareth" will be pre-circulated. Please email palestine@columbia.edu with "CPS Seminar" in the title to RSVP and receive a copy of the paper. Papers will be distributed on [November 21, 2012].

Light refreshments will be served.

Thursday, November 29, 2012
12:30 - 2 PM
Knox 208, Columbia University
RSVP on Facebook!

Some of My Best Friends Are Zionists

The Center for Palestine Studies invites you to the New York premiere of:

Some of My Best Friends Are Zionists, a documentary film by Director Bruce Robbins about American Jews who take an independent line on Israel and the Middle East.

The heart of the film focuses on the experiences of American Jews changing their minds on Palestine/Israel: what they were told about Israel and their Jewish identity as they were growing up, what they went through as they began gaining a different perspective, and finally what Israel and Jewish identity mean to them now.

Following the screening, there will be a discussion with the Director.

Monday, 19 November 2012
7:30PM
501 Schermerhorn
(Enter Gates on 116th & Broadway or Amsterdam Avenues)
RSVP on Facebook!

Like a Straw Bird it Follows Me - Bilingual Poetry Reading by Ghassan Zaqtan & Fady Joudah

The Center for Palestine Studies invites you to a reading of Palestinian poetry with Ghassan Zaqtan, one of the leading poets of the Arab world. Zaqtan will share his most recent collection of work, translated by Fady Joudah.

In this inspired translation of Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, Ghassan Zaqtan's tenth and most recent poetry collection, Fady Joudah brings to English-language readers the best work by one of the most important and original Palestinian poets of our time. With these poems Zaqtan enters new terrain, illuminating the vision of what Arabic poetry in general, and Palestinian poetry in particular, are capable of. Departing from the lush aesthetics of such celebrated predecessors as Mahmoud Darwish and Adonis, Zaqtan's daily, delicate narrative, whirling catalog, and at times austere aesthetics represent a new trajectory, a significant leap for young Arabic poets today.

"Ghassan Zaqtan's poems, in their constant unfolding invite us to enter them, exit them, map and un-map them, code and decode them, fill them up and empty them, with the living and non-living, the animate and inanimate, towards a true freedom."

Ghassan Zaqtan, is a Palestinian poet and author of ten collections of poetry. He is also a novelist, editor, and filmmaker. He was born in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, and has lived in Jordan, Beirut, Damascus, and Tunis. He returned to Palestine in 1994 and now lives in Ramallah.

Fady Joudah is an award-winning poet and translator. Among his translations are two poetry collections by Mahmoud Darwish, If I Were Another and The Butterfly's Burden.

Thursday, 18 October 2012 ~ 7:00 PM
Room 509, Knox Hall, Columbia University
606 West 122 Street, New York

Between Promise and Fragility: Aesthetic Belongings in the Body of Contemporary Palestinian Art

This talk is a discussion of contemporary Palestinian art practices and an analysis of how artworks, especially those depicting bodies or their absence, reveal and reform ideas about the individual, community, locality, and aesthetic belonging since the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Kirsten Scheid is an associate professor of anthropology at the American University of Beirut. She specializes in modern and contemporary Arab art. Scheid completed a book on the modern art movement in Lebanon titled On Civilized Art in Primitive Places: Modern Art and the Formation of Lebanon. The talk arises from comparative ethnographic research she is currently conducting on Palestinian and Lebanese art production since the "New Middle East" was initiated in the early 1990s.

This brownbag will be moderated by Professor Zainab Bahrani, Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology.

This event is sponsored by MESAAS and the Middle East Institute (MEI).

Thursday, 11 October 2012, 12:30 - 2 PM
Room 208, Knox Hall, Columbia University
606 West 122nd Street, New York, NY 10027

TENNIS IN NABLUS

BY ISMAIL KHALIDI

A staged reading of Tennis in Nablus, written by playwright and poet Ismail Khalidi. Moderated by Peter Goodman.

This "tragipoliticomedy" was nominated for a Suzi Bass Award for Best New Play and awarded the Quest for Peace Award from the Kennedy Center.

Co-presented by: Columbia University School of the Arts, the Center for Palestine Studies, the Heyman Center for Humanities, the Middle East Institute of Columbia University and Alwan for the Arts.

Thursday, 4 October 2012, 6:30PM
Miller Theater, 116 Street & Broadway
RSVP for this event

GAZAN Writers Salon: Tracing Genealogies of Gazan Literature, 1947-2011

Fractured Web: Gazan Writing Online

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In this discussion moderated by Khalid Hadeed (Cornell University) and featuring academic discussant Helga Tawil Souri (NYU); Somaya al Sousi and Fatena al Ghorra contextualize their work within the broader landscape of Palestinian literature online, while Adania Shibli (co-editor Narrating Gaza) discusses the way in which such platforms foster literary community and discourse.

Throughout its history, Gaza and its surrounding region has been controlled by external forces. During World War I, Gaza became part of the British mandate of Palestine. Following the 1948 Arab Israeli War, Egypt administered the newly formed Gaza Strip, and in 1967 the Gaza Strip was captured by Israel in the Six-Day War. In 1994, administration of the Gaza Strip was transferred to the Palestinian National Authority. Following the 2011 Egyptian uprisings, Egyptian involvement in the blockade of Gaza ended, potentially marking a new period of increasing mobility and literary production.

This event will explore the points of contact and departure between the literary voices that emerged throughout the last sixty years. In the conversation that ensues, which features young and emergent writers alongside established authors, we trace the fractured genealogy of literature in Gaza. Palestinian writers will discuss the increasing presence of literature online, and will explore the way contemporary writing has been shaped by the Internet. Each writer works in multiple platforms so that their literary voices encompass poetry, prose, and journalism.

Co-Presented by the Center for Palestine Studies & ArteEast. For more information on ArteEast see: http://arteeast.org.

This program is curated by Khalid Hadeed and Barrak Alzaid and made possible with generous support from the A.M. Qattan Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.

A reception will follow the panel.

Tuesday, 24 April 2012, 7 PM
Room 509, Knox Hall
Columbia University

THE ARAB REVOLTS: Causes, Dynamics, Effects

13 April 2012, 9:30 AM – 6 PM
Columbia University, Schermerhorn Building, Room 501
Enter Gates on 116 and Broadway or Amsterdam

9:30 AM Opening Keynote
Rashid Khalidi (Columbia), ‘America and the Arab Revolts’
*Moderated by Bashir Abu-Manneh (Columbia)

11 AM First Panel
Gilbert Achcar (SOAS, London) ‘Roots and Dynamics of Arab Revolt’
Asef Bayat (Illinois) ‘Revolution without Movement, Movement without Revolution-Again’
Mona El Ghobashy (Barnard) ‘The Politics of Counter-Revolt in Egypt’
*Moderated by Marwa El Shakry (Columbia)

2:15 PM Second Panel
Jason Brownlee (Texas) ‘Antecedents of the Tunisian Revolt’
Gershon Shafir (UCSD) ‘Tahrir in Tel-Aviv?’
Lisa Wedeen (Chicago) ‘Ideology in the Political Present: Notes from Syria’
*Moderated by Nadia Abu El-Haj (Columbia)

430 PM Closing Keynote
Khaled Hroub (Cambridge) ‘After the Revolts: The Question of Palestine’
*Moderated by Rashid Khalidi (Columbia)

For more information, please visit the Conference section of our website.

Co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute , the Trans-Arab Research Institute (TARI), the Heyman Center, and MESAAS.

Friday, 13 April 2012, 9:30 AM - 6M
Room 501 Schermerhorn, Columbia University.

CARCERAL POLITICS IN PALESTINE & BEYOND: Gender, Vulnerability, Prison

EVENT REGISTRATION ~ FACEBOOK

Seating is on a first-come, first-seated basis

This panel will explore comparative approaches to Israeli prisons and detention.

PANELISTS:
Judith Butler, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Lena Meari, Center for Palestine Studies Fellow, Columbia University
Mai Masri, Independent Documentary Filmmaker, Beirut, Lebanon
Angela Davis, Prison Activist and History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz

This event is brought to you by the Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and generously co-sponsored by:
The Barnard Center for Research on Women
The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
The Heyman Center
The Department of Anthropology
The Office of Diversity, GSAS
Center for Gender and Sexuality Law
The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society

5 April 2012. DOORS OPEN AT 5:30 PM. The event will begin promptly at 6 PM.
Room 1501, International Affairs Building, Columbia University
420 West 122 Street, New York, NY 10027

The Ethics of Pinkwashing: LGBT Rights in Israel/Palestine

Professors Katherine Franke, Kendall Thomas, and Vani Natarajan, Humanities and Area Studies Librarian, Barnard College, visited Israel and Palestine in January, 2012 as part of the first LGBTQ delegation to the West Bank.

Come hear them offer a "queer take" on Israel/Palestine. Moderated by Neta Patrick, Human Rights Institute, Columbia Law School.

Sponsored by the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law and cosponsored with the Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

Wednesday, 4 April 2012, 4-6 PM
Room 701, Jerome Green Hall, 116th Street between Amsterdam & Morningside
Columbia Law School

Palestine & Law Series, The State Question, Panel II

Please join us on 2 April 2012 for our second panel on the state question. This panel of noted legal specialists will examine the aftermath of the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations and assess the ongoing needs for democratization and political reform.

PANELISTS

George Bisharat, Professor of Law, UC Hastings. Author of "Palestinian Lawyers and Israeli Rule."

Noura Erakat, Attorney, Adjunct Professor of International Human Rights Law, Georgetown. Co-Editor of Jadaliyya.

Victor Kattan, Lawyer, Program Director, Al-Shabaka. Author of "From Coexistence to Conquest."

Respondent: Ramzi Kassem, Professor of Law, CUNY.

This panel is part of the Center for Palestine Studies's new series on Palestine and Law. The aim of the series is to promote innovative academic thought on legal questions related to Palestine. The issues covered will include the state question, property issues, from possession to dispossession; the sphere of litigation; the legal status of the refugee; and regimes of imprisonment.

Please RSVP to palestine@columbia.edu. Preference is given to Columbia students and faculty.

If you missed Panel I, you can watch it here.

Monday, 2 April 2012, 3PM
Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room
74 Morningside Drive (enter through East Campus dormitory)

The Politics of Analogizing Language and Music

A panel discussion following the premiere of Mohammed Fairouz's Symphony No. 3 "Poems and Prayers."

Panelists: Mohammed Fairouz, Jacqueline Rose, Sinan Antoon

Voice, lyricism, tonality, counterpoint, the operatic: literary critics and social theorists often make recourse to the metaphors of musicality. Similarly, musicians often draw upon literature, not merely by writing or incorporating it in the form of lyric, but as theoretical inspiration. A few undertake theoretical labor in and through their music. Such is the case with Mohammed Fairouz. Following on the world premiere of Fairouz's Symphony No. 3: "Poems and Prayers," which weaves together poetic texts from the Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew, this panel opens up discussion about music and literature to questions of translation and comparative composition, as well as the politics of analogizing language and music.

Sponsored by the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and co-sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies.

17 February 2012, 2:00 PM
Faculty House, Garden Room #2

Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender Among Palestinians in Israel

You are cordially invited to attend a Sheldon Scheps Talk with:

RHODA KANAANEH, Anthropology Department, Columbia University
ISIS NUSAIR, Department of Women's Studies, Denison University
LENA MEARI, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia University

Rhoda Kanaaneh and Isis Nusair will talk about the process of putting the collection together and the themes that it covers. Since most media coverage and academic research on Palestinians focuses on those living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, or the diaspora, the sizable number of Palestinians living within Israel rarely garners significant attention.

Displaced at Home gathers a group of Palestinian women scholars who present unflinching critiques of the complexities and challenges inherent in the lives of this understudied but important population. The essays engage topics ranging from internal refugees and historical memory to women's sexuality and the resistant possibilities of hip-hop culture. Unique in the collection is sustained attention to gender concerns, which have tended to be subordinated to questions of nationalism, statehood, and citizenship.

The collection presents on-the-ground examples of the changing political, social, and economic conditions of Palestinians in Israel, and examines how global, national, and local concerns intersect and shape their daily lives.

Sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies & the Anthropology Department at Columbia University.

A light lunch will be served prior to the talk from 12:00-12:30.

Friday, 3 February 2012, 12:30 PM
Robert F. Murphy/Morton H. Fried Lounge, Room 465 Schermerhorn Extension
Enter gates on 116 and Broadway or Amsterdam, New York, NY

Palestine & Law: The State Question

Part I: Panel Discussion

Part II: Q&A Session

This event inaugurates a new CPS series on "Palestine & Law." The aim of the series is to promote innovative academic thought on legal questions related to Palestine.

This first session brings together leading legal scholars Susan Akram, Jamil Dakwar and Nimer Sultany to address "The State Question." While taking account of recent developments at the United Nations, the discussion will range into wider issues connected with the history and current determinants of Palestinian state forms.

Future topics for CPS public events on "Palestine & Law" will include property issues, from possession to dispossession; the sphere of litigation; the legal status of the refugee; and regimes of imprisonment.

Please RSVP to palestine@columbia.edu. Preference is given to Columbia University students and faculty.

PANELISTS:

Susan Akram, Clinical Professor of Law, Boston University
Jamil Dakwar, International Human Rights Lawyer
Nimer Sultany, doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School
Moderated by Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University

Monday, 5 December 2011, 3:00 PM
Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room
74 Morningside Drive (enter through East Campus dormitory)

Debunking the Myth of Israeli Democracy

Jamal Zahalka, Member of the Israeli Knesset, will discuss the myth of Israeli democracy. Moderated by Professor Bashir Abu-Manneh.

Jamal Zahalka, has been a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, since 2003. He is a member of different committees in the Knesset that address education, culture, sports, local government and economic affairs. He is the head of the National Democratic Assembly, a party representing the Palestinians citizens of Israel. He holds a PhD in pharmaceutical studies from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Monday, 14 November 2011, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Columbia University, International Affairs Building
Altschul auditorium, Room 417
420 West 118 Street

Israeli Impunity and International Law: A Talk with Richard Falk

Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, will discuss the Israeli pattern of flagrant defiance of international law, as sustained by American geopolitical leverage inside the UN and beyond. This talk will be moderated by Bashir Abu-Manneh, Assistant Professor of Literature at Barnard College.

Sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies and the Middle East Institute

Thursday, 20 October 2011, 7:30 PM
Columbia University; 309 Havemeyer (enter gates on 116th street and Broadway)

America and Israel-Palestine: War and Peace

For more information, please visit our Featured Event page.

Injured Cities: Urban Afterlives

What enduring wounds does catastrophe leave on urban life, and how can they be mobilized and transformed in the aftermath of injury to enable the imagination of new modes of social life and to thwart impending forms of social death?

This conference, convened on the tenth anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, aims to explore the effects of catastrophe on cities and their inhabitants, to analyze the politics of shock and terror states use in response to their vulnerability, and to imagine more life-affirming modes of redress and re-invention.

New York City provides a significant and indeed singularly relevant locus for this event. A city of immigrants, many of whom have ties to other cities that have suffered catastrophe, New York's intellectuals and cultural producers, as well as its ordinary citizens, have a unique contribution to offer to the many urgent projects of reimagining cities around the world today.

The focal point of the conference will be the September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project of Columbia's Oral History Research Office, an oral history archive of 600 life stories of diverse New York City communities. The collection documents the multiple ways that "difference" - in the form of geography, cultural memory, ethnic identity, class, gender, generation, religious and political affiliation - affects how individuals are subject to and assign meaning to historical catastrophe, both immediately after the event and in the months and years following.

Speakers include Nina Bernstein, Teddy Cruz, Ann Jones, Dinh Q. Le, Shirin Neshat, Walid Ra'ad, Rebecca Solnit, Clive van den Berg, Eyal Weizman and several narrators from the 9/11 Oral History Project. Confirmed moderators include Gerry Albarelli, Carol Becker, Tina Campt, Saidiya Hartman, Anne McClintock, Rosalind Morris, Diana Taylor, and Mabel Wilson.

Sponsored by the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference (www.socialdifference.org). Co-sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies.

14-15 October 2011
For more information, please visit: http://socialdifference.org/injuredcities/

GAZA: ISRAEL'S WAR AND THE GOLDSTONE REPORT

Event Recording: Please click on image below

This panel is dedicated to examining the reality and consequences of Israel's war and siege of Gaza. What do we know about Gaza 2008-2009 today after several investigations by various human rights organizations? Is the head of the UN fact-finding mission Justice Richard Goldstone right in arguing (as he did recently) that a 'reconsideration' of his UN report, which found evidence of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity, is now in order?

Panelists:
Norman G. Finkelstein, author of This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion
Rashid Khalidi, author of The Iron Cage, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, and Co-Director of CPS
Peter Weiss, Vice President, Center for Constitutional Rights

2 May 2011, 7:30 PM ~ 10:00 PM
Room 417, Altschul Auditorium, International Affairs Building, Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, NY, NY 10027

A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle, Raja Shehadeh in Conversation with Rashid Khalidi

The quest for his great-uncle Najib Nassar, an Ottoman journalist - the details of his life, and the route of his great escape from occupied Palestine - consumed award-winning writer Raja Shehadeh for two years. As he traces Najib's footsteps, he discovers that today it would be impossible to flee the cage that Palestine has become. A Rift in Time is a family memoir written in luminescent prose, but it is also a reflection on how Palestine - in particular the disputed Jordan Rift Valley - has been transformed. Most of Palestine's history and that of its people is buried deep in the ground: whole villages have disappeared and names have been erased from the map. Yet by seeing the bigger picture of the landscape and the unending struggle for freedom as Shehadeh does, it is still possible to look towards a better future, free from Israeli or Ottoman oppression.

Raja Shehadeh is the author of When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, Strangers in the House, described by the Economist as "distinctive and truly impressive," and Palestinian Walks, for which he won the 2008 Orwell Prize. Shehadeh trained as a barrister in London and is a founder of the human rights organization Al-Haq. He lives in Ramallah, on the West Bank.

For more information and to read an excerpt of the novel, please visit: http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/rift-in-time/.

21 April 2011, 12:15 PM
Room 208, Knox Hall
606 West 122nd Street
Columbia University

MAPS & LEGENDS: EXPLORING THE CARTOGRAPHIC STATE OF PALESTINE

The fragmentation of Palestinian space and population results in a deeply wounded and torn collective archive. This workshop is a call for the re-unification and re-figuration of the Palestinian archive, specifically its cartographic content: the construction of a web-based participatory data-base of spatial information on Palestinian space.

A public visualization of a Palestinian spatial narrative on the history, current struggles, as well as utopian aspirations of the Palestinian people is crucial for empowering Palestinian social imaginaries. A democratic access to spatial data on Palestine is amongst the key requirements for an influential popular imagination of alternative spatial and political organization. An online public cartographic archive can provide the tools for developing such visions, and more importantly, enables their authors to communicate them globally. To begin this long-term endeavor, we will open the discussion by analyzing the potential role of (digital) cartography in the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Directs The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com). Her recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press 2008), A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007), and the 4th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2011). The Global City came out in a new fully updated edition in 2001. Her books are translated into twenty-one languages. She is currently working on When Territory Exits Existing Frameworks (Under contract with Harvard University Press). She contributes regularly to www.OpenDemocracy.net and www.HuffingtonPost.com.

Brian Boyd is Project Director of the Columbia Center for Archaeology and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1996. He has been working on, and directing, a number of archaeological projects in Palestine, Lebanon and Israel since 1988, and is currently co-directing a Columbia-Birzeit-Sorbonne interdisciplinary project (anthropology, archaeology, environment, oral histories, community anthropology) in the West Bank. He has published extensively on the prehistoric archaeology of the region, as well as on aspects of archaeological theory.

Nora Akawi (born Haifa, 1985) is an architect based in New York, currently completing her MSc. in Critical Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture, at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University. Her current research is on the political role of the (digital) collective archive in the visualization of the Palestinian spatial narrative and in imagining alternative spatial and political organization. Nora is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (B.Arch, 2009).

Elizabeth Angell is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.

15 April 2011, 1:00 PM
Room 208, Knox Hall
606 West 122nd Street
Columbia University

Ibrahim Abu-Lughod and the Engaged Intellectual: Resurrecting a Model

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the passing of Professor Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, the IALIIS announces the holding of a one-day conference at Birzeit University.

RSVP. The conference will take place at the Said Khoury Building of Development Studies, Birzeit University. For any inquiries, please send an email to ialiis@birzeit.edu.

12 April 2011, 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM

For more information, please download the following for SCHEDULE, SPEAKERS, & REGISTRATION INFORMATION.

Locating Tolerance: The Conflict over the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION: https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=48436

A branch of the Los Angeles based Museum of Tolerance is being built in the heart of Jerusalem on part of the site of the city's oldest Muslim cemetery. Legal suits, protests, claims and counter claims have ensued. What does it mean to build a museum borne of the memory of the Holocaust and designed to teach lessons about the importance of "tolerance" over a graveyard in the face of the protests of the descendants of the interred and, moreover, in a country in which it is prohibited to disturb Jewish graves?

On the one hand, the conference will consider questions particular to the case at hand: the nature of the ongoing contest over land and historical rights in Palestine and Israel. More specifically, the lawsuits and the political organizing against locating the Museum of Tolerance over the site of the Mamilla Cemetery puts in stark relief the hurdles Palestinians face in gaining recognition for claims to injury in the face of opponents whose own claim to moral authority derives in significant part from the history of the Holocaust. On the other hand, "tolerance" increasingly has emerged as a way of framing and legitimizing anti-Muslim sentiment and forms of politics. What insights might we gain from thinking through this particular instance of the limits and blind-spots of an ideology of "tolerance?"

Conference Speakers Include:

Wendy Brown, Heller Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
David T Goldberg, Director, University of California Humanities Research Institute & Professor of Comparative Literature, UCI
Rashid Khalidi, Co-Director Center for Palestine Studies & Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia U.
Saree Makdisi, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCLA
Eyal Weizman, Director of Centre of Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London

Sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Department of Anthropology, and the Middle East Institute.

Monday, 11 April 2011, 11:00 AM ~ 6:00 PM
Room 1501, International Affairs Building, Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, NY, NY 10027

FOR MORE INFORMATION, please visit our featured events page: Locating Tolerance: The Conflict over the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem.

'Events Are Continuous': 'Cast Lead' as Nakba Revisited

Even in the context of what Edward Said once called the Palestinian 'national inferno,' the 22-day war on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09 that Israel dubbed 'Cast Lead' produced arguably the most acute distillation of Palestinian existential vulnerability, collective and individual, since the Palestinian nakba (catastrophe, of dispossession in 1948.) This paper examines particular difficulties in Gazan narration of the war as a discrete event.

Partly based on recent research in Gaza around the second anniversary of the war, it examines how this most recent Palestinian experience of absolute withholding of agency, political or individual, can and has been integrated (or otherwise) into Gazan narratives of Palestinian self and nation - and whether the two are in any sense separable in Palestinian context. Taking its cue from Gazan reaction to the cartoonist Joe Sacco's research, in the midst of the second intifada, on Israeli massacres in Gaza in 1956 - 'events are continuous,' he is told, to explain difficulty in isolating 1956 from the present, and from the nakba understood as an ongoing whole - the paper asks how, how far, and for whom, 'Cast Lead' constitutes a caesura or otherwise in Palestinian narrative; and why so overwhelming an event might nonetheless be constitutively unsuited to any conventional narration as trauma, rather than, say, some version of the sublime.

Thomas JW Hill, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Committee on Global Thought and CPS Affiliate.

7 April 2011, 12:15 PM
Room 208, Knox Hall
606 West 122nd Street
Columbia University

Creating Proper Men: Masculinities, Embodiment & Agency in the West Bank

Maria Malmstrom, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS), New York University Visiting Scholar

In this talk, Dr. Malmstrom will discuss constructions of gender, embodiment and agency among male Hamas youths in the West Bank through the prism of violence. She will highlight the importance of analyzing the body in such processes - both as agential and as victimized. To be able to move away from the sensationalist Western media that often portray Middle Eastern Muslim men as 'violent', and as terrorists, we need to understand the motivations and the meanings of violence.

This talk will discuss constructions of masculinities in a complex interplay of violence, political Islam, suffering and loss. The method of analysis is to use a discourse-centered approach and to use experience-near ethnography that begins with men's own practices and attends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies are involved in this process, and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everyday lives. Thereby we are able to understand how men's realities and identities are interpreted, negotiated and constructed and how the body actively is involved in these processes. This approach is relevant since it is possible to analyze the singularity of experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties.

Maria Malmstrom is a Swedish anthropologist and her areas of interest are the MENA region, gender, body, sexuality, politics, violence, and security. She received her PhD from the School of Global Studies, Social Anthropology, University of Gothenburg. Her dissertation examined how female gender identity is continually created and re-created in Egypt through a number of daily practices, of which female circumcision is central. The study explored how the subject is made through the interplay of global hegemonic structures of power and the most intimate sphere, which has been exposed in the international arena. She is today involved in the inter-disciplinary research project "Hamas between Sharia rule and Demo-Islam." The study aims to investigate in what way Hamas will adopt to the new realities on the ground (together with Michael Schulz et al.). Additionally, Dr. Malmstrom is involved in ground research on sexual violence and armed conflict in a globalized world (together with Maria Stern and Maria Eriksson Baaz). Furthermore, she is a gender consultant (UNFPA and others), and member of several academic/policy networks, e.g. Think Tank for Arab Women.

Sponsored by the Columbia Law School's Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, Columbia's Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

6 April 2011, 12:00-1:10 PM
Jerome Greene Hall, Room 502
Columbia Law School (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)

MIRAL: Discussion with Director Julian Schnabel & Novelist Rula Jebreal

EVENT REGISTRATION: https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=48678

Moderated by Professors:

HAMID DABASHI, Professor of Iranian Studies & Comparative Literature, Columbia University HELGA TAWIL-SOURI, Professor of Media, Culture, & Communication, NYU

From Academy Award nominated director Julian Schnabel and based on the autobiographical novel of Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, Miral tells the story of three generations of Palestinian women as they navigate the complexities of life after the creation of the state of Israel. Shot in Jerusalem, the film charts decades of history, from the onset of Israel's occupation to the start of the "peace process".

Miral provides an unprecedented lens on Palestinian stories as told through Palestinian voices and experiences.

Schnabel and Jebreal will discuss the political, historical, and artistic context of the movie, including the difficulties of making a movie about Palestine for the mainstream American audience.

Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis.

This event is sponsored by The Center for Palestine Studies. Co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute and Columbia Film School Carla Kuhn Series.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, please visit our featured events page: MIRAL.

30 March 2011, 8:00 PM
417 Altschul Auditorium, International Affairs Building, Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, NY, NY 10027

Is There a Future for Jerusalem?

Event Recording: Please click on image below

The Holy City is the destination of people suffering from the Jerusalem Syndrome--those who believe that they are the Messiah. For most of humanity Jerusalem primarily is a metaphor: a utopian city that never existed or the site of redemption. "Next year in Jerusalem" is an expression of yearning for Jews. What is astonishing is the discovery this expression is incanted by Jews who are already in the Holy Land, indeed, living in the heart of the city, indicating that it is a yearning for spiritual salvation, not for territorial possession. But it is exactly the territorial possession of the city that is at the core of the current conflict.

This talk will address the actual urban space of the city, as opposed to its metaphorical meaning. It will examine how the claim of Unification of the City has turned out to be the arena of exclusivity, separation and conquest. A series of questions are raised: Is it possible to address the future of the city without addressing the whole constellation of issues surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict? What specificities does Jerusalem have which cannot be treated exclusively in terms of territoriality? The speaker will discuss the status of one city in the world today, whose recent history (embodying sacred and worldly attributes), carries a model for solving the problems of Jerusalem.

Dr. Salim Tamari is the Arcapita Visiting Professor at the Middle East Institute for Spring 2011 and CPS Affiliate. Professor Tamari is the Director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies and Professor of Sociology at Birzeit University in Ramallah. Dr. Tamari, who received his PhD in sociology from Manchester University, is one of Palestine's most distinguished scholars. His research draws heavily on archival materials and personal diaries to examine the social and political forces that shaped and re-shaped Palestine in the 20th century. His books include Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and Their Fate in the War, Palestinian Refugee Negotiations: From Madrid to Oslo II, and most recently, Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture, published in 2008 by the University of California Press. Dr. Tamari served on the refugee committee in the multilateral peace talks that followed the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference.

This event will be moderated by Professor Rashid Khalidi.

28 March 2011, 7:00 PM
Room 1501, International Affairs Building
420 West 118th Street, NY, NY 10027
Columbia University

REMEMBERING MAHMOUD DARWISH: A talk with Marcel Khalife

EVENT RECORDING: Please click on image below

Marcel Khalife will deliver a speech to pay tribute to the life and works of Mahmoud Darwish. In addition, he will perform a couple of his own compositions. Preceding Khalife's discussion, there will be Arabic and English readings of Darwish's poetry by OMAR KHALIFAH & TALA HADID.

Mahmoud Darwish was born on March 13, 1941 in Al Birweh, Palestine. Recognized as the Palestinian national poet and an icon, Darwish?s work embodies the Palestinian cause from the nakba until his passing in 2008. "Mahmoud Darwish is the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging, exquisitely tuned singer of images that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light into the world's whole heart. What he speaks has been embraced by readers around the world?his in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered." (Naomi Shihab Nye)

His earliest poetry used imagery that could relate intimately to Palestinian villagers. He wrote of olive groves and orchards, the rocks and plants, basil and thyme. In spite of an apparent simplicity, his short poems have several levels of meaning and express an array of emotions from anger, outrage and injustice to irony and a universal humanity. For Darwish the issue of Palestine became a prism for an internationalist feeling. His work embodies the Palestinian plight and also celebrated the beauty of Palestinian culture and identity.

Marcel Khalife is a distinguished composer, singer, and oud player that is best known for liberating the oud, an instrument integral to Arabic culture, from its traditionally strict techniques, expanding its musical possibilities, and contributing to its artistic and cultural revival. Over the decades, Khalife?s music and his own compositions have signified peace, reconciliation and breaking boundaries. He uses musical influences from both Christian and Muslim traditions to create a sound that is always innovative, inspiring, and beautiful. Many of his recordings utilize traditional instruments mixed with western mainstays depicting a sophisticated musical marriage of classical Arabic and jazz music. As a composer, he demonstrates a deep attachment to and a profound understanding of the power of the written word. Khalife has distinguished himself not only as a virtuosic oud player but also as a talented composer.

Khalife's educational and humanitarian contributions are as numerous as his creative endeavors. A tireless promoter of the arts and culture in the Arab world, he has been the recipient of many prominent awards and has performed in the most prestigious music venues in the world. In his quest to renew the vibrancy and significance of the Arabic song, he has based songs on the words of some of the great contemporary Arab poets, particularly the Palestinian poet and journalist who eloquently wrote of the exile, struggles, and hopes of the Palestinian people, Mahmoud Darwish.

This event is sponsored by the Middle East Institute.

SUGGESTED ENTRANCE FEE: $10.

REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT: https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=48076®ISTER_SESSION_NAME=23f2bb5c59da4b5cd824b8dfe98e3f90&state=init&

15 March 2011, 7:00 PM
Room 417, Altschul Auditorium, International Affairs Building
1190 Amsterdam Avenue (enter gates on 116th and Broadway), New York, Ny 10027

The 2011 Edward Said Memorial Lecture: Notes from Tahrir Square with Ahdaf Soueif

Egyptian novelist, translator, and critic Ahdaf Soueif, who spent much of the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square, will deliver the 2011 Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University.

For more information, please visit our featured page: The 2011 Edward Said Memorial Lecture.

"The 6-year war: Armed Struggle in Gaza (1967-73)"

Discussion with visiting Professor Jean-Pierre Filiu. Co-sponsored by the Alliance Program.

3 March 2011, 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Room 208, Knox Hall

Archives Lost and Found: Encounters with Palestinian History

Event Recording: Please click on image below

This talk will consider the complicated condition of archives of Palestinian history. Given the nature of Palestinian experience in both the 21st and 20th centuries, as well as the continued absence of an independent Palestinian state, it is no surprise that such archives are scattered, incomplete, and have sometimes been destroyed. Despite these conditions, a rich documentary record of Palestinian experience remains, in part because of the imperative for documentary retention felt by many Palestinians. This talk will explore the archival experience - as both a site of research and a feature of Palestinian life - amidst these countervailing pressures and outcomes.

Ilana Feldman is a CPS Affiliate and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917-67(Duke University Press, 2008) and In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care (Duke University, 2010; co-edited with Miriam Ticktin). Her current research traces the Palestinian experience in humanitarianism in the years since 1948, exploring both how this aid apparatus has shaped Palestinian social and political life and how the Palestinian experience has influenced the broader post-war humanitarian regime.

28 February 2011, 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Knox Hall, Room 207

Housing, Land, & Property Rights in East Jerusalem & the West Bank

Antonia Mulvey of the Norwegian Refugee Council in discussion with Professor Peter Rosenblum

The Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law invites you to a lunch time discussion with Professor Peter Rosenblum and Antonia Mulvey. Antonia is a British lawyer with extensive experience in criminal, human rights and refugee law. Currently, she is the international legal expert for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) based in New York. In March 2009, she established the first legal program for the NRC in East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza. The program focuses on representing Palestinians on housing, land and property cases within the Israeli legal system and it is currently the only international organization undertaking cases of this nature.

Antonia will be talking about the current situation regarding Palestinian housing, land and property issues in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Specifically she will highlight trends related to house demolition, eviction from homes, inability of Palestinians to access land and confiscation of land. She will be looking at the legal challenges faced by those bringing cases and for lawyers taking cases as well as highlighting some of the key issues of the complex legal system in which these cases are brought. She will also propose ways that could assist with tackling the current legal challenges.

7 February 2011, 12:10 - 1:10 PM<
Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Hall, Room 105

Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S-Arab Relations: 1820-2001

Ussama Makdisi, Rice University, is Arab American Educational Foundation Professor of History at Rice University. In April 2009 the Carnegie Corporation named Makdisi a 2009 Carnegie Scholar for his contributions to enriching the country's discourse on Islam. His previous book, Artillery of Heaven, won the 2009 John Hope Franklin Prize.

In this riveting account of U.S.-Arab relations, award-winning author Ussama Makdisi explores why Arabs once had a favorable view of America and why they no longer do. Firmly rejecting the spurious notion of a civilizational clash between Islam and the West, Makdisi instead demonstrates how an initial zealous American missionary crusade was transformed across the nineteenth-century into a leading American educational presence in the Arab world, and how the advent of the idea of Wilsonian self-determination, amidst wide-scale Arab emigration to the United States, further bolstered a positive, foundational Arab idea of America. However, a series of subsequent political turning points-beginning with the British and French colonial partition of the Arab world in 1920 and culminating in the U.S.-backed creation of Israel in 1948 at the expense of the Palestinians-systematically alienated Arabs from America. Drawing on both American and Arab sources, Makdisi brings to the fore for the first time a wide range of hitherto marginalized Arab perspectives on their multifaceted cultural and political encounters with America. Unearthing this neglected history puts current politics and Arab attitudes toward the United States in a crucial historical perspective. By tracing how American missionaries laid the basis for an initial Arab discovery of America, and then how later U.S. policy decisions fueled anti-Americanism, Makdisi tells a powerful historical tale brimming with contemporary relevance.

26 January 2011, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Room 1512, International Affairs Building
Register: https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=45829

Someone please call 911 - Israel's failure to protect Palestinians and their property

Moderated by Professor Katherine Franke, Professor of Law and CPS Affiliate, Columbia University.

Neta Patrick is an Israeli human rights lawyer who worked as the coordinator of the "rule of law" project in the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din. Yesh Din [Hebrew for - there is law] is a human rights organization working to achieve a long-term structural improvement in the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Since it was publicly announced two years ago, a declared policy called Price Tag is threatening Palestinian life and property in the Occupied West Bank. The policy, led by the extremist settler movement, is aimed to deter Israel's policy makers from evacuating illegal outposts by collecting a "price tag" of vandalism on Palestinian property for every such action. Thus, the mere talk of a settlement freeze results in cutting down olive trees, throwing stones and even setting fire to mosques.

The Israeli law enforcement authorities fail to fulfill their legal duty, according to both international and Israeli law, to protect the life and property of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank. The talk will review data gathered by the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din that reveals the consistent failure of the Israeli police to properly investigate these crimes.

25 January 2011, 12:30-2:oo PM
Knox Hall, Room 207

The Palestine Poster: A Pixel Is Worth A Thousand Verbs

To view the talk, please follow the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbSdF21WB-U

In the aftermath of the 1968 battle of Al-Karameh, the poster emerged as a new Palestinian national art form, one that now enjoys a place in Palestinian popular culture alongside poetry, music and film. Today Palestinian artists produce posters on a vast range of political and social issues, and organizations of every stripe routinely publish posters, host exhibits, and sponsor contests. The integration of the poster into Palestinian visual culture is now so complete that few realize how extraordinary this still-evolving genre actually is.

Simultaneously, over the past forty years artists from around the world acting in solidarity with Palestine, including many Israelis, have been creating posters with equal fervor. Although all the other major political poster traditions of the twentieth century have withered away, such as those of the Soviet Union and revolutionary Cuba, the Palestine poster genre is expanding, aided immeasurably by the Internet.

The Palestine poster's historical arc, from 1898 to the present, articulates a uniquely uncompromised narrative of modern Palestine. Considered as a whole, the genre has significant educational potential and is especially relevant to the U.S. discourse on the Palestinian-Zionist conflict.

Nearly 4,000 Palestine posters are now organized and freely available to the public through the Palestine Poster Project Archives. These posters from Palestinian nationalist, Arab-Muslim, international, and Zionist wellsprings constitute a wealth of original source material, most of which has been, until now, uncataloged, untranslated, and virtually inaccessible.

Dan Walsh, founder and archivist of the Palestine Poster Project Archives, will present on the implications of the Palestine poster for historians, educators, and advocates of public diplomacy. Walsh is expanding the contents and features of the PPPA as part of his Master's thesis project at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. This thesis project also includes a social studies curriculum that draws on the posters to support instruction. Dan Walsh is also a Center Affiliate of CPS and in conjunction with his presentation, the Center for Palestine Studies will premiere a new online exhibit that Walsh has curated, "One Archive - One Narrative," which features 100 iconic Palestine posters.

To learn more about the Palestine Poster Project Archives, please visit: http://www.palestineposterproject.org/

*This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.*

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130170157041648

29 November 2010. 4:00 - 6:00 PM
Room 404, International Affairs Building
420 West 118th Street
New York, NY 10027

Dying to Forget: US policy in Palestine/Israel 1948-1949

Brownbag Lecture with Irene Gendzier

22 November 2010
207 Knox Hall, 606 W. 122 Street, 12:30 - 2:00 PM

Palestinian Village Histories, Geographies of the Displaced by Rochelle A. Davis

To view the talk, please follow the links below:
Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk3EEDO6MJI
Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OPUXJYqjmM
Part III: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwzRUwYj5cM

The Center for Palestine Studies (CPS) at Columbia University invites you to the book launch of Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced and a discussion with author Rochelle A. Davis.

More than 120 village memorial books, about the over 400 Palestinian villages that were depopulated and largely destroyed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War have been published. Compiled as documentary histories and based on the accounts of those who remember their villages, they are presented as dossiers of evidence that these villages existed and were more than just "a place once on a map."

Based on her new book, Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced (Stanford University Press, 2010), Davis examines one facet of what it means to be a Palestinian refugee through how the villages, their histories, and the village books are part of people's lives today. A clear historiographical picture of pre-1948 village history has not yet developed, thus her talk focuses on the writing of history, the ways that peasant history is recorded in the absence of written sources, refugee understandings of home, the attraction of memory, and ways of commemorating the past in the present.

Rochelle A. Davis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

*This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.*

Monday, 15 November 2010, 12:00 - 2:00 PM
Knox Hall, Room 207.

Amira Hass and Gilbert Achcar: A Discussion on The Arabs and the Holocaust

To view the talk, please follow the links below:
Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JzRnV1SXTE

Israeli journalist Amira Hass and University of London professor Gilbert Achcar will discuss Achcar’s recently published book, The Arabs and the Holocaust.

9 November 2010
Room 1501, International Affairs Building, 6:00 PM

(Re)searching Palestine: Research Gaps and Horizons, Bir Zeit University

Professor Rashid Khalidi, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies and Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, will participate in a conference on (Re)searching Palestine: Research Gaps and Horizons organized by the Institute for Palestine Studies.

For coverage of the conference, please check this website regularly: http://jerusalemquarterly.org/IJSconf2010.aspx

For the conference program, including speakers and topics, please click here for English or here for Arabic.

October 30-31, West Bank.

Politics of GLBT Rights in Israel (and beyond): Between Queer Politics and Homonationalism

The Columbia Law School Center for Gender & Sexuality Law cordially invites you to join us for the Center's upcoming Colloquium with Aeyal Gross from Tel Aviv University, Faculty of Law. Professor Katherine Franke, Columbia Law School, will be the commentator. Hard copies of the paper are available outside Room 635 of Jerome Greene Hall, Columbia Law School. The paper (with more information about the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law) is also available at http://www.law.columbia.edu/center_program/gendersexuality/colloquium

18 October 2010, 4:20 PM
Case Lounge (Amsterdam Avenue and 116th Street, 7th floor)

Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat: "A Genuine End to Conflict: the Palestinian Perspective"

The Middle East Institute will host a talk by Maen Rashid Areikat, PLO Ambassador to the U.S., on the topic "A Genuine End to Conflict: the Palestinian Perspective."

18 October 2010, 6:00-8:00 PM
International Affairs Building, Room 1501, 420 West 118th Street

New York Premiere of Zindeeq, featuring director Michel Khleifi

As its inaugural event, the Center for Palestine Studies presents Zindeeq (2009), the latest feature film by groundbreaking Palestinian director Michel Khleifi. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the director and James Schamus, CEO of Focus Features and Professor of Film at Columbia University.

Thursday 7 October 2010, 7:30 PM
309 Havermeyer Hall
(CU ID required)

Israeli Policies in Jerusalem: The Case of the Mamilla Cemetery

Professor Rashid Khalidi and Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), will provide an important background on this groundbreaking case and address some of the legal strategies pursued. In addition, they will discuss Israeli policies in Jerusalem, using the case of the Mamilla cemetery as an example, and their impact on Palestinians.

14 April 2010, 7:30 PM
Room 501, Schermerhorn Building, Columbia University

My Jerusalem: Tense Politics of the Everyday with Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

By the Maps: Understanding Israel's Increasing Grip On Jerusalem, narrated by Yousef Munayyer, The Palestine Center

Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the author, most recently, of Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case Study* (2009). She is senior lecturer in both the Faculties of Law and Social Work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is Director of the Gender Studies Program at Mada al-Carmel, in Haifa. She has been a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and in 2008, she was awarded the Women's Rights Prize by the Gruber Foundation. She is a scholar, activist, and therapist concerned with violence, trauma, and abuse. She lives in Jerusalem.

10 February 2010, 6:00 PM
Lindsey Rogers Room, 7th floor, International Affairs Building, Columbia University

Other Events

From Hawai'i to Palestine: Settler Colonialism and the Politics of Occupation

Please join us for a lecture by J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology, Wesleyan University.

Thursday, April 4th, 2013 ~ 4:20PM
Jerome Greene Annex
410 West 117th Street
New York, NY 10027

Ignoring Borders: Waste Flows, Inner States and Environmental Sincerity

Please join us for the MENA Dissertation Workshop to hear our colleague, Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins' (Department of Anthropology) discussion on her dissertation chapter titled Ignoring Borders: Waste Flows, Inner States and Environmental Sincerity.

Professor Claudio Lomnitz will act as discussant. The chapter will be circulated in advance, and the abstract is included below. Please RSVP to sg2166@columbia.edu by 4/5 to receive a copy of the paper and so we might anticipate the number of attendees.

Lunch will be provided courtesy of the Middle East Institute.

Paper Abstract: In the West Bank after Oslo, eco-friendly waste management was tied to recognition of the Palestinian Authority's capacity for sovereign statehood. Foreign (non-Israeli) and Israeli attempts to locate "sincerely" environmentalist Palestinian governance were commonplace during planning, designing, construction and operation phases of sanitation projects of various kinds. A prevailing sense among Palestinian bureaucrats, engineers and experts who managed municipal waste that their intentions were being interpreted, on the one hand, and that their work was being evaluated for adherence to "environmental standards," on the other, was met with strategies for proving their own environmental sincerity. In this paper I analyze two of them: a) claims to be imitating nature by not seeing, knowing or recognizing the Green Line; b) displays of willingness to pay for sewage flows westward across the Green Line. The first of these entailed the demand to see "like the environment." The second, by contrast, demanded that the Green Line be recognized as a border between two equal states with equal environmental responsibilities. Rather than bursting into relief and eventual resolution, the tension between "seeing like the environment," thus not "seeing" political borders, and "seeing like a state" (Scott 1998), thereby prioritizing one's nation, was a perpetual, unsolved presence in their everyday work. What are the effects, I ask, of the imperative to address universalist standards of pollution prevention on enterprises aimed at securing recognition of the national capacity to self-govern? Keane observes that "sincere speech is that which is compelled by nothing that might lie 'outside' the speaker" (Keane 2007: 2014). Palestine's waste managers were sometimes expected to "see" like the inert materials of the environment, shedding culturally, economically or politically-informed (i.e. human) ways of being-in-the-world. But, produced by a linguistic ideology in which sincerity is a judgment of character, the purity of their interiority had to be recognized by the same narrow social conditions that precluded sincerity's possibility. How did Palestine's waste managers negotiate the demand, on the one hand, to prove sincerity originating in a self-contained human subject, and, on the other, to be something both more, and less, than human?

April 8th, 2013, 12-2P<
208 Knox Hall
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
Department of Anthropology

Benefit for the Children of al Nakbah featuring MARCEL KHALIFE

The LEAP Program invites you to a Benefit Dinner & Performance for the Children of al Nakbah featuring world-renowned artist:

MARCEL KHALIFE

MARCEL KHALIFE is a distinguished composer, singer, and oud player that is best known for liberating the oud, an instrument integral to Arabic culture, from its traditionally strict techniques, expanding its musical possibilities, and contributing to its artistic and cultural revival. Over the decades, Khalife's music and his own compositions have signified peace, reconciliation and breaking boundaries. He creates a sound that is always innovative, inspiring, and beautiful. Many of his recordings utilize traditional instruments mixed with western mainstays depicting a sophisticated musical marriage of classical Arabic and jazz music. As a composer, he demonstrates a deep attachment to and a profound understanding of the power of the written word. Khalife has distinguished himself not only as a virtuosuo oud player but also as a talented composer.

Khalife's educational and humanitarian contributions are as numerous as his creative endeavors. A tireless promoter of the arts and culture in the Arab world, he has been the recipient of many prominent awards and has performed in the most prestigious music venues in the world. In his quest to renew the vibrancy and significance of the Arabic song, he has based songs on the words of some of the great contemporary Arab poets, particularly the Palestinian poet and journalist who eloquently wrote of the exile, struggles, and hopes of the Palestinian people, Mahmoud Darwish.

All proceeds donated to the LEAP Program for Palestinian refugee youth in Lebanon. If you cannot attend, please consider making a generous tax-deductible donation to support the educational empowerment of Palestinian refugee youth in Lebanon (www.leap-program.org/donate).

To learn more about LEAP, please watch this video (http://youtu.be/OiXvRZT38Is).

Contact: info@leap-program.org, Website: www.leap-program.org

TICKETS:
+Section C: Individual $75 / Table of 10 $700
+Section B: Individual $150 / Table of 10 $1350
+Section A: Individual $250 / Table of 10 $2250
+Student tickets $50 (must show student ID)

For more information and tickets, please visit www.marcelkhalifeny.com

21 April 2013, 6PM
Dinner and Performance
Widdi Hall (5602 Sixth Avenue & 56th Street, Brooklyn, NY)

REPORTING APARTHEID: A Discussion with Chris Hedges and Jared Malsin

Building Solidarity across Black, Native American, and Palestinian Struggles

Here in the US, how can we connect the Palestinian resistance movements to those closer to home, namely, Black and indigenous struggles against structural oppression?

Do certain strategies for liberation cut across these different constituencies? Where does the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) fit in as a tactic?

How can we recognize what is distinct about these struggles, while making connections and acting in solidarity?

From the dispossession of Palestinians and First Nation Peoples to the political suppression and mass incarceration of African Americans in the United States, we live in an age of continuing colonization, segregation, and government-sanctioned brutality.

Please join us for an evening of discussion and live music as we learn from each other's histories of oppression and resistance.

This event is sponsored by Adalah NY and Scientific Soul Sessions.

Saturday, 16 March 2013, 6PM
St. Mary's Church 521 W. 126th Street

Launched in 2005 after over 170 Palestinian civil organizations issued a call for a campaign of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, an annual international series of events has been held in cities and campuses around the world. Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) seeks to penetrate the consciousness of those uninformed about the apartheid nature of Israel, as defined by international law, that functions as a system characterized by institutionalized and systematic racial and religious segregation. Join us for a discussion with Jared Malsin and Chris Hedges, who will examine the issue of Israel's deepening apartheid.

CHRIS HEDGES began his career reporting the war in El Salvador. Following six years in Latin America, he took time off to study Arabic and then went to Jerusalem and later Cairo. He spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as the bureau chief there for The New York Times. He left the Middle East in 1995 for Sarajevo to cover the war in Bosnia and later reported the war in Kosovo. Afterward, he joined the Times' investigative team and was based in Paris to cover al-Qaida. He left the Times after being issued a formal reprimand for denouncing the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. Hedges has written 12 books, including "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" (2003) which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. He is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University. He currently teaches inmates at a correctional facility in New Jersey. In addition to writing a weekly original column for Truthdig, he has written for Harper's Magazine, The New Statesman, The New York Review of Books, Adbusters, Granta, Foreign Affairs and other publications.

JARED MALSIN is a journalist who has reported from the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Nations, and the streets of New York City. Malsin spent two and a half years living in the West Bank working for the independent Palestinian news agency Ma'an, where he served as the agency's chief English editor. In January 2010, while returning from from Europe, he was questioned, detained for a week, and then deported from Israel's Ben Gurion Airport. In the last two years, he has extensively covered the Occupy movement in New York and the aftermath of the revolution in Egypt. He has contributed to TIME, VICE, Foreign Policy, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, and the East Village blog of The New York Times, among others.

15 March 2013, 7PM
Kimmel Center, NYU, Room 914

THE GAZA KITCHEN

The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey brings together traditional recipes from the Gaza Strip based on extensive interviews with home cooks, and uses profiles of these cooks as well as beautiful documentary photography to explore the history, economy and daily life of the territory.

Join us as one of the co-authors, noted blogger and journalist Laila El-Haddad (AKA Gaza Mom), discusses the book and the role of cooking and food for the people of Gaza.

For more information, please visit https://www.facebook.com/events/530437240311082/

Friday, 15 March 2013, 7PM
365 5th Ave., Rm. C197
New York, NY

Sarah Schulman to the NYC LGBT Community Center for Israel Apartheid Week

QUEERS AGAINST ISRAELI APARTHEID (QAIA) is proud to welcome Sarah Schulman with a reading from her new book, "Israel/Palestine and the Queer International." In her book, Schulman questions the contradiction between Israel's investment in presenting itself as gay friendly-financially sponsoring gay film festivals and parades-and its denial of the rights of Palestinians. At the same time, she talks with straight Palestinian activists about their position in relation to homosexuality and gay rights in Palestine and internationally (http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Palestine-Queer-International-Schulman/dp/0822353733).

This event is a huge victory for free speech and queer organizing, and we hope you'll come celebrate it with us. Beginning in March 2011, the NYC LGBT Center banned any discussion of Palestine, in response to pressure from wealthy supporters of Israel's anti-Palestinian policies.

In February 2013, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA) applied to the NYC LGBT Community Center for space for this reading. But in response to that denial and the two years history of censorship at the Center, the LGBT community mobilized in outrage, and overturned the ban.

From Palestinian Queers for BDS: 'As Palestinian queers, our struggle is not only against social injustice and our rights as a queer minority in Palestinian society, but rather, our main struggle is one against Israel's colonization, occupation and apartheid; a system that has oppressed us for the past 63 years. In the last years Israel has been leading an international campaign that tries to present Israel as the "only democracy" and the "gay haven" in the Middle East, while ironically portraying Palestinians, who suffer every single day from Israel's state racism and terrorism, as barbaric and homophobic.' (pqbds.com)

For more information, please visit QAIA-NYC: queersagainstisraeliapartheid.blogspot.com. This event is Free & open to the public.

Monday, March 11, 7PM
Location: NYC LGBT Community Center (208 West 13th St.)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/346534565451256/

Kent Klich's Images of Vacated Life in Gaza after 2008

Judith Butler, Columbia University English and Comparative Literature

This lecture will focus on images of vacated and suspended life in Gaza after the bombardment of 2008-2009 by Swedish photographer and video-maker, Kent Klich. These images of ordinary life in Gaza in the aftermath of the bombardment of 2008-2009 document vacated structures and suspended lives. They constitute the visual sequel to war photography, the landscape of architectural ruins of everyday life, uninhabited and uninhabitable. Abandoned and decimated structures still give a sense of vanished ways of life, and those still alive are endlessly waiting for their lives. The temporal and spatial conditions of living on with no life, dying without death, are explored through visual images that document the destruction that outlasts war-dispossession.

Following the lecture, Kent Klich will join the conversation with the audience.

Due to the popularity of this even, priority seating will be given to current students with Columbia University IDs. Overflow spaces are available in 114 and 115 Avery Hall.

Sponsored by Columbia University GSAPP: arch.columbia.edu

Wednesday, February 20, 2013, 6:30pm
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
1 Train to 116th Street

Some Thoughts Regarding the Erection of the Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind

What happens when an artist stops producing works and instead produces a museum? What happens when an artist stops producing museums and instead produces worlds? What happens when an artist stops producing worlds and instead produces a kind of consciousness that is itself capable of producing worlds? And what happens when these worlds become tired of producing only themselves, then decide to start producing humans and other forms of life?

Join us at e-flux for a symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Khalil Rabah: Pages 7, 8, 9,. Guests include: Khalil Rabah, Suad Amiry, Reem Fadda, Rasha Salti, Anton Vidokle and Brian Kuan Wood.

Khalil Rabah was born in 1961 in Jerusalem and studied architecture and fine arts at the University of Texas. Rabah is a co-founder of Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem in 1998 and of the Riwaq Biennial in 2005, and is also the founder of The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind. He is also a member since 2010 of the curriculum committee of Home Workspace Program, a pioneering educational initiative in Lebanon launched by Ashkal Alwan.

Suad Amiry is an architect and a writer. Born in Damascus to a Syrian mother and a Palestinian father from Jaffa, Amiry's family fled Jerusalem in 1948 to live in Amman. Amiry studied architecture at the American University of Beirut, University of Michigan in the US and received her Ph.d from Edinburgh University, Scotland. In 1991 Amiry founded the RIWAQ: Centre for architectural conservation, which protects, rehabilitate, and develops historic buildings and centers in rural Palestine where she was Director until 2011.

Reem Fadda is Associate Curator, Middle Eastern Art, Abu Dhabi Project, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. From 2005-07 Fadda was Director of the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art (PACA) and worked as Academic Director to the International Academy of Art - Palestine, which she helped found in 2006.

Rasha Salti is an independent curator and free-lance writer. She has been an international programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival since 2011. She lives in Beirut, Lebanon.

Anton Vidokle is founder of e-flux and co-editor of e-flux journal.

Brian Kuan Wood is co-editor of e-flux journal.

Fore more information, please visit: http://www.e-flux.com/program/some-thoughts-regarding-the-erection-of-the-palestinian-museum-of-natural-history-and-humankind/

Saturday, February 16, 3PM
e-flux
311 East Broadway
New York, NY 10002

Palestine Mini Film Festival Tuesdays, Documentaries from the Occupied Palestinian Territories

These four documentary films will expand our understanding of life as it is lived by the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Each of the four films provides the viewer with a glimpse into some of the challenges that 4.2 million Palestinians face today in Gaza and the West Bank, including the continuing blockade on most imports and exports in Gaza, the construction of the wall in the West Bank, settlement expansion and displacement, restrictions of movement and access, and frequent outbreaks of violence.

The films will illustrate, through personal accounts, how Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank experience life under occupation and how they manage to adapt and persevere despite the challenges to their daily lives.

Screening of Budrus, (3-5 pm, Hardin Room, 11th fl). Followed by discussion with Manager of Communications and Public Engagement of Just Vision, Nadav Greenberg.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013.

Screening of The Road to Silverstone, (3-5 pm, Boss Room, 8th fl). Followed by discussion with Director of UNRWA, New York, Mr. Richard Wright.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013.

Screening of Where Should the Birds Fly, (3-5 pm, Hardin Room, 11th fl). Followed by discussion with filmmaker Fida Qishta.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013.

Screening of Roadmap to Apartheid, (3-5 pm, Hardin Room, 11th fl). Followed by discussion with filmmaker Ana Nogueira (Q&A tentative).
Tuesday, February 5, 2013.

The event is kindly hosted by the United Methodist Women.

All screenings will take place at the UN Church Center.
777 UN Plaza, New York, NY 10017
First come, first served.

Edward Said's Music: a panel discussion

The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS) at Columbia University and The Cogut Center for the Humanities (CCH) at Brown University present

A panel discussion with Kinan Azmeh, Stathis Gourgouris, Ara Guzelimian, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, and Michael Steinberg on "Edward Said's Music."

This panel discussion is free. This event is part of a series of activities at Columbia University in 2013 remembering Edward W. Said in the 10th year anniversary of his passing.

Friday, February 1, 2013 - 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus Schermerhorn Hall, Room 501

URL: http://icls.columbia.edu/events/page/edward_saids_music

Remembering Edward W. Said: a conversation and performance with Daniel Barenboim and members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS) at Columbia University and The Cogut Center for the Humanities (CCH) at Brown University present:

"Remembering Edward W. Said: a conversation with Daniel Barenboim and Ara Guzelimian, and performance by members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra"

This event is the first in a series of activities at Columbia University in 2013 remembering Edward W. Said on the 10th anniversary of his passing. A 7pm conversation between Daniel Barenboim and Ara Guzelimian (Dean and Provost, The Juilliard School) will be followed by an 8pm performance by Daniel Barenboim and members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

PROGRAM:

7pm Remembering Edward W. Said
A conversation between Daniel Barenboim and Ara Guzelimian (Provost and Dean, The Julliard School)

8pm Daniel Barenboim and Members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra perform:

P. Boulez: Mmoriale
P. Boulez: Messagesquisse
K. Azmeh: Prayer, a tribute to Edward Said
F. Schubert: Piano Quintet in A major D.667, "The Trout"
Event URL: http://icls.columbia.edu/events/page/edward_saids_music

Tickets for the 7pm conversation and 8pm performance are available for purchase at the Miller Theatre Box Office or from the Miller Theatre website: http://www.millertheatre.com/Events/EventDetails.aspx?nid=1576

$25 general admission, $12 with student CUID (limit two tickets per student CUID)

Friday, February 1, 2013 - 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus Miller Theatre

Local and International Implications of the Criminalization of Islamic Charities, The Case of Zakat Committees in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

Islamic charities have been the target of various international counter-terrorism measures for more than a decade. Based on a detailed account of the recent history of Palestinian zakat committees, our panelists suggest that legal evidence against these institutions is generally weak. Rather, allegations of 'political affiliation' tend to serve as justification for political interventions in the Islamic charitable sector - with destructive results. In the West Bank and Gaza today, that sector continues to go through a contested process of institutional transformation with an uncertain future. A similar dilemma arises at the international level. Our panelists describe how the criminalization of zakat institutions has created legal risks for humanitarian organizations working with Islamic charities, casting a shadow of fear over relief work in conflict affected areas.

Emanuel Schaeublin, DPhil Programme in Anthropology at the University of Oxford (UK)
Kay Guinane, Program Manager, Charity and Security Network, Washington DC
Benoit Challand, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near East Studies, New York University

Free and Open to the Public. RSVP Required: RBInstitute@gc.cuny.edu.

Wednesday, 30 January ~ 6 - 8PM
THE RALPH BUNCHE INSTITUTE
City University of New York
Room C201, The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Ave. (at 34th Street
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/RalphBuncheInstitute/conferences

A WORLD I LOVED: THE STORY OF AN ARAB WOMAN

A World I Loved - The Story of an Arab Woman is a Narrative with Music, based on the memoir of Wadad Makdisi Cortas, an Arab woman who lived through and chronicled one of the most tumultuous periods in recent history.

Written by: Mariam C. Said and Vanessa Redgrave Director and Narrator: Vanessa Redgrave

Featuring Vanessa Redgrave, Najla Said and Nadim Sawalha, along with musicians Steven Bentley-Klein (violin), Sary Khalife (cello), Sofya Melikyan (piano), and The Spence Middle School Chorus.

Tickets: $30 Regular, $25 Seniors, $18 Students and Columbia Faculty and Staff NOTE: Tickets are already selling out - don't delay - purchase here: http://purchase.tickets.com/buy/TicketPurchase

A World I Loved is a one-of-a-kind theatrical event based on the memoir of Mariam Said's mother, Wadad Makdisi Cortas, an Arab woman who lived through and chronicled one of the most tumultuous periods in recent history.

Beginning in Lebanon in 1917 and spanning over half a century, through the creation of Israel to the Lebanese Civil War, A World I Loved interweaves Cortas' personal experiences as a student, teacher, and then principal of the Ahliah School for Girls in Beirut with the wider political and historical narrative of Lebanon throughout the 20th century.

A rich narrative combining music, storytelling, choral singing, and video projections, A World I Loved also includes appearances by two of Cortas's direct descendants: her daughter and co-author of the production, Mariam (widow of the Palestinian scholar and former Columbia University professor Edward Said) and her granddaughter, Najla Said. They are joined by Nadim Sawalha, along with musicians Steven Bentley-Klein (violin), Sary Khalife (cello), Sofya Melikyan (piano), and the Spence Middle School Chorus.

Wednesday, November 28, and Thursday, November 29, 8:00 PM
Miller Theater (2960 Broadway), Columbia University
Entrance at 116th and Broadway

Film Screening of 5 Broken Cameras & Discussion with Iyad Burnat

Come for a screening of 5 Broken Cameras, followed by a discussion with IYAD BURNAT, one of the leaders of the struggle against Israeli Occupation & the building of the apartheid wall in Bil'in, Palestine. The discussion with Iyad Burnat will touch on the stories and struggles of the village of Bil'in, as well as strategies for non-violent popular resistance. Iyad will show personal photos and videos of demonstrations and we will hear a first-hand account of his resistance to military occupation and oppression and the Palestinian people's struggle for freedom and dignity.

Iyad Burnat is head of the Bil'in Popular Committee and a leader of the village;s non-violent popular resistance movement. Since 2005, residents of Bil'in have held weekly demonstrations against the building of the Israeli separation wall through the community's agricultural lands, and the steady encroachment of illegal settlements. The demonstrators are joined by Israeli and international peace activists, and have maintained a commitment to non-violent methods of resistance in spite of armed, military opposition that has resulted in the death of some, and the injury of many.

Despite Israeli repression, Bil'in villagers continue nonviolent protests against the Wall. The legal proceedings managed to get the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice to order a re-routing of the wall section built on Bil'in land, which resulted in the villagers reclaiming 275 acres of the 600 acres Israel was planning on using to build the Wall-a minor triumph for the villagers.

These demonstrations are the subject of the recent award-winning documentary film 5 Broken Cameras, which was made by Iyad's brother, Emad Burnat. When his fourth son, Gibreel, is born, Emad gets his first camera. For more than five years, Emad films the struggle, which is lead by two of his best friends, alongside filming how Gibreel grows. Very soon it affects his family and his own life. Daily arrests and night raids scare his family; his friends, brothers and him as well are either shot or arrested. One Camera after another is shot at or smashed, each camera tells a part of his story.

Sponsored by: Hunter SJP, Columbia SJP, Brooklyn College SJP, John Jay SJP, New School SJP, Existence is Resistance.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012 ~ 6:30 PM (Doors open at 6PM)
Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, North Building - Lang Hall, 4th Floor
Enter on 68th & Lexington Avenue, Hunter West Building

MY SUMMER EXPERIENCE WORKING & LIVING IN THE REFUGEE-CAMPS OF LEBANON

Come Hear LEAP Volunteers Report-Back on Their Volunteer Experiences & How You Can Get Involved!

The LEAP Program and NYU SJP invite you to join LEAP volunteers for a report-back and informational session on their experiences volunteering in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon in the summer of 2012. This year, 55 volunteers participated in LEAP's Summer Help IN English (SHINE) Project both instructing English and leading recreational activities in four camps in Lebanon: Bourj el Barajneh and Shatila in Beirut, and Rashadieh and Bourj el Shamale in Tyre.

Come hear about their experiences working and living in the refugee camps, as well as learn more about the situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Learning for the Empowerment and Advancement of Palestinians (LEAP) is an educational empowerment program for Palestinian refugee-youth in Lebanon dedicated to nurturing the intellectual growth and creative curiosity of its students so they may become agents of change. LEAP provides educational projects and services to increase student access and opportunities. Over the past three years, LEAP has made a positive impact on over 1500 Palestinian refugee-students and over 90 volunteers.

Kindly note, handmade Palestinian embroidery and other merchandise from the camps will be available for purchase.

Learn more: www.leapsummerprogram.org ~ Contact: info@leapsummerprogram.org ~ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/453115011390785/

Tuesday, November 13 ~ 7:30 PM
NYU Kimmel Center, Room 808
60 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
(photo ID required)
Pizza & refreshments will be served!

The Holocaust and the Nakba: Traumatic Memories and (Bi)National Identities in Israel-Palestine

THE NEW SCHOOL HISTORY DEPARTMENT PRESENTS: AMOS GOLDBERG

The Jewish Holocaust and the Palestinian Nakba fundamentally shape two peoples' identities. Memories of each function as exclusionary "Myths of Origin," at once demanding acknowledgement by the other, while denying recognition of the other. Deeply polarizing, the Jewish and Palestinian national narratives become irreconcilable, inhibiting prospects for a political settlement.

Amos Goldberg will offer a framework - influenced by Arendt, Agamben, and LaCapra - for establishing an egalitarian public sphere for Jews and Palestinians which will enable both catastrophes to be told on shared ground.

Dr. Amos Goldberg is a senior lecturer of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of Trauma in the First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust (2012).

October 29, 2012, 6-8 PM
The New School, 80 5TH Ave, Room 529

Israeli-Palestinian Claims Tribunal: The Case of Sheik Jarrah

Please join us for a mock international tribunal, which will hear arguments on the application of principles of international humanitarian law to the property issues at the heart of the Sheikh Jarrah litigation. Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem, is an area of great historical and cultural significance, both to Palestinian and Jewish communities, and has been the site of a long-running litigation involving a wide range of international law issues. These include the status of the properties at issue under international law, the right of return of refugees to their homes in the State of Israel, and the fair and lawful resolution of international property law disputes. The purpose of this event will be to present these issues before a fair and impartial hypothetical international tribunal, which will resolve the issue based on principles of international humanitarian law.

Presenters:

Michael Mansfield QC (Palestinian side) is a British lawyer with an international reputation on human rights issues. He has represented defendants in criminal trials, appeals and inquiries in some of the most controversial legal cases of the past 45 years, particularly where issues of Civil Liberty have arisen.
Michael Sfard (Israeli side) is an Israeli lawyer specializing in international human rights law and the laws of war. He has served as counsel in numerous important cases on these topics in Israel.
Sami Ershied (Israeli side) is an Israeli Bar-qualified lawyer with a significant practice and expertise dealing with housing, land and property issues. He has extensive knowledge of the current legal situation in Jerusalem.
John Dugard (Chair of Tribunal) is a Professor of Law at the University of Leiden and the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He is internationally respected for his work on human rights in South Africa, and is a former special rapporteur for both the UN Commission on Human Rights and the International Law Commission.

Tuesday October 9 | 12:10 - 1:10pm
Jerome Greene Hall Room 107

Russell Tribunal on Palestine

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) will be holding its fourth and final session in New York City on Saturday, October 6 and Sunday, October 7. It will take place at the Great Hall, Cooper Union (7 East 7th Street, New York City).

The RToP is an International People's Tribunal created in response to the international community's inaction regarding Israel's recognized violations of international law. The Tribunal aims to bring attention to the complicity and responsibility of various national, international and corporate actors in the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the perpetuation of Israel's impunity under international law. Although the RToP has no legal status, like other Russell Tribunals on Vietnam, Chile and Iraq, its legitimacy comes from its universality and the strength that it draws from the will of citizens and the support of international personalities who advocate for an end to the Israeli occupation and Israel's denial of Palestinian rights.

Following the sessions in Barcelona (which focused on EU complicity), London (on Corporate Complicity) and Cape Town (on the crime of Apartheid), the New York Tribunal will go back to the root of the conflict and focus on UN and US responsibility in the denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination.

For more information, please visit the Russell Tribunal on Palestine website.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine will be live-streamed and recorded. You can watch it live on the Center for Palestine Studies website. Tune-in Oct. 6-7 from 10 AM - 5:30 PM to hear the live testimonies from expert witnesses and Jury responses:

LIVE VIDEO STREAM

Origins of Traditional Palestinian: Costume and Embroidery

Talk by Hanan Karaman Munayyer

Hanan K. Munayyer is a molecular biologist and worked for three decades in pharmaceutical research in NJ. She is president and co-founded, with her husband Farah, the Palestinian Heritage Foundation, 25 years ago, to preserve and exhibit their comprehensive collection of Palestinian costumes, jewelry and other artifacts, one of the largest in the world. She has researched for 25 years the origins of textile arts in the Arab world, and how it relates to Palestinian costume and embroidery and has lectured on the subject in numerous universities and museums. She has also designed and curated numerous exhibits of their Palestinian costume collection in museums. She is the author of the book, Traditional Palestinian Costume, which was awarded the Book of the Year for 2011 by ForeWord Reviews. Using museum photography of early embroideries from the Arab world and Europe, the lecture will focus on the origins of Palestinian costume and embroidery, including headdresses and jewelry, beginning from antiquity to the present. Special attention is given to patterns and specific styles of historical importance, and also the influence of Arab textile arts and costume on medieval European costume and embroidery, as specified in Western sources. High resolution photography of some of the embroideries will be included in the lecture.

Eugenia Paulicelli, Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Concentration in Fashion Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY, will offer comments and moderate.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012, 6.30-8.30 PM
Room C197, The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street
New York, NY 10016

Food and Fadwa

By Lameece Issaq and Jacob Kader
Directed by Shana Gold
Previews begin May 18th, Opens June 7th

Meet Fadwa Faranesh, an unmarried, 30- something Palestinian woman living in Bethlehem in the politically volatile West Bank. Known for her delectable cooking and deep-seated sense of duty to her family and aging father, our kitchen maven insists on continuing the preparations for the wedding of her younger sister, despite constraints of daily life under occupation. Politics blend with family tensions to create a sometimes humorous and sometimes heartbreaking meal. This new play melds the fight a Palestinian family wages to hold onto its traditional culture with its need to celebrate love, joy and hope.

Featuring Maha Chehalaoui, Nasser Faris, Lameece Issaq, Kathryn Kates, Arian Moayed, Heather Raffo, Haaz Sleinman. Scenic design by Andromache Chalfant, Costume design by Gabriel Berry, Lighting by Japhy Weidman, Sound design by Jane Shaw, Original music byJane Shaw, Amir Elsaffar and George Ziadeh, Stage management by Lindsey Turteltaub.

For more information and tickets, please visit http://noortheatre.org/

Runs May 18th-June 24th, at NYTW
79 East. 4th Street, New York, NY

The United States as a Dishonest Broker in the Middle East

Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies in the Department of History at Columbia University since 2003, where he also served as Director of the Middle East Institute, and was one of the founding co-Directors of the new Center for Palestine Studies. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, Georgetown University, and for 16 years at the University of Chicago. He is past President of the Middle East Studies Association; was an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the 1991-1993 Arab-Israeli peace negotiations; and is the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

Khalidi is the author of six books, including Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East (2009), The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006), and Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, reissued in 2010 with a new introduction, and has co-edited two other books. He has written over a hundred articles on aspects of Middle Eastern history. He is currently working on a book on United States policy and the Palestine question over the past 35 years.

Talk followed by a reception

RSVP by May 12th - Limited seats available. Phone: 577 7955 ext. 223, Mobile: 077 540 5500, nb2541@columbia.edu

Sunday, 13 May 2012, 6 PM
CUMERC, Jordan

Love Story, Palestine

This is a fiction based on the true story Occupation Layer: PALESTINE featuring members of Palestinian Dance Troupe El-Funoun from Ramallah.

In association with ROOT CULTURE in Kamakura, Japan. Dance by Miriam Parker, Saori Tsukada, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Ryuji Yamaguchi, Sari Husseini, Anas Abu Oun and Yoshiko Chuma Music by Sizzle Ohtaka, Aska Kaneko with Robert Black. Photography by Robert Flynt. Text excerpts from "Sayonara, Gangsters" by Genichiro Takahashi. Sound Design excerpts from "6 Seconds in Ramallah" by Koji Setoh 'Dabke' Choreography by El-Funoun Dance Troupe.

Conceptual Artist/Choreographer/Artistic Director of The School of Hard Knocks Yoshiko Chuma continues a lifetime obsession with danger in her new work, Love Story, Palestine. Intentionally confusing documentation with history, Chuma tasks El-Funoun members Sari Husseini and Ana Abu Oun and NYC-based talents Miriam Parker, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Saori Tsukada-three performers who have never been to Palestine-with recreating segments from her own documented works and experiences in Ramallah, Palestine. Chuma assembles a mosaic of images and interviews which pertain to pain and longing, as if framing theater with barbed wire.

Traditional dance is juxtaposed with contemporary movement, video projection and spoken text in a borderless environment constantly reshaped by sculptural objects. Yoshiko Chuma herself performs on the backdrop of Robert Flynt's photography.

To learn more about the production: http://occupationlayer.blogspot.com

We encourage you to make an advance reservation now as space is limited.

May 9-12, Wed - Fri, 7:30 PM; Sat, 2:30 & 7:30 PM
Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa | La MaMa Moves! Festival
66 East 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue and Bowery)
Admission: FREE
Advance tickets must be reserved by phone, in person or online.
Box Office: 212-475-7710
Online reservations: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/912803

READING: As Though She Were Sleeping, by Elias Khoury

As Though She Were Sleeping is an homage to dreaming, "the only way of escaping oppression, be it familial, religious, or political." Milia's response to her new husband and to the Middle East of 1947 is to close her eyes and float into parallel worlds where identities and faces shift, and where she can converse with the dead and foresee the future. As the novel progresses, Milia's dreams become more navigable than the strange and obstinate "reality" in which she finds herself, and the two worlds grow ever more entangled. This wondrous tapestry of love, faith, history, and vision breaks new literary ground.

Elias Khoury Born in Beirut in 1948, Elias Khoury is the author of eleven novels, four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. The publication of his first novel, On the Relations of the Circle (1975), entered him into the Beirut vanguard of modern Arabic literature, which was seeking to create new dimensions in the movement of modernism. Khoury's commitment to Palestinian human rights began when he visited a refugee camp in Jordan at age nineteen. Khoury has been an advocate ever since, devoting his energies to the Palestine Research Center in Beirut and speaking out in articles, essays, and through his fiction. Khoury is a Global Distinguished professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. In 1998, he was awarded the Palestine Prize for Gate of the Sun, and in 2000, the novel was named Le Monde Diplomatique's Book of the Year. Elias Khoury is a public intellectual, and a cultural activist who plays a major role in contemporary Arabic culture and in the defense of the liberty of expression and democracy.

Thursday, 10 May 2012, 7PM
Alwan for the Arts, 16 Beaver Street, New York
Doors open at 6:30 PM
$5 / free for Alwan members, students & seniors

Gazan Writers Salon II: From Memoir to Reportage and Back Again

ArteEast will present From Memoir to Reportage and Back Again: Gazan Writers Salon, to present contemporary writing from Gaza to New York's literary audiences. Through readings of both poetry and prose, the writers will offer a rare glimpse into the diverse emerging and established voices that make up the dynamic literary scene in this city.

Like Darwish's seminal poem Silence for Gaza, we see Palestinian writers of subsequent generations grapple with the personal and communal experiences of Gaza's history of occupation, blockade and war.

From Memoir to Reportage and Back Again: Gazan Writers Salon is presented in collaboration with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

Participants:
Fatenah al Ghorrah, author of five books of poetry, The Sea is Still Behind Us (Gaza, 2002) and A Very Disturbing Woman Woman (Egypt, 2003);
Adania Shibli, co-editor of the online forum "Narrating Gaza," who will reflect on multi-genre writings from the forum that explore the repercussions of the Gaza War;
Soumaya Al Sousi, poet has produced four poetry collections of her poetry, including The First Sip of the Sea's Chest (1998), Doors (2003), Lonely Alone (2005), and Idea, Void, White in a joint collection with the poet Hala El Sharouf (published by Dar Al-Adab, Beirut, 2005).

ArteEast will present two public programs of the "Gazan Writers Salon" in conjunction with the publication of For Lives Undone: Gaza Summons Its Writers to Speak (Min Hutam al-Hayah: Ghazzah Tastantiq Kuttabaha), the Spring 2012 issue of Shahadat, our popular online literary publication.

This two-part series of literary readings and discussions will present Somaya Al Sousi, Fatena al Ghorrah and Adania Shibli, a dynamic group of Palestinian writers who will showcase Gazan literature to literary and academic audiences in New York.

Palestine has long been a center of literary and cultural production in the Arab world, with individual voices like Mahmoud Darwish's setting a path for the rich contemporary scene exemplified by the Palestine Festival of Literature which is being held in Gaza in May in its fifth edition. ArteEast's "Gazan Writers Salon" Spring 2012 public programs mark the robust cultural production that has emerged from this city's traumatic history and allows audiences to discover observations and documentation of Gaza and Palestine today.

This program has been made possible with generous support from the A.M. Qattan Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.

25 April 2012, 7PM
Nuyorican Poets Cafe
236 E. 3rd St., New York, NY 10009

GAZA, Three Years Later, The Bombings Continue

Considering the current bombing of Gaza and looking back at Operation Cast Lead, Dr. Mads Gilbert will address the following topics:

Is there a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and how is the international community complicit? Was there, in fact, a breach of international humanitarian law and human right violations during Operation Cast Lead? With the use of US manufactured weapons being used on civilians, what is the role of the US and the responsibility of Americans in particular?

Come hear Dr. Mads Gilbert's eye-witness account treating patients in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, as one of the only two international doctors allowed in. He is also the author of the recently published book "Eyes in Gaza." Also, come hear about the conditions of Gaza three years after Operation Cast Lead.

Dr. Mads Gilbert, internationally acclaimed Doctor, Head of the Department of Emergency at the University of North Norway, Professor, and local politician will describe his experiences in Gaza during "Operation Cast Lead." During the Israeli offensive against the people of Gaza, Dr. Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse were the only two foreign doctors allowed into the region, spending days and nights at the busy and over-crowded Al-Shifaa Hospital in a region forbidden to the rest of the world. With a complete blockade on Gaza, including medical aid and media, Dr. Mads Gilbert became a common face, keeping the world informed of the conditions in Gaza. He has appeared on BBC, CNN, Democracy Now, and more.

Sponsored by the Arab Student Association at SIPA, the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund (www.chomskyfund.org), & Hunter Students for Justice in Palestine (www.sjphunter.com)

Co-sponsored by Al Awda- NY, NYU Students for Justice in Palestine (www.nyusjp.wordpress.com), Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (www.Columbiasjp.org), and John Jay Students for Justice in Palestine.

Tuesday, 17 April 2012 ~ 8PM
Columbia University, Room 417, 420 West 118th Street, New York

Nathalie Handal's Poet in Andalucia

You are invited to Nathalie Handal's book party for Poet in Andalucia.

Thursday, 12 April 2012
6:30-10:30pm / 6:30-8:30 Wine and Tapas
Black Door: 127 W. 26th St., New York, NY 10001

BUDRUS, Screening & Discussion with Director Julia Bacha

Come to the screening of this important documentary following by a special Q&A conversation with award-winning director Julia Bacha.

Budrus tells the story of a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites members of all factions along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel's Separation Barrier. Success looks improbable until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women's contingent that quickly moves to the front lines.

Winner of multiple prizes at top international film festivals, including Tribeca, Berlin and San Francisco, Budrus is produced by Just Vision, an award-winning team of Israeli, Palestinian, North and South American journalists, filmmakers and human rights advocates dedicated to increasing the power, legitimacy and exposure of Palestinians and Israelis working nonviolently to resolve the conflict and end the occupation.

Tuesday, 3 April 2012, 7:15 PM
Room 501, Schermerhorn Building, Columbia University
Enter gates on 116 and Broadway or Amsterdam

Feminist Lawyering in Palestine: Notes from the Field

Katherine Franke, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law

Professor Katherine Franke just returned from a week of working with women lawyers in the West Bank, helping them build a Women's Committee within the Palestinian Bar Association. Come hear her talk about what women in Palestine feel are the most pressing Gender Justice issues, how they plan to go about addressing them, and what it means to be a feminist in the West Bank.

Wednesday, March 28 2012, 12-1:15 PM
Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Hall, Room 546
435 W. 116th Street (at Amsterdam Ave.)
Lunch will be served

Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement
with Wendy Pearlman

Why do some national movements use violent protest and others nonviolent protests? Wendy Pearlman shows that much of the answer lies within the movement itself. This book offers fresh insight into the dynamics of conflict and mobilization. For more information, please visit: http://neareaststudies.as.nyu.edu/object/kc.events.pearlman.

Thursday, 8 March 2012, 5-6:30 PM
Hagop Kevorkian Center
50 Washington Square South (enter at 255 Sullivan Street)

Health at the Borderlines

Forum for Global Health and Human Rights presents "Health at the Borderlines," an event discussing the implications for health of geopolitical, social, and physical borders at the US/Arizona and Israel/Palestine borders.

Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health. He worked as the Public Health physician in the Galilee for many years and founded the Galilee Society, the largest Palestinian NGO in Israel, which provides health services to this underserved community within Israel.
Jared Lunkenheimer is a medical student at the University of Rochester and has researched the health status of people entering the United States through Arizona with the group No More Deaths (http://www.nomoredeaths.org/), an organization committed to human rights at the US/Mexico border.

Friday 16 March 2012, 1 PM, Hammer 301
Columbia University

The Politics of Dispossession

9th Annual Edward W. Said '57 Memorial Lecture

Arundhati Roy will deliver this year's Edward W. Said '57 Memorial Lecture. Her lecture is entitled "The Politics of Dispossession" and it will take place on March 5th at 5PM in McCosh 50 at Princeton University.

Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist and activist who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things. Since winning the Booker Prize, most of her writing has concentrated on issues of social justice. She is a critic of neo-imperialism and a leader of the anti-globalization movement. She also has been a sharp critic of India's nuclear policies. In May 2004, she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for her work on nonviolence and social campaigns and, in November 2011, she was the recipient of the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing. Her many books include The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002), War Talk (2003), An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2004), Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy (2009), and, most recently, Walking with the Comrades (2011).

This event is sponsored by the Edward W. Said '57 Memorial Lecture Fund, the Princeton Committee on Palestine, the Department of English, the Princeton Institute for for International and Regional Studies, the Council of the Humanities, and the Program in South Asian Studies.

Monday, 5 March 2012, 5 PM
Princeton University, McCosh 50

OLIVES ON THE TABLE: Tasting and Talking Organic Fair Trade Food in Palestine

You are cordially invited to an evening of tasting and talking about organic fair trade Palestinian olive oil, olives, za'atar (wild thyme), olive tapenade, sun-dried tomatoes and tahini. Vivien Sansour of Canaan Fair Trade (based in Jenin, Palestine) will present photography and stories from her work with organic fair trade olive farmers in Palestine. Free Palestinian food will also be served.

At the end of the night, we will be giving away a selection of Canaaan Fair Trade products (including bottles of olive oil, olives, za'atar and tahini) to a few lucky participants by lottery.

The event will close with a performance by the Columbia University Dabkeh Troupe.

Canaan Fair Trade: www.canaanfairtrade.com/

Olives on the Table is FREE and OPEN to the public. Co-Sponsors: Students for Justice in Palestine, Lucha, Muslim Students Association, Arab Students Association

Tuesday, 6 December 2011, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Columbia Law School
435 West 116th Street & Amsterdam
Case Lounge, Room 707

A Caged Bird's Song: Education Under Israeli Apartheid

As part of Right to Education Week, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine will be screening two brief documentary films, "A Caged Bird's Song," which documents the effects of checkpoints on the daily lives of students and school staff in the West Bank in Palestine, and "Two Schools in Nablus: Learning to Die."

The screenings will be followed by a teach-in led by Dina Zbidat on issues related to educational access and academic freedom for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Dina Zbidat is an MA Anthropology student at Columbia. She is Palestinian, from the town of Sakhnin in the north of Israel, and before coming to Columbia she studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where she was a member of the Arab Students' Union.

Wednesday, 7 December 2011, 8 PM
417 Mathematics Building, Columbia University

Performing Palestine in Contemporary France

For the past forty years, many French activists, artists, musicians, and writers have given voice to the Palestinian cause. Focusing on Franco-Maghrebi and Beur/banlieue culture, Olivia Harrison will chart the history and forms of this transnational affiliation. Olivia C. Harrison is Assistant Professor of French at the University of Southern California.

Monday, 5 December 2011, 6 PM
Maison Francaise, 2nd Floor, Buell Hall

MESA 2011 Program

To view the full Program and to Register, please follow the link: http://www.mesa.arizona.edu/annual-meeting/index.html

Palestine-related sessions:
I. Rethinking Palestine/Israel Through the Arts
II. Mandate Palestine: Memory, Media, and Medicine
III. The "Humanitarian" Present in Israel/Palestine: Forensic Architecture, Estrangement and Lawfare
IV. Palestine Now: Solidarity and Self Determination in the Post-Oslo Context
V. Non-state Actors in Israel-Palestine
VI. The Politics of Archiving in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Palestine
VII. Anthropology of the Middle East: A New Millennium

December 1-4, 2011
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, DC

Feminist Scholarship Inside Palestine

What are the politics of knowledge and the state of women's education in Palestine? How do feminists within and outside of Palestine approach issues of social justice and human rights? How does gender factor into analyses of the politics and security of the Middle East?

Join a group of noted scholars from around the nation for a discussion of these timely issues, including Chandra Mohanty (Women's and Gender Studies, Syracuse), Beverley Guy-Sheftall (Women's Studies, Spelman College), Barbara Ransby (Gender and Women's Studies, University of Illinois, Chicago) and Moderator Premilla Nadasen (History, Queens College, Resident Mellon Fellow, The Center for the Humanities, The Graduate Center, CUNY). Co-sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Seminar.

Monday, 28 November 2011, 7:00 PM | Martin E. Segal Theatre
365 Fifth Ave (between 34th and 35th Sts)

The Politics of Human Rights in International Conflict: The Palestinian-Israeli Case Study

The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies proudly invites Dr. Gerald Steinberg to Columbia to discuss "The Politics of Human Rights in International Conflict: The Palestinian/Israeli Case Study".

Abstract: Normative frameworks focusing on human rights and international law have become highly influential in post-Cold War international relations. The institutions perceived as promoting and assessing the implementation of these norms, such as the UN Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court and conflict-specific tribunals, as well as numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have become important international actors. Journalists, pundits, political leaders, and academic researchers often repeat the activities and judgments of NGOs, in particular, which are seen as possessing technical expertise and moral objectives goals, untainted by partisan politics. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Federation of Human Rights, have formed powerful transnational advocacy networks. Through the "halo effect", their pronouncements are protected from independent evaluation, in contrast to government officials, politicians, military officials and other actors. As result, there little effort is made to examine these claims for ideological bias, double standards, methodological defects, and false claims. This greatly enhances the political impact of these groups.

Israel has been a central focus of such reports and activity, from the 2001 Durban NGO Forum through the UN Goldstone Commission on the Gaza war, and the 2010 flotilla incident. The intense criticism has impacted significantly on Israel's military strategy, contributed to diplomatic isolation, and generated a major internal political debate. By examining the case study involving Israel, the wider implications of this form of soft power and the impact of the human rights advocacy network in other asymmetric conflict situations can be considered.

Biography: Gerald Steinberg is professor of political science at Bar Ilan University; founder of the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation, and president of NGO Monitor, a non-governmental research institute. He specializes in international relations, Middle East politics, negotiations and diplomacy, nuclear proliferation, and "soft power", particularly regarding political advocacy NGOs. He has worked with a number of international organizations (NATO, UN University, OSCE, SIPRI); publishes opinion articles in the Jerusalem Post, the Wall St. Journal, the International Herald Tribune, the Age (Australia) and elsewhere, and is a commentator for the BBC, NPR, and CBC. Publications include The Politics of NGOs, Human Rights and the Arab-Israel Conflict, The UN Goldstone Report Reconsidered, The Centrality of Confidence Building Measures - Lessons from the Middle East, and Examining Israel's NPT Exceptionality.

Thursday, 10 November 2011, 12:15 - 2:00 PM
Columbia University, International Affairs Building, Room 707
Contact: For further information regarding this event, please contact Aaron Pangburn by sending email to ajp2175@columbia.edu.

STRANGERS AS ENEMIES: Walls all over the World, and How to Tear them Down, A lecture by Etienne Balibar

Borders isolate, but they also link people. Throughout history, they have been complex, mobile, porous, and conflictual. They retained an essential correlation to the figures of sovereignty and identity. In a "globalized" world, which is also increasingly diasporic and nomadic, they could become privileged sites of democratization and the renovation of politics. We observe, almost everywhere, just the opposite: walls, fences, barriers - be they material or virtual, inside and around territories - are being erected and violently fortified, killing and harming citizens and non-citizens, without producing protection or security, feeding xenophobia and anxiety. The lecture will describe the various forms of this "ghettoization" of the political space, discuss its meaning, and tentatively address the political alternatives it calls for.

Etienne Balibar is Professor Emeritus of moral and political philosophy at Universite de Paris X - Nanterre and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. He has published widely in the area of Marxist philosophy and moral and political philosophy in general. His many works include Lire le Capital (with Louis Althusser, Pierre Macherey, Jacques Ranciere, Roger Establet, and F. Maspero) (1965); Spinoza et la politique (1985); Nous, citoyens d'Europe? Les frontieres, l'Etat, le peuple (2001); Politics and the Other Scene (2002); L'Europe, l'Amerique, la Guerre. Reflexions sur la mediationeuropeenne (2003); Europe, Constitution, Frontiere (2005). His seminar at Columbia in Fall 2011 is entitled "Human Rights and the Institution of the Citizen."

For more information on upcoming ICLS events, please visit icls.columbia.edu.

Thursday, 3 November 2011, 6:10 PM
Columbia University, 754 Schermerhorn

FROM PALESTINE TO ISRAEL: A PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD OF DESTRUCTION & STATE FORMATION 1947-50

The Mosaic Rooms are pleased to present this astonishing photographic exhibition curated by acclaimed visual theorist and curator Ariella Azoulay. The exhibition documents a critical four year period in the history of Palestine/Israel, 1947-1950 and features over 200 photographs from the Israeli State archive, many of which have never been seen outside of Israel. This collection offers further insight into the first years of the Israeli state and its relationship with the remaining Palestinians.

The images are accompanied by in depth textual analysis. At times referencing the official descriptions issued for the photographs in the state archives, the images are re-contextualised based on Azoulay's extensive research into the period. Often providing contrasting or probing interpretations, this body of work presents a record of the period previously ignored or only partially acknowledged by the West. It also reveals the power of documentary photography and its associated narrative in the (mis)representation of historical events and in the creation of political entities

For more information, please visit: http://www.mosaicrooms.org/from-palestine-to-israel/

4 November 2011 - 25 November 2011
To view the exhibit brochure, please visit: http://www.mosaicrooms.org/wp-content/uploads/Ariella-flyer-web.pdf

Second Annual Tree of Life Conference on Israel and Palestine

The Tree of Life is a Sacred Symbol for many cultures. It reminds us that all of creation is deeply interrelated and interconnected. World peace and harmony depend on our realization of this truth. This is especially critical in the Holy Land where so many faith traditions share that sacred place.

For more information and to register please see: http://nyc.tolef.org/

Special Focus- Journalism: How Can We Know the Truth?.

Saturday, 29 October 2011
2504 Broadway at 93rd Street New York City
The Home of: Advent Lutheran Church & Broadway UCC

SONGS FOR FREEDOM: A Benefit for the Freedom Theatre of Jenin

The New York Theatre Workshop, The American Friends of The Freedom Theatre, and Joe's Pub at The Public Theater present:

SONGS FOR FREEDOM: A Benefit for the Freedom Theatre of Jenin. Hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner. Directed by Jo Bonney. Please join us for a celebratory evening of song, video, and performance to benefit this invaluable cultural beacon in the Middle East, featuring performances by such renowned artists as Academy Award-winner David Byrne, Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks, Grammy-winners Aimee Mann and Angelique Kidjo, TV & Broadway star Audra McDonald, Palestinian hip-hop group DAM, as well as a special performance by the acting company of The Freedom Theatre, among others.

TWO EASY WAYS TO PURCHASE TICKETS: (1) ONLINE: Visit http://tickets.joespub.com/production/?perf=16600, (2) IN PERSON: Visit the Public Theater Box Office @ 425 Lafayette St. (Hours: Tues-Sat, 1-7:30pm; Sun & Mon, 1-6pm)

30 October 2011, 7:00 PM, Joe's Pub
Tickets: $100

Forum with Phyllis Bennis, Arab Spring, Endless Wars: What's Next for U.S. Policy?

Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies, directs the New Internationalism Project at IPS. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. In 2001 she helped found the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. She works closely with the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, co-chairs the UN-based International Coordinating Network on Palestine, and since 2002 has played an active role in the growing global peace movement. She continues to serve as an adviser to several top UN officials on Middle East and UN democratization issues. Questions and discussion will follow the presentation.

Wednesday, 26 October 2011, 7:30 PM
Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, 53 Prospect Park West (at 2nd St), Park Slope
Trains: 2/3 to Grand Army Plaza; F/G to Seventh Ave (at 9th St); B/Q to Seventh Ave (at Flatbush)
Admission Free, Donations Accepted
Sponsor: Brooklyn For Peace
Questions? Call 718-624-5921 or e-mail bfp@brooklynpeace.org

Struggling for Legal, Civil, & Human Rights: Bedouin Citizens of Israel in the Negev/Naqab

The Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel are among the indigenous Palestinian Arabs who remained on their lands (in the Naqab (Negev)) after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The Bedouin, who number 200,000 and 30% of the population in the Naqab, have lived on their ancestral lands for hundreds of years practicing a traditional lifestyle based on agriculture and the raising of livestock. They are demanding recognition of their land ownership rights, claiming less than 5% of the total land of the Naqab, as well as the right to pursue and preserve their unique culture. However, the Bedouin have historically been denied these rights and nearly 70,000 live in 35 "unrecognized villages" which pre-date the establishment of the State of Israel but where they are denied basic services including water, electricity, health and education. As a result, the Arab Bedouin community has the worst health and socio-economic outcomes in the country; Bedouin women are particularly disadvantaged by the lack of government services, and in the unrecognized villages 80% of women are illiterate and 90% are unemployed.

The speakers in the panel have been actively involved in promoting and protecting the rights of the Arab Bedouin to their ancestral land and their basic human rights through the various channels of law, advocacy and local empowerment. Panelists:

Rawia Abu-Rabia
Director, Bedouin Rights ProgramAssociation for Civil Rights in Israel

Dr. Thabet Abu Ras
Director, Negev Project, Adalah

Hanan Alsaneh
Director of Education and Community Development, Sidreh Association

Michal Rotem
Program Coordinator, Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality in Israel

27 October 2011 | 6:30 - 8:00 PM | Jerome Greene Hall 103

Is Israel an Apartheid State?: A Talk by Jeff Halper

Jeff Halper, Israeli anthropologist and founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions ICHAD), will deliver a talk on the nature of the Israeli apartheid regime and share his latest research on the Israeli weapons industry.

Thursday, 27 October 2011, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Columbia University, Hamilton, Room 517

Facts on the Ground - Israel/Palestine Exhibit

Daniel Cooney Fine Art is proud to announce the gallery's second solo exhibition of photographs by the collaborative team Sasha Bezzubov & Jessica Sucher. Facts on the Ground is a series of large-scale color and black and white photographs made in Israel/Palestine in 2010. The photographs reveal the enduring ways that Israeli history and current policies of occupation have transformed the land.

Facts on the Ground consists of three types of intersecting landscapes: photographs of the ruins of Palestinian villages in Israel that were destroyed by the Israeli military in 1948 during the founding of the state; olive trees once farmed by Palestinians, but now forcibly abandoned as a result of Israeli policies; and Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. The title of the exhibition is a phrase used to refer to this illegal construction of Israeli homes, one of the major obstacles to peace in Israel/ Palestine. As art critic and historian Lucy R. Lippard writes, "The photographers' familiarity with disaster and their empathy with its victims have helped them create these striking images. They have been able to "read" these landscapes and subtly convey their history to those of us who will never experience it."

Sasha Bezzubov and Jessica Sucher have been collaborating since 2002. In 2006, they received a Fulbright Scholarship for The Searchers, a collection of projects about Western spiritual tourism in India. Their work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Bezzubov received his MFA from the Yale University School of Art, and his monograph Wildfire was published by Nazraeli Press. His work is in the collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art and numerous private collections.

In conjunction with Facts on the Ground, Daniel Cooney Fine Art will be hosting a series of discussions led by artists, activists, filmmakers, and historians working towards peace and reconciliation in Israel/Palestine:

Thursday, 6 October 2011, 6 PM - 7 PM - Nadav Greenberg of Just Vision
On Trees Nadav Greenberg works with Just Vision, a nonprofit organization that generates awareness and support for Palestinians and Israelis working nonviolently to resolve the conflict and end the occupation. Nadav will screen selections from the documentary film Budrus, produced by Just Vision and directed by Julia Bacha. Budrus examines on West Bank town's reaction to Israel's construction of the security barrier and the loss of 300 acres of land and 3, 000 olive trees.

Saturday, October 15, 3 PM - 4 PM - Sasha Bezzubov + Jessica Sucher
Artist Talk, Facts on the Ground will be accompanied by a full color catalog, with introduction by Lucy R. Lippard.

8 September - 22 October 2011
Opening Reception: Thursday, 8 September 2011, 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 West 25th Street, #506
New York, NY 10001
http://www.danielcooneyfineart.com

PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD? IMPLICATIONS OF A UN RESOLUTION

Panelists Include:

Alvaro de Soto is renowned for his career as an international mediator. Mr. de Soto formerly worked with UNSCO as Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (2005-2007), as well as many years as a Peruvian diplomat.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University, whose academic work has focused on Palestinian, Jordanian, and Israeli nationalism.

Dov Waxman is Associate Professor of political science at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He specializes in International Relations and Middle East politics, especially concerning Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Thomas G. Weiss (Moderator) is a Professor of Political Science at The CUNY Graduate Center and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, where he is co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project.

Presented by: Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC) and Co-sponsored with Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 6:00-7:30pm
The Graduate Center, CUNY: Room 9206-07
365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street
New York, NY 10016
Directions: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/memeac

THEORY-ART-ACTION: ON BINATIONALISM AND OTHER SPECTERS

Three events presented by the School of the Arts and the Heyman Center for the Humanities

I.Screening of *Local Angel: Theological Political Fragments* (2002), Followed by Q&A with the Director UDI ALONI

Friday, 7 October 2011, 6:30 PM
511 Dodge Hall

II. Panel discussion on Aloni's *What Does a Jew Want?: On Binationalism and Other Specters* (CU Press, 2011). Panelists: UDI ALONI, ALAIN BADIOU, & SLAVOJ ZIZEK; Moderator: JAMES SCHAMUS

Wednesday, 12 October 2011, 7:00 PM
Miller Theatre

III. A performance of *While Waiting* presented by The Freedom Theatre, Jenin. Director UDI ALONI.

Monday, 17 October 2011, 7:00 PM
Shapiro Theater, 605 West 115th Street
RSVP required: arts@columbia.edu

International Justice in Practice: Challenges in the Search for Accountability

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute are sponsoring a Continuing Legal Education conference.

Raji Sourani, Director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, will be in New York to speak at the conference.

The conference will provide an overview of the international human rights and humanitarian law framework and examine a series of case studies illustrating the challenges and successes encountered when applying this framework to international law violations.

For more information and to register online (by Friday, September 23rd), visit: http://www.law.columbia.edu/human-rights-institute/events/accountabilitycle. Note that there are financial hardship scholarships available if necessary.

26 September 2011
9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Faculty House, Columbia University
64 Morningside Drive, New York, NY 10027

Palestinian Statehood: Implications & Impacts, A talk with Dr. Ahmad Tibi

Dr. Ahmad Tibi will give a talk on the upcoming UN vote for Palestinian statehood.

Dr. Ahmad Tibi is an Arab-Israeli politician, leader of Ta'al (The Arab Movement for Renewal), and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. Dr. Tibi also served as a political advisor to former Palestinian Authority President, Yasser Arafat.

Dr. Tibi will discuss the implications & possible impact of statehood on Palestinians in the diaspora, refugees, as well as Palestinians in Israel. He will address the issue of who will represent Palestinians and what role the existing political entities might play if statehood is achieved.

Moderated by Professor Rashid Khalidi.

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC BUT REGISTRATION REQUIRED AT TIBI REGISTRATION

Thursday, 22 September 2011
6:30 PM
Room 1501, International Affairs Building
420 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10027

The EU, the Emerging Palestinian State & the Role of the Central Bank

The European Union Studies Center at the Graduate Center, CUNY and the European Union Center of New York invite you to a lecture by Dr. Jihad Al Wazir, Governor and Chairman of the Board of the Palestine Monetary Authority. Dr, Al Wazir will discuss the EU, the Emerging Palestinian State and the Role of the Central Bank.

Reservations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. Tel: 212-817-2053/51; E-mail: eusc@gc.cuny.edu. Web address: euromatters.org. This event is a part of the EUSC Lecture Series co-sponsored by the Otto and Fran Walter Foundation.

Monday, 19 September 2011
5:30 PM
Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue, New York
Segal Theatre

THIS IS MY LAND...HEBRON

Featuring interviews with both Israelis and Palestinians living in Hebron, as well as activists on both sides, members of the Israeli parliament and prominent Ha'aretz journalists, This Is My Land...Hebron lifts the lid on Hebron as it is today - a city fraught with violence and hate. Hebron is the largest city in the occupied West Bank, home to 160,000 Palestinians. It is also home to one of the first Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the only one right in the heart of a Palestinian city. Once a bustling hub of activity, the city center now resembles a ghost town. A colony of 600 Israeli settlers lives in the city center, requiring a garrison of more than 2,000 Israeli soldiers to defend them. The cultural and economic life of the town is being suffocated. It's a war between neighbors where the main goals are to conquer one more meter of the city, keep the enemy at bay, and simply stand one's ground.

This film is being screened as part of the New York Human Rights Watch Film Festival. For more information and to view trailer, please visit: http://www.thisismylandhebron.com/ or http://www.hrw.org/en/iff.

Monday June 27, 4:00 pm
Tuesday June 28, 6:30 pm
Wednesday June 29, 9:00 pm
Film Society of Lincoln Center Water Reade Theater: 165 West 65th Street, upper level (Between Broadway and Amsterdam)

Politics & Poetry, Nadia Hijab & Kathy Engel

Mariam C. Said, Member of the Advisory Board of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, invites you to an evening of Politics & Poetry with Nadia Hijab, Writer & Analyst Kathy Engel, Poet & long-time advocate for justice for Palestinians.

Palestinians dream of freedom, justice, and equality, and struggle to achieve these fundamental rights. How are these dreams expressed in activism and in words? How should we understand the present political moment? And what more can we do?

The late Edward Said was a founding member of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation - a nationwide coalition that has grown from a handful of individuals and organizations in 2001 to over 360 organizations and over 50,000 supporters today. The coalition provides a platform and channel for diverse efforts to ensure that our government applies international law to this conflict. For the past 10 years, the US Campaign has led the long-term, strategic work necessary to shift US policy.

Mariam, Nadia, and Kathy all serve on the Advisory Board of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Join them in an evening to sustain the work of the US Campaign, generously hosted by Salam Alrawi at his fabulous East Village restaurant.

Tuesday, 21 June 2011, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Moustache, 265 East 10th Street, New York City (moustachepitza.com)
Suggested donation: $100 at the door or online at www.endtheoccupation.org Alternatively, join the Olive Branch Club for just $10/month - and plant a tree in Palestine for every $120 donated each year.

RSVP by phone or email at uscampaign@endtheoccupation.org or (202)332-0994.

Foreclosed: Between Crisis and Possibility

The Whitney Museum Independent Study program annual show. The work of CPS Affiliate Kamal Aljafari will be displayed.

Curated by Jennifer Burris, Sofia Olascoaga, Sadia Shirazi, and Gaia Tedone Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.

Taking the term foreclosure as a point of departure, this group exhibition examines processes of exclusion by which certain narratives and forms of subjectivity are privileged over others. Cutting across the psychic and the spatial, discourse and the documentary, this show investigates a sense of crisis, precariousness, and systemic collapse in the contemporary moment. Ranging from photography and film to performance, the artworks challenge the politically paralyzing rhetoric of crisis and explore possibilities for alternative practices within everyday experience. The ideas and questions put forth by this exhibition will be actively interrogated through a series of public platforms, events, and working sessions.

With works by Kamal Aljafari, Yto Barrada, Tania Bruguera, Claude Closky, Harun Farocki, Allan Sekula, and David Shrigley among others.

Exhibition Hours: Tues-Fri, 12-6 pm; Sat 11-6 pm FREE

Support for the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program is provided by Margaret Morgan and Wesley Phoa, The Capital Group Charitable Foundation, the Whitney Contemporaries through their annual Art Party benefit, the Easton Foundation, the National Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Edward and Sally Van Lier Foundation, and an anonymous donor. Endowment support is provided by Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo, the Dorothea L. Leonhardt Fund of the Communities Foundation of Texas, the Dorothea L. Leonhardt Foundation, the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, and George S. Harris.

May 20 - June 11
Opening reception: Friday, May 20, 5:00-8:00pm

Brooklyn Bridges: To Bethelehem & Back

On opposite sides of the world, living seemingly opposite lives, three Brooklyn teens travel to meet with their peers in Bethlehem. Using words to combat and describe their daily struggles, they discover how a grassroots movement can empower the lives of children living in chaos and conflict. The documentary, which takes place in Palestine, passionately conveys the resilience of both Black and Hispanic American and Palestinian teenagers struggling with the adverse circumstances in their daily lives. Through their writing, it becomes clear these teenagers share a fear of failure, peer pressure, and an uncertain future, overwhelmed by the call to revolutionize the environments in which they live. Through performing their writing, these teenagers demonstrate that they and their peers are not victims or predators but an integral, vulnerable part of the solution, dispelling misunderstandings and rectifying misconceptions.

Fran Tarr is a novelist, screenwriter, documentary film maker and Education Coordinator for the prestigious Off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company, which focuses on introducing NYC students to the Practical Aesthetic Acting Technique and extraordinary theater. She was also the Education Director for the Women's Project's Ten Centuries of Women Playwrights program, which teaches playwrighting in the NYC public schools, for the past 14 years. With Ten Centuries Fran has been working with Jackie Leopold, a determined and dedicated English teacher at Independence High School, an alternative high school for students 17-21 years of age. What can she say? Working with Jackie's attitude-laden, street savvy kids to reach into the recesses of those places they carefully protect to write original plays of phenomenal honesty and dignity has been a mind-altering experience.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDRz5XiRbtA

Friday, 10 June 2011, 7:00 PM
Al-Noor School, 675 4th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
This event is free & open to the public. Please RSVP to eir.nyc@gmail.com

Blueprint for Accountability: Gaza, Goldstone and the Crisis of Impunity

Come hear a distinguished panel of experts, including a co-author of the report, discuss the fallout of Goldstone's Op-Ed and the ongoing need for accountability for the crimes of Operation Cast Lead. More than 18 months after it was released, the Goldstone Report remains as critical as ever. For more information, visit goldstonereportbook.com

with Naomi Klein, Col. Desmond Travers, Noura Erekat, and Lizzy Ratner, moderated by Laura Flanders

Tickets $11. Visit ticketmaster.com, call Ticketmaster at 1-800-982-2787, or visit the Florence Gould Hall Box Office 12-7 pm Tuesday-Friday, or 12-3 pm Saturday.

Culture Project and Mondoweiss are pleased to present this event in association with Adalah-NY, Center for Constitutional Rights, CODEPINK, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Say No,Haymarket Books, The Nation, and The Nation Institute.

19 May 2011, 7:30 PM
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues)

Seeds of Nakba: The Continued Plight of Palestinian Refugees

Join us for an evening to both remember and discuss the continued plight of Palestinian refugees, particularly focusing on legal and humanitarian issues.

Nada Khader, Executive Director of the WESPAC Foundation, will discuss the Nakba, then and now.
Lamis Deek, Esq. will discuss the legal context of Palestinian refugees under international and humanitarian law and refugee conventions.
Jennifer Loewenstein, Professor at the University of Wisconsin, will discuss the humanitarian conditions of Palestinian refugees, particularly in Gaza and Lebanon.
Mirene Ghossein, cultural and political activist, will discuss the The Art of Palestinian Children, a traveling exhibition of paintings by Palestinian children living in Lebanon. Paintings will be sold.

A closing reception will follow with a live Oud performance.

Sunday, 15 May 2011 will mark the 63rd anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe. While the Nakba is commonly referred to as the year in which Palestinians were exiled and dispossessed of their land and the state of Israel was established, the Nakba is an ongoing and continuous phenomenon that both pre-dates 1948 and continues today. The Nakba persists due to Zionism and its many oppressive and racist manifestations. Palestinians continue to resist the Nakba and all is forms while remaining steadfast to their demands: end the occupation, apartheid and the siege on Gaza, and adhere to the right of return.

One of the most tragic effects of the 1948 Nakba is Palestinian refugees--Nakba's children. There are now over 4.8 million registered UNRWA Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the Arab world including Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian refugees comprise the longest-lasting and largest refugee population in the world today. For over six decades, Palestinian refugees have been living in legal limbo, denied compensation, or their most human rights both internationally and in their respective host states, particularly for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. On this 63rd anniversary we acknowledge yet another year of Palestinian suffering and resistance.

Proceeds will be donated to the LEAP Program--an educational empowerment program that aims to re-inspire and motivate refugee-youth to become their own agents of change through education by supporting their intellectual and creative growth and facilitating college exchange and scholarship programs. LEAP is strictly a volunteer-run program and all donations go directly to support opportunities for its youth. www.leapsummerprogram.org. This event is sponsored by Al Awda-NY.

18 May 2011, Doors open at 6:30pm, Program begins at 7:00 PM
ENTRANCE: $10. Alwan for the Arts (16 Beaver Street, #501, NY, NY)

Juliano Mer Khamis Memorial

CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF JULIANO MER KHAMIS: Remarks by TONY KUSHNER, UDI ALONI, ABDEEN JABARA, KATHLEEN CHALFANT and others. Music by SIMON SHAHEEN & LIZ MAGNES. Video appearances by Nabeel el-Ra'ee of The Freedom Theater, Maya Angelou, and others.

4 May 2011, Doors open at 6:30pm, Program begins at 7:00 PM
Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Columbus Avenue between 59th and 60th Streets

The Search for Origins, Again: The Biological Sciences and the Jewish Self

Nadia Abu El-Haj, Anthropology, Barnard College
Discussant: Michael Ralph, Anthropology, NYU
Read paper in advance at www.nyu.edu/gsas/program/neareast

25 April 2011, 5:00 - 7:00 PM
Hagop Kevorkian Center, 50 Washington Square South (enter at 255 Sullivan Street)

Israel's 'Enlightened Public' and the Remilitarization of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Yoav Peled, The New School, Tel Aviv University

14 April 2011, 12:30 - 1:45 PM

Hagop Kevorkian Center, 50 Washington Square South (enter at 255 Sullivan Street)

Sumeida's Song

World premiere of Mohammed Fairouz's opera (concert version), Sumeida's Song, with the Mimesis Ensemble. The opera is based on the classic Tawfiq El-Hakim play, Song of Death. As told by the great playwright, the opera follows the return of Alwan to his Upper Egyptian peasant village, and his attempts to bring modernity to darkness in an effort to break a never ending cycle of violence. I believe presenting this work in the midst of the current events in the Middle East is especially meaningful, and hope you will read more about the story on our website: www.sumeidassong.com.

Purchase Tickets: http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showcode=SUM17

13 April 2011, 8:00 PM
New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street (at Central Park West), New York, NY

SCHOLARS IN EXILE: An Endangered Scholars Worldwide event

Sponsored by the Center for Public Scholarship at The New School, in collaboration with the Institute of International Educations Scholar Rescue Fund.

Featuring:
Patrick Leahy, United States Senator for Vermont
Jonathan Fanton, former President of the MacArthur Foundation and Emeritus Chairman of the Board, Human Rights Watch
A panel of IIE Scholar Rescue Fund Fellows from Gaza, Iran, and Pakistan
Mohsen Sazegara,journalist and pro-democracy political activist; former Iranian Deputy Prime Minister in Political Affairs Shemeem Burney Abbas, Pakistani scholar of law and gender studies; Associate Professor, SUNY Purchase College Scholar of gender studies from Gaza

Join us to learn about the desperate plight of many scholars around the world whose lives and livelihoods are threatened because of who they are and what they believe.

8 April 2011, 6:00 - 7:30 PM
John Tishman Auditorium, The New School @ 66 West 12th Street, NYC
Free and open to the public. RSVP now to cps@newschool.edu. More information at www.newschool.edu/cps/endangered-scholarsor or call 212-229-5776 x3.

Man Without A Cell Phone (Bidoun Mobile), Sameh Zoabi

When he's not working in his cousin's concrete business, college dropout Jawdat (Razi Shawahdeh), who lives in a quiet Palestinian town inside Israel, usually spends his free time looking for new women to chat up on his cell phone. But when his wireless flirting starts to extend into the West Bank, it catches the attention of the Israeli authorities.

Sameh Zoabi's perceptive feature debut offers a window into a section of Palestinian society rarely seen on screen: Israeli citizens whose daily lives appear removed from the ongoing struggle, yet who often feel they are second-class citizens.

2010. France/Palestine/Israel/Belgium/Qatar. 83 minutes.

Director: Sameh Zoabi
Writers: Fred Rice, Sameh Zoabi
Producers: Marie Gutmann, Amir Harel, Ayelet Kait
Line Producer: Baher Agbariya
Cinematographer: Hichame Alaouie
Editor: Simon Jacquet
Music by: Krishna Levy

Cast: Razi Shawahdeh, Bassem Loulou, Louay Noufy

About the Director: Sameh Zoabi was born and raised in Iksal, a Palestinian village near the city of Nazareth, Israel, in 1975. In 1998, Zoabi graduated from Tel Aviv University with a dual degree in film studies and English literature, and in February 2005, he completed his MFA in film direction at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Zoabi's previous short film Be Quiet won many international awards, including third prize at the Cinefondation Selection at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Filmmaker Magazine named Zoabi one of the Top 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema. Man Without a Cell Phone is Zoabi's feature-film debut.

April 1, 2011 | 6:00 PM | FSLC
April 3, 2011 | 1:30 PM | MoMA
For more information, please visit: http://newdirectors.org/film/man-without-a-cell-phone-ish-lelo-selolari/

Suad Amiry is an architect and a writer. She is the Founding Director of Riwaq: Centre of Architectural Conservation, Ramallah Palestine (www.riwaq.org) which endeavors to protect and develop architectural heritage in Palestine. Professor Amiry taught in the Department of Architecture both at Birziet University and the University of Jordan. She is presently the Vice President of the Board of Trustees of Birziet University. Amiry is the author of "Sharon and My mother-in-Law" (Random House), which has been translated into 17 languages and won the prestigious Italian literary Prize "Viareggio" in 2004. She is the author of several architectural books. Additionally, she was a member of the Palestinian Delegation to the Washington Peace Talks between Palestine and Israel 1991-1993.

29 March 2011, 7:00 PM
Alwan for the arts
16 Beaver Street (Between Broad and Broadway), 4th Floor
New York, NY

Diwan - A forum for the Arts

In partnership with the Arab American National Museum and Alwan for the Arts and the Middle Eastern and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC), The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

DIWAN: A Forum for the Arts unites Arab American artists, scholars and performers representing myriad academic fields and artistic genres. Activities include presentations of new research into Arab American arts; poetry and prose readings; film screenings; and musical performances. This weekend dialogue reinforces the Arab American National Museum's commitment to providing a place for community members and artists to meet, exchange ideas and exhibit their work. It also encourages audiences to explore the boundaries of art in addressing social issues related to Arab Americans and the community at large.

Friday and Saturday, March 25th and 26th, 2011

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Nothing to Lose But Your Life: My 18 Hour Journey with Murad by Suad Amiry

She stands in front of the mirror, trying to hide her womanly curves and fully aware that she is about to expose herself to danger. A tomboy at heart, driven by adventure and a desire to understand what her less privileged compatriots go through, architect and university professor Suad Amiry has decided to disguise herself as a man and cross the Israeli border illegally to seek work in the Israeli town of Petah Tikva. The 18-hour journey that she braves with Murad and his brother Mohammed starts with a bumpy late night ride in a bus crammed with other illegal workers - all men -whose endless stories are both horrifying and amusing. And in his pocket, Murad carries a photograph of his object of desire who lives in Tel Aviv but who seems to have her eye on his friend.

Popular Resistance in Palestine

Discussion with Professors Mazin Qumsiyeh and Hamid Dabashi

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Professor and Researcher at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine. He serves as chairman of the board of the "Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People" and coordinator of the "Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements" in Beit Sahour.

Professor Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.

Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment, The book summarizes and analyzes the rich 130+ year history of civil resistance in Palestine discussing the challenges and opportunities faced in different historical periods with emphasis on trends, directions and lessons learnt. The aim is to put before the reader the most concise, yet most comprehensive and accurate treatment, of a subject that has captured the imagination and interests of the global community. Looking at the successes, failures, missed opportunities and challenges in this period allows people to chart a better direction for the future.

21 March 2011, 7:30 PM
Room 501, Schermerhorn Building, Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, NY, NY 10027

I SHALL NOT HATE: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity (1967-73) by Izzeldin Abuelaish

ABC News' Christiane Amanpour in conversation with Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, author of I Shall Not Hate

The New York Times has called Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish "a rarity: a Gazan at home among Israelis." But after Israeli shells recklessly killed three of his daughters and his niece in January 2009, Abuelaish's faith in the peace process could have died with them.

Yet, as he lays out in I SHALL NOT HATE: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity (January 11, 2011; Walker & Company hardcover; ISBN 978-0-8027-7917-5; $24.00; 224 pages), Abuelaish's resolve to fight for reconciliation only strengthened in the wake of his family's tragedy. Already well known in Israel as a television commentator and physician, he has startled everyone by not reacting to the tragedy by demanding revenge. His plea for understanding on both sides has thrust him on to the world stage as a unique voice of humanitarianism. It's only fitting that an infertility expert would embrace life so dramatically.

I SHALL NOT HATE recounts in stark detail Abuelaish's upbringing in the refugee camps of Gaza, a breeding ground for distrust and anger and violence, where punishment can be arbitrary and pleasure fleeting. He found a way up and out through education-a scholarship to study medicine in Cairo set him on his path to be a doctor in service to his community and the region. But despite winning the recognition of his peers and the privilege of practicing at some of Israel's best hospitals, Abuelaish lived with the daily indignities of being a Gazan commuting across the militarized border-a border that he has worked to break down ever since.

When the Israeli army shelled his home on January 16, 2009, Abuelaish's daughters were still recovering from the grief of their mother's recent death. In the hours following Abuelaish would make international news for his astonishing public reaction, broadcast live on Israeli television, in which he emotionally described to Israeli audiences what such a loss meant. I SHALL NOT HATE demands that we honor the memories of Abuelaish's daughters with something more productive than violence and destruction.

IZZELDIN ABEULAISH, MD, MPH, is a Palestinian physician and infertility expert who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He received a scholarship to study medicine in Cairo, and then received a diploma from the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of London. He completed a residency in the same discipline at Soroka hospital in Israel, followed by a subspecialty in fetal medicine in Italy and Belgium. He then undertook a masters in public health at Harvard University. Before his three daughters were killed in January 2009, Dr. Abuelaish worked as a senior researcher at the Gertner Institute at the Sheba hospital in Tel Aviv. He now lives with his family in Toronto, where he is an associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. His website and foundation can be found at www.daughtersforlife.com.

7 March 2011, 7:00 PM
The Cooper Union
Great Hall
7 East 7th Street

Mohammed Omer, witness to revolution in Egypt & the struggle for freedom in Gaza

4 March 2011, 7:00 PM
The Riverside Church, Room 10T
New York, NY
Donations accepted at the door to help pay for the costs of this program

The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict

To discuss the recent publication of the UN's The Goldstone Report, join moderator Roger Cohen (New York Times); former US Representative Brian Baird, a critic of Israel's actions in Gaza; and Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), a strong supporter of Israel's policy in Gaza, for an engaging conversation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the report's findings, and the ramifications of the changing landscape in Egypt for the future of peace in the Middle East. Sponsored by Nation Books and The New School.

3 March 2011, 7:00 PM
The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, NYC
Admission: Free; seating is limited, reservations required at 212.229.5353 or publicprograms@newschool.edu

Rejuvenating Palestine: Revitalization of Historic Centers; A Tool for Economic Development

Rehabilitation of Historic Centers as tool for Economic Development
Work Done by RIWAQ: Centre for Architectural Conservation, Ramallah Palestine

Suad Amiry is an architect and a writer. She is the Founding Director of Riwaq: Centre of Architectural Conservation, Ramallah Palestine which endeavors to protect and develop the architectural heritage in Palestine. Prof. Amiry has taught at the Department of architecture at Birziet University and the University of Jordan. She is currently the Vice-President of the Board of Trustees of Birziet University. Amiry is the author of "Sharon and My Mother in Law" (Random House) which has been translated into 17 languages and won her the prestigious Italian literary Prize "Viareggio" in 2004. She is also the author of a number of architectural publications. Amiry also has a political history she was the only female member to the Palestinian Delegation to the Washington Peace Talks between Palestine and Israel 1991-1993.

16 February 2011, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
WOOD AUDITORIUM, AVERY HALL

PALESTINIAN QUEER ACTIVISTS TALK POLITICS

What does the Palestinian queer movement have in common with other LGBTQ movements worldwide? How can we understand and work with issues of visibility and the notion of "coming out" within the Palestinian context? What are the questions, goals, beliefs and dreams of the Palestinian queer movement? Come, listen, learn, ask, connect. In the last ten years, new Palestinian LGBT organizations have been created and are flourishing. Representatives of two of these groups -- ASWAT: Palestinian Gay Women and alQaws: For Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society -- are coming to America to talk to a wide range of LGBT groups about their lives, goals, dreams, joys, and visions. Moderator: Katherine Acey, Founding Executive Director of the Astraea Lesbian Fund for Justice, and lesbian Arab activist.

10 February 2011, 7:00 - 9:30 PM
CUNY Graduate Center
Starlight Room, 365 Fifth Avenue, http://www.clags.org/
New York, NY

Censuring the Middle East: BDS, International Sanctions, and Campus Politics

Symposium featuring Asli Bali (UCLA); Rochelle Davis (Georgetown); Noura Erakat (Georgetown); Bassam Haddad (George Mason); Bayann Hamid (MERIP); Arang Keshavarzian (NYU); Zachary Lockman (NYU); Khalid Medani (McGill); Pete Moore (Case Western); Norma Claire Moruzzi (UIC); Paul Silverstein (Reed College); Ted Swedenburg (Arkansas); Helga Tawil-Souri (NYU); and Chris Toensing (MERIP)

This event is sponsored by the NYU Kevorkian Center and the Center for Global Islamic Studies and the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University and the Middle East Research and Information Project (www.merip.org)

11 February 2011, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Hagop Kevorkian Center, 50 Washington Square South (enter at 255 Sullivan Street)

Colored Identity: The Politics and Materiality of ID Cards in Palestine/Israel

Helga Tawil-Souri, Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU. This event is part of a Seminar Series

3 February 2011, 12:30 - 1:45 PM
Hagop Kevorkian Center, 50 Washington Square South (enter at 255 Sullivan Street)

Are Rights Frameworks, even Islamic Feminism, Adequate for Women? An Anthropological View

Mada Al-Carmel, The Arab Center for Applied Social Research is pleased to invite you to a lecture by Lila Abu-Lughod, Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. Her work, strongly ethnographic and mostly based in Egypt, has focused on three broad issues: the relationship between cultural forms and power; the politics of knowledge and representation; and the dynamics of gender and the question of women's rights in the Middle East.

20 January 2011. 5:00 PM
Mada offices: 51 Allenby Street, Haifa.

Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians, by Ilan Pappe

Book Reading & Discussion on Ilan Pappe's book.

Described by a UN fact-finding mission as "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population," Israel's Operation Cast Lead thrust the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip into the center of the debate about the Israel/Palestine conflict. Ilan Pappe surveys the fallout from Israel's conduct in Gaza and places it in the context of Israel's longstanding occupation of Palestine.

Ilan Pappe is professor of history at the University of Exeter in the UK, where he is also co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies, and director of the Palestine Studies Centre. He is author of the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld), A History of Modern Palestine(Cambridge), The Israel/Palestine Question (Routledge), and is a long time political activist.

*Free and Open to the Public*

10 December 2010, 7:00 PM
Alwan for the Arts
16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10004

The Poetry of Najwan Darwish

Followed by a Discussion with Poet, Moderated by Bashir Abu Manneh

Najwan Darwish will read his poetry in Arabic with English translations read by Sousan Hammad, introduction and post reading discussion with Bashir Abu Manneh.

NAJWAN DARWISH was born in 1978 in Jerusalem, Palestine, where he lives and works. His first poetry collection, He was Knocking at the Last Door, was published in 2000. Selections of his work have been translated into French, English and Spanish. He is currently the editor of Min wa Ila magazine, which publishes the works of emerging Arab writers and artists in the Middle East. Darwish is also active in diverse media and art projects in Palestine, the Arab world and Europe. His poems evoke the various modes of Palestinian resistance.-through lyricism mixed with irony, and a strong sense of immediacy as defiant melancholy.

Bashir Abu-Manneh, Assistant Professor of English at Barnard College, joined the faculty in 2004. He has also taught at Columbia University and Wadham College, University of Oxford.At Barnard, Professor Abu-Manneh teaches courses in global literature, Palestinian and Israeli literatures, Marxism,and Postcolonialism. He is affiliated with Barnard's programs in African Studies and Comparative Literature. Professor Abu-Manneh has been the recipient of a Ford FoundationPost-doctoral Fellowship and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship.

Sousan Hammad is a Palestinian writer and journalist who lives in between New York City and Palestine. She writes about culture and politics for Al Jazeera English and other publications.

23 November 2010. 7:00 PM
Alwan for the Arts
16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10004

Negotiating for Palestine: Alvaro de Soto in conversation with Diana Buttu

The Center for International Conflict Resolution (CICR) is pleased to invite you to the following event:

Diana Buttu is a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer based in the occupied Palestinian Territory (oPT), Former legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Former legal and communications advisor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

This event is part of the "Conversations with Alvaro de Soto series", which engages with high level figures from the domains of international mediation, international politics and conflict resolution in public discussions on their experiences and lessons learned.

Alvaro de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat and renowned international mediator. He led the negotiations which brought an end to the war in El Salvador; he also served as the political advisor to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a special envoy in Myanmar, the Special Advisor on Cyprus, and the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

Please RSVP to this event by sending an email to Daniel Perdomo: dp2462@columbia.edu. Space at this event will be limited; you must RSVP to be able to attend.

22 November 2010. 6:30 - 8:00 PM
Room 707, International Affairs Building
420 West 118th Street
New York, NY 10127

Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema from the 1960s to Now, Part I

This three-part program aims to map the largely unknown heritage of personal, artistic, and sometimes experimental cinema from the Arab world. In the 1960s, galvanized by a broader global vanguard of countercultural experimentation in poetry, literature, and theater, filmmakers began to craft a language and form that broke away from established conventions and commercial considerations, ultimately clearing the ground for boldly subjective cinematic expressions. Much of the inventive, daring, and formally challenging filmmaking at work today in the Arab world has its roots-both acknowledged and not-in this pioneering drive to experiment with narrative, representation, and the production of images.

This first installment of Mapping Subjectivity is organized in clusters that reflect thematic and aesthetic kinship rather than considerations of chronology and geography, specifically highlighting intangible connections and conversations between works. Showcasing thematic areas that can loosely be described as Mummies, Memories, and Mischief, these films and videos-which hail from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Syria-range from acclaimed masterworks to the rare and recently rediscovered. Together, they are sure to inspire new ways of thinking about and appreciating modernity in art and cinema from the Arab world. All films are in Arabic with English subtitles, unless otherwise noted.

For more information on film screenings, please visit: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1115.

28 October 2010-22 November 2010
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019

Law and the Israeli Occupation

You are cordially invited to attend a panel discussion sponsored by the Cardozo National Lawyers' Guild and Cardozo Students for Human Rights. The panel will explore legal aspects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The speakers will discuss Israeli and international law related to the Israeli occupation.

Speakers include:
-Neta Patrick, an Israeli attorney at Yesh Din, an Israeli legal and advocacy organization that works for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
-Uri Zaki, an Israeli attorney working for the American office of the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem

The panel will be moderated by Cardozo Professor Vijay Padmanabhan.
*This event is free and open to the public. Sushi will be served.*

Wednesday, 17 November 2010, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Benjamin Cardozo School of Law,
Yeshiva University, 55 5th Ave, Greenwich Village, Room 204.

The Possibility of Peace: Ensuring Human Security in Gaza, National Security in Israel

John Ging, Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian Refugees in Gaza

Mr. Ging, who has served as the Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza since 2006, will discuss the interdependence of Israeli national security and the material well-being of Palestinians in Gaza. He will reflect upon the challenges to peace presented by Hamas and the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and the steps required to achieve a two state solution.

Mr. Ging currently manages over 11,000 staff and an annual budget of $450 million delivering education, health care, relief and social services to more than 1 million Palestine refugees. Prior to joining UNRWA, John Ging worked in a variety of missions in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East.

Sunday, 14 November 2010, 7:00 PM
304 Barnard Hall (Held Auditorium), Barnard College.

The New Generation of Peacemakers - Sixth Annual Interfaith Tree of Life Conference on Israel and Palestine

The Tree of Life Conference seeks to amplify voices of conscience-Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Druze-who are committed to finding justice and peace together in Israel and Palestine through education and non-violent action. All are concerned with a fundamental question: How can people of faith help make the Holy Land the holy place it could be? Representatives of different faiths will address that question, and consider: 1) the importance of faith traditions' emphasis on justice as essential to peace, 2) the importance of connectivity and solidarity between our communities here and communities in the Holy Land, and 3) the role in political advocacy of faith communities here in the U.S.

Conference presenters include Col. Ann Wright, speaker and performance by Martin John Nicols, George and Najwa Saadeh, Jane Hillal, Rebecca Vilkomerson, Dr. Taiseer Maray, Maya Wind, Sahar Vardi, Marian Saadeh, Allison McCracken, Zead Ramadan, Mark Braverman, David Wildman, Enas Massalha, Jeanne-Minette Cilliers, Mark Braverman, and others.

To register and for more information please visit: http://nyc.tolef.org/?page_id=10

November 12-13, 2010, New York City.

PORT OF MEMORY film screening at the MoMA

Kamal AlJafari's Port of Memory (2010) is situated in the port of Jaffa. The film explores the formation of time in space-durational affect-and constitutes a relation of space and architecture via the cinematic lens that conjures up a new way of expressing occupation and gentrification. The use of space and architecture in the film perpetuate a new mode of expression that renders time in its suspension-an act of waiting.

For an interview with Kamal Aljafari, please click here: http://montrealserai.com/2010/09/28/this-place-they-dried-from-the-sea-an-interview-with-kamal-aljafari

6 November 2010, 4:00 PM at the MoMA.

Primary Sources: Coverage in Context
Media and the Middle East

Joe Sacco, comic artist, journalist, author, and illustrator of Footnotes in Gaza, Palestine, and Safe Area Gorazde, will be in conversation with NYU Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies faculty member Zachary Lockman, a historian whose works include Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948, and with Joel Beinin, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954.

Wednesday, 3 November 2010, 5:30 - 7:30 PM
20 Cooper Square, Floor 7.

The 2010 Palestine Center Annual Conference

Palestine: In a Moment of Change or Continuity? For more information please visit: http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/EventDetails/i/14722

29 October 2010, 9:00 AM-5:00 PM
The Palestine Center, Washington, DC.

Another Day Will Come: Jenin Freedom Theater Benefit

A night of Arab-American comedy and performance with Daoud Heidami, Dean Obeidallah, Mariam Abu Khaled, and Ismail Khalidi.

25 October 2010, 7:30 PM
New York Theater Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, NYC 10003. Tickets $35/$20 Students.

The Making of Budrus with director Julia Bacha at the Center for International History

The Center for International History and the Center for Palestine Studies present a discussion with Julia Bacha, a Columbia History graduate and director of Budrus, an award-winning documentary film about the nonviolent resistance movement to save a Palestinian village from destruction.

Friday 8 October 2010, 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
411 Fayerweather Hall

The 2010 Edward Said Memorial Lecture

Please follow this link to view the lecture or read the transcript.

7 October 2010, 12:00 PM
The Palestine Center, Washington, DC

Documentary Filmmaking as a Territory of Freedom: A master class with filmmaker SIMONE BITTON

The master class is in English, and is free and open to the public. Filmmaker Simone Bitton -- a citizen of both France and Israel and self-defined "Arab Jew who likes neither walls nor borders" -- works and makes films in Israel and Palestine. Bitton has directed more than 15 documentary films and won numerous awards, including the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the César. She will present clips from WALL, her award-winning documentary about the separation fence destroying one of the most historically significant landscapes in the world, and discuss her latest investigative documentary -- the controversial RACHEL -- about the American peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli Army bulldozer while protesting the Israeli destruction of Arab homes in Palestine. RACHEL will be showing in New York at Anthology Film Archives from October 8 through October 14.

6 October 2010, 6:00 PM
East Gallery, Buell Hall, Columbia University

The Punishment of Gaza with Gideon Levy

The Middle East Institute at Columbia University will host author Gideon Levy, to mark the launching of his new book The Punishment of Gaza. Described by Le Monde as a thorn in Israel's flank, Gideon Levy is a prominent Israeli journalist. For over twenty years he has covered the Israel- Palestine conflict, in particular the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in his column Twilight Zone. He previously served as an aide to Shimon Peres. His perspective is one rarely heard in the US: that of an Israeli still living in his homeland and sharing its vulnerabilities, but unflinching in his criticism of its conduct and its effects on the Palestinian people.

To view the lecture, please click here

28 September 2010, 6:00 PM
Room 1501, International Affairs Building, Columbia University

Meet the Media: Al Jazeera English

Meet Al Jazeera Television Gaza correspondents AYMAN MOHYELDIN and SHERINE TADROS, the only international English-language broadcasters in Gaza throughout the December 2008 and January 2009 conflict. They will screen some of their work, discuss the media's role in covering the conflicts in the Middle East and reflect on reporting from war zones and their experience in Gaza. Mohyeldin and Tadros are in New York as News & Documentary Emmy nominees in the International News category.

27 September 2010, 1:00 PM
3rd Floor World Room, Columbia Journalism School