I Witness Gaza
A night of arts and eyewitness accounts from Gaza
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
7:00pm – 9:00pm
First Unitarian Church, Shadyside
605 Morewood Ave at Ellsworth
-A book reading by Lora Gordon, a Jewish American who has spent over a year in the Gaza Strip
-Eyewitness accounts from Regina Birchem, past president of Women’s Interntional League for Peace and Freedom
-A reading of Seven Jewish Children, a 10-minute play written in response to the Gaza massacres
-Plus a Short film screening by Palestinian American video artist Edward Salem
Sponsored by: The Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee, Pitt Students for Justice in Palestine, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee, Middle East Peace Forum, Codepink Piitsburgh, Coalition for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, Muslim Student Association, Women’s Interntional League for Peace and Freedom
Gaza in Context

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Professors Jules Lobel and Magid Shihade will discuss the current crisis in Gaza, its local, regional and global impact, and the role of the United States in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Monday, March 30, 5pm
Carnegie Mellon, Porter Hall 100
Political Science Professor Majid Shihade is currently an Endowed Visiting Professor on Contemporary Global Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a research Associate at the Middle East/South Asia Studies at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Shihade has published articles in the Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), the Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences (JAPSS), and in publications such as Men of the Global South. He has also published chapters on comparative violence, race and religion in an edited volume–”Color Struck”– among other places. His manuscript—What a soccer game reveals: Modernity, Colonialism, the State, and Violence among Arabs in Israel, is under an advanced contract with Syracuse University Press.
University of Law Professor Jules Lobel recently traveled to Israel and Palestine with an international human rights delegation and met with high ranking officials from Israel and both Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations. Professor Lobel has litigated important issues regarding the application of international law in the U.S. courts. He is editor of a text on civil rights litigation and of a collection of essays on the U.S. Constitution, “A Less Than Perfect Union” (Monthly Review Press, 1988). He is author of numerous articles on international law, foreign affairs, and the U.S. Constitution in publications including Yale Law Journal, Harvard International Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. He is a member of the American Society of International Law.
March 17 – Ali Abunimah in Pittsburgh
Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, speaking on Palestine
March 17
7:00pm
David Lawrence Hall, Room 120
University of Pittsburgh.
Feb 28 – Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall
The Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall
Feb. 28 @ 7:00 in David Lawrence 121
March 1 & 2 lectures: Israel/Palestine as a Shared Homeland
Israel/Palestine as a Shared Homeland
with Israeli anthropologist David A. Wesley, Ph.D.
Two engagements:
Sunday, March 1, 1:00-3:00 p.m.
First Unitarian Church
605 Morewood Ave in Shadyside, Pittsburgh
Monday, March 2, 8:00 p.m. –
Kurtzman Room, William Pitt Union, University of Pittsburgh
We hear much about Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza. Dr. David A. Wesley looks at policies toward Arab Israeli citizens living in Israel. Wesley is an American-born Israeli citizen who lived and worked in a kibbutz for thirty years. He began to question the historic premise for why the former Palestinian owners of the land, displaced in 1948, were now the day laborers hired to pick the fruit in kibbutz orchards.
Engaged in study at Tel Aviv University, he launched an investigation of the relationship between Jewish and Arab towns in the Zipporit industrial area near Nazareth between 1992 and 1997. During this time, the Israeli Ministry of Industry was instituting a program of industrial development in that area. What Wesley observed was that industrial development of Jewish towns was promoted, while development in Arab centers was denied.
Wesley observes that in recent years, Arab towns have become involved in the planning process and are more actively articulating their demands for inclusion. He asks, “Might these efforts offer hope for a future in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims come to be incorporated as equal citizens, in law and practice, in a single national project?”
He and his wife, Elana, live in a mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood in Jaffa, which is greatly to their liking.
Sponsored by: Pitt Students for Justice in Palestine, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East (UUJME), Muslim Students Association, Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee, Pittsburgh Jews for Peace, OPTICS (Organizing Pittsburgh to Increase Community Solidarity, the Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians, International Solidarity Movement- Pittsburgh Chapter
Feb 4: National Lawyers Guild Delegation Report on Gaza
The National Lawyers Guild Presents:
Gaza: Impressions of the current situation and the larger context of the Israel Palestine conflict
Wed., February 4, 2009
7:30 – 9:00
Barco Law Building, Room 113
University of Pittsburgh
Professor Lobel: will speak about his recent travels to Israel and the Occupied territories a part of Human Rights Delegation.
Professor Shihade: on an Endowed Visiting Professorship on Contemporary Global Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, will speak about the violence in Gaza through the larger context of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, using a critique of cultural theories of violence.
Drought, Settlements, the Wall: A Presentation on Israel’s Systematic Violation of Palestinians’ Human Right to Water
With Susan Koppelman, LifeSource co-founder
There are two chances to see this presentation!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008, 7:30pm
First Unitarian Church
605 Morewood Avenue
Shadyside, Pittsburgh
Thursday, December 4, 2008, 7:30pm
University of Pittsburgh
Cathedral of Learning Room 232
Presentation will feature screening of LifeSource documentary, We, the Women of Jayyous, the story of an individual Palestinian village’s resistance to confiscated wells and Israeli industrial waste.
Come meet LifeSource co-founder Susan Koppelman, learn about the situation of Palestinians suffering acute water shortages due to Israeli policies, and reflect on some examples of water campaigns that LifeSource is supporting at the grassroots level as a strategic means for securing Palestinian water rights and ending the illegal Israeli Occupation.
Sponsored by Pitt Students for Justice in Palestine, Muslim Student Association, Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee, CMU Students for Freedom, Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians
Witness in the Holy Land: Palestinian Christians Under Occupation
with speaker Maria Khoury, Ed. D.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 8:30 PM
University of Pittsburgh Cathedral of Learning, Room 244A
Maria Khoury, Ed. D. is the author of Christian children’s books and Witness in the Holy Land, a publication reflecting personal experiences under Israeli military occupation. She and her husband, the Honorable Mayor David Khoury, have helped boost the Palestinian economy with investments in the Palestinian beer, “Taybeh,” and in fair trade bottling of Taybeh Olive Oil.
“Witness in the Holy Land” is being sponsored by Pitt Students for Justice in Palestine and co-sponsored by the Muslim Student Association (Pitt), the Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee, and the Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians.
For further information, contact joeskillet [at] riseup [dot] net


