High-Risk Activism and Popular Struggle Against the Israeli Occupation in the West Bank
Professor Joel Beinin, Stanford University
Monday, March 2nd , 4:30 pm, CWRU, Tinkham Veale University Center, Ballroom A
Scholars have longed distinguished between normal political protest and what can be termed "high-risk activism," best exemplified in the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964. The International Solidarity Movement consciously invoked the precedent of Mississippi Freedom Summer by designating its 2002 campaign of Palestine solidarity action "Freedom Summer." Protesting the occupation in any form has always been a high-risk activity for Palestinians, who have regularly experienced tear gas, beatings, torture, incarceration, and live fire from Israeli security forces, as well as indefinite administrative detention and other judicial procedures based on secret evidence.
Professor Beinin will discuss a new phenomenon: the participation of Israelis and internationals in qualitatively new ways involving high risk - not only social reprobation, but arrests and trials, tear gas asphyxiation and other forms of severe physical discomfort, serious bodily injury, and in a few cases of internationals, death.
Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University and a past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. His research focuses on workers, peasants, and minorities in the modern Middle East and on Israel, Palestine, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Sponsored by Department of Political Science, Department of History, NOCMES, and Kent State University.
