Jeff Halper, Ph.D., Author, speaking on Israel/Palestine

Thurs, Feb 18, 6 pm potluck (optional), 7 pm presentation

Spend a fascinating evening with peace activist Jeff Halper, a world-renowned American born political activist, Professor of Anthropology and co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Halper lives in Israel, having moved from the U.S. in 1973.

He participated in the first attempt of the Free Gaza Movement, serves on the international support committee of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Palestine, and was nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

The evening includes an optional potluck where you may share a meal with the presenter.

Halper will discuss his recently published book, War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification. Long-awaited, it is a powerful indictment of the Israeli state's "securocratic" war in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Halper draws on firsthand research to show the pernicious effects of the subliminal form of unending warfare conducted by Israel, an approach that relies on sustaining fear among the populace, fear that is stoked by suggestions that the enemy is inside the city limits, leaving no place truly safe and justifying the intensification of military action and militarization in everyday life. Eventually, Halper shows, the integration of militarized systems-including databases tracking civilian activity, automated targeting systems, unmanned drones, and more-becomes seamless with everyday life. And the Occupied Territories, Halper argues, is a veritable laboratory for that approach.

Halper goes on to show how this method of war is rapidly globalizing, as the major capitalist powers and corporations transform militaries, security agencies, and police forces into an effective instrument of global pacification. Simultaneously a deeply researched expose and a clarion call, War Against the People is a bold attempt to shine the light on the daily injustices visited on a civilian population -and thus hasten their end.

$10 pre-registered / $15 at the door; half price for Center members; FREE for students.