Head’s up, I know this is late notice, but on Tuesday night at 7 at Alwan for the Arts in New York, the Nation Institute and the editors of this book on the Goldstone Report are staging a panel on Gaza, Goldstone, human rights, and Egypt too, with several experts on human rights and the unfolding story in the Middle East. It’s a very impressive panel:
Alia Malek will be moderating. She is a lawyer and journalist who wrote the excellent book on Arab-Americans, A Country Called Amreeka. My new theme is that America is going to fall in love with Arab culture, and Malek is going to be one of our guides. (I keep wanting to pass along the story she tells in that book about Arab-American auto workers taking on the UAW after the 1973 war, which conveys a sense of how completely isolated/brave they were back in the 70s, an isolation that I believe is at last coming to an end.)
OK, and the experts:
Jamil Dakwar is a leading human rights attorney at the ACLU. He has a long resume of human rights work, including working for Adalah in Israel. I’ve never heard him talk but I’m told he’s seasoned and incisive. I’m looking forward.
Felice Gelman has visited Gaza a couple of times with Code Pink. She led my delegation there 2 years ago, a completely focused and passionate activist on whom nothing is lost. Gelman went to Cairo for several turbulent days of the revolution; and I’m sure she will relate the human rights issues in Egypt to the neverending blockade of Gaza, and offer political insight about where we’re headed politically.
Rebecca Vilkomerson is another of my personal guides. A leader of Jewish Voice for Peace, she is softspoken, thoughtful and utterly persuasive. She has lived in Israel, she supports boycott, divestment and sanctions; and she is also completely engaged with Jewish communal life. I expect that she will speak about Israeli policy toward Gaza and what we can do to end the siege.
Finally, there’s a co-editor of the Goldstone volume, Lizzy Ratner. Ratner knows the Goldstone report through and through and has spent time in Israel and Palestine; read her searing piece on her friend Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, whose three daughters were killed during Cast Lead. (Myself I met Ratner at the NY Observer years ago. She is a wideranging journalist; you should also check out her tale of two New York’s, boom town and bust city, the ways that the top tier of the city is doing fine while the poor continue to tailspin.)
Quite a lineup, anyway. Should be a fascinating evening. Oh: 16 Beaver St, between Broad and Broadway, in downtown New York.
