Middle East Cafe and Jewish Voice for Peace-DC Metro presents: Gaza 2014 and the Israeli Mizrahi Predicament
Israeli-American Smadar Lavie, a leader in improving the lives of Israeli Mizrahi women, will discuss her new book, “Wrapped in the Flag of Israel.” (The Mizrahim are the Jews from North Africa and the Middle East who comprise Israel’s majority Jewish population, but who suffer from systematic discrimination by Israel’s Ashkenazi Jews who drive Israeli policymaking.) The book explores intra-Jewish Israeli socialconflict from aFeminist perspective, the plight of Mizrahi single mothers, and the impact ofIsrael’s internalethnic andgender conflicts on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinianterritories, as well asits tensions with Iran and other neighboring Arab countries.
Professor Smadar Lavie is Scholar in Residence at the Beatrice Bain Research Group, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and A Visiting Professor, Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century, University College, Cork, Ireland. She received Israel’s Heart of the East Award in 2013 for lifetime service to Israel’s Mizrahi communities, and is the author of the award-winning “The Poetics of Military Occupation,” and “Staying Put: Crossing the Palestine-Israel Border with Gloria Anzaldua.” She specializes in the anthropology of Egypt, Israel and Palestine, with an emphasis on race, gender and religion.
This event is co-sponsored by the Middle East Cafe and Jewish Voice for Peace-DC Metro. For more information about Smadar, see: http://berkeley.academia.edu/
