Busboys and Poets welcomes author Dr. Sheila Katz to the Langston room to discuss her book Connecting with the Enemy: A Century of Palestinian-Israeli Joint Nonviolence.  Sheila H. Katz has written a path-breaking history of Palestinians’ and Israelis’ joint activism, a chronicle of grassroots nonviolent initiatives in politics, arts, environment, education, sports, science, business, technology, and religion.
This is the first comprehensive history of unprecedented grassroots efforts to forge nonviolent alternatives to the lethal collision of the two national movements. Katz brings to light the work of over five hundred groups in which Arabs and Jews, children and elders, garage mechanics and physicists, and lawyers and prisoners spoke truth to power, protected the environment, demonstrated peacefully, mourned together, stood in solidarity, and advocated for justice and security. She also critiques and assesses the significance of their work and explores why these good-will efforts have not yet managed to end the conflict and occupation. This previously untold story of Palestinian-Israeli joint nonviolence will challenge the mainstream narratives of terror and despair, monsters, and heroes that help to perpetuate the conflict.
This event is Co-Sponsored by J Street DC Metro.
AUTHOR
Sheila H. Katz, Ph.D, is Professor of Middle East history at the multidisciplinary Liberal Arts Department at the Berklee College of Music. She received a doctorate in Middle East history from Harvard University where she specialized in Palestinian-Israeli relations, organized programs on Middle Eastern women, and taught for eight years. Her book, Women and Gender in Early Palestinian and Jewish Nationalism (University Press of Florida, 2003), investigates the origins of conflict through the transformation of gender and national identities during the first half of the 20th century. She has published numerous articles and reviews in Kandiyoti’s, Gendering the Middle East, the Arab Studies Journal, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the Middle East Journal, the Association of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies Newsletter, Harvard International Review, and Lilith Magazine. Dr. Katz lived in Jerusalem for six years where she founded one of the early feminist groups and a network in which Palestinians and Israelis confronted tough issues together. She led workshops on inequality and allies in Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, England, France, Sweden, Italy, Greece, and the U.S.
