INTERNATIONAL POLITICS-ISRAEL/GAZA/CANADA:

ISRAELI PEACE ACTIVIST ON CROSS CANADA TOUR:

A tip of the Molly hat to Uli Diemer of the Radical Digressions blog for the following item. Jeff Halper, Israeli peace activist, coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and 2006 Nobel Peace prize nominee will be on a cross country tour of Canada during the next month to tell Canadians how they can participate in peaceful resistance to the Israeli siege of Gaza. Here is the news release

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Nobel Prize Nominee and Israeli Peace Activist visits Canada on 'Gaza' tour :
January 12, 2009

Jeff Halper visits Canada with surprising, eye-witness revelations about Gaza.

Jeff Halper, an Israeli human rights activist, anthropology professor, coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize nominee will be in Toronto January 20 - 24 as part of a cross-Canada speaking tour.

In August of 2008, Halper arrived in Gaza by sea as the only Jewish-Israeli member of the Free Gaza Movement. "When we finally arrived in Gaza after a day and a half sail, the welcome we received from 40,000 joyous Gazans was overwhelming and moving," says Halper. "People sought me out in particular, eager, it seemed, to speak Hebrew with an Israeli after years of closure."

While in Gaza, Halper received honorary Palestinian citizenship, including a passport. He returned to Israel through the Erez checkpoint. Upon arrival, he was immediately arrested and jailed at the Shikma prison in Ashkelon, charged with violating a military order prohibiting Israelis from visiting Gaza.

Halper will be talking about how Canadians can participate in peaceful resistance against the Israeli siege of Gaza and occupation in the West Bank. He will be visiting universities, churches and Jewish community centres in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Ottawa, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Victoria.

The tour is sponsored by a national movement of progressive Canadian Jewish groups and others. Sponsors include Independent Jewish Voices Canada, United Jewish People′s Order, Yosher – Jewish Social Justice Network, Science for Peace, Canadian Friends Service Committee, Canadian Auto Workers, Kairos and the Canadian Arab Federation.

Toronto speaking dates:

Thursday, January 22nd, Ryerson University (TBA), 12:00 pm, Free

Thursday, January 22nd, The Winchevsky Centre, 585 Cranbrooke Avenue, 7:30 pm, TI

Friday, January 23rd, Bloor Street United Church, 300 Bloor Street West, 7:30 pm, TI

For interviews or more information contact:Sandra Ruch

416-716-4010

Sandra.ruch@rogers.blackberry.net

Halper′s main public appearances at other locations across Canada are as follows (please check with contact persons since details might change):

Halifax -

Tuesday, January 13 - place TBA

Further info: Larry Haiven, Cell: 902 240-2782, larry.haiven@gmail.com

Montreal -

Please contact Scott Weinstein, 514 289-9989, scottmontreal@yahoo.ca

Ottawa -

Sunday, January 18, University of Ottawa

Monday, January 19, Centre Block of Parliament. $10 fee,

Monday, January 19, Kailash Mital Theatre

Further info (including additional events): Diana Ralph 613 321-2765, ijv@magma.ca

Hamilton -

Wednesday, January 21, McMaster University

Further info: Harry Shannon, harry.s.shannon@gmail.com or David Cohen, 905 577-1029 david316@sympatico.ca .

Winnipeg -

Saturday, January 24, Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre

Sunday, January 25, Canadian Mennonite U. Auditorium

Monday, January 26, University of Winnipeg

Monday, January 26, University of Manitoba

Further info: Mark Etkin, 204-955-1929, etkin@cc.umanitoba.ca

Vancouver -

Wednesday, January 28, at the Unitarian Church of Vancouver

Friday, January 30, University of British Columbia

Friday, January 30, Al-Salaam Mosque, 5060; Canada Way, Burnaby.

Further info: Sid Shniad, 604-314-5589, shniad@sfu.ca

Victoria - Thursday, January 29

Further info: George McFetridge, geomcfet@gmail.com

Bio - Jeff Halper

Jeff Halper is an Israeli human rights activist, anthropology professor, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize nominee and coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), a non-violent Israeli peace and human rights organization created to resist the Israeli occupation.

Born in the US, Jeff moved to Israel in 1973. For more than a decade, he worked for the municipality of Jerusalem as a community worker in the city's poor Mizrahi Jewish neighbourhoods. Eventually, having done research among Ethiopian Jews in the 1960s, he became the chairman of the Israeli Committee for Ethiopian Jews.

During his mandatory Israeli military service, Jeff refused to bear arms or serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. In 1997, he co-founded ICAHD to challenge Israel′s house demolition policies which have caused the dispossession of thousands of Palestinian families since 1967.

An anthropology professor, Jeff has taught at universities both in Israel and abroad. In addition to his many academic and political writings, he is the author of Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century (Westview, 1991) and Obstacles to Peace, a resource manual of articles and maps on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, published by ICAHD.

His new book, An Israeli in Palestine (Pluto Press, 2008) describes Jeff′s evolution from a young Zionist immigrant into a staunch opponent of the occupation and champion of Palestinian human rights.

In 2006, Jeff was nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the Nobel Peace Prize, together with the Palestinian intellectual and activist Ghassan Andoni.

Last year, he was the only Israeli Jewish participant in the maiden voyage of the two siege-breaking vessels of the Free Gaza Movement

For more information on the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, visit: www.icahd.org/eng

For more information contact:Sandra Ruch

Phone: 416-716-4010

Email: Sandra.ruch@rogers.blackberry.net

'THREATS OF WAR, CHANCES FOR PEACE'
The latest (March, 2007) edition of Scientific American has an interesting item by Earth Institute director Jeffrey D. Sachs with the title above. It basically a retelling of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the lessons that can be drawn therefrom.
Now, the Earth Institute is certainly a worthy institution. Its mission statement says,
"The Earth Institute at Columbia University brings together talent from throughout the university to address complex issues facing the planet and its inhabitants, with particular focus on sustainable development and the needs of the world's poor. The Earth Institute is motivated by the belief that science and technological tools already exist, and could be expanded to greatly improve conditions for the world's poor while preserving the natural systems that support life on Earth."
The site is a wealth of information about research being undertaken in support of sustainable development. Jeffrey Sachs himself is an economist with special interests in development issues, and there's no doubt that he is "on the side of the angels". His telling of the tale, however, leaves little to the imagination about what his politics are. He's an American liberal who looks back to the Kennedy era as a sort of lost golden age. What is left out is as significant as what is included in his brief summary. The omitted fact that the USA started this whole game of brinkmanship by installing nuclear missiles in Turkey the year before is a convenient omission- one almost universally ignored in most popular western accounts of the crisis. For a fuller story of the Cuban missile crisis see the Wikipedia article on same. As a good liberal Sachs praises Kennedy- a praise that is hardly universally voiced- and ignores the good faith initiatives of the Soviets. Also, like a good liberal he ignores not just the crazies on the American side but also an equally detached set of hardliners in the Cuban ruling class. In the endgame the missiles in Turkey were removed albeit "secretly" without fanfare, and Sach's claim for the Kennedy administration that they "stressed the need to avoid humiliating one's adversary" really applies much more to the Soviet actions as opposed to the American ones. It was also the one, only and last time that the Soviet ruling class ever exposed their strategic nuclear forces in a position where they might escape from their immediate and total control (into the hands of Cuban ideologues in this case).
Anyways, whatever one may think of the moral rectitude of the various players in this game a point Sachs makes is that it was indeed a "game". He says,
"Today's game theorists would describe Kennedy's strategy as 'generous tit-for-tat(GTFT)' (The Soviet moves should also be so described- Molly). A player adopts a position of cooperation as long as the other side does too. If the second player begins to cheat, the first player stops cooperating as well, to show the cheater that there are adverse consequences to the collapse of this arrangement. The door remains forgivingly open to future cooperation, however, if the cheater reverts to form. And generously the first player might initiate renewed cooperation, with a view to enticing the former cheater to reciprocate. GTFT is so successful and robust that many evolutionary biologists suppose that the basic strategy is somewhat hardwired in human attitudes.".
Whatever one may think of Sach's assignment of blame and praise the essential point that he is trying to make is true. There are ways towards peace and security that are different from and more effective than the bluster of the present American administration and their equally ideologically driven Islamofascist opponents. The two sides actually mirror each other very well. Have a look at the essay for the full story. It will likely be posted on the net next month at the Scientific American website, which is usually one month behind the printed version.
It's also an example the application of game theory in real life, something that Molly will return to as she slowly posts her complete review of 'A Beautiful Math' on this site. The book is long finished, but reading is faster than writing about it.
Molly