Webinar on Jerusalem Crisis and Current Violence

Recent days have seen an escalation in violence in Jerusalem, and sadly, violence has been flaring throughout today, Jerusalem Day. With the violent events at Al Aqsa mosque, police crackdowns on Palestinian protesters, the threat of home evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, and today’s incendiary Flag March, the city is in a state of crisis. Hamas rockets have fallen on Jerusalem and other parts of Israel and have been met by retaliatory attacks in Gaza. This is a highly volatile and dynamic situation — and we don’t know where it will lead.

 

Members of Reconstructionist communities and rabbis in the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association are invited to join in an urgent webinar with leading experts: 

 

• Huda Abuarquob is Alliance for Middle East Peace’s (ALLMEP) on-the-ground regional director since 2014. She has years of experience in conflict resolution, NGO leadership, and social change education and activism, as well as a life-long commitment to building strong people-to-people Israeli-Palestinian relations. She is a well-known speaker on issues related to Middle East politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Huda is the oldest of twelve children, the daughter of respected Palestinian educators, and an aunt to twenty-two nieces and nephews. Born in Jerusalem, she has traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, lived for six years in the U.S., and now resides in Hebron.
• Daniel Seidemann is an Israeli attorney specializing in Israeli-Palestinian relations, with an emphasis on Jerusalem. He is the founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an NGO that works towards a resolution to the question of Jerusalem that is consistent with the two-state solution.
• Hagit Ofran is the Co-Director of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project and has two decades of expertise on issues related to the settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. She is widely recognized as Israel’s foremost expert on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

 

This program is co-sponsored by: Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association (RRA), the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ), the New York Jewish Agenda (NYJA), the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), and the Progressive Israel Network (PIN), a coalition which includes Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now (APN), Habonim Dror North America, Hashomer Hatzair, Jewish Labor Council, J Street, New Israel Fund (NIF), Partners for Progressive Israel (PPI), Reconstructing Judaism, and T’ruah.

Note: The views of the presenters are their own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Reconstructing Judaism or the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.