What are the formal and informal structural barriers to Jewish-Arab equality in Israel? How do segregation, racism, and biased allocation of state resources affect access to opportunity and advancement for Israel’s majority and minority communities? What are the prospects for coexistence within Israel, and what projects currently exist to pave the way for a positive future? As an active participant in the development of a bilingual Arab-Jewish school in Beersheva, Israel, Neve Gordon’s personal experience offers a hopeful, if sobering, view of what lies ahead as Israel-inevitably-grapples with the aspirations of its Palestinian minority for full equality in a democratic society.

Neve Gordon is widely respected for his brilliant and original dissection of the evolving nature of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Gordon is the chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and author of Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press, 2008). He has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and the Watson Institute at Brown University. During the first intifada, he was the director of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Gordon is the co-editor of Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel, the editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights. His writings have appeared in numerous scholarly journals as well as in the Washington Post, LA Times, The Guardian, The Nation, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the National Catholic Reporter.

Co-sponsored by American Friends Service Committee, the Arab-Jewish Partnership for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, the Chicago Faith Coalition on Middle East Policy, the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago.

Recorded Monday, February 22, 2010 at Oak Park Public Library.