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Past Programs - 2012-13

► May 5: Love Wins - An American Woman's Journey into Becoming Palestinian

Kelly Baker is a graduate student at the Iliff School of Theology and spent the last half of 2012 living in Bethlehem and completing an internship with the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem. In her presentation, Kelly will highlight how she was introduced to the Israel-Palestine conflict and her five year experiment in solidarity.  She will also comment on her experience being in Palestine during Israel’s most recent assault on Gaza, Operation Pillar of  Defense.

► Apr 7: Rabbis for Human Rights

Boulder pediatrician Dr. Wendy Zerin will show slides and talk about her experience with a Rabbis for Human Rights Study Tour to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The tour was an on-the-ground experience with human rights activists from  Rabbis for Human Rights as well as a  number of other Israeli human rights organizations. 

Dr. Zerin is a physician (pediatrician), practicing at Kaiser Permanente for the past 20 years. She lives in Boulder where she is a member of Jewish Renewal Congregation Nevei Kodesh and a teacher of Buddhist vipassana (insight) meditation.

► Mar 3: An Ancestral Inheritance: Palestinian Life Under Occupation


 

Mennonite pastor Jeni Hiett Umble spent two weeks in Israel/Palestine with a Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) delegation last fall. Her presentation will highlight the work of CPT in Hebron and visits to Bedoin communities in the Negev. The title of her talk is based on 1 Kings 21, the story of Naboth's vineyard.

 

► Feb 10: International Law

Mark Burton of the International Lawyers' Guild speaks about international law as it relates to Israel/Palestine.

Mark Burton has had a life-long dedication to human rights which began with his first job our ot high school as an organizer of mainl low paid government workers in London, United Kingdom. A graduate of the University of Denver Law School, Mark has been in private practice since leaving the Colorado State Public Defender's Office in 2002. His practice specializes in criminal defense and civil rights cases, and he focuses on the defense of immigrants and indigent clients. In 2005 he was awarded theGideon award by the Colorado Criminal Defense bar for pro bono work recognizing his victories in the defense of a protestor who faced a very serious felony charge at jury trial, and for a victorious appeal at the Colorado Supreme Court that concerned free speech, in the cases of People v. Aleem.

The International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild is dedicated to international human rights and solidarity. As a member of this committee, Mark has promoted international human rights, led human rights delegations to Colombia and given various talks on international hunan rights issues at international conferences. Currently Mark is working on a human rights case of forced displacement in the Caribbean coastal region of Colombia.  

►Jan 13: Film: Roadmap to Apartheid

In this award-winning documentary, the first-time directors take a detailed look at the apartheid analogy commonly used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Narrated by Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple), Roadmap to Apartheid is as much a historical document of the rise and fall of apartheid in Soputh Africa, as it is a film about why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them.
 
 
►Dec 5: Bethlehem Pastor Mitri Raheb in Colorado

"Hope is What We Do" Dr. Raheb will preach and speak in several locations in Denver and Fort Collins, telling about the work of Lutherans in Bethlehem -- schools and programs for children, an eldercare program, a wellness center, programs to support musicians and artists and Dar Al-Kalima College, the first Lutheran college in the Middle East.. 

► Nov 4: Rebuilding Homes in theWest Bank - ICAHD 

with Mary Jones and Gordon Pedrow

Buffalo, New York native Mary Jones is a Sophmore at Colorado College studying International Political Economy and Arabic.  She will be discussing her experience this past summer as an international activist with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions in Anata, West Bank rebuilding, for the fifth time, the demolished home of Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh and experiencing life under occupation. Picture shows Mary.

Gordon Pedrow is the former Longmont city manager and he also was part of the group that rebuilt the house in Anata. "It's emotionally powerful for anyone to step on a pile of rubble and realize, if that was your own house, the emotions it would bring if someone had deliberately run a bulldozer through it," Pedrow said, in an interview with the Longmont Times-Call.

 

► Oct 7: Water Denied; Justice Denied

Water engineer Gary Anderson explains the legal and humanitarian rights to water, the physical supply of water in the region and the asymmetrical power relationship that govern the allocation/confiscation of water in te West Bank and Gaza.

 

► September 2012 - Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows, with Dr. Rob Prince

The US Long-term Alliance with Radical Islam

Rob Prince is a lecturer of International Studies at the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies. He is a board member of the newly formed Center of Middle East Studies there and a regular contributor to the Institute for Policy Studies' Foreign Policy in Focus and on the advisory board for Open Democracy (UK). A former Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia, he recently returned to that country to study the changes that have taken place since the outset of the Arab Spring. His articles from that trip have been widely published and circulated.