FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 18, 2004
Contact: Tom Uribes (559) 278-5366 or 246-1717

Middle East Forum Features Israeli Historian Pappe Thursday (Nov. 18)

Dr. Ilan Pappe, Israeli historian from Haifa University, will speak on Thursday, Nov. 18, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at California State University, Fresno in a Middle East Forum on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

Pappe will give his talk, “Road Map to Nowhere: Israel in a Virtual Juncture,” in the Alice Peters Auditorium of the Peters Business Building, Room 191 (5245 N. Backer Ave.).
The forum, the first of the 2004-05 year, is free and open to the public with relaxed parking in Lots V and J.

It is sponsored by the Harnish Lecture Series, Campus Peace and Civil Liberties Coalition and several community organizations: Peace Fresno, WILPF and the Fresno Center for Nonviolence.

Pappe is a senior lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University and the academic director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva.

His recent books include The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-1951 (New York, 1992) and The Israel/Palestine Question (Roputledge, London, 1999).
His most recent book A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2003) is the story of Palestine, a land inhabited by two peoples, and two national identities.

“It is a story of coexistence and cooperation, as well as oppression, occupation, and exile,” said Dr. Sasan Fayazmanesh, forum committee member. “Dr. Pappe is identified as a revisionist or ‘post-Zionist’ Israeli historian.”

He said Pappe is visiting the United States to participate in the Middle East Association Annual Conference which will be held Nov 21-23 in San Francisco.

The lecture in Fresno is part of a week-long lecture tour in California and Arizona, speaking at UCLA, University of Arizona, CSU San Luis Obispo and UC San Diego.

The Middle East Forum, which began in 2001 at Fresno State, is a series of lectures on the U.S. involvement in the Middle East and alternatives to war. The series is designed by organizers to present analyses on specific topics and give voice to alternative perspectives that are generally not allowed in the mainstream media, Fayazmanes said.

For more information on the lectures, email ruthoj@csufresno.edu.

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