DATE
23 MAR 2023
12 PM New York | 7 PM Jerusalem

LOCATION
Online — Zoom

A subtle psychological portrait of the author’s relationship with his father during the twentieth-century battle for Palestinian human rights.

Join the Center for Palestine Studies for an online conversation with Raja Shehadeh and Rashid Khalidi about Shehadeh’s new memoir, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I.

Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship.

A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognize his father’s courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja’s own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably.

This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in the Ramallah refugee camp. He is a founder of the pioneering, nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights, and the Middle East.

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.

We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I (Penguin Random House, 2023) is available for purchase here.