11 January 2023
7:30PM Palestine
12:30PM New York
Whose Dead Matter? Defending the Muslim Cemetery of Balad al-Sheikh in the Jewish State
Employing legal and extra-legal tools, attempts to appropriate and eradicate the Balad al-Sheikh Cemetery have been ongoing over decades, but have recently resurged with renewed vigor. Taking various vantage points—historical, legal, doctrinal, ethical, and comparative—this panel will examine the stakes of protecting this Muslim endowment in the modern state of Jewish sovereignty.
Speakers
Simone Bitton is an independent documentary filmmaker, born in Morocco in 1955. She has lived in Rabat, Jerusalem, and Paris. She directed more than 15 documentary films, all of which attest to her deep personal and professional commitment to better represent the complex histories and cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. She is particularly well known for her films addressing the Palestinian issue, such as “Wall,” “Story of a Land,” and “Mahmoud Darwich: As the Land is the Language.” Her most recent film, “Ziyara,” considers the Muslim guardians of Jewish sanctuaries and cemeteries in Morocco.
Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, and the University of Chicago, is co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and has served as President of the Middle East Studies Association. He has co-edited three books and authored eight, the most recent of which is The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Metropolitan Books, 2020), as well as over 100 scholarly articles and book chapters.
Ahmad Amara is a part-time lecturer in History of Palestine and Judaic Studies at New York University and Tel Aviv University, and a senior researcher at al-Quds University. His most recent book, Settling in the hearts of Palestinian Neighborhoods: The Old City, Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, was published in Arabic by al-Quds University Press in 2020. His research focuses on questions of law, history, and geography, with a special focus on Ottoman land law, Waqf properties in Jerusalem, and Bedouin lands in the Beersheba region.
Johnny Mansour is a historian, researcher, and lecturer from Haifa. He has published numerous studies in Arabic and English, including: “The Military Institution in Israel,” “Israeli Settlement,” “The Hejaz Railway,” “A Dictionary of Zionist and Israeli Terms and Personalities,” “The Other Israel: A View from the Inside,” “Distance Between Two States,” “Arab Haifa Streets,” “Haifa the Word That Has Become a City,” “Centenary of the Balfour Declaration,” “Aqila Agha Al-Hassi,” “Religiosity in Curricula and Instructional Books in Israeli Schools,” and with Ilan Pappe, “Historical Dictionary of Palestine” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). He is currently studying displacement inside Palestine in the first decade after the Nakba.
Moderator
Khaled Furani is a professor of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, and author of Redeeming Anthropology: A Theological Critique of a Modern Science (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Silencing the Sea: Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry (Stanford University Press, 2012).
