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I am organizing a conference this week here in Seattle that will focus on all the issues surrounding the Gaza flotilla attack and siege, as they relate to U.S. policy and its magnificent failure (so far). I’ve joined together with SABEEL of Puget Sound to produce the event. We’ll have Prof. Steve Nivas of Evergreen College, who will speak to U.S. policy towards Gaza and Hamas. I will address the current meltdown within Israel of its democratic values and how this impacts the possibility for progress on the peace front. Dave Schermerhorn was a passenger on and survivor of the Mavi Marmara attack and he will speak about his experience. Finally, Hazim Shafi, who lives and works here in the Seattle area will speak about current reality in Gaza on the ground. His father and brother have lived there for some time and Hazim’s larger family hails from there, though many have left since conditions worsened substantially over the past few years. Hazim’s uncle, Haider Abdul Shafi was a senior PLO negotiator at the Madrid conference.
If you live in or near Seattle or know people who do, please join us for an informative evening dealing with an especially nettlesome U.S. foreign policy issue.
Other co-sponsors include Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and American Friends Service Committee.
Tags: gaza, gaza flotilla, gaza-siege, hamas, Mavi Marmara, sabeel
Sorry for nitpicking, but you have a typo there – the _z_current situation in Israel
Yes, I know. I didn’t create the pdf.
Richard Silverstein,
I was at the Seattle Conference on ‘Crisis in Gaza’ and found your blog and decide to make a comment. I am not sure whether it was you or Steve Niva that said that you are disappointed with Obama because he could not overpower the lobbyists of Israel and the Military Industrial Complex. I voted for him expecting him to end both wars and establish sustainable capitalism. If Obama could not change the course set by the US government, I think no one else could. I think executive branch is controlled by military industrial complex ever since WWII. Eisenhower worried about it, but did not do anything about it. The military industrial complex would not permit any Presidents to reduce its power. Obama realized that the military industrial complex control the executive branch but could not do anything about it. Anyone who try to reduce the power of the complex would be accused as Un-American. Unless we change our debt driven capitalism to a sustainable capitalism, the life we enjoy in the US could not be perpetuated.
I am interested because I am in regular communication with a young man and his family in Gaza. He has a painful and chronic disease for which he has received excellent care from a doctor in Israel. However, the conditions under which he is forced to live exacerbate his problems. I am hoping that by attending this conference I may learn something that will let me help him better. I plan to be present June 25th.
I agree with the comment that President Obama has probably done the best he could given the circumstances.
Thank you
I see that all this was last year, so I’m out-of-date. Is anything planned for this year?
We do periodic conferences on various subjects connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We just did a conference on Islamophobia, but not directly related to Gaza. If you wish to find out about future events in Seattle, let me know.