Sabeel Conference at Berkeley

Friends of Sabeel--North America - http://www.forsna.org/ - announces a major conference event in Berkeley, Calif., August 24 and 25, 2007.

Breaking Down The Wall of Silence: Voices We Need to Hear - A Sabeel Conference to inform and stimulate thoughtful action toward a just resolution to the Palestine-Israel Conflict.

Friday-1:00 PM-9:45 PMSaturday-8:00 AM-7:00 PM.

St. John's Presbyterian Church
2727 College Avenue
Berkeley, California

Conference brochure: http://www.fosna.org/conferences_and_trips/documents/BerkeleyConferenceBrochure_000.pdf

Topics include:
Nonviolence
Peace Building
The Role of Sabeel
Speaking up for Justice
U.S. Foreign Policy
Israeli Peace Movement
Challenging Christian Zionism
Educating Ourselves
Caterpillar Lawsuit/Activism
Overcoming Our Fear
Coalition Building

Conference Presenters (Partial List)

Keynote Speaker: Jean Zaru - Palestinian Christian from Ramallah (West Bank); founding member of Sabeel; spiritual leader in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers); member of the International Council of the World Conference for Religion and Peace; former president of the Jerusalem YWCA; author of A Christian Palestinian Life: Faith and Struggle & Overcoming Direct and Structural Violence: Truth and Peacemaking in the Palestinian Experience.

Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel - Moderator, 214th General Assembly, Presbyterian Church USA; Palestinian from the village of Kuffer-Yassif in Galilee; Executive Director of Atlanta Ministry with International Students.

Isham Ahmad - Birzeit University, West Bank, professor of politics at St. Mary's, Moraga, Calif.

Mubarak Awad - Psychologist in Washington, D.C.; founder and director of Nonviolence International, advocating peaceful solutions to the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Anna Baltzer - Jewish-American, granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor; Fulbright scholar; volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service; author of Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories; presentation covers checkpoints, settlements, demonstrations, Israeli activism, environmental issues, the Separation Wall, and more.

Phyllis Bennis - Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies focusing on Middle East and United Nations issues; has written widely on Palestine, Iraq, and U.S. domination of the U.N., including primers on Palestine and Iraq; former co-chair of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation http://www.endtheoccupation.org/

Chris Brown - Former Christian Peacemaker Team member in Hebron.

Craig and Cindy Corrie - Parents of Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Wash., killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah Camp, Gaza Strip, March 2003.

Mitchell Plitnick - Director of A Jewish Voice for Peace, its newsletter editor, and an editor of Jewish Peace News. He was born in New York City and raised an orthodox Jew in a pro-Israel environment. Plitnick has been studying Israeli and Jewish history since he was a child. In 2000, Mitchell graduated with honors from UC Berkeley in Middle Eastern Studies.

Mazin Qumsiyeh - (http://www.qumsiyeh.org/) Served on the faculties of Duke and Yale Universities; on steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation; executive committee of Palestinian American Congress (www.pac-national.org/) and board of the Association for One Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (one-democratic-state.org). His third and latest book is Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle.

Rosemary Radford Ruether - Carpenter Emerita Professor of Feminist Theology at Pacific School of Religion; author of The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2002) and Amerika, Amerika: Elect Nation and Imperial Violence, scheduled for publication in June 2007.

Donald Wagner - Professor of religion and Middle Eastern studies at North Park University in Chicago and executive director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies; author of Anxious for Armageddon (1995) and Dying in the Land of Promise: Palestine and Palestinian Christianity from Pentecost to 2000 (2003).

Stephen Zunes - Professor of Politics/International Studies at the University of San Francisco, teaching courses on Middle Eastern and African politics, nonviolence, conflict resolution, and globalization; prominent specialist on U.S. Middle East policy; author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.

CONTACTS
Mary Louise Gotthold
Ph: 925-979-0351
Cell: 925-324-4595

or Rev. Kate SalinaroEmail: deaconk1@comcast.net

Registration
$70 General Admission (full conference)
$40 Student or Seminarian or Low Income (full conference)
Saturday-only program (half-price)
Online Registration at the Conference Web Page - http://www.fosna.org/conferences_and_trips/index.html

Friends of Sabeel
PO Box 9186
Portland, OR 97207
Ph: (503) 653-6625
Web: http://www.fosna.org/