Events-past

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Title: The Legal Oppression of Palestine: On the Illegal Occupation & the Israeli Military Courts

Date: October 14, 2021

Time: 12:30pm to 2:30pm EST

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Co-sponsors:

• The Palestine Forum
• UofT Law Union
• Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University

The panel examines how law and legal systems are used by the Israeli state against Palestinians, especially to legitimize violence against civilians and human rights organizations. 

Dr. Ardi Imseis will speak on “Negotiating the Illegal: On the United Nations and the Illegal Occupation of Palestine, 1967–2020.” Ms. Randa Siniora will speak on “Israeli Military Courts through a Gender Lens: How Israel Legitimizes Illegal Practices against Palestinians.” 

Dr. Ardi Imesis
Dr. Ardi Imseis is Assistant Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University. He is a Member of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts, the UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry into the civil war in Yemen. Between 2002 and 2014, he served in senior legal and policy capacities in occupied Palestine with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and is former Senior Legal Counsel to the Chief Justice of Alberta. He has provided expert testimony in his personal capacity before various high-level bodies, including the UN Security Council, and to members of the UK House of Lords and the French Senate. He is author of the United Nations and the Question of Palestine: Rule by Law and the Structure of international Legal Subalternity (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press), and his scholarship has appeared in a wide array of international journals, including the American Journal of International Law, the European Journal of International Law, the Harvard International Law Journal, and the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. Professor Imseis is former Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law (Brill; 2008-2019) and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow, Columbia Law School. He holds a Ph.D. (Cambridge), an LL.M. (Columbia), LL.B. (Dalhousie), and B.A. (Hons.) (Toronto). 

Randa Siniora
Randa Siniora is the General Director of the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC). She is a human rights and women’s rights activists with professional experience in the field of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law for over 35 years. Earlier, she was the Senior Executive Director of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) from 2007 to 2015 and the General Director of Al-Haq, Law in the Service of Man (2001-2005). Previously she also headed the Networking and Advocacy at the WCLAC and worked as a Legal Researcher and Coordinator of the Women’s Rights Program at Al-Haq. (1987-1997). Randa Siniora was the first Palestinian woman ever to brief the UN Security Council on Women Peace and Security (WPS) in 2018. In 2019, she was selected among the 100 most influential people in gender policy around the world, one of the largest and most prominent global lists that was drawn from over 9,000 nominations to recognize and celebrate the hard work being done on gender policy by many around the world. Randa has an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex/UK and an MA Degree in Sociology-Anthropology from the American University in Cairo. 

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***This event is taking place while the CAUT’s Censure of UofT is paused. The organizers and sponsors of this event support the Censure. For the latest information, please visit: https://censureuoft.ca/ ***

Date: September 23, 2021 

Time: 5pm to 7pm EDT (Toronto)

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In this talk, Professor Rashid Khalidi will speak about his latest book The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: a History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance.  

Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. 

 “In recent decades”, he concludes, “civil society initiatives such as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and student activism have done more to further the Palestinian cause than anything the main two factions (Hamas and Fatah) have undertaken.”  

In this discussion, we will consider Professor Khalidi’s historical analysis to reflect on the anti-Palestinian racism at play in the Canadian context. From the attack on academic freedom at the University of Toronto, to the suppression of Palestinian narratives in Canadian media, we’ll discuss how the long history of the Palestinian struggle manifests in the Canadian landscape today. 

About Professor Rashid Khalidi: 

Rashid Khalidi is the author of Palestinian Identity, Brokers of Deceit, and The Iron Cage, as well as numerous journal articles. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other places. He is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. 

Link to purchase “100 Years’ War on Palestine”.

This event is hosted by the Nathanson Centre at York University and co-organized by the Institute of Islamic Studies.  

**We support the CAUT censure on the University of Toronto. To read more, please visit: https://censureuoft.ca**