L.A. Jews for Peace presents a special dinner benefit event with delicious Lebanese food from Carnival restaurant. This dinner with Richard Falk & Jeff Halper raises funds to benefit the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).  ICAHD is a non-violent, direct-action organization established in 1997 to resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories—24,000 as of this writing and counting. As ICAHD gained knowledge of the brutalities of the Occupation, the organization expanded resistance activities to other areas—land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, policies of "closure" and "separation," the wholesale uprooting of fruit and olive trees, the Separation Barrier/Wall, the siege of Gaza and more. ICAHD supporters and activitists are both Israeli and Palestinian. More about ICAHD.

To pre-register, send your check payable to ICAHD with LAJP in the memo line of your check to: Levantine Center, 5998 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90035-2657. Include your email address and we will send you an email confirmation of your dinner reservation. Or use the online reservation function above.

A bipartisan organization opposing the Occupation

This benefit event is sponsored by LA Jews for Peace, a group of Jewish Americans committed to peace in the Middle East through a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, and opposition to American militarism, imperialism, and exceptionalism. More about LAJP. The benefit is cosponsored by the Levantine Cultural Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, Muslims for Progressive Values-USA, the Progressive Democrats of America-LA, in association with the Shura Council of Southern California and Friends of Sabeel. KFPK 90.7 FM is the official media sponsor.

Dinner Speaker Bios

Richard Anderson FalkDr. Richard A. Falk has been the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. He is the author of The Declining World Order, America's Imperial Geopolitics, along with many other titles. Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His book, The Great Terror War (2003), considers the American response to September 11, including its relationship to the patriotic duties of American Citizens. In 2001 he served on a three person Human Rights Inquiry Commission for the Palestine Territories that was appointed by the United Nations, and previously, on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance; Human Rights Horizons; On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics; Explorations at the Edge of Time; Revolutionaries and Functionaries; The Promise of World Order; Indefensible Weapons; Human Rights and State Sovereignty; A Study of Future Worlds; This Endangered Planet; coeditor of Crimes of War. He serves as Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's Board of Directors and as honorary vice president of the American Society of International Law.  

Jeff HalperDr. Jeff Halper is an American anthropologist who immigrated to Israel in 1973. He now lives in Jerusalem and for the past 13 years has been the Coordinating Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). ICAHD is an Israeli-Palestinian NGO that works on the ground to resist the Israeli occupation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem. ICAHD rebuilds some of the 24,000 Palestinian homes that have been destroyed by the Israeli occupation authorities. The American Friends Service Committee nominated Halper, along with Palestinian activist Ghassan Andoni, for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. 

Halper has been a peace and human rights activist for more than three decades. A second edition of his most recent book is An Israeli in Palestine; Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel (2008), has just been released. The book traces Halper's work against the Israeli Occupation. Born in Minnesota, he participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s. After attending rabbinical school and resisting military service in the Vietnam War, Halper immigrated to Israel in 1973.