The UCSC Center for Jewish Studies presents an event with Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus at Stanford University.

How should we speak about the shocking October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and its allies which killed 1,139 people, 61% of them Israeli civilians, in a single day? What is the appropriate context for understanding the attack, Israel’s massive military, intelligence, and first response failure and its vengeful retaliation which has resulted in nearly 42,000 confirmed Palestinian deaths in the Gaza Strip, some 2/3 of them women and children with plausible estimates rising as high as 186,000? Is it possible to acknowledge the reality of the categories of “terrorism” and “genocide” while placing them in a broader historical context?

Due to the anticipated high demand and limited space for this event, in person attendance at this event will be reserved for the UC Santa Cruz campus community (staff, faculty, and students with a ucsc.edu email address). We will be requiring registration at the door in order to attend in person.

For those in the community who would like to watch Professor Beinin’s presentation, we will be offering the event via livestream, which you can access at: https://vimeo.com/event/4619142

Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus at Stanford University. His research and writing focus on the social and cultural history and political economy of modern Egypt, Palestine, and Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1970, A.M. from Harvard University in 1974, and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1982. He taught at Stanford from 1983 to 2019 with a hiatus as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo in 2006-08. In 2002 he served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

He has written or edited twelve books and over fifty academic articles and book chapters. His most recent book is A Critical Political Economy of the Modern Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2020); co-edited with Bassam Haddad and Sherene Seikaly. His books on Israel/Palestine include: The Independent Left in Israel, 1967-1993: A Collection in Memory of Noam Kaminer [in Hebrew] (November Books, 2019); co-edited with Carmel Kaminer, Matan Kaminer, Smadar Nehab Kaminer, and others; The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 (Stanford University Press, 2006); co-edited with Rebecca L. Stein; Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948-1965 (University of California Press, 1990); and Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation (South End Press, 1989); co-edited with Zachary Lockman.