Friday, February 10, 2006

AFSC Nominates Jeff Halper, Ghassan Andoni for Nobel Peace Prize


The American Friends Service Committee announced on February 3 that it had nominated Ghassan Andoni and Jeff Halper for the Nobel Peace Prize. Andoni is a Palestinian, a Professor of Physics at Birzeit University, well known for co-founding the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Jeff Halper (pictured) is Israeli, Professor of Anthropology at Ben Gurion University, and co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), which is exemplary among Israeli peace groups for its activism on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (I can't find a good photo of Andoni.)

As an aside, because I'm particularly interested in this, Halper was a pioneering scholar in the field of Mizrahi, or "Israeli Mediterranean," music (the music of Jews of "Eastern," mostly Arab, origin). Here are a couple references:

Jeff Halper, Edwin Seroussi, and Pamela Squires-Kidron, "Musica Mizrahit and the Realignment of Israeli Society: The Case of Hayyim Moshe." 1789-1989 Musique, Historie, Democratie, 3 vols., ed. Antoine Hennion. Paris 1992, vol. III, pp. 669-672.

Jeff Halper, Edwin Seroussi, and Pamela Squires-Kidron. "Musica Mizrahit: Ethnicity and Class Culture in Israel." Popular Music 8/2 (1989), 131-141.

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