Understanding October 7, 2023 and Israel’s War on the Gaza Strip.

Thursday October 10 @ 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm  |  Humanities 1, Room 210

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. A livestream of the event will be offered here

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?

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.

Find more info at THI UC Santa Cruz