Israeli activist Interview with Uri Davis

Uriel "Uri" Davis (Hebrew: אוריאל "אורי" דייוויס Arabic: أوري ديفيس, born 8 June 1943 in Jerusalem) is an academic and civil rights activist. Davis has served as Vice-Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and as lecturer in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. Davis describes himself as "a Palestinian Hebrew national of Jewish origin, anti-Zionist, registered as Muslim and a citizen of an apartheid state - the State of Israel." A member of Fatah since 1984, he was elected to the Revolutionary Council for the Palestinian party in 2009.

Contents

• 1 Background and education
• 2 Career
  • 2.1 Apartheid comparisons
  • 2.2 Activism
  • 2.3 Revolutionary Council election
• 3 2008 marriage and conversion to Islam
• 4 Selected bibliography
• 5 See also
• 6 References
• 7 External links

Background and education

Uri Davis was born in Jerusalem and grew up in and was educated in Kfar Shmaryahu. His parents were Jewish immigrants who had come to Mandatory Palestine during the Fifth Aliyah. His mother Blanka was from Czechoslovakia and his father Joseph was from the United Kingdom. Davis describes himself as a Palestinian Hebrew. During the 1961-1963 period he worked on Kibbutz Erez as an alternative form of national service to military conscription. Subsequently, he received a BA in Philosophy and Arabic from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1968), a Masters in Philosophy from the same ins*ution (1970) and from The New School for Social Research, New York City an MA in Anthropology (1973) and a PhD in Anthropology (1976).

Career

Davis was appointed to a position in the University of Bradford's Department of Peace Studies by Professor Adam Curle soon after the Department's founding in 1973. He is an honorary research fellow at the University of Durham's Ins*ute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (IMEIS) and at the University of Exeter's Ins*ute of Arab and Islamic Studies (IAIS). He currently divides his residence between the predominantly Arab city of Sakhnin in northern Israel and the mixed city of Ramle in central Israel. In 2009, Uri Davis was appointed to teach a course at the Palestinian Al-Quds university on critical Israeli studies.

Apartheid comparisons

See also: Israel and the apartheid *ogy

Davis wrote a series of books and articles that cl*ify the State of Israel as an apartheid state, alleging that Israel's policies towards Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, are comparable to South Africa's apartheid policies: Israel: An Apartheid State (1987), Apartheid Israel: A Critical Reading of the Draft Permanent Agreement, known as the "Geneva Accords" (2003), and Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (2003).

In an interview to Irish Times in 2002 Davis said: "I am an anti-militarist and recognise the right to use force in certain instances, in armed resistance, which is legal in international law. It allows armed resistance, the targeting of the opposite party in uniform."

Activism

He is a founding member of The Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP) and of Al-Beit The *ociation for the Defense of Human Rights in Israel, and a former member of the Executive Committee of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) and of the Editorial Board of RETURN magazine.. A member of Academia for Equality, an organization working to promote democratization, equality and access to higher education for all communities living in Israel.

Revolutionary Council election

Until 2009 Davis was Observer Member of the Palestine National Council.In 2009, Davis was successful in his bid for a seat on Fatah's Revolutionary Council, a legislative body of the Movement, placing 31st from among more than 600 candidates running for position in the 128-member body. He is the first person of Jewish origin to be elected to such a high-ranking position. He was re-elected in 2016, taking the 29th place.

2008 marriage and conversion to Islam

Davis met Miy*ar Abu Ali, a Palestinian, in Ramallah in 2006. They signed their Certificate of Marriage ('Aqd al-Zawaj) there in 2008, after Davis converted to Islam at their marriage.

Selected bibliography

• Dissent & Ideology in Israel: Resistance to the Draft 1948-1973 (as co-editor, with Martin Blatt and Paul Kleinbaum) (1975) ISBN:0-903729-07-5
• Do*ents from Israel, 1967-73: Readings for a Critique of Zionism (as co-editor, with Norton Mezvinsky) (1975) ISBN:0-903729-09-1
• Israel & the Palestinians (as co-editor, with Andrew Mack and Nira Yuval-Davis) (1975) ISBN:0-903729-13-X
• Israel: Utopia Incorporated - A Study of Cl*, State and Corporate Kin Control (1977) ISBN:0-905762-12-6
• Deir al-Asad: The Destiny of an Arab Village in Galilee, in Palestinian Arabs in Israel: Two Case Studies, Ithaca Press, London 1977, (as co-editor, with Hasan Amun, and Nasr Dakhlallah San´Allah) ISBN:0-903729-32-6
• Towards a Socialist Republic of Palestine (as co-editor, with Fouzi el-Asmar and Naïm Khader) (1978) ISBN:0-903729-30-X
• Debate on Palestine (as co-editor, with Fouzi el-Asmar and Naïm Khader) (1981) ISBN:0-903729-64-4
• Israel: An Apartheid State (1987) ISBN:0-86232-317-7
• The Jewish National Fund (with Walter Lehn) (1988) ISBN:0-7103-0053-0
• The State of Palestine (Jerusalem Study Series) (1991) ISBN:0-86372-135-4
• Crossing the Border: an autobiography of an Anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew (1995) ISBN:1-86102-002-3
• Citizenship and the State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon (London, 1997) ISBN:0-86372-218-0
• Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications (as co-editor) (Syracuse, New York, 2000) ISBN:0-8156-2829-3
• Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (2004) ISBN:1-84277-339-9

See also

• Uri Avnery
• Adam Keller

References

External links

• Uri Davis' website
• Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine official website

Articles, selected

• An Exchange on Israel and the Palestinians 10 February 1972, New York Review of Books,
• Transfer and the Lessons of the Holocaust at the Wayback Machine (archived October 26, 2004) March 1990, Return
• Citizenship legislation in the Syrian Arab Republic, in Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Winter, 1996
• Just an ordinary Sakhnin day, October 2001 (about Sakhnin)
• Jews! Stand Up and Be Counted! Archived 2007-06-09 at the Wayback Machine, 11 April 2002,
• Martin Buber's Paths in Utopia The Kibbutz: an experiment that didn't fail? issue 2446 March–June 2002, Peace News,
• The Movement against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine at the Wayback Machine (archived January 7, 2008) issue 93, 4 June 2002 Information Brief,
• Apartheid Israel issue 655 11 September 2003, Al-Ahram Weekly,
• Apartheid Israel: A Critical Reading of the Draft Permanent Agreement, known as the 'Geneva Accords', 6 December 2003
• Research Report on the Subject of the British Park funded by the Jewish National Fund UK (First draft), June 2004 (about Ajjur)
• Regarding the Gush Shalom statement on the Jewish National Fund, 28 January 2005
• Rejoinder to David Newman and Benjamin Pogrund 30 May 2005

Interview

• Apartheid Israel at the Wayback Machine (archived September 29, 2007), by Uri Davis and Jon Elmer; FromOccupiedPalestine.org; September 19, 2004
• Beaumont, Peter (2009-08-23). "Why Israeli Jew Uri Davis joined Fatah to save Palestine". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2009-08-26.