Yossi Klein Halevi — American-born Israeli, award-winning author, and journalist — delivered a special lecture for the Colgate community on Thursday, Oct. 12. He joined his audience live via Zoom from Jerusalem to discuss the current conflict between Hamas and Israel in light of recent developments.
The talk, titled “The War in Gaza: A Briefing,” was sponsored by Jewish studies, the Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty, and the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization.
A senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Halevi is co-director of the Muslim Leadership Initiative, which teaches emerging young Muslim American leaders about Judaism, Jewish identity, and Israel.
Halevi’s first book, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, tells the story of his teenage years as a follower of the militant right-wing rabbi Meir Kahane and Halevi’s subsequent disillusionment with Jewish radicalism. His 2013 book, Like Dreamers, won the Jewish Book Council’s Everett Book of the Year Award, and Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, his latest book, is a New York Times bestseller.
Halevi also writes for leading op-ed pages in the United States, including the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and he is a former contributing editor to the New Republic.