Securitizing Worlds: a Critical Look at the Israeli Global Security Industry
14 – 16 of September 2016 in CREA
The Israeli security industry affects lives everywhere. As an outcome of Israel’s immense financial investment in military and security technologies, its image as pinnacle of security expertise and its ‘combat proven’ weaponry, Israel is a huge player in the global security market that is flourishing like never before. Israeli technologies, knowledge and actors spread all over the world, accompanied by ideas about the ‘other’, including of the Palestinian as dangerous ‘other’ and as Muslim threat. Tools to subdue this ‘other’ and to fight multiple sorts of constructed ‘enemies’ are sold by Israel on a global market. As such, the Israeli, discriminating security philosophy and its technologies that have been developed to be used against Palestinians are brought to many countries and used against many different unprivileged around the world. This three-day symposium Securitizing Worlds aims to offer an interdisciplinary, critical overview of these practices and their effects as well as at the current struggles against them.
Program
Day 1: Wednesday 14 September 20:00 – 22:00
Keynote Lecture
Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear
Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian – Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Day 2: Thursday 15 September 10:00 – 16:30
10:00-11:00 Opening and Keynote
Exposing the Past, Stopping the Present and Preventing the Future of Israel’s Military Support of Dictatorships and Human Rights Violations around the Globe
Eitay Mack, Israeli human rights activist and attorney.
Break
11:15-13:00 Panel 1: Security in Research
Israel’s Security Industry as Allocation of Resources to Elite Groups
Shir Hever, PhD candidate at the Free University of Berlin and political economy researcher of the occupation.
The Peace and Security Nexus in Dutch Foreign and Development Aid Policies in Palestine
Ghada Zeidan, expert on Middle East politics (Israel/Palestine in particular) and Dutch and EU Foreign and aid policies in Palestine, founder and director of Palestine Link.
Israeli Security Companies in an Increasingly Frightened World
Erella Grassiani, anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam, co-founder of gate48.
Lunch break
14:00-15:00 Panel 2: Activism against Securitization
The Belgian Campaign for a Military Embargo on Israel
Itamar Shachar, member of ‘Intal – Globalize Solidarity’ and PhD candidate at Ghent University.
Activism against Military Relations between the Netherlands and Israel
Benjamin Baars, Stop Wapenhandel.
Break
15.15-16.30 Panel 3: Security, State, and Art: Visual Arts and the Security Imagination
Round table with Amir Yatziv, Video Artist, Galit Eilat, Independent Curator and writer and dr. Noa Roei, researcher of Militarism and Visual Culture at the University of Amsterdam, board member of gate48.
Day 3: Friday 16 September 20:00 – 22:00
Film screening and Discussion
The Lab (Yotam Feldman), followed by Q&A with attorney and activist Eitay Mack
The Lab is an investigative documentary revealing how the Israeli military occupation in Palestine has become a business rather than a burden.
Securitizing Worlds: a Critical Look at the Israeli Global Security Industry is organized by gate48 (Critical Israelis in the Netherlands) and made possible with the support of the Leonhard-Woltjer Foundation, SECURCIT (European Research Council); NICA (Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis), UvA, Stichting Haella and CREA.