Jeff Halper

Jeff Halper
Born
Jeff Halper

1946
NationalityAmerican/Israeli (dual nationality)
EducationMacalester College (BA); University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (Ph.D) in Anthropology
Occupation(s)Anthropologist, Director of Israeli NGO
Known forCo-founder and Director of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
SpouseShoshana Halper
ChildrenEfrat, Yishai, Yair
WebsiteICAHD website

Jeff Halper (Hebrew: ג'ף הלפר; born 1946[1]) is an Israeli-American anthropologist,[2] author, lecturer, and political activist who has lived in Israel since 1973. He is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a co-founder of The One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC). He is a Jewish Israeli.[3]

Halper has written several books on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and is a frequent writer and speaker about Israeli politics, focusing mainly on nonviolent strategies to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a supporter of the BDS movement and the academic boycott of Israel, and considers Israel to be guilty of "apartheid" and of a deliberate campaign to "judaize" the occupied Palestinian territories.

In 1997, Halper co-founded ICAHD to challenge and resist the Israeli policy of demolishing Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories and to organize Israelis, Palestinians and international volunteers to jointly rebuild demolished Palestinian homes as political acts of resistance (ICAHD has rebuilt 189 Palestinian homes).[1] Halper was nominated, together with the Palestinian intellectual and activist Ghassan Andoni, for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize by the American Friends Service Committee for his work "to liberate both the Palestinian and the Israeli people from the yoke of structural violence" and "to build equality between their people by recognizing and celebrating their common humanity."

In 2013 Halper initiated, with a group of international activists, The People Yes! Network, intended to provide an "infrastructure" that will enable left and progressive groups to find each other across issues and geography, communicate, coordinate, share analyses and materials, and plan joint campaigns, especially around global issues. The ultimate goal of TPYN is to generate a conception of a just, inclusive, pluralistic and sustainable post-capitalist, "human-centric" (or "life-centric") world system and to help create the global movement that would bring it into being.

  1. ^ a b "Dr. Jeff Halper, Coordinator". Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Archived from the original on 2007-10-10. Retrieved 2008-05-16.
  2. ^ "Dr. Jeff Halper, Coordinating Director, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions". ICAHD-USA. Archived from the original on 2007-10-10. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
  3. ^ Jeff Halper, "Rethinking Israel After 60 Years" Archived 2022-01-05 at the Wayback Machine, CounterPunch, 15 May 2008.