Prof. Shlomo Avineri, political scientist from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and recipient of the Israel Prize, spoke at JPC about “Israel`s Political System: Challenges and Responses”.
Prof. Avineri said that in 1948 the debate about the partition of the Land of Israel seemed to be over, only to be opened again after 1967. Many of today`s ministers were brought up without the “Green Line” which separated Israel from the West bank, and their political outlooks are influenced by it.
About the speaker:
Shlomo Avineri is Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He served as Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He is currently Recurring Visiting Professor at the Central European University in Budapest. He has been recently elected to the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Krakow.
In 1996 he received the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian decoration.
He held visiting appointments at Yale, Cornell, University of California, Oxford, Australian National University, Cardozo School of Law, as well at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Brookings Institution (both in Washington DC), the Institute of World Economics and International Relation (IMEMO) in Moscow and Collegium Budapest.
After the fall of communism, he participated in democracy development programs and election monitoring in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Among his books, which have been translated into many languages, are: The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, Israel and the Palestinians, The Making of Modern Zionism, Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism, Communitarianism and Individualism (with Avner de-Shalit) and Herzl: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State.
