Politicizing Human Rights in Israel/Palestine

Politicizing Human Rights in Israel/Palestine

A Conversation with Anat Biletzki

Anat Biletzki, a long-time philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University, presented a lecture titled, “Politicizing Human Rights in Israel/Palestine,” on Tuesday, March 3. Along with her work at the Tel Aviv University, Biletzki has also traveled widely, as a visiting scholar/professor at, among others, Cambridge University, Harvard University, and MIT. Her publications include books and articles on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Hobbes, analytic philosophy, political thought, digital culture, and human rights. Outside academia, Biletzki has been active in the peace movement and in several human rights projects in Israel for almost four decades.

During the first intifada she was one of the founders (and in charge of communications) of the peace movement, “The Twenty-First Year” — a group devoted to promoting civil objection to the Occupation. In 1997-1998, Biletzki helped establish the human rights movement “Open Doors,” which worked on the problems of administrative detention in Israel. She has also been active as one of the leaders of Hacampus Lo Shotek — “The Campus Is Not Silent” — at Tel Aviv University, and is on the board of FFIPPI-Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. She was chairperson of the board of B’Tselem, the Israeli Information center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, during the second intifada (2001-2006). In 2005, she was chosen as one of “50 most influential women in Israel” by Globes, the Israeli business monthly, and was nominated among the “1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005.”

Biletzki spent the 2014-15 school year at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle, North Carolina, working on a book provisionally titled Philosophical Investigations into Human Rights in Israel-Palestine.