Fitted in a dres shirt and suspenders--his forehead pocket brimming with scribbled cues--Dr Uri Davis turn the thoughtss very much an academic.

Fitted in a dres shirt and suspenders--his forehead pocket brimming with scribbled cues--Dr Uri Davis turn the thoughtss very much an academic. He sports a silver goatee and thinning hair, gregariously speaking with sparse, sardonic jibes. The Jewish scholar stands poised before a roused assemblage of undergraduates, behind a podium draped in a Palestinian banner. Organized from the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, Davis' keynote address at Toronto's York University is no sober oration, although His is a heartfelt plea.

"The flag of the state of Israel does not set forth for me any signifier of pride or ease The flag of my geographical division the flag of Palestine, is the flag I'm happy to speak behind," he says with scorn.

"I identify my abiding habitation as the country of Palestine. I identify the state in which I'm a citizen as the state of Israel, a member state of the United Nations organization. It has a flag in a less degree than which I personally would not wish to speak. The flag is raised about detention and torture centres, police stations and prisons, where political detainees are incarcerated."

Davis is a Jewish citizen of Israel, on the other hand staunchly identifies himself as a "Palestinian Jew" Born in an undivided Jerusalem in 1943--raised from his British and Czechoslovakian parents--he is an unlikely booster of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) For 30 years, the anthropologist and philosopher excavated Israel's democracy, trying to show up what he calls the "pervasive regularity of legal and social discrimination" against the Palestinian commonalty Davis is the founding member and chairperson of the emotion against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP) and an observer-member with the Palestinian National Council. An master-hand on Middle Eastern affairs and Islamic history, he is a mate at the University of Durham and the University of Exeter in the UK

The human rights upholder has written and edited 15 works and numerous articles on politics, legal a whole s and human rights in Israel and Palestine. In his first part Israel An Apartheid State, originally published in 1987 he claimed Israeli legislation guarantees the rights of no other than a "subset of its citizenry." He followed its succes with his autobiography, Crossing the Border, and his in the greatest degree recent release, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the contest Within.

Davis resides in the Arab city of Sakhnin in northern Israel, although as a hebrew he may live anywhere in the state--a right denied to his Arab neighbours. Formerly a resident of south-western UK near Plymouth he arrived in Sakhnin as director of external relations with the Arab Institute for Vocational Completion. And after his service there, he saw no reason to change his address.

In his article, Just an Ordinary Sakhnin Day, published in 2001 he writes: "After I obtain up in my flat, brush my teeth shave, dressing-comb my balding scalp, dress and go on foot out to the veranda to send greeting to my neighbours, I see my city of Sakhnin encompassed by a circle of rather admirable leafy rural suburban communal residential localities-mostly perched upon the mountain tops ... This is what I diocese from my veranda when I memorize up in the morning."

His adopted hearthstone is not a collegiate town, nor a trendy tourist locale. It's an industrial park with no industrial plants of which to speak. However, as the merely Jew, he does not face life imprisonment for membership in an illegal organization. He does not have tanks outside his window threatening his children. He says he has notwithstanding to be denied access to hospital treatment, or delayed "indefinitely" at a military checkpoint--the usual indignities endur at Palestinians. Here, Davis' choice of residence cogitates his commitment to a coming events in which all Jews and Palestinians have fruition of equal rights.

Standing up as a Jew

His consciousness advances from the Holocaust. His Jewish mother's family was killed in World War II, following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. "Her values underpinned my moral progressive growth and are universally relevant for all be of importance toed including myself," he remarked in an article in The Irish Times. In it, he also accused Israel of exploiting the extermination of hebrews in Europe, describing it as "a direct assault" onward his ancestors.

He says: "The publishing of any criticism of Israel charged with being anti-Semitic has been an instrument of intimidating critical debate forward Israel for decades. It's therefore essential to base or anchor our narrative in fundamental separation between Zionism and Judaism. It's the mostly difficult obstacle that faces us."

Political Zionism, he says, is as a "wholly negative proposition."

"Zionist is not my identity. I operate in succession the basis of a clear distinction between Zionism and Judaism. I have nothing against the Jewish collective tribal identity or theological identity.. however Zionism is separate. It's a political program and has nothing to do with professional identity.