OHAD HEMO: REPORTING FROM THE ARAB STREET

He’s been beaten up by Turks inflamed when they heard him speaking Hebrew and by Israeli settlers accusing him of treason.

He still shudders at the memory of the cold metal of the rifle held to his temple by a masked gunman in Gaza who thought he was from Hamas.

And he regularly despairs when he recalls the young children in refugee camps he heard talking nonchalantly about killing Jews and becoming martyrs.

Yet day after day, Ohad Hemo returns to reporting from the heart of anti-Israel sentiment because he believes that his fellow Israelis need to see and hear what he experiences through the reports that run on Channel 12, Israel’s most watched commercial TV channel.

For 15 years, as a reporter for all three of Israel’s main channels, Hemo has taken the pulse of the Palestinian street and been the eyes and ears of ordinary Israelis hungry to understand the nuances of Palestinian society and politics.

Now, at a moment of enormous change in the Middle East and the rise of an Arab party in Israel’s ruling coalition, he is coming to The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center to take you on a journey into the complexities of Gaza and the West Bank, into the thinking of Fatah and Hamas leaders, the realities of the Abraham Accords and the audacity of young Palestinians on the West Bank and inside Israel itself breaking the barriers of fear.

His lecture will be accompanied by clips from his reporting and followed by questions from the audience.