Mike Peled, author of The General’s Son, will be discuss his book at 7:30 p.m., at the Haverford KINSC Sharpless Auditorium.

 

Peled was born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well-known Zionist family. His maternal grandfather signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His father, Matti Peled, fought in the1948 Israeli War of Independence, and was a general in 1967 during the Six Day War when Israel conquered Gaza, the Golan Heights, the Sinai, and the West Bank. Later, General Peled became a peace activist, a leading proponent of an Israeli dialogue with the PLO.

 

A young patriot, Peled volunteered for a Special Forces Commando unit in the Israeli Defense Forces, service he later came to regret. The death of his niece Smadar, 12, in a suicide attack in Jerusalem in 1997 was the starting point for the remarkable, personal story of a man who sought justice not through revenge, but through understanding — an understanding that transformed his heart, and ushered him into a singular life of pro-peace activism and, some would say, risk.

 

The program is sponsored by the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship.