Paul McGeough book launch
"Kill Khalid: Mossad's failed hit... and the rise of Hamas"
Tuesday
23 June 2009
6.00pm for a 6.15pm start
Bradley Forum, UniSA City West campus, Hawke Building - level 5, 50 North Terrace, Adelaide
Presented by the Australian Friends of Palestine Association and
supported by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre
REGISTRATION via AFOPA secretary@friendsofpalestine.org.au or phone 0414 773918
"KILL KHALID" tells the story of the dramatic attempt in 1997 to assassinate Khalid Mishal by Israel's spy agency Mossad. A series of tense, high level negotiations, including with Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister then, as now, saved Mishal's life. Subsequently, Mishal became, and remains, an important player in the rise of the Hamas organisation in the decade and more since then. Paul McGeough tells the story with pace and accuracy. He draws on information from key persons and observers of Middle-East conflicts in Amman, Jerusalem and Washington, together with exclusive interviews with Mishal himself. He documents how Israel encouraged the development of Hamas by allowing it to establish schools, health clinics and other social services. In so doing, McGeough carefully reconstructs the history of Hamas. He details crises that were narrowly averted, and reports the missed signals and lost opportunities for peace in the Middle-East. The book has been described as a riveting tour de force of investigative journalism. It is the definitive insider's history of Hamas and its notorious leader.
Paul McGeough is an award-winning Australian foreign
correspondent specialising in frontline reporting from Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Iraq and Iran. A former managing editor of the Sydney Morning
Herald, he has twice been named Australian Journalist of the Year and in
2002, was awarded the Johns Hopkins University-based SAID Novartis Prize for
excellence in international journalism. McGeough has also won numerous
Walkley Awards and regularly appears as a world affairs commentator on radio
and television. He is the author of three books on the Middle-East. He lives
in Sydney.
While the views presented by speakers within the Hawke Centre public
program are their own and are not necessarily those of either the University
of South Australia or The Hawke Centre, they are presented in the interest
of open debate and discussion in the community and reflect our themes of:
strengthening our democracy - valuing our cultural diversity - and building
our future.