Atalia Omer

Atalia Omer is a leading global expert on the Palestine-Israel conflict, specializing in Jewish studies, religion, conflict and peacebuilding, religion and violence, and religion and decoloniality. She is Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and at the Keough School of Global Affairs.

As a Jewish Israeli-American scholar born and raised in Jerusalem, her research, teaching, and peacebuilding practices develop a distinct approach to how Jewish people of all nationalities can and must seek solidarity with Palestinians. This work focuses on recognizing Palestinian human rights and international justice while striving for the rights and shared dignity of all people together.

Professor Omer has authored several books on Jewish-Palestinian solidarity in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her book, "Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians" demonstrates how Jewish-Palestinian solidarity offers a grassroots critique and transformative agenda for the local Jewish-American landscape, while critiquing Israeli policies and Zionist interpretations of Jewish identity. She examines the movement's intentional participation in rethinking Judaism to provincialize Zion from Jewish identity and inter-traditional work that seeks to undo the intersections between Islamophobia in the U.S. and the marginalization and silencing of lives in Palestine. Professor Omer demonstrates how this inter-traditional work is pivotal to deconstructing the conflation of criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism, asserting that criticizing Zionism and Israeli state policies is not tantamount to anti-Semitism.

Professor Omer is also the author of "When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice." In this book, she examines how the Israeli peace camp addresses interrelationships between religion, ethnicity, and nationality, and interprets justice in relation to the Palestinian conflict. This work explores the “visions of peace” and “visions of citizenship” articulated by a wide spectrum of groups, ranging from Zionist to non-Zionist and secular to religious orientations.