Former Israeli PM Netanyahu to speak at Penn

Connaissance will distribute tickets for the October 6 event in Irvine Auditorium through an on-line lottery system. Netanyahu will speak at the newly reopened Irvine Auditorium on October 6 at 8 p.m., highlighting "his experiences as a world leader" and "the factors that will affect world stability during the next century," according to a press release. The speech will be followed by a 45-minute question-and-answer period. Connaissance Co-Director Theo LeCompte, an Engineering junior, said Netanyahu will be "bigger than pretty much any of our major speakers" in recent years, adding that he will also likely be among the most popular speakers in Connaissance's history. Connaissance sponsors two major speeches each year featuring speakers of national prominence. Recent speakers have included feminist activist Gloria Steinem, actor James Earl Jones, singer Billy Joel and talk show host Conan O'Brien. LeCompte said Connaissance is excited to have such a major figure in world affairs come to speak on campus, saying that Netanyahu is "so relevant" to current events in the Middle East. He stressed his hope that the speaker will provoke discussion among students and faculty across the University. Approximately 1,200 tickets for the event will be available for purchase at $10 per ticket through an on-line lottery system beginning at midnight on Monday, September 20, and finishing on Friday, September 24, at 11:59 p.m. Students with a valid PennCard will be able to log on to the World Wide Web site http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~connlect to enter the lottery, and winners will be allowed to purchase up to two tickets, according to the press release. Though Connaissance would not say how much it cost to bring Netanyahu to campus, it is likely that at $10 per ticket the foreign politician cost much more than past speakers. Last fall Connaissance charged only $2 per ticket for students to hear Steinem speak. And tickets to hear comedienne Ellen DeGeneres speak last spring cost $3 per ticket. LeCompte said the members of Connaissance jointly decided to raise ticket prices for the Netanyahu event. Netanyahu, of the conservative Likud Party, was Israel's prime minister from 1996 until this past July, when he was defeated in his bid for re-election by Labor Party leader Ehud Barak. His major achievements were privatizing many state industries and the signing of the Wye River Peace Accords, which helped jumpstart the lagging peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Netanyahu was elected in 1996 on a platform promising that no further concessions would be made in peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority until the security of Israeli citizens could be guaranteed. He was criticized by many during his tenure for destabilizing the tenuous political balance between the Arabs and Israelis, leading to an increase in terrorist incidents rather than the promised decrease. Though he was born in Israel, Netanyahu was educated in the United States, where he earned degrees in architecture and management studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1982, he was appointed to serve at the Israeli embassy to the United States. He served as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988, and was later elected to the Israeli parliament, where he served as deputy foreign minister and was a vocal critic of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995 by a right-wing extremist.