Kathy Drinkard is a retired teacher and elementary school counselor. She has long been concerned about the suffering in the Palestinian territories and has been involved with her church on the issue for more than a decade. She has traveled to the region four times, most recently in the fall of 2018, a trip she helped plan. During her second trip, s…

James Metz retired after a career in information technology—working in both the public and private sectors. In 2013, inspired by a community discussion of Sandy Tolan’s book, The Lemon Tree, Metz and his wife Suzanne Hallberg joined with another couple to co-found Richmonders for Peace in Israel-Palestine (RPIP). In 2016, RPIP joined forces with Fr…

Paul Noursi has been active with the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights (VCHR) since its founding in 2016. He is also active with several other organizations working for peace and justice in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace, the New Dominion PAC, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the Arab A…

Brad Parker, Esq. is Senior Adviser, Policy and Advocacy at Defense for Children International. Parker specializes in issues of juvenile justice and grave violations against children during armed conflict, and leads DCIP’s legal advocacy efforts on Palestinian children’s rights. Parker regularly writes and speaks about the situation of Palestinian …

Saqib Ali served as a Democratic Party member of the Maryland House of Delegates. He represented District 39 from January 10, 2007 to January 12, 2011. Since leaving the legislature, he cofounded Freedom2Boycott in Maryland, an organization of Palestinian Solidarity activists dedicated to preserving their constitutional right to boycott Israel and …

Martin McMahon is a graduate of Fordham Law School, and an experienced litigator who has tried cases all over America. He has spent a number of years with the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, where he oversaw significant litigation matters in the Southern District of New York and in the Second Circuit. He has had private practice experie…

James North is an independent writer, based in New York City, who has been reporting from Africa, Latin America and Asia for 44 years. He is also a contributing editor at Mondoweiss, the website that covers “News & Opinion About Palestine, Israel and the United States.” Over the years, North has written for The Nation, In These Times, and many othe…

Grant Smith is the director of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). He is the author of the 2016 book Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America and Divert! Numec, Zalman Shapiro and the Diversion of U.S. Weapons-Grade Uranium Into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program (2012). Smith has also written two hi…

Ali Abunimah is a journalist and the co-founder and executive director of the widely acclaimed The Electronic Intifada, a nonprofit, independent online publication focusing on Palestine. A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago, Abunimah is a frequent speaker on the Middle East, contributing regularly to numerous publication…

Walter Hixson is the author of a half-dozen books on the history of U.S. foreign relations. He has taught history for 36 years and is currently distinguished professor of history at the University of Akron. Hixson’s books include American Foreign Relations: A New Diplomatic History (Routledge, 2016); American Settler Colonialism: A History (Palgrav…

Delinda Curtiss Hanley is news editor and executive director of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a 76-page nearly monthly magazine with the largest circulation of any Middle East related publication in North America. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, features insightful analysis of the political, economic, and historical re…

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson's last position in government was as Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff (2002-05). He previously was associate director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff under the directorship of Ambassador Richard N. Haass, and member of that staff responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, political-military an…

Jefferson Morley is a veteran Washington investigative reporter and the author of the 2017 St. Martin’s Press book, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton. The book sheds new light on Angleton’s close relationship with Israeli intelligence, citing such cases as Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty and the diversion of U…

Ali Abunimah is a journalist and the co-founder and executive director of the widely acclaimed publication The Electronic Intifada, a nonprofit, independent online publication focusing on Palestine. A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago, he is a frequent speaker on the Middle East, contributing regularly to numerous publi…

Gideon Levy is a columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, which he joined in 1982. He spent four years as the newspaper’s deputy editor and is currently a member of its editorial board. He is widely considered the “dean” of Israeli journalism—as well as “the most hated man in Israel.” As Levy has written, “Treating the Palestinians as victims and t…

Thomas Getman is partner in a private consulting group that specializes in international, United Nations and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) affairs and university seminars, on U.N. Reform and humanitarian interagency partnership building. He was World Vision’s executive director for international relations until March 1, 2009. He managed World…

Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi is the director and senior scholar in the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas; associate professor of Ethnic Studies/Race and Resistance Studies; and affiliated faculty in Sexuality Studies graduate program at San Francisco State University. She is a co-founder and editorial board member of the Islamophobia Studies Journal…

Dr. Barry Trachtenberg is the Michael R. and Deborah K. Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History and an associate professor of history at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. On Nov. 7, 2017, he testified before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on “Examining Anti-Semitism on College Campuses.” A scholar of Jewish history and the Nazi H…

Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and activist. She is an assistant professor at George Mason University. She is a co-founder/editor of Jadaliyya e-zine and an Editorial Committee member of the Journal of Palestinian Studies. Prior to joining GMU's faculty, she served as legal counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Represent…

Grant Smith is the director of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). He is the author of the 2016 book Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America and Divert! Numec, Zalman Shapiro and the Diversion of U.S. Weapons-Grade Uranium Into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program (2012). Smith has also written two hi…

Khalil Jahshan has been serving as Executive Director of Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) since its inception in 2014. Between 2004 and 2013, Jahshan was a lecturer in International Studies and Languages at Pepperdine University and Executive Director of Pepperdine’s Seaver College Washington DC Internship Program. Previously, Jahshan served as Exec…

Internationally acclaimed author and media critic Dr. Jack G. Shaheen is a committed internationalist and a devoted humanist. His lectures and writings illustrate that damaging racial and ethnic stereotypes of Arabs, blacks, and others injure innocent people. He defines crude caricatures, explains why they persist, and provides workable solutions t…

Tom Hayes, Lecturer in the Film Division at Ohio University, originally hails from Vermont. At the age of 15 he won the Kentucky Educational Television Young Peoples Film Competition. He worked his way through film school in the 70’s crewing on cargo ships, and working as a drive-in projectionist. Working as media freelance on commercial production…

Jim Moran is a former U.S. Representative for Virginia's 8th congressional district in Northern Virginia, including the cities of Falls Church and Alexandria, all of Arlington County, and a portion of Fairfax County. Moran served from 1991 to 2015, and is a member of the Democratic Party. While in congress, Moran was a staunch critic of moving the …

Maria LaHood is a Deputy Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, with expertise in constitutional rights and international human rights. She works to defend the constitutional rights of Palestinian human rights advocates in the United States in cases such as Davis v. Cox, defending Olympia Food Co-op board members for boycotting Isr…