“Israel Lobby and American Policy 2018” conference speakers – March 2

The all-day March 2 conference “The Israel Lobby and American Policy 2018” at the National Press Club will feature the following speakers:

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 for which she is co-editing the forthcoming special issue on “Gender, Sexuality and Racism.” She is co-author of Mobilizing Democracy: Changing U.S. Policy in the Middle East; and co-editor of Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging, winner of the 2012 National Arab American non-fiction Book Award; American Quarterly Forum on Palestine and American Studies (2015); and a special issue of MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies.

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. He is the author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and The Battle for Justice in Palestine.

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 Palestine Studies. Prior to joining GMU's faculty, she served as legal counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, as a legal advocate for the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, and as the national grassroots organizer and legal advocate at the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, where she helped seed BDS campaigns nationally as well as support the cases brought against two former Israeli officials in U.S. federal courts for alleged war crimes.

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 the crimes perpetrated against them as crimes is considered treasonous.” Levy writes the weekly Twilight Zone feature, which covers the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza over the last 30 years, as well as political editorials for the newspaper. His columns about politics, money, how Israel's military occupation is changing Israeli society and about U.S.-Israel relations are widely read and discussed around the world.

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 willingness to subordinate U.S. interests to those of Israel within the CIA, citing such cases as Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty and the diversion of U.S. government-owned weapons-grade uranium from Apollo, PA to Israel in the 1960s.

M.J. Rosenberg is a writer, primarily on matters relating to Israel. He is a regular contributor to The Nation and Huffington Post, with his writing widely reprinted throughout the world. His recent articles include "Sorry, Democrats: Your NRA Is Spelled AIPAC" and “The US Should Stop Taking Idiotic Actions It Knows Will Provoke Terrorism.”  He has special expertise on the Israel Lobby, having been employed by several pro-Israel organizations between 1973 and 1975 and 1982 and 1986. His last post was as editor of AIPAC’s Near East Report and as senior adviser to then-executive director Thomas Dine.

Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science at Southern Illinois University, and co-author of the report, “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” commissioned by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) of the United Nations. The report, co-authored by Prof. Richard Falk, finds that Israel is imposing an “apartheid regime” on Palestinians.

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.” He told the committee that "It is increasingly common to hear reports that a new anti-Semitism threatens to endanger students on a scale not seen since the Second World War and the Holocaust…however, they are motivated less by an actual threat faced by American or world Jewry, than they are part of a persistent campaign to thwart debates, scholarly research, and political action that is critical of the state of Israel."

Dr. James J. Zogby co-founded the Arab American Institute in 1985 and continues to serve as its president. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee and was twice appointed by President Obama to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. In addition to writing a weekly column published in 12 countries, Zogby is the creator and host of the award-winning call-in political television show “Viewpoint,” and is frequently featured on national and international media as an expert on Middle East affairs. In 2010, Zogby published the highly-acclaimed book, Arab Voices. His 2013 e-book Looking at Iran: The Rise and Fall of Iran in Arab Public Opinion, and 20 Years After Oslo are drawn from his extensive polling across the Middle East with Zogby Research Services.

View more information at the conference website and register online at IsraelLobbyAndAmericanPolicy.org

Attendees receive lunch, beverage ticket for the post-conference reception. Through News Year’s Eve, a limited-quantity of $89 tickets are available.

The Israel Lobby and American Policy conference is solely sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep).