THE ISRAEL LOBBY & AMERICAN POLICY CONFERENCE 2019
Hanan Ashrawi was the first woman to be elected member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 2009. She served as the Official Spokesperson of the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace process from 1991-1993 and participated in the 1991-1992 Madrid peace conference as a member of the Palestinian Leadership Committee delegation. In 1993 Dr. Ashrawi founded the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights (PICCR) to investigate Israeli and Palestinian human rights violations. She chronicled her involvement in her book This Side of Peace: A Personal Account (1995). In 1996, Ashrawi was elected and subsequently reelected many times to the Palestinian Legislative Council. In 1996 she also accepted the post of Minister of Higher Education and Research. In 1998 Ashrawi founded and continues to serve in MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy. At the conference, she will address the Israel lobby and the “Peace Process.”
John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago. In 2007 Professor Mearsheimer coauthored The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (with Stephen M. Walt), which made the New York Times best seller list and has been translated into 22 languages. Professor Mearsheimer will address what, if anything, has changed in the decade since The Israel Lobby was published, subsequent findings, foreign policy choices the U.S. makes that it otherwise would not—if not for Israel—and what the new administration could do differently in the future that would better serve broader American interests.
Ilan Pappé is Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK. His research focuses on the modern Middle East, particularly on the history of Israel and Palestine. He is the author of the books The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2007), Israel and South Africa: the Many Faces of Apartheid (2015) and The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge (2016), among others. He will discuss the value of viewing Israel-Palestine through the lens of settler-colonialism, how Zionist myths have been shaped and/or perpetuated by the Israel lobby, and what framework is necessary to overcome these myths and ensure that efforts to resolve the "conflict" are grounded in reality.
Wajahat Ali is a journalist, writer, lawyer, an award-winning playwright, a TV host, consultant, and Creative Director of Affinis Labs. He was a National Correspondent, Political Reporter, and Social Media Expert for Al Jazeera America. In 2012, Ali worked with the U.S. Department of State to design and implement the “Generation Change” leadership program to empower young social entrepreneurs.
Ali was the lead author and researcher of “Fear Inc., Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” the seminal report from the Center for American Progress.
Katherine
Franke is the Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School,
where she also directs the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and
is the faculty director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience
Project. She is a member of the Executive Committee for the
Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, a member of
the Steering Committee for the Center for the Study of Social
Difference, and an Affiliated Faculty member for the Center for
Palestine Studies. She is among the nation's leading scholars
writing on law, religion and rights, drawing from feminist, queer,
and critical race theory.
Her most recent book, Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality,
NYU Press, 2015, considers the costs of winning marriage rights for
same sex couples today and for African-Americans at the end of the
Civil War. Franke was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 to
undertake research for Wedlocked. In addition to her work at the Law
School, she works regularly in Palestine, most recently serving as
an academic mentor for the human rights faculty at Al Quds
University in East Jerusalem, and sits on the steering committee of
the Academic Advisory Council of Jewish Voice for Peace. She also
chairs the board of directors of the Center for Constitutional
Rights, based in New York City.
Before coming to the Law School, Franke was an associate professor
at Fordham Law School and the University of Arizona College of Law.
From 1990 to 1991, she was the executive director of the National
Lawyers Guild. Prior to that, she worked for the New York City
Commission on Human Rights and founded the AIDS and Employment
Project.
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 productions enabled him to pursue his independent documentary projects. Hayes’s first long form documentary focused on the experience of Cambodian refugees, from their lives in a refugee camp on the Cambodian border, through their first year of resettlement in the U.S. That film, Refugee Road, was broadcast nationwide on PBS.
In the early eighties his interest turned from the Cambodian refugee experience to the odd situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Weathering the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, and ongoing civil strife, he produced Native Sons: Palestinians in Exile, narrated by Martin Sheen. Once faced with the realities of the Palestinian experience, Hayes became engaged with the issue and continued documenting the human and political rights situation of this human community for decades. The Independent Television Service funded his film, People and The Land, about the role of the United States during the first Palestinian Intifadah. His latest film, Two Blue Lines, integrates footage Hayes began gathering in 1983, up to the present.
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 Executive Vice President of
the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Director of its
government affairs affiliate, NAAA-ADC. Throughout his career he has
held numerous positions, including Vice President of the American
Committee on Jerusalem, President of the National Association of
Arab-Americans, and National Director of the Association of
Arab-American University graduates. He received a bachelor’s degree
in political science and French from Harding University in 1972.
Mr. Jahshan has served on the board of directors and advisory boards
of various Middle East-oriented groups including ANERA, MIFTAH and
Search for Common Ground. He has appeared on various media outlets
such as Al-Jazeera, Al-Hurra, CCTV, Al-Arabiya, C-SPAN, and Charlie
Rose.
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 U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem and the major role the Israel lobby played in pushing for the
U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Moran was the mayor of Alexandria, Virginia from 1985 to 1990, when
he resigned to run for Congress. He defeated Republican incumbent
Stanford Parris in the general election on November 6, 1990, and was
sworn in the following January. He is of Irish descent, and is the
son of professional football player James Moran Sr. and the brother
of former Democratic Party of Virginia Chairman Brian Moran.
Moran announced on January 15, 2014, that he would retire from
Congress at the end of his term. Moran is currently a professor of
practice in the School of Public and International Affairs in the
College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech.
Former
Congressman Nick Joe Rahall II, a grandson of Lebanese immigrants,
represented West Virginia in the U.S. Congress from 1977 to 2015.
When he was elected, the 27-year-old became the youngest member of
Congress.
Rahall was one of only 8 House members to vote against the
Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq in 2002 that
preceded the Iraq War.
Rahall has repeatedly expressed concern about America’s relationship
with Israel, stating, “Israel can’t continue to occupy, humiliate
and destroy the dreams and spirits of the Palestinian people and
continue to call itself a democratic state.” He has affirmed that
America’s interests would be served by getting the peace process
back on track, and regretted the U.S. vetoes of U.N. resolutions
against Israeli settlement building.
The Congressman pressed the State Department to end a ban on travel
to Lebanon until the ban was finally lifted in 1997. Rahall also
expressed concern over a bipartisan resolution supporting Israel in
the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict without adding language urging
restraint against civilian targets. Rahall helped draft a resolution
that urged “all parties to protect innocent life and civilian
infrastructure.”
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 to help shatter misconceptions.
Dr. Shaheen, a distinguished visiting scholar at New York University
(NYU), served as a CBS News Consultant on Middle East Affairs from
1993-98. As a professional film consultant, he has consulted with
writers and producers such as writer-director Stephen Gaghan on Syriana (2005),
and producer Chuck Roven on Three
Kings (1999), as well
as with Coca-Cola’s creative team. He is a 2013 recipient of the
Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which pays homage to those individuals
who have distinguished themselves in the cultural mosaic of America.
Shaheen has given more than 1,000 lectures in nearly all 50 states
and on three continents. In cooperation with the U.S. government,
Dr. Shaheen has conducted seminars throughout the Middle East. He
also consulted with the United Nations, the Los Angeles Commission
on Human Relations, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division,
and New York City’s Commission on Civil Rights.
Shaheen’s book, A
is for Arab: Archiving Stereotypes in U.S. Popular Culture, features
telling photographs of materials from the Jack G. Shaheen Archive at
NYU. His book and a special traveling exhibit documents U.S. popular
culture representations of Arabs and Muslims from the early 20th
century to the present. NYU’s Shaheen Archive contains more than
4,000 images, including motion pictures, cartoons,and TV programs,
as well as toys and games featuring anti-Arab and anti-Muslim
depictions.
His other books are: Nuclear
War Films, The TV Arab, Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American
Popular Culture, the award-winning book [and DVD] Reel
Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, and
GUILTY: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11. His writings
include 300-plus essays in publications such as Newsweek,
The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and
the Washington Report
on Middle East Affairs, as well as dozens of chapters on
stereotypes in numerous college textbooks.
Dr. Shaheen, an Oxford Research Scholar, is the recipient of two Fulbright teaching awards; he holds degrees from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Missouri. He has appeared on national network programs such as CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, Nightline, Good Morning America, 48 Hours, and The Today Show.
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 about the history, functions and activities of Israel affinity organizations in America. Smith has written two unofficial histories about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). America's Defense Line: The Justice Department's Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government and Foreign Agents: AIPAC from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal.
Smith's reports about the Israel lobby appear frequently in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Antiwar.com news website.
Janet McMahon
is the managing editor at the Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs.
She earned her B.A. in English at Reed College and has a graduate
diploma in Middle East Studies from the American University in
Cairo.
She is an expert on the Israel lobby and pro-Israel political action
committees (PACs).
McMahon co-edited Seeing the Light: Personal Encounters With the
Middle East and Islam, and Donald Neff’s 50 Years of Israel,
both compilations of feature articles from the Washington Report
on Middle East Affairs.
She also edited Stealth Pacs: Lobbying Congress for Control of
U.S. Middle East Policy by Richard H. Curtiss.
In addition to her editorial duties, she has written special reports
on Israel and Palestine, and has contributed articles to special
issues of the Washington Report on Iran, Tunisia, Cyprus and Libya.
Delinda
Hanley is the executive director and news editor at the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Before joining the
magazine in 1996, Hanley spent decades in the Middle East, studying
in Lebanon, volunteering with the Peace Corps, and later working in
Oman and Saudi Arabia.
From 1990 to 1996 Hanley worked as a researcher, editor and writer
for Empire Press (now Weider History Group) and Sovereign Media.
Hanley writes for the Washington Report on an array of
topics, including Muslim- and Arab-American politics and civil
rights issues. Her articles have also been published in the Arab
News, the Minaret, Islamic Horizons,
Jewish Spectator and other publications.
She is the winner of the NAAJA 2011 Excellence in Journalism award
for her dedication to accuracy and professionalism.
Dale
Sprusansky is the assistant editor of the Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs.
He reports on the U.S.-Israel relationship and its impact on the
Palestinian people and the broader Middle East.
Sprusansky received his B.A. in Political Science from Stetson
University in DeLand, FL.
He has lived in Egypt and traveled extensively throughout the
region.