DR. SAMIR ABED-RABBO
Samir Abed-Rabbo is a Palestinian-American who was born in a refugee camp in Jerusalem.
Completed college and university studies in the US where he obtained a Ph.D. in International Law from the University of Miami. Taught International Law and US Government and served as the Dean of the Jerusalem School of Economics and Diplomacy.
He is the author and editor of several books and articles on law. International affairs and culture. Currently, he teaches US Government at a College in Dallas, Texas, and is involved with the Movement for One Democratic State in Palestine (ODS).
http://www.onedemocraticstate.org/
GILAD ATZMON
Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born British jazz artist and author.
As internationally acclaimed jazz saxophonist and composer, he fronts the Orient House Ensemble and is a member of the Blockheads.
Atzmon is one of the busiest jazz musicians in Europe. His albums, of which he has recorded nine to date, often explore the music of the Middle East. He supports the Palestinian right of return and the One-State Solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Atzmon writes on political matters, social issues, Jewish identity, ideology and culture. His papers are published on very many press outlets around the world. His two novels Guide to the Perplexed and My One and Only Love were translated in many languages.
Atzmon´s new book The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics, which will be published in October 2011, was praised as a breakthrough study by some of the Israeli Palestinian conflict ‘s most prominent scholars.
Atzmon lives in London since 1994.
RAMZY BAROUD
Ramzy Baroud is Palestinian-US journalist, author and editor of the Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story.
Baroud's work has been published in hundreds of newspapers and journals worldwide, including The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Seattle Times, Arab News, The Miami Herald, The Japan Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, Asia Times and nearly every English language publication throughout the Middle East.
He is the author of three books, and he has contributed to and was cited and referenced in hundreds of books. His book Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion has received international recognition. His book, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle has won the praise of many scholars world-wide. Baroud’s third book, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story narrates the story of the life of his family starting in the early 1940’s until the present time.
He has been a guest on many television and radio programs including CNN International, BBC, ABC Australia, National Public Radio, Press TV, Al-Jazeera and many other stations.
Baroud has been a guest speaker at many top universities around the world.
IBRAHIM EL-ZAYAT
Professor of Islamic Studies.
Ibrahim El-Zayat has studied Law and Economics with special emphasis on the economic problems of the Third World and the field of Islamic Economics at the German universities of Darmstadt, Marburg and Cologne. He is co-founder of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists in Germany in 1995 and a founding and board member of IIFTIHAR, the International Forum on Science Technology and Human Resources Development under chairmanship of Prof. Dr. Dr. B J Habibie in 1996.
During his studies he has been active in student activities with Circle of Christian Democratic students in Germany, RCDS and was heading the Muslim Students Union in Germany for some years. He was convenor and first president of FEMYSO, the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations until 2003. He was and still is holding positions in different Muslim organizations in Germany and Europe and is regularly lecturing on issues of integration and Muslim identity in the European countries as well as on issues related to Islamic finance and economics.
SAMEH HABEEB
A Palestinian Journalist from the Gaza Strip.
He worked as reporter for Ducth TV Netverk, and freelance reporter with Aljazeera, BBC, Chanel 4 and Sky News during Israeli war in Gaza in 2009. He worked as a photographer and carried out many press features for many online and printed Newspapers and media outlets.
Mr. Habeeb is also a speaker on the Palestinian issue and Middle East affairs. Habeeb is a frequent writer on the Palestinian issue as well as regional affairs. He spoke and participated at many conferences and workshops in Australia, Europe and South Africa.
He founded the Palestinian Telegraph Online Newspaper.
http://www.paltelegraph.com
ALAN HART
Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East.
Over more than four decades Alan Hart enjoyed intimate access to, and on the human level friendship with, leaders of both sides including Golda Meir, Mother Israel, and Yasser Arafat, Father Palestine. (Others included Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Nasser, Sadat, King Faisal, King Hussein—the list is long). He also participated at a leadership level in the secret politics of the search for peace in the Middle East as an intermediary between Arafat and Peres when it was presumed that Peres was headed for leadership.
His new three volume epic book Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews is a journey through the propaganda lies and the documented truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of what has come to be called the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It takes the story from the 1967 war and the creation of Greater Israel to the present and the question: Is Peace Possible?
EVELYN HECHT-GALINSKI
Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, is a German publicist and the daughter of the late Heinz Galinski († 1992), who was president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland). For many years Mrs. Hecht-Galinski has been an advocate for a just peace in Palestine and Israel.
Mrs. Hecht-Galinski’s criticism is directed to the Council’s onesided bondage to Israel as well as to the Israeli apartheid politics. In the past she was repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism, which she vehemently resists. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have nothing in common, on the contrary – putting criticism against Israel on the same level as anti-Semitism bears the risk of trivialising real anti-Semitism.
Evelyn Hecht-Galinski is writing monthly columns in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. She is delivering lectures about the situation in the Near East and she is a harsh critic of the unbearable situation of Palestinians.
DR. MAKRAM KHOURY-MACHOOL
Makram Khoury-Machool (PhD., SOAS, University of London) specialises in international media (with special reference to Middle Eastern and Arab media, politics and culture).
He has taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, th University of Bedfordshire and was appointed in September 2006 as Pathway Leader/Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge and has been teaching/supervising at the University of Cambridge since 2003.
In January 2008 he was appointed as Head of Mass Media Communications Subject Group at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. Following completion of his diploma studies in Media and International Relations in 1982, Dr Khoury-Machool worked in the print and electronic media.
Fluent in both Arabic and Hebrew, he was at that time the only Arab journalist working for the Tel-Aviv Hebrew press.
On 15 December 1987, he published an extensive report in Ha’aretz’s Tel-Aviv supplement, Ha-Ir (The City), which led to his being acclaimed as the first journalist to
announce the outbreak of the first Palestinian Intifada. During his coverage of the story, he was shot in the face and rescued under fire. His report titled 'This is no rebellion - it is a war' or ‘This is not a revolt – this is a war’ became an international media event.
In August 1988, Dr Khoury-Machool founded and managed the Jaffa-Tel-Aviv Area Bureau of the oldest existing Palestinian newspaper, Al-Ittihad (est. 1944), working under the eminent journalist-writer Emile Habibi. Having received wide international coverage, Dr Khoury-Machool’s report ‘It’s Not a Rebellion, It’s a War’ and other journalistic works led to him being awarded the International Reuters Award for journalism in 1990.
During the academic year 1990-1991, Dr Khoury-Machool became a Reuters Research Fellow at Oxford University (JFP Diploma).
Following his return to Palestine, he founded and managed Jaffa Communication Ltd. in 1992. The company developed rapidly in parallel with the beginning of the peace process and, by late 1994, it became Jaffa Group, owning several affiliates dealing with advertising, public relations, market research, trade, personnel and business tourism.
In 1996, this wide array of activities led Dr Khoury-Machool to be elected by the World Economic Forum (Geneva-Davos) as one of one hundred Young Global Leaders (GLTs), alongside other international figures. Since then, he has participated in the Davos Annual Summits in Switzerland, the Middle East and North Africa summits in Amman (Jordan), Cairo (Egypt) and Doha (Qatar), and the GLTs’ summits in Paris (1999) and Geneva (2000).
He has acted as the head of a Task Force monitoring globalisation processes for the World Economic Forum. In 1998-1999, Khoury-Machool acted as an independent special advisor to the Palestinian Minister of Finance.
In 1995, Dr Khoury-Machool laid down the principles of a unique social, political and
economic movement, which in 1998 became known as the “Movement of The New Arab”. The philosophy of the movement is based on the juxtaposition of classical Arab norms and beliefs with modern principles. Besides the empowerment of Arab women, the Movement of the New Arab is concerned with the development of education and economics.
In January 1999, Dr Khoury-Machool established and chaired The Party of The New Arab, an independent political party, for the Israeli parliamentary elections.
Dr Khoury-Machool has been residing in the United Kingdom since September 1999 and is a member of the Governing Body of the Pall Mall based Oxford and Cambridge Club.
Dr Khoury-Machool is the author of the first (forthcoming) academic book on Arab media in English, Arab Media: From the First Press to New Media (Routledge, 2011).
KEN O´KEEFE
Ken is an Irish-American activist and former U.S. Marine who served in the 1991 Gulf War. Subsequently he spoke out about the use of depleted uranium as a "crime against humanity" and the US military using soldiers as "human guinea pigs" with experimental drugs that were directly linked to Gulf War syndrome.
He is also a social entrepreneur utilizing direct action marine conservation. He is more widely known for leading the human shield action to Iraq and as a survivor of the Israeli attack on the MV Mavi Marmara in which he participated in May 2010.
On January 7, 2004, O'Keefe burned his US passport in protest of "American Imperialism" and called for US troops to immediately withdraw from Iraq. He replaced his US passport with a "World Passport", subsequently proclaiming himself a "Citizen of the World" with “ultimate allegiance to my entire human family and to planet Earth." His is also legal citizen of Ireland and Palestine citizenship.
In November 2010 he travelled to Gaza where he lived for six months. In Gaza he founded the Samouni Project Community Center.
The plans are to organize a truck convoy which will depart from London and make its way to Gaza as a part of Samouni InterTrade Palestine, a social enterprise international trade mission.
“We do not seek simply to alleviate the suffering of the people in Gaza. Our ultimate objective is to eliminate preventable, blockade-derived suffering. We recognise the loss of dignity that is inherent in compelling a people to live on aid. We are focused on the root of the problem and thus we are committed to replacing aid with trade.”
http://worldcitizen.uk.net/
