2011 Schedule

Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of both CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange. In June of 2005, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize collectively, on behalf of the millions of anonymous women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. Since the September 11, 2001 tragedy, Medea has been working to promote a U.S. foreign policy that would respect human rights and gain us allies instead of contributing to violence and undermining our international reputation. In 2000, she was a Green Party candidate for the California Senate.

Anna Baltzer is the national campaign coordinator at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. She is a Jewish-American Columbia graduate, former-Fulbright scholar, the granddaughter of Holocaust refugees, and an award-winning lecturer, author, and activist for Palestinian human rights. As a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in the West Bank, Baltzer documented human rights abuses and supported Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance to the Occupation. Baltzer has appeared on television more than 100 times (including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where she appeared alongside Palestinian presidential candidate and nonviolence leader Dr. Mustafa Barghouti) and lectured at more than 500 universities, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, and policy institutes around the world with her acclaimed presentation, “Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories and Photos.”

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Rene Belfer Professsor of International Relations at Harvard University. He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he served as Master of the Social Science Collegiate Division and Deputy Dean ofSocial Sciences. He has been a Resident Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, and he has also served as a consultant for the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the National Defense University. He presently serves on the editorial boards of Foreign Policy, Security Studies, International Relations, and Journal of Cold War Studies, and he also serves as Co-Editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, published by Cornell University Press. Additionally, he was elected as a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 2005.

Professor Walt is the author of The Origins of Alliances (1987), which received the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award. He is also the author of Revolution and War (1996), Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (2005), and, with co-author J.J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby (2007).

John J. 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, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He began graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975, and received his Ph.D. in 1980. He was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs and a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Professor Mearsheimer has written extensively about security issues and international politics. He has published five books, including Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in International Politics (2011). His articles and op-eds in that have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, and academic journals like International Security.

Chas W. Freeman is one of America’s most distinguished diplomatists. In a government career spanning three decades, he negotiated on behalf of the United States with over 100 foreign governments. In America’s Misadventures, Freeman presents two dozen of his essays on the Middle East, all of them trenchant and many of them previously unpublished. The essays span the period from 1990-when as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Freeman helped plan and implement the massive, U.S.-led effort to liberate Kuwait from occupation by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq-through 2010, by which time he had developed many thoughtful and well-informed criticisms of the policies Washington had pursued toward the region throughout the past two decades. The book includes considerable new material on Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, much valuable information about the structure and politics of Saudi Arabia, and many trenchant essays in which Freeman applies his smart and wide-ranging “Realist” form of analysis both to defining America’s national interests in the Middle East and describing the often sad, confused, or counter-productive way in which it has sought to pursue them.

Laila al-Haddad is a blogger, political analyst, and social activist from Gaza. She got her B.A. from Duke University and her MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She and her two young children spend as much time in Gaza as they can—but her spouse, a Palestinian physician who grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon, is not allowed by Israel to enter Gaza. El-Haddad was the Gaza stringer for the Al-Jazeera English website, 2003-2006. She contributes regularly to the BBC and the Guardian Unlimited. Her work has appeared in The New Statesman, The Daily Star, Electronic Intifada, and Le monde diplomatique, and on Pacifica Radio. Gaza Mom, named for the blog she has published since 2004, is her first book.

Rich Forer works with the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel, a non-profit that consists of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and non-affiliated groups whose common denominator is peace and equality for Israelis and Palestinians. Among their activities is a creative billboard campaign.
Forer, a former member of AIPAC, became deeply involved in the Israel-Palestine issue as a result of a profound transformation in which his core identity as a Jew dissolved. His discovery is that in Truth we are all Muslim and Jewish, Palestinian and Israeli. His book, Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion –A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict describes the transformation and clarifies virtually all arguments made to defend the Israeli Occupation. Forer, who has relatives living in Israel and whose identical twin brother is a prominent member of an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism, is a practitioner of the Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method, a unique system of healing developed by an Israeli.

Pamela Olson grew up in small-town Oklahoma and studied physics and political science at Stanford University. She lived in Ramallah, Palestine for two years, during which she served as head writer and editor for the Palestine Monitor and foreign press coordinator for Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi’s 2005 presidential campaign. She’s published stories and articles in CounterPunch, Electronic Intifada, Israel’s Occupation Magazine, Mondoweiss, and The Stanford Magazine among other publications. Fast Times in Palestine is her first book.

Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. In 2001 she helped found and remains on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. She co-chairs the UN-based International Coordinating Network on Palestine and serves as an adviser to several top UN officials on Middle East and UN democratization issues. Bennis is also the author of numerous articles and books, particularly on Palestine, Iraq, the UN, and U.S. foreign policy.

Noura Erakat is a Palestinian attorney and activist. She is currently an adjunct professor of international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University and the Legal Advocacy Coordinator for the Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights. Erekat was part of a National Lawyers Guild fact-finding mission to Gaza in the wake of Operation Cast Lead.

Nadia Hijab is Co-Director of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and a writer, public speaker and media commentator. Her first book, Womanpower: The Arab debate on women at work was published by Cambridge University Press and she co-authored Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel. She is a co-founder of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and serves on its advisory board.

In the spring of 2009, South African judge Richard Goldstone set out on a mission to the Gaza Strip on assignment from the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate possible war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas during “Operation Cast Lead,” Israel’s invasion of Gaza a few months earlier. Many other reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had been conducted, but the account Goldstone’s mission produced later that year was different — it became the report heard round the world. Its most stunning conclusions: that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Israel’s 2009 incursion into Gaza, with Israel aiming to “punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population.”

In recent weeks, the Goldstone Report has once again became front-page news. The precipitating event was an essay Goldstone published in the Washington Post “reconsidering” one of the many damning claims of the report, that Israel had targeted civilians as a matter of policy. The essay was immediately seized on by Israel’s supporters to try to kill the report once and for all. But the report lives and is arguably more important than ever.

A new book, The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict, assesses the legacy of the original report and the impact that it continues to have on U.S. policy towards Israel and Palestine as well as popular movements to end the occupation and achieve Palestinian self determination. The panel of editors and experts will discuss the impact of the Goldstone Report in the context of current developments in the debate and on the ground, especially the revolutions rocking the Middle East.

Laila El-Haddad is a journalist and blogger from Gaza City, currently based in the U.S. Since November 2004, she has authored the award-winning blog, Gazamom.

Noura Erakat is a Palestinian attorney and activist. She is currently an adjunct professor of international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University and the Legal Advocacy Coordinator for the Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights. Erekat was part of a National Lawyers Guild fact-finding mission to Gaza in the wake of Operation Cast Lead.

Donna Nevel, a community psychologist and educator, is a long-time organizer for Palestinian-Israeli peace and justice, most recently with Jews Say No!

Lizzy Ratner is a journalist who is one of the editors (with Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss) of The Goldstone Report:The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.

Organizers in the Palestine Solidarity Movement are often falsely charged with anti-Semitism. This workshop will use case studies presented by participants to explore the dimensions of these charges and they way they interface with Islamophobia. We will also use role plays to practice defending our work in transforming the discourse away from anti-semetism toward solidarity with human rights.

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb is cofounder of Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence and the Co-director of Middle East Programing for the American Friends Service Committee’s Pacific Mountain Region.

This workshop will explore some of the most successful campaigns in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS.) Leaders from CODEPINK, Who Profits, ADALAH- NY and Jewish Voice for Peace will present tactics, obstacles, and successes of their respective campaigns.

CODEPINK Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has collected a petition to ask the financial services company TIAA-CREF to stop investing in companies that pro?t from the Israeli occupation and its college JVP groups have led divestment campaigns. ADALAH- NY, the New York Campaign for the boycott of Israel has several cultural and consumer boycotts, as well as a boycott against land developers.

Dalit Baum, Ph.D., is the founder of “Who Profits from the Occupation”, an activist research initiative of the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel that exposes companies and corporations involved in the Israeli occupation. Baum is a feminist scholar and teacher in Israel, teaching about militarism and about the global economy from a feminist perspective in the Haifa University and the Beit Berl College. This year she is visiting the U.S. as an activist in residence with the human rights group Global Exchange, directing a new program titled Economic Activism for Palestine, which aims to support existing divestment campaigns in the U.S. as well as help new ones through education, training, networking and the development of dedicated tools.

Nancy Kricorian is a member of the CODEPINK national staff and the coordinator for the Stolen Beauty Ahava Boycott Campaign. In addition to working with CODEPINK, Kricorian is a writer, whose two novels were published by Grove/Atlantic. She is a member of PEN USA and on the board of the Armenia Tree Project.

Dave Lippman is a member of the songwriting and streetsinging team of Adalah-New York: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel. Adalah-NY has been carrying out a successful boycott campaign against Israel settlement builder Lev Leviev since 2007 and has been active in consumer, cultural, and academic boycott activities as well. Dave has been doing satirical tours nationally and beyond for decades, portraying first a singing CIA agent, and currently the Bard of the Bankers, Wild Bill Bailout.

Rebecca Vilkomerson is the Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace. She has over fifteen years of experience in community organizing, advocacy, program development and fundraising in the United States and Israel. Vilkomerson has been an active member of JVP since 2002, and lived in Israel with her family from 2006-2009. Most recently, she worked for a Palestinian Israeli public policy center and a Bedouin-Jewish environmental rights organization. Her study, “Public Policy in Divided Societies: The Case for a Civil Rights Institution” was published in July, 2008 by Dirasat, the Arab Center for Law and Policy. She is a former editor of Jewish Peace News. Vilkomerson is a graduate of Connecticut College and has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University.

Expose, Challenge and Regulate AIPAC: The Nitty-Gritty on Illicit Activities

Confronting Stealth Israel PACs Their characteristics and coordinated pattern of giving; the attempt to get the FEC to classify and regulate AIPAC as a political committee rather than a “membership organization.” The case of Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) with a nod to Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV). How to identify, expose and oppose Stealth PAC activity in your state.

From Charity to Foreign Agent In the 1960s, AIPAC’s parent organization was shut down after it was caught laundering tax exempt overseas funds into US public relations and politics. Today, declassified law enforcement files into espionage, theft of government property and civil court records have exposed AIPAC’s latest outrages: classified information trafficking and illicit activities to drum up a US war with Iran and exert undue political influence. These little known activities disqualify AIPAC for tax exempt charitable and domestic lobby status. Case studies on the current citizen drives to re-register AIPAC as an Israeli foreign agent, revoke its IRS tax exempt status, expose the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement while publicizing wrong-doing.

The Lobby’s Hotel Interlocking organizations and why they mandate Congressional trips to Israel; local federations and foundations that send city and state officials on similar trips. How AIPAC drafts legislation and Congressional letters to the White House designed to curtail administration pressure on Israel; pressuring loyalty pledges to Israel from mainstream candidates for Congress; coordinating activities with other Jewish organizations. Case studies on tactics for successfully suing an Israel lobby organization for illicit covert activity and running a successful outdoor ad campaign targeting aid to Israel.

Moderated by Alison Weir, founder of If Americans Knew and President of the Council for the National Interest.

Jeffrey Blankfort is a journalist and radio programmer with a 40-year history of activity around the Palestinian cause. His articles have appeared in CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Mondoweiss, Pulse Media, Left Curve, and the Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. He was a founding member of the November 29th Committee on Palestine, a co-founder of the Labor Committee on the Middle East and editor of its publication, the Middle East Labor Bulletin (1988-1995). He currently hosts a twice monthly program on international affairs for KZYX, the public radio station for Mendocino County in Northern California where he now lives.

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). She 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. 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.

Grant Smith is the Director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) in Washington, DC. He is the author of two unofficial histories of AIPAC–America’s Defense Line and Foreign Agents, as well as the books Spy Trade, Deadly Dogma, Visa Denied and editor of the book Neocon Middle East Policy. Before joining IRmep, Smith was senior analyst and later program manager at Yankee Group Research, Inc. in Boston. He has a bachelors degree in International Relations from the University of Minnesota and a Masters in International Management from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Alison Weir is president of the Council for the National Interest, a board member of New Policy PAC, and executive director of If Americans Knew, a nonprofit organization she founded following an independent investigation as a freelance journalist to the West Bank and Gaza in early 2001. She writes and speaks widely on Palestine, her articles appearing in Censored 2005, The Encyclopedia of Palestine-Israel, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, CounterPunch, Editor & Publisher, The Link, and other books and publications. She has given two briefings on Capitol Hill, presentations at the Asia Media Summit in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, conferences in the West Bank, Harvard Law School, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the Naval Postgraduate Institute, Georgetown, and elsewhere. Alison has received national awards from the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Council for American Islamic relations (CAIR), and in 2004 was inducted into honorary membership of Phi Alpha Literary Society at Illinois College. The award cited her as a: “Courageous journalist-lecturer on behalf of human rights. The first woman to receive an honorary membership in Phi Alpha history.”

Inspired by the initial Albuquerque billboard campaigns, community-based and campus groups are using creative new techniques to reach tens of thousands of people about the financial, moral, and political costs of military aid to Israel. Does it seem too hard to mount one of these campaigns? Come hear from those who have done it and learn about the basic steps to take, issues to confront, and resources to customize for use in your city, town, or campus.

Caren Levy-Van Slyke is a founding member of the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine (www.cjpip.org) and part of the team that developed the “Be On Our Side” transit advertising campaign with its targeted messaging and compelling graphics of Israelis and Palestinians. She is a long-time anti-war and human rights organizer, who has helped to build a successful community-based organization on Israel and Palestine over the past ten years. She has worked on the Chicago transit-based strategy, contributed to the essential information-packed website (www.TwoPeoplesOneFuture.org), and supported the spread of the campaign to Albuquerque, Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC, Arizona State University – with more cities to come.

Rich Forer works with the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel, a non-profit that consists of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and non-affiliated groups whose common denominator is peace and equality for Israelis and Palestinians. Among their activities is a creative billboard campaign.
Forer, a former member of AIPAC, became deeply involved in the Israel-Palestine issue as a result of a profound transformation in which his core identity as a Jew dissolved. His discovery is that in Truth we are all Muslim and Jewish, Palestinian and Israeli. His book, Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion –A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict describes the transformation and clarifies virtually all arguments made to defend the Israeli Occupation. Forer, who has relatives living in Israel and whose identical twin brother is a prominent member of an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism, is a practitioner of the Meir Schneider Self-Healing Method, a unique system of healing developed by an Israeli.

Mai Abdul Rahman is a Palestinian American living in Washington D.C. an organizer, activist, writer and speaker. Mai founded American Palestinian Women’s Association, has organized humanitarian relief programs, to aid Palestinians as well as homeless women and children in our area and serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations. Mai is a Doctorate student at Howard University’s School of Education, Educational Policy and Administration program in that capacity she has published several articles related to educational policy and the state of education in the District of Columbia. As a United Nations consultant, she assisted in developing short and long-term strategies for Birzeit University in the Israeli Occupied West Bank. She developed the fundraising document “Creating a World of Possibilities & Building a Future of Hope” and produced a Johns Hopkins University Documentary “Arab Women Speak Out”. Mai hosted and produced “Spotlight on Education” a local television program that addressed school policies, social and economic issues that impact school aged children, families, teachers and administrators in the District of Columbia.

Flashmobs have been taking the world by storm! Join this exciting workshop for tips and training in how to create a flashmob to raise awareness about your campaign, and learn about other tools for making news with creative visuals.

Rae Abileah is the Middle East Coordinator at CODEPINK Women for Peace (www.codepink.org) and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace / Young Jewish Proud (www.youngjewishproud.org). She co-authored a submission to Mondoweiss entitled “2011: Year of the Flashmob” which won second place in the Mondo Awards. (http://mondoweiss.net/2011/03/mondo-award-winner-first-runner-up-rae-abileah-and-colleen-kelly-for-flashmob.html) Rae is an American Jew of Israeli descent living in San Francisco, CA, where she has been known to write parodies and groove with a beat for justice.

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Guardian, The Independent Film Channel, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.

Dave Lippman is a member of the songwriting and streetsinging team of Adalah-New York: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel. Adalah-NY has been carrying out a successful boycott campaign against Israel settlement builder Lev Leviev since 2007 and has been active in consumer, cultural, and academic boycott activities as well. Dave has been doing satirical tours nationally and beyond for decades, portraying first a singing CIA agent, and currently the Bard of the Bankers, Wild Bill Bailout.

Are you someone who has been to Palestine or knows a lot about the issue but hasn’t quite figured out how to best convey your experience to others? Or do you feel frustrated and ill-prepared when confronted with opposition and difficult questions? Developed by award-winning speaker Anna Baltzer, this interactive workshop offers techniques and talking points for dealing with hostility and effectively engaging your communities to take action.

Anna Baltzer is the national campaign coordinator at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. She is a Jewish-American Columbia graduate, former-Fulbright scholar, the granddaughter of Holocaust refugees, and an award-winning lecturer, author, and activist for Palestinian human rights. As a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in the West Bank, Baltzer documented human rights abuses and supported Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance to the Occupation. Baltzer has appeared on television more than 100 times (including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where she appeared alongside Palestinian presidential candidate and nonviolence leader Dr. Mustafa Barghouti) and lectured at more than 500 universities, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, and policy institutes around the world with her acclaimed presentation, “Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories & Photos.”

We all know that politics drives much of the policies enacted by the U.S government. Change happens not only by taking to the streets but by going to the suites of Congress and government. Learn how to leverage your people power into political power that influences Members of Congress and other government officials.

Moderated by Gael Murphy, cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace.

Paul Kawika Martin is Peace Action’s organizing and political director. He has worked for 20 years with numerous environmental, peace, animal rights and human rights organizations. Martin uses his expertise on nuclear weapons and U.S. foreign policy to lobby Congress and to mobilize Peace Action’s 100,000 members and 100 chapters around social change. He holds leadership positions in the two largest peace coalitions: Win Without War and United for Peace and Justice. Mr. Martin founded several influential coalitions working on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan policy and chairs a nearly six-year old meeting between NGO leaders and congressional staff. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Politico, Nightline, and Democracy Now! He is also on the board of the National Priorities Project.

Gael Murphy is primarily concerned with the increasing militarization of US foreign policy, with Israel’s “defense” at the center; and the massively bloated US military budget. For the past 5 years, Gael has served as co-chair of the Legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice Coalition pursuing legislative and political pressure to defund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As part of the Gaza Freedom March, she led an ad hoc policy working group to organize inside and outside actions in an effort to build Congressional support for justice for Palestinians. As a resident of Washington, DC, she has extensive practical experience with a broad range of methods to engage Members of Congress, from traditional lobbying to direct action. Gael is a cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace.

Barbara Wien has worked to stop human rights abuses, violence and war from the time she was 21. She has protected human rights defenders in conflict zones, led eight national organizations, taught alternatives to war and violence at six universities, and been invited to speak in 58 countries.

From 2003-2008, Barbara was Director of Peace Brigades International-USA (PBI) which protects lives in war zones using a cutting-edge strategy known as “nonviolent protective accompaniment”. PBI walks side-by-side as unarmed bodyguards at the request of the local people to stop abductions and massacres. Barbara worked with the playwright Eve Ensler at the V-Day Foundation for two years funding women’s coalitions in many countries to end gender violence. The royalties and proceeds from performances of “The Vagina Monologues” are used to end honor killings, bride burnings, female genital mutilation, rape, incest and war. Barbara also led labor delegations to El Salvador to stop the killing of priests, school teachers and trade union activists by the Army’s death squads (1986-1989).

On special assignment, the U.S. State Department sent Barbara to Northern Uganda to help religious leaders to gain the release of child soldiers kidnapped by the Lord Resistance Army (1999-2000). The U.S. Embassy in Delhi also sent her to work with Hindu and Muslim women to stop communal rioting and gender violence in Gujarat in 2002. With women of color in her neighborhood, she negotiated ceasefires and truces among gangs in Harlem (1981-1986) and Washington D.C. (1987-1997).

Barbara was Director of the Real Security Education Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a national training program to reduce military spending and put the money into human needs. As a Program Officer and Trainer at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) for five years, she worked with hundreds of UN officials, humanitarian workers, police and military officers to de-escalate violence and negotiate ceasefires, but was famously forced out for opposing the bombings of Afghanistan in 2001. For six years prior, Barbara was the Exec Dir of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED), a membership organization of K-12 peace educators, scholars, and activists in the U.S. She also served as the chief fundraiser for the National Whistleblower Center to protect atomic workers.

Last year, one success of the 2010 NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) Review was a reiteration of the need for a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the Middle East. But Israel (not a party to the NPT) promptly asserted they would not join the discussions. As Israel is one of 3 nuclear powers in the region (along with India and Pakistan), this constitutes a major roadblock to what could be a major step toward peace. This workshop will look at the realities of Israel’s nuclear weapons program, the history of NWFZ’s elsewhere, and prospects for progress in the current political landscape.

Jay Marx is a writer and nuclear weapons abolition advocate living in DC since 1996. He has written educational videos for college students, helped administer the World Bank’s microfinance program, and run for DC City Council. A former coordinator of the Washington Peace Center, Jay is now Campaign Coordinator for the Proposition One Committee for Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion. He lived and worked in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in 1995.

Kevin Martin has served as Executive Director of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund since September 4, 2001, and has worked with the organization in various capacities for over 25 years. Kevin’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Village Voice, The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, The Progressive, Z magazine and many other publications. He has appeared on CNN, National Public Radio, Fox News, MSNBC, BBC-TV and radio, and many other local, national and international radio and television outlets. Kevin also serves on the Advisory Board of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. In addition to traveling and speaking on Peace Action’s behalf all around the United States, Kevin has represented Peace Action on international delegations to Japan, Russia, China, Mexico and Britain. Peace Action is the nation’s largest peace and justice organization with 100,000 members nationwide, 30 state level affiliates and over 100 local chapters. www.peace-action.org

Leila Zand is an Iranian-America who experienced the Islamic Revolution, and lived through Iran-Iraq war, Iranian Reconstructing period following the war and the Iranian Reform years. In 2000, Leila left Iran for the U.S. along with her husband and twin daughters.

Mrs. Zand served at Fellowship Of Reconciliation. Since 2006, where she has focused on Iran-US relations and the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Leila’s mission is creating a bridge of understanding between the people of the Middle East and people of the United States. She has traveled and lived in many different countries in the Middle East and led number of Civilian Diplomacy Delegations to Iran to sustain the goal of promoting understanding and reconciliation. Leila works hard to educate American population about the US activities on militarization of the Middle East and the impact of such militarization in the life of ordinary people.

In this panel, students will share stories of campus BDS campaigns and the influence of AIPAC on college campuses.

Sarah Jawari from the University of Kansas will share her experience about the difficult time she has endured organizing a SJP group organization on campus. Despite the difficulties, she has helped mobilize students to have a business successfully divest from sponsoring and catering to KU Hillel’s Israel Week events.
Andrew Meyer is a student at Evergreen State College, a founding member of Olympia BDS and member of the Board of Directors at the Rachel Corrie Foundation. Students at Evergreen State College, the alma mater of Rachel Corrie, have tirelessly worked for divestment from companies profiting off of the occupation of Palestine.
Hanna King is a student and pro-Palestine organizer at Swarthmore College. A member of Young Jewish Proud and Jewish Voice for Peace, she was part of the delegation that interrupted the Jewish General Assembly this past November. Hanna finds her roots in queer, youth-led movements, and broadly calls on that experience in her work against the occupation.
Also presenting will be Nuha Masri, a UC Berkeley student and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine.

Ann Wright grew up in Bentonville, Arkansas, and attended the University of Arkansas, where she received a master’s and a law degree. She also has a master’s degree in national security affairs from the U.S. Naval War College. After college, she spent thirteen years in the U.S. Army and sixteen additional years in the Army Reserves, retiring as a Colonel. She is airborne-qualified.

In 1987, Col. Wright joined the Foreign Service and served as U.S. Deputy Ambassador in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. She received the State Department’s Award for Heroism for her actions during the evacuation of 2,500 people from the civil war in Sierra Leone, the largest evacuation since Saigon. She was on the first State Department team to go to Afghanistan and helped reopen the Embassy there in December 2001. Her other overseas assignments include Somalia, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada, Micronesia, and Nicaragua. On March 19, 2003, the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ann Wright cabled a letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell, stating that without the authorization of the UN Security Council, the invasion and occupation of a Muslim, Arab, oil-rich country would be a disaster. Since then, she has been writing and speaking out for peace. She fasted for a month, picketed at Guantánamo, served as a juror in impeachment hearings, traveled to Iran as a citizen diplomat, and has been arrested numerous times for peaceful, nonviolent protest of Bush’s policies, particularly the war on Iraq. She has been on delegations to Iran and was in Gaza three times in 2009, following the Israeli attack on Gaza that killed 1,440 and wounded 5,000. She was an organizer for the Gaza Freedom March that brought 1,350 persons from 44 countries to Cairo, Egypt, in solidarity with the people of Gaza. She was on the May, 2010 Gaza flotilla that was attacked by the Israeli military. She lives in Honolulu.

We will honor four amazing peacemakers and truthtellers:
* 86-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, who has joined West Bank protests, confronted angry Zionists on college campuses, started a hunger strike in Egypt to force open the Gaza border, and is preparing to set sail for Gaza as part of the next Freedom Flotilla.
* Young Gaza native Amer Shurrab, who has been educating the US public about the plight of Gaza through the tragic story of the death of his two brothers at the hands of Israel soldiers during Operation Cast Lead.
* London Boycott Divestment Sanction (BDS) organizer Bruce Levy, who recently won a great victory in closing down Britain’s flagship store of AHAVA (cosmetics made in illegal settlements).
* Accepting the award on behalf of “Two People, One Future” Billboard campaign will be Caren Van-Slyke, who helped bring the campaign to Chicago and Mai Abdul Rahman, who helped bring the campaign to Washington D.C.
* Accepting the award on behalf of MondoWeiss, will be founders and editors, Phil Weiss and Adam Horowitz.

There will be two one hour sessions, both will have space for on-site self-organized sessions as well. Learning Circles will include sessions such as:

Breaking the Siege of Gaza One Boat at a Time
Felice Gelman, Ann Wright, Bob Naiman

The Right of Return
Ron Fischer

BDS Organizers Meet-Up
Contact Nancy Kricorian ( codepinknyc@gmail.com) if you are interested in joining

Challenging AIPAC: What’s Next?
Ridgely Fuller

AIPAC and the IRS
Grant Smith

How the Israel Lobby dominates the US Media
Alison Weir

This is an evening devoted to the poets, musicians, and comedians of Palestine. Join us for a performance by Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi, as he delivers poems from his new book, Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine. Jonathon Tucker, a local resistance poet will unleash poems about the dangerous relationship between the United States and Israel. Palestinian-American comedian Said Durrah will lighten the mood with humor, and Palestinian-American poet Dina Omar will share poetry. Guests will also hear a performance by the magical Palestinian oud and kanoun player, Huda Asfour.

Remi Kanazi is a poet, writer, and activist based in New York City. He is the editor of Poets For Palestine (Al Jisser Group, 2008). His political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world, including Al Jazeera English, GRITtv with Laura Flanders, and BBC Radio. His poetry has taken him across North America, the UK, and the Middle East, and he recently appeared in the Palestine Festival of Literature as well as Poetry International. He is a recurring writer in residence and advisory board member for the Palestine Writing Workshop.

Huda Asfour is a Palestnian oud and kanoun player, born in 1982 in Lebanon. Huda spent her childhood in Tunisia, after which she moved to Gaza and later Ramallah. After high school she joined Birziet University, and became a member of the University’s Ensamble (Sanabel) also, while in Ramallah, Huda joined the National Conservatory of Music where she studied musical history and theory under the supervision of Mr. Khaled Jubran. In 2001, she joined Al-Urmawi Center for Mashriq Music – Jerusalem. In 2004, she moved to Egypt to continue her education and established Jehar Ensemble with Tamer Abu Ghazaleh. Huda is currently a doctoral student at the George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Washington DC, She has performed in Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and the DC metropolitan area. Huda reflects her journey as a Palestinian in her music while exploring different genres and styles.

Jonathan B. Tucker is a performance poet, facilitator, youth worker/advocate, community organizer and coach of the DC Youth Slam Team. He uses performance art to start conversations about social justice issues, focusing his efforts primarily on engaging and supporting young artists and activists in the DC/MD/VA area. He has led high school students on year-long journeys with Operation Understanding DC, exploring cross cultural dialogue and traveling down south to study the Civil Rights Movement. He is currently a grantee with the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities’ Young Artists Program, using spoken word poetry as a vehicle for peer education around HIV/AIDS with a group from Children’s Hospital called Teens Against the Spread of AIDS. Jonathan also works with Teaching for Change and regularly hosts open mics and slams at Busboys and Poets, BloomBars, The Fridge, and other community art spaces in which he also teaches creative writing and performance.

Dina Omar is a Palestinian poet and graduate from the University California Berkeley in Middle Eastern Studies and Anthropology. She is now a graduate student in Anthropology at Columbia University. At UCB Dina studied and taught in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People Program and was an active organizer in Students For Justice in Palestine and the Palestine Youth Network through witch she was a core organizer of the Berkeley BDS campaign. Dina is currently submitting her first book of poems to be reviewed for publication titled sabbar.

Said Durrah is a rising comedic star based out of the Washington D.C. Area. Said has performed stand-up all over the country and draws most of his inspiration from his Arab-American and Muslim roots. Within his first year performing comedy, he performed in the “Arabs Gone Wild” , “1001 Laughs” , and “Funatical Comedy” tours and recently performed Arab Standup Comedy on Broadway. Said has been labeled “One To Watch” by international television and print outlets.

Josh Ruebner, National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, will present a workshop on how to organize to challenge U.S. military aid to Israel. The workshop will cover background information on U.S. military aid to Israel, the budget process for military aid and ways to influence it, laws governing military aid and how to use them to advocate to end aid to Israel, and ways to get involved with the US Campaign’s organizing efforts to end aid to Israel, along with demonstrations of its interactive websites–http://www.aidtoisrael.org and http://www.weaponstoisrael.org–that support this campaign.
Followed by an overview of lobbying points presented by Robert Naiman, Grant Smith and others.

Josh Ruebner is the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of nearly 350 organizations working to end U.S. support for Israel’s illegal 43-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, and to change U.S. policy toward Israel/ Palestine to support
human rights, international law, and equality.

Ruebner is a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service, a federal government agency providing Members of Congress with policy analysis. He holds a graduate degree in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. Ruebner’s analysis and commentary on U.S. policy toward the Middle East appear frequently in media such as NBC, ABC Nightline, CSPAN, Al Jazeera, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, Detroit Free Press, Huffington Post, Middle East Report, and more.