The Israel Lobby Con EXTRA! Podcast

Grant Smith: American Public Opinion About U.S. Aid To Israel And Other Top AIPAC Programs

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.

Catherine Jordan: The producer shows clips from Valentino’s Ghost: Why We Hate Arabs.

Catherine Jordan is the award-winning producer and co-editor of Valentino’s Ghost: Why We Hate Arabs. A journalist for 14 years, she spent five years working with director Michael Singh to shape the film’s structure, narrative and aesthetics, as well as researching the storylines and current events which form the narrative thread for their documentary. Jordan was an editor and staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, and a correspondent for The Daily Telegraph in London, The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Magazine, Condé Nast’s Tatler (London) and The New Scotsman (UK). She spent three years as a researcher at Hollywood’s Paramount Pictures studio, where her work included research and writing on the genres and highlights in Paramount’s theatrical library of 2,500 films. Jordan was honored at the MPAC 2014 Media Awards as a “Voice of Courage and Conscience” for her role in producing Valentino's Ghost.

Philip Weiss: Mainstream media coverage of Israel and Palestine. How is it getting better? How is it getting worse?

Philip Weiss is an American journalist who co-edits Mondoweiss, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.

Weiss has written for the New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, and the New York Observer.

In 2006 he began writing a daily blog called Mondoweiss on The New York Observer website. In the spring of 2007 he started Mondoweiss as an independent blog because of 9/11, Iraq, Gaza, the Nakba and the struggling people of Israel and Palestine, with the aim of building a diverse community, with posts from many authors.

He co-edited The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (2011) with Adam Horowitz and Lizzy Ratner.

Rula Jebreal: Voices prohibited by mainstream media and its role in spreading Islamophobia.

Rula Jebreal is an award-winning journalist, author, and foreign policy analyst.

Her first novel, Miral, sold two million copies and was made into a major motion picture.

She frequently appears on CNN, HBO and Bloomberg News, and has contributed op-eds to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Newsweek, The Nation, and San Jose Mercury News.

Jebreal has anchored multiple television shows in both Italy and Egypt, and reports extensively from across the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S., frequently challenging Islamophobic rhetoric and media on its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jebreal will be discussing why lumping all Muslims into one monolithic, extremist-linked bracket is actually a victory for ISIS, as well as how and why the media abrogates its responsibility to cover all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Huwaida Arraf: Holding Israel accountable for the Gaza flotilla raid.

Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American lawyer and human rights advocate. As the daughter of an Israeli-born Palestinian, she is also a citizen of Israel. Arraf received her Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, and her Juris Doctor from the American University Washington College of Law, where she focused on international human rights and humanitarian law. In 2001 Arraf co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is co-editor of the book Peace Under Fire: Israel, Palestine, and the International Solidarity Movement.

Arraf was one of the initiators and organizers of a delegation of American lawyers to Gaza in February 2009, and co-authored the report on their findings, Onslaught: Israel's Attack on Gaza and the Rule of Law. She is the former chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement, and from August to December 2008 led five successful sea voyages to the Gaza Strip to confront and challenge Israel's illegal blockade. Arraf was one of the primary organizers of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and was traveling with it when Israeli forces lethally attacked it on May 31, 2010.  In 2016 Arraf joined other plaintiffs in U.S. federal court suing the Israeli agencies for their roles in the 2010 attack on Challenger I.

Susan Abulhawa: Why we’re suing the U.S. Treasury Department.

Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian novelist, poet, and essayist. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury, 2010), became an instant international bestseller and was translated into 27 languages. Her most recent novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water (Bloomsbury, 2015), has likewise been translated into 26 languages thus far. Abulhawa’s first poetry collection, My Voice Sought The Wind (Just World Books), was published in 2013, and she has contributed to several anthologies.

Her essays and political commentary have appeared in print, radio and digital media internationally.

In 2001, before she left a career in neuroscience research to become a full-time writer, Abulhawa founded Playgrounds for Palestine a children’s organization dedicated to upholding the Right to Play for Palestinian children.

Maria LaHood: The birth of Palestine solidarity activism at George Mason University. The Key aims of solidarity movements on U.S. college campuses and attempts to thwart growing grassroots activism.

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 Israeli goods; Salaita v. Kennedy,representing Steven Salaita, who was terminated from a tenured position for tweets critical of Israel; and CCR v. DOD, seeking U.S. government records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regarding Israel’s 2010 attack on the flotilla to Gaza. She works closely with Palestine Legal to support students and others whose speech is being suppressed for their Palestine advocacy around the country. She also works on the Right to Heal initiative with Iraqi civil society and Iraq Veterans seeking accountability for the lasting health effects of the Iraq war.

Her past work at CCR includes cases against United States officials, Arar v. Ashcroft, Al-Aulaqi v. Obama, and Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta; against foreign government officials, Matar v. Dichter and Belhas v. Ya’alon; and against corporations, Wiwa v. Royal Dutch/Shell and Corrie v. Caterpillar. Prior to coming to the Center for Constitutional Rights she advocated on behalf of affordable housing and civil rights in the San Francisco Bay Area, and she graduated from the University of Michigan Law School. She was named a 2010 Public Justice Trial Lawyer of the Year Finalist. 

Tareq Radi: The birth of Palestine solidarity activism at George Mason University. The Key aims of solidarity movements on U.S. college campuses and attempts to thwart growing grassroots activism.

Tareq Radi is a Palestinian-American organizer based in Washington, DC.

He is currently the Public Affairs Coordinator at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Under the umbrella of the Arab Studies Institute,

Radi is leading an initiative to mine historical and contemporary documents related to the Palestinian solidarity movement in the United States. The work will culminate in a series of databases aimed at studying the U.S.-based movement and offering researchers and advocates alike a critical resource.

Before that, he graduated with a B.S in Finance from George Mason University (GMU), where he was a founding member of GMU’s Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA).

He intends to pursue graduate school with hopes of developing and conducting research on resistance economies.

Justin Raimondo: Israel and foreign policy issues in the presidential campaign. Is America’s unconditional support for Israel finally becoming a political issue?

The following is a presentation made at the 2016 Israel Lobby Con held at the National Press Club.

Justin Raimondo is an American author and the editorial director of Antiwar.com.

In addition to his thrice-weekly column for Antiwar.com, Raimondo is a regular contributor to The American Conservative and Chronicles magazines.

Raimondo's books include Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993), reissued in 2008 with new introduction by George W. Carey by Intercollegiate Studies Institute: Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (AFPAC, 1996); and Colin Powell and the Power Elite (America First Books, 1996).

Raimondo also wrote An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard, (Prometheus Books, July 2000). 

Jim Lobe: Review of the rise of neoconservatives, their role in promoting the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the doctrinal centrality of Israel.

The following is a presentation made at the 2016 Israel Lobby Con held at the National Press Club.

Jim Lobe served as the chief of the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS) from 1980 to 1985 and again from 1989 until 2015. He has managed and produced LobeLog, a blog focused primarily on U.S. policy toward the Middle East, since 2007.

LobeLog, which features contributions by experts on the Middle East and foreign policy, received the Arthur Ross Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs from the American Academy of Diplomacy in 2015.

Throughout much of his journalistic career, Lobe has followed the influence of neoconservatives on U.S. foreign policy and has lectured on the subject at various colleges and universities in the United States, as well as the Institute of American Affairs in Beijing, the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and Sciences Pos in Reims, among other institutions overseas.

In 2004, he acted as defense attorney for the Project for the New American Century at the Brussels Tribunal in Brussels. He is also an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.