Miranda’s mother was a secular Jewish refugee from the Holocaust in 1938. She was always bitterly opposed to what was being done to the Palestinians in her name as a Jew. Because of that, Miranda became an Ecumenical Accompanier in 2009, spent 3 months in Hebron, and has been back many times since. She is a member of the Holocaust survivor Descendants Network and attends demonstrations under that banner. In 2017 she produced a documentary entitled ‘Balfour to Banksy: Divisions and Visions in Palestine‘. She is a trustee of Sabeel-Kairos UK, the Communications Lead for Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine as well as being on the Advisory Forum of the Balfour Project and a founder member of CAMPAIN.

Thair Abu Ras is a PhD candidate at the department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. A Palestinian citizen of Israel, Thair has extensive experience in civil society in Israel. Thair worked for Mossawa – The advocacy centre for Arab citizens in Israel’, “Sikkuy-Aufoq: a shared Jewish and Arab nonprofit organisation that works to advance equality and partnership between the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel”, and the European Union delegation to Israel working on employment equality for Palestinian citizens in Israel. Thair has a Masters in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Haifa and a Masters from the University of Houston in Political Science, his current research focuses on the Palestinian citizens of Israel during the Israeli political crisis 2019-2022.   

Online talk given

Jonathan Kuttab is a co-founder of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq and co-founder of Nonviolence International. A well-known international human rights lawyer, Jonathan practices in the US, Palestine and Israel. He serves on the Board of Bethlehem Bible College and is President of the Board of Holy Land Trust. Jonathan was the head of the Legal Committee negotiating the Cairo Agreement of 1994 between Israel and the PLO. After graduating with his Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD) from Virginia Law School, and practising a couple years on Wall Street, Jonathan returned home to Palestine. Jonathan was visiting scholar at Osgoode Law School at York University in Toronto in the Fall of 2017, and is a founding director of Just Peace Advocates Mouvement pour une Paix Juste, a Canadian based international law human rights not-for-profit organisation. Jonathan is currently the executive director of Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA). Jonathan is a resident of East Jerusalem, and is a partner of Kuttab, Khoury and Hanna Law Firm in East Jerusalem.

Helena Cobban is a writer and researcher on international affairs who lives in Washington DC. In 1984, Cambridge U.P. published her seminal study The Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Three of her six other sole-authored books dealt with political and strategic developments in the Arab-Israeli theatre, the rest with more global matters. For 17 years she contributed a regular column on global issues to The Christian Science Monitor and Al-Hayat (London). In 2010 she founded Just World Books, which has published ground-breaking titles by Palestinian, Zionism-questioning Jewish, and other authors; and in 2016 she was a co-founder of Just World Educational, which she now serves as president. Her most recent book, co-authored with Rami G. Khouri, is Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters (OR Books, 2024.)

Sir Vincent Fean on Times Radio on 8 October 2024

Tamara El-Halawani is a research assistant at the SOAS ICOP project and a recent MSc graduate in International Politics from SOAS University, London. She is currently completing a dissertation on ‘The Erasure of Palestinians on social media.’ Prior to joining ICOP, she worked as a reporter for The Conduit in London and served as a parliamentary staffer for her local constituency in the House of Commons. Tamara also holds a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Genetics from the University of Edinburgh.

Dr Zahira Jaser is an Italian-Palestinian Associate Professor at the University of Sussex Business School. She is the Director of the MBA programme. She has been researching the impact of anti-Palestinian racism in organisations and society. Her research and writings have been featured in Science, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the BBC, Wired, the Harvard Business Review and many academic journals. She holds a PhD in Management from Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) and a MSc in Organisational Behaviour from the London School of Economics, and received her BA with honours in Political Science and Economics from Università Di Padova, Italy.

with Kristyan Benedict, Crisis Response Manager for Amnesty International UK

Kristyan Benedict manages Amnesty International UK’s Crisis Response Programme, focusing on armed conflict, mass repression, and UK foreign policy. His work has involved working with and supporting activists and human rights defenders from a range of countries and regions, including Israel/Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, China, and Myanmar. He’s worked on Israel/Palestine at a high level since the early 2000s, with a particular focus on justice and accountability and developing the End Israeli Apartheid Campaign.

Dr Phyllis Starkey (Vice Chair, Balfour

Closing Statement -Dr Phyllis Starkey

Part of our Peace with Justice – how to get there

How young people bring about change—The Balfour

Part of our Peace with Justice – how to get there