The Israel Lobby Con EXTRA! Podcast

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.

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.

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.”

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. 

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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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.