Human Rights, Detention & the Rule of Law

Conversation What does it mean to defend human rights from within a society engaged in prolonged conflict? Tal Steiner reflects on years of representing Palestinians challenging military detention, movement restrictions, and barriers to family unity, while examining the enduring tension between security, accountability, and the rule of law.

Guest Tal Steiner is Executive Director of HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, an Israeli human rights organization providing legal representation to Palestinians affected by the occupation. She has spent her career advocating before Israeli courts on issues including administrative detention, freedom of movement, family reunification, and access to justice.

Witness To

• Human rights advocacy during armed conflict
• Military detention and the rule of law
• Defending universal rights from within Israeli society

The Holy Land Foundation Case: Advocacy, Prosecution & the Limits of Dissent

Conversation In 2008, five leaders of what was then America's largest Muslim charity were convicted in one of the most consequential terrorism-financing prosecutions in U.S. history. Miko Peled and John Cline — an author who spent years investigating the case and the defense attorney who tried it — revisit what unfolded inside that courtroom, and what it reveals about the boundaries between advocacy, dissent, and the machinery of post-9/11 prosecution.

Guest Miko Peled is an Israeli-American author and human rights advocate. The son of Israeli general Matti Peled, he is the author of The General's Son and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five, the latter examining the prosecution and conviction of the Holy Land Foundation's leadership.

Guest John Cline is a nationally recognized criminal defense attorney who represented Ghassan Elashi, the Holy Land Foundation's former chairman, at trial and on appeal. Over a decades-long career in complex federal defense, he has also represented clients including Oliver North, Wen Ho Lee, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Witness To

• The Holy Land Foundation case and its legal legacy
• The boundaries between advocacy, speech, and criminal prosecution
• Civil liberties in the post-9/11 landscape

Medicine Under Siege

Conversation For physicians who have volunteered in Gaza, medicine becomes an act of witness as much as a profession. Dr. Nour Sharaf and Dr. Farhan Abdul Azeez, both Dallas-based emergency physicians who have each completed multiple medical missions there, reflect on practicing under conditions of extreme scarcity, the ethical weight of choosing who to treat first, and what it means to return again and again knowing each trip could be their last.

Guest Dr. Nour Sharaf is an emergency medicine physician trained at UT Southwestern/Parkland who has completed medical missions to Gaza, including a 2025 trip and a return mission in early 2026. She has spoken publicly about the collapse of hospital capacity and the toll of treating patients with minimal supplies and equipment.

Guest Dr. Farhan Abdul Azeez is an emergency medicine physician who has traveled to Gaza on multiple medical missions. He also studied Arabic, Tajweed, and Islamic studies formally, and often speaks about the intersection of faith and the ethical demands of practicing medicine in crisis conditions.

Witness To

• The realities of frontline medical care in conflict zones
• The ethical obligations of healthcare workers
• Bearing witness to humanitarian crises through medicine

Free Speech, Journalism & Government Accountability

Conversation When governments, institutions, and powerful actors seek to shape public discourse, journalists and civil liberties advocates are often among the first to confront the consequences. Nora Benavidez and Seth Stern examine the evolving challenges facing free expression, press freedom, and democratic accountability — and what it means to defend the public's right to know in an era of increasing pressure on independent journalism.

Guest Nora Benavidez is Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights at Free Press, where she leads the organization's work at the intersection of law, technology, and democracy — including efforts to curb disinformation and protect free expression and digital civil rights. She previously directed U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America, where she led the organization's First Amendment lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Guest Seth Stern is Chief of Advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, where he leads the organization's efforts to defend press freedom and protect journalists and whistleblowers. A former First Amendment lawyer, he has spent recent years writing and advocating on the legal and policy threats facing the American press.

Witness To

• The evolving landscape of free speech and press freedom
• Government accountability and the role of journalism in democracy
• Protecting expression in an era of increasing polarization

Why Witness?

Conversation After telling the stories of others, Marium Uddin steps in front of the microphone to explain why this show exists. Drawing on her career as a prosecutor, public defender, DHS trial attorney, Immigration Judge, and civil liberties advocate, she reflects on why the people at the center of consequential events — not the legal arguments or headlines about them — have always mattered most to her. She traces the show's title to its double meaning: witness as the people who bear testimony, and witness as an act of presence. She also draws on the word's deeper root, shahid, and what it means to testify to truth even at personal cost.

Guest Marium Uddin is the host of Witness. Across her career, she has represented both institutions and the individuals challenging them, giving her a rare vantage point on law, power, and conscience. Witness is an extension of that work: a forum for preserving testimony before memory hardens into history.

Witness To

• Why testimony — not verdicts — preserves meaning
• Power, conscience, and the fault lines of public life
• Bearing witness as both a description and an invitation

Journalists do more than report history — they often become part of it. Sami Hamdi and Muhammad Jalal discuss political commentary, independent media, immigration enforcement, and the growing consequences of public dissent during periods of geopolitical conflict.

Law is often described as neutral. Politics rarely is. Human rights attorney Noura Erakat and policy expert Lara Friedman examine how international law, diplomacy, advocacy, and public narrative intersect in one of the most contested conflicts of our time. Together, they explore not only what the law says, but why the struggle over the story itself has become so consequential.

In times of crisis, communities often look first to their faith leaders — not only for answers, but for moral clarity. Sheikh Omar Suleiman reflects on leading a community through the war in Gaza and the surge in Islamophobia that followed, the burdens of public leadership, and what it means to bear witness while helping others carry grief, conviction, and hope.