Contributors

Jennifer Bing 

Jennifer Bing is the Palestine-Israel Program director for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Chicago where she has worked organizing conferences, campaigns, speaking tours, workshops, and internship programs since 1989. Jennifer’s first visit to Gaza was in 1982, although Quaker and AFSC engagement began there when Palestinian refugees arrived in 1948. Jennifer currently works on AFSC’s project Gaza Unlocked (gazaunlocked.org), which highlights stories from Gaza and the need to end the blockade and Israeli military occupation. 

Kathleen Christison 

Kathleen Christison has been writing on the Palestinian situation for 45 years, first as a CIA political analyst in the 1970s and since then as a freelance writer. She has traveled to Palestine more than a dozen times, initially in 1963 and with increasing frequency since 2003. She writes often for Counterpunch.org, and is a member of EPF/PIN, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship’s Palestine-Israel Network. Her books include Perceptions of Palestine (1999 and 2001), The Wound of Dispossession (2002), and Palestine in Pieces (2009), co-authored with her late husband Bill Christison. 

Pauline M. Coffman, Ed.D. 

Dr. Coffman is Professor and Director (retired) of the School of Adult Learning at North Park University in Chicago, and an author/editor of Steadfast Hope: the Palestinian Quest for Just Peace (2009) and Zionism Unsettled: A Congregational Study Guide (2014). Her interest in the Middle East began with a junior year of college at Beirut College for Women (now Lebanese American University) in Beirut, Lebanon. She has led traveling seminars for the Middle East Task Force of Chicago Presbytery to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel/Palestine. She is co-chair of the Seraj Library Project which establishes children’s libraries in villages in Palestine (Serajlibraries.org). She was part of the initial group that launched Kairos USA, and has served on the Board of the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  

Jonathan Cook 

Jonathan Cook, winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism, is based in Nazareth, the capital of Israel’s Palestinian minority. He is a regular contributor to Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye. His books include Blood and Religion and Disappearing Palestine. His website is jonathan-cook.net. 

Katherine Cunningham 

Katherine Cunningham is a licensed psychoanalyst and a Presbyterian minister (honorably retired). She is a past moderator of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the PCUSA and has been a member of the Core Group of the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum of the World Council of Churches. Katherine has also served as the president of the board and executive director of Kairos USA. A committed advocate and educator on Palestinian human rights and justice issues, she has sought to strengthen ecumenical and inter-faith partnerships among faith-based advocacy groups internationally and in the U.S., especially focusing on the call of Palestinian Christians to the church and the world in the Kairos Palestine document. 

Richard Falk 

Richard Falk is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University, and former Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories, UN Human Rights Council. 

Noushin Darya Framke 

Noushin Darya Framke in an Armenian/ Iranian writer and editor who is an active Presbyterian advocate for Palestinian rights. She was on the writing and editing teams of Steadfast Hope, and Zionism Unsettled. Noushin was also involved in the corporate engagement of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) with Caterpillar, Inc., Hewlett Packard, and Motorola Solutions, all of which the denomination voted to divest its holding from in 2014, based on their profits from human rights abuses in Palestine. Noushin has been a U.S. citizen since 1986 and splits her time between the U.S. and Canada. 

Joseph Getzoff

Joseph Getzoff is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota. He conducted field work in the Naqab/Negev from 2015-2017 thanks to a Fulbright Fellowship and a University of Minnesota thesis research grant. 

Harry Gunkel 

Harry Gunkel is a retired pediatrician in San Antonio, Texas, who spent 2007-2012 living in the Palestinian territories as a volunteer with the Episcopal Church, faculty member of Bethlehem University, consultant to a USAID healthcare project, and other volunteer activities. His experiences during those years sealed his bond with Palestine and its people and motivate his ongoing efforts in collaboration with other advocates toward justice in the region. With a colleague, he organizes annual visits to the West Bank and Gaza to offer travelers a different perspective on the “Holy Land.” 

Gil Hochberg 

Gil Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies at Columbia University. Her first book, In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination (Princeton University Press, 2007), examines the complex relationship between the signifiers “Arab” and “Jew” in contemporary Jewish and Arab literatures. Her most recent book, Visual Occupations: Vision and Visibility in a Conflict Zone (Duke University Press, 2015), is a study of the visual politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is currently writing a book on art, archives and the production of historical knowledge. 

Rachael Kamel 

Rachael Kamel, PhD., is an independent scholar, currently working as an adjunct professor for the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she teaches a course on gender and globalization. Since the 1980s, Kamel has worked as an editor and writer on a variety of social justice issues. After the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2001, Kamel joined the Jewish anti-occupation movement, which led her to an interest in Jewish Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in Religion in 2016, with research on Zionism, Nationalism, and American Jewish history. 

Rami Khouri 

Rami Khouri is a Senior Public Policy Fellow and adjunct professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut. He is a Syndicated columnist through Agence Global Syndicate, USA, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

Jonathan Kuttab 

Jonathan Kuttab is a Palestinian attorney and human rights activist. He grew up in Jerusalem, graduated from University of Virginia Law School, and worked at the Wall Street law firm of Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander. He is a member of the Bar Association in New York, Israel, and Palestine. Mr. Kuttab founded a number of human rights organizations, including Al Haq in Jerusalem and the Mandela Institute for Palestinian Prisoners; he is the Chairman of the Board of Bethlehem Bible College, and of Holy Land Trust. Mr. Kuttab is a recognized authority on international law, human rights, and Palestinian and Israeli affairs; he was the head of the Legal Committee negotiating the Cairo Agreement of 1994 between Israel and the PLO. 

Susan Landau 

Susan Landau combines her lifelong career as a clinical social worker with her commitment to justice in Israel-Palestine. A founding member and co-convener of Christian-Jewish Allies of Philadelphia (PA), she participates in interfaith teaching teams offering Steadfast Hope:  The Palestinian Quest for a Just Peace and Zionism Unsettled to faith-based communities. Susan helped launch the Philadelphia Coalition for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel (2010; Philly BDS). A former Jewish educator in her congregational school, she left  to participate in founding a non-Zionist Tikkun Olam Chavurah, where she serves on the steering committee. 

Ken Mayers 

Ken Mayers is a graduate of Princeton University in Electrical Engineering, a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, and a holder of a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. A member of Veterans for Peace since 1986, Ken participated in the Gaza Freedom March in 2010, sailed on “The Audacity of Hope” in the Second Gaza Flotilla in 2011, helped ICAHD rebuild a home destroyed by the IDF in 2012, and participated in Veterans for Peace delegations to Palestine in 2013 and 2017. 

Martina Reese 

Martina Reese is a communications professional with a strong interest in the people and politics of the Middle East. She is a past member of the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and has contributed to the development of the IPMN’s library of resource materials. Ms. Reese has engaged at the local and national level in educational outreach and activism to promote awareness of the Palestinian narrative and the role of U.S. policy in creating the regional status quo. 

Laura Siena 

Laura Siena is a longtime community activist who has had an eclectic professional career in nonprofit management and fundraising. Her particular interests include civil rights, the cooperative economy and sustainable agriculture. 

Ron smith 

Ron J. Smith is a Political Geographer who has conducted research in Palestine for over a decade. His research has focused on the impact of occupation on daily life of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. His book, forthcoming from University of Georgia Press, details the local geographies of occupation. He is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Bucknell University. 

G.J. Tarazi 

Ghassan J. Tarazi is a retired educator, spending 37 years in public education and ending his career as a college professor. He is a founding board member of Palestinian Christian Alliance of Peace and a member of Justice for Palestine and Israel Community of the Alliance of Baptists. He is a member of Ravensworth Baptist Church in Annandale, VA. 

Jim Tiefenthal 

Jim Tiefenthal is the co-producer of the annual Witness Palestine Film Festival at  The Little  Theatre in Rochester, N.Y. (six years running). He is also a Charter member of Christians Witnessing for Palestine, and the Rochester, N.Y. local group of Friends of Sabeel North America. 

Co-editors: Noushin Darya Framke and Susan Landau
Book design: Martina Reese 

Proof editor: Don Maclay 

Videographer: Jim Tiefenthal 

Website: Noushin Darya Framke 

IPMN Book Project Committee: John Anderson, Pauline Coffman, Katherine Cunningham, Walt Davis, Jeffrey DeYoe, Kathleen Christison, Noushin Darya Framke, Susan Landau, Don Maclay, and Martina Reese 

The Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

ActiveStills.org
Don Wagner, IPMN Education Committee 

Anna Baltzer, Director, Organizing and Advocacy, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights 

Dalit Baum, Director, Economic Activism Program, American Friends Service Committee, Co-founder, Who Profits 

Elmarie Parker, Regional Liaison for Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, Presbyterian Mission Agency of the PC(USA)
Tova Perlmutter and Adam Horowitz, Mondoweiss.net

Sylvia Haddad, Executive Secretary of the Joint Christian Committee in Lebanon 

Ted Settle, IPMN member and photographer