Public Forum on Israel-Gaza War: One Year Later

Event Description 

October 7, 2024, marks the somber anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israel-Gaza War. These events are widely viewed as a transformative moment both in the Middle East and for international affairs more broadly. Join us for a panel discussion to examine the political and moral significance of this topic with four experts who will address different aspects of the topic, including recent events in Lebanon marked by the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. This event is envisioned as a public forum. Audience participation is both welcome and encouraged.

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Panelists

Mouin Rabbani is a researcher, analyst, and commentator specializing in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He has among other positions served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Head of Middle East with the Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation, Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group, and Researcher with Al-Haq, West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. Rabbani is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, where he also hosts the Connections podcast and edits its Quick Thoughts feature; Managing Editor and Associate Editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development; and a Contributing Editor of Middle East Report. He is Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS), Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), and the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. Rabbani has published, presented and commented widely on Middle East issues, including for most major print, television and digital media.

Sarah Leah Whitson is the Executive Director of DAWN. Previously, she served as executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division from 2004 – 2020, overseeing the work of the division in 19 countries, with staff located in 10 countries. Whitson has led dozens of advocacy and investigative missions throughout the region, focusing on issues of armed conflict, accountability, legal reform, migrant workers, and human rights. She has published widely on human rights and foreign policy in the Middle East in international and regional media, including The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Los Angeles Times, and CNN. She appears regularly on Al-Jazeera, BBC, NPR, MSNBC, and CNN. Previously, Whitson worked in New York for Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Law School. Whitson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is on the boards of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, Artistic Freedom Initiative, Freedom Forward, ALQST for Human Rights, Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, Action for Hope and the Armenian Bar Association.

Arie M. Dubnov is an associate professor of history and International Affairs who holds the Max Ticktin Chair of Israel Studies and serves as director of the Middle East Program. Trained in Israel and the U.S., he is a cultural and intellectual historian of twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli history, with emphasis on the British mandate period in Palestine and the study of Jewish nationalism. His books include the intellectual biography Isaiah Berlin: The Journey of a Jewish Liberal (2012), and three edited volumes, Zionism – A View from the Outside (2010 [in Hebrew]), and Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-century Territorial Separatism (2019, co-edited with Laura Robson), and Amos Oz’s Two Pens: Between Literature and Politics (Routledge, 2023). His current book research project, tentatively entitled Dreamers of the Third Empire/Temple, examines ties between Zionist and British imperial thinkers in interwar years and seeks to uncover alternative, neglected federalist political schemes for the region’s future that were circulating at the time.

Yousef Munayyer is Head of Palestine/Israel Program and Senior Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC. He also serves as a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of Palestine Studies and was previously Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Some of his published articles can be found in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, the Journal of Palestine Studies, Foreign Policy, Middle East Policy, among others. He also co-directs the Transnational Repression Project, a research initiative housed at the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. Dr. Munayyer holds a PhD in International Relations and Comparative Politics from the University of Maryland.

Moderator

Dr. Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He obtained his doctorate from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and previously was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA Global Institute. Dr. Hashemi was previously the founding Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. While there, he was also Co-Director of the Religion and International Affairs certificate program, as well as the Political Theory Initiative. His intellectual and research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics and political theory, in particular debates on the global rise of authoritarianism, religion and democracy, secularism and its discontents, Middle East and Islamic politics, democratic and human rights struggles in non-Western societies and Islam-West relations. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, 2009) and co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (Melville House, 2011), The Syria Dilemma (MIT Press, 2013), Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2017) and a four-volume study on Islam and Human Rights: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies (Routledge, 2023). He is frequently interviewed by PBS, NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, Pacifica Radio, Alternative Radio and the BBC and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Al Jazeera Online, CNN.com among other media outlets.