2025 Annual Conference: Gaza Genocide Year 3

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Anthony Aguilar was commissioned into the US Army from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served for 25 years in uniform as a combat Infantry Officer and as a Special Forces Green Beret. Over his military career, he deployed 12 times in support of combat operations and US operations aboard; to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Jordan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. He is a highly-decorated combat veteran and was awarded the Purple Heart from being wounded in combat, a Bronze Star for Valor in Combat and an Army Commendation Medal for Valor in Combat. He was in Gaza working under GHF from 17 May 2025 through 26 June 2025.

William R. (Bill) Deere serves as Director of the Washington, DC office of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). In this role, he relays the Agency’s mission, programs, and challenges to North American policymakers. Deere routinely appears on international fora such as PBS NewsHour, BBC, and ABC News to discuss Palestine refugee and UNRWA matters. He is also a part-time instructor in Arizona State University’s master’s program in International Affairs and Leadership.

Prior to joining UNRWA in 2018, Bill served in both the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government and as a senior executive at major business and trade organizations. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Senate Affairs at the U.S. Department of State under Colin Powell. In the legislative branch, Deere served as an associate staff member to the House Committee on Appropriations.

In the private sector, Deere developed and executed legislative, regulatory and public affairs initiatives for some of the nation’s leading membership and business associations. He was a senior executive at the United States Telecom Association, and a Senior Vice President at the Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association, the world’s largest civil aviation organization.

Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer, writer, public speaker, activist, former senior United Nations Official, and a member of the Gaza People’s Tribunal. He left the UN in October of 2023, penning a widely read letter that warned of genocide in Gaza, criticized the international response, and called for a new approach to Palestine. He has spent four decades in the international human rights movement, including 30+ years at the UN.

He is the former Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, held senior UN positions in Geneva, New York, and in the field, and undertook human rights missions to dozens of countries. He has served as the UN’s Senior Human Rights Advisor in Palestine and in Afghanistan, was Chief of Staff for the High-Level Mission on Darfur, headed the Rule of Law and Democracy Unit, and served as Chief of the Economic and Social Issues Section and Chief of the Development and Economic and Social Issues Branch at OHCHR Headquarters.

He spent five years as the Chairman of the UN Task Force for Action Two, and later chaired the UN Democracy Fund consultative group, the UN Working Group on Leadership, the UN Consultative Group on Inequalities, and the Steering Committee of the UN Human Rights Mainstreaming Fund. He served on the UN Gender Task Team (2023) and led several initiatives aimed at integrating human rights into the work of the UN itself.

Craig Mokhiber has lectured and taught human rights, authored several publications on human rights themes, and served on several major UN international conferences and summits for human rights from 1993 to 2018. While on leave from the UN in 1999, he led a global study on human rights and rule of law reforms on behalf of the International Council on Human Rights Policy. Before joining the UN, he worked as an NGO activist, a human rights advocate, and a lawyer in private practice.

Said Arikat is a Member of the Palestine Center Committee and the Washington bureau chief for the Palestinian newspaper al-Quds, a daily for which he is a writer, columnist, and analyst. He previously served as spokesman and director of public information for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq and currently teaches as an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, DC.

Dr. Ian Lustick holds the Bess W. Heyman Chair, Emeritus, in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recipient of awards from the Carnegie Corporation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Social Sciences Research Council. Before coming to Penn he taught for fifteen years at Dartmouth College and worked for one year in the Department of State. His present research focuses on the implications of the disappearance of the option of a negotiated “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the new threats to civil society in America posed by the Israel lobby. He is a past president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association and of the Association for Israel Studies, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Among his books are Arabs in the Jewish State (1980); For the Land and the Lord (1988, 1994); Unsettled States, Disputed Lands (1993); Trapped in the War on Terror (2006); and Paradigm Lost (2019).

Sarah Leah Whitson is the Executive Director of DAWN, an organization that seeks to support democracy and human rights in the Middle East, hold abusers accountable, and reform U.S. policy in the region. Previously, she served as executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division from 2004 – 2020. Whitson has led dozens of advocacy and investigative missions throughout the region, focusing on issues of armed conflict, human rights, accountability, and legal and policy reform. She has published widely on human rights and foreign policy in the Middle East in international and regional media, and appears regularly in global media, including Al-Jazeera, BBC, NPR, MSNBC, and CNN. Whitson’s book with Michael Omer-Man, “From Apartheid to Democracy: A Blueprint for Peace in Israel-Palestine,” was published in September 2025 by University of California Press.

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 and is fluent in English, Arabic and Armenian. Whitson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is on the boards of the the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, the Artistic Freedom Initiative, ALQST for Human Rights, Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, Action for Hope, and the Armenian Bar Association.

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, where she co-directs the New Internationalism Project. She helped found the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and serves as International Adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace. She works with many US and global anti-war and Palestinian rights organizations, and has addressed the UN General Assembly. She has served as an informal adviser to several top UN officials on Middle East issues, and was twice short-listed to be the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory.Her most recent book is this year’s Understanding Palestine & Israel.

Edmund Ghareeb is an internationally recognized expert on the Middle East, the Arab and American media, US-Arab relations and International Affairs. He has taught at Georgetown University, George Washington University, the University of Virginia, Pepperdine University, McGill University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar.

Ghareeb was the American University’s Center for Global Peace’s first Mustafa Barzani Distinguished Scholar in Kurdish Studies. He launched the first regularly offered courses on Kurdish history, politics and society in the US. He also served as coordinator for the Middle East program at the American University’s School of International Service. Ghareeb is a Senior Scholar at The Jerusalem Fund and is an Advisor at the Washington Institute for Peace & Development.

Sereen Haddad is a Palestinian-American activist and a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University. As a student organizer within VCU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), she has challenged institutional repression and spoken out in the face of censorship and administrative retaliation, including against her university’s attempt to withhold her degree. She now works as the Communications Coordinator and Editor at the Institute of Palestine Studies (IPS) ,  and continues to organize with the DMV chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a reporter and broadcaster with more than 20 years of experience focusing on Palestine. She is an associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, an independent online news publication and educational resource  on Palestine, and the author of “In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine” (Just World Books, 2014).

Mowahid Hussain Shah is an Attorney-at-Law, author, and Member of the District of Columbia Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. Mowahid served as Of Counsel to late U.S. Senator James Abourezk. He was a Minister in the Punjab Cabinet in Lahore and Special Assistant to the Chief Minister of Punjab (2003-2007) and, during 2004, he served as Advisor to the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Mowahid’s book, “Will & Skill”, was launched in Islamabad, Lahore, and Washington, D.C. During the Gulf crisis/Gulf war of 1990-1991, Mowahid was at the forefront, opposing the U.S.-led war against Iraq, speaking nation-wide on campuses and on U.S. TV, forewarning of its repercussions, in that Desert Storm would become a Desert Trap. His seminal July 30, 1990 Christian Science Monitor article, “A New Cold War with Islam,” published two days before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, predicted the looming Mideast storm, in the aftermath of the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Along with this, Mowahid played a small part in facilitating the founding of ADC in 1980.

Mohammed Abu-Nimer is a full professor in the International Peace and Conflict Resolution program at American University, and Chair of the Said Abdul Aziz for Peace and Conflict Resolution. He previously directed the Peacebuilding and Development Institute (1999 – 2013) and is the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. With over 35 years of teaching experience, he has developed numerous courses and published widely on peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and faith-based approaches to peace education in the Arab and Muslim worlds. As a scholar-practitioner, he has led interreligious conflict resolution training and interfaith dialogue workshops in conflict zones worldwide, including Egypt, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Israel, Palestine, Chad, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka.  He has served as a senior advisor for policy and research at the Center for Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue in Vienna, Austria (2013-2021), and as a senior advisor to the KAICIID Dialogue Centre. He is also the founder of the Salam Institute for Peace and Justice. Professor Abu-Nimer has authored and edited more than 17 books and numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on faith-based peacebuilding, interfaith dialogue, and reconciliation.