Gaza is the Compass
2025 Speakers
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Raja Abdulhaq
Palestinian political activist, researcher, and organizer, president of Tamkeen Movement and co-founder of Quds News Network.
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Abubaker Abed
A Palestinian journalist from Deir al-Balah Refugee Camp in Gaza. Initially a football journalist and commentator, he evolved into an "accidental war correspondent" due to Israel's ongoing war on Gaza, reporting on the genocide’s devastating impact.
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Ghassan Abu Sitteh
A plastic and reconstructive surgeon who worked as a war surgeon in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, South Lebanon and during the 4 wars in the Gaza Strip. On the 9th of October 2023 he entered the Gaza Strip and worked in Shifa Hospital and then Al-Ahli- Baptist Hospital for 43 days during the current bombardment.
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Mosab Abu Toha
Pulitzer Prize–winning Palestinian poet, author, and writer from Gaza, founder of the Edward Said Library.
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Thaer Ahmed
Palestinian American emergency medicine physician who served in Gaza during the genocide.
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Huwaida Arraf
A civil/human rights attorney and activist based in Detroit who co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and is one of the primary organizers of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla now and in 2010, when she was traveling with as it was lethally attacked by Israeli forces.
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Mousa Alsadah
Writer and researcher specializing in the political dynamics of Arab liberation, with a focus on resistance movements, anti-colonial struggles, and the culture of resistance.
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Omar Assaf
Former Palestinian prisoner and coordinator of the executive committees of the Popular Conference.
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Nora Barrows-Friedman
Nora Barrows-Friedman is a journalist, radio broadcaster, and staff editor at the Electronic Intifada.
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Mariam Barghouti
Mariam Barghouti is a journalist based in Ramallah, occupied Palestine. She has covered the region for more than ten years as a policy-analyst, researcher, and reporter.
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Hatem Bazian
A senior lecturer at UC Berkeley, co-founder of Zaytouna college, President of the Northern California Islamic Council, co-founder and national chair of American Muslims for Palestine, and chairman of the board of the Muslim Legal Fund for America.
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Hannah Craig
Hannah Priscilla Craig is the Director of Culture & Communications at The People’s Forum in New York City, where she leads cultural programming & artist initiatives as well as design & communication. She’s also a founding organizer of Artists Against Apartheid, building with over 15,000 cultural workers around the world dedicating their work to the struggle for Palestinian liberation & beyond.
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Amaya Tawasha Diwan
Amaya Tawasha Diwan is a Palestinian of mixed heritage from the Bay Area. She is a member of Arab Youth Organizing with AROC. In her free time, she likes to write about Palestine and dance dabke.
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Lama Ghosheh
A human before being a journalist from Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem. She was put under administrative detention in September 2022 for her social media posts, facing interrogation in al-Maskobiyya prison and solitary confinement in Hasharon before being transferred to Damon, the prison for Palestinian women. After she was released, she was put under 10 months of house arrest for her social media posts in September 2022.
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Ashraf Hazeyen
Ashraf Hazeyen, PhD, is a philosopher and author whose forthcoming works explore Israeli thought, the collapse of moral meaning, and the unspoken grammars of political life. His research interrogates ideology, symbolic power, and the fragile architectures of ethics in contemporary politics.
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Monadel Herzallah
Dr. Monadel Herzallah has been involved in student activism since the 80s through OAS and GUPS, currently serving as part of the coordination committee in USPCN, and co-founder and organizer with the People’s Center for Palestine in California.
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Dr. Nidal Jboor
Co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide, a global organization mobilizing healthcare professionals to confront and prevent genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
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Rama Kased
Professor at San Francisco State University and organizer with United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN).
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Mahmoud Khalil
Palestinian graduate of Columbia University who was unlawfully detained for 104 days for his Palestine advocacy.
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Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle
Co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide and lead of the Health for Palestine Pediatric Program, providing care and training in refugee camps across the West Bank.
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Eduardo Martinez
Mayor Eduardo Martinez was born in 1949 in Dumas, Texas. After moving to the Bay Area in the 1970s, Councilmember Martinez received his BA in Liberal Arts and a Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential from San Francisco State. He began his teaching career in 1989 and worked in the West Contra Costa County Unified School District for many years before retiring in 2010.
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Lamees Mehanna
Organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement.
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Grant Miner
Grant Miner is the President of the Student Workers of Columbia - UAW 2710 (pron. twenty seven ten), the union of all student researchers and instructors at Columbia University. Previously, he was a PhD student at Columbia for five years, until he was expelled last March for participating in on-campus protests against the genocide in Palestine.
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Belal Muhammad
Belal Muhammad is a mixed martial artist and former UFC Welterweight Champion, known for proudly representing Palestine on the global stage. In 2024, he made history by becoming the first fighter of Palestinian descent to win a UFC world title, carrying the flag and his heritage into every fight.
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Mohammed Nabulsi
Mohammed Nabulsi is a Palestinian American lawyer and organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement based out of Houston, TX. He has organized for Palestine in various capacities, from shaping political analysis for the role of the movement to educational programming to building out the infrastructure of the broader Palestine movement.
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Aisha Nizar
Organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement and steering committee member of the Mask Off Maersk Campaign.
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Jemma Pasch
Jemma Pasch is the Director of Grassroots Organizing at Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), where she fosters powerful, locally-rooted organizing at national scale so that anti-zionist Jews in the US can play our strongest possible role to end this genocide and the US-Israel alliance enabling & funding it. A long-time organizer in movements for Palestinian and collective liberation, Jemma is dedicated to cultivating practices and structures that build trust and alignment at scale, allowing us to move in disciplined, collective formation when it’s time to act.
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Sachin Peddada
Sachin Peddada is the Research Coordinator of the Progressive International. His work supports state governments, factory and maritime workers, and civil society organizations around the world seeking to intervene in the supply chains and transport routes of military cargo shipments to the Zionist entity. Sachin is also a PhD student in Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where his research focuses on the political economy of ecological justice and sovereign development. His most recent publication — “Imperialist Intervention and the Invention of Israel” — analyzes the rise, expansion, and evolution of the zionist project as a tool of empire over the past two centuries.
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Miko Peled
Miko Peled is the founder and director of Palestine House of Freedom in Washington DC. Born in Jerusalem, Palestine to a Zionist family, his memoir, “The General's Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” documents his departure from Zionism and his work as an activist calling to dismantle the apartheid Zionist state and establish a free Palestine with equal rights from the river to the sea. In 2016 he published his second book, “Injustice, the story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.” This book tells the story of the persecution and prosecution of the largest Muslim charity organization in the US, and the imprisonment of 5 innocent Palestinian- Americans.
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Eugene Puryear
Eugene Puryear is an American journalist, author, activist, host on Breakthrough News, and author of Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America." He is also a cofounder and central committee member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
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Sueda Polat
Columbia University graduate student and organizer.
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Fadi Quran
The founder of Thiqa, an initiative working to reconnect Palestinian communities.
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Jake Romm
Jake Romm is a New York City based writer, the associate editor for Protean Magazine, and the US Representative of the Hind Rajab Foundation.
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Linda Sarsour
Palestinian-American author, racial justice and civil rights activist, and community organizer.
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Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch
Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch is a Palestinian refugee from Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the West Bank. He is the co-founder of the Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh. Zeiad is also a filmmaker, journalist and educator who has worked with Palestinian and international media and has participated in the production of several documentary films. He completed his Master of Arts in Social Justice and International Relations from the World Learning School for International Training Graduate Institute.
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Chris Smalls
Founder of the Amazon Labor Union and The Congress of Essential Workers, 2025 Handala Flotilla crew member.
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Dr. Omar Suleiman
Dr. Omar Suleiman is dedicated to building bridges across humanity, serving the Muslim community, and advocating for justice. He is the founding director of MUHSEN, a nonprofit supporting individuals and families with special needs and promoting greater inclusion within Muslim spaces. He also serves as an adjunct professor of Islamic Studies at Southern Methodist University and is the founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, which focuses on addressing doubts, strengthening faith, and inspiring positive Muslim contribution and impact.
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Rashida Tlaib
Rashida Tlaib, born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrant parents, is the first Palestinian-American woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She currently represents Michigan’s 12th District.
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Ammar Youzbashy
Ammar Youzbashy is a Computer Science graduate working as a Youth Programs Manager with extensive experience in training, community empowerment, and youth political and social engagement. He also volunteers as the Beirut Area Coordinator at the Palestinian Cultural Club, supervising the work of committees in both Beirut and North Lebanon.