to stand trial. but in 2009, the spanish judge agreed to open an investigation or to actually pursue a case against the perpetrators of the attack on gaza and as a result of that, where you have the potential of the officials being investigated for war crimes, they promised that this would not be allowed to have been and the universal jurisdiction law was gutted so now in order to pursue the case not only must a spanish citizen be involved and be a victim, the whole series

have some crimes that are so heinous that any government and court should be able to take jurisdiction over the criminals so these people can be stopped but now in many other countries that have gutted at a loss as a result of political pressures in spain a spaniard has to be involved in and the person accused has to be on spanish soil which doesn't limit the ability to prosecute for this case because the thought was they were involved involved and if they set foot in spain they should be arrested. but following the ruling, a spokesman for the ministry told the media we are working with the authorities to get this canceled and we hope it will be resulted soon and the spanish court annulled the decision of the judge and removed the officials from the police database.

the attorney for the victims appealed. unfortunately not only did the court in spain pulled the dismissal but the costs on the victims which is unprecedented. the attorney is appealing out to the court and if he fails he takes it up to the court of human rights. and the lawyers also presented a complaint to the police are gathering that are gathering evidence now with the views of deciding if a certain officials basically if they step foot in the uk if they should be arrested so there's an ongoing case in the united kingdom. the united states, so the president here hasn't been so great. we try tried to work with the

government a lot to try to get answers to what happened to us and to try to get some kind of help. everything was taken from our money, cameras, laptops, none of that ever happened. it's been over the last few years since the attack of the freedom of information act to get a lot of information from the government as to what the new in relation to the attack on the flotilla was before come after some redacted documents but in pursuing the action, maria has been at the forefront trying to hold them accountable when it comes to caterpillar

corporation. some of the cases were mentioned here both of the cases were against their involvement in war crimes. it was for the 1996 attack on the refugee base camp in lebanon it was the bombing of an apartment building in gaza which killed 15 people that were dismissed based on sovereign immunity saying that these officials are entitled to any unity and i see the red light has come on on so that they go on to the case today.

the data file an action for compensation against the state. it was the sovereign immunity act which in general gives immunity to foreign states because the politics of the country they've created a situation where they are litigated in the u.s. courts. it is one of these exceptions and one of them is found in under 1605. if they shouldn't be anyone from the jurisdiction of the united states in the case which money damages against the personal injury or damage in the united

states our ship was flying for all intensive purposes on the territory in the high seas and therefore immunity does not apply. sorry i forgot to mention it had been a few months before in california for the united states citizen executed. the fact-finding commission found he was shot five times, once in the face at point-blank range on his back already down and what happened when the fact-finding mission report came behind the counsel for the vote. executed was the only country to vote not to approve the report.

it's a u.s. lobby or israel when it causes america to take such shameful positions against its own citizens that cannot be good for america but that case is also ongoing in what israel has sent a letter to the united states government asking for the suggestion of any unity asking the united states to submit a letter to the court saying that they recommend any unity for the individual being sued in california and it is what they've done in the past cases that have been dismissed by sovereign immunity. the united states to the best of my knowledge hasn't submitted this letter yet and they are not responding to the motion to dismiss. in our case it is likely that they will do the same thing. they are not entitled to

immunity. but the government of israel in their letter says this is an orchestrated a politically motivated effort in the judicial system in june. for this lawsuit as opposed to seeking justice for lost loved ones and abuse if it is politically motivated, is it politically motivated to seek justice for eric garner and freddie gray. the same people in that same mindset would see that it is political. what's political is to say some people are entitled to justice piece on the color of their skin and others are not where with her race and ethnicity.

it's not politically motivated because it isn't going to be one in u.s. courtrooms. it's going to be one bite the people embarking on the streets in palestine. what we seek from the court is to say that our lives are important and that the government cannot abuse and kill and execute people and not face justice because if the united states government submits a letter.

on u.s. soil who is saved and who is next. it is an all women's vote and there is a representative of the vote here somewhere. the effort of the people won't stop and anything to stop the court to at least detour. that is the true danger. it remains to be seen as we hope

the courts will be the place we can get justice but despite that, we will keep on marching in failing. [applause] i would like to think the panelists. we are running a little late so i propose we take a 15 minute break and then come back for an exciting second keynote address and a final panel of the day. thank you very much.

>> conversations link

[inaudible conversations] people continue live coverage of the forearm on israel influence on the u.s.. it is hosted by the group american education trust and the institute for research. a 15 minute break and we will move back and show you some remarks from some of the speakers. >> thank you very much. i would like to thank the people at the washington report for inviting me here. i've benefited tremendously from their work over the years and the ability to interview some of them for the buck that i completed not long ago.

im by formal training in middle east specialist and as said, my first books were one related to egypt. my children were at a certain age i didn't think that it would make sense to be taken out again i decided to follow up on on an idea i had a number of years to come back and make numerous trips to. congress doesn't have much of a wilderness area role in this area so i will come back to it later on but i thought this could make for an interesting topic and one that hadn't been written on very extensively at all grade i like to use as my

primary method interviewed extensively to broad egyptian political belief and i wanted to do the same thing here because by talking to people that are involved in playing the political game themselves as an outsider how the insiders are behaving to take the decisions in the way that they do and also the people that are actually serving as members of congress were people talking very frankly about these matters. they would be able to speak dutch were openly and also how they perceive their bosses

behaving. i put 435 for each of the members of congress i start to work my way down the list. as as the head of the members of the house as i possibly could. i went into all 100 to senate offices requesting interviews on the house or the senate side you were you're naked in washington, d.c. if you don't have your business card.

so i would like to speak for them on the role the congress played in shaping the middle east policy. in the end i ended up somewhere in the order of at least one interview with 130 or more house members and leaders on wind back and my initial way of introducing was in the 2005-2006 period i came down here again between 2011 and 2013 to follow up with additional interviews typically in the second round talking to as many people as i met the first time around. we had follow-up interviews have follow-up interviews with a number of them and on the senate side i get interviews had interviews with over 30 senate staffers total across-the-board so this book i've written is very heavily based on my

interviews with the staffers so i tried to get an idea of who they were. they play an incredibly important role for their bosses and members of congress that would be incapable of moving on all kinds of issues in any way resembling the fashion if they didn't have the assistance of the staffers so i was curious who the staffers themselves were, where did they come from, how did they get the job, how were they recruited, where do they study and have they gone to graduate school or not at all, were they political scientists have studied in other disciplines. then the beginning of the interview asking how old they were and how long they had been on the hill and so on and so

forth. so i think i came up with a reasonably good sense of who the people were and also the biggest issue was to find out how they went about doing their work and went about advising their bosses diet and what communications they had a. i haven't worked on the hill. i'm not i am not an american us by formal training. if you are the person that has the foreign-policy portfolio for the representatives is this all that you do.

i do defense and intelligence. i do taxation and the environment, immigration issues it may be up to eight or nine enormous portfolios at this point but it went up to 12 or 14 different portfolios. this is on the house side. how can any human being possibly be knowledgeable and have expertise in the different areas it is just humanly impossible and these are the individuals providing the information to their bosses across this range of issues and upon whom they are depending to considerable extent

they are directly out of school for a couple years removed from being highly qualified to go on and be working in a house office there may be half as many portfolios or slightly fewer that are being carried by the senate staffers. and the people on the senate side play the role and there isn't a lot of communication between the two if you were not aware of that but i was blown away again and then by the hard work of course and the lack of expertise into the deep

knowledge so we would have people that have been around for three or four years we can to consider more being like the veterans they would look at me and say you have come to find out how little we know in this issue. that's kind of a standard thing that i came up with. i didn't go in with the intention of focusing. i've been asked if i would focus more on the purpose of the presentation i would be happy to do so. i will note though that all the different organizations and lobbyists and so forth that were mentioned to me and there wasn't a long list of organizations that were mentioned by the staffers the only one even if they had been there a short amount of time was familiar and they had been made aware of its excess tends because they were

highly professional, very quick to move in and introduced themselves and make themselves known and offered their assistance to people in the office and knowing it's a brand-new person on the job in a particular office suite was kind of the 800-pound gorilla. there really weren't for the biggest only gets get to be 600 pounds or so so say you have that going for you. >> how do they go about incurring their influence into the narrowing the focus a bit that begins with elections very early before people are even running for congress per se in

the assistance to talk about the opportunity he was talking about early on that the level. it's on the aisle to see if somebody that is running for the municipal council in a major city or some lower level job it looks like he or she has the potential to rise up to be quite a promising showing of themselves as a political candidate so from very early on the vetting process began. this is often going to be spoken about later on. the attempt to socialize people who are perceived as potential

candidates from the age to the perspective of some of these groups. i had one jewish-american staffer who said to me whatever you do don't talk about the money. it would open me up all the more to the anti-semitism and so forth because it is a standard. how does one make nor the money if the congress persons if i could use that term they spend a couple of their time looking for money. they only arrived, some of them here as the representative long-time veteran on the house side told me by late thursday or

friday morning that her home constituents they are raising money while they are in their offices here as well so it is exceptional to the individuals as you know and in the aipac as the organization they can to provide assistance this way that they do arrange for large meetings from the regional basis and then at the regional meetings which are fund-raising activities they are congressional candidates in charge with the governors of those particular organizations, so this is the way they tend to work those things out the absence of the influence that skier is important because there

is a countervailing influence to pro- right-wing government actors is the oil lobby so i listen to the individuals that were being contacted by the influenza in whatever shape and manner and so forth and they would again not talk at all without the loyal lobby so at this segment of the interview i would say what about the lobby and they would sit back and people coming from the oil-producing states they would scratch their heads and say no we never hear from people in the lobby at all relating to this issue which i found very interesting. so, once the people are elected and arrive on the hill, how do

they try to sustain their influence? numerous measures. they are active in providing members of congress with letters and with the provision of materials that set up the bills and actions so this is one important factor. i may have to skip through some of these along the way because i see the clock is ticking down. they keep scorecards and they vary heavily people in the offices are much were likely to want to listen to and hear from their own constituents and respond to the constituent concerns than to listen to people coming from the outside but again they know of the significance they can get their

foot in the door. they go to great link and communicate that information back to the constituents that call on a regular basis. would you take the call again this isn't a game that is being played anywhere near the same success by any of the other lobbyists compared. another thing this is what is structural about the way that it succeeds they know how strapped the staffers are for the time they have allotted so for aipac

to talk to them on a silver platter makes life so much easier for them that they are happy to agree on the receiving end of the information. yet another plaintiff that is up there and you are probably laundering at this point many of the staffers last on the job for a short number of years only there for one or two or three years. there's a short number of years they can leave the hill and go to work for the lobbyist and start making three times as much money as they were being paid as a staffer. if you're long-run objective your long-run objective is one of being hired by a lobbyist and

a broadening folks to think about the implications for the influence of other special interest groups how likely are you to bite the hand of people that are trying to provide information for free if you want to be employed by people over the longer run. the other one is being placed in charge of the chicken coop so to speak. so to see which individuals served over time as the chair or the ranking member and so forth of the committee and subcommittee in foreign policy. one was described to me as opposed to the light blue meaning in the backgrounds you

tend to see people that are coming from very hard-core dark blue jewish-american districts in the country or people that are coming from evangelical backgrounds or that our security hogs so they tend to be clustered into the communities of foreign policy appropriations anyway that is important. let me try to wrap things up. you've had a lot of people along the way that argued that this is not the case. david miller has written about this and i would imagine people have heard of him. people on the left argument doesn't play the role. the president has tremendous covered of course but it's the congress again over time that does things like signed a bill that provides the $2.3 billion annually now going up to 5 billion annually in terms of

assistance to israel so i would like to think of this in terms of a horse trainer that can drug the horse so that it performs more in a race and this is potentially injurious over the longer run to the health of the horse so to speak and let me just finish them by saying. there's hundreds of interviews i did with the staffers. we have many staffers including those that are disgusted by the power and over 30 years of teaching on the subject not once

ever have i in the classroom ever accused any of the members of congress or any of the actors in the executive branch of having dual loyalties were being treasonous. it's both republican and democratic backgrounds who told me again anonymously and be heard when i asked them to give specific names like inserting of any other country into the formula and any member of congress where their behavior would be accused of treason so i will conclude on that note. of course.

assigning the book at the conclusion of the panel in the exhibition hall we have a number of questions we are still receiving by internet and twitter of course from our wonderful participants. one of them asked immediately after seeing one of my slides on polling how can the americans belief that there's multiple nuclear weapons? it was the majority of americans, so people know how that figures into the qualitative military edge we are supposed to pay the that as tax payers it is never discussed so that is an open question. paul thomas from chicago asks how do you view presidential candidates on their middle east policy positions and that will be covered by antiwar.com during his presentations, so stay tuned. michael from eastern

massachusetts is asking why so many states passed resolutions opposing boycott sanctions. it's the same organizations and legislative templates that we see state after state. so a lot of the organizations and the local that exist in the policy committee are active in passing those. whether or not they are constitutional should be decided fairly soon. the information given to me today and available in the book, some of it but the rest of the slides will be on the influence.org website and now i would like to pass it on to roger. >> were there restrictions on the media? stack due to the relentless supporters come our own media is

profoundly restricted. we can criticize every country including our own except for israel. our speakers will discuss the influence on television and print media and the film industry. so i have the great honor to introduce a the second second keynote address today. it's titled voices prohibited by mainstream media and its role in spreading islam phobia of sheep will sit down and join the panel. an award-winning journalist and, author and foreign policy analyst. her first autobiographical novel sold 2 million copies and has been translated into 15 languages. it's turned into a rarity for

any political film not to mention a film telling a palestinian story. both are available at the middle east story she assigning those at the reception tonight. she was born in hi-fi funded in jerusalem where she received a superb education. i met her first at a luncheon hosted. she was frustrated by the way that they were portrayed in the media. i got tired of throwing my shoe at the tv so she started writing her own articles and received a scholarship from the government.

as the history of the italian television. [applause] i would like to thank everybody at the washington report. they've been active lately not only organizing this amazing conference they have to say i received a phone call two weeks ago and i was visiting some friends in florida that had some health issues and she said i need to send you something urgently and i think you will be fascinated by it. when i came back home and opened and there was a package of

e-mails as a producer in the voice of america asking a former speaker of he would be fine if i would be the guests to debate whoever they deem as a proper israeli official about the israeli-palestinian conflict and the role of these misogynistic details and the back and forth the thesis leave this has been the way that my carrier. we are going to liberate women and it's fascinating to have a

culture that it's a glimpse of the kind of power that they not only established by the exercise without any shame but i'm sure that the e-mails were not the only that we knew of, they were the ones we had access to that i'm sure if you read private internal e-mails of any news outlets whether it's "the new york times," cnn, msnbc, you will see similar things. the government is begging them you know we want to give you the money but they are saying basically now, we want more. i grew up thinking that the

media managed to expose corruption into this inspired me as a child because i thought you can live in a country where a simple journalist and reporter can do his or her job and can't force the most in the land to answer some tough questions and eventually get to be forced to resign or in impeached. that's the kind of journalists i didn't see around me. we grew up watching arabic television where i knew that somehow somebody in the government had returned to questions or maybe the answers also. so i grew up with that kind of culture knowing something needs to change.

i always look and say when i work at television they hired me simply because i was the only woman that spoke arabic they need somebody to understand the middle east from the region to explain to them what went wrong in his famous article in "newsweek" what went wrong in the air at muslim world and ira member explaining to him the difference between shia and sunni and why it would be disastrous because looking at the numbers of the population in iraq, 60% they send me to cover the iraq war and i always love to be underestimated because it gives the more, somehow more freedom because as soon as they realize what they have and they realize what i was standing for and what i was doing it with

some of the weapons they drove against me and there's a lot to be done. the american media has been the most disappointing thing i've seen in my life even working in countries like egypt. it's by far much more than in this country. i have seen what does that produce. it happens with a passive, silent and vocal consent of the media sold a lie and none of these people have been fired, they've been recycled and they are still called the experts on many issues. on the iran nuclear deal or the

obama doctrine. nobody ever questioned the manipulation. none of that happened but they questioned the fact that my hair is long or short or i am skinny or fat. we are reduced to a level that allowed and enabled every lobbyist to get away with murder and basically pave the way for donald trump to become the front runner. we are responsible for that and it reminds me very much of the media in egypt and italy so when the title of the conference is this good for america, not only is that, but the influence goes beyond and if you think it is a larger dynamic in the middle east and think how much money

you're talking about, we are talking about, think of the 2 billion in egypt. basically created the state into democracy in the country that gives the number one of al qaeda is just a this is the country that gave political insight of the present but post has been committed but produced and radicalized an entire generation and they left with one idea, go after the regime. create the groups to go after the regime, blow up themselves and guess what, every one of the backers starting in the united states so we enabled the government because of one issue

in the accord. basically we still give money to the regime that is committing atrocities and violating human rights and killing thousands of people and to keep the peace with israel were closing the borders with the other ally that is not only going to question it but if you think of what israel has been trying to push the united states to do it goes beyond the issue. we had them come and testify in 2002, and his word was we need to go into iraq because it would have more for the regime change because this would have a positive effect on the entire region.

i don't see an area of this you can see that the whole issue was number one and they had been vocal about it and the one issue is now they don't even care about the issue basically. what they care about is that iran issue that has been the focus of the government for the last 20 years so you have the prime minister, the minister of defense and even the former ambassador who basically are telling us they would rather have radical groups as if the answer to the region is yes let's wage war and the sunni that gave us every group that has committed atrocities we can

turn a blind eye on them this is the same mindset of the cold war. this is the same mindset and never changed as if they are not realizing the postcolonial order has collapsed already and doesn't exist anymore and it's collapsed because of of the choices that basically ended. it's that mentality so we need to create an alliance with whoever is there to defeat so we created a monster that is turning on all of us and we keep repeating the same strategies and mistakes and i understand

it's hard for a politician to change because they are beholden and somehow sadly they call it legal corruption in my world, here they call it citizen united but it's been the people that are sitting on television with the revolving door they start to speak for the ten years earlier and then they are as a natural tv host or some prison guard who serves lecturing people on some website of how they need to behave as journalists. somehow the system allows for them to thrive and become the establishment.

since 9/11 the idea became a mainstream idea who is your neighbor or eventually the war on diversity started by a laminating devices and mainstream media in the united states. i can't even fathom until now how it is possible in a country that led to the investigative journalism and led to push the administration to re-sign to be the country that allowed not

only the administration to abuse their power and pass secret memos and spy on their citizens but some of them you have fascists on the right and it didn't do enough. i have some of my colleagues that are saying it's not even in the us because it's not enough. this is what would make us all safe. i've never been in my entire

life i never worked so hard to make people understand what are the state's but i am concerned for the next generation i think our children are growing up if they're 16, 14. the follow-up mattered more than the question itself to push back. if your job is to expose lies and corruption and reflection and push them to answer it and the only person that has been doing this somehow surprisingly come and i'm horrified to see this we are looking at megan kelly as the person that managed to challenge some of the candidates. but we looked for years at the

first president being smacked by a dummy that 7 million people in here you have a country have 300 million people, the leader of the free world and with congress. the model is not contained in israel. it's being transported into becoming a part of the american model so when you have police brutality and the cozy relationship in the media, it is becoming cozy in the police department, so they've been trained by the israeli police

and it's considered normal. no one is investigating these kind of relationships. i am proud to be sitting with philip who reported about the executive cnn speechwriters. there is a level of cooperation and propaganda that reached such a level that is normal. we are the normal. they are writing the chapter of the nation's history. i can't be late that i'm mentioning this quote from my favorite european intellectual that wrote from his prison cell and he was asked about mussolini and he said he wasn't an aberration, he was an auto biographer of the nation. he was enabled by the media and was a journalist and enabled by a system that turned a blind

eye. i think we need to push harder and fight more and we need to create a community that is productive ecosystems that can producing ecosystem that can help each other to expose this more. we cannot allow ourselves to -- 15 years ago i used to throw my shoe at the television. i can't do this anymore. i'm happy to be evicted from certain tv networks i'm happy to be part of the system. it must be a united world. i've seen it in other places, i've seen it in the middle east. when he was elected in 1994 he

took others from the network and people who were there to criticize him some of them were my friends. i work for an egyptian television in 2009 after six months i had to leave because the level of abuse was beyond me it was about the people that worked with me and i knew that while the establishment was talking about the transfer of power from father to son the people were talking about three things and these three things exist they were talking about freedom, democracy and dignity and this is what i kept hearing from the ground so the detachment between the base and the establishment is so deep that we need to stay true with a

base because the base will lead the change. i don't believe that it will anymore but i believe the base. the millions of people that were neglected step up one morning without a reason. sorry clinton said it's a stable country and the people ignored that and didn't even bother to think or ask what do you want or what do you think? based up in the streets and demanded dignity to overthrow the regime and they have setbacks but that kind of power and the sentiment is still there. i'm sure that it will rise again. and i hope in that moment we will be able to help them and put a bigger bridge that will unite us here and in the middle east and it will not be above them or us but about all of us.

thank you. [applause] you are reminding me of this speech last year. he called for an american spring and i think that we are all inspired. next, philip is an american journalist who is the founder and coeditor with adam horovitz of the widely read news websites devoted to covering foreign policy in the middle east from a progressive jewish perspective so began his career in mainstream journalism writing for "the new york times" magazine, harper's, esquire and the observer in 2006 while the fda of server he began a daily

blog. as he began to explore the relationship between american jews and israel, however, the observer became increasingly uncomfortable. so in 2007, he established it as an independent blog and today it is a valuable source of news and opinion from a variety of authors. >> thank you very much, thanks to linda. you know, i just have to say ruler's invocation was very important to me as a young

journalist and i remember that i was at the philadelphia daily news 30 years, 35 years ago and the guy at the next desk had read harrison's book about the pentagon papers, and that was when "the new york times" took on the government, the government try today shut down "the new york times" publication about this vital document which explained history of vietnam war. and the time stood up to the government and, you know, it helped to bring -- took a while but it was very important in bringing an end to the american participation and that disaster. and my -- my friend at the next desk said, let's write to harrison, we are never going to get a story like that and so we wrote this letter and we said, how do you plan your career --

we were just young ambitious journalists, how do you plan your career so that you get ready to take on the government and a story like that? what i remember about his letter was he said, hang in there, learn to be a good journalist, work hard and some day you will get your big story, the thing i find moving about that now is that, in fact, we did get that big story, we got in the shape of the iraq war and just what american foreign policy has been in the last ten years, "the new york times" has been awal on that one and i think i may have said this last time. that gets tremendous power to our community. if you think about how much information that people in this community are developing in the way that journalists are supposed to develop traditionally have developed information that's vital, even this fact that both ruler and

said about the a package to egypt is essentially a bribe to keep them, this is a central fact of our foreign policy that you won't find stated and that is on pentagon papers in terms of vital understanding. so i'm here to talk about "the new york times" chiefly because it sets tone for discussion and i did once worked -- staff at the times magazine and i thought i would move on to the why's of it, why is the times sort of in the tank for israel. so the newspaper has been a reliable israel supporter for a long time now and we keep looking for times of a fall and

i am going to be hopeful but let me describe the character that i support, and i will be describing as i go through my remarks, i will be using the term soinism. it's embedded, it's an important force at "the new york times", what i mean by that is some degree by commitment to the idea of the need for a jewish state and the need to preserve a jewish state in israel. so the times has -- has at least three columnists who are openly soinis, the s and those are david brooks who said he gets gooy-eyed.

roger cohen that said israel is justified by the holocaust but can be somewhat critical of the occupation. he is openly which is a good thing in as much he is frank with adherence to the ideology and then there's paul crugman who says he's critical of is israel but never expresses it. you would think that winning a nobel prize would give you freedom, but demonstrates principle that the higher you get, the less freedom you have. i'm leaving that other columnists freeman, while he began his career as supporter back in the suburbs of

minneapolis, i think that one of the principles of this conference is that people can change and i sense that freeman has been away from ideology in the way that congress is paid forly the -- making the statement not being nice enough about israel. and he is also said recently that the two states-solution is a failure and that that failure was produced among netanyahu and natelson and the right-wing jewish influence. and that was a very important column and i will turn to it because i think it was -- it's the heart of what i always understood journalism to be.

not quite the heart because i understood what journalism to be what's true and important and it's true and it's important, it's just not new, what freeman was telling us. you may know that david brooks' son served in the military and one of the reporters that had children who served in the military. the most celebrated example was ethan broner. his season entered while he was writing for the "times" and shortly after cast led when israel slaughter 14,000 pa palestinians and causes activists in act of branding to paint the new york city logo on the apartheid wall. i don't know if you saw him just at this but it was kind of wonderful.

broner introduced a guessing game into journalism about unspoken ideological agendas, this was is he or is he not a z zionist. i participated in the game and when he left the newspaper ultimately in the last year or so, i mean, he left out about this question and resulted when he hosted right-wing israeli military figures in new york on a program that was about the quote, unquote incredible courage of israeli soldiers. so when we started the same guessing game when ethan bronner successor took over after him in

jerusalem, and i remember that i sort of was -- i was a little bit more credulous than others. i thought, she's going to be fair. she wrote totally out of the israeli-jewish experience. that was really the community that she openedly admitted that she related to more but made little effort to get outside the comfort zone so there were long pieces about long israelis getting tattoos when their grandparents had had tattoos. there was an episode where she went to gaza in 2012 and on facebook said that palestinians were hohum about death, the family members. she went to a funeral in gaza and observed that palestians

were hohun. it wasn't a prejudice that she seemed to want to shed or to get out of. recently she's -- she gave some podcast where she said that she spoke one word of arabic. actually i'm sure she speaks more arabic in that there are a lot of arabic words in our language. alcohol and algebra to begin with. [laughter] >> it's a reflection of curiosity about the palestinian experience, you see in the times a lot and she exhibited. so i remember because she was more adapted to guessing game about her commitment to israel as a jewish state, she would -- she said, the only i am is a

journalist when she was asked about this question. i'm not a zion. she comes out of the zionis, the background and she was upset about even that being identified and even that fashion and said, well, why would you say that and i said, well, you know, you've said to to jewish groups when you have spoken to them that you are familiar with the american jewish experience and the american jewish concern for israel and you came to israel when you were in high school with united senegag youth. you know, i went to lake wenapasaki too. [laughter] >> you know, i -- it was one of the most reflections that i have

ever experienced because those trips by united senagag groups were ideological in character. they weren't like vacations, and they were -- it was a measure of her -- how obtuse she could be that she could make that kind of statement. in my one meeting with redorani told her that her great challenge was to tell americans, this was four years ago, that the two-state solution was over and that if you just go to the west bank you see it over, they won't be able to make a palestinian stay there, those people don't want to leave, just a little bit of an ad, some of the journalists have done about the west bank, we have up in the -- in the joining room and that i said that, you know, she had

to explain this and vital function of journalists to bring this news and she never did that. and it's not just that i made this challenge, you'll notice recently that john kerry and dan shapiro from the state department have said, we are approaching this one-state reality. well, they have gotten no support from the leading american newspaper to explain what that one-state reality is. so the times have sort of abandoned this vital function of telling people what's going on and this kind of most important american relationship that exists. and i think that -- that again is one of the great things about this tom freedman column where he said the israelis don't want to leave, they've been supported in the west bank, they've been supported by right-wing american jews and they want -- unending civil war with greater and greater isolation with israel in

the world stage. all true. this has been true for the last five, eight years, i think, at least and yet now a times columnist and secretary of state are bringing this information. so in the time i have left, and by the way, i think that there is something very cruel about maintaining the illusion about the two-state solution because it is, it's saying the horrible conditions, they're just temporary, these people of 5 million, you know, people under some form of a pa -- apartheid in gazza prison. we are going to take care of that soon. it's white citizens' council

journalism. if now now, when, this is a situation which demands if not now when. and the position of the times is kind of whenever and the position of these people who preserve the illusion of the two state solution is, kind of whenever with respect to a tremendous amount of suffering as susie beautifully showed us. so i brought in the jewish piece. i'm one of the american jews who is in this, in the conference today and -- and in my capacity i would just have to acknowledge that, you know, zoinism comes out of the jewish community, it's -- it was an answer to two jewish persecution in europe and was embraced by the world or the western world, the colonial world of the solution of the

jewish question of europe. and now that -- and one jews to it side through 40's, 50's and 60's, now what we are seeing because of the -- we'll just -- the unending 50-year occupation, we are seeing even inside the jewish community some questioning of this ideology. and i think that if bernie sanders says there is a war for the soul of islam and, you know, america has to help islam in that respect, there's also a war for the soul of jewdism. jews of my generation are working in great number to the

extent that the jewish community embrace the ideology and marry the ideology and saw it as deliverance ideology. that's something that's becoming undone among younger jews, and so i would -- i would remind you if you don't know it that there was a time when "the new york times" was antizionist. our homeland is here, we don't want our patriotism undermined by the creation of a jewish state and we are going to oppose it and we are not going to send jewish reporters over to jerusalem because their loyalty, we don't want to place them in a position where there's any question about where our loyalty lies. so that era past in the

1960's. the times ultimately became an organization where many zionist jews worked and i think there are no antizionists at the time but that will come, bound to because of the changes not just in the jewish community but throughout the american community which is, i think, what we witnessed at this conference. it's one of -- i think the great things about the conference that it has brought together so many diverse perspectives, american interest, israelis, left wing, palestinian solidarity people and antizionist jews as well. i think just again to what i said at the beginning, this gives our community tremendous power from the story-telling journalistic perspective.

we are the ones who are developing this information, who are working through the difficult questions about antisemitism and antizionism. and that will also make us information leaders. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. i really recommend everyone starting off their day with a column -- reading all all the columns. thank you very much for your work. [applause] >> so we've had tv media, we've had talking about the mainstream press, now, we are going to talk about israel's influence on the film industry and kathy jordan

is the award winning and producer about valen,tino's ghost. first release and released to press in 2013, viewers from 127 countries watch valentino's ghost. it has just been released and copies available from middle east, website, it now includes the israel bombing, israeli bombing of gaza, the murderers, the hollywood film american sniper and donald trump's antimuslim crusade. katherine was an editor and writer, hollywood reporter, los angeles magazine, the new scott'sman.

she has sprent three years as a writer at hollywood paramount theaters. jordan was honored at the muslim public affairs council media awards as a voice of courage and conscious for her roll in producing vrveción afternoon please welcome this gifted producer. [applause] >> i'm the final act. i'm just going to talk for four minutes and then show you some of the film. the director of the film michael sing is in egypt today where he show it had fulfill m last night in cairo. he e-mailed me to tell me that the sound was out of sink --

sync and besides blunder it was met with enthusiasm by the crowd, so this is good. >> most americans have been hearing from the media all their lives that the middle east is somehow in a state of crisis. by media, i mean, traditional television news, newspapers, magazines and no less important narratives in movies, even children's cartoons. like most people in this country, i never understood why they couldn't all just get along until i got involved with this film, in fact, i always came away from media coverage of the middle east with a conclusion that it was just somehow far too complicated to understand and it was all over my head. and the media seemed to convey a world view that palestinians

were inherently violent andition -- irrational people. after 9/11, a lot of people in the country found themselves asking huge questions, who are these people, why are they so angry, and how is it that i know so little about this subject. our film, i'm very pleased to say after this amazing day, enshrines much of what has been said today by the incredible speakers. we seek to expose and explain the reasons before our long-standing hatred and fear of arabs and muslims in this country. we also seek to show that u.s. foreign policy in the middle east and specially that of israel is what dictates public

perceptions and attitudes towards the middle east and has done so for more than a century. it should astonish and appall the public that the mainstream media typically goes right along with the government's narrative and in turn, see, here is the evidence right here on the front page of "the new york times", the yellow take in iraq with a flagrant example of this but certainly not the only one. and so the government recycles the stories to further reinforce narrative in support of policy decisions and military invasions and so on. so this is a vicious circle here. the stereotypes of arabs and muslims inform the behavior of policy makers which create policies which puts low value of

palestinians and others in the arab world. so what you get is that self-reinforcing cycle, loop, if you will with destructive results. this cycle shows the enormous power of mass media to shape the public's idea and mold the opinion for us. i feel it's really valuable for us to be able to tell this story in the medium of mill -- film, which we believe can have power full impact and can be be widely shared by huge numbers of people. two months ago our film was broadcast worldwide in the al jazeera. the film ran in great britain, throughout asia, throughout europe.

it ran to a potential subscribers base of 130 million households. it sounds like a fantastic success, however, there was one country that wasn't on the list, the united states. you knew that was coming. the film did not play in the united states and has not played in its full feature length in the united states. again, we were thrilled when our film premiered at the venice festival which along with the cam festival is the most difficult festival to get into in the world of film making. it's almost unheard that the venice festival accepts a documentary film. and the film was welcomed in 12 other festivals in europe and asia but every major festival in the united states has turned us down. a top-tier festival for a film maker is a launching pad, it's a marketplace, it's where you get attention and it's where you

sell your film, often right there at the festival itself where meetings take place so it's key to the success of your film. after the success in venice where the film got standing ovation and a lot of press buzz, our phone started ringing. some of them had seen it at venice and they would like to show it. could they view a dvd for consideration for their festival. even michael moore called us. we submitted dvd's at their behest and then we never heard from any of them again, across the board. there was a virtual blackout, you are all familiar with this. maybe the film wasn't good enough, you have to face that as a film maker, was it just not good enough. we looked at that.

that said, and with all humility our film received standing innovation at venice and glowing review in "the new york times" and los angeles times and "the new york times" designated it a favorite critics pick which is a real honor and the magazine, american conservative published a brilliant feature saying that our film essentially got it right, yet, we had a blackout from u.s. festivals and distributors. so ironically the very forces which we are trying to expose are the forces that are suppressing wide distribution of film in our own country. maybe we should have thought of that when we -- after spending years and years making this film. but we persevered. perhaps if the wider public is

informed and educated on this issue and learned the answers to so many questions, maybe we can begin to take the steps towards a futures, not of violence but of peace. i would like to show you a few clips from the film right now and by way of explanation, it's not a tightly edited trailer as you're typically used to seeing. it's a series of short clips or excerpts plucked from the whole duration of the film. so thank you. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> media is so central to how americans think about things, it didn't happen if it didn't come on tv, it didn't happen if we don't have a picture of cincinnati.

>> where do these images come from? what is the relationship between these images and american foreign policy in the middle east? >> what's their impact? why do they matter? america's lob affair with arabia reached a frenzy with the 1920 novel the shake and hollywood turned into a film. the shake would create the most popular sex symbol in american cinema. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> what indicated america's love affair with arabia was actual contact. the west was invading the arab's

land and media was violent and hateful, as with news headlines, most movieses depicted arabs as foreigners and not defending their homeland. the european political movement which chose palestine called itself zionism. >> pa lest -- palestinian people living there. >> the jews created the state of israel and ethically cleansed large parts of palestine. what many people forget was that israelis themselves used terrorism for the principal weapon for driving the british out of the middle east and gardnering a state of their own for the jewish people. terrorism was one of the main weapons.

many supporters of israel like to make the argument that the reason they are heavy handed, the reason they have to build a wall, the reason they have to occupy huge amounts of palestinian territory is that they have to cap the volcano. it is the occupation that is causing terrorism. it is not terrorism that is causing the occupation. >> america has to defend its differences, how, by giving force and blood to this military base. in order it will crash any arab liberation movement which will say american out. this is our property. our real enemy is not only israel. it's totally backed by america. >> would you take action against americans and american interests?

>> do you expect me to tell you? [laughter] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> within two years the portrait of the articulate palestinian comando disappeared almost completely as media investigations into the root cause of the violence. >> it's now said that there were 11 hostages, they're now gone. >> presenting palestinians as freedom fighters or even as terrorists was gone in the blink of an eye. >> in every case it was said that those who oppose israel are against the forces of goodness in the world. they're evil. >> and take back to honor the

evil god. >> and so arabs come out very badly in the scenario. >> those who were in conflict with israel were in conflict with god. >> if america does not stop pressuring israel to give up land, i believe that god will bring this nation into judgment because i believe what this book says. >> jews invented the idea of being chosen. i have muslims. [laughter] >> god shows us, you see, he promised us this land. you see this unhabitable desert right there. okay. [laughter] [applause] >> why do british rock stars

film stars, journalists and other influential voices bring to the world while american counterparts remain silent? >> the american israel public affairs committee, apec. >> this report is one of the few american television broadcasts ever to investigate the highly influential lobby, it aired over 30 years ago. a surprising rare news event that gave americans more information about the lobby than anything found in the mainstream media since that time. >> israel's struggle is our struggle. >> the united states will stand with israel now and forever. >> israel is not alone in this fight nor will she ever be. >> it is very difficult for mainstream journalists to talk about israel in a critical way and i've talk today a number of

journalist who is fully understand this and who in private will say just who i said. >> we don't want to push boundaries of what can be written or what can't be written. to me, that's the problem. >> what's going on here is definitely not a conspiracy. what's going on here is good-old fashion group politics. any time, any one criticizes israel or criticizes israeli policy or criticizes the u.s.-israeli relationship he or she is almost certain to be labeled an antisemi or hating jew by the israel lobby. of course, that's exactly what happened to us.

>> there's fundamental debate about the conflict, about the conflict itself, i don't know, i ask myself the same question and i don't have the answer. >> in the piece we refer to the charge of antisemitism as the great silence. >> we have a spectacular terrorist event and we have a very, very rapid test and lo and behold they were all them guys and so don't you think those are the guy that is we should be frightened of? >> the 9/11 would have investigated the question of why they hate us but, in fact, the 9/11 commission was not able to investigate the all important question in any meaningful way. >> why are we addressing the

girl in the room? page 147. it is stated that mohamed was driven to attack us not because of radical ideology -- >> okay. >> because of u.s. support of israel. >> this is a conversation that you and i ought to have. let's not take the time of resource people. may we go to the next question, please. >> because the answer would have been that our relationship with israel is one of the main reasons that we have a terrorist problem and the israel lobby does not want that message to get out to the american people because it would then force washington to change its policies towards israel. >> but what have you found out about why these men did what they did? what motivated them to do it?

>> the answer is unknown to most americans because the government and the media have not made it available. here it is. >> i believe that outrage against the united states, they identify with the palestinians problem and with people who oppose regimeses and i believe they tend to focus their anger on the united states. >> it is widely seen in the muslim world that the west is going after and is attacking islam. [speaking in native tongue] >> the host applies a different set of rules.

[speaking in native tongue] >> the protection against hate speech provide today jews but not muslims was present at magazine itself. in 2008 cartoonist wrote a column that was seen by some as antisemiattic. >> this gentleman that was poking fun, was effectively fired from the magazine because he had behaved in an unacceptable way. with regard to muslims, there's almost nothing that's unacceptable. it's a no hold's bar atmosphere. this is what enrages muslims.

>> what charlie was doing in this instance was cultural bullying. their basic belief was because this group had little power it would not be able to retaliate. when you engage in bullying sometimes the person you bully reach it is breaking point and he or she retaliates. >> the conflict has had a huge impact on how americans see the middle east. >> the media has been absolutely unfair to is ral' not only in the united states but around the world. >> what the public hears about the middle east has been passed along to the public by cooperative media. >> by pentagon officials as just only starting. >> the fact is that a whole group of propaganda who specialize in the use and misuse of words and similar --

semantics and journalists pick up on this. you change and diminish and the wall becomes a barrier and the occupation becomes a security zone. settlements become neighborhoods. when a picture of a dead baby appears in time magazine it says killed in cross fire. it's cross fire when it's palestinians killed by israelis but when you get an israeli shot by palestinians is cross fire. >> a photographer captured images of the boys running for their lives. >> are those hamas targets? >> only targets military targets. >> a second rocket apparently

targeting them came in. >> it's very carefully chosen through multiple layers of intelligence. >> the united nations runs schools was being used for shelter and struck by israeli tank fire. >> a lot of training goes into, careful consideration. >> we understand that at least 15 were killed including two children and united nations. >> max, we will start with you. >> there's no conflict between israel and palestine. it's been going on for 70 years. as part of 70 years of disposition, expulsion in order to consolidate the ethnic purity of the state. >> more american jews are having difficulty dealing with the fact

that israel has turned itself into an appar -- apartheid state. it's not accepted by most american politicians who sustain a much more positive image of israel and leaders. >> i want to thank you democrats and republicans for your common support for israel, year after year, decade after decade. [applause] >> donald j. trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of muslims entering the united states until our country's representative can figure out what the hell is going on. [cheers and applause]

>> we have no choice. we have no choice. ♪ ♪ ♪ [applause] >> thank you. >> so here is a question for you, how can we get that movie into all the tv networks to

theaters, how can we get that out here? >> is this on? >> yes. >> we've been turned down by hbo, showtime, pbs, we have been trying to get the film distributed by all the big networks. we ran a one-hour version of the film was run on 30 or 40pbs stations but it's a boring distinction but an important one. it's provided by a third party for content to run it if they chose, plenty of people ran it but had zero marketing and when there's zero marketing, you might not run it because no one makes the time to see it. that had a tiny little ripple of an effect, so we are still -- we are still seeking wide distribution in this country,

anyway. >> thank you. and one more question to you before we go to the next questions, was the sundance independent ient -- festival and what was their response? >> one of our colleagues who was a consultant on the film has a big position on the sundance film festival and she talked to her friends, the reviewer who looked at it actually e-mailed us on the qt and said she thought it was a fantastic film and one of the better films she had seen and it was too political for sundance and, of course, we did not get in. >> okay. this thing is for rula, a lot of the questions are for rula. i asked an la times reporter how can he participate in the destruction of the news, he said if i can get them to leave 10%

of my copy unsen sored this is a worth -- it is worthwhile to continue. please comment. >> if he can get editors to leave -- >> leave 10% of it to continue. >> that's a good ratio. [laughter] >> you know, sensorship, it's part of med alive. if we could get away with 10% on this issue, we would revolutionize america. right now it's a 90% censorship, give it to me. i love it.

[inaudible] >> talking about guns and everything else, and you've never seen an article about the israel lobby with, you know, one-tenth of that kind of free speech involved. so -- >> yeah, there's a cozy relationship. one of the reason that is made me actually in 2014 do what i did on msnbc was, you know, these officials would be israeli officials would be like 99% of the time and would never be challenged as the document treaty represent and would never be asked about the occupation or

the siege. i remember i almost choked on my coffee one morning and i was watching interviewing gnat gnat and at the end of the interview it was softball questions. how do you feel if it's safe? he was bombarding and pounding gaza. well, like the former prime minister of israel said, we will never forgive the arabs for forcing us to kill their children and i looked at the television and said, sorry my language, is this a joke. i mean, i was horrified and i went -- i went to my network and that morning, that morning one of our journalists, one of the best one we've ever had, reporter who covered the gaza war, he just filmed three kids killed on the beach, he just filmed it.

i was -- i was in the tv station and i saw the panic because suddenly there's one story and it's a major story that was filmed on camera where you see the missile striking, the first one, and then the second missile and this kid is running, they were playing football in the beach and the third kid, 6-year-old running and the second missile come and strike him and you couldn't explain that. there's no justification to this. the telephone starts ringing and the justification that there was a missile there and they kept calling producers, are you sure there was another missile in the area? no, every journalist was there, we watched it, you had three or four cameras there. that story was taken from him, given to another one who wasn't even in gaza, he was in, the

elaviv and just arrived and was called out of gaza because he witnessed that moment. i went on air and i said, our coverage not only disgusts but it's a disgrace. we are betraying the american people because we are basically not telling them the whole story. we are lying blatantly the american people. leaving the building, i remember some of the producers stopping me, you don't understand the kind of bullying and harassment and attention. recently somebody from -- i will not mention a name from the washington post was telling me that every article they write, they have to answer to lobbyist and organizations like camera and i said, i don't care what kind of harassment, you just stand up to it. basically you stand up to it and when i submit an article and they tell me --

[applause] >> look, supposedly i'm an arab, black woman, you're not only in the wrong job but if you can't stand up to these thugs, then they will get away with it. they will get away with it over and again. i am so grateful that independent organizations exist like alternate, now -- [applause] >> and these kind of document documentaries and forgive me if i'm shameless about it, we need to support the organizations, these are independent organization that is live on donations. this is the ultimate battleground, whatever you're

doing, i will be like sanders, $7, whatever that is, give it to katherine to promote her movie, this will change america forever, will change the public opinion. when rupert martha wanted to buy for the first time and it he retract what had he said, i don't buy newspapers and that was a lie obviously. he said that he use today buy journalists, guess what, we can shift the public opinion, if they put $100 million on one end to ma manipulate the opinion and you can put much less. one footage like that can shift the public opinion. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, we have time for maybe one more question or should we close the door here?

this was more about what you started out talking about the e-mail exchange, do you want to talk more about that? that was uncovered by the way in request made by grant smith and he found it accidentally and that's the kind of thing that -- it appalled us when we read it and -- would you like to talk a little more about that? >> again, i'm really grateful that we exposed this, you know, disgusting and again i love when white men lecture me and others about how we go to the middle east and liberate women and cnn put someone against me, he's telling me that an arab woman like myself would never -- basically they look down at the middle east, arabs.

when i wrote my new york column about minority rights or minority life in israel, the only way we are described as arab-muslim women or brown as either a terrorist or a bed-win without nationality. we are every question starts where like how do you feel? as if my job is to feel. my job is to analyze phenomena. sorry my description. whether i'm, the -- tall or not. whether i had plastic surgery to look like this. every since i started working, iraqi war, if you listen to whatever any arab analysts have told you about invading iraq, how would create mass radicalization and basically

bring -- you know, we had 200 jihaddists after 9/11, only 200. only 200. today we have hundreds of thousands. if that's a success, what is failure. every arab analyst has been saying the same thing. what is their weapon to throw against people like me, oh, yeah, her looks. give me a break. it didn't hit me but to explain to the public's mindset of thugs and bullies, i'm used to it. they refused to answer questions because i was a muslim or brown or some kinds of things. i remember interviewing sconi for the first time, i mean u usually it's hard for me to lose -- i mean, i have no comment on the kind of -- if you think he was bad, imagine when donald

trump will deal with journalists. with the kind of attitude that i see under bill for ten years, was this kind of things, where people basically women and men who work for him would call us and threaten us, real threats in a country that killed journalists actually and people i believe that when you somehow use violent words, this can easily translate into real violence and killing. it can easily translate into that. that's why, again, forgive me for repeating the same thing, we need to create an ecosystem that collaborates much more with each other and reinforce with each other and actually -- we have to create a culture glue that

reinforces and pushes back harder because, i'm sorry, we are not pushing back harder enough because these thugs are bullies and will throw everything they have, you know, from threats to bullying to harassment or even beating of journalists but we live in an era where democracy still functions. before it collapses, let's hold it together. >> thank you. [applause] .. foo said that he would short-legged the audience to know that out of the news wasn't allowed to cover the convention. they denied access to the aipac. >> i'm sure they would be naïve%

of the people. i go to church with him sometimes and the way they pray i feel like when they pray to aipac and please come your or give me whatever you want. it's painful and the democrats this time to travel around the world and to see millions of people standing in the street standing in algeria and people willing to die for the principle of democracy and equal what you because they feel like they were born as free men and women and this is the kind of model that they look up to and what they see on television is aipac basically squeezing pardon my language the balls of these people and they are saying yes please,