Featured Writers
As I have looked over the roster of contributors* to this site, certain names have cropped up repeatedly (3 is the magic number). I thought our readers might like to know who they are.
Alphabetically listed by last name
Avigail Abarbanel was the Secretary of the Australian National Network of Counsellors Inc. (2000-2001), and in 2002 was the President. The two areas that concern her the most at the moment are her field of psychotherapy and the situation in the Middle East. Her website
Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
Judy Andreas: a remarkable lady. Her website
Tariq Ali is the editor of the New Left Review, a well-known essayist, and author of a series of suggestive historic novels about Islam.
Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli expatriate living in London, is the Renaissance Man of the One State movement - an award-winning jazz saxophonist, a novelist, political writer, humorist, and in my view a most brilliant as well as colorful commentator. His website
Uri Avnery is former Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, "Ha'olam Haze" newsmagazine, served 3 Terms as member of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), founding member of the Israeli council for Israeli-Palestinian peace, founding member, "Gush Shalom" (Peace Bloc) - Independent Peace Movement, Member of Samson's Foxes (commando unit) 1948 (twice wounded in action), Member of the Irgun 1938-1942.
[However, as a consistent and outspoken supporter of the two-state solution, he may be more a part of the problem than the solution.]
Anna Baltzer is a 27-year-old Jewish-American graduate of Columbia University, Fulbright Scholar, and two-time volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service, based in the OPT. She authored the book Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories, and has spent most of the past year touring with it and her acclaimed presentation, " Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories & Photos." Her website
Ramzy Baroud is a veteran Palestinian-American Journalist and is Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle. His latest book: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle is available everywhere; also author of: Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion.
Azmi Bishara is a member of the seventeenth Knesset. Bishara was born to Arab Christian parents in Nazareth, where he currently lives (as of February 2007). In the 1999 election he became the first Israeli Arab to run for Prime Minister. He was one of five people to run for Prime Minister in these elections, but dropped out of the race two days before election day. In the end, only Ehud Barak and Benyamin Netanyahu were left as final candidates. He writes a regular column for Al-Ahram Weekly. [He is currently in exile, after the Israeli State machinery went into action to imprison him.]
Jeff Blankfort is a radio program producer with KPOO in San Francisco, KZYX in Mendocino and KPFT/Pacifica in Houston. He is a journalist and Jewish-American and has been a pro-Palestinian human rights activist since 1970. He was formerly the editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin and co-founder of the Labor Committee of the Middle East. He was also a founding member of the Nov. 29 Coalition on Palestine.
Noam Chomsky is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at MIT. Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar, considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the field of linguistics made in the 20th Century. Chomsky has become more widely known — especially internationally — for his media criticism and politics. Author of The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians and is co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy.
Bill Christison is a former senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy and The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story.
Alexander Cockburn is co-editor of Counterpunch
Patrick Cockburn is the Iraq correspondent for Britain's Independent newspaper, a contributor to CounterPunch and author of The Occupation: War, Resistance and Daily Life in Iraq, which is a finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle Award as the best nonfiction book of 2006. He was the first Western journalist to investigate and challenge the official story over the killings in Najaf.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State". His website.
Elias Davidsson was born in Palestine in 1941. His parents were born in Germany but had to emigrate to Palestine due to the Nazi persecution of Jews. Elias lived his first years Baq'aa, a neighborhood of Jerusalem, where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in peace side by side. He is co-founder of the Association Iceland-Palestine and a supporter of a democratic State in the whole of historic Palestine for Muslims, Christians and Jews. He lives in Reykjavik, Iceland. His website.
Albert Einstein. Perhaps the greatest human being of the 20th Century - mere words cannot do him justice. See the Essentials page.
Paul Eisen is a long-time supporter of the One State Solution and is UK Director of Deir Yassin Remembered.
Haidar Eid teaches at the Department of English, Al-Aqsa University.
Norman Finkelstein is an American professor of political science and author. The son of Jewish Holocaust survivors, he is known for his writings pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for his contention that the Holocaust is being exploited both for personal financial gain and for pro-Israel political ends. His most recent book is Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history. His website.
Robert Fisk is a British journalist and is currently a Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent. He lives in Beirut, Lebanon, where he has resided for over 25 years.
Joshua Frank writes for Counterpunch and is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush. He edits Dissident Voice's blog, the BrickBurner.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston based activist and writer who publishes the World View News Service.
Daniel Gavron, a frequent contributor to Haaretz, is writing a book on Jewish-Arab cooperation and coexistence projects.
Mark Glenn is the author of "Not My Words, But Theirs: A Christian American's Defense of Middle Eastern Culture and its People." Website
Mark Green is an independent producer who lives in California. His website.
Dr. Ran HaCohen was born in the Netherlands in 1964 and grew up in Israel. He has a B.A. in Computer Science, an M.A. in Comparative Literature, and his PhD is in Jewish Studies. He is a university teacher in Israel. He also works as a literary translator (from German, English and Dutch), and as a literary critic for the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth. Mr. HaCohen's work has been published widely in Israel.
Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus and a lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He writes for Counterpunch.
Jeff Halper is a professor of anthropology, the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), the author of Obstacles to Peace: A Re-Framing of the Palestinian – Israeli Conflict, and An Israeli in Palestine (Pluto Press: forthcoming). He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the American Friends Service Committee.
Amira Hass is an Israeli journalist and author, mostly known for her columns in the daily newspaper Ha'aretz. She is especially famous for living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and reporting on events from the Palestinian perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The daughter of two Holocaust survivors (Bergen-Belsen), Hass was born in Jerusalem. She began her journalistic career in 1989 as a staff editor for Ha'aretz and started to report from the Palestinian Territories in 1991.She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege, and co-author of Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land.
Chris Hedges is the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and the author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning."
Michael A. Hoffman II is an American historian and writer. Hoffman has been characterised as a conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier, but he has questioned the accuracy and legitimacy of the latter term. Hoffman is the managing editor of the newsletter Revisionist History, and describes himself as a "heretical writer." He is rather little known to mainstream audiences, but has produced many books and articles.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is forthcoming from Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625 @ charter.net
Remi Kanazi is a Palestinian-American poet and writer based in New York City. He is the co-founder of www.PoeticInjustice.net and the editor of the forthcoming anthology of poetry, Poets for Palestine. He can be contacted at Remi @ PoeticInjustice.net
Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.
Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War? and The Age of War. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is After Socialism.
Stephen Lendman: [After retiring, I] "have since devoted my time and efforts to the progressive causes and organizations I support, all involved in working for a more humane and just world for all people everywhere." His blog. His online talk show, The Steve Lendman News & Information Hour, is an hour of fact-filled information on vital world and national issues with occasional guests and listener call-ins each Saturday at noon, US Central Time, at The Micro Effect.com
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
Henry Lowi is a Jewish peace activist living in Toronto, Canada.
Joachim Martillo is a Boston based activist and writer.
Joseph Massad is associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. His recent book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question, was published by Routledge.
Curt Maynard is a former US Cavalry Scout who became "enlightened" in 1986 after a visit to Dachau - a visit that resulted in learning the fact that there were never any operational gas chambers at Dachau, which contradicted everything that Maynard had learned in school. He considers himself to be an old line conservative patriot and Constitutionalist and all that entails. His blog: Politically Correct Apostate
Ralph Nader is an American attorney and political activist. His activism has played a large part in the creation of many governmental and non-governmental organizations, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Public Citizen, Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), and is the author of numerous books. Nader ran for President of the United States three times (1996, 2000, 2004). In 1996 and 2000 he was the nominee of the Green Party. His website
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Kurt Nimmo is an American writer, artist, and political blogger. His political commentary, fiction, poetry, and photography have appeared on numerous web sites and have been published in anthologies and small press magazines and chapbooks since the late 1970s. His website: Another Day in the Empire
Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian who used to teach at Haifa University. He has now taken a position at the University of Exeter in Britain. He is one of the "New Historians" who have re-examined and hold controversial views of the history of Israel and of Zionism. Pappé was born in Haifa to German-Jewish parents who had fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s. His early books dealt with Israeli policy in 1948, a subject he has returned to in his latest book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. His A History of Modern Palestine covers the last two hundred years and focuses on cultural and social issues. His The Modern Middle East is a textbook that brings to the fore the social and cultural developments in the region in the last century. He is one of the foremost Israeli advocates of the One State Solution. His website
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Miko Peled is an Israeli peace activist living in San Diego, California. His father was the notable Israeli general, Matti Peled.
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked and The Power of Israel in the United States. His essays in English can be found at petras.lahaine.org and in Spanish at rebellion.org.
John Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker from Sydney, primarily based in London, England. He is one of only two to have twice won British journalism's top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. "John Pilger," wrote Harold Pinter, "unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him."
Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian Christian, is a Connecticut-based medical geneticist who has taught at Duke and Yale and was born in Shepherds’ Field near Bethlehem. He is a cofounder of a number of groups including Al-Awda (the Palestine Right to Return Coalition), Triangle Middle East Dialogue (interfaith) and the Carolina Middle East Association, AcademicsForJustice.org and BoycottIsraeliGoods.org campaigns, as well as Wheels of Justice. He is the author of Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle. His website.
Shmuel Rosner is Chief US Correspondent, Haaretz
Faysal Ruwayha is a retired UN staff officer who has studied the conflict for more than five decades. He has lived in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as repeatedly visited many Arab countries that have a role in the conflict. In addition, he has lived a total of 16 years in America and 13 years in Europe. His wide background provided him considerable insight when writing "Questions and Answers About the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict," which is currently with a literary agent searching for an interested publisher.
Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984 to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of numerous books, including “Iraq Confidential” (Nation Books, 2005) and “Target Iran” (Nation Books, 2006)
Paul Craig Roberts held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University and was Senior Research Fellow in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, he was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Israel Shamir 's website gives the following description. However, please see notes of caution 1. and 2. In spite of his occasionally aggressive Judeophobia (offensive to the politically correct), he is an undeniably brilliant and original writer who strongly advocates a new democratic nation to replace the state of Israel and the Occupied Territories.
Col. Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus , a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
John Spritzler is the author of The People As Enemy: The Leaders' Hidden Agenda in World War II, co-author of On the Public Agenda: Essays for Change, co-editor of NewDemocracyWorld, and active in building opposition to U.S. support of Israel. A Research Scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, he is a biostatistician focused on the design and analysis of HIV-related clinical trials.
David Swanson is creator of MeetWithCindy.org, co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. His website.
Robert Thompson is a columnist on Axis of Logic. His writings can be found in the Axis section, "Letters from France". He is a French citizen and a retired Avocat (Trial Lawyer). After becoming an English Solicitor, he later went to work at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. There he was Secretary General of the Court of Arbitration, the most important international commercial arbitration centre on the world. While there, he became the I.C.C. Director in charge of relations with the Arab states.
Virginia Tilley, a professor of Political Science, is the author of The One-State Solution : A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock, and is now working at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa.
Roger Tucker is a Jewish American, a student and practitioner of Shambhala Buddhism, and the founder and webmaster of this site.
Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic, commentator, Internet essayist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com. His essays appear regularly at various alternative news websites from around the globe. He can be reached at manuel @ valenzuelas.net. His next book, Beyond the Smoking Mirror: Reflections on America and Humanity, a collection of his essays, will be published in early 2007.
John Walsh writes for Counterpunch. He can be reached at John.Endwar @ gmail.com.
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi was born in 1971 and spent her early childhood in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, until she returned with her family to the United States in 1977. Recently, she journeyed to Iraq for a 3-month visit, returning to the U.S. in March 2006. Based on her experiences, she is speaking out against the negative impact of the U.S. invasion on the Iraqi people and the need to end the occupation. Her website.
Paul Joseph Watson's Propaganda Matrix started in mid-2001 as a political newsletter and has since emerged as one of the leading alternative news websites on the Internet. Watson's debut book, Order Out of Chaos was published in the Summer of 2003. Many peers in the field consider this to be the most well researched and credibly sourced book of its kind ever written.
* By "contributors" I don't mean to imply that these people have written anything specifically for this site. Most of the pieces were published elsewhere and collected here to present a wide spectrum of relevant writing and reporting.