LA Remembers: October 7
September 25, 2024
|By Tanya Macarenco
Shabbos Kestenbaum is a student activist and the lead plaintiff against Harvard University, alleging pervasive and systemic antisemitism. He is a regular contributor on national media, has testified in front of the United States Congress multiple times, and lectures internationally on Jewish communal issues.
Shahar Azani is a veteran Israeli diplomat, passionate advocate for Israel and a frequent contributor to various media outlets focusing on Israel, Jewish issues and the Middle East.
He serves as Founder and Principal at Fourth Dimension Strategies and Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Jet Support Services, Inc. (JSSI).
Azani was formerly Senior Vice President at JBS, Jewish Broadcasting Service, former Executive Director for StandWithUs in New York and served at Israel’s Foreign Ministry for over 16 years – in London, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, Nairobi and New York, focusing on international affairs, media affairs and public diplomacy.
Before embarking on this career path, he practiced Law at Haim Zadok and Company, based in Tel Aviv, focusing on litigation.
Rawan Osman is a Syrian-Lebanese/German activist advocating for peace with Israel. Rawan previously served on the executive committee at PeaceComms and as a speaker at SharakaNGO. Currently, she is studying Islamic and Jewish Studies at Heidelberg University and is the founder of ArabsAsk. Additionally, Osman serves as the Chairwoman of PostOctober7 e. V.
In her role with PeaceComms, she documented cases of persecution of activists and political dissidents in the Arab World advocating for normalization with Israel. At Sharaka, she organized speaking tours promoting the Abraham Accords and facilitated the participation of professionals and academics in Arab countries in a Holocaust education program.
Colonel Richard Kemp was a British infantry commander who spent most of his life combating terrorism and insurgency in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Northern Ireland, where he was wounded in a terrorist attack. His name appeared on an Al Qaida kill list in 2013.
He has been present in Israel during all of the conflicts with Gaza terrorist groups. He has spent most of his time there since the present war began in October 2023, entering Gaza on several occasions and making many visits to the Lebanese border and Judea & Samaria. He has also visited the front lines in Ukraine on a number of occasions during the current war with Russia.
He headed the international terrorism team at the Joint Intelligence Committee in the UK Prime Minister’s Office and was chairman of the multi-agency intelligence group at COBRA, the UK national crisis management committee. He was a founding member of the intergovernmental US-UK Security Strategy Group. He was appointed MBE for intelligence work in Northern Ireland and CBE for intelligence work in Iraq and the UK and was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery for actions in Afghanistan. Today he is a strategic consultant, writer, media commentator and public speaker.
Dalia Ziada is an Egyptian award-winning writer, peace activist, and political analyst specializing in governance, geopolitics, and defense policy in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. She has been globally recognized for her leading role as a civil rights activist in the Arab Spring revolutions of 2010-2011 and for her uncommon stance as an Arab Muslim intellectual in support of Israel’s war against Hamas in 2023.
Dalia has been active in the people-to-people Muslim-Jewish Dialogue and Arab-Israeli Dialogue for 16 years. Dalia studied international relations, focusing on global security studies, at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (in the United States).
Dalia worked in leading positions at primary regional and international think tanks and civil society organizations, where she wrote dozens of papers analyzing the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean region, advocated for peace and democracy in the Middle East, and fought tough political and cultural battles against radical Islamist groups in Arab countries.
In November 2023, Dalia had to flee Egypt, running for her life. During the 2023 conflict between Hamas and Israel, Dalia condemned Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israeli civilians and expressed strong support for Israel’s military retaliation against Hamas. Her public stance led to significant backlash in Egypt, resulting in threats to her safety and accusations of espionage and incitement of war crimes. Now, Dalia lives in the United States, where she is determined to continue her fight against radical Islamists and her activism for peace in the Middle East.
As a social entrepreneur, Dalia co-founded and led the Liberal Democracy Institute (LDI) in 2015 and the Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies (MEEM) in 2019. Before that, Dalia served as the Executive Director of the Cairo-based Ibn Khaldun Center for Democratic Studies and as the Regional Director in the Middle East and North Africa of the Washington-based American Islamic Congress (AIC). Dalia is also a member of several regional and international voluntary initiatives for peace and liberalism, such as the Clarity Coalition and Diplomeds. She currently works as a Senior Fellow for Research and Diplomacy at the Israel-based Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs (JCFA). Dalia authored the best-selling book “The Curious Case of the Three-Legged Wolf – Egypt: Military, Islamism, and Liberal Democracy” (2019) and other internationally acclaimed books dating back to 2006.
Dalia’s next book project, “The Coalition of Odds” explores the reshuffling of power coalitions in the greater Middle East and their rising influence on the historical and renewed conflicts between modern-day world superpowers.
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