Profiles of Peace

Isam Sartawi

Isam Sartawi

Palestinian physician who founded the Red Crescent Medical Society and the Active Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (AOLP), a non-combatant group that offered medical assistance to Palestinian resistance fighters. Nominated by the AFSC for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

Ilan Pappé

Ilan Pappé

Israeli "New Historian" who has used declassified Israeli government documents to publish new views related to the birth of Israel in 1948.

Edward Said

Edward Said

Palestinian author, professor, and advocate for peace with justice in Israel/Palestine. Said was a former member of the Palestinian National Congress who also taught at Columbia University and wrote extensively on Palestinian rights.

Matti Peled

Matti Peled

Israeli who was a military officer before becoming a leading peace activist and proponent of dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization and of Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. Peled died in 1994.

Mattityahu (Matti) Peled evolved from being a Major General in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to a leading peace activist and proponent of both dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and a complete withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Jessica Montell

Jessica Montell

Executive director of B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights monitoring group.

Jessica Montell is the executive director of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.  The organization was created in 1989 to promote human rights by shedding light on human rights violations in the Occupied Territories and inspiring action and understanding amongst Israelis.

Fatima Khaldi

Fatima Khaldi

Palestinian activist, social worker and community organizer, Khaldi is helping lead the nonviolent grassroots resistance to the Separation Wall in the West Bank.

Rela Mazali

Rela Mazali

Writer and lecturer who co-founded the New Profile movement.  New Profile challenges militarism in Israeli society and supports those who resist serving in the military.

Rela Mazali was born in 1948 at Kibbutz Ma’ayan Baruch in the Upper Galilee.  Her mother was an American from Kansas City who moved to Israel as a Zionist-Socialist activist eager to build an egalitarian homeland. Rela Mazali spent most of her childhood in Tel Aviv, where she stayed to study philosophy and comparative literature at Tel Aviv University.  

Ruchama Marton

Ruchama Marton

Israeli psychiatrist and founder and president of the Israeli activists' organization Physicians for Human Rights - Israel. Marton continues to advocate for Palestinian rights and is also the recipient of the Emil Grunzweig Award for Human Rights and the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights.

Dr. Ruchama Marton was born in 1937 in Jerusalem, and was raised there. Marton became an activist at an early age while serving compulsory military duty in the Israeli army.

Felicia Langer

Felicia Langer

Israeli lawyer and activist who has worked extensively for Palestinian human rights. She has written numerous books that describe Israel’s widespread use of torture against political prisoners as well as human rights violations.

Samiha Khalil

Samiha Khalil

Palestinian leader and founder of the Society of Ina’ash El-Usra, which empowers women by training them in skills they could use in their own homes. Khalil ran against Yasser Arafat in the first Palestinian presidential elections. She died in 1999.