Dear friends--
I hope this finds you well!
This past week, in the "Story/Backstory" project, I turned to the question of the super-well-funded influence operations that, in particular, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (but also, Qatar and Israel) have been running in Washington DC in recent years.
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In the column I published in Mondoweiss Thursday, I dug into the small corner of the Mueller Report that addressed some actions taken by sleazy UAE bagman George Nader and his boss, the powerful UAE Crown Prince, and I provided some context for what the two of them have been up to.
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Want to learn about the event in DC this Tuesday with Palestinian mental-health leader Dr. Samah Jabr? Jump straight down to here.
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Then, in the linked podcast episode I released yesterday, I interviewed Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy, who has amazing expertise on how high-powered influence peddling actually gets done in DC. We talked lots of intriguing nuts and bolts about how this happens. As Ben memorably put it, this is "where our weak system of lobbying oversight meets our weak system of campaign finance oversight."
 Ben agreed with my assessment that the "Big Four" of Middle Eastern powers undertaking influence ops in DC are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Israel. (This graphic is a screengrab from the "Foreign Lobby Watch" page on opensecrets.org. What an amazing resource!)
But he noted that the total spending on pro-Israel influence ops is actually a lot higher than these figures suggest, since so much of it comes from domestic-US funders and doesn't get recorded in the "Foreign agents" (FARA) filings.
He also made the excellent point that many lobbying firms have contracts with one or all of those "Big Four"-- and also with one or more big US military manufacturers...
Lots more to explore there, but I feel we made a great start. Do listen to the podcast if you can!
 The previous week, in the "Story/Backstory" project, we focused on the issue of the 7,000-plus Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails. Here's the column I wrote about the prisoners having won a notable (if small) victory from the prison authorities through the steadfastness of their recent hunger strike.
I didn't do a podcast that week. Instead, with some super help from Yousef Aljamal, we put three very informative items about the prisoner issue on our JWE blog: 1, 2, 3.
 And more recently, Yousef helped organize a wonderful "Skype seminar" that I held with a group of young people in Gaza last Tuesday. The seminar was hosted by the Center for Political and Development Studies in Gaza City, and gave us a rare chance to hear directly from the young people in the Center's "Birds Without Borders" program.
You can read more about the seminar here.
This event was held in conjunction with the opening of an exhibition, in the Center's library, of the photos that many of us took at the World Beyond War "Peace Festival" earlier this month, in which we expressed our message of #IStandWithGaza. If you look carefully in the photo above you can see some of those photos hanging on the wall!
If you'd like to join the #IStandWithGaza photo campaign you can download a sign to hold from here (or make your own!!). Then, take a selfie with it and either send us the picture or post it on Twitter with the hashtag #IStandWithGaza! Help us to organize an even bigger exhibition next time!
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 And now, the details about the great opportunity that those of us in the DC area will have this Tuesday, to hear firsthand from Ramallah-based mental-health leader Dr. Samah Jabr. The event will be at 7 pm at St. Stephen's Church, 1525 Newton St NW, in the District (near Columbia Hts. Metro Stn.)
Dr. Jabr is on a short U.S. tour along with a short film about her work that recently premiered at the Houston Palestinian Film Festival, that will also be shown at Tuesday's event.
She will also be accompanied by the film-maker, Alexandra Dols, and by Rebecca Fadil, director of the US-Palestine Mental Health Network.
You can learn more about Dr. Jabr, her work, and the film, here.
Be sure to tell all your friends in DC about this opportunity!
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 And finally, just before I sign off, I wanted to draw your attention to two fine and thought-provoking resources that place the recent tragic fire at France's Notre Dame Cathedral into a broader context.
The first is the powerful article that archeologist Dr. Lamya Khalidi had in The Guardian yesterday, under the title "Yemen proves it: in western eyes, not all ‘Notre Dames’ are created equal..." The sub-title there was: "As an archaeologist, I’ve seen Yemen’s rich heritage. But for too many world leaders, only arms sales really matter... "
But go read the whole thing.
 The second Notre Dame-related piece was this one, which I researched and put onto the JWE blog last week. It was a quick survey of the record of the Zionist extremists who in recent years have torched scores of churches and mosques in Israel and the West Bank.
Anyway, as you can see, we've been creating and disseminating numerous great resources ion recent weeks-- and we want to carry on doing so! We also really want to ramp up our live-events programing as much as we can...
But, as noted above, that all takes resources! Please do whatever you can to help us to take advantage of all the opportunities there currently are to really e-x-p-a-n-d the discourse here in the United States on these vital issues of war, peace, and Palestinian rights.
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Do check back frequently with our blog or our Twitter or Facebook feeds, to keep in touch with everything we're doing... And you can share this email with your friends and networks, using the links below.
Here's to building a better world for all of humanity!
Helena.
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