Board Members
Elizabeth Barlow received an MA in Middle Eastern history from the University of Michigan and later served as a staff member at the University’s Middle East Center for nearly 20 years. She was also a founding member of Friends of Sabeel-North America and has led a number of groups to different countries in the Middle East, including Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Mark Braverman is a Jewish American with deep family roots in Israel/Palestine. Trained in clinical psychology and crisis management, Braverman worked with groups and individuals undergoing traumatic stress. Braverman now devotes himself full-time to the Israel/Palestine conflict. He is a co-founder of Friends of Tent of Nations North America, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting Palestinian land rights, and serves on the advisory committee of Friends of Sabeel North America. He is the author of Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land (Synergy Books, 2010).
Ellen Davidson is an activist journalist and photographer in New York City. She works with the Indypendent, the paper of the New York Independent Media Center, and with the War Resisters League, among other groups. She has spoken and written about her experiences traveling in the West Bank in 2007 and 2009 and about participating in the Gaza Freedom March in Cairo in December 2009.
Dr. Hassan Fouda is a Board Director of The Tree of Life Foundation, Holy Land Educational and Peace Building Project and is Board Director of The Council for National interest Foundation. He visited Israel-Palestine 7 times with different interfaith delegations with the aim of identifying and amplifying voices of conscience and hope among Israelis and Palestinians. He also visited all the neighboring countries where he met and interviewed many government officials, opposition leaders and opinion makers. Hassan frequently writes and speaks about these experiences.
John Hickox, based in Oregon, is an ordained United Church of Christ minister and a Board Certified Chaplain. He is the founding director of Americans Committed to Justice and Truth, a 501(c)3 corporation which facilitates tax-deductible educational study tours to Israel/Palestine: “A picture is worth a thousand words, a personal experience is worth a million words.”
Esther Nelson, retired from horticultural research, serves on the board of Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights and co-chairs Lutherans for Justice in the Holy Land, Portland, OR. Her commitment to advocacy stems from her experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Ecumenical Accompanier in Palestine/Israel, Israeli committee Against House Demolitions summer camp home rebuilder, and Palestine Fair Trade Association intern.
Frances ReMillard is a retired chemist-hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Co-founder and current Director of Utahns for A Just Peace in the Holy Land, she advocates for peace in Israel-Palestine based on justice and international law. Frances traveled in the West Bank and Israel in 2003 and again in 2008, and writes freelance articles and op-eds on the situation in the Holy Land.
Executive Committee
Tom Stern, Chair of the Board, is an education attorney in Durham, NC. In 2002, he traveled to the West Bank as part of a National Lawyers Guild delegation to investigate Israel’s unprecedented six-week shut down of the West Bank and the aftermath of the fighting in Jenin. Tom has returned three times since then to participate in the ICAHD Summer Camp, rebuilding Palestinian homes, and as part of the Constructing Peace Campaign.
Mary Lou Leiser Smith, Vice Chair of the Board, was a founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA. She is the Coordinating Director of the Coalition for Peace with Justice, an interfaith/intercultural organization based in the Triangle of North Carolina. Mary Lou also serves on the Board of the US Friends of Hope Flowers School, a Palestinian school promoting peace education in Bethlehem, and is the Southeast representative for Friends of Sabeel-North America.
Coordinating Director
Elyse Crystall, originally from Brooklyn, NY, is a long time social justice activist and human rights advocate. She is a member of Jews for a Just Peace – NC and teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the summer of 2006, Elyse visited the West Bank to rebuild a demolished Palestinian home.
