Ari Shavit is a left-wing Israeli journalist, formerly for Haaretz, and advocates against Israel’s occupying settlements in Palestine. He resigned from Haaretz because of sexual misconduct allegations. He was born in Rehovot, Israel, and studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is the descendent of early Zionists who migrated from Europe to Israel around the turn of the 20th century. Shavit’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Politico. He authored My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel in 2013 and subsequently traveled across the United States discussing Judaism and Israel with Jews residing in the United States. 

Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, commonly referred to as Yasser Arafat, was a Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President of the Palestinian National Authority. He was an Arab nationalist and founding member of the Fatah political party. He negotiated a temporary peace agreement with Israeli leaders in the early 1990s, which resulted in the Oslo Accords. In 1998, amid Israeli-Palestinian hostilities, he negotiated the Wye River Memorandum with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.