Inspirational Commitment to Palestinian Advocacy Award
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Founded in 2012, Palestine Legal is an independent organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom. Palestine Legal is the only legal organization in the United States exclusively dedicated to supporting the movement for Palestinian rights. Our attorneys are based in Chicago, New York City and the Bay Area, and our work spans all 50 states and Washington D.C. We provide a wide range of free support to activists, including legal representation and consultation, public education, advocacy support, and more. We also build allies within legal and social justice communities to strengthen the movement’s legal safety net and develop collective strategies against increasing cross-movement repression. By protecting the right to engage in debate and political action, we ensure that advocacy for Palestinian human rights is amplified, not silenced.
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On Behalf of Palestine Legal, Amal Thabateh, Dylan and Meera Shah accept the award.
Amal Thabateh is the Michael Ratner Justice Fellow at Palestine Legal where she challenges the censorship, surveillance, and suppression of advocates for Palestinian liberation.
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Dylan Saba is a Staff Attorney at Palestine Legal, where he advises Palestine human rights advocates on a number of issues, such as free speech violations, employment discrimination, bullying, and disciplinary actions. Dylan is half Palestinian and half Jewish American.
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Meera Shah joined Palestine Legal in 2019. She supports the organization’s casework and public education and oversees the advocacy work on free speech, academic freedom, and the right to boycott.
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Inspirational Commitment to Palestine Organizing Award
Noura Erakat
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Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and the Program of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She recently completed non-resident fellowship of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School. Noura is the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), which received the Palestine Book Award and the Bronze Medal for the Independent Publishers Book Award in Current Events/Foreign Affairs. She is co-founding editor of Jadaliyya and editorial board member of the Journal of Palestine Studies as well as Human Geography. She is a co-founding board member of the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival. She has served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the US House of Representatives, as Legal Advocate for the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, and as national organizer of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Noura has also produced video documentaries, including "Gaza In Context" and "Black Palestinian Solidarity.” Her writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, and Al Jazeera. She is a frequent commentator on CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Fox News, the BBC, and NPR, among others. Most recently, she was selected as a 2022 Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation.
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