This is a speech given by Phyllis Bennis last night (9/29) on her new book Understanding ISIS and The New Global War on Terror.

Bennis is a career journalist who has been active in the Middle East since the 1970s and who covered the United Nations in the 1980s. In 1987, she witnessed the First Intifada and began to take a serious interest in pro-Palestinian advocacy. …In 1999, Bennis accompanied a group of congressional aides to Iraq, examining the impact of U.S.-led economic sanctions on humanitarian conditions there….

Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C., and of its offshoot, the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. At IPS, Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project, which “works primarily on Middle East and United Nations issues,” focusing on “the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” The project makes use of “education and activism” in an effort to change American policy and also seeks to “democratize and empower” the UN and free it of “U.S. domination.”^[3

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-september-30-2015/

• From Stones to Statehood: The Palestinian Uprising (1990);
• Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN (2000);
• Before & After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis (2003) [US Policy and the War on Terrorism, 2nd ed.];
• Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power (2006);
• Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer (2009);
• Ending the Iraq War: A Primer (2009);
• Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer (2009);
• Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer (2010).

Bennis was featured in the 2007 award-winning documentary film Occupation 101