* Notable figures who have addressed Al-Awda gatherings over the years include: Norman Finkelstein (who asserts that the Holocaust has been exaggerated and exploited by Jews to justify Israeli crimes against humanity); Laila Al-Arian (daughter of former Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian, the latter of whom Al-Awda describes as a “political prisoner”); professor Ilan Pappé (who accuses Israel of practicing “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians); As’ad AbuKhalil (who boycotts “all things Israeli” and says that the only way in which an Israeli can “redeem himself” is to “leave the house he/she occupies” and “engage in armed struggle against the terrorist state of Israel”); Michel Shehadeh, the host of “Radio Intifada,” a Los Angeles radio program named in honor of the Palestinian terrorist campaign seeking to destroy the State of Israel; and Salman Abu Sitta (Palestine Land Society president who characterizes the creation of Israel in 1948 as “Al Nakba”—Arabic for “The Catastrophe”).
* Al-Awda has a Media Center that markets audio and video productions promoting the organization’s anti-Israel, anti-Semitic message. A number of these productions feature presentations by some of the individuals cited above as Al-Awda convention speakers. The organization has also promoted a DVD recording of a 2009 California speech where George Galloway announced the formation of Viva Palestina USA and its plans to help break Israel’s “siege of Gaza.”
* In April 2008, Al-Awda expressed its deep regret over the recent death of Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund director Riad Hamad, depicting him as a “martyr” whose “long years of advocacy and direct assistance to the children of Palestine … [have] been an inspiration to all of us who support our internally displaced families under the brutal 60-year Zionist occupation of our lands,” and whose legacy would live on “in our collective determination to return and reclaim Palestine.”