WASHINGTON - June 3 -  

HOSSAM EL-HAMALAWY
El-Hamalawy is a journalist and blogger in Cairo.
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HEDY EPSTEIN
Epstein, a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, is author of Remembering Is Not Enough. After World War II, she worked at the Nuremberg Medical Trial, which tried the doctors accused of performing medical experiments on concentration camp inmates.

She said today: "Of course it's good that Obama will be commemorating the victims of the Nazis while in Europe. But in Cairo, he should acknowledge the 700,000 people who were driven out of what would become Israel in 1948. Some of those same Palestinian refugees are now in Gaza and continue to suffer Israeli attacks. Current Israeli military and economic policies are continuing the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."
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ABDUL MALIK MUJAHID
Abdul Malik Mujahid is an Imam in Chicago, president of the Muslim group Sound Vision and vice chair of the Council for a Parliament of World Religions.

He recently wrote the piece "The U.S. and Pakistan's Aerial Bombing Will Kill Civilians and Make More Terrorists."

He also wrote that "President Obama visited churches and synagogues in the U.S. during his election campaign, but not a mosque" in a recent piece titled "Engaging American Muslims Will Give a Far Better Message to the Muslim World Than Speeches."


OSAMAH KHALIL
Khalil is a PhD candidate in U.S. and Middle East History at the University of California, Berkeley focusing on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He spent three months in Egypt last year. He said today: "The United States has an opportunity to redefine its relationship with and role in the Arab and and Muslim World; that is how President Obama will be judged, not by one speech. While his speech is certainly a positive development, it must be followed by concrete steps to demonstrate that it is not empty rhetoric designed to mask the same failed policies.

"Of particular importance to most Arabs and Muslims is ending the 24-month siege of Gaza, the ongoing Israeli occupation and settlement construction in the West Bank, as well as the occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and continued U.S. support of dictatorships who have little popular support in their own countries, including his hosts in Egypt and Saudi Arabia."
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