Position: Director of CIVIC Worldwide, the only door-to-door casualty survey in post war Iraq. He also established Emaar a non-government organization that carried out work in Baghdad and the nine cities of the south.

Tenure: Mr. Jarrar was in Iraq during and after the 2003 invasion. He left the Middle East and moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 2005. He maintains a web-log that includes analysis and news summaries regarding Iraq and the Middle East.

Perhaps Mr. Jarrar is most widely recognized today for his attempt to board a Jet Blue flight from New York to Oakland last August, while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “WE WILL NOT BE SILENT” in both English and Arabic. This is a phrase borrowed from the anti Nazi group, the White Rose, who were activist students in Munich during WWII. Many Jet Blue passengers were apparently concerned about the T-shirt and the airlines requested that he remove it before flying. Jet Blue eventually bought him another T-Shirt to wear over the ‘offensive’ one and moved him to the back of the plane and out of sight, before allowing him to fly.

The publicity around this incident and an interview with Democracy Now reporter, Amy Goodman, allowed him to draw attention to his web-site and the predicament of many average citizens in Iraq. Mr. Jarrar is half -Palestinian and half-Iraqi and has spent a great deal of time in the Middle East and especially in Baghdad. He currently has a blog site describing events on the ground in Iraq and has also drawn up an exit strategy from Iraq called “The Iraqi Roadmap.”

Visit Raed’s Blog at: http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/