BISHOP JACKSON.
E.W. Jackson was honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps. He then graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Phi Beta Kappa Key from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and from Harvard Law School. While in law school, he was accepted into the Baptist ministry and studied at Harvard Divinity School.
He practiced small business law for 15 years in Boston, and taught Business and Regulatory Law at the college and graduate levels. His first book, “Ten Commandments to an Extraordinary Life” was published in 2008. His second book is scheduled for release in 2014.
He is the Founder of Exodus Faith Ministries, a nondenominational Christian church. On July 4, 2009, he launched S.T.A.N.D. – Staying True to America’s National Destiny. In December of 2013, he founded “Unite Virginia PAC.”
He was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, but his family dates back to the Revolutionary War. His great grandparents (Gabriel and Eliza) were a sharecropper family in Orange County, Virginia after slavery ended.
In 2011 Bishop Jackson ran for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. In 2013 he sought the nomination for Lt. Governor and won. While unsuccessful in the general election, Jackson received one million votes and sparked a movement which continues to inspire and unite Virginians.
He and his wife founded the annual Chesapeake Martin Luther King Leadership Breakfast which brings hundreds of people together to celebrate the ideals of Dr. King.
Mr. Jackson founded and ran Boston’s first and only gospel radio station for 9 years, and has hosted local and national radio talk shows. He has been a guest on FOX News’ The O’Reilly Factor, Megyn Kelly’s America Live, CBN World News, ABC’s Good Morning America, C-Span’s Washington Journal, ABC Radio Network, National Public Radio, Virginia Public Radio in Richmond and Tony Macrini’s morning radio show on WNIS.
He was consecrated a Bishop in July 1998. He and his wife, Theodora, have been married for forty two years, have 3 children and reside in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Bishop Jackson is an experienced Bible teacher, and looks forward to sharing insights to God’s on the upcoming trip to Israel.
Chris Long is the President of Ohio Christian Alliance.
Having taught his congregations the importance of civic responsibility, Chris himself ran for public office for City Council in 1999, and was the Republican candidate for the 47th Ohio House seat in 2000. He also served as an advisor to the Stow Citizens Committee that fought a challenge by the ACLU which threatened the City of Stow with a lawsuit which stated that the city seal which contained a Christian cross and open Bible was unconstitutional.
Under Chris's leadership for the past ten years, the Ohio Christian Alliance (formerly the Christian Coalition of Ohio) has surveyed federal and state candidates and published the results in a educational voter guide - producing, printing, and distributing more than 7 million of the voter guides over the past 8 years. The voter guides are distributed to thousands of Ohio churches through a network of volunteers in all of Ohio's 88 counties. OCA also conducts candidate forums and produces a Congressional scorecard. Citizenship Sundays are conducted for non-partisan voter registration efforts, encouraging people of faith to register and voter.
OCA's most recent legislative effort to add FDR's D-Day Landing Prayer to the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C. was initiated by Chris in collaboration with Congressman Bill Johnson (OH-6). The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 386-26 in the 112th Congress. It was then introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut with 22 co-sponsors. It has now been reintroduced in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in the 113th Congress and is awaiting committee hearings.
Legislative successes through Chris's leadership include the raising of Ohio's adoption tax credit from $500 to $1500, the Ohio Choose Life License Plate, working for the passage of Ohio's Defense of Marriage Act, and most recently the initiation and passage of The Founding of America Documents Bill which now requires the study of our nation's founding documents in all of Ohio schools, grades 5-12, including The U.S. Constitution with an emphasis on The Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, The Northwest Ordinance, and The Ohio Constitution.
Esther Levens has been appointed by Presidents George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon to serve on three U.S. Presidential Advisory Councils:
As Founder in 1991 and Chief Executive Officer of the Unity Coalition for Israel (UCI), Esther has brought together more than 200 organizations to educate Americans and others about Israel, the Middle East and radical Islam.
This Coalition, representing millions of people, has served as a clearinghouse for information on Israel, its history and culture, and that of the 22 Arab nations surrounding it. She has overseen this broad educational outreach to grassroots America by communicating with the secular and religious media, college campuses, the U.S. Presidential Cabinet, the U.S. Congress, the Israeli Knesset and other government officials.
UCI has held seven major educational conferences in Washington DC featuring experts on the Middle East. They twice hosted Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, during his first term of office, attended by more than 4,500 in Washington DC at the JW Marriott and Mayflower Hotels.
UCI has also sponsored numerous press conferences on Capitol Hill, at the National Press Club, and at the National Religious Broadcasters annual conventions.
William J. Federer is a nationally known speaker, best-selling author of 20 books, including What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur'an History of Islam & the United States, and numerous DVD series, such as: Islamic Conquest-Past & Present, and Political Islam's War on the west. He is president of Amerisearch, Inc., a publishing company dedicated to researching America's noble heritage.
TELEVISION: A former U.S. Congressional Candidate, Bill has appeared on: CSPAN, FOX, Hannity & Colmes, O'Reilly Factor, NPR, MSNBC, ABC-Time Warner Affiliates, CBN, TBN, INSP, TCT, FamilyNet, FamilyLand TV, Coral Ridge Hour, 700 Club, AT&T Cable, Charter Cable, Danny Fontana Show, iLife TV, FOX Strategy Room with Brian Kilmeade, hosted CSPAN's George Washington Book Festival-February 26, 2000, CTN with Herman & Sharron Bailey, Grizzly Adams Television Production documentaries, and numerous local programs.
RADIO: Bill has been interviewed on thousands of radio programs, including Focus on the Family, Janet Parshall's America, Point of View, USA Radio Network, Salem Radio Network, Bott Radio Network, Michael Medved, Common Sense Radio w/Ollie North, D. James Kennedy's Truths that Transform, Phyllis Schlafly Live, Beverly LaHaye Live, G. Gordon Liddy, Janet Folger's Faith to Action, Clear Channel Radio, VCY America, RadioAmerica, BQ, Armstrong Williams, American Family Radio, Family Life Radio, USA Radio Network, Judicial Watch, InsightMag.com, Martha Zoller Show, Chuck Harder's For the People, Derry Brownfield, Michael Reagan and others.
Bill's AMERICAN MINUTE radio feature and FAITH IN HISTORY television program broadcast daily across America and by the Internet.
PUBLICATIONS: Bill has been quoted or referenced in USA Today, Human Events, New York Times, Washington Times, Washington Post, Roll Call, Harper's Magazine, The Wanderer, George, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Fort Lauderdate Sun-Sentinel, Ted Baehr's MovieGuide, England's Surrey Hants Star, Insight Magazine, WorldNetDaily.com, TownHall.com, NewsMax.com, Catholic.org, Crosswalk.org, CitizenLink.com and other publications.
William J. Murray is the chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition in Washington, DC. For more than two decades Murray has been at the forefront of social conservatism. During the early 1980's he served as director of Freedom's Friends, an organization which reached out to the victims of communism worldwide. In the 1990's he founded the first commercial Bible publishing company in the Soviet Union. For many years his organizations operated evangelistic tours to the Soviet Union for Christians.
Rior to the fall of the Soviet Union William Murray warned of a coming great Islamic Jihad against the secular West. On September 11th he was driving past the Pentagon on his way to a news conference supporting the Sudan Peace Act when American 77 crashed into that building. Before the end of September Murray ran ads in national newspapers pointing out that there was no distinguishable difference between the Saudi and Taliban governments.
From his office in Washington, DC, William J. Murray continues to work for the rights of Christians in America and persecuted Christians around the world. Under his guidance the Religious Freedom Coalition assists Palestinian Christian families and supports Christian schools in the West Bank. He has traveled to Israel and the West Bank on numerous occasions.
William J. Murray has appeared on ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news as well as Nightline and various Fox News programs. He is a regular guest on numerous radio talk shows.
Ron Wexler- Heritage Study Programs
Ron Wexler heads Heritage Study Programs, an educational travel organization based in Boca Raton, Florida and serves as president of the Ten Commandments Commission, a non-profit that fosters improved understanding between Christians and Jews.
Ron Wexler served in the Israel Defense Force during the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. He both attended rabbinical school and has done research on early Christianity, giving him the basis for his work promoting conciliation between Jews and Christians. He has produced programs for the Municipality of Jerusalem and the Government of Israel Tourist Office; in particular, he was responsible for the "Jerusalem 2000" celebration.
Daniel "Danny" Ayalon
Daniel Ayalon is an Israeli diplomat and politician who currently served as Deputy Foreign Minister and as a member of the Knesset for Yisrael Beiteinu. Formerly he served as Israeli Ambassador to the United States from 2002 until 2006. He frequently writes in Israeli and international newspapers, notably in the Jerusalem Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Ayalon was appointed Israel's Ambassador to the United States in 2002 by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Before his appointment, Ayalon had served as a Deputy Foreign Policy Adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and to Ehud Barak as well as Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Throughout his time in Washington, Ayalon cultivated a strong relationship with President George W. Bush and played a leading role in the Road Map for Peace negotiations between President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon. He also secured the agreement for $9 billion in U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel beginning in 2003 which Israel needed in order to raise funds abroad at low interest rates. In early 2012, as Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Ayalon, met with his U.S. counterparts to secure another three-year, $3.8 billion extension of loan guarantees.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar- Lt. Col. (res.)
Mordechai Kedar is one of the top Israeli scholars of Arabic literature and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. He holds the Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University.
Kedar is an academic expert on the Israeli Arab population. He served for twenty-five years in IDF Military Intelligence, where he specialized in Islamic groups, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic press and mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena. The Los Angeles Times' Edmund Sanders described him as "one of the few Arabic-speaking Israeli pundits seen on Arabic satellite channels defending Israel".
Kedar drew attention with a June 2008 Al-Jazeera interview in which he challenged the moderator's assertion that "You cannot erase Jerusalem from the Qur'an", pointing out that Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Qur'an.
Ali Yahya
Yahya was born in 1947 and raised in Nazareth. He completed his BA degree in history and Arabic literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1970. Yahya is married and has five children.
Prior to becoming an ambassador, Yahya was the coordinator of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Special Projects Division for the Middle East and the Peace Process.
In 1995, Yahya became a member of the Board of Directors of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), where he was in charge of Arabic and radio programs. That year he also joined the Lapid Movement for Learning the Lessons of the Holocaust. Later in 1995 he was appointed the Israeli ambassador to Finland. He served until 1999.
In 1999, he served as Coordinator and Advisor for Special Projects (P.T.P.), at the Department for the Middle East Peace Process and was the direct responsible for the Aqaba Eilat peace talks.
In 2006, Yahya was appointed the Israeli ambassador to Greece.
Yahya was the first Israeli-Arab to light the ceremonial torch at the Israeli Independence Day celebration, and was the delegate of the Israeli - Arab Community at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in 1995.
Joshua S. Reinstein - Director of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus
Josh Reinstein has been the Director of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus since its inception on January 5th 2004. Before assuming his present position, he served as English Language Spokesperson for the Israel Beiteinu and for Uri Lupliansky, the Mayor of Jerusalem, during his election campaign. Mr. Reinstein also owns and operates JSR International Marketing, an international marketing and public relations firm based in Israel.
Josh Reinstein is an advisor to the Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs and the producer and founder of the hit TV show, Israel Now News. Israel Now News is a half an hour weekly news magazine that is broadcast to 35 million viewers in a 191 countries around the world.
Mr. Reinstein grew up in Dallas, Texas and Toronto, Canada. He is an honors graduate of the University of Western Ontario, where he earned a degree in Political Science. He served as a tank gunner in the elite 188 unit of the Israel Defense Forces Armored Corps. He currently lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Rebekah and three sons.
This year, Mr. Reinstein was named as one of the "50 most influential Jews in the world" by the Jerusalem Post.
General (ret.) Amos Yadlin
Amos Yadlin was born in Kibbutz Hatzerim and in 1970 enlisted in the IAF. After qualifying as a fighter pilot, Yadlin joined the 102 "Flying Tiger" Squadron, with which he flew the A-4 Skyhawk during the Yom Kippur War. In the early 1980s Yadlin was among the first batch of Israeli pilots to fly the F-16 Fighting Falcon and was among the eight pilots selected to carry out Operation Opera against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981. A year later, Yadlin participated in Operation Peace for Galilee. In all he had accumulated about 5,000 flight hours and flew more than 250 combat missions. Yadlin commanded two fighter squadrons (116 and 106), two Israeli Air Force bases (Nevatim and Hatzerim) and between 1990 and 1993 headed the IAF's planning department. He then served as Deputy Commander of the IAF.
In February 2002 Yadlin was awarded the rank of Major General and appointed commander of the IDF's Military Colleges and National Defence College. Between 2004 and 2006 he served as Israel's military attaché to the United States. Upon his return to Israel, Yadlin was named head of Aman, the IDF's Military Intelligence Directorate.
After his retirement from the IDF in November 2010, Yadlin joined the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as the Kay Fellow on Israeli national security. In November 2011, he was appointed director of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.
Yadlin obtained a B.A. in Economics and Business Administration at Ben Gurion University in the Negev. He received a master's degree in Public Administration from the JFK School of Government, Harvard University.