DAWN's 2025 Annual Report

Of all the transformations that have taken place in American politics in recent years, none is as unexpected and stunning as the shift in mass popular opinion in support of Palestine. Growing disgust at Israeli atrocities in Gaza made possible by U.S. military support has steered the vast majority of Americans to opposing continued weapons for Israel. Congressional candidates funded by AIPAC and its affiliates endure endless condemnation and shaming; new candidates now run on a platform opposing aid to Israel and shunning contributions from pro-Israel groups. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties are riven by intense debate over the role of decades of pro-Israel policies that have so gravely harmed Palestinians and the entire Middle East. All of this would have been unthinkable even two years ago.

[Download DAWN's 2025 Annual Report here]

At DAWN, we are proud to have played an important role in helping shape the national discourse about Israeli crimes and shift popular opinion. Not only were we the first organization to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israeli occupation – on October 9, 2023, two days after the war began – but the first to conclude that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza in January 2024, ahead even of the International Court of Justice's initial findings in the genocide case. Not only did we bring a landmark lawsuit (still pending!) against the State Department for failing to enforce U.S. laws prohibiting weapons to abusive Israeli forces, we filed a historic complaint with the International Criminal Court in January of this year seeking the prosecution of former President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin for aiding and abetting Israeli crimes in Palestine. Following our precedent-setting work seeking the prosecution of 40 Israeli military officers for their crimes in Gaza, the Israeli government banned our staff. But that did nothing to deter us. Not only did we succeed in persuading the U.S. Treasury to sanction five abusive Israeli settlers, this year we beat back a retaliatory lawsuit one of them brought against us seeking discovery of our internal documents. Following our work exposing the harms caused by investments in Israel Bonds, New York City divested its holdings; we will broaden our work targeting Israel Bonds in 2026. And in December of this year, we launched an unprecedented expose identifying AIPAC's officers and directors, hidden from their website, and the network of other pro-Israel organizations they control.

I also take great pride in the publication of my first book, with my colleague Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man with University of California Press, "From Apartheid to Democracy: A Blueprint for Peace in Israel-Palestine." A product of four years of research and writing, and insights and analysis gleaned from decades of work on the topic, the book offers a radical new plan to end Israeli occupation and apartheid, prioritizing it over all other issues; it creates a rights-respecting government from where the people living between the River and the Sea can democratically decide what their future governance will look like. We are thrilled at the broad, positive reception our book has received, despite the intense challenge of imagination it requires of our readers, and look forward to continuing our book tour in the coming year.

At DAWN, we're always connecting the dots between the malign actors undermining our own democracy here at home and the brutal regimes, Israeli and Arab, they support in the region. Exposing the cruelty of oppressive Arab regimes against their own people, while fighting their efforts to influence our own government, remains a central pillar of our work. DAWN played a leading role exposing the risks of a proposed U.S. security agreement for Saudi Arabia, and ensured massive international media attention to the crimes of its government, including the murder of DAWN founder Jamal Khashoggi, during Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman's visit to Washington. We upended the Saudi Public Investment Fund's annual Miami event with a slew of negative coverage following our parallel press conference. We carried out regular investigations into abuses in Jordan, for years evading scrutiny as one of the top recipients of U.S. military support despite its tiny size. Our publication, Democracy in Exile, featured over 100 articles, including 20 first time authors from the Middle East, focused on governance, politics and human rights throughout the Middle East. Our staff published over a dozen op-eds in leading publications, and our communications team once again produced record-breaking media citations and social media followings. The contributions of our 24 Fellows, each a leader in their academic and political fields, producing books, articles, speeches, lectures, and collaborations with DAWN, brought great honor to us.

I hope we have demonstrated how much a tiny but mighty organization can achieve despite the primary challenge we face: great ambitions but not enough money! I want to express my heartfelt gratitude first and foremost to the fearless and tireless DAWN team, who have gone above and beyond to produce such a powerful body of work this year, and every year since 2020, when we first launched DAWN. I thank our supporters who have stood by us and supported us financially, making our work possible, and our board for entrusting me with leadership of this organization. Nearly six years later, I have made the difficult decision to step down as Executive Director simply because after 35 years of nonstop, full-time employment, I need a break! I am confident that my successor, who we will announce soon, will carry our organization forward stronger and more effectively than ever before, and I look forward to remaining part of the DAWN family and contributing to our gutsy and bold projects.

Sarah Leah Whitson,
Executive Director