Al-Manar (Arabic: المنار‎; The Beacon) is a Lebanese satellite television station affiliated with Hezbollah, registered as Lebanese Media Group Company, broadcasting from Beirut, Lebanon. It offers a "rich menu" of high production news, commentary, and entertainment. The self-proclaimed "Station of the Resistance" (qanat al-muqawama), in its psychological warfare against the Zionist enemy, i.e. the state of Israel, and an integral part of Hezbollah's plan to spread its message to the Arab world.

Al-Manar was designated as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity," and banned by the United States in December 2004. It has also been banned by France, Spain and Germany, and has run into some service and license problems outside Lebanon, making it unavailable in the Netherlands,Canada and Australia while it has not officially been banned in any of these regions.

According to the US department of treasury, Al Manar is the media arm of the Hezbollah. The station manager Muhammad Afif Ahmad, said that al-Manar belongs to Hezbollah culturally and politically.Hezbollah launched the network in 1991.^{[better source needed]} allegedly with the help of Iranian funds, by 2004, Al Manar was estimated to hold 10-15 million viewers daily worldwide. Critics^[who?] argue al-Manar's agenda is strongly influenced by Iran by virtue of the "significant portion" of Hizbollah's budget shortfall that is covered by Iran, via some of the "$100 and $200 million a year" Iran provides to Hezbollah itself. Al-Manar officials strongly deny this, saying they are subsidized by the Hezbollah party and donations from other Muslims, not by Iran.

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who are Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision, and praised Finkelstein "as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher."

Julian Paul Assange ( /əˈsɒnʒ/ ə-SONZH; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer, political/internet activist, publisher, and journalist. He is best known as the editor in chief and founder of WikiLeaks, a media website which publishes information from whistleblowers. The site acts as a conduit for worldwide news leaks, with a stated purpose of creating open governance.

WikiLeaks has published material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya, toxic waste dumping in Côte d'Ivoire, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, and banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer. In 2010, WikiLeaks published Iraq War documents and Afghan War documents about American involvement in the wars, some of which was classified material. On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five international print media partners (Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian and El País) began publishing U.S. diplomatic cables.

Assange was a hacker-activist in his youth, before becoming a computer programmer and then becoming internationally renowned for his work with WikiLeaks. He has lived in several countries and has made public appearances in many parts of the world to speak about freedom of the press, censorship, and investigative journalism. He has received numerous awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award, Readers' Choice for TIME magazine's 2010 Person of the Year, the 2011 Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal and the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.Snorre Valen, a Norwegian parliamentarian, nominated him for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Hasan Nasrallah (born August 31, 1960; Arabic: حسن نصرالله‎) became the third Secretary General of the Lebanese political and paramilitary organization Hezbollah after Israel assassinated the previous leader, Abbas al-Musawi, in 1992. Hezbollah is regarded as a legitimate resistance movement and political party throughout much of the Arab and Muslim worlds, but is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the Netherlands, Israel, and Canada. The group's military wing by itself is designated a proscribed terrorist group by the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia.

Hasan Nasrallah was born the ninth of ten children in Bourj Hammoud, Matn District (an eastern suburb of Beirut) on August 31, 1960 . His father, Abdul Karim, was born in Bazouriyeh, a village in Jabal Amel (South Republic of Lebanon) located near Tyre to Iranian grandparents. Although his family was not particularly religious, Hasan was interested in theological studies. He attended an-Najah school and later a public school in Sin el Fil (Christian area) Beirut.

Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is politically active in Madison, Wisconsin, and writes as a freelance journalist. Her work has been featured in scholarly publications such as The Journal of Palestine Studies, and she is a regular contributor to CounterPunch magazine. Loewenstein is a sharp critic of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as well as American support for Israel, which has drawn accusations of being a "self-hating Jew" and anti-Semite from some critics.

Loewenstein lived in Israel in 1963 as a child when her father played first trumpet in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. She went back in 1981 as a junior in college, and as an adult as well. Loewenstein has lived in Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut and traveled in the Palestinian Territories, where she worked for five months in 2002 at the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City. She has returned to Gaza several times since then. Jennifer Loewenstein is married to David Loewenstein, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin.