Ashraf Ramelah
Ashraf Ramelah – The Founder and President of “Voice of the Copts”
- Dr. Ashraf Ramelah
Biography
Ashraf Ramelah is the founder and President of Voice of the Copts, a human rights organization with offices in Italy and the United States. He is dedicated to the Coptic cause and believes that this life’s mission is to speak up for the oppressed Copts who cannot speak up for themselves, hence the name, Voice of the Copts.
When he is not meeting with political figures and policy makers, Dr. Ramelah spends his time travelling throughout the country giving talks about the Coptic issue and explaining to the West the oppression against the Copts in Egypt. Dr. Ramelah was invited to address the European Parliament (2010) and to be the keynote speaker in the Italian Parliament (2011) on the issue of Coptic persecution in Egypt. He has done various interviews with Italian newspapers and appears frequently in the Italian and Arab Media. Dr. Ramelah is a featured author at American Thinker.com, Family Security Matters.com, and Canada Free Press.com.
Dr. Ramelah is well known to the Egyptian government due to his advocacy for the Egyptian Copts as well as for Voice of the Copts’ lawsuit against them on behalf of Muslim convert to Christianity Mr. Hegazy and his family in 2009-2010. Ashraf Ramelah also appears as an entry in the Coptic History Encyclopedia (http://www.coptichistory.org/new_page_5260.htm).
Dr. Ramelah, himself a Copt, was born in Cairo, Egypt. At the age of 17, he travelled to Italy to study architecture. He graduated with a doctorate in architecture from La Sapienza – Universita’ Degli Studi di Roma,Italy. His special study is restoration of old monuments and history of architecture.
His career as an architect took him to work and live in Italy, Saudi Arabia, Gabon and the USA. His personal interests are Egyptology and Coptic history in the period after the Arab invasion of Egypt in 651 AD.
Voice of the Copts is dedicated to bringing fair, correct and balanced information to the entire world regarding Copts and Christians in countries with an Arab-Muslim majority.
Dr. Ramelah is managing editor of a website in both English and Italian with the same name.
Sarah Stern – Board Member
- Sarah Stern
Sarah Stern has had a rather lengthy history of advocacy for the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Right after the Oslo Accords had been signed, she had been contacted by three former Israeli diplomats who had worked in the embassy in Washington under the reign of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
They told her that they harbored grave suspicions that Chairman Arafat was not going to live up to one iota of the Accords he had just signed. They asked her if she would be their conduit to Capitol Hill, and help them to get the truth out about what it was that Chairman Arafat was actually saying to his people, in Arabic and how it differed from what he was saying to Western diplomats and journalists. Sarah immediately agreed, and was thrust full throttle into the fulcrum of the Middle East debate.
After a few years of doing this, pro-bono, Sarah was hired by the Zionist Organization of America to be their National Policy Coordinator, (from 1998 through 2004). After that, she became the Director of the Office of Legislative and Governmental Affairs of the American Jewish Congress, (from 2004 through April of 2006). Sarah had played a major role in the drafting and passage of many pieces of legislation, including the Syria Accountability Act, the Koby Mandell Act, and the resolution in support of Israel’s right to build a security fence, and the inappropriateness of the referral to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
She has worked on many other issues which include; the stationing of US troops on the Golan Heights, the sale of the Harpoon block missiles to Egypt, the hiring of Hamas agents to teach at the UNRWA camps, the issue of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in our nation’s college campuses, the treatment of religious minorities by the Moslem world,
reform of the United Nations, and energy independence for the free world.
She has testified before the Senate Working Group on Religious Minorities and Human Rights about the treatment of Christians and other religious minorities by the Palestinian Authority, and has testified before the United States Commission on Civil Rights on anti-Semitism on our nation’s college campuses.
Sarah was one of a panel of three expert witnesses on the issue of anti-Semitism on our nation’s college campuses. As a result of their testimony, the US Commission on Civil Rights has determined that :anti-Semitism on our nation’s campuses is a grave problem and that Jews are to be considered a protected minority.” They are now at work issuing concrete steps to help remedy the problem.
Sarah has subsequently been appointed as a Commissioner for the US Commission on Civil Rights representing the state of Maryland.
Sarah’s effort in the drafting , lobbying for, and passage of the Koby Mandell Act has resulted in the opening of an Office for the American Victims of Terrorism abroad, in the Department of Justice. The purpose of this office is to ensure that all Americans, irrespective of where they have been injured or harmed by acts of terrorism, (even areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority), will receive an equal chance for the rigorous pursuit of justice under the law. And that the rigorous pursuit of justice will not be subordinated by diplomatic or political
concerns.
Sarah has written many articles, and has been published in The Jerusalem Post, the Washington Jewish Week, and the Middle East Quarterly. She is the author of one novel, “Cherished Illusions”, (2005, Balfour Books), and has written a chapter in Frank Gaffney’s widely acclaimed book, “War Footing” (Naval Press. 2006).