Brooke Goldstein
Executive director & FOUNDER
Brooke Goldstein is a New York City-based human rights attorney, author, and award-winning filmmaker. She serves as Executive Director of The Lawfare Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about and facilitating a response to the abuse of Western legal systems and human rights law. Brooke is also the founder and director of the Children’s Rights Institute (CRI), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to track, spotlight, and legally combat violations of children’s basic human rights around the world. CRI has a special focus on the state-sponsored indoctrination and recruitment of children to become suicide-homicide bombers, child soldiers, and human shields.
Brooke’s first book, co-authored with Aaron Eitan Meyer and titled Lawfare: The War Against Free Speech: A First Amendment Guide For Reporting in an Age of Islamist Lawfare, gives practical guidance to journalists who wish to speak truthfully about the national security threats faced by liberal democracies.
Brooke’s second book, End Jew Hatred: A Manual for Mobilization, will be released in September 2023. End Jew Hatred shows how the Jewish people can affect real and lasting change by championing the Jewish cause as a minority rights issue, and by harnessing the power of grassroots mobilization, direct action, and legal activism.
Brooke’s award-winning documentary film, The Making of a Martyr, uncovers the illegal, state-sponsored indoctrination and recruitment of Palestinian children for suicide-homicide attacks. Filming Martyr, Brooke secured firsthand interviews with active and armed members of the Al-Aqsa, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas terrorist groups as well as with families of suicide bombers, children imprisoned for attempting to blow themselves up, teachers at terrorist-run schools, and others involved in the phenomenon of child suicide bombing. Martyr is currently broadcast on television stations throughout the globe and is ranked as IMDb’s seventh most popular title on the West Bank.
Brooke is a regular commentator on FOX News and has been featured in several media, including CNN, The New York Sun, Swindle Magazine, Defense Technology International, and on WABC News Talk Radio, and has been published in a variety of sources, including the New York Daily News, Commentary Magazine, The American Spectator, The Counter Terrorist Magazine, Special Ops Magazine, and others. She also hosts the television series Outspoken on Jewish Broadcasting Service (JBS) and is a contributor at Newsmax.
Brooke is a seasoned public speaker and has lectured and taught seminars at numerous schools, including the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York University, Berkeley University, Stanford University, and others. Brooke has also been invited to brief government officials at the U.S. State Department, the White House, the Pentagon, the U.K. Parliament, and U.S. Central Command on issues of asymmetric warfare and human rights.
Brooke is the 2007 recipient of the E. Nathaniel Gates Award for Outstanding Public Advocacy and the 2009 Inspire! Award bestowed by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, was listed in 2009 as one of “36 Under 36 Young Innovators” by the Jewish Week, formerly served as an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, and is currently a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations, an associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, a member of the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East’s (SPME) Council of Scholars, an advisory board member of Belev Echad Charity, and a board member of The Mideast Reporter. She is also a recipient of The Blue Card’s 2016 The Irene Hizme Tikkun Olam Award, the UJA’s 2017 Defender of Israel award, and Belev Echad Charity’s 2015 Pillar of Courage award. In 2019, she was inducted into the Manhattan Jewish Historical Initiative’s (MJHI) Manhattan Jewish Hall of Fame. In 2020, she was named among the JNS top 40 global advocates for Israel online. In 2022, Brooke was presented with the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation’s (CAEF) Advocate Award of Excellence in recognition of The Lawfare Project’s work. In 2023, she was honored to receive the WIZO Charlotte and Sami Rohr Defender of Israel Award, established to pay tribute to those who have acted as guardians and protectors of the State of Israel and its people.
From 2007-2009, Brooke served as director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum, an organization that arranges financial support for and pro-bono legal representation of persons wrongfully sued for exercising their right to free speech on issues of national security and public concern.
Additionally, Brooke is the co-founder of A2B Film Productions, Inc., a Canada-based independent documentary film production company focused on creating films that explore issues ignored by the mainstream media.
Canadian born, Brooke earned her B.A. from McGill University and received her J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. She also attended Columbia University and University of Toronto’s exchange programs.
In her role as Executive Director of The Lawfare Project, Goldstein incubated, provided the seed funding for, and founded the progressive Jewish organization Zioness. She coined the phrase, “Zionism is a progressive value.”
Benjamin Ryberg
Chief Operating Officer & Director of Research
Benjamin Ryberg is an attorney and serves as Chief Operating Officer and Director of Research at The Lawfare Project, where he has dedicated his legal career to championing the civil rights of the Jewish community for more than a decade. His primary areas of focus are civil rights law, First Amendment law, and antiterrorism law.
Ben earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan with a double major in Economics and Organizational Studies (OS), a small and highly selective program. As an undergraduate, he was an active member of the Sigma Alpha Mu (Sammy) fraternity, the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP), and the Greek Activity Review Panel (GARP). Ben went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. While there, he served as a staffer and then as Senior Articles Editor of the Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law, which published his scholarly Note analyzing China’s newly enacted Anti-Monopoly Law. Additionally, he co-founded and served as co-president of the Cardozo chapter of the Children’s Rights Institute (CRI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness of and combating egregious violations of the human rights of children throughout the world. He also spent two summers during law school at a boutique criminal defense firm in New York City. He was admitted to the New York State Bar in 2011.
In 2013, Ben was profiled in The Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” list of young visionaries. A seasoned public speaker, he has been featured on radio and television programming and has spoken before countless audiences, including at AIPAC's Policy Conference, Alpha Epsilon Pi's International Convention, and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs' Global Coalition for Israel conference.
Ziporah Reich
Director of Litigation
Ziporah Reich serves as the Director of Litigation. She came to The Lawfare Project with an extensive background in complex commercial litigation. Her experience includes shareholder derivative lawsuits, contract-based disputes, employment law, including sexual harassment and racial discrimination, and claims arising from cross-border transactions. Ziporah has mediated multi-party agreements and has appeared before various government agencies for administrative hearings. She represented the New York City Transit Authority and major corporations including Macy’s, Inc., Whole Foods Market, Domino’s Pizza, LLC, and GEICO. She has now turned her attention to her true passion—civil rights litigation.
Ziporah graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree from the Thomas Hunter Honors Program at Hunter College and received her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. While there, she served as a law journal editor and worked at the Georgetown Law Juvenile Justice Clinic representing juvenile defendants in criminal proceedings. Throughout her career, Ziporah has volunteered many hours to securing orders of protection and temporary custody and support orders for battered women. She has also devoted her time to negotiating agreements in Housing Court on behalf of low-income tenants facing eviction.
Ziporah is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Golden Key International Honour Society. She is admitted to practice in all courts of the State of New York, as well as in the federal courts in the Southern and Eastern Districts.
Gerard Filitti
Senior Counsel
Gerard Filitti is Senior Counsel at The Lawfare Project. He joined The Lawfare Project after working as a litigator in private practice for over 15 years, including at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP and Osen LLC. He has broad experience in commercial and complex litigation across a wide variety of practice areas, in both state and federal courts. Representative clients include Johnson & Johnson, DePuy Orthopaedics, Janssen Pharmaceutia, Honeywell, Alcon, Travelers, Allstate, MetLife, and ADP. More recently, he pursued civil counter-terrorism litigation with an emphasis on money laundering investigations, and represented victims of international acts of terrorism in litigation brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act (“ATA”), the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (“JASTA”), and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”).
Gerard earned his undergraduate degree from New York University. He went on to complete a Master’s Degree (with Merit) at the University of London, writing his dissertation on Exchange Rate Misalignment and Reform in Post-Revolutionary Iran. He was subsequently elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (U.K.), and was a scholar of the Middle East and Central Asia before focusing his attention on the practice of law, graduating from the University of Michigan Law School. Gerard is a member of the New York and New Jersey Bars and is admitted to practice before the United States District Court for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Gerard’s first book, Frozen Tide, was featured in Panama City News Herald’s “The Beach’s Best Bookish Bets” as a “timely thriller” that “follows the investigation of a terrorist attack on American soil – with plot twists that could be ripped from the headlines.”