Mark is trained in clinical psychology and crisis management and has worked with groups and individuals undergoing traumatic stress. He serves on the Advisory Board of Friends of Sabeel North America and has been appointed Consultant for Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding. Mark currently serves as Executive Director of Kairos USA, a movement to unite U.S. Christians to take a prophetic stand for a just peace. He is the author of Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land (Beaufort Books, 2011) and A Wall in Jerusalem: Hope, Healing and the Struggle for Justice in Israel and Palestine (Jericho Books, 2012).
Traveling to Israel/Palestine in 2006 with Interfaith Peace-Builders, Mark was transformed by witnessing the occupation of Palestine and by encounters with peace activists and civil society leaders from the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities. He met Daoud at Tent of Nations that summer and was convinced of the importance of the Nassar family’s work and the importance of establishing a link with communities in the United States. Upon his return to the United States, Mark began the work of co-founding Friends of Tent of Nations North America.
Mark is a Jewish American with deep family roots in Israel/Palestine. His grandfather, a fifth-generation Palestinian Jew, was born in Jerusalem, emigrating to the U.S. as a young man. Growing up in the United States, Mark was reared in the Jewish tradition, studying the Bible, Hebrew literature and Jewish history. He now devotes himself full time to the work for a just peace in the Holy Land. Besides his work with FOTONNA, Mark writes and speaks widely on his own journey and the role of religious beliefs in the current struggle for a just peace.