Rula Jebreal

Rula Jebreal is an Italo-Palestinian journalist, novelist and screenwriter with both Israeli and Italian citizenship. Her mother died when she was five, and her father put her and her sister in the Dar El-Tifel orphanage, where she was educated. She won a scholarship from the Italian government to study medicine at the University of Bologna and graduated with a degree in physiotherapy. While working as a physiotherapist, Jebreal went back to school at the University of Bologna, earning her masters in Journalism and Political Science. She became the first foreign anchorwoman in the history of Italian television, winning a Media Watch award for her coverage of the Iraq war, and by age 33 earned the highest European journalism award, the International Ischia Award, for Best Journalist of the Year. Jebreal worked as a journalist in Italy for 12 years, earning a reputation for being one of the toughest interviewers because of her interviews with such prominent figures as Prime Minister Mas