Author Archives: Arab America

Ragheb Alama is touring internationally to promote his last album Habib Dehkaty: a great mix of oriental sounds and lebanese rhythms. His fans will be surprised by the song Ya Hayati: the famous Lebanese singer has collaborated with a rapper. And that works pretty well. He may want to attract younger fans.

And Ragheb Alama has worked together with very coveted lyricist Ahmad Madi. Arabic stars can’t get enough of him at the moment! This hit maker has written songs for Elissa, Wael Kfoury and Joseph Attieh.

The music video for Ragheb Alama’s new single Habib Dehkaty which takes place in Paris, France, has recently been posted on Youtube and meets a great success. Let’s watch it out!

Source: www.arabzik-radio.com

Mutkal Halabi serenaded us with an oud as we ate a scrumptious oven-baked lamb dish made with almonds, walnuts, and rice. A side dish of hummus beans and potatoes complemented the main course. We were in Halabi’s restaurant—the only diners in fact—and we were enjoying every minute of our culinary adventure in the Israeli Druze town of Daliat al-Carmel.

The meal had started with a spread of sour labane cheese, zaatar salad, homegrown olives from the year’s “good crop”, creamy tehina, hummus with pine nuts, stuffed vine leaves, and Druze pita, which is flatter and thinner than pita bread available elsewhere in the country. The name of Halabi’s restaurant—Misadat HaKeves—was quite fitting; it translates as The Sheep Restaurant.

Source: ellisshuman.blogspot.co.il

Fifty-one-year-old Haj will become the eighth artistic director of Minneapolis’s Guthrie theatre, one of the largest and most influential non-coastal US theatres. Haj will start the job July 1, when Joe Dowling steps down from a 20-year roll managing the theatre.

A Guthrie news release calls Haj “one of the few Arab-American artistic directors in the country” and marks that he turned his previous theatre company, the Playmakers, into “a place of diversity and inclusion.” The release adds that Haj “has directed projects in a maximum-security prison in Los Angeles, in the West Bank and Gaza, and in rural South Carolina.”

Haj further told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he believes a theatre needs to be responsive to world events. He also told the paper that “Large institutions are like ocean liners. We have trouble being responsive.”

Haj was first an actor, and while he has not primarily been known for Arab-American theatre, he has not shied from it. He played in Raja Shehadeh’s When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, a first-person account of Shehadeh’s experience during the 2002 siege of Ramallah. Haj has also embraced other contemporary theatre, such as the show Rodney King.

In a 2007 interview with the North Carolina-based Indy Week, Haj said that few good plays were exploring “the Palestinian/ Israeli divide” but told the paper that the 2005 drama My Name Is Rachel Corrie “may be the exception that proves the rule.”

More recently, in January 2015, Haj staged Aaron Davidman’s acclaimed Wrestling Jerusalem, saying that, “Now, especially given recent events in Gaza, it is important to once again look at this area of the world, this time through the lens of a Jewish artist/activist.”

The Guthrie has indeed been an ocean liner, sometimes stuck in its well-worn and popular routes. It will be interesting to see if Haj can steer her in a new direction.

Source: arablit.org

Probably writing this recipe takes more time than preparing it. It is super easy to make (for a main dish) and it tastes fancy and delicious. There are many versions of Okra Stew recipes but the one I’m posting today is the easiest out there. It is all about combining different ingredients together and baking them in the oven. Every single ingredient has its distinctive taste and its own place in the recipe. Tomato, garlic, coriander, pomegranate molasses, cumin and other spices, all cooked together to bring out the best of okra flavor.

Okra stewed in tomato sauce is widely known in many Eastern cuisines; including Egyptian, Greek, Iranian, Indian, in addition to the Levantine. The secret of making good okra stew is by picking the tender and small okra pods which can be found, fresh or frozen, in different middle-eastern shops.

Ingredients
1 kg small okra pods (fresh or frozen)
350 gram beef, cut in small chunks (optional)
10 garlic cloves, chopped
5 tomatoes, finely chopped
4 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon fresh coriander, chopped
1 teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon allspice
3 tablespoon olive oil
Directions:

Wash okra pods thoroughly and drain them of water. Cut off okra stems in conical way using a sharp knife as in the pictures. (This cutting style is preferable but not necessary; it will keep and maintain the shape of  okra pods after cooking).

In an ovenproof big pan, add all ingredients. Combine them very well using your hands or a spoon. Add 3 cups of water and stir to let tomato paste and spices dissolve in water.  And then cover the pan with foil.  Place the pan in 180 c preheated oven for about an hour or until water is mostly absorbed.

.
Serve hot with your choice of pita bread or white rice on the side. (In case of having rice, it’s better to leave the okra with more stew).

Source: www.kitchenofpalestine.com

Responding to the call of Palestinian civil society to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel, we are a U.S. campaign focused specifically on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, as delineated by PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). If you wish to endorse this call for an academic and cultural boycott, please email us at: usacbi@usacbi.org or complete the form below.

PACBI writes:

“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions;

Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression, We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace

Source: www.usacbi.org

USACBI extends its warmest congratulations to the students and staff at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) for endorsing an academic boycott of Israel through the passage of a referendum that also was supported by PACBI and Palestinian student and academic unions. That 73% of the

Source: www.usacbi.org

Over the weekend the Prime Minister’s Office released a video showing Benjamin Netanyahu in his study preparing Tuesday’s speech to Congress. A source at the residence says that not much Hebrew has been heard around the prime minister in recent days. Many of the people around him speak American English in a heavy Republican accent.

One of the key people helping craft the speech is Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, who has been in Jerusalem the past few days. Dermer is a persona non grata in Washington these days, the man who concocted the speech idea with House Speaker John Boehner, behind the White House’s back.

But not only Dermer is in Jerusalem. Netanyahu has apparently recruited American consultants to help write the speech, to help him compose a text with maximum appeal.

Source: www.haaretz.com

George Yancy: Can you discuss your own view of your “racial” identity and how that identity is linked to your critical explorations into the philosophical and political significance of race?

Falguni A. Sheth: Until 2001, I thought of my identity in terms of ethnicity rather than race. I was an immigrant, and in the American imaginary, immigrants were rarely discussed in terms of race. After September 11, 2001, I tried to reconcile what I saw as the profound racist treatment of people (often Arabs and South Asians) who were perceived as Muslim, with a politically neutral understanding of “racial identity,” but it didn’t work. That’s when I began to explore race as a critical category of political philosophy, and as a product of political institutions. The biggest surprise was my coming to understand that “liberalism” and systematic racism were not antithetical, but inherently compatible, and that systemic racism was even necessary to liberalism. Soon after, I read Charles Mills’s “The Racial Contract,” which supported that view.

Source: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

Two Jewish Defence League UK thugs were today found guilty of assault after they attacked a panel at a Palestine literary festival in September.

Roberta Moore was convicted of two counts of assault and one count of possession of an offensive weapon. Her accomplice Robert De Jonge was convicted of assault.

Both initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, but De Jonge on Thursday changed his plea to guilty for reason of recklessness.

De Jonge argued he had only meant to cause a “distraction” when he rushed the stage and assaulted Andy Simons, the chairperson of the panel and an organizer with Haringey Justice for Palestinians.

But district judge Julia Newton ruled today that De Jonge had acted with full intent to cause injury.

The other man assaulted by Moore was Simon Assaf, who had been invited to the festival to run a stall for Bookmarks, the socialist bookshop. Moore sprayed the two men in the face with “Farb gel” spray paint, which the judge ruled was used in a way consistent with an offensive weapon.

The two were released on bail until sentencing on condition they did not attend any event involving Haringey Justice for Palestinians. Sentencing will take place 23 March. The hearing this week took place over two days.

Source: electronicintifada.net

It says something about the state of affairs in the Middle East that from a U.S. foreign-policy perspective it hardly matters that the U.S.-Israel relationship is in the worst shape we’ve ever seen it. It is largely a domestic political issue in the two countries involved. Sadly, however, it is once again distracting the leaders of both countries — and citizens in each — from addressing the much bigger concerns that ought to be commanding their attention.

While it is easy to pin blame on both sides in the current spat, special honors for ratcheting it up go to Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Since there is literally nothing Bibi can say to the U.S. Congress that will come as a surprise — no new insight he can offer into an Iran nuclear deal that is not yet done — all he can do on his visit to Washington, D.C., next week is posture and vent. Since there is little chance his well-cultivated impression of a volcano spewing righteous indignation will change for the better the opinion of one single U.S. leader or voter (unless, as polls indicate he actually further undermines his position and lowers public opinion of him), the only possible reason he can be doing this is to win votes back home in Israel.

So, with the assistance of House Speaker John Boehner, Netanyahu has appropriated the rostrum of the U.S. congress to serve as a soapbox from which he will make a campaign speech directed to the people of a small country roughly 6,000 miles away. Presumably he feels this will show his influence as a statesman and his tirelessness in their defense. The fact that in making the speech he will actually dramatically diminish his influence in the United States and ensure bad relations with the government in Washington for the next two years suggests a flaw in his reasoning and creates a challenge for the Israeli people. If they really value the relationship with the United States or want a prime minister who can effectively work with their country’s principle ally and sponsor, they’ll take one look at Bibi’s ill-considered star turn and vote for someone else.

Source: foreignpolicy.com

I was inspired by a group of mostly young black organizers from Ferguson, Mo. and elsewhere who recently traveled to Palestine. Seeing organizers continue in the tradition of bridging the intertwined yet nuanced differences of western-based dominance on black and brown peoples across the globe, brought me back to my own journey to Palestine a decade ago and the wonderful and thoughtful friends and allies that educated me of those connections.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Banksy, the anonymous English graffiti artist may be the most mysterious and celebrated urban artist in the world today. Born out of the Bristol underground scene, Banksy has crossed the world leav…

Source: www.buzzfeed.com