Author Archives: Arab America

We want to bring the Palestinian refugee story to Washington DC
The Nakba Museum Project of Memory and Hope aims to finally tell the Palestinian refugee story, one that has been silenced or ignored for too long. By creating a virtual and physical space to feature these stories, using arts, films and oral history. We launched our project in June 2014 and have received enormous encouragement and engagment. Now we need your support!

Our space is committed to being nonpolitical and nonpartisan. It’s simply tells the human story to build deeper understanding of the current impasse, and be a venue for critical conversations for change. 

Help us making our opening exhibit “RECLAIMING THE LOST FUTURE” a reality, 12 – 27 June 2015

Our opening exhibit will feature art work from Palestinian refugees and other Eye Witness testimonies, documentaries, stories, and writings from the region that would tell their story of loss and resilience. The exhibit will feature three segments:

Photography which will include historical photos before the period of 1948 and photos of refugees leaving their lands and villages and others from present day life. 
The second segment will be painting from artists who are still living in refugee camps to this day allowing them to tell their own personal stories and what it feels and looks like to live in a refugee camp. 
The third segment will be oral history, interviews with refugees and documentaries about the Nakba. 
The space that we will be located in, is the Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Road Northwest, downtown Washington DC and will build momentum for creating the full museum. The exhibit to be FREE and open to the public. 

Source: www.indiegogo.com

Media speculation has focused on whether or not the forthcoming Israeli elections will help or hinder the quest for peace and a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Personally, I don’t expect Tuesday’s ballot to have any profound effects on the status quo of the conflict. However, missing from this equation, as so often is the case, is what the elections mean for Israel’s Arab minority, which constitutes a full fifth of the country’s population.
At first sight, their situation appears to be the very definition of a no-win situation.

“I have yet to make a decision regarding which would be the best of two evils – a Zionist Camp government or a Netanyahu government,” says Mimas Abdelhai, a young university student from al-Tirah, which lies in what is known as the “Arab triangle”. “The more racist the Israeli government gets, the more the international arena understands Palestinian suffering.”

Israeli-Palestinian coalition of political parties seek big win in elections
This reflects the widely held conviction among Palestinian-Israelis that, when it comes to Israel’s Arab citizens, the main difference between the Israeli centre(-left) and the right is one of honesty. This broad-based anti-Arabism manifested itself in the recent witch hunt against Balad Knesset member Hanin Zoabi.

Source: www.aljazeera.com

During the entire month of March, Americans celebrated the remarkable achievements of American women, and the important role the US feminist movement has played in shaping gender discourse in the US. No one can deny the relevance of the US feminist movement in advancing American women’s rights. Likewise, none can dispute that since the 1800′s Arab American women have continued to push the glass ceiling, yet few are aware of their significant contributions in the US. While the dominant Eurocentric influence on gender discourse in the US, heavily contributes to this glaring omission, however it is not the sole factor.

Source: americanpalestinian.wordpress.com

Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) trip to Israel this week is so blatantly political that even the avowedly impartial Associated Press describes it as looking “like a jab at the White House.”

Source: thehill.com

On this day in 1976, thousands of Palestinians marched in towns and villages across the Galilee region, in the north of present-day Israel, to protest Israel’s expropriation of vast tracts of land as part of its openly declared policy to “Judaize” the area at the expense of the indigenous population.

No Zionism without “evacuation” and “confiscation”

“Following the Zionist tenets, Israel has systematically and callously followed an intricate and continuous process of Arab land expropriation through the promulgation of new laws, the circumvention of existing laws, harassment and duplicity. Recognizing the naked truth, Y. Ben-Porat, a known ‘hawk’ wrote ‘One truth is that there is no Zionism, no settlement, no Jewish state without evacuation of the Arabs and confiscation and enclosure of their land,’” anthropologist Khalil Nakhleh wrote in The Journal of Palestine Studies in 1976.

Source: electronicintifada.net

More than 2,000 Palestinians in southern Nablus took part in a march to mark the 39th anniversary of Land Day on Monday, commemorating Palestinian protests against Israeli land seizures that were violently suppressed on Mar. 30, 1976.

More than 15 Palestinians suffered tear-gas inhalation when Israeli forces attempted to suppress the march, which took place in the village of Huwwara.

The injured included Fatah member of the Palestinian Legislative Council Walid Assaf.

Many were treated on the spot while others were taken to hospitals for treatment.

Hundreds of soldiers were reportedly deployed, witnesses said.

Protesters waved Palestinian flags and repeated slogans calling for Palestinian unity and demanding an end to the Israeli occupation.

Source: www.maannews.com

When the Palestinian Authority joins the International Criminal Court on April 1, it will hold off on steps to against Israel regarding settlement construction, Israeli media reported Sunday.

The Jerusalem Post newspaper reported that the decision follows Israel’s release of seized tax revenues.

According to the report, the ICC prosecutor has opened a preliminary examination on alleged Israeli war crimes during its devastating summer 2014 assault on Gaza.

Israel’s prime minister’s office announced Friday that Israel would release the funds it collects on the PA’s behalf and withheld as punishment for its move to join the ICC.

“Tax revenues that have been accumulated through February will be transferred, after payments for services to the Palestinian population have been deducted, including electricity, water and hospital bills,” a statement said.

Source: www.maannews.com

he Islamist governments of Turkey and Saudi Arabia see a growing Muslim community in Cuba and are acting quickly to ideologically lead it. The Saudis and Turks have separately asked for permission to build a mosque there. President Erdogan wants it to reflect the Ottoman Empire, the last Islamic caliphate that was abolished in 1924.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey are competing over who will build the mosque in Havana for the estimated 4,000 Muslims in Cuba. The Saudis originally expressed interest, but now the elected Islamist government of Turkey is bidding for it. Turkish President Erdogan says his country hopes to build elsewhere in Cuba if its application is rejected.

Saudi Arabia remains an extremist state and continues to promote Wahhabism, a very radical interpretation of Islam. The Saudis spend an estimated $3 billion a year promoting Wahhabism. It is a national security threat to have the Saudis shaping the Cuban-Muslim community only 90 miles away from Florida.

Turkey is no better. President Erdogan’s government is rolling back democratic freedoms, hosts a Hamas terrorist network and is a stalwart supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. There is a scandal in Turkey over his intelligence service’s cover-up of its arming of Al-Qaeda in Syria.

The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs says the envisioned mosque in Havana will be modeled after an Ottoman mosque in Istanbul. Its insistence that it builds the mosque without any other country’s involvement shows that this project isn’t about serving Cuban Muslims. It’s about indoctrinating the growing Cuban-Muslim community into following Turkish Islamism.

Source: jewishvoiceny.com

Three soldiers come up to the minibus holding rifles out before them, and a boy of 10 sitting next to you who you’ve never met before jams himself into your side and clutches your arm, saying “I sc…

Source: mondoweiss.net

Islamic State | Christians in Iraq | 22 Mar 2015 The Islamic State, ISIS, is trying to wipe out all minorities in Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, …

Source: www.youtube.com

The provincial capital Idlib, a city of 165,000 in the old days and administrative center of the northwestern Idlib province, appears to have fallen completely to a Muslim fundamentalist coalition spearheaded by Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of Syria) and the al-Qaeda affiliate, the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra). Most of the Idlib countryside has long been in rebel hands, and some of it was held by pro-Western, relatively secular-minded forces until last fall, when they were preyed upon and defeated by the Support Front, which is loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri’s core al-Qaeda (responsible for the 9/11 attacks).

Source: www.juancole.com

A group of Syrian refugee teenagers will learn to tell their stories through photography during National Geographic Photo Camp Jordan, March 30-April 3, highlighting issues faced by young people in the region. During the five-day Photo Camp workshop in Jerash, Jordan, 20 participants ages 13-16 will be mentored by National Geographic contributing photographers Amy Toensing and Matt Moyer, National Geographic magazine editor Jessie Wenders, Photo Camp technical director Jon Brack, and National Geographic Emerging Explorer and cultural educator Aziz Abu Sarah.

The workshop, conducted in partnership with Abu Sarah, will train the students to document — through photography and writing — the reality of their lives as refugees from the conflict in Syria, which began four years ago this month. Since then, Syrian refugees have flooded into parts of Jordan, including Jerash, where there are now more than 60,000 Syrian refugees. According to the United Nations, nearly 4 million people have become refugees in the neighboring countries of Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Abu Sarah and his Syrian colleague Nousha Kabawat founded Project Amal ou Salam, which has been supporting education programs in Jerash. Amal ou Salam will be providing support for Photo Camp Jordan.

“We hope Photo Camp Jordan will provide these young photographers with a creative outlet to share their unique perspectives,” said Terry Garcia, National Geographic’s chief science and exploration officer. “National Geographic believes in the power of science, exploration and storytelling to change the world. We’ve found that Photo Camp inspires a new generation of storytellers as well as the members of the community who view their work.”

Source: press.nationalgeographic.com