Author Archives: Arab America

Mother’s Day is a modern celebration honoring one’s own mother, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world, most commonly in the months of March or May. It complements similar celebrations honoring family members, such as Father’s Day … Continued

In Tel-Aviv, as in Baltimore, it is clear that Israeli and American police share the same philosophies and practices. All citizens, especially if they are Black, are “Palestinians” to be dealt with in the same way, as suspected terrorists.

Immediately after 9/11, and taking advantage of having one of its own in a high ranking position in Homeland Security, JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, made it a point to create a close (if perhaps too close) relationship between it and the national security agencies of Israel and America. This included Defense, CIA, Homeland Security and the police.

The view was that Israel having a close relationship with the military-industrial complex could contribute to the national security of the US with the aims to “engage the American defense community about the role Israel can and does play in securing Western democracies’ interests in the Middle East”.

There is no reason to go into detail about “who’s whom” in JINSA. Many served as top officials of the US, while serving at JINSA. All of them, without exception, played a key role in America’s wars against Afghanistan and the destruction of Iraq, promoting “not just invasion, but total war on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Palestinian Authorities” (ref.: The Nation, September 2, 2002).

So it should not come as a surprise for all of us, especially the Blacks and the Black leadership, that JINSA through its Law Enforcement Exchange Program enabled tens of thousands of police men and major city police chiefs to train in Israel. The “Week long program designed to strengthen American law enforcement counter terrorism, practices by facilitating dialogue with and studying techniques used by their Israeli counterparts to keep citizens safe”.

In November 2008, the International Association of Chief of Police honored the Israeli National Police at is annual conference in San Diego. Recognizing the role JINSA’s program in shaping American police rules of engagement.

Last week in Tel-Aviv, Israeli police used “stun grenade” clubs and tear gas, at the rally organized by Jewish Ethiopian-Israelis, who were demonstrating against not only police brutality but also deep-rooted racism by White Israeli Jews. The protests came three days after police officers in Holon, a Tel-Aviv suburb, severely beat an Ethiopian-Israeli who was in IDF army uniform, and whose beating, from the video shown on public television, was without provocation… breathing-while-Black is sufficient.

Source: www.veteranstoday.com

Rajab al-Toum, a 126-year-old Palestinian man, says the history books fail to accurately describe the days that followed the Palestinian Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), which coincided with the establishment of Israel on May 15, 1948.

Al-Toum still vividly recalls events, including the atrocities committed by Jewish terrorist gangs against the local Palestinian population – memories that still bring tears to his eyes.

“The massacres that took place at the time remain etched on my memory,” al-Toum told Anadolu Agency.

Already 59 years old when the Nakba occurred, al-Toum had been working on a farm in Beersheba (in what is now southern Israel) when violent Zionist gangs forced hundreds of thousands Palestinians to flee their homes and villages.

He remembers seeing Jewish soldiers dragging a young pregnant Palestinian woman away before killing her in front of her husband and children.

“I trembled in fear when I saw this,” al-Toum said. “I was afraid they would kill me too.”

After the soldiers slaughtered the pregnant woman, they withdrew, giving al-Toum – along with other Palestinians who were hiding in fear – some respite.

Later, however, al-Toum would discover – to his horror – that the pregnant woman was not the only Palestinian to be slaughtered by Jewish paramilitary groups.

Numerous other men, women and children, he later found out, were killed – often in front of their families – by armed Zionist groups like the Haganah and the notorious Stern Gang.

Many were slaughtered, al-Toum recalled, while others were simply shot and killed.

At the time, he said, most Palestinians failed to grasp the enormity of the catastrophe that was unfolding before them.

They began to understand the scope of the crisis when heavily-armed Jewish gangs stormed their villages on the backs of tanks.

News of the carnage spread like wildfire, said al-Toum, prompting Palestinian men, women and children to flee for their lives – most of them leaving all their property behind.

“Jewish gangs shelled Palestinian villages indiscriminately with the aim of terrorizing residents into fleeing,” the old man said.

Hundreds of Palestinians, he added, were buried under the rubble of their destroyed homes.

“The history books fail to adequately describe the horror of the massacres that took place,” al-Toum, who lives in the city of Beit Lahia in the Gaza Strip, said.

“They don’t do justice to the painful experiences of the Palestinian families who lost their homes,” he asserted.

He said he would never forget the scenes of Palestinian families fleeing their ancestral homes in terror.

“It was the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” al-Toum said.

He went on to decry the role played by Great Britain – responsible for Palestine at the time under a League of Nations “mandate” – in allowing Jewish gangs to attack and destroy Palestinian villages.

Al-Toum also denounced Britain’s infamous 1917 “Balfour Declaration,” which had called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Jewish immigration to Palestine rose considerably during the British mandate period, which lasted from 1922 to May 14, 1948.

Ultimately, some 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes – or were forcibly expelled by invading Jewish forces – while hundreds of Palestinian villages and cities were razed to the ground by the conquerors.

The Palestinian diaspora has since become one of the largest in the world.

Until this day, Palestinian refugees remain scattered across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and other countries, while many have settled in refugee camps in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Britain armed and protected the Jewish gangs,” al-Toum asserted, adding that many Palestinians who fled their homes had believed – mistakenly, as it turned out – that they would soon return.

Many of these Palestinians kept the keys of their homes; some snuck back to their fields at night to tend to their crops.

“Only gradually did they realize they would never return to their ancestral homes and farms,” the super-centenarian lamented.

Source: www.aa.com.tr

Actor George Clooney, 54, has been married to activist and attorney Amal Alamuddin for eight months, and the arrangement is going “terrifically.” The activist, director and producer was a notorious bachelor until he met the stunning Alamuddin. “She’s an amazing human being,” Clooney recently told Entertainment Tonight. “And she’s caring. And she also happens to … Continued

Yellow and destroyed, the Barakat house still stands at the Sodeco intersection in Lebanon’s Ashrafieh area. At the end of 2015, 40 years after the start of the Lebanese civil war, the building is going to reopen as a cultural and research center. Beit Beirut (“Beirut House”) will be a place of memory and heritage dedicated to the city and its evolution.

A four-story residence built during 1924 and 1936, the yellow house is a standing witness of different architectural styles: Ottoman, French and Art Deco. It also saw the violence of civil war, used strategically by snipers controlling the area when sectarian tensions dominated in Lebanon in 1975. At the end of the war, the Barakat family sold the house to a construction company, and in 1997, activists such as the architect Mona Hallak noticed that construction was happening and managed to stop it. Today, the building is finding a third life through the municipalities of Paris and Beirut and Lebanese civil society, all of which joined forces and shared ideas to preserve this area’s heritage.

Beit Beirut is a symbol of the residential bourgeois buildings in the first half of the 20th century. The past is still present in curtains and decorations on the floors and walls and in the family archives found in the eight apartments. The building is pockmarked with bullet holes from defenders and attackers, messages from snipers. From later years, when the war was over and the Monot neighborhood became the center of Beirut nightlife, graffiti marks the walls. Ninety years of Beirut history and its people’s evolution are conserved on and in the Yellow House.

The restoration project began in 2008. Reconstruction started in 2010 and took five years to complete.

The architect in charge of the project is Youssef Haidar, who studied architecture in Paris before returning to Lebanon in the ‘90s. “The building is like a living being, just like any Lebanese person, with many stories, full of hidden or visible injuries,” he told Al-Monitor. “Our attention is not to realize a face-lift, but treat it, which is a fairly new approach to memory in Lebanon. We filled the missing parts as you would with dentures, different from the rest, a new flesh to give it back its humanity.” It is, therefore, not purely reconstruction, but a project to “complete this work, with all its layers of history, and to write our part of it.”

To best preserve this memory, Haidar added a new building to the existing structure while preserving its facade and interior. He said, “We only stabilized it and made it functional, leaving it frozen in time.” The two destroyed staircases at the entryway are as the snipers left them. The architect installed two elevators in the new building. It is “very contemporary, with a new updated architectural language, lined with mirrors,” he said.

Beit Beirut’s ground floor has been turned into an open and convivial space with a cafeteria and a conference room where people can pass from, say, Monot to Damascus Street. “There was a photographer’s shop here,” the architect told Al-Monitor. “We found 65,000 large-format negatives of the people in the neighborhood, and they are going to be exhibited in the building. Actually, the first collection of the museum is the building itself. Bullets’ impacts, drawings on the walls, old tiles and decorations as well as parts of windows and doors are kept as they were.” In the intersection of the old house and the new part, a huge ramp takes visitors from one floor to another, as in an initiation journey.

The first floor, where the snipers used to station themselves and shoot, is to be a memorial and cultural center. “We reserved only one floor for the memory of war, because it is only 17 years of the building’s history,” Haidar explained. “It is important to show it to the people because it seems that we went from a general amnesty to a general amnesia. I just hope that this place will accomplish its memorial mission, and that the civil society will help make it alive through activities and conferences. The second floor is the museum itself, on the life and evolution of Beirut since the 1920s. This place is about the memory of the city, of its society and their mutation.” There, messages on the walls are still visible, left by the snipers who used to relax there during cease-fires. The space is a puzzle, half painted half conserved.

The third floor, more open and less war-damaged, 800 square meters (2,600 square feet) will be dedicated to permanent and temporary exhibitions and display the documentation of all the archives found in the house, plus some from the Beirut municipality. These archives are going to fill five separate basement levels, all outfitted with climate control to protect their contents, and the sixth has already been turned into an auditorium. On the rooftop, a cafe and a restaurant will provide entertainment for visitors.

But Beit Beirut is not only for people to visit. It is also intended for researchers, who will be provided a 30,000-book library as well as five work spaces, separated by glass windows. All of this, of course, will be free. “What we need now is a real institution to manage this project, which is at least a 15 to 20-year one, I think,” Haidar added. “It’s going to be a very long process to turn this place into a real museum.”

Beit Beirut is set to open its doors by the end of 2015.

Source: www.al-monitor.com

The Daily Star
BEIRUT: A group of six glowing figures light up Samir Kassir Square. Their hollow forms symbolize the loss felt by refugees who leave behind homes, belongings, friends and family when they are forced to flee their cities. The installation by Lebanese artist Alaa Minawi was set up in the balmy garden Monday night, scheduled to remain on show to the public until June 4, as part of the annual Samir Kassir Festival.

A tribute to Syrian refugees in Lebanon and all the refugees displaced from their homes over the last century, the installation is entitled “My light is your light…” and was first shown in November as part of the Amsterdam Light Festival.

The figures, outlined in neon tubing, represent a family unit made up of a father, a mother, a grandfather, an aunt and two children.

Each year, the Samir Kassir Foundation organizes its Beirut Spring Festival, a tribute to the journalist and history professor assassinated in 2005. Consisting of a week of free events, it promotes tolerance and cultural diversity through multidisciplinary international performances, including theater, dance, music and conferences.

This year, to mark a decade since Kassir’s assassination, the festival has been extended to just over a month, running until June 6. The focus has also shifted, from theater and music performances to panel discussions and forums.

This year’s program is composed of a diverse series of events related to Samir Kassir’s interests, focusing on politics and history, as well as culture.

Topics range from defending press freedom, to freedom of information and privacy, Palestine and shifting pan-Arab priorities, Syrian refugees in Europe, democracy and religion, and politics and the military.

Culturally focused events will include a talk on wartime cultural production, an exhibition of photos capturing a single day in Beirut, several film screenings and a grand finale featuring a multidisciplinary open air performance.

Tuesday evening promises a talk entitled “Healing Memories and Building the Future” at Université Saint Joseph.

The discussion will focus on how mechanisms can be put in place to deal with collective memory and enable societies to move forward after conflict, drawing from approaches taken in Spain, Chile and Northern Ireland, while addressing the ramifications of Lebanon’s policy of amnesty and collective amnesia.

Speakers are set to include Ziad Baroud, a former Lebanon interior minister, as well as Josefina Cuesta Bustillo from the University of Salamanca, Luciano Fouillioux from Chile’s Museum of Memory and the National Institution of Human Rights, former deputy-speaker of the Northern Irish Parliament Jane Morris. The event will be moderated by Carmen Abou Jaoude from Lebanon’s International Center for Transitional Justice.

The highlights of this edition’s culture-related events include a talk at Dawawine in Gemmayzeh on May 8, entitled “Culture amid War: The Syrian Experiment.” Ali Atassi, of the Beirut-based Syrian filmmaking collective Bidayat, Lebanese political analyst Ziad Majed and Creative Memory founder Sana Yaziji will discuss cultural production since the onset of the civil war. SHARQ’s Reem Maghribi will moderate.

Dwelling on the importance of culture in wartime, their talk will focus on what the work being produced by Syrian artists says about history, suffering and hope for a peaceful future.

On May 9, prominent filmmakers and writers will pay tribute to Kassir.

A series of short documentaries will be screened at the French Institute, each shedding light on his vision, career, personal life and values. Two works broadcast in the months after his death, Gretta Nawfal’s “Tulipe Noire” and Talal Khoury’s “Monday,” will screen alongside the world premiere of a film by Kassir’s daughter Liana.

“One Day in Beirut” will encapsulate the diversity of the city from May 14 to June 4. Organized by FRAME, a photo exhibition at the Beirut Souks will display the work of more than 100 photographers.

Each photographer was given 12 hours to capture 12 photos on 12 themes on Sept. 27 last year, during the second edition of the Beirut Photo Marathon. Taken all over greater Beirut, the resulting photos showcase daily life in different quarters of the city.

Université Saint Joseph will host a film screening and discussion on May 28. Jacques Debs’ film “A la rencontre des Eglises Premières” (In search of the first churches) takes viewers on a tour of the world’s oldest churches, evangelized by the 12 apostles.

Each is located at a crossroads between cultures and, against all the odds, has survived for millennia. The screening will be followed by a talk featuring the filmmaker and Lebanese cultural figures.

The grand finale on June 6 is set to provide a memorable close this year’s edition.

A multidisciplinary light show and live performance in Martyrs’ Square will transform the facade of the An-Nahar building with glitzy projections of light and thousands of images celebrating Beirut and Kassir’s legacy.

Lebanese, regional and international artists are set to perform live music and theater as part of the show, conceived by Ivan Caracalla, president of Caracalla Dance Theater. – The Daily Star

The Beirut Spring Festival continues at locations across Beirut until June 6. To see the full program, please visit www.beirutspringfestival.org.

Source: www.dailystar.com.lb

Lebanese street artists the Dihzahyners just got a little bit more famous, as the multinational brand 7Up teamed up with the design collective for its “Feels Good to Be You” campaign.

The Dihzahyners – pronounced designers – are famous around the world for their creative stair artwork that can be seen all over Beirut.

7Up’s campaign is being rolled out in more than 140 countries, is focused on highlighting people who are original and refreshing. Given that mandate, the Dihzahyners sound like a perfect fit.

The Dihzahyners regularly head out into the various neighborhoods of Beirut, finding old and neglected staircases to transform. Through vivid colors and bright geometric patterns, the group works to reinvent the city its members call home.

Source: stepfeed.com

You would think Lebanon is consumed by the threat of jihadis knocking at the border gates. Or the more than 1m Syrian refugees flooding its villages and towns. Or perhaps the fact that there is no president because the political class can’t agree on holding an election.
But no. The talk of the town in Beirut is the new traffic law, modern and progressive, and so draconian that it rivals regulations in western states.

The council of ministers, unable to tackle Lebanon’s big problems, has been on a mission to demonstrate its efficiency with small improvements in citizens’ daily lives. It is selling the law as a sign of progress amid the broader disorder. And it has sparked a hot debate, with as many supporters of the measure as detractors.
Let me put things in perspective. Some 25 years after a devastating civil war, Lebanon is a driving jungle. Some of the provisions in the law tell the story. There are fines not only for drink-driving and passing red lights, but also for drivers who “stick their head or any other body part out of the window” or take on passengers who “sit on the window when someone else is driving”.
In the early years after the civil war, I used to find charm in the chaos: driving in Beirut was like a bumper car ride. Now I’m terrified and I don’t dare sit behind a wheel.
Road signs and traffic lights are a novelty that is easily ignored, and drivers make up their own laws as they navigate the potholed streets, which are often unlit at night. Even if less prevalent than in the past, driving licences can still be bought and policemen corrupted.
The result? According to Yasa, a non-governmental organisation that campaigns for road safety, there are tens of thousands of car accidents a year, and an estimated 900 annual deaths for a population of about 4m. According to a study by Yasa officials, that places Lebanon as the fifth most dangerous country in the Middle East when it comes to road safety, after Oman, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen.

Source: www.ft.com

The post-election atmosphere in Israel has had many abandon their hope for peace in the region in the near future, but one new application is giving peace a fighting chance with a Tinder-style model aimed to connect Israelis and Palestinians.
 
The idea for the app, named Verona after the city in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” where lovers from feuding families meet, was inspired by founder Matthew Nolan’s Palestinian friend who met an Israeli girl in New York and fell in love.
 
Verona, which has the tagline “World peace, one swipe at a time,” is almost identical to Tinder – accept for the Israeli/Palestinian catch.
 
Users first log into Facebook and create a profile where they identify themselves as either Israeli or Palestinian. They then upload a photo of themselves and are then shown photos of people in their area who identified as the opposite group.
 
Users then swipe right if they like someone or left if they don’t. If the two match, if both swipe right, they can start matching and potentially meet.
 
“The idea for the application came to me while I was looking for a final project application for my art school studies,” says Nolan during a phone interview from his Manhattan apartment.
 
“I have a close Palestinian friend named Khaled, and he told me he met this amazing Israeli girl who came to live here in New York, and now they’re together and in love.
 
“We started joking and saying that there needs to be an application that would set up Israelis and Palestinians and then left the subject alone. But I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind,” says Nolan.
 
Instead of forgetting the idea, Nolan, who works as an app developer, decided that he actually wanted to test out the waters.
 
“I really think this is the solution,” says Nolan without any hint of cynicism. Apparently, Nolan is not kidding when he says that he believes the app could be a step toward peace in the region.
 
“If you take a look at history, every time there are social changes, they usually begin with those that are willing to defy conventions.
 
“Here in America we experienced amazing changes simply because people decided to try different things. So yes, I definitely think this is the first step on the path towards the right direction,” says Nolan.
 
Nolan is not the only one who sees the app’s potential to break barriers. The renowned tech blog RT reported that Verona has more than a thousand Android users (the IOS version will launch in June) since the app launched in March.
 
Most of the app’s users are college students of either Israeli or Palestinian origin in the US, but Nolan says that there are also more than a few users from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ramallah.
 
“I’m convinced it will work,” says Nolan, while he does not go into detail about the logistics – such as how a user in Jerusalem and Ramallah could meet up.
 
However, Nolan says that the terms “Israeli” and “Palestinian” are loose. “If, for example, there is an Arab woman who lives in Israel but wants to identify as Palestinian, she can do so and can still meet someone to fall in love with. We have hundreds of users here that are Jewish or Arab who do not necessarily live in one of the two countries, but nonetheless identify themselves as Israeli or Palestinian.”
 
“I think this is the first time that someone has tried to put the conflict aside and said: ‘Let’s see if we have another common denominator other than the fact that we are enemies.’

 
“Maybe the path to peace is to for a moment put aside the question of who is right and wrong. To solve the conflict through an application is of course impossible, but I am full of hope that there will be enough users who will connect with one another and understand that they have other things they can talk about other than the war,” said Nolan.

Source: www.ynetnews.com

Distinct visual interpretations of Arabian horses seen through the eyes of two artists from different backgrounds are on display at the “Asalat Khail” (Thoroughbred) exhibition which recently opened at Souq Waqif Art Centre.

Thirty-four paintings by Palestinian artist Rima Al Mozayyen and Qatari artist Jameela Al Shraim are showcased in two galleries dedicated for equine art enthusiasts.

For several millennia, the Arabian horse has been regarded a symbol of strength, grace and gentleness in this region with a long established equine tradition. Dating back thousands of years, the Arabs have bred horses which became instrumental in leading them to victory during wars as well as served their daily life in times of peace.

Arab writers have written volumes of stories and poetry inspired by the Arabian horse’s cultural and religious importance.

This particular retrospective is an ode to the beauty and power of the Arabian horse born of noble heritage.

Al Shraim depicts the horse as spirited and dreamlike in form in her 18 paintings which adorn the walls of Gallery 1. She illustrates the horse with unparalleled beauty with its long flowing mane and tail and arched neck and high crest which signify courage.

While some are in black and white, most of Al Shraim’s paintings were created using vibrant colours and geometric shapes embedded within the figures evoking an authentic Arabic design.

In Al Mozayyen’s 16 paintings located in Gallery 2, the horse is portrayed as central to Arab way of life as told in myths and fables. Although she presents a commanding image of the horse, the artist incorporates other elements in the canvas such as the olive tree symbolic of peace and resilience. 

There is richness in texture within the paintings layered with colours and filled with meaning. In some of the pieces, a panorama of other subjects arises as the viewer looks more closely into them. The inclusion of feminine elements like the designs reminiscent of embroidery in traditional Arab women clothing projects is a powerful contrast.

In some of their works, the artists include Arabic calligraphy, a common element which interweaves into the artistic and cultural facet they both embrace.

A leading Palestinian figure in contemporary art, Rima Al Mozayyen has a Master in Design degree from Helwan University in Egypt and has taught design and ceramics at Al Aqsa University. She has exhibited in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bulgaria, France, USA and Italy among others.

With more than three decades of experience in fine arts, Al Shraim has produced over 200 paintings and sculptures. She has already featured in over 25 expos in Qatar and other countries. She devoted 20 years in teaching fine arts. A member of Qatar Fine Arts society, she was one of the 10 pioneering Qatari women artists who joined the Society and accredited by the National Council for the Arts.

Launched by the Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage H E Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kuwari, the expo runs until May 20 and is a collaboration between Porta Coeli International Art Gallery and Souq Waqif Art Centre. 

The Peninsula

Source: thepeninsulaqatar.com

By Philip Weiss Mondoweiss Rula Jebreal has a wonderful piece up at the Nation calling out Israel for bragging on its relief efforts in Nepal while Gaza is in rubble and 150,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria are being slowly decimated in Yarmouk refugee camp. The headline of the piece is “Israel must open its doors” to … Continued

A crowd of more than a hundred paraded through the Loop Saturday in what organizers said was the country’s first-ever Palestinian Heritage Parade.

Many waving the red, black, white and green Palestinian flag danced in the traditional “dabke” style and sang folk songs as others on colorful floats waved to spectators.

Sponsored by the Palos-Hills-based non-profit American Muslims for Palestine, the parade also featured the recreation of a Palestinian wedding and other traditions unique to the Middle East.

The parade fell less than a week before the anniversary of what Palestinians refer to as “Nakba Day,” or the “Day of the Catastrophe,” which marks the group’s uprooting in the war over Israel’s 1948 creation.

Organizers said the aim of the parade was to showcase their pride in their “deep cultural and religious history.”

Source: chicago.suntimes.com