Author Archives: Arab America

A Tunisian author who was inspired to write his first novel after the Arab Spring has won the Arab world’s top prize for fiction.
Shukri Mabkhout’s The Italian was the eighth winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF).
Judges said the novel was “astonishing”, “a work of art” and “an important contribution to Tunisian, and Arab, literary fiction”.
Mabkhout receives $50,000 (£32,000) and a guaranteed translation into English.
The Italian chronicles a seminal period in Tunisian political history while telling the story of Abdel Nasser, nicknamed ‘The Italian’ due to his good looks.
Yasir Suleiman, chairman of IPAF’s board, called its author a “master of suspense”.
Mabkhout’s book, he said, “never lets go of the reader, who willingly follows its intriguing characters on their converging and diverging journeys”.
He added that Mabkhout defies the “unfair criticism that the Arabic language is a bookish and fossilised mode of expression at odds with the modern world”.
A total of 180 titles from 15 countries were in contention for the award, which is unofficially known as the Arabic Booker prize.
The five other shortlisted finalists will each receive $10,000 (£6,543).
Since 2008, the winning and shortlisted IPAF books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Source: www.bbc.com

In Bachoura, a rundown quarter of central Beirut, a quiet revolution is gathering strength. From the balcony of a new office block, the Mediterranean sparkles behind a row of cranes. On a freshly painted roof patio next door, entrepreneurs work at picnic tables laden with laptops and lattes. Amid walls still bearing artillery scars from the civil war a quarter of a century ago, the Beirut Digital District is rising — one of a growing number of spaces in the Lebanese capital dedicated to 21st-century start-ups.
Hala Fadel, a dynamic serial investor who grew up in Paris, is among women in the vanguard of this entrepreneurial revolution. She is chairwoman for the pan-Arab region of MIT Enterprise Forum, a non-profit organisation that promotes entrepreneurship, and began its start-up competition in 2005. Returning to Lebanon in 2003, “everything outraged me”, she says. “But I love the people. It’s not just about making money; it’s entrepreneurship with a mission to change the whole system. This is why I wear so many hats.”

FirstFT is our new essential daily email briefing of the best stories from across the web
Once a top-ranking analyst at Merrill Lynch in London, Fadel started a telecom software company after studying business at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Last year she quit her day job in fund management to co-found Leap Ventures, a $71m venture capital fund for high-growth Middle East technology businesses, which launched in March at the sixth ArabNet Beirut. At this huge networking event, Raed Charafeddine, vice-governor of Lebanon’s central bank, hailed an “Arab digital renaissance”, while the telecoms minister, Boutros Harb, pledged improvements to Lebanon’s notoriously slow internet.
The line between social and commercial entrepreneurship is blurring, Fadel says, as everyone wants to create jobs. But with inadequate governments (Lebanon has been deadlocked without a president for almost a year), start-ups are stepping into the breach, to address issues from recycling to traffic jams. Fadel enthuses about Tripoli’s car-free day in 2011, when she organised a rally of 50,000 people and 900 volunteers to raise environmental issues in the northern city. “Twenty-two kilometres of roads were closed for a day. It was the best project of my life.”

Source: www.ft.com

Palestine will seek Israel’s exclusion from FIFA later in May, the Palestinian football chief said. Jibril Rajoub told Reuters he won’t drop a resolution calling to sanction Israel for “behaving like the neighborhood bully.”

The head of the Palestinian Football Federation and the Palestine Olympic Committee will press ahead with his proposal to European delegates at FIFA’s Congress in Zurich on May 29.

“Last year, we dropped the resolution when Europe got involved and the Israelis promised to co-operate in improving the situation,” Paulo Rajoub told Reuters.

Israel is still behaving “like the neighborhood bully, or worse,” he said. He asserted Israel was “persecuting Palestine footballers, athletes and the movement of sporting equipment.”

Read more
Israel stands behind travel restrictions for Palestinian football players
“Enough is enough,” Rajoub said.

In 2013 and 2014, Paulo Rajoub agreed to drop similar resolutions when Europe got involved.

“This is the third year in a row this has come up, first in Mauritius, then Brazil and now again,” he told Reuters.

But Rajoub said “there is now a feeling Europe cannot sit back and ignore what Israel is doing any longer.”

While Europe may once again step into, Rajoub holds firm to his intention.

“We are close to crossing the bridge and no-one can stop us having the proposal on the agenda even if some people would rather it was not,” he said. He “would not make the concessions” he made when withdrawing the previous proposals.

“A year ago I agreed to drop the proposal, I will not do that again. The aggression towards our sportsmen and women in the West Bank and Gaza continues. It is hostile and racist and the time has come to take action,” he said.

Palestine will have to gain a three-quarter majority of FIFA’s 209 members for its demand and the Palestinian Football Federation head is confident this will happen.

Reuters / Mohamad Torokman

“Don’t think just because Israel is in Europe that Europe will support Israel any longer,” he said.

“I think [UEFA president] Michel Platini, who has backed Israel in the past, has had enough. He sent us sports equipment which was held by Israel for 16 months and we had to pay $32,000 to get it.”

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has attempted to ease the situation between the countries but failed.

READ MORE: Palestine gets ICC membership, opening door to Israel war crimes prosecution

Blatter may go to Israel to try to resolve the crisis, a FIFA spokesman said.

“It is a possibility, not a certainty, but it is a problem the president would like to see resolved,” a statement said as cited by Reuters.

Tensions between Israel and Palestine further deteriorated following the conflict in Gaza last summer, when 2,200 people were killed in 50 days of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge.

Source: rt.com

Tomorrow morning, Thursday 7th May 2015, Irish multinational CRH will hold their Annual General Meeting in the Royal Marine Hotel, Marine Road, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign plan a protest outside the venue. CRH have thus far refused to ditch their toxic Israeli assets which are involved in building the illegal apartheid wall and settlements in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

The IPSC is organising this protest because CRH owns 25% of the Israeli company Mashav Initiative and Development Ltd which, in turn, owns Israel’s sole cement producer Nesher Cement Enterprises Ltd. Nesher provide up to 90% of all cement sold in Israel, including cement used in the construction of Israel’s illegal separation wall in Palestine and illegal settlements and checkpoints. We are calling on CRH to end its shameful investment in Israel and to stop profiting from the occupation of Palestine by divesting from its Israeli interests.

Over the past six years the issue of CRH’s investment in Israel has been raised in the AGM proceedings by IPSC members who are also shareholders in the company. In 2012 year the IPSC presented a 10,000-signature strong petition to the CRH Board calling for divestment from Israel, and filed a complaint with the OECD. CRH has yet to take action, despite press reports suggesting that they were contemplating ditching their toxic Israeli assets. Come along let them know that you think that would be a good idea, and that CRH must stop profiting from the destruction of Palestine!

For more about the IPSC’s CRH Divestment Campaign here.

Source: english.pnn.ps

These five Palestinian women want to win so many car races that they’ll have a ‘Fast & Furious’ franchise of their own. They’re already well on their way.
Behind the wheel of her car, with her long red nails snaking around the steering wheel and a racing helmet obscuring a perfect sheath of blonde hair, Betty Saadeh is just another Palestinian race car driver. But that doesn’t mean she’s willing to sacrifice her glamour.

“I’m in this sport that’s for men,” Betty explains while a manicurist arranges rhinestones in a heart shape on her fingernails. “It’s very important for me to show I’m not a tomboy.” Betty and four other female Palestinian racers are the subject of a new documentary following the dust left by a group of lightning-fast drivers who must navigate the sometimes invisible obstacles of a male sport in a homeland under occupation.

via Facebook
Filmmaker Amber Fares had been working in development in Palestine for a few years when she was invited to watch a race at former President Yasser Arafat’s helicopter landing pad in Bethlehem. In the middle of a thousand screaming fans, she spotted Betty, along with two other female racers, getting her pre-race tune ups. “What the hell, there are women here?” she remembers thinking. It was 2009, and by the next year, Speed Sisters—the Middle East’s first all-female racing team—officially formed.

For four years, Amber and her film crew followed the women through the world of high-speed racing. It was akin, she says, to trailing a group of rockstars. “In the street, people would come up and say, ‘You’re the racers!’”

Those training sessions, races, donuts, skid outs, and trophies are chronicled in a new documentary, Speed Sisters, which made its North American premiere at Hot Docs in Toronto last week. After the screening, the teammates were approached by a Canadian female driver. “In Canada, we are only two racers,” she said, according to Marah, one of the racers touring with the film. “It’s amazing to see you have five. How do you recruit more girls?”

The day after showing the documentary in Canada, two of the racers, 24-year-old Noor Daoud and 23-year-old Marah Zahalqa, juggled what sounded like a vicious racing battle on a Fast and Furious phone app and a conversation with The Daily Beast.

Their chosen hobby has an unlikely setting. In the ad-hoc race tracks of the Palestinian territories, hundreds of spectators stack into bleachers and squeeze against the sidelines to cheer on drivers, including all five women, as they skid through an obstacle course lined with orange cones. Kids on the sidelines film with their phones and wave green and red flags. After the race, they rush to take pictures with their favorite victors.

There’s Noor Daoud, a big-haired, outspoken sportswoman who is not only an award-winning drift racer, but also a boxer, weightlifter, and Olympic swimmer. In 2012, she became the first Palestinian to race in an Israeli race—much less win. (She did that, too.) Betty Saadeh, a local celebrity who’s at ease both in front of the cameras and the starting line. Marah Zahalqa, a serious competitor focused on victory. Mona Ennab, the track pioneer who started racing back in 2005. And there’s team leader Maysoon Jayyusi, who’s an expert mediator when intra-team troubles arise.

In a sport where rounds are won by seconds, there’s no attempt to hide the deeply competitive spirit that emerges. Marah and Betty have a particularly intense rivalry, which lends a nice realism to a movie that doesn’t overdose on the feel-good love of sisterhood. “I hope she hits a cone,” Marah mutters as Betty navigates the course in the film.

“You think because you’re blonde and pretty they’re not going to shoot you?” she asks. “They shot you in the ass.”
On the racetrack, the women put up a unified front, occasionally getting into yelling matches with the commissioner of the Palestinian Racing Federation to ensure they’re treated fairly. “The problem is that men are afraid of strong women. They are afraid they will take over,” Mayhoon says in the film. But for the most part, the male racers are in awe of their competition. “You ask any of them and they’re like, ‘These girls are good—they’re no joke,’” Amber says about the men’s team.

The heroics of these trailblazing ladies on the track almost pale in comparison to the endearing figure cut by Marah’s father, who is so invested in his daughter’s untraditional hobby that he forgoes building his dream house to buy her a new car— a BMW, no less.

At the races, he’s on the sidelines jumping and hugging the other team members while Marah slips through the orange cones. “Two-forty-one horse!” he yells as she zooms by.

Source: www.thedailybeast.com

Instrumental Arabic music is out there – whether it is classics by Umm Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez or the Arabic hits of today, all arranged for orchestras. The challenge is finding it.

“It’s not easy,” says Leyann Smili, the 25-year-old Lebanese presenter of Arabesque, an hour-long radio show devoted to instrumentals from across the region, which is broadcast twice a week.

“Arabic music takes a lot of digging, and it’s even more difficult if it’s instrumental music,” she says. “I think it is difficult to get your hands on because it is not as advanced online. The music is being made, it’s just not online yet.”

The show’s producer, Marwa Moaz, is the one in charge of finding the music, but Smili researches every piece played on the show – “who is the composer, who sang it, when they sang it, was it a movie soundtrack, maybe it was part of a concert or TV series, who is performing what, who is on piano or violin – any detail that will help in the appreciation of the music”.

“It’s the kind of show to sit back and relax to,” says Smili. “You get to learn about the classical music of the region rather than the pop.”

Arabesque has only two requirements for the music it plays – it must be from the region (Turkey is included) and it must be instrumental.

“We play the music of different artists on the show, from Umm Kulthum to the Iraqi artist Hazim Faris to the music of Mohammed Abdul Wahab performed by Omar Khairat, to more modern artists such as Malek Jandali to Sameer Suroor to Kamal Musallam and others, but it’s all instrumental,” says Smili. “So if we play an Umm Kulthum song, it will be someone else playing her music and they are usually Arabs and there will be no singing.”

Matthew Sansom, the head of station at Abu Dhabi Classic FM, describes Arabesque as an introduction to the culture of the region.

“Of course, we have a lot of locals and a lot of Arabs who listen in and who love this kind of music and it’s nice to service them with a slightly different, classical version of the Arabic music they adore – without the vocals, though,” he says. “But we also have a lot of western listeners who love it.

“So an expat would go to a hotel and hear music in the lobby but not know where to buy it or how to find it or who the artists are, and that’s really where Arabesque comes in.”

It’s been just over a year since the launch of Arabesque and ratings at the end of last year revealed that the show was the fourth-most popular programme with westerners in the UAE, says Sansom.

Smili says Arabic music is in her blood – she was born and raised in Bahrain and spent her university years in the United States. Preparing Arabesque every week for the past year is a constant reminder of how much she loves the music of the region.

“I’ve always appreciated older Arabic music, such as pieces by Fairuz and Umm Kulthum – and we play that kind of music on Arabesque, as well as more modern Arabic music,” she says. “My favourites from the show are usually the piano pieces, such as pieces by Malek Jandali.

“We’ve received such great feedback from people who are new to this type of music, telling us not only that they enjoy it, but that they’re learning about the music of the Middle East and gaining an appreciation for it,” says Smili.

“That makes me so proud.”

•Abu Dhabi Classic FM (@abudhabiclassic on Instagram) is on 91.6FM in Abu Dhabi, 87.9FM in Dubai and 105.2FM in Al Ain. Arabesque is on every Friday and Saturday from 4pm to 5pm. For more information, visit www.abudhabiclassicfm.ae

Source: www.thenational.ae

Maureen Abood left her big-city job in Chicago to follow her heart to culinary school.

After training in San Francisco, Abood came back home to Michigan and has dedicated her life to cooking and writing about Lebanese food.

Rose Water & Orange Blossoms: Fresh and Classic Recipes From My Lebanese Kitchen (Running Press) is the title of her first cookbook.

This is not just a love letter to Lebanese cooking and food. It’s also love letter to her family.

“It was such a special way to be raised in a Lebanese American family where we are so connected to our cousins to our relatives back in Lebanon and of course to the cuisine, which is so wonderful and delicious.”

Abood talks about the fragrant spices, flavors and ingredients used in Lebanese cooking.

“I love how the Lebanese use a spice like cinnamon in a savory way. Cinnamon is laced throughout many of my recipes and that’s a classic thing … and it’s fun to serve someone a dish like Lebanese hushweh, which is a pilaf of rice with ground beef or lamb with some chicken and it has delicious butter toasted nuts, and it has cinnamon in it and someone eating it might not know, might not be able to put their finger on what this unusually wonderful flavor is that they’re eating and it’s fun to say ‘hey, that’s cinnamon.’”

Avocado Tabbouleh in Little Gems.
CREDIT JASON VARNEY
Fresh herbs such as mint, parsley and cilantro are used a great deal in her recipes.  

“And the mint in particular, which you might recognize in a well-known dish like tabbouleh, which is a parsley and mint salad with a little bit of bulgur wheat and lots of lemon and tomato. This shining example of mint is not unlike the way we use mint through the cooking.”

Avocado Tabbouleh in Little Gems

Makes 8 Servings

1⁄3 cup / 65 g bulgur, #1 fine grade

3 bunches curly parsley

1 pint cherry tomatoes, diced into 1⁄4-inch / .5 cm pieces

1 ripe avocado, diced into 1⁄4-inch / .5 cm pieces

5 scallions, sliced thinly crosswise

4 sprigs fresh mint leaves, finely chopped

Juice of 2 lemons

1⁄4 cup / 60 mL extra-virgin olive oil

1⁄2 teaspoon kosher salt

1⁄4 teaspoon granulated garlic powder

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

2 heads Little Gem romaine, rinsed and dried

Rinse the bulgur twice in a small bowl, letting the bulgur settle for a few seconds before pouring off the water. Add enough fresh water just to cover the bulgur. Soak it for 30 minutes, or until it is softened. Pour off and squeeze out any excess water. While the bulgur softens, prepare the parsley. Wash the parsley by dunking and shaking it in a sink full of cool water two or three times, changing the water between rinses.

Wrap the parsley in clean kitchen towels and gently squeeze, soaking up as much water as possible, and then change out the towels for dry ones and squeeze again. Or, dry the parsley in a salad spinner, and then squeeze it in towels to soak up any remaining water. The drier the parsley, the easier it will be to chop and the nicer the tabbouleh will be.

If you are prepping the parsley in advance, which is ideal for dryness, let it sit out on the towels for a few hours after it has been patted dry, and then bundle the parsley up in paper towels and refrigerate it until you are ready. Pinch off the curls of parsley from their stems. Chop the curls in two or three batches with a large chef’s knife, gathering the parsley up as you chop to form a more compact mound, until it is finely chopped.

In a medium bowl, combine the parsley, tomato, avocado, scallions, mint, and bulgur. Stir in the lemon juice, olive oil, salt, garlic powder, and pepper. Taste and adjust the seasonings, adding more lemon and salt if needed. Let the tabbouleh rest for about 15 minutes so the bulgur will soak up, and be flavored by, the juices. Pull the Little Gem leaves from their stems and arrange the nicest, cup-like leaves on a platter. Fill each cup with a big spoonful of the tabbouleh, and serve immediately.

Source: michiganradio.org

You don’t need a master’s degree to know that jail inmates are lonely, but during the past year, cultural anthropologist Naima Shalhoub has seen it doesn’t take much, or cost much, to make them feel less isolated and sad.

The difference between happy and unhappy just might be eight minutes. That’s the time it took for Shalhoub, also a jazz artist, to sing three songs on her first visit to a women’s unit at the San Francisco County Jail a year ago, right around Mother’s Day.

“One woman said, ‘I’ve been here two years and this is the happiest I’ve felt,’” she recalled during a visit to the women’s unit on Tuesday. With feedback so powerful, she had to come back, and has taught music therapy classes almost every Friday since.

For this Mother’s Day, Shalhoub went further: She and a four-piece band performed a 45-minute concert in the jail’s E pod on Tuesday, and recorded it before a captive audience of 50 female inmates, a first in the jail’s history. The album, to be titled “Borderlands: Singing Through the Prison Walls,” will feature songs with themes of freedom and borders, written by Shalhoub. Accompanying her were Isaac Ho on keyboard, Tarik Kazaleh on guitar and oud, Aaron Kierbel on drums, and Marcus Shelby on bass. Rhodessa Jones of the Medea Project kicked the program off.

Shalhoub, whose vocal style has an Edie Brickell-meets-Sade sort of quality, and whose music is influenced by Billie Holiday, African rhythms, Arabic songs, soul and blues, was at turns wistful, haunting and powerfully growling. Within moments of her first note, the inmates were clapping in time, singing along and dancing in their seats. Her “Oh Sky” found favor with the audience: (“Oh sky, tell me what to do/ show me where’s the light/ ’cause every path I try to walk/ just don’t feel right”), as did a lively rap by the guitarist in the song’s middle, which led to a standing ovation at the number’s end.

Source: www.sfchronicle.com

For the second time in less than a year, an American city was transformed into a hypermilitarized police state to subdue growing resistance to anti-Black police violence. 

Eight months ago, paramilitary forces barreled down the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, following the gruesome police killing of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown. 

Last week, martial law was imposed on the people of Baltimore, Maryland, in yet another crackdown aimed at crushing the Black Lives Matter uprising, galvanized this time by the police murder of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man whose spinal cord was severed while in police custody. 

It was an occupation in the truest sense of the term. However, for Baltimore’s poor Black neighborhoods, it was a hypermilitarized version of the lower intensity occupation they are subjected to on a regular basis. 

Protests demanding justice for Gray had been largely peaceful, until heavy-handed police tactics against Baltimore high school students on 27 April incited a riot. 

Some young people responded by throwing bottles and rocks at police, prompting comparisons to Palestine, where children often toss stones at Israeli occupation forces as a means of resistance and self-defense. 

Windows of police cruisers were smashed, stores were looted and a CVS store was set ablaze, throwing white America into a panicked frenzy that seemed to prioritize broken windows over broken spines, as one activist put it. 

Source: electronicintifada.net

A new report from the Israeli group Breaking the Silence on Israel’s policy of indiscriminate fire during the 2014 Gaza assault comes just a week after a United Nations probe confirmed Israeli forces conducted direct attacks on its facilities in Gaza during last summer’s offensive. The attacks took place despite repeated notifications with the GPS coordinates of U.N. sites to Israeli forces. Palestinians have vowed to bring the findings to the International Criminal Court, which it officially joined last month. We discuss the implications of Palestine’s accession to the ICC with two guests: Ambassador Nabil Abuznaid, head of the Palestinian Mission to the Netherlands, and John Dugard, former U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories and emeritus professor of international law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Breaking the Silence report on Israel’s “policy of indiscriminate fire” during the 2014 Gaza assault is being published just a week after a United Nations probe confirmed Israeli forces conducted direct attacks on United Nations facilities in Gaza, killing at least 44 Palestinians sheltering at those sites during last summer’s offensive. The attacks took place despite repeated notifications to Israeli forces of the GPS coordinates of U.N. sites.

AMY GOODMAN: Palestinians have vowed to bring the findings to the International Criminal Court, which it officially joined last month. Last week, while we were at The Hague, I spoke to two guests about the implications of Palestine’s accession to the International Criminal Court. Ambassador Nabil Abuznaid is the head of the Palestinian Mission to the Netherlands. And John Dugard is the former U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, now emeritus professor of international law at University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He was born in South Africa. I started by asking Ambassador Abuznaid about the significance of Palestine becoming the newest member of the International Criminal Court.

NABIL ABUZNAID: Well, first, I think the international community should encourage Palestine and congratulate Palestine for joining the international court, because we accepted to live under international law. We are a peace-abiding nation. And we really tried politically to end the occupation. We tried by all means to end it. But, unfortunate, we were forced to seek justice through the international court, which hopefully could stop the Israeli aggressions against our people, against our lands, so we can live free and in dignity in our homeland.

Source: www.democracynow.org

On Wednesday, May 6, 2015, Arab America announces the launch of their new Nefsie program. We have all at one time or another taken a selfie of ourselves with family and friends. Arab America is launching its new “Nefsie” program. Nefsie, which means selfie in Arabic, is a fun way to share your pictures. Just … Continued

Writing about music is hard. In other words, how can you transform musical notes and tones into words and sentences? How can you feel the effect music has on your mind and body if you are reading long paragraphs of information? That’s the dilemma I was going through while writing this article on the National … Continued