Author Archives: Arab America

Djida waited until just before they left their home in Algiers to tell her 10-year-old daughter, Nada, that they were going to a new life in France.

You can take one thing with you, she told her. A neighbor, a police officer, was waiting in his car to ensure they made it to the airport safely.

It was June 18, 1994, and Algeria was in the third year of what would become known as the Black Decade, a savage civil war that broke out after the government invalidated elections set to be won by the Front of Islamic Salvation. While the government would eventually win the war, the death toll mounted to more than 150,000 civilians. 

Women had become easy prey in a battle of competing visions of what Algeria should be — observant or secular — and some were brutally killed for wearing the veil, while others paid the same price for refusing it.

Djida — an accomplished doctor and a divorced single mother who would never accept the veil for herself — was an obvious target. So were many of the people in her world. Each day Djida saw friends, acquaintances and other professionals murdered, some of them her patients, dying in the days between their last and next appointments at her clinic. Yet people said the worse was still to come.

Were it just Djida alone, she would have assumed the risks and stayed. She loved Algeria. Though she had traveled and even worked abroad, every separation was borne with the intent to return home. Unlike her sister Nora, who left before Algeria’s descent into blackness and who always dreamed of moving to America, Djida wanted to stay.

Her daughter, though, deserved a better life where such violence wasn’t the norm.

Now Djida rushed her to pick something to take to France; their neighbor was waiting.

Nada chose a sweater knitted by her grandmother, a keepsake that showed on its front a squirrel, an apple tree and a little girl — Nada — all rendered in yarn.

Bordj, December 2014

Though Nada Fridi’s grandmother and grandfather passed away years earlier, their house in the Kabylie Mountains still belonged to the family, and Nada returned to spend the 2014 winter holidays in Bordj Bou Arréridj, in eastern Algeria. Her American cousin Meriem Bekka flew in from the U.S. to join her.

Nada, now 30, had become an architect and urban planner in Paris. Meriem, 25, the daughter of Djida’s sister Nora, was born in Texas and was a specialist on Syria at the Carter Center in Atlanta.

As girls and young women, each had sampled the other’s country, and they were fluent in both cultures. When Nada was a teenager, her mother — who worked long hours in France — sent her to sister’s house in Texas for high school, feeling it would be better for her daughter to be part of a happy nuclear family. In turn, when Meriem went to college, she attended Sciences Politiques (known in the French vernacular as Sciences Po) at a specialized campus in the southeast of France with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa.

Source: america.aljazeera.com

Arab Idol-star Haitham Khalaily feels an obligation to raise his voice about the Palestinian cause. PNN met him for an exclusive interview after his performance at a Nakba-event in Ramallah.

The vibrations from Haitham Khalailys voice sound through the streets of Ramallah and can be heard from kilometers away. The epicenter is a stage in Arafat Square, where a few thousand people have gathered Wednesday to commemorate the anniversary of Nakba.

The official Nakba day is not until Friday, but the whole week is packed with demonstrations, marches and events all over the West Bank. The PA is behind this particular event at which Khalaily seems to be the big draw for the youngsters.

The 25-year-old singer, who grew up in a village near Nazareth, gained status as pop star all over the Middle East, as he came in second at the Arab Idol last year.

Almost every Palestinian family watches the show. For the past two years, their compatriots have made it to the finals and beat singers from countries like Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and even Kurdistan. In 2013, Muhammad Assaf from Gaza famously won the whole show.

A beautiful experience

The young audience is dancing on the plastic chairs and in the square in front of Khalaily, waving their Palestinian flags high. The singer uses one hand to hold the microphone and the other to accompany the narratives of his songs. A male choir dressed in matching uniforms delivers back-up vocals.

As the last phrase has been sung, Khalaily steps down from the stage where a group of fans crowds round him. He returns their smiles and shakes hands but soon disappears into the minibus he first arrived in.

PNNEnglish meets him half an hour later at the Grand Park Hotel in the outskirts of Ramallah. He seems happy about the concert.

“It was so beautiful at the square today. It is the first time in five months for me to gave concert in Ramallah so it was really something special” he says and explains that he just got back from a tour in the US and Canada.

No free movement

Even though he lives in an Israeli-occupied village that enforces the Israeli ID and passport on the Palestinians, Haytham has strong attachment to the Palestinian right of return.

He grew up in Majd El-Kroum village near Nazareth, which was occupied by the Israelis in the wake of Nakba 1948. Unlike the 700,000 Palestinians who were deported from their homes, most citizens in the Nazareth region were able to stay. Today, they represent a significant Arab minority.

In order to participate in Arab Idol in Lebanon last year, Khalaily had to acquire a special travel document, which gained him access via Jordan, a country on better terms with the Israelis.

Even so, his passport was confiscated when he returned home and the Israelis told him he was at risk of four years prison for participating in the show in Lebanon, considered an enemy state of Israel.

The tension between the two countries means Khalaily’s Lebanese manager was not able to attend Wednesday’s concert in Ramallah. The crew surrounding the singer in the hotel lounge during the interview consists of friends and supporters, he explains.

Together

The fact that Haitham Khalaily is from an area taken over by Israel several decades ago does not seem to affect his Palestinian identity.

“I think no matter what area we come from, we try to stand together. It makes us stronger. That is why it was also really important for me to sing here today and use my voice to commemorate Nakba,” he says.

More than two million Youtube views of his perfomance in Arab Idol bears witness to the fact, that people do listen to Khaleily. And he is aware of that.

“People know who I am now. I have a lot of fans and people who listen to what I have to say. That makes it really important for me to use my voice to speak up about this” he says.

Songs of the homeland

Khalaily is particularly known for his melancholic Mawwal, the traditional introduction in Arabic singing before the instrumental part begins. In Arab Idol he sang various patriotic songs, among others the old Palestinian folklore, ‘Ala dal’ona, in which the Mawwal sounds (translated):

The soil of your homeland cannot be exchanged for money

This land is not for sale

This land is for the people, who worked hard for it

And for the people who will pick its fruits with their hands

You have to plow your own land

“There is always a place for Palestine in my music. It is so important for me to show the world, that this is not only a land of war. There is also happiness here. There is a lot of amazing music, art, culture and talent.”

Soon Haitham Khalaily will get the opportunity to show Palestinian talent to the world, as he is heading for another tour to the US and Canada. The following month, the star is destined for Germany.

Source: english.pnn.ps

The small North African country of Tunisia will be in the spotlight this coming week as President Beji Caid Essebsi makes his first official visit to Washington since his January election.

Talks on May 21 will focus on efforts to spur economic growth and counter terrorism in a nation that the United States considers to be the Arab Spring’s only clear success story. Tunisia’s not in the clear yet, however, as evidenced by the deadly attack on the Bardo Museum in March and reports that thousands of young Tunisians have joined the Islamic State.

Tunisia is also taking a lead diplomatic role in the civil war in neighboring Libya. And Essebsi is also expected to press President Barack Obama to help restart peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians (Tunisia hosted the PLO in the 1980s).

The State Department has vowed to triple military assistance to Tunisia this year, and Congress has also taken a keen interest in the country. The House passed an amendment to its annual defense bill last week calling cooperation with Tunis a “national security priority,” and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee spearheaded a letter to Obama urging him to establish a multiyear aid program for Tunisia.

In other developments, the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Middle East/North Africa panel on May 20 holds the first in a series of hearings on Egypt. Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., is a hawk on terrorism but has consistently pressed the government that replaced ousted President Mohammed Morsi on its commitment to democracy, requesting a series of reports from the Government Accountability Office along with Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.

“President [Abdel Fattah al-] Sisi has a responsibility to protect his citizens from … threats in the Sinai and along the border with Libya, but he also has a responsibility to improve the economy, promote a vibrant civil society and protect the human rights of all Egyptians,” Ros-Lehtinen said in announcing the hearing. “This hearing will provide our members the opportunity to weigh US policy toward Cairo as Egypt struggles to balance its security concerns with its needs for democratic reforms.”

In the Senate, the Foreign Relations Committee holds a hearing May 19 on “the rising tide of extremism in the Middle East.” The committee will also mark up legislation May 21 to establish a fund for Americans held hostage in Iran and their families and express the Senate’s concerns about anti-Semitism in Europe.

On the national security side, House Defense appropriators hold a closed markup May 20 on funding for FY 2016. The House passed its defense authorization bill May 15; it’s not clear when the Senate will pass its version of the bill, which cleared the Senate Armed Services Committee this past week but has yet to be made public.

Finally, the House Homeland Security Committee panel on counterterrorism and intelligence holds a hearing May 21 on “Admitting Syrian Refugees: The Intelligence Void and the Emerging Homeland Security Threat.”

And the House Financial Services Committee’s Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing holds a hearing May 21 on “A Dangerous Nexus: Terrorism, Crime, and Corruption”; it also issued a 15-page memo on the hearing.

Source: www.al-monitor.com

hile reporting to the UN on Israel’s violation of basic Palestinian rights, I became keenly aware of how official language is used to hide inconvenient truths. Language is a tool used by the powerful to keep unpleasant realities confined to shadow lands of incomprehension.

Determined to use the rather modest flashlight at my disposal to illuminate the realities of the Palestinian ordeal as best I could meant replacing words that obscure ugly realities with words that expose as awkward truths often as possible. My best opportunity to do this was in my annual reports to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and the General Assembly in New York. My courageous predecessor as Special Rapporteur, John Dugard, deserves credit for setting the stage, effectively challenging UN complacency with language that looked at the realities lurking below the oily euphemisms that diplomat seem so fond of.

Of course, I paid a price for such a posture, as did Dugard. Your name is added to various black lists, and doors once open are quietly closed. If the words used touched enough raw nerves, you become a target of invective and epithets. In my case, this visibility meant being called ‘an anti-Semite,’ even ‘a notorious anti-Semite,’ and on occasion ‘a self-hating Jew.’ Strong Zionist pressures have now been brought to induce legislative bodies in the United States to brand advocacy of BDS or harsh criticism of Israel as prohibited form of ‘hate speech.’ In April of this year, pressures broad to bear by the British Jewish Board of Deputies led the University of Southampton to cancel a major academic conference on the Israel/Palestine conflict.

In relation to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, the clarifying/offending words are ‘apartheid,’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ ‘settler colonialism,’ and ‘annexation.’ The UN evades such invasions of light by speaking of Israeli ‘occupation’, as if a static reality without history and without challenging certain strong normative tendencies, including the criminalization of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, the delegitimation of colonialism, and the unlawfulness of annexation (as in Jerusalem by legal diktat and the West Bank by the de facto settlement phenomenon).

It was my experience that using words that connect the realities with the norms changes the discourse that is used by some of those at the UN and in the media, especially among those who seek genuinely to understand the significance of what is actually happening. Right language encourages right action. What is right language follows from how convincingly the word links to the reality being pointed to, and whether ideological obstacles can be overcome. The weakness of Israel’s position from the perspective of controversy is being expressed by their avoidance of substantive debate, for instance, challenging the labeling of occupation as apartheid, and recourse instead to character assassination of those who dared to connect these dots.

I feel that Israel is losing this struggle to obscure the true nature of their activities, and its devastating effects on Palestinian lives and rights. Whether this will mean that Israel will alter its policies is far less clear, and certainly not assured, and the outcome of the 2015 Israeli elections and formation of the new coalition government would suggest that the most extremist Israeli government ever has been installed under the leadership of Netanyahu and the Likud Party.

Nothing should be more shocking to Western sensibilities than the appointment of Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home Party as the new Minister of Justice. Ms. Shaked, then a member of the Knesset, became globally notorious after her post during the Israeli attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014 in which she called the entire Palestinian population the “enemy” that “should be destroyed.” Leaving no room for doubt, she went on to say that even “its elderly and and its women” should not be spared, and the killing of Palestinian mothers is justified because they give birth “to little snakes.” Ali Abunimah asks rhetorically, “If Shaked’s post does not meet the legal definition of genocide then nothing does.”

What is as shocking as these sentiments of Shaked is the silence of the Western media and leaders in the face of such an appointment in the only democracy in the region. Imagine the self-righteous angry posturing from liberals in the West if Hamas dared to select such a personality from their ranks to serve as the Minister of Justice. As it is, the Hamas Covenant is invoked to confirm genocidal sentiments although subsequent behavior and political initiatives have moved in a far more accommodating direction. What is at stake is the discriminatory manner of either noticing or not noticing the elevation of adherents of ‘genocide’ to the pinnacles of state power. This two-way approach to language is fully displayed in the political discourse surrounding the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Source: www.foreignpolicyjournal.com

Karen Leigh The Wall Street Journal The revolution that consumed Tunisia in 2011 ignited the Arab Spring. It also helped revive the Arab novel. After Tunisian ruler Zine El Abedine Ben Ali was deposed, Shukri Mabkhout, an academic and the president of Tunisia’s Manouba University, was inspired to write his first book. The notion of … Continued

  Israel will cry foul, but its suspension from international soccer really could be a game changer. Gideon Levy Haaretz The truth must be told from the outset: I hope Israel is suspended from FIFA. On May 29, a move might be made that could become a game changer. It could start a chain reaction … Continued

The Sahrawi refugees have lived in desert camps in Tindouf, south-western Algeria, since fleeing their homes in the contested territory of Western Sahara nearly 40 years ago. They rely almost wholly on outside assistance, including food rations. The staple food they receive — mostly dried items including cereals and pulses, supplemented by some fresh vegetables — has barely changed over the years. But one refugee in the camp has been doing her bit to try to introduce more variety into their diet.

Haha Ahmed Kaid Salah, a 46-year-old mother of six, is a foodie. She devours TV cooking shows, including Masterchef, and scours the internet for recipe ideas. Her favorite TV chefs include Britain’s Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay, and Egyptian-born Chef Osama, a celebrity on Dubai television.

She dreams of baking exotic breads, croissants, donuts and cupcakes. But from her Saharan desert home in Boujdour refugee camp, in Tindouf, south-western Algeria, she knows that there are limitations to what she can achieve.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

As long ago as 1998, Edward Said reminded the world that acting as if Palestinians were equally responsible with Israelis for the persisting struggle of the two peoples was not only misleading, but exhibited a fundamental in misunderstanding of the true reality facing the two peoples: “The major task of the American or Palestinian intellectual of the left is to reveal the disparity between the so-called two sides, which appears to be in perfect balance, but are not in fact. To reveal that this is an oppressed and an oppressor, a victim and a victimizer, and unless we recognize that, we’re nowhere.” [Interview with Bruce Robbins published in Social Text (1998).] I would rephrase Said’s statement by substituting ‘any engaged citizen and morally sensitive intellectual’ for ‘the American or Palestinian intellectual of the left.’ We do not need to be on the left to expose the cruel hypocrisy of suppressing gross disparities of circumstances, or more to the point, blocking out the multiple diplomatic, military, material, and psychological advantages enjoyed by Israel as compared to the Palestine. “It is elementary, my dear Watson!” as Sherlock Holmes so often exclaimed, or at least it should be.

A poster of Palestinian scholar and activist Edward W. Said pasted onto the annexation wall Israel has illegally constructed in the West Bank (Justin McIntosh/Wikimedia Commons)
Unfortunately, a principal instrument of the mind numbing diplomacy of the United States is precisely aimed at avoiding any acknowledgement of the disparity that at the core of the encounter. As a result, the American public is confused as to what it is reasonable to expect from the two sides and how to interpret the failure of negotiations to get anywhere time and again. This failure is far from neutral. It is rather the disparity that has done the most damage to peace prospects ever since 1967: This pattern of delay has kept the Palestinians in bondage while allowing the Israelis build and create armed communities on occupied Palestinian land that was supposedly put aside for the future Palestinian state.

Beyond this appeal to intellectuals, Said’s message should be understood by everyone everywhere, and not just by Americans and Palestinians, although these are the two populations most responsible for the prolonged failure to produce a peace based on justice. Elsewhere, except possibly in parts of Western Europe, such a discourse as to shared responsibility for the ongoing struggle is not so relevant because the ugly forms of Israeli exploitation of the Palestinian ordeal have become increasingly transparent in recent years. For decades, Europeans gave Israel the benefit of the doubt, partly reflecting a sense of empathy for the Jewish people as victims of the Holocaust without giving much attention to the attendant displacement of the indigenous population of Palestine. Such an outlook, although still influential, loses its tenability as time passes.

Beyond this, there are increasing expressions of grassroots solidarity with the Palestinian struggle by most peoples in the world. It is a misfortune of the Palestinians that most political leaders in the world are rarely moved to act to overcome injustice, and are far more responsive to hegemonic structures that control world politics and their perception of narrowly conceived national interests. This pattern has become most vividly apparent in the Arab world where the people scream when Israel periodically launches its attacks on Gazan civilian society while their governments smile quietly or avert their eyes as the bombs drop and the hospitals fill up.

In Israel, the argument as to balance also has little resonance as Israelis, if they pause to wonder at all, tend to blame the Palestinians for failing to accept past Israeli conflict-resolving proposals initiatives made over the years. Israelis mostly believe that the Barak proposals at Camp David in 2000 and the Sharon ‘disengagement’ from Gaza in 2005 demonstrated Tel Aviv’s good faith. Even Netanyahu, at least when he is not seeking reelection, and is speaking for the benefit of an American audience disingenuously claims Israel’s continuing dedication to a peace process based on seeking a two-state solution while he explains diplomatic gridlock by contending that lacks a Palestinian partner in the search for peace, and never deigns to mention the settlement archipelago as an obstacle.

Looked at objectively, by assessing behavior and apparent motivation, it is the Palestinians that have no partner for genuine peace negotiations, and should have stopped long ago acting as if Israel was such a partner. That is, Israel inverts the Said disparity, contending that the public should point its finger of blame at Palestine, not Israel. Of course, this is hasbara in its impurest form. Israel never made a peace proposal that offered Palestinians a solution based on national and sovereign equality and sensitive to Palestinian rights under international law. And as for Sharon’s purported disengagement from Gaza, it was justified at the time in Israel as a way to deflect international pressures building to pursue a diplomatic solution and it was managed as a withdrawal that didn’t loosen the grip of effective control, leaving Gaza as occupied and more vulnerable than it was when the IDF soldiers patrolled the streets. Since 2005, the people of Gaza have suffered far more from Israel’s military domination than in all the years following 1967 when occupation commenced, and it should be clear, this outcome was not a reaction to Hamas and rockets. Hamas has repeatedly sought and upheld ceasefires that Israel has consistently violated, and offered long-term arrangements for peaceful coexistence that Israel and the United States have refused to even acknowledge.

Where the equivalence argument is so influential is with the Obama administration and among liberal Zionists, including such NGOs as J Street and Peace Now that are critical of Israel for blocking progress toward a two-state solution. It is a blindfold that obscures the structural reality of the relationship between the two sides, and believes that if Israel would make some small adjustments in their occupation policy, especially in relation to settlements, and if the Palestinians would do the same with respect to refugees and accepting Israel as a Jewish state, then a negotiated peace would follow as naturally as day follows night. In effect, Israel is expected to curtail unlawful settlement activity in exchange for Palestine suspending its rights under international law affecting the situation of several million Palestinian refugees. As is widely known, Jews from anywhere in the world have an unconditional right to immigrate to Israel, whereas Palestinian living abroad with deep residence roots in the country are almost totally banished from Israel including if their purpose is to resume residence so as to live with close family members.

In Ramallah back in March 2013, and speaking to a Palestinian gathering, President Obama did forcefully say that “The Palestinians deserve an end to occupation and the daily indignities that come with it,” and this will require “a state of their own.” Obama even then acknowledged “that the status quo isn’t really a status quo, because the situation on the ground continues to evolve in a direction that makes it harder to reach a two-state solution.” Such a display of circumlocution (“continues to evolve in a direction”) so as to avoid clearing mentioning Israel’s continuous encroachment on the land set aside by the international consensus, is for a discerning reader all that one needs to know. The unwillingness to challenge frontally Israel’s unlawful and obstructive behavior is underscored by Obama’s reassurances given to a separate Israeli audience in Jerusalem on the same day that he spoke guardedly to the Palestinian, with such phrases as “America’s unwavering commitment,” “unbreakable bonds,” “our alliance is eternal, it is forever,” “unshakeable support,” and “your greatest friend.” No such language of reassurance was offered the Palestinians. His two speeches left no doubt that Israel retained its upper hand, and could continue to rest easy with this status quo of simmering conflict that had worked so long in its favor.

The Secretary of State, John Kerry, ploughs the same field, calling on both sides to make “painful concessions.” Obama in his Jerusalem speech illustrated what this concretely might mean, assuming that the two sides were equally called upon to act if peace were to be achieved. The Palestinians were called upon to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, while Israel was politely reminded in language so vague as to be irrelevant, “Israelis must recognize that settlement activity is counterproductive.” To ask Palestinians to recognize Israel is to affirm as legitimate the discriminatory regime under which the 20 percent Palestinian minority lives, while asking the Israelis to recognize that the counterproductive character of settlement expansion is to misunderstand Israeli intentions. If their goal is to avoid the establishment of a Palestinian state then being ‘counterproductive’ is exactly the result being sought. Besides asking the Palestinians to abridge their rights while requesting Israel to admit that their settlement activity is not helping the diplomatic process is to appeal to their self-interest, and avoid a demand to cease and reverse an unlawful, likely criminal, activity. The false equivalence is a metaphor for the deformed framework of diplomacy that has unfolded largely as a result of the United States being accepted as the presiding intermediary, a role for which it is totally unsuited to play. This lack of qualification is admitted by its own frequent declarations of a high profile strategic and ideological partnership with Israel, not to mention the interference of a domestic Israeli lobby that controls Congress and shapes the media allocation of blame and praise in relation to the conflict.

Kerry expresses the same kind of one-sidedness in the guise of fairness when he calls on the parties to make compromises: “…we seek reasonable compromises on tough complicated, emotional, and symbolic issues. I think reasonable compromises has to be a keystone of all of this effort.” What kind of compromises are the Palestinians supposed to make, given that they are already confined to less and less of the 22 percent of the British Mandatory territory of Palestine, and since 1988 have sought no greater proportion of the land? Kerry’s approach overlooks, as well, the defiant refusal of Israel to act in good faith in relation to the 1967 Security Council Resolution 242 that called upon Israel to withdraw without claiming territory through its use of force or by taking advantage of being the occupying power. In the interim, while being unwilling to do anything concrete to implement its view of decades that Israeli settlement activity is ‘counterproductive’ the United States proclaims and proves its readiness to oppose any Palestinian attempt to gain access to the UN to express its grievances, an effort which Obama denigrated as “unilateral attempts to bypass negotiations through the UN.” The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly made clear that it favors a resumption of direct negotiations with Israel, despite being at a great disadvantage within such a framework, and insists persuasively that there is no inconsistency between its seeking greater participation in international institutions and its continued readiness to work toward a diplomatic solution of the conflict. If Israel and the United States were sincerely dedicated to a sustainable peace, they would encourage this Palestinian turn away from violent resistance, and their increased effort to push their cause by persuasion rather than missiles, to advance their cause by gaining respectability through joining institutions and adhering to lawmaking treaties instead of being confined in a prolonged rightless lockdown euphemistically disguised as ‘occupation.’

In the end, we cannot see the situation for what it is without reverting to the Said insistence that the relation between oppressor and oppressed is a paramount precondition for sustainable peace. Unless the structural distortion and illegitimacy is acknowledged, no viable political arrangement will be forthcoming. From this perspective, the Kerry emphasis on ‘reasonable compromise’ is as mind numbingly irrelevant as it would have been in seeking a peaceful end to racial struggle in apartheid South Africa by demanding that ANC and Nelson Mandela become amenable to compromise with their racist overlords. Peace will come to Israel and Palestine, and be sustained, if and only if the oppressor becomes ready to dismantle its oppressive regime by withdrawing, not merely by disengaging Gaza style. At present, such a readiness is not to be found on the Israeli side, and so long as this is so, direct negotiations and these periodic calls issued by Washington to resume direct talks have one main effect—to free Israel to realize its ambition to establish ‘Greater Israel’ while keeping the Palestinians in chains. This ambition has not yet been explicitly embraced by the Israeli leadership, although only those who refuse to notice what is happening on the ground can fail to notice this expansionist pattern. Israel’s new coalition government even more rightest and pro-settler than its predecessor makes Israel’s ambition to end the conflict by self-serving unilateral action less and less a well-kept state secret.

Source: www.foreignpolicyjournal.com

When the Rev. Mitri Raheb’s Greek Orthodox grandfather was orphaned at age 8 in Palestine’s Bethlehem, Lutherans took care of him.
For the past 27 years, Raheb, 52, has served as senior pastor of the 165-year-old Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in the West Bank city, about six miles south of Jerusalem.
“There are many people in this country who would not know that there are Christians in Palestine,” Raheb said in a phone interview on Wednesday while traveling from Illinois to Pennsylvania. “Two percent (of Palestinians) are Christian.”
On Sunday at 4 p.m., Raheb will speak at Tellus 360, 24 E. King St. His talk is being presented by Lancaster’s Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. A freewill offering will be received.
An Arab Christian who visits the United States three or four times a year, Raheb will share his perspective of life in Palestine under the Israeli Occupation.
“It’s important for (Americans) to know that the church was not founded by missionaries, but that there has been an active Christian presence in Palestine for 2,000 years, despite all the wars, oppression and turmoil that our region has been going through.”
Raheb also will share his vision for the Diyar (“house” or “homeland” in Arabic) Consortium, a Lutheran-based organization that serves all Palestinians. He is founding president of the 10-year-old consortium, which includes the Dar Al-Kalima Health and Wellness Center and the Dar Al-Kalima University College of Arts and Culture, both in Bethlehem.
“It’s the only university in Palestine that focuses on the arts, contemporary art, design, dance, theater, music, graphic design, jewelry making,” says Raheb.
“This week one of our students will be receiving an award for best documentary film at a convention in Abu Dhabi. (The film) is about the process Palestinians have to go through to go to work in Israel. Going through check points at 2 or 3 a.m. Sometimes it takes two or three hours to cross check points to get to work on time.”
Raheb’s visit to Lancaster was arranged by Mary Ann Johnson, wife of the late Rev. David L. Johnson, senior pastor of Holy Trinity from 1998-2005. They met when David Johnson was serving the Lutheran World Federation’s Department of World Service, overseeing the operation of Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives, which served Palestinians and others.
“I’ve known him since 1989, when he was a young pastor in Bethlehem with this wonderful vision of what church ministry can be for community,” says Mrs. Johnson.
“As the years went on, with the walls going up, he recognizes the continuing tradition of a culture that is becoming jeopardized. So many Palestinians, especially Christians, are emigrating. He gives Palestinians, especially the young, hope that their lives can go on.
“He’s just a wonderful example of a visionary, with all these organization that he runs. He is the third-largest employer in Bethlehem.”
Raheb co-founded and serves as president of Chicago’s Bright Stars of Bethlehem, a nonprofit ministry created in 2003 by a group of Americans who visited Palestine to support the Diyar Consortium.
He also is the author of 16 books, including his latest, “Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes.” Amazon recently listed it as its No. 1 bestseller in the Christian liberation theology category.
His hope is that when Americans visit the Holy Land, they will stop by the church or school “and meet some Palestine Christians face to face and hear their stories.”
One of those stories is about the first Palestinian female soccer team, started 15 years ago by a young woman at the Diyar Center.
“To see women, Christian and Muslim, forming one team is to see how we can empower women through sports. Fifteen years ago, it was totally unthinkable that women would play soccer because some come from refugee camps or remote villages. Now they are in the newspaper every day. Through that, we were able to transform the image of women in Palestine.”

Source: lancasteronline.com

The legendary blue bra stencil that was once omnipresent in the streets of Cairo will now be exhibited as a silkscreen print at Montreal’s Station 16 gallery. The artwork, created by Bahia Shehab as part of her series A Thousands Times No: The Visual History of Lam-Alif, was created in the aftermath of the brutal stripping and beating of a woman by the Egyptian military in December 2010, which revealed her blue bra. It was an incident that remained engraved in history as a symbol of military abuse.     

An icon of Egypt’s revolutionary graffiti, the stencil piece, titled No to Stripping the People was selected by the Canadian art gallery among 15 other pieces from street artists across the world who will be part of the A Global Street Art Story exhibit. The project, launched in December 2013, aims to create 16 silkscreen prints with 16 artists from around the world to promote the street art culture worldwide and facilitate exchanges among Montreal’s local street artists with their counterparts worldwide. 

Source: www.cairoscene.com

Pope Francis praised Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, as an “angel of peace” during a meeting at the Vatican on Saturday.

The Vatican also expressed hope that Israel and the Palestinians would resume talks “to find a just and lasting solution to the conflict” that has roiled the Middle East for decades.

The encounter came days after the Vatican announced that it would sign a treaty recognizing the “ state of Palestine,” tacitly endorsing the Palestinians’ bid for sovereignty.

Abbas is in Rome for Sunday’s canonization of two Arab nuns who lived in Ottoman-ruled Palestine in the 19th century.

Abbas also met with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and “great satisfaction was expressed” over the bilateral accord reached on Wednesday, which concerns “various essential aspects of the life and the activity of the Catholic Church” in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, the Vatican said in a statement.

The treaty will be signed “in the near future,” the Vatican statement said.

The Vatican reiterated its hope that “Israelis and Palestinians may take with determination courageous decisions to promote peace.”

Interfaith dialogue was also emphasized as a means to combat terrorism in the Middle East.

Abbas’ meeting with the pope ended with an exchange of gifts. The pope gave Abbas a medallion that he said depicted an angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war.” It was appropriate, the pope added, since “you are an angel of peace.”

Abbas gave the pope relics of the two new saints.

Source: www.dispatch.com

The proliferation of Arab projects being developed with European producers and filmmakers at this year’s Cannes market suggests that despite political turmoil, and the escalation of anti-Muslim sentiment in France after the January attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, strong ties between the cultures are being forged.

Underlining this broad artistic and financial accord is the Arab Cinema Center, the first Arab film industry umbrella group to attend Cannes, comprising some 17 film outfits and orgs from eight Arab and European countries.

“We need to do more work as Arab filmmakers,” notes Egyptian helmer Marwan Hamed, who is bullish on the Arab Cinema Center being at Cannes. “We have to do more lobbying and marketing for what we are (creating).”

The Center, which will act as a focal point for the international film industry to engage with what is being touted as a New Arab Wave, is coming to Cannes thanks to marketing and theatrical distribution company Mad Solutions, based in Cairo and Abu Dhabi.

Mad, headed by film analyst Alaa Karkouti, is experimenting with social-media-based strategies — connecting potential ticket buyers to films via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, for example — to boost box office prospects among home audiences for Arab movies.

The group has had some encouraging results, most recently with Mohamed Khan’s female-empowerment melodrama “Factory Girl,” which was a hit across the Middle East, including Egypt. The film also scored a rare theatrical release in Sweden. Mad has been behind such successful releases as Jordanian first-timer Naji Abu Nowar’s Bedouin Western “Theeb,” and “Warda,” touted as a “Blair Witch”-like Arab chiller.

The challenge in expanding the Arab film industry’s international horizons is that “it’s really rare to find a project that can interest audiences both in the Arab world and in Europe,” says Mohamed Hefzy, topper of Egyptian shingle Film Clinic, which is participating in the Cinema Center.

At Cannes, there are many Arab projects suitable for global cross-pollination.

For instance, “Degrade,” directed by Palestinian twins Arab and Tarzan Abunasser, is a comedy that focuses on a group of women stuck in a Gaza hair salon while mayhem breaks out across the street. The pic, a joint effort between Arab and French producers, unspools in Critics’ Week at Cannes.

“Degrade” made the rounds of the European co-production mart circuit, where it tapped into France’s Breizh Film Fund, among others. Produced by Rashid Abdelhamid of the Jordan-based Made in Palestine Project in tandem with Marie Legrand and Rani Massalha of Paris-based Les Films du Tambour, the picture will be offered at Cannes by French sales company Elle Driver. The movie also circulated on the Middle East festival scene, where it was adopted by the Doha Film Institute.

Another production headed to Cannes is “Clash,” an Islamic fundamentalism-themed thriller by Egyptian auteur Mohamed Diab (“Cairo 678”). France’s National Center of Cinematography and the Moving Image announced that the film will be supported by its Cinemas du Monde fund, which had not given coin to an Egyptian pic in many years.

Paris-based producer Daniel Ziskind recently boarded “Clash” as Film Clinic’s European representative. Hefzy and French producer-distributor Eric Lagesse, whose Pyramide is co-producing — and will be pre-selling the film in the Cannes market — both see the Charlie Hebdo attacks as adding urgency to movie, set inside a police wagon in Cairo packed with both pro- and anti-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators. Franco-German network Arte also has joined the production, which will start shooting in September.

Another Islamic fundamentalism-themed project being set up as a joint Arab-European effort is the big-budget “Assassins,” about Hassan-i-Sabbah, the charismatic 11th century leader whose cult, which assassinated its political rivals, is considered the forerunner of Al-Qaeda and Isis. Hamed (“The Yacoubian Building”) is developing the film.

“ ‘Assassins’ is a new territory I’m entering. It’s an epic, it’s historical and it’s political,” says the director, who will certainly need European coin to put his vision on the screen. And, judging by the way French and Arab filmmakers are eagerly forming alliances, it shouldn’t be long before cameras roll.

Film Clinic’s Hefzy sees the rise in co-productions as being enabled by a cross-cultural awareness.

“People in Europe are more interested in what’s happening in the Arab world,” he says. “Or maybe Arab producers are getting more guidance from all the co-production markets they go to, so they know how to approach European funds and European producers.”

Source: variety.com