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Middle East Monitor
 

Amelia Smith

amyinthedesert

Amelia Smith is a writer and journalist based in London who has reported from across the Middle East and North Africa. In 2016 Amelia was a finalist at the Write Stuff writing competition at the London Book Fair. Her first book, “The Arab Spring Five Years On”, was published in 2016 and brings together a collection of authors who analyse the protests and their aftermath half a decade after they flared in the region.

 

Items by Amelia Smith

  • Does the new Islamic wing at the Louvre make or break stereotypes?

    At around five million, France has the largest population of Muslims of any country in Europe. Things haven’t always gone smoothly between its Muslim citizens and the government; incidents such as Sarkozy’s banning of the burqa last year infuriated people, leaving many wondering about the Islamic community’s place in...

  • Playing for Peace: The Rise of Classical Music in Occupied Palestine

    Playing instruments in the bathroom isn’t quite what you expect when you think of classical musicians, but this is exactly what Palestinian flute player Dalia Moukarker does to snatch a few moments of peace in her busy household. At 20, Dalia grew up in the village of Beit Jala,...

  • David Lean's Classic 'Lawrence of Arabia' Restored for 50th Anniversary

    Sweeping shots of the desert make the 800-mile railway line cutting through its sand look miniature. As a train braves the track and appears in the corner of the camera frame, it erupts into thick smoke and flames and the carriages topple to the ground. Thousands of men descend...

  • Britain in Palestine exhibition at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London

    Tucked into a corner of the Brunei Gallery in London are three share certificates in a display cabinet. One stands out as it is decorated with a beautiful blue border; all bear the familiar yellow-brown discolouration of age. Slightly creased in some places, perhaps from their journey from Palestine...

  • 5 Broken Cameras at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London

    The person in front of me flinches. Someone in the audience cannot even look at the screen, two people are crying. In an act of pure brutality, the camera captures a Palestinian protestor who is pulled to one side by the Israeli army and shot in the leg as...

  • Why Remembering the Nakba is important: A new Documentary Confronts Denial

    Amnon Neumann is wearing a blue shirt and large glasses. Despite the topic he presents his testimony slowly and gently to the spectators in front of him; he’s talking about The Nakba in 1948 when he and his fellow army commanders helped literally erase Palestinian villages from the map....

  • Syrian art flourishes in Lebanon as galleries in Damascus close

    In one of his drawings, Syrian political cartoonist Ali Ferzat has drawn a picture of Bashar Al Assad announcing reforms, but instead of speaking, Assad is blowing bubbles through a wand. “I use satire to draw dictators who use oppressive methods,” Ferzat told the Guardian earlier this year. “I try...

  • Photographs offer a new way to look at Gaza conflict

    Beyond Abbas’s pictures of Iranian revolutionaries burning a portrait of the Shah in 1978, and past the stereotypical images of veiled women with mobile phones, a collection of photographs at the back of a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum tell a subtle story. Sombre, grey, concrete watchtowers...

  • "Despite" Exhibition by Arts Canteen: 16 Contemporary Palestinian Artists Under one Roof

    Walls and checkpoints in occupied Palestine mean that artists from Gaza and the West Bank, though from the same country, may never actually meet each other; art, therefore, can offer a different form of engagement. “There is a lot of contact, certainly digital contact, through the arts organisations, who...

  • London a growing haven for contemporary Arab art

    As the bloody uprising in Syria continues to rage, Ayyam Gallery in Damascus does more than just show artwork; it has become a safe haven for artists. The gallery owners, cousins Khaled and Hisham Samawi, are helping them escape the violence in Syria and seek refuge in studios and...

  • 'In My Mother's Arms,' the story of Iraq's orphans

    A group of young boys gather around a TV set listening to the presenter as she delivers news of bombings in the Al Sadr neighbourhood of Baghdad, Iraq. Images of children wrapped in bandages and casts fill the screen; an injured child cries for his mother. The boys assembled in...

  • Film Review: Roadmap to Apartheid

    As South Africa’s apartheid system neared its end, the regime asked their long-term ally Israel for some advice. How could they boost their image in the West and sell themselves favourably to a part of the world who were becoming increasingly disenchanted with their oppressive rule? How was it...

  • Theatre Review: Facts

    On the back wall of a tiny room in West London, a telephone hangs patiently next to the door; to the left is a shelf on which a silver fan stands, and adjacent a two-way mirror. In the centre of the room is a table scattered with paper and...

  • Film Review: Occupation 101

    These days there are a number of documentaries and academic books that address the Israel Palestine conflict; many of them, like Occupation 101, reveal how Israeli policy in the region is tearing families apart, killing people and destroying homes. Yet the occupation is still raging in the Middle East;...

  • Film Review: When I Saw You

    It’s hard to recreate the 1960s with only a quarter of the budget you intended to shoot on. But that’s exactly what Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir did to film When I Saw You, a story set in 1967 when Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza were uprooted by...

  • Film Review: Gaza Calling

    The Tedious Occupation of Bureaucracy Six years ago Palestinian director Nahed Awwad, her husband and their four-week-old daughter were on the way to Germany from their home in the West Bank. Because he is not Palestinian the couple took separate lanes across the bridge leading out of the Occupied Territories...

  • Theatre Review: The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution

    The most disturbing part of Caryl Churchill’s The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution is the relevance its main themes have today. Set in a psychiatric hospital at the time of the Algerian war of liberation from colonialism, it explores the cognitive aftermath of torture on both victims...

  • Film Review: Apples of the Golan

    One villager cuts open an apple and presents to the camera the fruit before him. Inside, in a neat circle, are five pips – one for each point of the star on the Syrian flag. He explains that the apples growing in the Israeli settlements have six pips, one...

  • Film Review: Infiltrators

    The cameraman passes a microphone through a gap in the separation wall and a hand from the other side finds just enough space to take it; for one mother and daughter, talking through this crack is the only way they can communicate. When the wall was built, the family passed...

  • Film Review: Though I Know the River is Dry

    Qalandia, “I hate the word,” says the protagonist as he walks through the familiar metal grille that protects the crossing between the West Bank and Jerusalem in the occupied territories. The oppressive space and the dull colour are menacing. This scene is one of many in ‘Though I Know the...

  • Film Review: When the Boys Return

    Nadar Khallaf lays out colourful cards in the centre of the circle and asks each of the 12 young men surrounding him to pick two of them. A member of the group chooses one depicting a figure wearing a white blindfold, set against a red background. “This picture reminds...

  • In Egypt, socially conscious music festivals flourish

    “It’s kind of strange, but okay. You can’t help but dance- in an awkward fashion- but it was well worth it,” music lover Yahya Karali commented on a recent concert he attended by Amr 7a7a Figo and Sadat in London. Twenty-six year old musician Sadat (Al-Sadat Mohamed Ahmed) not only...

  • Bringing a taste of Egypt to London: Koshari Street, a street food experience

    In 2011, it was handed out to keep protestors in Tahrir Square going as they demonstrated against former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year rule; since 1950 Abou Tarek’s downtown restaurant, which serves up huge bowlfuls of the dish to four floors of customers in Cairo, has been one...

  • Who will be the next (televised) president of Palestine?

    Considering the Palestinians have only had two presidents in over 20 years, it’s no wonder they are taking it upon themselves to elect their own leader – or a televised version at least. In the West Bank’s answer to the Apprentice, Ma’an Network has launched The President, a reality...