Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Anjuman Rahman
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Afro-Palestinians face ‘double the harassment and double the racism’
Nisreen Salem is an Afro-Palestinian from Egypt who has been mocked due to her skin colour and hair for most of her young life. The 25 year old is one of at least 400 Afro-Palestinians from Nigeria, Egypt, Chad, Senegal and Sudan who live within the walls of occupied...
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Meet the Syrian refugees shaking up the British halloumi industry
Raghid Sandouk escaped from his home in Damascus and brought his wife and three children to safety in Britain. “We never thought of living in the UK,” he told me. “Leaving was not an easy decision to make.” However, a car bomb outside his office left him with little...
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‘The world doesn’t care when the victims are Palestinians, they will keep selling weapons to Israel,’ says activist
It was during the late afternoon hours of 29 September 2021 when Basel Al-Adra was being chased by a group of masked Israeli settlers with bats and rocks. They were screaming racist slurs. A few minutes earlier, the journalist and activist had been recording a mob of almost 80 to...
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Cooking helps them through the crisis days in Gaza, say the founders of its first cookery school
The spicy aroma and pots bubbling away are part of the daily routine that helps to see Nour Al-Batta and her husband Ahmed Taha through the crisis days in the besieged Gaza Strip. Moreover, they help other Palestinians too. As the founders of Smile Kitchen Culinary Arts Academy in 2017,...
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Disabled, underage or critically-ill in hospital, Israel soldiers’ abuse with no limits
Al-Ajlouni, 25, suffered from a state of shock, as well as severe pain in the neck and shoulders following his abuse at the hands of the Israeli officers....
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Kidnapped Syrian boy returned to his family
The news that Fawaz had been reunited with his family had people all over the world expressing their relief on Twitter following up with the hashtag 'Save Fawaz Al-Qutayfan'....
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Key to Return: A provocative look at the lives of Palestinians living under occupation
“Take your boots off my son now!” roars Taslima. A pin-drop silence instantly falls over the auditorium. “Don’t point your guns in their faces. They’ve done nothing wrong!” she pleads with the Israeli soldier. “Don’t shout, Taslima. It won’t help,” Ahmed begs. “My old mother is in a wheelchair, sick...
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This Palestinian oud player performs on the roofs of homes facing demolition
Canaan Ghoul stood tall and proud on the roof of the Salehiyah family home as it awaited demolition by the Israelis recently. He played traditional Palestinian folk songs on his oud while residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied Jerusalem sang along. It was a sight for sore...
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Nine years in Australia’s immigration detention regime, Mehdi Ali is battling suicidal thoughts
Mehdi Ali was only 15 when he made the dangerous journey to Australia by boat in 2013, fleeing persecution in Iran, as members of the Ahwazi Arab minority. “Since then, for nine years now, I’ve been detained under cruel circumstances in offshore and onshore detention centres,” said Mehdi. Marking yet another...
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Meet Gaza’s first national amputee football team training for the Amputee Football World Cup
“It all started about a year and a half ago,” recalled Numan Abu Shamla, Secretary General of the Palestine Amputee Football Association. “They are the first Palestinian national football team made up entirely of amputees, who lost their limbs under different unfortunate circumstances as a result of the Israeli siege.” The...
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It’s time to talk about mental health and healing in the Middle East, new Palestine start-up says
When lifelong worrier Sondos Mleitat was forced to discreetly sneak across her university corridors to visit the mental health counsellor and seek help, it was the prompt she needed to realise the gap in the Palestinian market for services that are easy to access and culturally sensitive. As an architectural...
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Miss Universe contestants accused of ‘Israelising’ Palestinian culture
Miss Universe contestants accused of 'Israelising' Palestinian culture...
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'The colours that best describe life in prison, in Palestine, is black,' says Cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh
Mohammad Sabaaneh, a political cartoonist, endured two weeks of his detention in solitary confinement before being held in an Israeli prison for five months. He says the Israeli government cracks down on Palestinians who use art to oppose occupation....
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I want the world to share the Palestinian experience through my book, says Swedish journalist
Swedish journalist Lena Fredriksson’s account of everyday life under Israel’s West Bank occupation is informed and passionate. All Quiet on the West Bank? Living under prolonged occupation pulls no punches in its critique of Israeli policies, including the imprisonment of children in military prisons and checkpoints which restrict freedom...
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The Sinsila Project sees Palestinian beekeepers taking over East Jerusalem rooftops
Rooftops in occupied East Jerusalem are being used by Palestinian women for innovative beekeeping and gardening to combat the challenges of life in the cramped, cobbled neighbourhoods of the Old City. With unemployment and poverty rates surging due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Sinsila Project, founded by Tariq Nassar,...
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Artists nominate Palestinian refugee camp for UNESCO world heritage status
During the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe), the nascent Israeli army occupied more than 40 Palestinian villages to the west of Jerusalem. The residents were driven out of their homes and took refuge in what is now known as the occupied West Bank. Up to 15,000 of these refugees settled in Dheisheh...
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UAE, Morocco to take part in Miss Universe in Israel amid calls for boycott
Candidates from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Morocco will take part in the Miss Universe pageant in Israel in December, ignoring calls for a boycott. The 70th Miss Universe competition will be held in the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat on 12 December, confirmed the Israeli Ministry of...
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MEMO in conversation with Jason Sherman
Watch our live interview of Jewish Canadian Playwright and Film Director Jason Sherman...
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Cyclists travelled 2,400km to spell out ‘Refugees Welcome’ in the UK
Breaking a Guinness World Record for the largest GPS drawing ever created, the pair also raised money for charity projects which support asylum seekers ...
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Know Your Rights and Claim Them: A Guide for Youth
Whether it is Israeli soldiers assualting and detaining groups of Palestinian schoolchildren, Syrian refugee children stranded in camps in sub zero temperatures without protection and food, or Uyghur minors separated from their parents and forced into state orphanages, there is plenty of evidence that the rights of children are...
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We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance
“Walking through the town square in El-Bireh, I’d noticed a little Palestinian boy selling Wrigleys — they call it taxi gum — five shekels for five pieces. The child was maybe ten years old and not well kept. His red shirt was too small for him, and was torn...
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The Gilboa Prison escape meant a lot for our freedom struggle, says Gaza sand sculptor
Using one of the world’s most abundant and renewable elements, Palestinian sand artist Rana Al-Ramlawi highlights the Palestinian cause and Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip in her work. Based in Tel Al-Hawa, an area of Gaza devastated by Israel’s bombardment in May, the 26 year old creates ephemeral...
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‘The air we breathe is being weaponised to attack people on multiple scales,’ says Prof Eyal Weizman
Death, destruction and endless streams of refugees have become a common theme in the documentation of war, to the point of becoming almost numbing in their repetitiveness. However, another deadly killer dominates those areas of conflict; one which doesn’t immediately meet the eye. Forensic Architecture’s Director, Professor Eyal Weizman, exposes in...
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‘Western media has worked overtime to demonise the valiant people of Afghanistan,’ says Taliban leader
In the early hours of Tuesday, the Taliban celebrated the departure of the last US plane of soldiers and their ambassador from Afghanistan, after a 20-year US-led occupation of the country. Jubilant members of the Taliban paraded the streets of Kabul, as their leaders marked what they called Afghanistan’s “independence...