IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding
His food tours are on hold but chef Fadi Kattan is on a mission to preserve the traditions of Palestinian cuisine
on October 1, 2021
Photo Essays
Ramadan is a sacred time of year for devout Muslims. The holy month began days after the Israeli military killed 62 protesters in Gaza’s Great Return March. Despite the sorrow over the killings, and despite the ongoing suffering Palestinians in Gaza experience due to the Israeli-imposed blockade, four hours daily of electricity, lack of drinking water, and chronic unemployment — families in Gaza still mark Ramadan with devotion, and with dignity.
on June 14, 2018
Sometimes the way to really figure out who you are, what you’re supposed to be, where you go next, is to drop everything and find your way back home. With apologies to Mr. Wolfe: You can and should go home again—back to the beginning, to the place that made you and set you on your course. If you’re lucky, like Bay Area chef Reem Assil, it’s a journey that might even touch a place inside you that you couldn’t have reached on your own.
on January 2, 2018
Reem Assil on her Muhammara dip: “Muhammara is my homecoming. I discovered this addicting dip as an adult and fell in love with it when I went back to Syria in 2010. At the time, I was soul-searching in my father’s homeland and started to open my eyes to all the richness of my Syrian identity, particularly through the food and hospitality."
on December 18, 2017
Videos
A Palestinian-owned bakery with a social justice edge. Loved by the community and widely celebrated. Attacked by Breitbart and right-wing Israel supporters. Reem's California is standing strong to provide locally-sourced food that brings freedom seekers of all stripes together.
on November 24, 2017
Tucked away amid the palm trees in one of the world's oldest cities, an unadorned white warehouse sits on a dusty plot of land. Inside, air conditioners hum as workers hover over elevated beds of dirt. They methodically pick out the pearly white domes peeking out from the compost as a strip of neon lights shines overhead.
on June 16, 2016
Videos
"6 miles, 9 miles, 3 miles. It's all the same." For fishermen in Gaza, Israeli gunfire, harassment, intimidation, and arrest remain constant threats to their daily lives. Whether 9 miles or 3 miles, the restricted area simply doesn't have enough fish.
on June 8, 2016
Fishing has been in 44-year-old Musa Jurban’s family for at least three generations. “My father was a fisherman and my grandfather was also a fisherman,” Jurban told Middle East Eye. “It was passed down from grandfather to father to son.” “But if my children said they wanted to be fishermen, I wouldn’t want that,” he said.
on May 20, 2016
Mahmoud al-Hasnat, 28, had hoped to find himself standing in front of a camera while holding a microphone after graduating as a journalist from the Faculty of Information at the Palestine Polytechnic University. Instead, these days, he is standing with his brother Moath, 24, behind the window of a truck they designed and turned into a mobile food caravan they named Karmoshty, which in Arabic means “bite.”
on May 11, 2016