IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding
News Roundup
My parents and grandparents are refugees from 1948. My mother’s side is from Jaffa; my father’s side is from Haifa, Nazareth. My grandmother was pregnant with my mom when they were ethnically cleansed from Palestine, so I grew up in a small town in Western Massachusetts and I moved to...
on January 31, 2017
Literature
The Parachute Paradox, a new book from Palestinian author Steve Sabella, provides a unique insight into the individual pursuit of global citizenship through the author’s life story. Sabella begins in Jerusalem’s Old City, where he was born, and he quickly learns that only his unfettered imagination and bold spirit will enable him to see beyond his identity...
on December 21, 2016
Literature
Writing Balcony on the Moon allowed Barakat “to heal some of the hardships imposed” on her by her Palestinian identity while offering a poignant message on the importance of education for young women. “Freedom of education for all children, and opportunities for lifelong learning for all people are fundamental human needs not only for individuals, but also for humanity as a collective,” she says. “Educational empowerment for girls and women especially promise massive possibilities of positive change.”
on December 14, 2016
Op-Eds & Analysis
Earlier this August, Donald Trump dragged American political discourse to what most pundits agreed was a new low by suggesting that “Second Amendment people” would know what to do if Hillary Clinton were to impose rigorous controls on gun ownership...
on August 17, 2016
Op-Eds & Analysis
When Ben Ehrenreich started spending time in the West Bank in 2011—the award-winning writer even lived there between 2013 and 2014—he went, in part, on assignment for the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s. What he returned home with is The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine (June 14), a collection of revelatory anecdotes offering a pragmatic, somber look…
on July 20, 2016
Op-Eds & Analysis
More than 150 literary figures, including nine Pulitzer Prize winners, are calling for Israel to free an Israeli-Arab poet charged with inciting violence through social media. The open letter announced Tuesday in support of Dareen Tatour, who has been under house arrest since October, was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and Adalah-NY (The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel)…
on July 13, 2016
News Roundup
Identical twins who swap identities to keep their double out of jail; an Israeli settler caught in his own razor wire, too proud to allow himself to be helped down by a Palestinian; a little blond girl who defiantly raises her fist at soldiers twice her size—Ben Ehrenreich brings a novelist's touch to anecdotes that are often stranger than fiction in his new book.
on July 6, 2016
News Roundup
Last week Viet Thanh Nguyen, a professional associate of mine, became the fourth winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), joining Alice Walker, Richard Ford, and Junot Diaz. Besides the Pulitzer, his novel, “The Sympathizer,” won several other prestigious awards and made it to over 30 book-of-the-year lists, including The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
on June 22, 2016
News Roundup
With a flick of her wrist, Dareen Tatour turned a page in her notebook, smoothed the paper and began reading aloud in a slow, steady cadence. "The charges are like pieces of clothing. They brought me these clothes and forced me to wear them, from my toes to my head," she said, before bursting into excited laughter at the novelty of her work being translated into English.
on June 20, 2016