There isn't a week that goes by that I don't think of the events of this week, sixteen years ago. I recall, as though it were yesterday, as Israeli soldiers drove tanks through the streets of Ramallah, crushing cars and beautiful trees in their path before stopping in front of my building on Library Street.
on March 22, 2018Dr. Farouq Ahmad Zuaiter passed away on February 15, 2018. “Abu Abbas” as he was referred to often was a highly respected financial executive, investment manager and a significant contributor to the economic growth of the Palestinian economy in the face of Israeli occupation.
on February 26, 201816-year-old Palestinian Ahed Tamimi hasn’t seen a day of freedom. She's spent her youth protesting a foreign army that has jailed, shot, and killed her unarmed relatives. After defending her home from Israeli invasion, she now faces years in prison. Imagine if this was your reality.
on January 17, 2018Sometimes 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, 2018A 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, 2017Israeli bombs. Israeli drones. Israeli-imposed power cuts. And no way to leave. Everyday life in Gaza is shaped by Israeli policy, which has turned the coastal enclave into a maximum security prison where the inmates are fathers, mothers and children whose only crime is being born in Gaza.
on July 19, 2017“I am Palestinian and I’m going to stay Palestinian forever. It doesn’t matter where I live or what passport I carry.” Displaced by Israel during the Naksa in 1967, Manal grew up as a refugee in Jordan. Today, Manal lives in Brooklyn and remains active on Palestinian, undocumented, Muslim, and Arab women's rights locally.
on June 26, 2017“We will never stop fighting for Palestine, because Palestine is everything.” Eman Abdelhadi still remembers her childhood nightmares of Israeli soldiers executing her — nightmares that surfaced after watching footage of the Second Intifada. It was the first indication that her life as a Palestinian was seen as disposable.
on June 24, 2017“It was the worst scene ever when we were pushed out [by Zionist forces]. Only God knows how much I cried.” A Nakba survivor, 86-year-old Ibrahim lived through displacement in 1948 and has endured 50 years of Israeli occupation.
on June 6, 2017