Middle East Monitor Conversations

For the co-author of Tamimi's autobiography, meeting the outspoken Palestinian was an emotional rollercoaster When she was just 16 years old, Palestinian Ahed Tamimi became a household name when footage of her slapping an Israeli soldier went viral. She was later arrested and jailed by occupation forces. She has since detailed her experience and the trauma that followed in her tell all book They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom. MEMO speaks to co-author and Palestinian-American journalist Dena Takruri about meeting the lady she calls 'a once in a generation voice'.Dena Takruri is a senior presenter at AJ+ and one of the channel’s founding members. She hosts 'Direct From with Dena Takruri', which has been honoured with many awards, including the prestigious National Edward R. Murrow Award.Dena has reported internationally from the occupied West Bank, the North Korean border, South Africa and in Europe covering the refugee crisis. Domestically, she’s covered presidential elections, immigration and a wide array of social justice and civil liberties 

Saleh established the Palestine Museum US after noticing there were no Palestinian museums in the Americas but there were over 70 Israeli galleriesIn this week’s conversation we speak with the visionary businessman Faisal Saleh, who is behind the Palestine Museum US, as he embarks on a tour to bring the Nakba and history of Israel’s expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians from their land to the world.  The Palestine Museum opened its doors in Connecticut in 2018 after Saleh decided to focus on creating an institution to tell the story of the Nakba. Saleh’s roots are in  the Palestinian village Salama, five miles east of Jaffa.The exhibition is billed as the boldest presentation of the ethnic cleansing and dispossession of the Palestinian people ever seen in the West.Born in 1951, Saleh is the youngest of 11 children. His mother gave birth to him in the family’s crowded, rented room in El Bireh - a stark contrast to the comfortable home the family had enjoyed in Salama. In Salama, Saleh’s father, Ahmad Saleh, was a well-established landowner and farmer, with flourishing orange groves and banana trees. But in 1948, the Saleh family fled Salama following months of fighting between Zionist forces and village defenders. As a teenager, Saleh grew up against the backdrop of continuing Palestinian resistance to encroaching Israeli domination.He later moved to the US to continue his studies and received a Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College in 1974, also completing an MBA at the University of Connecticut.

Ever wondered why certain words cross borders and are used the world over? Fadi BouKaram has made it his business to find out whyDid you know the Arabic word for Austria - An-Namsa - comes from Proto-Slavic language and means 'mute' or someone who doesn't speak and this was applied to anyone who could not speak a Slavic language? Why is the loquat fruit in Turkish called yeni dunya or 'new world' while in Arabic it's called akideneh and iskidenya derived from the Turkish word eski dunya or the 'old world'? Why do foreign learners of a language have a hard time understanding certain sounds in the language they are learning? Fadi BouKaram, better known as Cedrusk on Instagram, set out to explore the roots of different languages and the human stories behind them. A former professional photographer turned tax transparency lawyer by day and Instagram language nerd with a loyal following by night, BouKaram has popularised the study of etymology, or the origin of words, which takes him across different languages. Having grown up in Lebanon, lived in the United States and Ireland, different cultures, habits and customs have always interested him. His photography allowed him to explore the world and led him on the path to investigate languages. BouKaram grew up in Lebanon and earned a degree in engineering and business. However, by his thirties, he decided he needed a career change and went into the world of photography. In 2013, he was part of a collective of photographers who set up Observers Collective, a group dedicated to capturing the diverse humanity around them. 

MEMO in Conversations is on hiatus this week and will be back next week. During the later quarter of August 2023, the southern Syrian city of As-Suwayda was gripped by anti-government protests led by a religious minority, the Druze. In this throwback episode from 2020, we discussed the politics of Druze in Syria with Syrian feminist and human rights activist Sarah Hunaidi. The Druze in Syria have recently risen up against the rule of President Bashar Al-Assad, in this 2020 MEMO in Conversation Syrian feminist and human rights activist Sarah Hunaidi refutes claims Al-Assad is the only hope for minorities in the war torn country. A good case study to understand how the Assad regime is harmful to minorities is its relationship with the Druze in southern Syria, she says. A religious minority that split away from Islam hundreds of years ago, the Druze in Syria are a majority in As-Suwayda governorate and they have a long history of rebelling against tyrannical rule stretching back centuries.Hunaidi also explains how Syrian voices abroad are being silenced and how political debate about Syria has little to do with what was actually happening in the country. Moreover, she points out that Syria’s economic hardship cannot be blamed solely on US sanctions; Assad’s destruction of the country over the years is a key factor. Hunaidi is a Syrian writer, feminist and human rights activist. She writes and publishes both in English and Arabic in prominent media outlets like Foreign Policy, the Independent, Buzzfeed, among others. She appears regularly on the BBC, Al Jazeera English and NPR to comment on political and cultural events in the Middle East. Her work has been reported by NPR, Al Jazeera, Al-Hurra and various other Arabic and International media platforms. Sarah is a member of the Syrian Women Political Movement, the first women-led political movement dedicated to advancing women’s rights and political participation in a free and democratic Syria.

The internet has always been the place for free expression in Arabic and Arabs eagerly embraced the possibilities offered by the online world. However, since the Arab Spring, MENA governments have ruthlessly clamped down on the internet and used spyware, fake profiles and disinformation on social media. In 2011, people took to the streets in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and Syria to demand change and for an end to corrupt rule. They did so aided with technology created in the West but the protestors innovated the digital platforms and showed the world what could be done with online content. It's often been argued social media revolutionised the Middle East, but what if it was the other way around? Join us as we speak to Laila Shereen Sakr, who is more commonly known aby her moniker VJ Um Amel, as we discuss how or if the Middle East revolutionised social media. The internet has always been the place for free expression in Arabic and Arabs eagerly embraced the possibilities offered by the online world. However, since the Arab Spring, MENA governments have ruthlessly clamped down on the internet and have utilised spyware, fake profiles and disinformation on social media. Sakr writes, develops software and produces multimodal art to theorise technology, language and the body. Author of 'Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives' (Stanford University Press, 2023), Sakr is Associate Professor of Media Theory & Practice at the University of California, Santa Barbara. At UCSB, she co-founded Wireframe, a studio promoting collaborative theoretical and creative media practice with investments in global social and environmental justice. She is Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Feminist Studies, Department of Media Arts and Technology, Centre for Responsible Machine Learning, Centre for Middle East Studies and the Centre for Information Technology and Society. Over the last two decades, she has been a leading voice in the open-source movement, particularly for Arabic localisation. In 2009, she launched the R-Shief media system that went on to archive over 70 billion social media posts in 72 languages and developed software to analyse multi-dimensional data. She is Co-Editor for the open-access journal Media Theory, and for After Video published by Open Humanities Press. She is also an editorial board member of Punctum Books. 

Much of the Middle East's archaeological treasures are battling man-made climate change, over-development, wars and receding coastlines, but there are those who are working to save them.Gaza's heritage is being lost to the sea. Oman's ancient cities are taking a beating from cyclones. Archaeological treasures across the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East are battling man-made climate change, over-development, wars and receding coastlines. The preservation of heritage sites needs urgent support from local communities and working with the people of the region is what archaeologists are seeking to do. Join us as we speak to UK-based Cypriot marine archaeologist Dr Georgia Andreou about working on the Gaza Maritime Project, which aims to monitor the deterioration of Gaza's heritage sites and find solutions, and the impact cyclones are having on Oman's ancient sites. Georgia is an associate lecturer in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at UCL. She is also a senior researcher at the Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Southampton. Her research combines archaeology with data science to examine the impact of natural and cultural processes on coastal archaeological sites in the Middle East. Her book project titled 'Critical Heritage Under Water' explores the potential, but also the ethical challenges of big dataset analyses in the context of maritime archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The international humanitarian body UNRWA was created to support Palestine refugees functioned as a surrogate state, however Palestinian refugees have continued to demand their political rights while resisting the UN’s categorisation of their plight as an apolitical humanitarian issue. Join us as we speak to Dr Anne Irfan about her book 'Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the international refugee system' to discover how engagement with world politics was driven as much by the refugee grassroots as by the upper echelons of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), making refugee groups important actors in global politics, not simply aid recipients.Dr Irfan is a historian of the modern Middle East, specialising in migration and socio-political history in Palestine and the Levant. She has a BA (Hons) from Oxford University and a Dual MA/MSc in International History from Columbia University and the LSE. Irfan won the 2017 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Best Essay on Jerusalem for her work, 'Is Jerusalem international or Palestinian? Rethinking UNGA Resolution 181'. She has also spoken in the UK Parliament and at the UN Headquarters in New York about the situation of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.She was awarded a PhD in International History in January 2019 and taught in the department as a Graduate Teaching Assistant until June 2019.She is currently a Departmental Lecturer at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University.

Ali Pasha revolutionised nineteenth century Egypt, but was a violent and controversial figure In 1805, an illiterate Turkish-speaking Greek-born military officer, Muhammad Ali Pasha, became governor of Egypt. He reigned for 43-years and by the time of his death in 1848 Egypt was a profoundly different place. Hospitals, schools, law courts, factories and many new institutions sprang up. Muhammad Ali Pasha, who often likened himself to Napoleon and Alexander the Great, was also brutal. In 1811, he invited the heads of Egypt's military aristocratic elite, the Mamluks, to celebrations at the Cairo Citadel, where Ali's troops gunned them down. MEMO speaks to historian Khaled Fahmy to help us understand this violent, controversial and enigmatic man and his impact on Egypt. Fahmy is Edward Keller Professor of North Africa and the Middle East at Tufts University. Educated at the American University in Cairo and the University of Oxford, and having taught at Princeton, NYU, Columbia, Harvard and Cambridge Universities, he is a historian of the modern Middle East with specific emphasis on nineteenth century Egypt. His books and articles deal with the history of the Egyptian army in the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as the history of medicine, law and urban planning. Through working on such topics as conscription, vaccination, quarantines, forensic medicine and legal torture, he charts the specific ways in which a modern state was established in Egypt and the manner in which Egyptians accommodated, subverted or resisted the institutions of this modern state.In addition to his academic publications, which have appeared in both English and Arabic, Fahmy uses his social media platforms to share ideas about his new academic project: a military, social and cultural history of the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Middle East and North Africa are facing rising temperatures almost twice as quickly as the rest of the world, but how is climate changing impacting policy in the region?Dr Mohammed MahmoudDirector of the Climate and Water Program, Middle East InstituteJoin us for a conversation with climate change expert Dr Mohammed Mahmoud as we discuss the impact of water shortages on the Middle East and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)'s effect on Egypt's water supply and COP28 being hosted in the UAE.Mohammed is the Director of the Climate and Water Program and a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. His areas of expertise include climate change adaptation, water policy analysis and scenario planning.He has conducted water management research and work for the Middle East and North Africa region; most extensively on the Nile River Basin. His research on the Nile River Basin focused on the development of water resources in the Basin, analysis of Nile water- sharing agreements and solutions for current and future challenges in the Nile River Basin.Mohammed has held a number of leadership positions, most recently as Chair of the Water Utility Climate Alliance; a coalition of 12 of the nation’s largest water utilities that collectively provide water to over 50 million people in the United States, with the purpose of providing leadership and collaboration on climate change issues that affect water agencies. Prior to that Mohammed was President of the North American Weather Modification Council; an organization dedicated to advancing research and development activities that increase the scientific knowledge and proper use of weather modification applications.He has provided numerous subject matter interviews in press, radio and video media on climate-associated topics such as regional climate change impacts, water resources management, extreme heat, droughts and the food-water-energy nexus.Mohammed holds a BSc and MSc in Civil Engineering from Michigan Technological University, and a PhD in Hydrology and Water Resources from the University of Arizona.