Middle East Monitor Conversations

Ebeid and Zawahry's new children's film raises tackles the issues around Palestinian identity when living in the diaspora, especially when faced with its erasure Join us as we speak to the filmmakers behind 'I am from Palestine', a new animated children's film following the story of Saamidah, a young Palestinian-American girl, as she deals with questions about where she comes from and where Palestine is on a map.Iman Zawahry and Rifk Ebeid discuss the ups and downs of making a short feature and telling Palestinian stories through film.Zawahry is one of the first hijabi American-Muslim filmmakers. She has worked on numerous films that have played at over 150 venues worldwide. She’s an Emmy award winner, Princess Grace Award recipient, a Lincoln Center Artist Academy Fellow, and Sundance Momentum Fellow and Sundance Universal Fellow. She is also the co-creator of the first American Muslim film grant with Islamic Scholarship Fund where she currently serves as Director of Film Programs. Iman works to amplify the underrepresented female voice and frequently consults and speaks across the nation on the topic of Muslims in Film. Her debut film, Americanish, has won 26 awards, including best director and best film and has been acquired by Sony Pictures.Ebeid is a Palestinian-American Muslim writer, attorney and pediatric speech language pathologist. She is the author of two children's picture books about Palestine, including 'You Are The Color', and 'Baba, What Does My Name Mean? A Journey to Palestine', which was nominated for the Palestine Book Awards 2020 and came in highly recommended by our panel of judges. She has a JD from George Mason University, an MA in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University, an MA in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Northern Colorado and a BA in Political Science and Near Eastern Language and Cultures from the University of Florida. 

As Israel continues to restrict Christian access to holy sites and processions during religious holidays, Christians are finding it harder to complete their religious rites in JerusalemIsraeli occupation forces blocked the route for the Holy Saturday procession through Jerusalem and attacked the Christian worshippers who were taking part. Such events have previously been highlighted as some of the reasons why Christians are leaving the occupied territories. With these attacks on the increase, MEMO speaks to John and Samuel Munayer, Palestinian theologians about the situation of Christians in Jerusalem and what the future holds for them. John S. Munayer is a Palestinian theologian from Jerusalem who holds degrees from King’s College London, the University of Edinburgh, and VU University Amsterdam. John is currently a lecturer at the Bethlehem Bible College and editor of the Journal of Palestinian Christianity. John is also active in several Palestinian Christian initiatives in Palestine.Samuel S. Munayer is a Palestinian theologian from Jerusalem. After completing a BA in Theology and Philosophy at Durham University, he is pursuing a Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Politics at Exeter University under the supervision of Professor Ilan Pappe. Samuel. Samuel has recently co-authored an article with John on Palestinian Liberation Theology titled: Decolonising Palestinian Liberation Theology: New Methods, Sources and Voices. 

Foreign governments are evacuating their staff from Sudan as fighting intensifies, but what options do the Sudanese people have and what prospects are there for peace?Since 15 April, major clashes have erupted in a number of Sudanese states between the army, led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo 'Hemedti'. Hundreds have been killed and wounded, most of whom are civilians. Thousands have fled and the country sits at the precipice of a civil war. Join us as we talk to Ola Ibrahim, a member of the Khartoum Resistance Committee. The Khartoum Resistance Committee was formed as an informal, grassroots network of Sudanese residents that started organising civil disobedience campaigns against the government of Omar Al-Bashir in 2013 and became part of a major organised network playing a key role during the Sudanese Revolution which ousted him in 2019.The network gave youth "the momentum and inspiration to be part of the revolution and to own their own fate and future."Part of the Sudanese Resistance Committees, it's members have been targeted by the RSF and the General Intelligence Service during protests. 

MEMO was in conversation with Hisham Al-Omeisy to discuss the Yemen peace talks currently underway. The Yemeni conflict analyst and consultant is not surprised the Saudis are sitting down for peace talks with the Houthis, but is under no illusions that the talks will resolve the conflict. Currently based in Washington DC, Al-Omeisy has worked with the UN and other international bodies in Yemen. Hisham has been working to promote a peace process that is bottom-up and puts ordinary Yemenis first, and has discussed this plan with government officials in the UK and elsewhere. Since the start of the conflict, Hisham has been an outspoken critic of both sides. He was arrested by the Houthis in 2017 and detained for five months.

Lebanon, a failed state: MEMO in conversation with Mohammed Kozbar Join us for a conversation with Mohammed Kozbar as we discuss the economic and political collapse in Lebanon and what's next in the country's future.A Lebanese national, Kozbar is the Deputy Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and the Chairman of Finsbury Park Mosque, one of the most prominent Islamic centres in the UK, and a member of the National Council of MCB. He holds a master's degree in Charity Management at St. Mary’s University. Kozbar is also a member of the Islington Faiths Forum representing the Muslim Community in North London and was a regular IB Times UK and MEE columnist. He sits at the diversity panel of the ITV London news and is a member of the Police Islington Advisory Group (IAG) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) London Scrutiny and Involvement Panel in hate crimes.

Join us for a conversation with Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University Kali Rubaii. Dr Rubaii has studied the environmental and health impacts of the US occupation of Iraq including birth defects, rapid climate change,  soil degradation and the outbreak of disease. We discuss how the US occupation still impacts Iraq's health and environmental sectors with disastrous consequences. Kali Rubaii is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University. She is currently conducting two research projects: Taking toxicity as an analytic for material politics, she is working with a team of doctors, epidemiologists, and environmental activists to document the links between the epidemic of birth defects in Fallujah and military environmental damage. She is also researching the corporate-military enterprise of concrete production in post-invasion Iraq and how it enforces global regimes of class and citizenship. 

Dr Melis HafezAuthor, Inventing Laziness: The Culture of Productivity in Late Ottoman SocietyIs laziness a new phenomenon? MEMO in conversation with Melis HafezJoin us for a conversation with Dr Melis Hafez on how the concept of laziness and productivity took off in the 19th century Ottoman Empire. Hafez is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received a PhD in History from UCLA. Her research is focused on the cultural history of the Ottomans during its last century when the empire experienced land losses, social and economic upheavals, wars and violence, along with extensive, transformative reforms. Her book 'Inventing Laziness: The Culture of Productivity in Late Ottoman Society' was published in 2021 and traces the development of a binary between work and laziness during the last century of the Ottoman Empire. 

Join us for a conversation with Executive Director of EuroMed Rights Rasmus Alenius Boserup as we discuss how the EU and European member states have reacted to the far-right Israeli government and how the bloc could act. Boserup previously worked as senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies focusing on power and politics in the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to this, he served as Executive Director of the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute in Cairo.He holds a doctoral degree in culture and civilisation from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a PhD in Arabic Studies from the University of Copenhagen.

Join us for a discussion with Kevin Jones on Iraqi poetry, British colonialisation, national building and resistance. Kevin Jones is an Associate Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the History Department at the University of Georgia. He earned his PhD in History from the University of Michigan in 2013 and served as Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the George Washington University Institute for Middle East Studies in 2013-2014 before accepting his current position at the University of Georgia. He has published two articles about Iraqi cultural history and Middle Eastern labor history in Social History. His first book, The Dangers of Poetry: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in Iraq, was published by Stanford University Press in September 2020. The book demonstrates the unique contribution of nationalist and communist poets to the cultural politics of anticolonialism and national liberation in twentieth-century Iraq. 

Join us this International Women's Day as we talk to Bayan Abu Salameh who is working on building and launching Palestine's first satellite and talking about the challenges she has faced and barriers she has broken as a female Palestinian engineer.A mechanical engineer graduate from Birzeit University, Abu Salameh - who is from a small village near Jenin called Faqua - was awarded the Chevening Scholarship, funded by the British government, to study at Queen Mary University, where she successfully designed and analysed what she hopes will be the first Palestinian cube satellite and named it Palestine_1. She is now completing her postgraduate studies at Imperial College London and undertaking further research on her space project which will study urban growth and water resources in the MENA region.