Far from the children who beg for change from idling cars and the teenagers who hurl rocks at armed Israeli troops, a different spectacle of Palestinian youth is playing out in the ballroom of a luxury Ramallah hotel. Young contestants are gathered for a taping of “The President”, a game show that aims to select…
Israeli soldiers raided the offices of three civil society organizations on Tuesday in the heart of Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Entering before dawn, troops wrenched open the doors of the Women’s Union, the Palestinian NGO Network and Addameer, an advocate for Palestinians in Israeli jails, confiscating five computers…
The Ramallah municipality approved the construction of a mausoleum to honor the Palestinian terrorists who killed 11 Israelis in the 1975 attack on Tel Aviv’s Savoy Hotel. The vote was reported last week by the PA daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and translated into English by Palestinian Media Watch. The eight terrorists, members of the Palestine…
“Hip-hop goes beyond race, religion or socioeconomic class,” according to Lorenzo “Rennie” Harris, hip-hop dancer and founder of Rennie Harris Puremovement, Philadelphia’s famed hip-hop dance company. “Whether you are from Philly or Cairo, you can connect with African-American arts, because they are about freedom.” His words had just been acid-tested by a month-long tour of…
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward editor Jane Eisner and Forward fellow Naomi Zeveloff to discuss Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad and his hopes for Palestinian statehood. Then, the group turns to discuss the Israel debate on US college campuses and how college presidents are handling the sometimes-toxic atmosphere. Finally,…
Is Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on his way out? Jonathan Tobin certainly seems to think so. In a blog post for Commentary, where he is the editor, he posits that Fayyad’s approach to governance and to foreign affairs places him outside the Palestinian mainstream. Citing Fayyad’s comments in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle…
I was last in Ramallah a year and a half ago, and the change since then is striking. The headquarters of the once-feared Palestine Liberation Organization had been on the second floor of a nondescript office building above a furniture store; now it is in a gleaming office tower adjacent to the sprawling compound of…
It was Independence Day on the West Bank, an annual commemoration of the fruitless Declaration of Independence proclaimed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Algiers on November 15, 1988. Even though she got a day off from her job, Riham Rabiya wasn’t celebrating. “We’re celebrating Independence Day, but there’s no independence,” the 52-year-old secretary complained….
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