From Partners

Palestinian Hip Hop Group DAM Takes on "Honor Killings"

"Before she was murdered, she wasn't alive. We'll tell her story backwards from her murder to her birth..." begin the Arabic rap lyrics, soon interlaced with a mournful chorus from the renowned Palestinian soloist Amal Murkus.

Faded Postcards

‘You wanted to see. I also wanted to see, but I can’t seem to. Do you see that?’

Such did Lebanese actor Rabih Mroué asked Catherine Deneuve in an imaginary dialogue, in Je Veux Voir, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s 2008 film. This was around the time when I was just starting to pay attention to the music of Marc Codsi and his band, Scrambled Eggs.

Honour

… Their honour was all that some men had in this world … The English didn’t understand these ancient rules. Their wives could kiss other men, drink and dance with strangers, and they would look on smiling.

On Rita, Israel, Iran, and Identity Politics

You could be forgiven for suggesting that my comments to NPR journalist Avishay Artsy in his recent report on Israeli-Iranian singer Rita Jahanforuz—who sang at Royce Hall on Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012—took the discussion in a political direction (listen here). "It's a political act for Rita to be speaking in her native tongue, after all Farsi is her native tongue, her first language," I told Artsy. "In fact it's a political act if you're an Israeli Jew and you choose to speak Arabic in public, because the Arab culture is seen as the enemy culture. And now Iran is the enemy."

Your Most Powerful Currency: Your Vote

As I write this, a brave young woman sits in a hospital bed halfway across the world, recovering from a gunshot wound to the head that she received simply for speaking out, for using her young voice to bring about change on an issue that she felt demanded attention. The issue? The state of education for young girls and women in Swat, a conflict-ridden area in northern Pakistan beset with violence in the struggle between the right-wing Taliban and the more moderate-minded.

Why The Palestinian State of Mind Matters

Politics is inextricably bound up with everyday life in Palestine. This sentence at first sounds so obvious that it seems trite. Why bring it up now? The answer is simple: to highlight a largely ignored issue, Palestinian mental health, an issue that cannot be separated from the fact of Israeli military occupation and colonization.