https://www.middleeastmonitor.com Latest news from the Middle East and North Africa Tue, 08 Aug 2023 12:39:48 +0000 en-GB Middle East Monitor 30 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/favicon.png?fit=32%2C32&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com 32 32 116394717 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221110-pba-2022-address-by-dr-husam-zomlot/ Thu, 10 Nov 2022 14:38:35 +0000 Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=592681 Palestine Book Awards 2022: Dr Sara Roy – Keynote speech]]> 592681 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221107-palestine-book-awards-2022-dr-sara-roy-keynote-speech/ Mon, 07 Nov 2022 19:36:32 +0000 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=591872 READ: Winners of Palestine Book Awards 2022 announced]]> 591872 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221104-winners-of-palestine-book-awards-2022-announced/ Fri, 04 Nov 2022 23:36:32 +0000 , Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=590742 The winners of 2022's Palestine Book Awards (PBA) were announced on Friday evening in an event in London to recognise authors and their contributions to literature on the subject of Palestine. Seven books were handpicked by the panel of judges and saw their authors presented with awards in five categories. The 11th PBA was held in person for the first time since 2019, after COVID forced MEMO to host the event online. The awards ceremony followed an informal event held yesterday at London's P21 Gallery, in which authors of the nine shortlisted books discussed their work with the audience and participated in a lively debate. The 2022 Palestine Book Awards ceremony was opened by British journalist, author and former associate […]]]> 590742 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221030-tolerance-is-a-wasteland-palestine-and-the-culture-of-denial-by-saree-makdisi/ Sun, 30 Oct 2022 11:00:15 +0000 , Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=587730 One of the most startling aspects of Israel's ongoing takeover of historic Palestine is how, despite the catalogue of human rights abuse, violations of international law and the practice of the crime of apartheid, the Zionist project has been able to maintain support for its cause amongst large sections of the Western liberal community. It is quite common, for example, to find celebrities and politicians who are instinctively opposed to racism, making generous donations and offering support to pro-Israel causes whose main function is to preserve a system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. This strange phenomenon, which has come to define the hypocrisy of liberals that continue to support Israel, has been given a special label: Progressive Except for Palestine […]]]> 587730 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221023-psychoanalysis-under-occupation-practising-resistance-in-palestine/ Sun, 23 Oct 2022 07:08:42 +0000 , Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=585246 This complex subject is presented with meticulous research by Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi in Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practising Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022). The book goes beyond the 1948 Nakba to portray how Israel's settler-colonial violence cannot be removed from the Palestinian experience and its psychological impact, and the importance of a decolonial approach by clinicians towards their Palestinian patients in order to understand their psychological trauma as well as contribute towards the collective goal of liberation. "Psychoanalysis provides a theoretical framework for Palestinian clinicians and for ourselves to understand the experiences of Palestinians and the conditions of Zionist settler colonialism and military occupation under which they live," write the authors in their introduction. The book presents ample feedback […]]]> 585246 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221016-power-born-of-dreams-my-story-is-palestine/ Sun, 16 Oct 2022 08:31:58 +0000 , Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=582735 Sharing a very personal account of his own incarceration at the hands of the Israeli occupation authorities, MEMO's Palestinian political cartoonist, Mohammad Sabaaneh, offers us a glimpse into this harrowing and dehumanising experience in his graphic novel published last year, Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine. Exploring topical themes such as freedom, oppression and the human will to endure and resist, Sabaaneh loosely depicts his own ordeal after his arrest in 2013 and subsequent five months imprisonment for "contact with a hostile organisation", which turned out to be the publication of several of his cartoons in a book written by his brother, a member of the Hamas Movement, about Palestinian political prisoners. This book is on the shortlist […]]]> 582735 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221014-palestine-book-awards-2022/ Fri, 14 Oct 2022 11:47:25 +0000 Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=586285 You are invited to join us for 11th Palestine Book Awards 2022 – Pre-launch Evening, an evening of celebration with the shortlisted authors. Date and time: Thu, 3 November 2022, 18:00 – 21:00 GMT Location: P21 Gallery, 21 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD ABOUT THIS EVENT The evening is a chance for you to meet the shortlisted authors and discuss their work, inspirations and network with them. The authors who will be on the panel to discuss their books are: Ashjan Ajour Erling Lorentzen Sogge Heba Hayek Maryam S. Griffin Lara Sheehi, Stephen Sheehi Lynn Welchman Mohammad Sabaaneh Mosab Abu Toha Saree Makdisi The event will be chaired by Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at St Antony's College, University […]]]> 586285 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221002-things-you-may-find-hidden-in-my-ear-poems-from-gaza/ Sun, 02 Oct 2022 08:00:27 +0000 , Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=582383 Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear defies order and structure. It is a staggeringly diverse collection and as deep, heavy and haunting as the very days Israel rains down bombs and drones on Gaza. Some of Mosab Abu Toha's subjects in this recently published poetry collection are vast and ungraspable: the 2014 war, F-16 aircraft, immigration, family, exile and loss – especially loss. Each poem uniquely details the alienating cruelty of living under Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip, which has been under a strict Israeli siege since 2007. Given Israel's escalating violence against Palestinians, including its latest three-day bloody onslaught on Gaza last month, resulting in 49 people, including 17 children and four women, being killed, only […]]]> 582383 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220925-sambac-beneath-unlikely-skies/ Sun, 25 Sep 2022 08:00:05 +0000 , Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=580038 It's Christmas Eve in London and Heba Hayek's narrator is looking to bake something that reminds her of home. She settles for basbousa, a coconut yoghurt semolina cake, which translates as 'little kiss.' "No one should be this far," she thinks to herself at the end of a video call in which her father and mother argue over whether she should add cream to the top or middle of the cake. Heba's narrator was born in Palestine and has now moved abroad to study where she is trying to navigate her feelings of being a foreigner in a strange land and memories of home. Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies, published by Hajar Press, is a collection of vignettes on a girlhood […]]]> 580038 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220918-vehicles-of-decolonisation-public-transit-in-the-palestinian-west-bank/ Sun, 18 Sep 2022 08:00:53 +0000 , Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=578433 A prominent part of Israel's colonial violence is the deprivation of free movement for Palestinians. Maryam S. Griffin's book, Vehicles of Decolonisation: Public Transport in the Palestinian West Bank (Temple University Press, 2022), provides details of the ways in which Israel collectively denies mobility for Palestinians and how, as a result, Palestinian public transportation becomes "a site of social struggle." Griffin's writing contextualises the ramifications of public transportation for Palestinians from within Israel's colonial framework, thus setting the scene for readers to engage with a political reality that is either denied or obfuscated. "Public transport is severely affected by the policies and practices of Israeli settler colonialism," the author asserts in the introduction. Giving an overview of how Israel's colonial […]]]> 578433 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220911-the-palestinian-national-movement-in-lebanon-a-political-history-of-the-ayn-al-hilwe-camp/ Sun, 11 Sep 2022 08:00:22 +0000 , Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=577279 Of the 12 official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Ain El-Hilweh ('Ayn Al-Hilwe) is the largest in both area and population and is known among its 33,000 or so inhabitants as the "Capital of the Diaspora". This title is fitting considering the unmatched degree of political and territorial autonomy the Palestinians enjoy, arguably more than in any other Arab country. It is also one of the most contested refugee camps in the country, containing a host of different political factions, many of which have their own armed militia. Navigating through this complex political landscape, Erling Lorentzen Sogge's The Palestinian National Movement in Lebanon: A Political History of the 'Ayn Al-Hilwe Camp provides an ethnographic study on the post-Oslo camp politics […]]]> 577279 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220904-reclaiming-humanity-in-palestinian-hunger-strikes-revolutionary-subjectivity-and-decolonizing-the-body-2/ Sun, 04 Sep 2022 08:55:35 +0000 , Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=576616 The deployment of the physical body into a site of struggle and resistance remains one of the most poignant and controversial methods of protest. Due to its tremendous toll, practising hunger strikes have always provoked extreme reactions, from bitter irony to deepest admiration. In just a matter of days, physical and mental deterioration begin to take effect. Ultimately, it can lead to death. However, despite this high cost risk, hunger strikes have become a long-standing tradition and weapon for Palestinian prisoners, whose revolutionary subjectivity, according to Ashan Ajour, is exercised through this radical political action in the Israeli jails to not only regain, but also maintain dignity and humanity. This book is on the shortlist for the Palestine Book Awards […]]]> 576616 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220611-9-books-shortlisted-for-palestine-book-awards-2022/ Sat, 11 Jun 2022 17:00:21 +0000 Middle East Monitor https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/?p=577288 The Middle East Monitor (MEMO) is pleased to announce the books shortlisted for its 2022 Palestine Book Awards. This prestigious event, now in its eleventh year, honours and celebrates books in English about Palestine. It, equally, encourages authors and publishers to produce more books on Palestine. 2022 has been another successful year with over 50 books submitted for consideration. The highest record of books put forward for the Awards. The shortlisted winners selected by the judges have added to the diversity of submissions and genres featuring the Palestinian narrative. Judges also reviewed 4 children's books. An exceptional new growing genre in regards to Palestine. The 2022 shortlisted authors are: Ashjan Ajour – Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes Erling Lorentzen Sogge […]]]> 577288