Over 725 expert guests have appeared on the show from around the globe since April 2002, including:

 April 2017 marked the 15^th anniversary for Arab Voices on KPFT!

Date:

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  Did you miss the last show, or the previous shows? 
  (click on a date below to listen to a specific show)

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May 24, 2017

1st Segment: Zaha Hassan
Human rights attorney, Middle East Fellow at New America, and former coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership from 2010-2012. As a New America fellow, she will complete a novel, Die Standing Like Trees, which deals with a Palestinian-American woman’s search for answers twenty years after her mother’s violent death during the height of the Oslo peace talks. Zaha received her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, an LLM in transnational & international law from Willamette University, and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington in Seattle with a B.A. in political science and Near East languages and civilizations. She has been co-host for the last two years of the Portland, Oregon radio show, One Land Many Voices, on KBOO 90.7 FM and is a contributor to the online magazine, The Civil Arab.
  
We will speak live with Zaha about President Trump's visit to occupied Palestine, the ongoing (37 days and counting) Palestinian Political Prisoner's Hunger Strike, and more.
 
Please note there will be a protest "Houston Stands with Palestinian Political Prisoners on Hunger Strike" this Thursday, May 25, 2017, in front of the Consulate General of Israel in Houston organized by Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston. Click here for more details.
       

2nd Segment: Sahar Aziz
Professor of law at Texas A&M University School of Law where she teaches courses on national security, civil rights, and Middle East law. She also serves as a Nonresident Fellow at Brookings Doha Center. Prior to joining Texas A&M, Professor Aziz served as a Senior Policy Advisor for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security where she worked on law and policy at the intersection of national security and civil liberties. Her academic articles have been published in the Harvard National Security Journal, George Washington International Law Review, Penn State Law Review, and the Texas Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Journal. In 2015, Professor Aziz was named an Emerging Scholar by Diverse Issues in Higher Education and received the Derrick Bell Award from the American Association of Law Schools Minority Group Section. She is a blogger for the Huffington Post and the Race and the Law Profs blog. She also serves on the board of the ACLU of Texas. Professor Aziz earned a J.D. and M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of Texas where she served as an associate editor of the Texas Law Review.
 
We will speak live with Sahar about President Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia. Sahar published oped on CNN titled "Trump's Doublespeak in Saudi Arabia", in which she says "If there's one thing we've learned about Donald Trump, it is that he has no qualms about contradicting himself to get what he wants. In Saudi Arabia, he wanted a $110 billion arms deal -- not to promote peace and tolerance, as he later proclaimed in his Sunday speech. Thus, his speech will not "be remembered as the beginning of peace in the Middle East," as he loftily put it, but rather a boost to the war that is ravaging it. Nor will Trump's speech put an end to the Islamophobia and bigotry that he has spent the past two years inciting. After all, he needs scapegoats to blame when the terrorism in the Middle East inevitably reaches the United States.".

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May 17, 2017

"Israel's Politics of Fear and the Palestinians" by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
The Arab-American Educational Foundation Lecture Fund and the History Department at Rice University sponsored a talk titled "Israel's Politics of Fear and the Palestinians" on April 4, 2017, at Rice University with guest speaker Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian from Jerusalem.
 
The talk was based on Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian's newly published book about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict entitled Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear. By drawing attention to violence against Palestinians, and by pointing to legal, symbolic and material means of dehumanization, Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian explores the production of racialized and violent forms of surveillance and fear that results in human suffering. In connecting the structures of Israeli power with the invisible and mundane lives of the colonized Palestinian people, the talk shares data, including photos, videos, and relevant laws, to show how the personal has become profoundly politicized. Moving from the dead to the newborn, from the graveyard to the womb, from the attack on home to homeland, Shalhoub-Kevorkian discusses the way in which intimate agonies are political sites of colonial governance. Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Faculty of Law-Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
  
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian's lecture on "Israel's Politics of Fear and the Palestinians".

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May 10, 2017

1st Segment: Dr. Faiza Zalila
We will speak live with Dr. Faiza Zalila, President of the Arab American Cultural & Community Center (ACC) in Houston about the center, and the new community-wide needs assessment survey the ACC is conducting to obtain feedback from the community and constituents, Arabs and friends of Arabs, about social service needs and cultural programs you want to see offered at the ACC Center, as the ACC is looking to align its services and programs with the community needs and interests in order to better serve the community. We will also talk about the upcoming free Family Health Fair for the community at large, to be held Saturday, May 13th, where the ACC in partnership with other organizations will be offering free screening of vital health signs, vision, cholesterol, blood pressure, fitness tests, in addition to smoking cessation, mental health counseling, dental exams, and much more.
    

2nd Segment: Mustafaa Carroll
We will speak live with Mustafaa Carroll, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Houston) about the new civil rights report titled "The Empowerment of Hate" released yesterday, May 9, 2017, by CAIR documenting a spike in Anti-Muslim bias incidents. The report reveals a 57 percent increase in 2016 anti-Muslim bias incidents over 2015. This was accompanied by a 44 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the same period. Other issues covered in the report include public officials conditioning American audiences to fear Muslims, flying while Muslim, closure of bank accounts linked to Muslim names, the FBI, the impact of Islamophobia in educational institutions, watch lists, and workplace discrimination. We will also talk about the new Texas Senate Bill 4 signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott banning "sanctuary cities" in Texas and requiring local police to cooperate with federal immigration authorities and allowing police to inquire about the immigration status of people they lawfully detain.

1st Segment: Houston Palestine Film Festival
We will speak live with Mayk Chahine, Board Member with the Houston Palestine Film Festival (HPFF) about the 11th Annual Houston Palestine Film Festival (It's time to share stories from and about Palestine)! The festival will be held Friday, May 5 through Sunday, May 7 at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Rice University Media Center. Click here for more details and Program Lineup.
    

2nd Segment: The Israel Lobby and Fake Peace Processing by Khalil Jahshan
We will listen to the speech titled "The Israel Lobby and Fake Peace Processing" delivered by Khalil Jahshan at The Israel Lobby and American Policy Conference, which was held on March 24, 2017 at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. The conference was sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep).
 
Khalil Jahshan has been serving as Executive Director of Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) since its inception in 2014. Between 2004 and 2013, Jahshan was a lecturer in International Studies and Languages at Pepperdine University and Executive Director of Pepperdine’s Seaver College Washington DC Internship Program. Previously, Jahshan served as Executive Vice President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Director of its government affairs affiliate, NAAA-ADC. Throughout his career he has held numerous positions, including Vice President of the American Committee on Jerusalem, President of the National Association of Arab-Americans, and National Director of the Association of Arab-American University graduates. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science and French from Harding University in 1972. Mr. Jahshan has served on the board of directors and advisory boards of various Middle East-oriented groups including ANERA, MIFTAH and Search for Common Ground. He has appeared on various media outlets such as Al-Jazeera, Al-Hurra, CCTV, Al-Arabiya, C-SPAN, and Charlie Rose.

Date:

April 26, 2017

Joe Catron
Organizer with Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. We will speak live with Joe about the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners including children, women and legislative council members held in Israeli jails, and the latest on the massive hunger strike that started 10 days ago on April 17, 2017 (Prisoner's Day) by nearly 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails and detention centers, amidst resentment of Israel’s cruel policies towards Palestinian political prisoners.
 
We will also talk with him about the hearing held yesterday in a Detroit U.S. District Court where a plea agreement was reached to revoke Palestinian American Rasmea Odeh's U.S. citizenship and deport her from the U.S.!

Date:

April 19, 2017

"Beyond the Arab Muslim Ban: Feminist Futures and Joint Struggle" by Professor Nadine Naber
The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and The Arab-American Education Foundation Chair in Modern Arab History at the University of Houston held the Nijad and Zeina Fares Arab-American Educational Foundation Annual Distinguished Lecture in Modern Arab Studies on March 21, 2017, at the University of Houston. The lecture was titled "Beyond the Arab Muslim Ban: Feminist Futures and Joint Struggle", and the speaker was Professor Nadine Naber.
   
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Professor Naber's lecture on "Beyond the Arab Muslim Ban: Feminist Futures and Joint Struggle".
    
Professor Nadine Naber is a leading Arab-American feminist scholar, author, and social justice advocate. She is an associate professor in the Gender and Women's Studies Program and the Global Asian Studies Program and the director of the Arab American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Professor Naber is author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism and editor of Race and Arab Americans; Arab and Arab American Feminisms (winner of the Arab American Book Award 2012); and The Color of Violence.

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April 12, 2017

Philip Giraldi
Former CIA Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases. He is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues. He writes regularly on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues, and appears frequently on national and international broadcasts. He holds a BA with honors from the University of Chicago and an MA and Ph.D. in Modern History from the University of London.
  

A live conversation with Mr. Giraldi about the recent U.S. missile attack on Syria after a horrific poisonous gas attack in Khan Shaykhun, south of the Syrian city of Idlib that killed dozens of civilians.
  
Mr. Giraldi is one of several prominent former intelligence and other officials with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (from virtually every branch of the U.S. national security state) that have released a statement saying "Trump Should Rethink Syria Escalation", and also asking Trump to pull back from his dangerous escalation of tensions with Russia.

Date:

April 5, 2017

              

Spring Fund Drive

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March 29, 2017

The 3rd Annual Lebanese Festival
A live conversation with Hiba Elroz and Fred Davis, members of the Lebanese Festival Committee, about the 3rd Annual Lebanese Festival that will be held Friday through Sunday, March 31-April 2 at Jones Plaza in Downtown Houston.
 
There will be entertainment, food, different activities, great festivities, enjoyable atmosphere for both adults and children, door prizes, music, folkloric dances, performances, and much more. This will not just be a festival...it will be a one of a kind experience as attendees are whisked away on a memorable and exquisite journey to explore all that Lebanon has to offer. The 3rd Annual Houston Lebanese Festival will be unlike any other festival before. It will be filled with surprises that take you to the streets, the sights, and the sounds of Lebanon. This event is hosted by the American Lebanese Cultural Center (ALCC) in Houston. 
              

Spring Fund Drive

Date:

March 22, 2017

1st Segment: The 7th Annual Houston Palestinian Festival
A live conversation with Ruba Afifi, Festival Chair and Board Member with the Palestinian American Cultural Center (PACC-Houston) and Alma AlQuqa, Festival Co-Chair about the 7th Annual Houston Palestinian Festival scheduled to be held March 25-26 at Jones Plaza in Downtown Houston. We will also speak with Dalal Abu Amneh who will be performing live at the Festival. Dalal is a Palestinian singer singing classical and folk music of the Arabic musical heritage, and also a neuroscientist from Nazareth. She is committed to achieving humanitarian goals through her art and draws from the rich culture of Palestine, and aims to develop this art and spread the Palestinian culture to the wider world. Dalal is crafting a global Palestinian identity and advocating for the Palestinian cause through her music. She has participated in many international and Arab festivals and has represented Palestine in several Arab operettas and also participated in many local and International cultural events. In addition to her participation with her own band, Dalal is the lead singer in the international orchestra MESTO where she performs Arab and Palestinian folk, accompanied by Western musicians and orchestral arrangement. A surprise to many of her fans, besides music and singing, Dalal is studying for a Ph.D. in neuroscience in the Faculty of Medicine at the Technical Institute in Haifa.
  

2nd Segment: ESCOWA's New Report: Israel is guilty of apartheid 
We will talk about a new report published a few days ago by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, ESCOWA, which directly accuses Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people. The report also urges governments to "support boycott, divestment and sanctions activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives." What did the U.N. do when the report was released? Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ordered the report be withdrawn and removed from the web! Rima Khalaf, the head of the U.N. agency ESCOWA, responsible for this report resigned in protest!

Date:

March 15, 2017

Trump’s Foreign Policy Positions on Palestine and the Middle East
The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. held an event titled "Trump’s Foreign Policy Positions on Palestine and the Middle East" on February 7, 2017. Panelists Dr. Nathan Brown, Dr. Shibley Telhami, and Professor P.J. Crowley will examine in this panel the foreign policy positions of President Donald Trump with regard to Palestine and the Middle East. Among the many issues related to the subject of this panel are President Trump's campaign promise to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and his appointment of David Friedman, a pro-settlement lawyer with no foreign policy experience, as US ambassador to Israel. The panelists will discuss these issues, while examining the widespread regional and global effects the Trump administration will bring.
  
Today, on Arab Voices, we will listen to that panel.
 
Dr. Nathan Brown is a professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies as well as Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University. From 2013 to 2015, he was President of the Middle East Association–the academic association for scholars studying in the region. In 2013, Dr.Brown was named a Guggenheim Fellow. Four years earlier he was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For the 2009-2010 academic year, he was a fellow at the Wilson International Center for Scholars.
  
Philip J. (P.J.) Crowley is a professor of practice and distinguished fellow at the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communications at George Washington University, after serving a long career in the U.S. Department of State. He is a specialist on national security and from 2011- 2012 he was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress where he authored detailed analyses on security issues including Safe At Home —a national security strategy to protect the American homeland, improve national preparedness and rebuild the US standing in the world.
  
Dr. Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development and the Director of the University of Maryland critical issues poll. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His best-selling book, The Stakes: America and the Middle East, was selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the top five books on the Middle East in 2003. His recent book, The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East, was published in 2013. Dr. Telhami was selected by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, along with the New York Times, as one of the “great immigrants” for 2013.

Date:

March 8, 2017

1st Segment: President Trump's new "Muslim Ban"
President Trump signed on Monday, March 6, 2017 another executive order to ban Muslims and Arabs from 6 Muslim countries from entering the United States. This is his second attempt at this after his first executive order to ban Muslims from 7 countries was stopped in courts. Several national organizations voiced opposition and concerns about this second attempt at banning Muslims from entering the United States.
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to statements and reactions to this latest executive order from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). We will also listen to a news conference held by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
       

2nd Segment: Dr. Michael Fares 
Instructional Assistant Professor of Arabic at the University of Houston. He joined the department of Modern and Classical Languages at UH in 2012. Michael grew up in the Middle East and has spent time in several Arabic speaking countries. He teaches beginning and intermediate Arabic, and is working to develop the curriculum for these courses as part of the department’s newly created Arab Studies Minor. Prior to teaching at the University of Houston, Michael worked as a teaching assistant for the Arabic Flagship Program at the University of Texas. He also served as an instructor of advanced Arabic for the University of Texas Arabic Summer Institute. Michael is interested in foreign language acquisition, as well as Medieval Arabic philosophy and literature. He also has several publications and projects, including University of Houston Arabic Speaking Faculty Interview Series, Online Beginning Arabic “Catchup” Lecture Series, The Phenomenon of Interlanguage and its Importance for Teaching Arabic as a Second Language, and Ghassan Kanafani’s “The Stolen Shirt”: A Translation and Introduction.
  
We will speak with professor Fares about the Syrian refugees and the upcoming “Sketches of the Syrian Diaspora: A night of Music and Storytelling” event that will be held at the University of Houston on March 22, 2017.

Date:

March 1, 2017

Dr. Ramzy Baroud
US-Arab journalist, media consultant, author, internationally-syndicated columnist, founder and editor of Palestine Chronicle, former managing editor of the London-based Middle East Eye, former editor-in-chief of The Brunei Times, and former deputy managing editor of Al Jazeera online. He is the author of several books including Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle, and My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story. He is also the co-author, with Samah Sabawi and Jehan Bseiso, of the poetry collection I Remember My Name. His work has been published in hundreds of newspapers and journals worldwide, and is regularly translated and republished in several languages. He has contributed to and was referenced in hundreds of books and academic journals. Baroud has been a guest on many television and radio programs nationally and internationally, and he has been a guest speaker at many top universities around the world. Baroud has a Doctorate of Philosophy in Palestine Studies from the European Centre for Palestinian Studies at the University of Exeter.

Date:

February 22, 2017

1st Segment: Building Resistance: Japanese Imprisonment and the Fight Against a Muslim Registry
Produced by Making Contact (02.14.2017)
 
This year is the 75th anniversary of we now call Japanese Internment. And every year since 1942, Japanese Americans have tried to get the rest of us to remember what happened. To notice the scar that mass incarceration left, not just on the Japanese community, but on all of us. We found ourselves at similar crossroads in 2001 when the Bush Administration used the chaos of 9/11 to push through drastic changes, including the creation of a Muslim registry called NSEERS, the National Security Entry Exit Registration System. But, people fought it. And won. Today, as President Trump moves to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and threatens to build another registry we are faced with similar choices. So, what can we learn from our history? And how do we fight back?
 
Featuring:
Satsuki Ina, documentarian; Mutsu Homma, Roy Ebihara, George Murihiro, Matsuo Watanabe, survivors; Joseph Arsinoe, US soldier; War Relocation Authority. Lara Kiswani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center; Anirvan Chatterjee, Alliance of South Asians Taking Action Liz Ouyang, attorney; Mohammad Sarfaraz Hussain; Anirvan Chatterjee, Alliance of South Asians Taking Action; Jason Prado, Sophie Xie, DoBetter.Tech
     

2nd Segment: Lawyers, activists organize against Trump’s Muslim ban
A podcast produced by The Electronic Intifada (02.03.2017)
  
Immigration attorneys and immigrant rights groups continue to fight the Trump administration’s so-called Muslim ban but the executive branch of the US government remains intransigent in its refusal to comply with federal court orders against the ban. The executive order banning persons from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US was signed by President Donald Trump last Friday. On Saturday, thousands of activists poured into airports around the US to demand that Customs and Border Protection (CPB) release people it had detained under the ban. By the evening, a federal court in New York had issued an immediate order against the ban.
 
“What I saw at the protests at SFO [San Francisco International airport] was an organized and focused crowd of protesters … to respond and protest to the immediate implementation of Trump’s executive order,” said The Electronic Intifada’s Charlotte Silver in an interview for the podcast.
 
On Wednesday, immigration attorneys in Southern California told The Electronic Intifada that the US Marshals Service is failing to enforce federal court orders against the CPB at Los Angeles International airport, Silver reported.
 
There have been ”several” instances in the past few days where CBP agents “are telling lawyers, telling congress people, telling activists that they are specifically not complying with the court order, that it is not applying to them,” Silver explained.

She said that there are “serious reasons to be concerned about the Trump administration and its federal agency’s willingness to comply with court orders.”
 
Featured audio: Lara Kiswani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, speaking to crowd at SFO, 28 January; crowd chanting and drumming via Palestinian Memes

Date:

February 15, 2017

Panel Discussion about "Immigration Ban Statement"
The Arab American Cultural and Community Center (ACC) in Houston held a panel discussion of local immigration lawyers and experts on February 11, 2017 to help address the community's concerns and help clarify questions in regards to the immigration ban that was put in effect January 27, 2017. The Panel included:
 
Wafa Abdin, Esq.
Vice President for Immigration and Refugee Services at Catholic Charities. She oversees the Cabrini Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance, the largest non-profit provider of immigration legal services for low-income and indigent non-citizens and Refugee Resettlement Program. She has more than 15 years of experience in immigration law and is a frequent lecturer at immigration conferences and has also written several articles and papers on immigration law topics. In recognition of her outstanding work and dedication, she was awarded the Chrys Dougherty Legal Services Award in 2010 by the Texas State Bar.

Norma Ayoub
Attorney at the law firm of Ayoub & Associates, PC. She has been practicing law for about 18 years. Earlier in her career she handled international corporate matters while working overseas. Upon returning to the US, she opened her own office and has handled strictly immigration matters for the past 16 years and is licensed in both New York and Texas. She is admitted in various appellate courts. She speaks fluent Arabic.

Nejd Jill Yaziji
Attorney at Yaziji Law Firm. She has been practicing Immigration & Asylum Law for more than a decade. She represents clients from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, Egypt, Ukraine and other countries. She is a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, and is Editor-in-Chief of The Houston Lawyer magazine (2016-2017), the official publication of the Houston Bar Association.
 
Today on Arab Voices we will listen to the remarks made at the panel discussion on refugees, asylum and non-immigrant visa. We will also listen to some of the questions and answers raised during the event such as could a Muslim registry be enforced, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), what do undocumented immigrants need to do, what to do if targeted by ICE, what can we do to counter hate speech and hate crimes, what will happen to TPS, when can one apply for asylum, what is the legality of agents asking for and searching smartphones and laptops at airports, what is the status of DACA, and more.

Date:

February 8, 2017

1st Segment: Wafa Abdin
Vice President for Immigration and Refugee Services at Catholic Charities. She oversees the Cabrini Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance, the largest non-profit provider of immigration legal services for low-income and indigent non-citizens and Refugee Resettlement Program. Ms. Abdin has more than fifteen years of experience in Immigration Law and is a frequent lecturer at Immigration conferences and has also written several articles and papers on Immigration law topics. In recognition of her outstanding work and dedication, Ms. Abdin was awarded the Chrys Dougherty Legal Services Award in 2010 by the Texas State Bar.
 
We will speak live with Wafa about President Trump's executive order, the lawsuits filed to stop it, where does it legally stand now, and more.
  

2nd Segment: Ussama Makdisi
Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. In 2012-2013, Makdisi was an invited Resident Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin). In April 2009, the Carnegie Corporation named Makdisi a 2009 Carnegie Scholar as part of its effort to promote original scholarship regarding Muslim societies and communities, both in the United States and abroad. Professor Makdisi is the author of Faith Misplaced: the Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001. His previous books include Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East, which was the winner of the 2008 Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association, the 2009 John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association, and a co-winner of the 2009 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize given by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Makdisi is also the author of The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon and co-editor of Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa. He has published widely on Ottoman and Arab history as well as on U.S.-Arab relations and U.S. missionary work in the Middle East. Among his major articles are “Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: An Interpretation of Brief History” which appeared in the Journal of American History and “Ottoman Orientalism” and “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity” both of which appeared in the American Historical Review. Professor Makdisi has also published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and in the Middle East Report. Professor Makdisi is now working on a manuscript on the origins of sectarianism in the modern Middle East to be published by the University of California Press.
  
We will speak live with professor Makdisi about President Trump’s Muslim ban executive order, what it means to U.S. relations with the Arab and Muslim world, President Trump's exempting Christians from his ban, and more. Professor Makdisi published an article last week titled "Trump's executive order pits Muslims against Christians" in which he says "The cynical executive order is not only blatantly discriminatory, but it plays Muslim against Christian, demonizing the former while pretending to be sympathetic to the latter. Trump's politics of sectarian sympathy and the purported protection of minorities has a long history. It has led to more persecution, not less."

Date:

February 1, 2017

Arsalan Safiullah
Staff Attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas Houston). He earned his undergraduate degree from McGill University in Montreal and holds a Master of Biotechnology (M.Biot.) and a Juris Doctorate (J.D.) from Texas A&M University. In his current position, Arsalan focuses on employment discrimination, civil liberties issues, hate crimes, and know your rights community education.
         

Yolanda Rondon
Staff Attorney for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC National), where she works on legal cases and policy issues related to surveillance, racial and religious profiling, hate crimes, employment discrimination and immigration. She has provided written and oral testimony to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on surveillance, privacy and profiling concerns of the Arab American community, and has provided written testimony and reports to the United States Commission on Civil Rights on religious violations of prisoner rights and religious accommodation issues in immigration detentions. She has also addressed the United States compliance with the Convention Against Torture and privacy issues related to surveillance at the U.S. Department of State – Universal Periodic Review. She has also provide written testimony to U.S. Congressional committees on issues ranging from profiling and countering violent extremism to the refugee crisis and the visa waiver program, as well as oral testimony to the U.S. Department of Education on implementation of the Elementary & Secondary Education Act, resource equity, and accountability for English Language Learners.
   

We will speak live with Arsalan and Yolanda about President Trump's executive order to ban Muslims from 7 countries entry to the US, the effect of that on Houston and the nation, the nationwide stay issued by a federal judge halting part of Trump's immigration ban (after ACLU files emergency lawsuit), how should travelers deal with this ban and questioning by authorities at airports, the Texas Muslim Capitol Day that drew the largest crowd ever (held yesterday in Austin), the rise of attacks and hate crimes against Muslims in the US, and more.
   
    
We will also listen to the remarks of Sylvester Turner, Mayor of the City of Houston and Art Acevedo, Chief of the Houston Police Department (HPD) in the wake of President Trump's executive order on Immigration, and their message to the community.

Date:

January 25, 2017

           

Winter Fund Drive

Date:

January 18, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump said at the AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference last year: "In Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you've got a culture of hatred that has been fermenting there for years, and if we want to achieve peace, they've got to go out and they got to start this educational process. They have to end education of hatred. They have to end it, and now".
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to an interview Arab Voices conducted with Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Lecturer in Language Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an award-winning Israeli peace activist, poet and author, and one of the founders of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. Nurit is the daughter of Israeli General Matti Peled. In 2001 she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Human Rights and the Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament. She is also the author of the book Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education. We will speak with Nurit about Palestinian and Israeli textbooks. Please note that her book is available as a Thank-You Gift today on Arab Voices during KPFT's Winter Fund Drive at the $200 pledge level (call 713-526-5738 or email ArabVoices@hotmail.com).
   

We will also listen to an interview Arab Voices conducted with Sut Jhally, Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, a leading scholar on advertising, public relations, and political propaganda. He is the author of several books including The Codes of Advertising; Enlightened Racism; and The Spectacle of Accumulation. Professor Jhally is the Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF), a documentary film company that looks at issues related to U.S. media and public attitudes. He is the producer, director, or executive producer of dozens of MEF films, including Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict; Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire; Reel Bad Arabs (featuring Jack Shaheen); Edward Said On Orientalism; Dreamworlds: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video; and Advertising & the End of the World.
 
We will speak with professor Jhally about his new film The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in The United States, featuring Roger Waters, Amira Hass, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen M. Walt, Noam Chomsky, Rula Jebreal, Henry Siegman, Rashid Khalidi, Rami Khouri, Yousef Munayyer, Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Phyllis Bennis, Norman Solomon, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart, and Sut Jhally. This film is available as a Thank-You Gift today on Arab Voices during KPFT's Winter Fund Drive at the $120 pledge level (call 713-526-5738 or email ArabVoices@hotmail.com).
         

Winter Fund Drive

Date:

January 11, 2017

"The Terrorism Label: an Examination of American Criminal Prosecutions" by Wadie Said
The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. held its annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture on October 7, 2016. The speaker was Wadie Said, professor of law at the University of South Carolina School of Law, where he teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, and human rights law. Before joining the South Carolina faculty, Said represented terrorist suspects as an assistant federal public defender in Tampa, Florida, serving as counsel in United States v. Al-Arian, one of the largest terrorism prosecutions in American history. A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, he clerked for Chief Justice Charles P. Sifton of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He is also the author of the recently published book, Crimes of Terror: the Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions, which provides a comprehensive legal analysis of the criminal terrorist prosecution in the United States. His scholarship also appears in many prestigious law journals and reviews.
 
Professor Wadie Said spoke on the issue of terrorism and the ways in which it’s produced and dealt with in the American legal system. The lecture was titled "The Terrorism Label: an Examination of American Criminal Prosecutions".
   
Today, on Arab Voices, we will listen to that lecture and some of the questions and answers that followed his talk.

Date:

January 4, 2017

Noam Chomsky: With Trump Election, We Are Now Facing Threats to the Survival of the Human Species
On December 5, 2016, Democracy Now! held a special celebration event for its 20th anniversary at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York. More than 2,300 people attended the event. There were several speakers, including Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. He is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of more than 100 books.
 
Today on Arab Voices, we will listen to Noam Chomsky’s remarks at that event on “Trump and the decline of the American Superpower”, and will also listen to the conversation that followed his talk that Amy Goodman and Juan González of Democracy Now! had with Noam Chomsky and Harry Belafonte, who also spoke at the event. Harry Belafonte is a longtime civil rights activist who was also a popular singer and actor. He was one of Martin Luther King’s closest confidants and helped organize the March on Washington in 1963.

Date:

December 28, 2016

1st Segment: Dr. Riyad Mansour
Ambassador and Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, and the non-resident Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. He joined the Permanent Observer Mission of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the UN, New York, in 1983 as Deputy Permanent Observer, and has since represented Palestine in several committees and bodies of the UN. Dr. Mansour has published several studies and articles about the Palestinian community in the US, lectured in several American universities, and has participated in numerous international conferences, symposia, seminars and panel debates as a representative of Palestine. He is also a member of senior officials committees of the State of Palestine and the PLO.
 
We will speak live with Ambassador Mansour about the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 that was adopted last Friday, December 23, 2016 stating that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem have no legal validity, constitute flagrant violation of international law, and demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligation as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. It was the first UNSC resolution to pass regarding Israel and Palestine in 36 years, and the first to address the issue of Israeli settlements with such specificity since Resolution 465 in 1980. We will also get his reaction to today's speech by Secretary of State John Kerry about Israel and Palestine.
  

2nd Segment: Paul Butler
Director of ANERA's (American Near East Refugee Aid) Palestine programs overseeing the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2011. He is based in Jerusalem and supervises ANERA’s programs in health and education services, sustainable community development, water rehabilitation, agriculture, microfinance and emergency relief and medical aid. He is a veteran development professional with over two decades’ experience in the Middle East. He has directed programs in emergency relief, medical aid and economic development in some of the region’s most vulnerable places: Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt. A fluent Arabic speaker, Paul has first-hand experience in the difficult political and economic situations of the region. He travels to Gaza regularly and was instrumental in ANERA’s relief efforts after the most recent war.
 
We will speak live with Mr. Butler about his experience on the ground in Palestine, an update on the humanitarian conditions there and what is being done to address them, the priorities for humanitarian relief and development work over the next few years, how has Gaza reconstruction progressed since the last war, how do the residents of Gaza cope with poverty and the blockade, how can development work advance peace in the region, and more.

Date:

December 21, 2016

Said Arikat
Journalist, author, and political analyst. He is the Washington, DC Bureau Chief for the daily Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds (based in occupied Jerusalem), for which he is a writer, columnist, and analyst. He is also an adjunct professor at the American University in Washington, DC where he teaches a course on "The Role of the Media in the Arab World". He also served as spokesman and director of public information for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq from 2005 to 2010.

Date:

December 14, 2016

Liz Jackson
Founding Staff Attorney for Palestine Legal and Cooperating Counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Her work includes representing students, professors and activists on free speech and academic freedom issues, documenting the chilling effect of repression campaigns, and educating activists on their rights. She advised the successful divestment campaign at UC Berkeley, and helped students respond to Title VI complaints, which were dismissed, rejecting the theory that Palestine activism creates a hostile environment for Jewish students. She has defended the right to advocate for Palestine on campuses from New Mexico to Southern Florida, Boston, New Jersey, and California. She has organized for Palestinian human rights as a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, as a Jewish solidarity activist, and as a former Co-Chair of the National Lawyers Guild Free Palestine Subcommittee. Liz has advocated for First Amendment rights to speak about Palestine in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Electronic Intifada podcast, the Real News Network, Al Jazeera, and more.

We will speak with Liz about the controversial and unconstitutional "Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2016" that passed the U.S. Senate earlier this month, but failed to pass the U.S. House of Representatives last week despite intense lobbying by Israel advocacy groups. Will this be the end of it, or will we see it again during the next session? We will also talk about the efforts by some lobbying groups to restrict speech on U.S. campuses that are critical of Israel; the attacks on advocacy for Palestinian Rights; the rights of students advocating for justice in Palestine on university campuses; and more.

Date:

December 7, 2016

“Semitism and the Palestinians" by Joseph Massad
The United States Senate silently passed a dangerous piece of legislation last week called “The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2016”. It was introduced by senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Bob Casey (D-PA). This new piece of legislation requires the Department of Education to apply the State Department's definition of anti-Semitism in evaluating complaints of discrimination on educational campuses across the United States. It threatens the First Amendment rights and academic freedoms of students and faculty across the country by equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
 
Arab Voices will be discussing this in more details on the show with experts on the subject matter within weeks, but today, we will listen to a lecture held a few years ago at the James A. Baker III Institute at Rice University in Houston titled “Semitism and the Palestinians”, delivered by Dr. Joseph Massad, who is now Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He is a historian, political scientist, a leading scholar of Arab culture, and author of several books and articles. This lecture addresses questions such as: What is Semitism and what does it have to do with the Palestinians? What is the relationship that Palestinians have to the Semite? Does the history of Semitism have anything to do with Palestinians? If so, what is it?

Date:

November 30, 2016

Sam Kadi
Director/producer of the award winning American feature drama THE CITIZEN. THE CITIZEN received five awards on the festival circuit before being released theatrically worldwide in 2013. The film was named among the "Best 10 Films of 2013" by Examiner.com. Kadi has been recognized by the prestigious Cinema For Peace organization for raising awareness of human rights issues through motion pictures, and was asked to speak on the same subject before the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands in June 2012. In 2013, Kadi was presented with a Humanitarian Service Award by the Life for Relief and Development Organization. Kadi is a member of the Directors Guild of America, where he serves on the Directors Guild Asian American Committee.

We will speak with Sam Kadi about the ongoing catastrophe in Syria; the war that has devastated the country and left hundreds of thousands dead and millions refugees. We will talk about the horrific situation in Aleppo; and the path for peace. We will also talk about the new award-winning documentary film "Little Gandhi" that will be screened in Houston on December 1 and 2.

Date:

November 23, 2016

Dr. Emran El-Badawi
Program director and associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Houston. He founded the Arab Studies program at UH and has designed, implemented and assessed degree programs in the Humanities and Sciences. He has consulted for various industries, including government, law and oil & gas, and he is also active in program development and fundraising. Dr. El-Badawi is founding executive director and treasurer of the International Qur'anic Studies Association, which is the world's first learned society of its kind. He has published in English as well as Arabic and has made dozens of national and international media contributions or appearances including for The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, Forbes, Christian Science Monitor and Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne (ARTE). His current research projects include a book on 'Arab Liberalism' between secular nationalism and political Islam, as well as a project documenting the evolution of Eastern Church/Canon Law to Shariah Law. Dr. El-Badawi has received numerous awards for his work and research including honorable acclaim by the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize for his book on The Qur'an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions. Furthermore, his professional management and scholarly projects have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for several organizations.

We will speak with Dr. El-Badawi about several issues including the U.S. election results, populism, immigration, globalization; Trump's impact on minority groups in the US; Muslims, Arabs, South Asians in America (contributions and challenges); Middle East policy, and more.

Date:

November 16, 2016

Khalil Jahshan
Executive Director of the Arab Center Washington DC, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank focusing on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as furthering economic, political, and social understanding of the Arab World in the United States. He is a Palestinian-American activist and media commentator. He previously served as Executive Director at Pepperdine University, Executive Vice President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and director of its government affairs affiliate (NAAA-ADC), Vice President of the American Committee on Jerusalem, President of the National Association of Arab Americans, National Director of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG), Assistant Director of Palestine Research and Educational Center, and Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Chicago Extension and at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Mr. Jahshan has served on the boards of directors, and advisory boards of various Middle East-oriented groups, including ANERA, MIFTAH and Search for Common Ground.

We will speak with Mr. Jahshan about the U.S. elections, Trump’s victory and what we might expect in terms of foreign policy, the recent Arab Public Opinion Poll about the U.S. elections by the Arab Center Washington DC, and Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign about Muslims and other minority groups and its impact.
 
Since Trump's victory last week, we have seen a significant increase in violent hate rhetoric and crimes targeting Arab and Muslim American communities, and communities of color. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, more than 500 incidents of hateful harassment and intimidation have been reported in the U.S. following the election results (higher than the immediate post-9/11 backlash), and according to Campus Safety magazine, a series of racially-motivated incidents have been reported at schools at all levels across the U.S. following Trump’s victory. A new report released on  November 14, 2016 by the FBI reveals that law enforcement agencies across the country reported 257 anti-Muslim incidents in 2015, up 67 percent from the year before (many attribute that to the anti-Muslim rhetoric that came out of the presidential campaign).

Date:

November 9, 2016

1st Segment: Reactions to Trump's Election
We will listen to the reaction of several national U.S. Muslim and Arab organizations and interfaith organizations to the election of Donald Trump as the nation’s 45th president. The comments will include: Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Muslim Alliance of North America, National Council of Churches USA, Islamic Circle of North America, American Muslims for Palestine, Muslim American Society, and others.
        
2nd Segment: Hani Al-Masri
Director General of Masarat, the Palestinian Center for Policy Research & Strategic Studies, and Policy Advisor at Al Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network. He founded and was director general of the Palestinian Media, Research and Studies Centre, Badael, between 2005 and 2011. He has published hundreds of articles, research and policy papers in Palestinian and Arab magazines and newspapers including Al-Ayyam and Al-Safir. He previously served as General Manager of the Printing & Publication Department at the Ministry of Information and as a member of the Committee on Government in the Commission of Dialogue held in Cairo in 2009. He is also a member of the board of trustees at the Yasser Arafat Foundation.
  
Please note that Dr. Hani Al-Masri will be speaking at the Arab American Cultural and Community Center in Houston on Sunday, November 13 at 5 p.m. Click here for more details.

Date:

November 2, 2016

Sheila Carapico
Editor of the newly released Arabia Incognita: Dispatches from Yemen and the Gulf, who is widely recognized as a leading expert on Yemen. She is the author of Civil Society in Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Modern Arabia and numerous other books, book chapters, and articles about Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula, and the region. Carapico acquired her reputation as a Yemen expert through her time as a Fulbright research scholar in the country and consultancy work she did there for bodies such as Human Rights Watch, the Royal Netherlands Embassy, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. During 2010 and the crucial spring of 2011, she was Visiting Chairperson of the Department of Political Science at the American University in Cairo. She teaches Political Science and coordinates the International Studies program at the University of Richmond and is a long serving member of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) collective.

Date:

October 26, 2016

ACC's Annual Unity & Friendship Gala
The Arab American Cultural & Community Center (ACC) in Houston held its 23rd Annual Unity & Friendship Gala on October 1, 2016. This year's theme was "Raising Hope", and it highlighted the Culture and People of Tunisia. The Gala Chairs were Mrs. Shiraz Ghedira Goucha and Mrs. Aicha Limayem Lassoued. The Mistress of Ceremonies was Kaitlin McCulley, Reporter at KTRK ABC 13 News in Houston.
 
This year's ACC honorees were the Levant Foundation for outstanding community service, Dr. Mohamed Rabie for the ACC lifetime achievement award, and Minuteman Press Southwest for the ACC business community award.
  
Today on Arab Voices we will listen to most of the remarks made at the Gala, including the remarks of Dr. Kamal Khalil, ACC President, Sylvester Turner, Mayor of the City of Houston, and Ambassador Fayçal Gouia, Tunisia’s Ambassador to the United States.

Date:

October 19, 2016

Date:

October 12, 2016

Ann Wright
Former US State Department official/diplomat, retired US Army Colonel, and a long-time CODEPINK activist. She resigned from the US government in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. Since her resignation, she has travelled to Gaza seven times, helped organize the 1,300 person Gaza Freedom March in 2009, was a passenger on the Challenge 1 in the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, was an organizer for the 2011 US Boat to Gaza and a boat leader on the 2015 Gaza Freedom Flotilla. She was also an organizer for Gaza’s Ark. Ann Wright was an organizer and the boat leader for the 2016 Women’s Boat to Gaza that began to sail on September 14, 2016 from Barcelona in an effort to break the Israeli naval blockade on Gaza. The boat, Zaytouna-Oliva, was hijacked in international waters by the Israeli military on October 5, 2016 a few miles of the coast of Gaza, and all 13 women on board, including Ann Wright, were kidnapped by force by the Israeli military and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod. On board with her were three parliamentarians from New Zealand, Sweden and Algerian, an Olympic athlete from South Africa, and Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire, from Northern Ireland.

We will speak live with Ann Wright about her recent attempt to break the siege on Gaza, and her firsthand account of her kidnapping from international waters by the Israeli military.
   

Fall Fund Drive

Date:

October 5, 2016

     

Fall Fund Drive

Date:

September 28, 2016

Dr. Mohamed Rabie
Distinguished Professor of International Political Economy who taught at several Arab and American universities, including the University of Houston and Texas Southern University in Houston, Georgetown University, The Johns Hopkins University, and The American University in Washington. Dr. Rabie published 43 books in English and Arabic including The Politics of Foreign Aid; A Vision for the Transformation of the Middle East; The US-PLO Dialogue; Conflict Resolution and the Middle East Peace Process; and Global Economic and Cultural Transformation: The Making of History. He also drafted the original document that guided negotiations and coordinated secret contacts between the US and the PLO. Dr. Rabie received several awards and recognitions over the years including the prestigious 2015 State of Palestine Honorary Award for his contributions to the humanities and social sciences fields.

We will speak live with Dr. Rabie about various topics including the current situation in the Middle East and the wars that are destroying several Arab countries; the U.S. involvement and its foreign policy towards the Middle East; the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli problem; and the prospects for peaceful resolutions to what's happening in the Middle East.
 
Note: Dr. Mohamed Rabie is currently in Houston and on Saturday, October 1, 2016, he will be the recipient of the Arab-American Cultural & Community Center's Lifetime Achievement Award at the ACC's annual gala.

Date:

September 21, 2016

Edward Said - Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights
This week marks the 13th anniversary of Professor Edward Said's death, and on this occasion, we will air today on Arab Voices one of the last major speeches he delivered few months before he died. The talk was titled "Memory, Inequality, and Power: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights". He delivered that speech at the University of California, Berkeley on February 19, 2003.
 
Professor Said is an internationally renowned writer, author, and scholar, whose writings about the Middle East and its relationship with the West have gone far to open new roads in academia and to influence public opinion. Dr. Edward Said was a giant figure in the Arab-American community, and for Arabs in the Middle East and across the world. During the course of his life, he articulated a vision of Palestine and the Arab world that not only recalled the significant contributions of the region’s people but also offered hope for the future. Edward W. Said was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He died on September 25, 2003, in New York.

Date:

September 14, 2016

1st Segment: Israel's Netanyahu redefines “ethnic cleansing”!!!
Comments and reactions to the latest remarks by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that those who want to create a Palestinian state are seeking “ethnic cleansing” of Jews from the occupied territories. We will also listen to the reaction of the US State Department, and a talk about ethnic cleansing by Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe.
    

2nd Segment: Gareth Porter on Syria
An American historian, investigative journalist, author and policy analyst specializing in U.S. national security policy. He has written several books about the potential for peaceful conflict resolution in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, including Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. Porter has reported extensively on Middle East conflicts including Syria. Porter's analysis and reporting have appeared in academic journals, news publications, and periodicals for four decades, and in 2012 he was the winner of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
 
We will speak live with Gareth about the latest ceasefire in Syria, and the probabilities of it succeeding.

Date:

September 7, 2016

US student politics “rapidly shifting” despite Israel lobby efforts
Podcast produced by The Electronic Intifada.
 
We will listen today to a Podcast by the Electronic Intifada titled “US student politics “rapidly shifting” despite Israel lobby efforts”. It features interviews with Omar Zahzah and Rahim Kurwa, both graduate students at UCLA and members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Charlotte Kates of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoners Solidarity Network, who was denied entry to Palestine by Israel. Kates was travelling to accompany a delegation of European parliamentarians and lawyers in support of Bilal Kayed, who ended a 71-day hunger strike last month. Charlotte was interrogated about her activism with the BDS movement.

Date:

August 31, 2016

     

Back to School Mini-Drive

Date:

August 24, 2016

Ghada Alatrash
Syrian-Canadian writer, author, poet, and certified translator based in Calgary, Alberta, in Canada. She is chair of the Syrian Women's Club of Calgary. She holds a Masters of English from the University of Oklahoma, with an emphasis on post-colonial studies, and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Calgary's Werklund School of Education in Canada. Ghada taught English at Abu Dhabi Women's College, Arabic at the University of Oklahoma, and is a Columnist for Gulf News. In 2012, she released her first work of translation "So that the Poem Remains", a collection of poems by Lebanese poet Youssef Abdul Samad, translated from Arabic to English. She also held a number of poetry readings set to music by Western and Eastern composers. Ghada just published her first book "Stripped to the Bone: Portraits of Syrian Women", a collection of seven short stories about Syrian women in war-torn Syria and the West, and it explores issues of identity, love, strife and courage.
   
We will speak with Ghada about her stories and work, poetry, Syrian women, women's issues, and her new book "Stripped to the Bone: Portraits of Syrian Women".

Date:

August 17, 2016

Rania Khalek
An independent journalist reporting on the underclass and marginalized; Associate Editor at the Electronic Intifada; and Co-host of the weekly podcast Unauthorized Disclosure. She's written for Extra, The Nation, Al Jazeera America, the Electronic Intifada, Truthout, Salon, AlterNet, Citizen Radio and more.
 
We will speak with Rania about last week's murder of  Khalid Jabara, a 37-year-old Arab-American man, who was shot and killed in front of his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma by his neighbor, Vernon Majors, who terrorized the victim’s family for years, referring to them as “dirty Arabs” and "filthy Lebanese". Majors shot and killed Khalid Jabara while he was out on bond from a prior hate crime where he intentionally drove his car into Khalid Jabara’s mother, despite a prosecutor telling the court that Majors was “a substantial risk to the public.” According to the Jabara family, Khalid called the police 30 minutes before he was shot and killed to report that Majors had a gun and that he was scared for what might happen, but the police came and told him there was nothing to be done!
 
We will also talk about the execution-style killings on Saturday of New York imam (religious leader) and his associate, as hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. continue to rise in an atmosphere filled with hateful rhetoric in politics and the society at large, and a growing climate of fear among Arabs and Muslims in the U.S.

Date:

August 10, 2016

Syrian Tragedy: Causes, Consequences, and Options
A fascinating overview and analysis of the history of Syria, from post-WWII to the current quagmire of war, the rise of ISIS, and the battleground of the world’s powerful military countries.
 
Featured Speaker: Stephen Zunes
Professor of politics and international studies and program director of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco. He has published scores of articles in academic journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspaper op-ed pages on such topics as U.S. foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics, Latin American politics, African politics, human rights, arms control, social movements and nonviolent action.
  
This segment is a production of Global Voices for Justice, a non-profit media organization.

 
 
 

 
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