Palestine Think Tank

Muslim organizations and the people who run them in the US should be ashamed of themselves for what they have done to add to the misery and discrimination that Arabs and Muslims face in the United States of America.
These sad and bankrupt organizations are always the first to condemn any tragedy that happens here or [...]

Historically, villagers were fully dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. They were harvesting olives, almonds, citrus and rain-fed crops such as wheat, barley, and beans. After the Israeli military occupation, villagers' hardship continued. Villagers were used as unskilled labour in Israeli factories and on construction sites. As a result, farmers neglected their remaining farmlands and agricultural produce declined sharply. As in any other Palestinian locality, shops in the village were turned into marketing outlets for Israeli produce. Moreover, the Israeli military administration controlled all aspects of economic life in the village, including the release of building permits, driving licenses, travel permits and recruitment approval of public servants. All in all, livelihood in the village was designed to serve Israeli colonial interests.
The combination of accelerated hardships of the Palestinian rural communities, including Zayta, and the failure of conventional development models to resolve Palestinian challenges call for an alternative Palestinian development worldview.

(art: Arab Woman by Shepard Fairey)
Dignity, my sisters and brothers demand it, so hand it to them now.
Soldiers with big guns pointed at our little ones
At our women and men again and again.
They shout and they berate, humiliate and hate
At Al Aqsa and Allenby Gate
While the old stand and wait.
 
“You’re dirty! Drink your piss! Dance to [...]

Every time I think of 9/11
I see burning flesh dripping off the bones of Iraqi children in Fallujah
Now Gaza
I tend to memorialize the forgotten
The collateral damage eclipsing our unpunished crimes
Maybe it’s because I’m a numbers guy
Because if I had a dollar for every time an Iraqi died since 2003 
I’d be a millionaire
And don’t get me [...]

(photo by Daniela Spano "Nelle Mani di Nonna")
I woke up yesterday morning to find an email from my father, who is on a business trip in Europe at the moment, informing us that my grandmother had a stroke Sunday and passed away.
Unlike my cousins who grew up with her, I'd never known my grandmother. She'd always lived in Iraq and [...]

Mostafa, an unemployed Palestinian refugee from Albaqaa camp in Jordan, unfolds a crumbled page of an old magazine in an attempt to read the stale news dated three years ago. This routine ritual comes usually after eating his falafel meal that was wrapped with the page. This is the only way someone suffering from poverty like [...]

Salvatore had black hair until it turned white
Always had masses of it, until the medicine took it all
He had eyes as clear as a lightning bolt in a darkening sky
And always a curious gaze upon the world that he loved
He truly loved the world and the simple gifts it gave
It gave him music and his [...]

To those who do not know what it means to welcome the Syrian - Lebanese – Arab icon Duraid Laham in Gaza, I will try to come as close as can be to the shadows of this gigantic human figure. Duraid was chosen as a Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations but long before that he was [...]