Status/الوضع

A conversation with Gaza based writer Rawan Yaghi about daily life in Gaza.

In her recent op-ed in the New York Times, titled “Gaza Screams for Life,” Gaza-based writer Rawan Yaghi describes her visit to the site of the Great March of Return protest at the border two days after Friday’s massacre. She writes, “I left the protest thinking of the rest of Gaza — shellshocked for years, its borders closed and its United Nations-funded infrastructure in decay. I thought of the kids in my neighborhood who play football in what used to be the ground floor of a tall residential building, with bare concrete columns and poking iron rods as their only audience. And I thought: Once again, Gaza the Injured has come out to protest, and to scream for life.”

April 5th, 2018 | English
Interviewed by Malihe Razazan
Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa (VOMENA)

VOMENA (Voices of the Middle East and North Africa) Producer Shahram Aghamir spoke with Dr. Cengiz Gunes who is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University in the UK about the Turkish invasion of Afrin, an enclave in North Western Syria, on January 20th.

March 22nd, 2018 | English
Interviewed by Shahram Aghamir
Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa (VOMENA)

A conversation with Gaza based human rights activist and legal researcher for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Mohamad Abu Hashem, about the Great March of Return.

April 5th, 2018 | English
Interviewed by Mira Nabulsi
Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa (VOMENA)

On Friday 30 March 2018, thirty-thousand Palestinians in the Gaza Strip organized the largest civil protest in recent history in Palestine. The effort, known as the March of Return, is meant to commemorate the Land Day protests organized by Palestinian citizens of Israel in response to Israeli land confiscations and to last through the Palestinian Nakba on 15 May 2018, also known as Israel’s independence day.

On the first day of the March of Return, Israeli snipers shot to kill 18 Palestinians and injured 1,400 others across the militarized border against the unarmed demonstrators who were within the Gaza Strip’s buffer zone and posed no threat to the soldiers.

In this interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Status host Noura Erakat places the march in context and discusses the mainstream media’s inability to understand or explain this mass civil uprising.

Yemeni journalist and political commentator Sama'a Al-Hamdani discusses current events in the Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia's continued war in Yemen and arrests of members of the royal family, the death of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the ongoing diplomatic crisis in the GCC, its legal implications, and more.

Courtesy of Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
January 19th, 2018 | English

In a talk based on his most recent book, Dr. Lahouari attempts to assess the history and political legacy of radical Arab nationalism to show that it contained the seeds of its own destruction. While the revolutionary regimes promised economic and social development and sought the unity of Arab nations, they did not account for social transformations, such as freedom of speech, that would eventually lead to their decline. But while radical Arab nationalism fell apart, authoritarian populism did not disappear. Today it is expressed by political Islam that aims to achieve the kind of social justice radical Arab nationalism once promised.

Dr. Lahouari creatively links the past and present while also raising questions about the future of Arab countries. Is political Islam the heir of radical Arab nationalism? If political Islam succeeds, will it face the same challenges faced by radical Arab nationalism? Will it be able to implement modernity? The future of Arab countries, Addi says, depends on this crucial issue.

Courtesy of Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
January 12th, 2018 | English

Max Geller and Tabitha Mustafa, of the New Orleans Palestinian Solidarity Committee, discuss the campaign that culminated in the resolution, as well as the fall-out that followed it.

Interviewed by Noura Erakat | English
February 25th, 2018

Courtesy of the LSE Middle East Centre.

Seven years since the popular uprising that shook Egypt, the relationships between state, society, social movements and corporate power have been reconfigured, perhaps even disfigured. On the eve of the anniversary of the January 25 revolution, Adel Iskandar reflects on these changes and asks how they have affected our understanding of social, cultural and political life in the country. He argues that Egypt today is a replica of various historic Egypts, each manifesting as an effigy built for either public scrutiny or glorification.

January 24th, 2018 | English
Recorded at the Wolfson Theatre in London, England
(Note: Recording ends abruptly due to technical difficulties)

Adel Iskandar is Director of the Global Communication Program at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver. He is the author of several works on Egypt and Arab media, including "Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution" (IB Taurus, 2013) and "Mediating the Arab Uprisings" (Tadween Publishing, 2012). He is a co-editor of Jadaliyya and an associate producer of the Status audio journal.

Muna Dajani is a Policy member of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy
Network, and a Palestinian environmental researcher.

Dr. Nahid Siamdoust is the author of “Soundtrack of the Revolution:The Politics of Music in Iran”.

Interviewed by Malihe Razazan
(English)

Status host Malihe spoke with Dr. Siamdoust about her work and some of the most important songs that continue to define modern Iran.