Voices of the Middle East and North Africa

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine is based on journalist Ben Ehrenreich’s eye-witness account of life in the West Bank—in the village of Nabi Saleh and the cities of Hebron and Ramallah.

At age fifty one, the film the Battle of Algiers has never seemed so current, as it continues to inspire, instruct and inform as much as it did when it first came out in 1966.

What is it about this classic film that has so revolutionized the very medium of political cinema? And continues to provoke thought and reflection and whose lessons are still pondered in the whole world’s movie theaters, university campuses and military barracks long after it first showing?

In a 2017 piece “The Battle of Algiers” at 50: From 1960s Radicalism to the Classrooms of West Point, Columbia university’s Madeleine Dobie notes that “The film has been acknowledged as an influence on everyone from the Black Panthers and the Red Army Faction to the military juntas of the Southern Cone. It may, however, have had the greatest impact in the United States, where it has appealed both to scholars of colonial and postcolonial history such as myself, and to members of the military and defense community.” Khalil spoke with Professor Dobie about why this film has withstood the test of time

Leïla Slimani ‘s latest novel, The Perfect Nanny has been a huge hit in France, winning the Prix Goncourt and making her one of the most celebrated writers in the world. We speak with Leïla Slimani about her novel and her dual status in France as both Moroccan and French.

Later in the program, we remember Broadcast Media Pioneer, Arab-American activist and long-time host of the “Middle East in Focus” radio program on KPFK in Los Angeles, the great Don Bustany, who passed away last week in Santa Barbara at the age of 89.

Hanin Zoabi is Palestinian a member of the Israeli Kenesset (parliament). She is known for her vocal criticism of Israel and its policies against Palestinians.

In 2010, Zoabi participated in the Gaza flotilla. Zoabi was arrested and held by Israeli authorities and faced an aggressive wave of attacks for her participation in the Flotilla. Israeli politicians called for her disqualification from her role as an MP and for stripping her Israeli citizenship and she received death threats. None of that deterred her from her activism and continuing to challenge the Israeli political establishment.

Vomena’s Mira Nabulsi sat down with Hanian Zoabi, and spoke with her about what it means to be be a Palestinian in the Israeli kenesset as well as the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the Israeli political culture that normalizes it.

A Palestinian actor learns there’s more to English girls than pure sex appeal. A Pakistani-born terror suspect figures out what’s wrong with his first novel. A British youth suspects all is not what it seems with his object of desire. A New Yorker asks his girlfriend for a sexual favor at the worst possible time. The latest Bay Area Golden Production’s play, Love, Bombs & Apples is the comic tale of four men, each from different parts of the globe, all experiencing a moment of revelation.

Khalil Bendib spoke with the play’s screen writer Hassan Abdulrazzak, the play’s actor Asif Khan, and Golden Thread productions’ Director of Marketing & New Plays Evren Odcikin

April 24th marks the centennial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, when the Ottoman Empire began carrying out a systematic plan to annihilate its Armenian population. As a result, between 1 million and 1.5 million people were killed or died of starvation. This week, to mark the 100th anniversary of this tragic event, we bring back a 2006 conversation Beshara Doumani had with Dr. Stephan Astourian, about the historical circumstances that led to the genocide. Beshara Doumani is a Professor of Modern Middle East History and Director of the Middle East Studies at Brown University. Dr. Stephan Astourian is the Executive Director of the Armenian Studies Program and associate adjunct Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh: The Life of a Palestinian Doctor

For the past 35 years, Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh has provided healthcare to his fellow Palestinians in the Galilee. In 1981, he set up The Galilee Society, an NGO working for equitable health, environmental and socio-economic conditions for the Palestinian citizens of Israel. In 2008, he published his first book, a work of non-fiction, about his life as a Palestinian doctor in his memoir, A Doctor in Galilee: The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel. On this program, we speak with Dr. Kanaaneh about his recently published book, “Chief Complaint: A Country Doctor’s Tales of Life in Galilee,” which provides a unique look at the Palestinian struggle in historic Palestine through a series of fictional short stories based on his experience and the experience of patients he treated in Galilee. In a light-hearted and entertaining way, this book explores the changing, precarious, and ever-shrinking world of Palestinians living in Israel

Alia Malek's new book, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria, covers modern Syria, from the last of the Ottoman days to the present. Malek provides a rich history of the country by weaving the lives of her family members with the geopolitical and economic history of Syria

Alia Malek is a journalist, and author. She is the author Amreeka: US History Retold Through Arab-American Lives and the editor of Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice.

On Friday, March 30, more than 30,000 Palestinians gathered at the border of Gaza and Israel to commemorate the 1976 killing of six Palestinian citizens of Israel protesting the theft of their land, which became known as the Palestinian Land Day. On the first day of what the organizers call “The Great March of Return,” Israeli military forces opened fire into the peaceful demonstration, killing at least 17 people and injuring more than 750. The Israeli occupation forces boasted on their Twitter account that they “know where every bullet landed” during the massacre. They tweet was later deleted.

Organizers of the Great Return March note that the objective of the march is to demand the implementation of the United Nations Resolutions 194 allowing for Palestinian refugees to return to their original towns and villages that are part of now Israel. The March was part of a 6-weeks event that will culminate in the commemoration of 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba or Catastrophe. That’s the term Palestinians use to describe the events leading to creation of the State of Israel and displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians now refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, surrounding Arab countries and around the world.

We’ll go to Gaza to speak with Mohamad Abdulwahab Abu Hashem a legal researcher with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and a human rights and criminology lecturer at Al Azhar University in Gaza, and Rawan Yaghi, a writer based in Gaza

We’ll also remember renowned palestinian singer, songwriter, and composer Rim Banna, who passed away in her hometown of Nazareth on March 24th after a long battle with cancer.

A conversation with Professor Ella Shohat about her latest book On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements.

This book gathers together some of her most influential political essays, interviews, speeches, testimonies, and memoirs for the first time and we have a chance today to share this exceptional work with you, but you need to move fast, since we have only limited number of copies!

On January 20, Turkey launched so-called Operation Olive Branch in the northern Syrian enclave of Afrin. Turkish ground troops crossed the border into Syria alongside thousands of Turkey-backed Syrian rebels. The Turkish government has stated that its goal is to root out an armed militia called the People's Protection Units (YPG), which it views as a threat to its security. Turkey sees the YPG as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has struggled for the rights of the Kurdish people in Turkey for more than three decades. After two months of fighting, on March 18, Turkey announced the city of Afrin has been taken, and Turkish president Erdogan suggested that the current military campaign could be extended extend to other Kurdish-held borders areas east of Afrin.Vomena’s 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

This week, we speak with world renowned dancer and choreographer Shahrokh Mosh-kin Ghalam about his new performance of Love Stories of Shahnameh, playing on March 18th, at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose.

But First, On saturday, March 10, we lost prominent and celebrated anthropologist and a dear friend of our program, UC Berkeley Professor Saba Mahmood. This week, we celebrate her life and pay tribute to her everlasting legacy by airing one of her last lectures, given at Bogazici University in 2015.