on palestinian rappers

three great new stories on palestinian rappers and how hip hop culture is used as a mode of resistance:
first: from a dear friend in bourj al barajneh refugee camp in lebanon. yassin and mohammed are originally from akka and are rapping until and for their right of return:

then ayman mohyeldin is [...]

on orange & other adventures in normalization

i love orange. it’s my favorite color. i even painted my office at boise state university orange a few years ago. but in this region colors always take on new meanings that destroy colors and what they mean. for instance, when i first moved to palestine in the summer of 2005 i discovered that orange [...]

homeless in new orleans…prisoners in gaza

jordan flaherty, who is one of my favorite journalists has covered, and continues to cover, the man-made disaster that is new orleans after hurricane katrina has a new article marking the four year anniversary, which details the ongoing state of homelessness in new orleans in black agenda report:
Crawling through a hole in a fence and [...]

“i just want to have fun” (so says random bingo player)

i spent the last few days scouting out various spots where items from the zionist entity are being sold in los angeles. last week i went with a friend from the boycott campaign to a beauty supply shop at the northridge mall. she scoped it out beforehand and saw ahava dead sea products in the [...]

food for thought: on hollywood

there are so many reasons why i don’t live in the u.s. any more. why i can barely stand coming back here at all. but i do it to see my grandma because she is the one reason that it remains difficult for me to live abroad. i’ve spent the last couple of weeks cleaning [...]

homelessness

i’m at “home” in los angeles. where i was born. where i grew up. because i am allowed to go home. something palestinians are not allowed to do. something so simple as going home. i picked up a copy of the weekly publication la weekly which had a feature story in it about a palestinian [...]

a not-so-holy land grab

those of us active in the struggle for the right of return for palestinian refugees and justice for palestinians in general are well acquainted with article 49 of the geneva convention, which reads:
Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or [...]

on refugees & idps

today is world refugee day. there are 42 million refugees world-wide. there are also 7.6 million palestinian refugees, who are not included in the numbers that the united nations high commission for refugees (unhcr) uses because palestinian refugees fall under the united nations relief and works agency (unrwa) which means something different in terms of [...]

mr. carter goes to gaza

there are a lot of people who are very pleased with jimmy carter’s trip to gaza this week. certainly, his trip to gaza helped put gaza back in the news, which is important. but carter’s insistence that there should be a two-state solution with no right of return for palestinian refugees makes me extremely frustrated [...]

old camp, new camp: how about no camp?

the situation of palestinians in nahr el bared refugee camp in northern lebanon remains one of the primary reminders of why the right of return is the only solution for palestinian refugees. while palestinians who continue to be displaced from their camp two years after the lebanese army destroyed it, an immediate solution to the [...]