Much like American civil rights icon Rosa Parks – who was arrested six decades ago by breaking the law for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white man – Tamimi has become the face of a nonviolent movement against injustice.
Having survived Britain’s recent cabinet reshuffle the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt , is confronted with the biggest headache of her short ministerial career: the fallout of the US intention to cut funding to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which constitutes one of the most serious challenges to UK policies in the Middle East.
When President Donald Trump announced in December he would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and call for the U.S. embassy to be moved there, some of his loudest cheerleaders were American evangelicals. Members of Trump’s unofficial evangelical advisory board were consulted on the decision, evangelical-led groups such as Christians United for Israel advocated for the change, and conservative Christian leaders such as Jack Graham were quick to applaud the move on Twitter.
In this panel, speakers Dr. Virginia Tilley, Khaled Elgindy, and Sam Husseini discuss the intertwined topics of US foreign policy and the continuing problem of representation and media bias when it comes to the Palestinian issue.
Palestinian voices were largely absent from American cable news’ coverage of President Donald Trump’s decision last week to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. By turning to their stable of regular political commentators to weigh in on the unprecedented move, the three major news networks – CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News – excluded those most impacted by the decision and avoided difficult questions about Israeli rights abuses, Palestinian human rights lawyers and activists say.
Arabs and Muslims are responding with both actions and reactions to the decision of the Donald Trump administration to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While public protests have engulfed countries as close as Jordan and as far away as Morocco and Indonesia, political leaders are searching for actions they can take to respond to the unexpected large public protests and demands for action.
Fayrouz Sharqawi, Advocacy Director at Grassroots International, discusses the recent movement for Al Aqsa and the necessity of organizations like Grassroots Jerusalem to build a cohesive political platform through which Jerusalemites can voice their demands and bring attention to the indigenous and independent Palestinian economy outside of the international aid and NGO system.
Professor David Palumbo-Liu discusses how our commitments to empathy and ethics can only be met if we acknowledge the ways the realities of Palestine have been obscured and distorted. He examines three key concerns related to human rights that Said addressed via his study of literature and suggests a vision of comparative literature that might conjoin with the model of literary studies Edward Said embodied, at the center of which was the issue of rights.
Through educational events, humanitarian support, and cultural preservation, the Jerusalem Fund is helping build the movement for Palestinian liberation.
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