Off to Germany!

In less than six hours, I should be on my way to the airport, heading to Muenster/Germany where I will be accompanying a group of university students participating in an International Youth Media Camp organized by an NGO called the Bennohaus Citizen Media Center.

It just feels like a wrong time to be away, for multiple reasons… there’s so much that I wanted to be working on here these couple of weeks, especially that we finally began to get organized in a group to take action for Lebanon. There’s also a lot happening at work and other fronts!

But seriously now, I think I could use some time away. And of course I’m excited about all the media work we’re going to be involved in.

We only got the visa Thursday afternoon, and it’s been a race ever since that moment. I still didn’t finish packing, so I can’t blog much right now.

I will try to blog regularly while there, to reflect on the experience and keep it all well-documented. I actually found it very sweet when my mom asked me this evening if I will be blogging from Germany. Mom has been an avid reader of my blog for quite some time. So now this post will give her more reason to worry about my sleep deprivation. That aside, I just want to say, mom… you rock! I love you so much, you’re the best!

Stay tuned…

The Faces of Islam in the Irish Times

Check out this article by Mary Fitzgerald in the Irish Times entitled “Party of God has No Regrets“, where she interviewed one of Hizbulla’s prominant leadership figures; Ali Fayyad. It offers an interesting perspective to readers in the West.

I met Mary while she was in Amman, learning Arabic and freelancing for different international publications and media outlets. In May she was awarded the inaugural Douglas Gageby Irish Times Fellowship for her journalistic project “Under the Crescent – The Faces of Islam“. She set off in Egypt, writing an article every week on Islam in politics, culture, and society. She has spent the past two weeks in Beirut, reporting on the latest crisis. Next she will be headed to Pakistan, Turkey, and Indonesia.

Do check out her articles, they come out every Friday, and are always a good read.

Concert to Raise Funds for Lebanon and Gaza

The Jordan River Foundation is holding a concert this Sunday July 30th 2006 at the Hussein Park’s Amphitheatre to raise funds for Lebanon and Gaza. It’s going to be at 7:30, and you can contact the JRF to get tickets, Tel. 06 – 5933211 (tickets are for 10 JDs).

A Call for Help, and a Good Article

The Jordan River Foundation is starting a national campaign to raise funds and get relief donations for the people of Lebanon and Gaza. Monetary donations can be directed to the following account numbers at Jordanian-Kuwaiti Bank’s main branch:

- For Lebanon: 252318095
- For Gaza: 252318087

Inkind donations needed:

- Medications
- Powder Milk
- children’s milk and food
- Diapers
- Rice, Sugar, Flour, canned food, dried beans and seeds
- Blankets, sleeping bags, and tents

Aramex is helping transport the inkind donations to Lebanon. If you want to donate anything you can deliver it to the JRF’s main offices in Abdoun from 8:00 AM till 6:00 PM (phone number: 5933211)

Please do spread the word, a lot of people want to help but don’t know how.

On a side note, read this article by Iman Azzi, an American of Lebanese origins interning at the Daily Star in Beirut, and sharing heart-felt accounts and reflections on the war experiences. (Thanks for the link Sami)

on demonstrations, democracy, and…recycled slogans

One of my friends has been doing a wonderful job sending mass messages via sms regarding every protest, demonstration, or sit-in that takes place in support of Lebanon and Gaza.

What do protests and demonstrations achieve? Well, besides letting off steam - which is very legitimate but at the same time somewhat deceptive because one lets off part of the frustration while none of the causes behind the frustration are addressed – ideally demonstrations should be able to send a strong message, and to exercise some kind of pressure on whoever holds the power to somehow affect the situation.

I did say “Ideally”.

I had a good brainstorming session with a Lebanese guy about what we can do here to help…

Think Think

“What if we organize a huge sit-in in front of the American Embassy?” he suggested

“um, sorry K, that’s not quite doable here.”

“Ok, balash the American Embassy, let’s just have a huge demonstration to create pressure on the government to take a stronger stand against the Israeli aggression!”

“um, that’s not exactly how politics here works.”

“What would it take for us to mobilize thousands in a protest or sit-in?”

“Well, you’d have to be with the IAF.”

…

Funny when you attempt to explain the workings of things to someone who’s not from here, has never lived here before, and does not have the slightest clue about the climate of the place. They ask questions that to you sound ridiculous, and your answers come instinctively without resorting to any analysis or logic, but when you stop to listen to yourself, well, let’s just say it feels weird.

…

“So can we do some fundraising to help relieve the humanitarian crisis?” he asked.

“Yes, that we can do.”

…

Back to my other friend who keeps telling me about the demonstrations; he called me on Friday to tell me that there’s going to be a sit-in at the Culture Street in Shmeisani, “this one’s going to be huge, I’m telling ya!”

I grabbed my camera, and decided to drop by.

About 20 young people were gathered there, with t-shirts that said “No to Silence”, red flags, red bands on their arms, Lebanese, Jordanian, and Palestinian flags, and… guess what, Guevara t-shirts.

The number remained quite small, and they started chanting and singing Marcel Khalifah songs, songs calling for revolution, and then… songs calling for “Leftist Unity” and glorifying the struggle of the Proletariat.

I was sad. I don’t know why. Being a leftist has a sort of attraction for some young people eager to be rebellious, to resist, and to do something different. They romanticize about the idea of revolution. The movements and uprisings of the sixties are definitely fascinating and worth a study.

But seriously now, leftists need to stop recycling the attractive slogans of their era of glory. Well, not just the leftists. There needs to be a level of political maturity among those who want to be activists that is capable of defining new concepts to address the issues of today, in the political and socio-cultural climate we live in today, here and now.

I wonder how the political reform and quest for democracy will go now after this July war. Someone asked me; why do you people in the Middle East blame the world instead of just taking responsibility and solving your own problems? Yes, we should take on the responsibility and start addressing our internal issues and problems, but we also need to acknowledge the external causes of these problems. Echoing Batir, how many people has Al-Qaeda recruited during the course of this recent war? Mr Bush has taken it upon himself to wage “war on terror” and “spread democracy in the Middle East”… yet I cannot think of anything that could’ve done more harm to the quest for democracy or the curbing of fundamentalist or extremist thought than this so-called war on terror, the so-called attempts to spread democracy, and of course, the continued blind support of Israel and its crimes against humanity.

Ahhhhhhh…

Turn your Frustration into Action

I’ve been incapable of reflecting and writing these past few days. Nothing feels worse than being helpless in the face of something that is making you so angry. But I’m a believer that every small action counts, and not just in this particular crisis, but in general… we think that since it would take ages and ages for people’s mentality to change and for distorted perceptions to shift, and since some problems are too big for a few people to attempt to fix, then we should just sit back and complain and get sucked into a complicated political analysis while letting frustration fester within.

Well, every small action counts, which is why I was so happy when my friend Nellie told us about this great and well-organized effort coordinated by one of her Lebanese friends currently in Amman. They’re liaising with relief organizations, channeling donations and support, publicizing demonstrations and marches in different parts of the world, and working on multiple fronts to help Lebanon in the face of this war.

Here is their message:

Dear Friends,

The ongoing crisis in Lebanon has been devastating to its people and economy. More than two hundred civilians have died, there is no infrastructure left to speak of, and there are no signs of an imminent ceasefire. Meanwhile, the possibility that the international community will take decisive action to stop the violence is dismal. Despite the various statements made by leaders all over the world, there have been no concrete political steps taken to stop these attacks.

Our primary concern is not to assign political blame, but rather to provide a practical plan of action.

We need to act immediately! A concerted international initiative is needed to apply pressure on global and regional powers to end the incessant violence and to work for a constructive rather than destructive solution to this crisis.

You now have the chance to turn your frustration into active support for the people of Lebanon. Our plan of action involves three major demands:

1. Mobilize and build on the momentum of the protests spurred by worldwide distress over this tragedy. Force the world’s attention to the grave human suffering in Lebanon.

2. Contact your local and national representatives to actively engage in ending the war. Pressure them into taking effective diplomatic and legislative action (Send in the Blue Helmets!)

3. Relieve the suffering of the Lebanese people by supporting the humanitarian effort and by providing resources to the organizations most engaged in the rescue and rebuilding efforts.

There are opportunities to become involved wherever you are in the world. We have launched saveleb.org in order to coordinate this international initiative by providing the information necessary to get involved in such efforts.
The website allows you to channel your frustration into a practical effort that will help the Lebanese people.

Visit and revisit www.saveleb.org

We are open to any suggestions you may have.

The Saveleb Team

www.saveleb.org

PS. Use this logo and link to their website.

Home

Serina, Khaled, and the rest of the youth group just made it into Jordan from Lebanon safely. I am so glad. They had witnessed a bombing right in front of them on the way from Lebanon to Syria, and barely made it through the border.

I’m not going to talk logic and opinions right now. At this moment I want to be selfish; I was so worried about my friends this morning, spent hours trying to call the Jordanian Embassy in Beirut, and couldn’t get my mind off the issue until Serina sent a message from Syria.

The comments on the previous post were very interesting, and offer some logical and valid perspectives. There were some opinions I disagree with, but I still see where they’re coming from. The Middle East is just so complex I guess, you can’t work your way through it by logic sometimes. But I don’t want to get into that, not now. I have many thoughts I’d like to share with you, perhaps tomorrow.

Now, I want to be caught up in my own personal human aspect of the story, and give Serina a call.

In the meantime, here is a good post that’s worth reading and pondering.

Dear World

For three days, I’ve had a lump in my throat and my fingers have been numb every time I sit in front of my pc to write.

Mostly I just cuddle in front of the TV while the rest of the house is asleep, and then go to the internet and read what the Lebanese bloggers are sharing, and what Roba, Hala, Khalaf, Sam, Lisa, Abu Aardvark and the rest of them are saying.

Then I start to write, but fall short… a letter to the world, an email to my Lebanese friends, an email to the MERYANers in Iraq, Gaza, West Bank, and Lebanon. Amazing how this youth network managed to personify the Middle East conflicts for me.

Now Lebanon is not just the place we went for a couple of beautiful family vacations, the source of art, poetry, culture, and music. It’s not just the travel agency advertisement, the “See you in Beirut” superstar tag line, the lyrics of a Fairouz classic… It’s more than that.

It’s Nabil, Wassim, Nellie, Maria, Rabi3, and Malak.

And it’s Eve, Mustafa, Raja, Fouad…

Here’s the unfinished letter I began writing to the world yesterday…

Dear World,

I am writing you from Jordan, a small country in the Middle East, the one “between Iraq and a hard place”, the one south of Syria and Lebanon.

Don’t worry about me. I am ok. I was supposed to be in Lebanon this week, participating in a youth camp, but I apologized way earlier because I couldn’t take time off work. Two of my friends are there now, still not sure when and how they’ll be able to get a ride back.

At first, when all this hell broke lose, I was mad. I was so furious at how someone like Nasrallah can decide to drag an entire people into war, and to have them subjected to bombing, shelling, destruction, and death… for one stunt.

But then, I was even madder, not at Nasralla, not at Hamas, not at religious fanatics and extremists… but at YOU; The cowardly, apathetic world, and so-called world leaders, who sit back and allow hundreds of innocent lives to be shattered for “self-defense”. Nasralla knew that his “operation” would instigate such a reaction, and Israel didn’t let him down.

Can’t say it more eloquently than Khalaf… are you seriously asking yourself why young people in this part of the world are driven into the extremist thought? Why they become so polarized?

How can you, how dare you, close your eyes to the humanitarian disaster that’s been happening in Gaza those past weeks? How can you sit back and allow the US to veto a UN declaration to condemn the acts of a war-machine? How can you sit back and allow for massive, disproportional, unjust collective punishment??

You claim you want to bring democracy to the Middle East, and then you support the actions that feed the extremism that will come to power if true democracy is implemented.

I live in Jordan, where many people take the stability and peace for granted, where they have political opinions without fully realizing what they entail, and where extremist thought and sentiments are alarmingly finding their way into a segment of young people. People watch Al Arabiyah, Al Jazeera, CNN, Future, and LBC, feel angry and frustrated, curse Israel, curse the US, and then go back to daily business as usual. They curse the inflation, the increase in oil prices and real estate prices. They curse Amman’s summer traffic. They watch with fear the fluctuating stock market where they risked what little life-long saving they have. They flip through the newspaper in search of a decent inexpensive short vacation escape; Beirut will now be scrapped off the list, and Sharm will be back on. But Beirut will never be scrapped off our hearts and minds. I just pray that we don’t go numb from the saturation of war and death news. Hundreds of innocent Iraqis die every week. After three years of this news being repeated, it became just that, ‘news’… flying over our heads.

I’m tempted to say “Whatever…” and end this letter…

Yet I can’t say “Whatever”!! Three days ago I wrote to my friends telling them I’m depressed. Today, I don’t want to be depressed anymore. I am angry.

But what difference would another angry Arab make?!

In a couple of hours, I will be out heading out to work with a group of young people on a film they’re making, a hilarious film about bride-shopping. In the evening I will get together with a friend I haven’t seen in ages. And tomorrow I will start off another hectic week at work with a 6:00-AM meeting.

And in the midst of all that, I will be watching Al Arabiyah and Al Jazeera, I will be checking toot, and I will sit at the Cafeteria and discuss the whole thing with my wise friend B, one of the most politically and socially-aware people I know. We will wonder, again, what it would take to mobilize people, and to shake us out of our silence. I will sigh, the lump in my throat and the knot in my tummy will grow bigger, and then I will look at my watch, and tell him I have to get back to work.

And that’s probably what you will be doing too, dear world. You will do whatever it is you were doing, or not doing, and the Extremists on both side will have the upper hand.

But you and I have a responsibility to find what it is that’s in our power to do about it, and to do it.

…

Until then, I will light a candle, and say a prayer for Serina and Khaled to get back to Amman safely, and for my friends in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq. I will light a candle for my beloved Jordan too. I will light a candle for hope…

Be Inspired – The Other Arabia

I’ve stumbled upon this very interesting project entitled “Azka Dunya” or “The Other Arabia” , from the Arab Education Forum.

The Other Arabia or Azkadunya is an alternative non-profit distribution network for the promotion, marketing, and sale of non-commercial cultural production by individuals, organizations, or educational and cultural initiatives in the Arab world or in the Arabic language.

…

“The Other Arabia” is dedicated to show the creative, original, contemporary, and inspiring side of the Arab world.

“The Other Arabia” has been developed by the Arab Education Forum to become a sustainable independent project on the long run.

The Other Arabia presents a wide range of non-commercial books, newsletters, magazines, periodicals, films, music Cds, art projects from the Arab world and provides for the possibility to order these products from anywhere in the world.

I’ve always admired the Arab Education Forum and what they do. I love their philosophy, their spirit, and their approach. And what better to introduce you to it than this article written by its founder – Munir Fasheh. Check it out:

The Arab Education Forum (AEF): Building on what is beautiful, inspiring, healthy, and abundant in the Arab world”

One of the other amazing initiatives run by the AEF is Safar, the Arab Youth Mobility Fund. It enables actively involved young people in the Arab world to travel to any Arab country and visit an inspiring organization, individual, or attend an event such as a workshop or conference. They have a great website, so do check it out and seize the opportunity.

A Visit to Philadelphia, and Some Thoughts

As most of my blog readers might have noticed by now, part of my work involves meeting with university students on campus. It has taken me to Mu’tah in the South, JUST in the north, and a bunch of others in between.

One of these is Philadelphia University, which is a private university located on the way to Jerash, and which was headed for eight years by Dr Adnan Badran, before his term as Prime Minister.

A lot of the university’s progress is accredited to Dr Badran, and the level of student activities and extra-curricular programs there is quite impressive. An example that comes to mind is the Arab University Theatre Festival, which the university organized and hosted last May.

I was there last week, and I left with a surge of positive energy, not just because of the beautiful campus, built on hill tops and overlooking a great view, but because of the students I met with.

In a world plagued by apathy and shallowness, I love it when I meet young people who are proactive, doing something different, and passionate about it. It fills me with enthusiasm and optimism. Quite often in my conversations with people about Jordan and the change we need to drive, things feel gloomy, and frustration is the prevalent emotion. Of course I acknowledge that there are so many frustrating elements and social and cultural trends that are deeply entrenched and hard to uproot, but I tell people that one of the things that make me feel positive are my encounters with bright, talented, and passionate people.

So, back to those students at Philadelphia; they were a group involved in theatre, music, and arts. Listening to them singing and playing what they had written and composed, and discussing the idea they have and the project they want to do was very refreshing.

I wish drama, arts, and music can have a more active role in education from early childhood. This area is terribly marginalized. Don’t you notice how subjects that emphasize CREATIVITY and FREE EXPRESSION are undermined?! Well, that has to change. Don’t just give us computer labs in every school with a great IT curriculum. Add a subject like theatre arts and try to change the paradigm that such a class is “not important” and nothing but a chance for students to chit chat, finish the undone math homework, or study for the day’s Arabic test or something.

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of the Philadelphia campus, taken a few months ago.