Fearing the Palestinian Narrative: Why Israel Banned ‘Jenin Jenin’

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Ramzy Baroud On January 11, the Israeli Lod District Court ruled against a Palestinian film-maker, Mahmoud Bakri, ordering him to pay hefty compensation to an Israeli soldier who…

Read More

How filmmaker Khosrow Sinai uncovered the hidden history of Polish refugees in Iran

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Aga Sablinska Iranian filmmaker Khosrow Sinai passed away in August from COVID-19, leaving behind an important and eye-opening document of Polish exodus during the Second World War. His…

Read More

‘Music is our only weapon’: Middle Eastern artists fight oppression with new ‘peace album’

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Bell Trew One of the songs was recorded during an air strike, parts of another by a fleeing refugee aboard a boat. The man behind the album is…

Read More

Remembring Houshang Pezeshgnia, Iranian artist

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Houshang Pezeshgnia, Iranian artist (1917-1972) was one of the first modernist painters in the country. He attended the College of art in Istanbul studying under professor Leopold Louis….

Read More

Book Review: The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Greg Burris, The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019).* *Book two in the Insubordinate Spaces series edited by George Lipsitz. Jadaliyya (J): What made you…

Read More

The Way To The Orchard: Poem by Sohrab Sepehri

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Keep calling me! Sweet is your voice. It is the green Growing beyond the companionship of sorrow. In the scopes of this silent era I am lonelier than…

Read More

A Shelter (سقف): a song by Iraj Jannati Ataei

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Saghf (Persian: سقف)(Literary: Roof) is one of the most beautiful Iranian songs. It was first performed by Farhad Mehrad in the 1970s. The lyrics are composed by  Iraj…

Read More

‘To sing is not a right in the Gaza Strip’

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Hind Khoudary. Abed Nasser, the owner of Cedar restaurant in Gaza City, broke the news to his customers in a Facebook post: the highly-anticipated music night scheduled for…

Read More

Michael Rakowitz review – horribly entertaining tour of ruined utopias

Thursday, June 6, 2019

Adrian Searle. Whitechapel Gallery, London: The Beatles play a presidential funeral while Nimrud’s Palace is rebuilt with sardine cans in this angry, thought-provoking journey though time. Michael Rakowitz’s…

Read More

Why artists are speaking up against ‘dirty money’ in Iranian cinema?

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Rohollah Faghihi. The phenomenon of “dirty” or suspicious money appears to have increasingly found a new haven: Iran’s cinema and TV production industry. In 2015, Interior Minister Abdolreza…

Read More

Poems of Resistance: 7 Poems for Palestine

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Salem Jubran: The Exile The sun walks through the borderGuns keep silentA skylark starts its morning songIn TulkaremAnd flies away to supWith the birds of a KibbutzA lonely…

Read More

Iran’s street art siblings on censorship, activism & advocacy

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Peter Corboy. Born in tabriz, iran in 1985 and 1991 respectively, street art siblings ICY and SOT began making work under less than hospitable conditions. initially influenced by…

Read More

Poems by Ahmad Shamlu, Iranian poet

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

“Ahmad Shamlou, also known under his pen name, Alef Bamdad, is among the most influential Iranian literary voices of the twentieth century and widely known as the father…

Read More

Poems in English by Mohammad Tavallaei

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

The Poet, Poetry and Paper Poetry is an umbilical cord Connecting the poet with Mother-God-Nature. He comes into existence with The birth of every chicken, pup or baby…

Read More

In memoriam: Samir Amin at 80, an Introduction and Tribute

Sunday, September 9, 2018

John Bellamy Foster. Published by Monthly Review in 2011, re-posted by Middle East 4 Change as a memorial to Semir Amin who died on August 12, 2018. Samir…

Read More

Queens of Syria: Voices of the dispossessed

Monday, July 30, 2018

Tanushka Marah. Posted Middle East Eye July 24, 2018. Performed by 14 Syrian women who have fled their homeland, Queens of Syria is a theatrical adaptation of Euripides…

Read More

A Poem by Ahmad Yamani, Egyptian poet.

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Translated by Robin Moger. My sister screamed in the night Take me to my brother’s house And there she screamed that same night No no! Take me back…

Read More

Poem by Sukaina Habiballah: ‘Everything in You Grew, But Not Your Hand’

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Translated by Robin Moger. Posted on ArabLit May 25, 2o18. Over at Youssef Rakha’s Cosmopolitan Hotel, there are six poems in Robin Moger’s translation, by Moroccan writer Sukaina…

Read More

Israel and Iran on brink of full-scale war after unprecedented Syria bombardment in response to alleged Golan Heights attack

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Bethan McKernan. Posted on the Independent 10 May 2018. Israel has launched its most intensive attack on Iranian positions in neighbouring Syria since the civil war began in 2011,…

Read More

Obituary: Abbas, Iranian photographer of revolutions, war and religion

Friday, April 27, 2018

Diane Smyth. Posted by British Journal of Photography April 26, 2018. The Iranian photographer died on 25 April in Paris, after a 60-year career that included a 27-year…

Read More

Gravequake and Death by Stoning – two poems by Ziba Karbassi

Monday, April 9, 2018

Gravequake The song of the nightingale Is not up for sale. Tell your black crows tell Your black crows Caw Caw The song of the nightingale Is not…

Read More

Egyptian Surrealist art at the Tate Liverpool, UK

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Marina Warner. Posted on London Review of Books Vol 40, no 5, March 8, 2018. Art et Liberté was a movement that came into being in 1938 in…

Read More

ID card and the Dice Player: Two Poems by Mahmoud Darwish

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Mahmoud Darwish Posted on Resistance Words on June 15, 2017. Last year, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman called his poems “fuel for terror attacks”. By that, he meant…

Read More

Iranian graffitists feel walled in

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Zahra Alipour. Posted on Al Monitor February 11, 2018. Feature image reads: ‘peace”. “You are no artist if you are drawing on a wall with spray paint. You…

Read More

The Boustani house: the tragedy and faith of Lebanon

Friday, December 29, 2017

Robert Fisk. Posted on Znet December 28, 2017. Source The Independent. During the great famine in Lebanon and Syria – whose lamentable hundredth anniversary we mark these current…

Read More

Art Versus Cultural Diplomacy

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Maymanah Farhat. Posted on Jadaliyya on December 21, 2017. Between Two Rounds of Fire, the Exile of the Sea: Arab Modern and Contemporary Works from the Barjeel Art…

Read More

A Looming Crisis for Turkey’s President

Friday, December 22, 2017

Conn Hallinan. Posted on Znet on December 21, 2017. Viewed one way, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan looks unassailable: He weathered last year’s coup attempt, jailed more than…

Read More

Anuar Brahem: Blue Maqams

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Adam Shatz. Posted on London Review of Books blog on December 5, 2017. Anouar Brahem first heard jazz when he was studying the oud at the National Conservatory…

Read More

A Visit to Heaven and Hell: Mapping Planet Earth: extracts

Monday, November 6, 2017

By Eduardo Galeano, Book extracts Published in TomDispatch, November 2, 2017 The following passages are excerpted from Hunter of Stories, the last book by Eduardo Galeano, who died…

Read More

‘One Hundred Years’, a poem by Steve Bloom on the centenary of the Russian Revolution

Saturday, October 14, 2017

The full poem can be downloaded as a pdf here  And over the evening forest the bronze moon climbs to its place. Why has the music stopped? Why…

Read More