Palestinian-American Poet Naomi Nye..... "a champion of the literature of encouragement and heart. Reading her work enhances life.”

Palestinian-American Poet Naomi NyeThe third season of Wyoming Chronicle debuts with an interview of Naomi Shihab Nye, an Arab-American poet, talks to Wyoming Chronicle about peaceful ways to resolve conflicts in the Middle East, with a backdrop of fierce debate in the United Nations over Palestinian statehood.

In a Chronicle short feature, Sen. Malcolm Wallop, who passed away in September, is remembered.

Nye’s Palestinian grandmother and father lost their home in Jerusalem in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in which they were not participants. Nye was born in St. Louis in 1952, and now lives in Texas. An author of poetry and young adult books, Nye recently toured Wyoming as part of a campaign by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities for civility in public discourse.

A keen observer of the Arab Spring and the turmoil in the Middle East, Nye has used her writing to provide a human face to the oft-caricatured Arab. While she provides insights into the despair that leads to violence in the Islamic world, she has also taken a strong stand against terrorism, expressed in her widely published “Letter to Any Would-be Terrorist.”

Above all, though, Nye is a talented, award-winning poet, with books like “19 Varieties of Gazelle”, and the soon-to-be-published “Transfer.” She has also written a young adult book, “Habibi.”

About her work, the poet William Stafford has said, “her poems combine transcendent liveliness and sparkle along with warmth and human insight. She is a champion of the literature of encouragement and heart. Reading her work enhances life.”

Nye has received awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Carity Randall Prize, the International Poetry Forum, as well as four Pushcart Prizes. She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow. In 1988 she received The Academy of American Poets’ Lavan Award, selected by W. S. Merwin.

Her poems and short stories have appeared in various journals and reviews throughout North America, Europe, and the Middle and Far East. She has traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the United States Information Agency three times, promoting international goodwill through the arts.

She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas. She was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2010.

Video

LINKS AND OTHER MATERIAL ON NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

• Naomi Shihab Nye reading and talking about inspiration and poetry
• An interview with Naomi Shihab Nye by Rachel Barenblat
• “Lights in the Windows” an essay by Naomi Shihab Nye
• Transcript of a Bill Moyers interview with Naomi Shihab Nye, 10/11/02
• Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American Poet, To Any Would-Be Terrorists

The Elders: For the recognition of a Palestinian state... Peace negotiations must be "based firmly on international law and universal human rights"

from the Elders

... Any future peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians cannot be a return to business as usual. If they are, they will be doomed to failure. Instead they must start on a fresh basis, one based firmly on international law and universal human rights with clear parameters and an agreed deadline for their conclusion.

Twelve months ago US President Barack Obama used his annual address to the UN to declare that he looked forward to welcoming Palestine to the ranks of the UN’s members by the start of its next session. Unfortunately, the bilateral negotiations that might have produced this desired result have not been possible, due in large part to the continued expansion of Israeli settlements on the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

These settlements have repeatedly been declared by the international community to be illegal under international law. To salvage the remaining opportunity to create a “contiguous and viable” Palestinian state, all construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem intended solely for Jewish occupants must halt immediately.

Any negotiations that resume following action at the UN should aim to define the boundaries of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Such an accord could entail equal land swaps to allow for minor adjustments.

Fair and robust external mediation will be another essential ingredient as, under present circumstances, the parties are unlikely to be able to reach an agreement on their own. In this regard, a positive and united stand over the anticipated UN resolution by the European Union, Israel’s largest trading partner and, at a billion Euros per year, by far the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority, would give it leverage to play a bigger political role to help resolve the conflict.

For over two decades, negotiations have been more about process than real substance, leading to understandable disillusionment and frustration among Palestinians and all those who seek a just and lasting peace agreement. It has been almost 65 years since the UN agreed to the creation of two states – this solution has been delayed for far too long

Three women, two Liberians and a Yemeni, win Nobel Peace Prize

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-nobel-peace-women-20111008,0,5816697.story
Three women, two Liberians and a Yemeni, win Nobel Peace Prize
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman share the Nobel Peace Prize. (EPA, Associated Press, Reuters)

By Jeffrey Fleishman and Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times October 7, 2011, 5:56 p.m.

Reporting from Cairo and Johannesburg, South— Three women from Africa and the Middle East who symbolize nonviolent struggles to improve their nations and advance the role of women's rights were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Sharing the award were Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female head of state; her countrywoman Leymah Gbowee, a peace activist who challenged warlords; and Tawakul Karman, a Yemeni human rights leader seeking to overthrow an autocratic regime as part of the regionwide "Arab Spring" movement.

"We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society," said the citation read by Thorbjorn Jagland, head of the Nobel committee, based in Oslo.

The Norwegian panel said it hoped the award would help end "the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realize the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent."

The trio joined an exclusive group of about a dozen female Nobel peace laureates among the scores of men who have won the honor over the decades....READ MORE

American Task Force on Palestine Proud to Announce PM Salam Fayyad as 2011 Gala Keynote Speaker

ATFP [The American Task Force on Palestine] is strictly opposed to all acts of violence against civilians no matter the cause and no matter who the victims or perpetrators may be. The Task Force advocates the development of a Palestinian state that is democratic, pluralistic, non-militarized and neutral in armed conflicts.

Palestine's Salam Fayyad

ATFP Sixth Annual Gala

The American Task Force on Palestine is pleased to announce that the theme of this year’s annual gala will be:

Honoring Heritage, Embracing Originality

ATFP is proud to announce Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as gala keynote speaker.

We will honor four distinguished Palestinian Americans: Maha Freij, Hanan Munayyer, Nawaf Soliman and Maysoon Zayid.

We are privileged to crown the event with a Concert of Arab Vocal and Instrumental Music by internationally recognized Palestinian American musician and composer Simon Shaheen and Ensemble.

We are delighted to have the very talented Palestinian American comedian Dean Obeidallah as our MC for the evening.

Registration: 5:30PM
Reception: 6:00PM
Program & Dinner: 7:30PM

This will be a black tie event.

Please click here to purchase tickets
Please click here to get more information about sponsorship.

More than fifty dignitaries have joined our Honorary Host Committee so far
Please click here to view the list of members.

The raison d'être of the American Task Force on Palestine | The American Task Force on Palestine
Ziad Asali

Ghaith Al-Omari

Hussein Ibish

To follow Israel-Palestine news, subscribe to APN's News Nosh http://1.6u.ah.sl.pt/ and ATFP's News Roundup http://1.6u.au.sl.pt/ Between them, you will miss almost nothing at all.

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Promoting economic and educational opportunities for the Palestinian people

Falling test scores try Palestinian educators

National achievement tests show, for example, that refugee students at UNRWA schools are outperforming many government-run schools. All Palestinian schools, except some private schools, use the same curriculum and Matar thinks the educational strategies of UNRWA teachers and administrators are responsible for students’ higher rates of success...

http://www.jmcc.org/news.aspx?id=3111Mohammed al-Khouli, 9, in a technology class at al-Mu'tasem Elementary School in Gaza City. Suhair Karam/IRIN

CRITICAL THINKING

Aref Husseini, who heads an education non-profit in Ramallah, believes that if teachers provided students with the skills necessary to research and gather information, they would do better on the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the international test where Palestinian scores fell between 2003 and 2007.

“Most of the questions on the TIMSS are related to critical and logical thinking. It has nothing to do with information or memorizing,” Husseini said. Learning by heart Newtons’ law and other laws of physical science will not help students pass the test if they cannot apply them.

Giving an example, Husseini said TIMSS asked students what would be left of a chair if all its atoms were taken away. He said that over 70 percent of students said the chair would still be there, instead of the correct answer: nothing. He argues that students are not using critical thinking skills and problem-solving to connect what they are learning in school with the wider world.

Husseini is the founder of Al-Nayzak for Extracurricular and Scientific Innovation, which runs after-school programs in Jerusalem and Ramallah that encourage students to think more critically.

Intesar Hamdan, a spokesperson for the Teacher Creativity Center in Ramallah, echoed other officials in saying that teaching methodology must improve in order to reverse the downward trend in Palestinian learning.

She said that teachers tend to rely on practices that reward students for memorizing lecture material. Students are evaluated based on their ability to remember information, rather than their ability to apply it.

POOR LEARNING CONDITIONS

Hamdan added that the student-to-teacher ratio is too high in many Palestinian schools, reaching forty-to-one at some government classrooms. In Gaza, schools run by the United Nations refugee agency, UNRWA, report 50 students in most classrooms. With high numbers of students, teachers find it more difficult to give students individual attention.

The shortage of classrooms is also acute in Area C in the West Bank, where Israel remains in control and blocks Palestinian construction. According to UNICEF, 10,000 students in Area C study in tents, caravans or tin shacks and one-third of schools have insufficient water or sanitation.

Schools built in Area C can be threatened with demolition, says Hamdan. According to the UN, at least 23 schools in Area C and East Jerusalem have demolition orders and could be destroyed at any time. ....READ MORE

Falling test scores try Palestinian educators

New York Times Art & Design Placing Islamic Art on a New Pedestal

A 14th-century prayer niche, or mihrab, from a theological school in Isfahan, Iran. (Photo by Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times)

The Damascus room, from the 18th century

Placing Islamic Art on a New Pedestal

By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: September 22, 2011

IN one of Washington Irving’s tales from “The Alhambra,” the short-story collection that rooted the great 14th-century Moorish landmark in the American imagination, a poor Spaniard and his daughter discover a hidden chamber deep within the abandoned palace’s crumbling walls and spirit away the treasure inside.

Over the last three years in a suite of galleries concealed from public view on the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is as if Irving’s fable of Islam’s rich past has been unfolding in reverse. Treasures, in this case more than a thousand pieces from the museum’s extensive holdings of Islamic art, have been slowly populating newly constructed rooms, taking their places in gleaming new vitrines with Egyptian marble underfoot and mosque lamps overhead, amid burbling fountains and peaked arches framing views of 13 centuries of art history.

When this 19,000-square-foot hidden chamber is finally opened to the public on Nov. 1 with the unwieldy but academically precise new name of the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia, it will not only represent the culmination of eight years of planning and work. The reinstallation and enlargement of the collection — one of the most important outside the Middle East — also promises to stand as a watershed moment in America’s awareness of the visual culture of the Islamic world, at a time when...READ MORE

Mechthild Baumeister, right, a conservator, with Daniel Olson, a carpenter, in the new galleries.

A Spanish plaque from the late 10th or early 11th century.
READ MORE

France opposes rapid Palestinian bid to join UNESCO

A Palestinian walks past the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. France says it opposes moves by the Palestinian Authority to seek rapid recognition as a full state member of the United Nations cultural organisation UNESCO. (AFP Photo/Hazem Bader)

France opposes rapid Palestinian bid to join UNESCO

France said Wednesday that it opposed moves by the Palestinian Authority to seek rapid recognition as a full state member of the United Nations cultural organisation UNESCO.

"We don't think UNESCO is the appropriate arena," foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, after Arab members of the world body said they wanted the Palestinians to be promoted from observers to full members.

Palestinian leaders have demanded full recognition as a state by the United Nations Security Council in New York -- in the full knowledge that the United States will veto such a move, in support of its ally Israel.

Now their Arab allies in Paris-Based UNESCO have opened up a second front, hoping to add to the growing trappings of Palestinian statehood.

And UNESCO membership would not only be a diplomatic feather in Palestine's cap -- it would allow it to apply to class its monuments as World Heritage Sites at a time when the heritage of much of the Holy Land is under dispute.

France has tried to ply a middle course in the debate, while insisting it fully supports eventual Palestinian statehood in the framework of a two-state solution that guarantees Israel's security and a viable Palestine.

But Valero said France felt it "was not the time" for the Palestinians to push the UNESCO issue, and insisted that the "priority must be the resumption of negotiations" with Israel on an eventual settlement of the dispute.

Yasser Arafat's scarf maker gets Internet lifeline

A man works a machine in a factory that manufactures keffiyeh scarves in the West Bank city of Hebron. Instead of selling to a dwindling local market, Joudeh Hirbawi is working with a group of Palestinians overseas to market the scarves abroad, even harnessing social media to connect with customers. (AFP Photo/Hazem Bader)

Related Article Yasser Arafat's scarf maker gets Internet lifeline

"In the old days, everyone used to wear them, especially in winter when it gets cold here and they kept people warm," Hirbawi said, seated in a small office in the factory.

"But now it's really something that you only see older Palestinians wearing," he said. "And the competition from Chinese products is simply more than we can take on."

Lebanon news - NOW Lebanon -Arab-Americans rejoice, Awlaki is gone!

"The bottom line is that Awlaki preached that all Americans, of whatever origin, were fair game and should be killed at every possible opportunity. That, of course, includes Arab- and Muslim-Americans. So Awlaki not only threatened the reputation of these communities, but also potentially their members as well." Hussein Ibish

Arab-Americans rejoice, Awlaki is gone!

Coming Soon: There Is No Long Distance Now... very short stories by Naomi Shihab Nye

Coming Soon...

There Is No Long Distance Now

Very Short Stories

By Naomi Shihab Nye

On Sale: 10/11/2011

Formats: Hardcover | eBook

Book Description

In these forty life-altering, life-affirming, and extremely short short stories, the award-winning poet Naomi Shihab Nye proposes that no matter how great the divide between friends, siblings, life and death, classmates, enemies, happiness and misery, war and peace, breakfast and lunch, parent and child, country and city, there is, in fact, no long distance. Not anymore. Read Now

What's Up: Palestinian Sunbird

The Visitor Information Center (VIC) in Bethlehem was established by Franciscan Father Ibrahim Feltas in December, 2010, as a project of the John Paul II Foundation, with its base in the Middle East in Bethlehem. VIC’s main goal is to serve tourists in Bethlehem with relevant for their visit.

WHAT'S UP
Palestine’s location on the migration route from Europe and Western Asia to Africa is responsible for the very large number of bird species in the country.
Palestinian Sunbird

The bird is commonly associated with the area of Palestinian land and even its picture has been used on post stamps.

It has been as well used by an artist Khaled Jarrar in the design of a potential “State of Palestine” border control stamp, which he stamps into international visitors passports as a call for freedom of Palestine.

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To learn more about Khaled Jarrar’s project check his Facebook page.

Great works of literature, theater, dance, fine art, and music reach us through a universal language that unites us regardless of background...

The problem we all live with — by Norman Rockwell (1894–1978), depicting an incident in the American Civil Rights struggle of the early 1960s, when Ruby Bridges entered first grade on the first day of court-ordered desegregation of New Orleans, Louisiana, public schools (November 14, 1960). Originally published in Look magazine.The painting is currently displayed in the West Wing of the White House, just outside President Obama's Oval Office.

"Like Rockwell's painting, art in all its forms often challenges us to consider new perspectives and to rethink how we see the world. This image still moves us with its simple poignancy, capturing a moment in American history that changed us forever. This is the power of the arts and humanities -- they speak to our condition and affirm our desire for something more and something better. Great works of literature, theater, dance, fine art, and music reach us through a universal language that unites us regardless of background, gender, race, or creed...

We must recognize the contributions of the arts and humanities not only by supporting the artists of today, but also by giving opportunities to the creative thinkers of tomorrow. Educators across our country are opening young minds, fostering innovation, and developing imaginations through arts education. Through their work, they are empowering our Nation's students with the ability to meet the challenges of a global marketplace. It is a well-rounded education for our children that will fuel our efforts to lead in a new economy where critical and creative thinking will be the keys to success."

The White House: Presidential Proclamation -- National Arts and Humanities Month, 2011