Middle East Monitor Conversations

Lebanon is experiencing what the World Bank has said is one of the worst financial crises seen globally since the mid-nineteenth century, it was also the scene of the devastating port blast which destroyed much of its capital, with high levels of corruption and a currency that has lost almost all its value, will Lebanon's cities survive the constant attacks?  Nothing symbolises corruption, gr...

Has Syrian regime President Bashar Al-Assad been victorious after he was allowed back into the Arab League in spite of spending over a decade of killing and torturing his citizens? On 19 May 2023 Syria's leader Bashar Al-Assad arrived in Jeddah for the Arab League summit. It was the first time Damascus attended the summit since being expelled from the league in 2011. Despite hundreds of thous...

Subhead: As support for the Palestinian cause increases, so too do efforts by the Friends of Israel to quash it, but who are the key factors in the British Zionist movement? Join us in conversation with Dr Hil Aked as we discuss how Israel's friends in the West are helping maintain its apartheid regime and reverse widening support for the Palestinian cause in Britain. Dr Aked is a writer and...

Can poetry give a voice to the oppressed in Australia and Palestine? Much like with Palestinians, Australia's First Nation people otherwise known as the Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islander peoples, have suffered dispossession, violence and colonialism from the European settlers. Pro Palestine and Pro First Nation activism are connected in their fight for justice against settler colonialism...

George Washington University recently cleared Sheehi of allegations of anti-Semitism, with the probe once again highlighting that criticism of Israel is being conflated with anti-Semitism Dr Lara Sheehi was recently cleared of allegations of anti-Semitism brought against her by the notorious anti-Palestinian lobby group StandWithUs. Join us as we discuss concerns over the conflation of anti-Semiti...

Ebeid and Zawahry's new children's film raises tackles the issues around Palestinian identity when living in the diaspora, especially when faced with its erasure  Join us as we speak to the filmmakers behind ' I am from Palestine ', a new animated children's film following the story of Saamidah, a young Palestinian-American girl, as she deals with questions about where she...

As Israel continues to restrict Christian access to holy sites and processions during religious holidays, Christians are finding it harder to complete their religious rites in Jerusalem Israeli occupation forces blocked the route for the Holy Saturday procession through Jerusalem and attacked the Christian worshippers who were taking part. Such events have previously been highlighted as some of th...

Foreign governments are evacuating their staff from Sudan as fighting intensifies, but what options do the Sudanese people have and what prospects are there for peace? Since 15 April, major clashes have erupted in a number of Sudanese states between the army, led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo 'Hemedti'. Hundreds have been kil...

MEMO was in conversation with Hisham Al-Omeisy to discuss the Yemen peace talks currently underway. The Yemeni conflict analyst and consultant is not surprised the Saudis are sitting down for peace talks with the Houthis, but is under no illusions that the talks will resolve the conflict.  Currently based in Washington DC, Al-Omeisy has worked with the UN and other international bodies in Yemen. H...

Lebanon, a failed state: MEMO in conversation with Mohammed Kozbar  Join us for a conversation with Mohammed Kozbar as we discuss the economic and political collapse in Lebanon and what's next in the country's future. A Lebanese national, Kozbar is the Deputy Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and the Chairman of Finsbury Park Mosque, one of the most prominent Islam...

Join us for a conversation with Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University Kali Rubaii.  Dr Rubaii has studied the environmental and health impacts of the US occupation of Iraq including birth defects, rapid climate change,  soil degradation and the outbreak of disease.  We discuss how the US occupation still impacts Iraq's health and environmental sectors with...

Dr Melis Hafez Author, Inventing Laziness: The Culture of Productivity in Late Ottoman Society Is laziness a new phenomenon? MEMO in conversation with Melis Hafez Join us for a conversation with Dr Melis Hafez on how the concept of laziness and productivity took off in the 19th century Ottoman Empire.  Hafez is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received a PhD in Histo...

Join us for a conversation with Executive Director of EuroMed Rights Rasmus Alenius Boserup as we discuss how the EU and European member states have reacted to the far-right Israeli government and how the bloc could act.  Boserup previously worked as senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies focusing on power and politics in the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to this...

Join us for a discussion with Kevin Jones on Iraqi poetry, British colonialisation, national building and resistance. Kevin Jones is an Associate Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the History Department at the University of Georgia. He earned his PhD in History from the University of Michigan in 2013 and served as Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the George Washington Universi...

Join us this International Women's Day as we talk to Bayan Abu Salameh who is working on building and launching Palestine's first satellite and talking about the challenges she has faced and barriers she has broken as a female Palestinian engineer. A mechanical engineer graduate from Birzeit University, Abu Salameh - who is from a small village near Jenin called Faqua - was awarded the C...

Join us in our discussion with Professor Philip Wood on medieval Arab Christian political thought and his book the Imam of the Christians.  Philip Wood is Tejpar Professor of Inter-religious studies at Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations. He is also Head of Education for the MA programme in Muslim cultures. He is a historian of the Middle East, and focuses on the e...

Join us for a conversation with Justin Stearns as he tells us about his work on 17th century Morocco, the history of the natural sciences and medicine before colonisation and the state of archives in the Arab World.  Justin Stearns received his BA in English and History from Dartmouth College in 1998, and his PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 2007. He is Professor of Arab Cr...

MEMO spoke to the Executive Director of Muslim Aid Sweden, Mehmet Kaplan, about the relief efforts on the ground in Turkiye following the deadly earthquakes that rocked the country and neighbouring Syria on 6 February 2023

Join us for a conversation with Hassan Al Kontar, a Syrian refugee who became a Canadian citizen after making headlines around the world in 2018 when he was stranded in Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur International Airport for seven months. Hassan will discuss his experiences in navigating his unique challenges and provide an insight into the common Syrian refugee experience over a decade on from the...

MEMO speaks to Ross Caputi about the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the siege of Fallujah and building an oral history archive made up of Iraqi voices and stories.  Caputi served in the US marine corps and was stationed in Iraq, but grew disillusioned with the war and became an anti-war activist.  He is currently a doctoral candidate at the Department of History in the University of Massachusetts-A...

Sufi movements in Iran:  MEMO speaks to Seema Golestaneh who is an assistant professor at Cornell University in the department of Near East Studies.  We discuss Dr Golestaneh's new book 'Unknowing and the Everyday: Sufism and Knowledge in Iran' which looks at the social and material life of gnosis (ma'arifat) for disparate Sufi communities in Iran. We also discuss the situation...

In December 2022, the United Nations' general assembly passed a resolution asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the legality of Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.  MEMO speaks to Hugh Lovatt about whether this is a major milestone and what we can expect from this.  Hugh Lovatt is a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme...

MEMO talks to Al Jazeera's correspondent in the West Bank Nida Ibrahim about her journey into journalism, covering Palestine and the killing of her colleague Shireen Abu Akleh.   

MEMO caught up with Israeli comedian and activist Noam Shuster Eliassi to discuss the new Israeli government, doing comedy in Arabic, English and Hebrew and going viral on Arabic-language social media.  Born to an Iranian-Jewish mother and Romanian Jewish father and raised in Neve Shalom/Wahat As-Salam or the 'Oasis of Peace', a community in Jerusalem where Jews and Palestinians live tog...

MEMO met up with Dr Suja Sawafta to discuss granting Palestinians permission to narrate their history through popular culture and Nexflix's recent offering Farha . Sawafta is an Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami. She is currently working on her first book project which examines the impact of exile, intellectu...