Voices of the Middle East and North Africa

Last month oppressive summer heats, lack of water and electricity, and pent-up anger against government corruption sparked mass protests in southern oil rich city of Basra. It quickly spread across the south of the country and into Baghdad- People in Iraq have sent a clear message to the government- enough is enough! This week, we bring you the first part of an in-depth conversation about the root...

Iraqi-American pediatrician Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha has played a critical role in exposing the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, which affected thousands of adults and children after dangerous cost-cutting measures led to widespread lead poisoning. This week, we speak with Dr Attisha about her new book “What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City,” which cente...

This week, we bring you a conversation about the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding Trump administration ban on travelers from seven cpu tries, most of them Muslim-majority nations. Last month, In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a federal court’s judgment against the third version of the Trump administration’s travel ban. Now, the Supreme Court has upheld Trump’s ban on travel from N...

This week, we bring you the second part of an in depth conversation about the presidential election and the ruling Justice and Development party or AKP in Turkey with sinan Birdal, a visiting assistant professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California In the second part of the conversation, we speak about the base of support for President Ardogan...

This week, we bring you the first part of an in depth conversation about the presidential election and the ruling Justice and Development party or AKP in Turkey with sinan Birdal, a visiting assistant professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California

Award-winning journalist Rania Abu Zeid has made countless trips inside Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Washington, and several European towns and cities to cover the Syrian uprising and the deadly civil and proxy war that ensued and destroyed tens of millions of lives. This week Rania Abouzeid joins us to talk about her new book, No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria Later in the...

In the summer of 2015, a wave of refugees taking perilous sea and land crossings to get into Europe exposed one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history, the wars in Syria and Iraq and the worsening situation in Afghanistan having forced hundreds of thousands of people to live their homes and risk their lives to seek sanctuary elsewhere. According to the most recent reports, in 2014, 14...

On Saturday, May 12th, Iraq held its parliamentary elections to decide the 329 members of the body, which will serve as the basis for establishing a new government. While Nearly 7000 candidates and more than 200 parties were vying for votes, only 44 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the recent elections; a notably low figure given that, no election since the U.S-British invasion of...

For the past thirty year, The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) has been working for the rights of children in the Middle East by sending humanitarian aid, supporting projects for children and educating North American and international communities about the effects of the US foreign policy on children in the region. This week, we speak The Middle East Children’s Alliance founder Barbara Lubin...

in his new book "Inter/Nationalism Decolonizing Native America and Palestine," Steven Salaita argues that American Indian and Indigenous studies must be more central to the scholarship and activism focusing on Palestine. His discussion includes a fascinating inside account of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement; a wide range of Native poetry; the speeches of U.S. President Andrew Jacks...

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine is based on journalist Ben Ehrenreich’s eye-witness account of life in the West Bank—in the village of Nabi Saleh and the cities of Hebron and Ramallah.

At age fifty one, the film the Battle of Algiers has never seemed so current, as it continues to inspire, instruct and inform as much as it did when it first came out in 1966. What is it about this classic film that has so revolutionized the very medium of political cinema? And continues to provoke thought and reflection and whose lessons are still pondered in the whole world’s movie theaters, uni...

Leïla Slimani ‘s latest novel, The Perfect Nanny has been a huge hit in France, winning the Prix Goncourt and making her one of the most celebrated writers in the world. We speak with Leïla Slimani about her novel and her dual status in France as both Moroccan and French. Later in the program, we remember Broadcast Media Pioneer, Arab-American activist and long-time host of the “Middle East in Foc...

Hanin Zoabi is Palestinian a member of the Israeli Kenesset (parliament). She is known for her vocal criticism of Israel and its policies against Palestinians. In 2010, Zoabi participated in the Gaza flotilla. Zoabi was arrested and held by Israeli authorities and faced an aggressive wave of attacks for her participation in the Flotilla. Israeli politicians called for her disqualification from her...

April 24th marks the centennial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, when the Ottoman Empire began carrying out a systematic plan to annihilate its Armenian population. As a result, between 1 million and 1.5 million people were killed or died of starvation. This week, to mark the 100th anniversary of this tragic event, we bring back a 2006 conversation Beshara Doumani had with Dr. Stephan Astourian, abo...

Alia Malek's new book, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria, covers modern Syria, from the last of the Ottoman days to the present. Malek provides a rich history of the country by weaving the lives of her family members with the geopolitical and economic history of Syria Alia Malek is a journalist, and author. She is the author Amreeka: US History Retold Through Arab-American Lives and...

On Friday, March 30, more than 30,000 Palestinians gathered at the border of Gaza and Israel to commemorate the 1976 killing of six Palestinian citizens of Israel protesting the theft of their land, which became known as the Palestinian Land Day. On the first day of what the organizers call “The Great March of Return,” Israeli military forces opened fire into the peaceful demonstration, killing at...

A conversation with Professor Ella Shohat about her latest book On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements. This book gathers together some of her most influential political essays, interviews, speeches, testimonies, and memoirs for the first time and we have a chance today to share this exceptional work with you, but you need to move fast, since we have only limited number of copies!

On January 20, Turkey launched so-called Operation Olive Branch in the northern Syrian enclave of Afrin. Turkish ground troops crossed the border into Syria alongside thousands of Turkey-backed Syrian rebels. The Turkish government has stated that its goal is to root out an armed militia called the People's Protection Units (YPG), which it views as a threat to its security. Turkey sees the YPG as...

This week, we speak with world renowned dancer and choreographer Shahrokh Mosh-kin Ghalam about his new performance of Love Stories of Shahnameh, playing on March 18th, at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose. But First, On saturday, March 10, we lost prominent and celebrated anthropologist and a dear friend of our program, UC Berkeley Professor Saba Mahmood. This week, we celebrate her life and pay...

The plight of refugees in Libya

Is the Yemen war taking a new turn with the recent clashes in the south? ]

VOMENA JANUARY 19, 2018 by VOMENA Team at KPFA

'Bread, jobs and freedom': A conversation with Arang Keshavarzian about the street protests in Iran by VOMENA Team at KPFA

An interview with Melody and Safoura Safavi about their band Abjeez by VOMENA Team at KPFA