Author The Home That Was Our Country:A Memoir of #Syria & A Country Called Amreeka; editor Patriot Acts & EUROPA. Int'l Reporting Director @newmarkjschool @CUNY
Sep 26, 2020 • 70 tweets • 21 min read
NOT SURPRISED: A THREAD (cc: the entire media industry but esp the enablers @nytimes )
RCMP arrests ‘Abu Huzayfah’ for allegedly faking his past with ISIS | Globalnews.caglobalnews.ca/news/7350363/r…
because i belong to an industry that is remarkably not self-reflective, i often have to assign my students in int'l reporting & cross cultural journalism criticisms from other disciplines -ie literature, film, art et al -- that also take on representations of other peoples
Sep 13, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Ok so @paulkrugman is doubling down. 2 points: first: the absolute numbers of Arab/Muslim or those perceived to be Arab or Muslim are way fewer than those of Black Americans or um all those who can be sexually assaulted (everyone)
Second: many crimes and discrimination cases went unreported because folks did not trust a government that was in the midst of dehumanizing in word and in deed Arabs and Muslims overseas (as well as domestically)
Sep 11, 2020 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
This is not the lived experience of many folks; numbers of discrimination cases & hate crimes are well documented. Check the book I edited for @voiceofwitness Patriot Acts. On a personal note, hate mail was sent to my work address, fake anthrax to my home all for an essay I wrote
Also, the #IRAQ#Afghanistan wars dehumanized Muslims and Arabs everywhere. Think it was great quality of life living in a country that destabilized the entire region where many of us come from while spewing a narrative that was ahistorical and racist?
Aug 5, 2020 • 9 tweets • 9 min read
Situation in #Beirut is dire. @basmehzeitooneh which usually works w #syria refugees in #Lebanon quickly shifted its operations to respond w relief efforts for our beloved city. Please GIVE. (Full disclosure I’m on intl & North America board & know how well run &effective BZ is)
ok, i have read this now twice. it is NOT a parody. wow, how remarkably tone deaf and disingenuous. also, did everyone who signed this letter actually read it? harpers.org/a-letter-on-ju…
They bemoan essentially cancel culture but use that as cover to whine about being called out for a variety of behaviors and dynamics that are totally legit up for debate
Jun 25, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
“In the American Nightmare, the severity of anti-Black racism is inseparable from the endurance of American imperialism.” - will be adding this essay to my syllabus for Intro to Intl Reporting...
now up @NYTimesAtWar the 3rd dispatch from my long term reporting project following several families from #Syria rebuilding their lives in Europe (currently in year 5)
His Family Fled Syria. He Didn’t Cry Until He Heard About His Sisters. nytimes.com/2020/06/02/mag…
I met Yousef, his mother, and 2 sisters in #Kos#Greece after they crossed the Aegean Sea in an over stuffed rubber dinghy of folks mostly from #Iraq and #Syria - Yousef was 13. This picture is from when they made it safely ashore after stalling adrift
May 26, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
AMEN. I direct a program at @newmarkjschool@CUNY & now more than ever should public institutions like this be rigorously defended and strengthened.
The Backward Logic of Austerity Threatens America’s Most Vibrant Campus nytimes.com/2020/05/26/opi…
May 6, 2020 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
YAWN another article about #Lebanon as told through its bar scene. So bored of this neo-Orientalist trope. #Beirut Nightlife Survived Civil War. Can It Withstand Pandemic? - The New York Times nytimes.com/2020/05/03/wor…
“In Beirut, a night out is something of a sacred right” - kinda like how it’s a sacred right of journos to write this kind of sentence in continuum for decades now...
May 5, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
am i late to this party? regardless, it's great party, or should i say a "dynamic" one😂 #DestroyYouForever
A Dynamic Song On Corona by CMC Sisters | Mount Carmel Generalate Aluva ...
It’s an insanely catchy tune and so sincere
Apr 23, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It’s a step, even if the main architects remain in power w impunity. Germany Takes Rare Step in Putting Syrian Officers on Trial in Torture Case - The New York Times nytimes.com/2020/04/23/wor…
There is no viable future for #Syria WITHOUT justice for the victims and accountability for the perpetrators— whether they were from the regime or the opposition
Mar 23, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
In today's @nytimes Sunday Review-my essay on #Syria; diseases vs. symptoms;cancer & metastasis; beautiful dreams & stolen revolutions; who we can't bury in Syria & what we shamefully have already ‘He Didn’t Want to Lie in a Grave That Couldn’t Be Visited’ nyti.ms/2U7U3UR
It's in part abt my father's desire to be buried in his native Syria &his death from a cancer that viciously metastasized. It's also about how the world excuses its failures in Syria by pretending the disease which is rotting it & the mutations it sprouted are one and the same
Jan 3, 2020 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
not to comment on the obvious, but currently on @CNN@andersoncooper has 3 male guests to talk #QassemSoleimani -none of whom are from #Iraq or #Syria or #Lebanon or even #Iran - the nations whose people have been the main victims of Soleimani's "strategizing"
@CNN@andersoncooper to be clear, i'm visiting a home where there is TV, therefore, not by full choice.
Dec 3, 2019 • 7 tweets • 6 min read
It’s #GivingTuesday and for the 5th year in a row my family is raising money for great #SYRIA orgs that work w/refugees. I’ll thread the orgs and the fundraising pages but it’s all laid out here sites.google.com/site/helpsyria… (FEEL FREE TO SHARE WIDELY)
We picked these three orgs bc
they do great work, and we believe in them. Importantly, they are also founded by Syrians and/or Syrian Americans. Often, the most effective solutions come from communities themselves. #GivingTuesday#Syria
Much has already been said (been offline, just catching up). But I find this tweet about war profiteers particularly demonstrative of “all irony is dead” #Syria
“the rise of a nouveau riche that made a business off the war while average ppl that resisted lost everything” - substitute “the war” with “the last 5 decades” and you have the MO of the #syria regime, the Assad extended family, & their cronies
Jul 14, 2019 • 36 tweets • 9 min read
For this Sunday, some thoughts triggered by this @nytimesbooks review by @ABarnardNYT of Elliot Ackerman's latest book – while I will touch on the substance of the work briefly, this is really a thread about who gets to be part of these conversations nytimes.com/2019/07/10/boo…
Different NYT pages have given over a lot of space to Ackerman; in the last 6 months we’ve heard FROM or OF him 3x at @nytimesbooks as well as also at @nytopinion
May 21, 2019 • 6 tweets • 5 min read
Start w/"Moving Beyond the Label of ‘War Refugee’"nyti.ms/2Jq73RS where we introduce the project (a long term collaboration w/ @MagnumPhotos@pvanagtmael) &more importantly frame it as part of what US wars in #Afghanistan#Iraq & its policies in the region have truly cost
It's no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of the one million who in 2015 fled the catastrophes home had become, were from #Syria, #Iraq, and #Afghanistan. Yet, for many Americans, it had nothing to do with them.
May 17, 2019 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Really thrilled that @NYTimesAtWar will be publishing dispatches from my longtime collaboration w/@pvanagtmael following the same #Syria refugees in Europe; read the intro here -- Moving Beyond the Label of ‘War Refugee’ nyti.ms/2Jq73RS
the first dispatch takes readers into Suhair's life in the #Netherlands - Suhair is the single mother of four children, who only left #Syria for them -- To Stay or to Flee: A Syrian Mother’s Impossible Choice nyti.ms/2WK4A7z -- w/ photos by @pvanagtmael
Dec 13, 2018 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Usually we’re subjected 2seeing MidEast thru US/EU aka“western” eyes &that becomes dominant framing/narrative.Here #France thru #Syria eyes-already more informed framing given US/EU contexts R well known bc theyve been able 2tell own stories historically correspondent.afp.com/yellow-rage-th…
Some gems: @abdfree2 says
