Sep
03
2007
Daoud Kuttab: Journalism Professor at Princeton
Veteran Arab journalist Daoud Kuttab left for the US August 9th to take up a teaching post at Princeton University.
Kuttab is the first Arab to ever win the prestigious Ferris Journalism
Professorship. He plans to teach a course on new media in the Arab world.
Kuttab who writes in local and regional newspapers is the director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University and the founder of the Arab world’s first internet radio AmmanNet.
Jul
05
2007
Pardon is not part of the Israeli lexicon?
By Daoud Kuttab
I still remember that hot day in the summer of 1994 when Jordan’s King Hussein signed the peace treaty with
Israel’s Yitshaq Rabin in Wadi Araba. I had gone down to cover the event and remember Buthina Duqmaq of the Mandella Institute for political prisoners reminding me that a number of Jordanian prisoners were still held in Israeli jails even though the two countries were signing a peace agreement.
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Jun
11
2007
By Daoud Kuttab
Both my parents were away from home on the eve of the June 1967 war and I was home alone with my younger siblings. At the time we were living near in a rented house next to Rachel’s Tomb just outside Bethlehem. Jordanian soldiers were posted near our home and I remember how my older brother Jonathan came running and screaming as I was sitting leisurely in the balcony of our home. Go inside, don’t you hear the sirens, I had thought they were test sirens. Once we went he suggested that we go downstairs where it would be safer, we took a board game and a transistor radio which was broadcasting the ‘heroic’ news from Sawt al Arab that the Egyptians were bringing downs tens of Israeli planes. Continue Reading »
Aug
03
2006
The following appeared in the New York Times TimesSelect section under the heading in the Line of Fire
August 2, 2006, 9:31 pm
By Daoud Kuttab, Ramallah, West Bank
For about three hours on Tuesday, I was really concerned. My sister Grace and her four children were traveling from Jordan to see relatives in the West Bank using the northern Jordan-Israel crossing point. The source of my concern was a news item I saw on TV saying that a Hezbollah rocket had fallen on Bisan in northern Israel. Bisan, literally on the other side of the border crossing that the family was about to reach, is now called Beit Shean and is 100 percent inhabited by Israelis. I was debating whether to ask them to turn back or or let them take their chances. When I finally called Grace on her cellphone, she told me that they had almost reached the crossing point. I told her what was happening. She said that they wanted to continue on. I then advised her that once they crossed into Israel, they should drive quickly south towards Jerusalem. I never expected her be denied entry by the Israelis for a completely different reason.
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Nov
10
2005
By Daoud Kuttab
The problem in our household after the triple bombing in Amman was how to tell our six year old daughter, Dina. The urgency of the problem was because the Jordanian government had called for a day of mourning the following day and schools were expected to be closed. Because she is so inquisitive we knew that once we tell Dina there was no school in the morning she will want to know why.
My wife Salam was also worried about Dina’s reaction because every night as she puts her to sleep they pray, among other things, for the security of the city and the country. The night before I had been made responsible for putting her to sleep and the security of the city was part of her nightly prayer routine. Continue Reading »