Palestine, media, Jordan, community radio, online journalism
Today is Women’s Day. In response to the call by the Director General of UNESCO, I decided, yesterday, to appoint Nahed Abu Toumeh as director for Al Quds Educational Television, for one day. I didn’t realize when I wrote the memo that Nahed would take the issue so seriously. She really got excited, came to…
I left Amman very early to get to Ramallah for some work and a few interviews. My parents in law also wanted to go to Palestine and stay in Jericho. We left Amman at 7:30 and things went smoothly. My father in law, Odeh a Jordanian who lived many years in Jerusalem has a special…
The invitation I received from the US embassy was very simple. You are invited to coffee with Senator John Kerry. I looked at the invitation twice to be sure that the name was correct. I was invited to meet with the former presidential candidate. I arrived at the well guarded US embassy in Amman and…
I start this day with a previously arranged meeting with the former Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muasher who is now deputy prime minister and minister for administrative affairs. He welcomes me in his huge office in the prime ministry and I can’t help but ask him if in fact he agrees with the description that…
Tuesday November 30th  2004 This week was scary and hard on the road. It began when I made a visit to some relatives who live in the old city of Ramallah. I had gone to deliver a package for them from Jordan and to pick up a package intended for a Jerusalem family who…
March 14, 2004 Luxor, Egypt I have been invited to participated in a US-Arab media conference scheduled to take place in the southern Egyptian historic city of Luxor. The trip from Amman to Cairo on Egypt Air is an early evening flight but from Cairo to Luxor is flight past midnight. At the Cairo Airport…
Seoul, South Korea, March 23, 2004 No GSM service, No English As soon as an outsider arrives in South Korea you notice two things. Barely anyone speaks English and there is no GSM roving signal. Both are simple examples of the recent history of the isolation of South Korea from the rest of the…
It is 8:50 a.m. on Tuesday, November 14, and the phone is ringing off the hook. My cell phone reads 6 missed calls. I must have overslept. I was up late the night before working on the script for a documentary about how Palestinian children and adults are trying to cope emotionally with the violence…