Support the North America Nakba Tour 2020
In 2015 we began the first North America Nakba Tour with a dangerous message. The message was that Palestinians want and deserve the return of their stolen land and property – all of it. To deliver this message we brought two stateless Palestinians from the refugee camps in Lebanon, 22-year-old Amena Elashkar and 86-year-old Mariam Fathalla. We deliberately chose Palestinians that neither have citizenship in any country nor ID cards and passports issued by the Palestinian Authority. We expected resistance to this message, and we got it, but not as much as we expected, partly because it could not have been delivered by two more charming messengers.
We have had two more Nakba tours since then, with similar results, and we have discovered that North Americans are sympathetic and receptive to this message. Other groups have picked up the message, and now there is more support for it than ever before.
The 2020 North America Nakba Tour, beginning at the end of February, 2020, will be very different. Nakba survivors like Mariam are simply too old for the rigors of the trip or not old enough to remember the details of the expulsion, and Amena will be pursuing a Master’s degree at Oxford University. So we are bringing a new team from Lebanon, composed of four outstanding young Palestinian women.
Hiba El Ashkar is Amena’s younger sister. She is majoring in linguistic engineering at the Lebanese International University and has been an English teacher with Save the Children, a translator for media and educational organizations, and a curriculum developer, as well as a volunteer in community organizations and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Hanin Youssef graduated from the American University of Beirut with a B.S in Nutrition and Dietetics, and another from the Lebanese University in Chemistry. She has worked as a dietician, a food quality control inspector, a field investigator for employment research, and an English teacher at UNRWA.
Samar Mohamad majors in nursing at the American University in Beirut with a minor in film and visual culture. She is an administrator of faculty workshops and has volunteered at the Children’s Cancer Center and the Unite Lebanon Youth Project. She has participated in making short films.
Ruba Abdel Jawad graduated from Beirut Arab University in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has been an engineer, designer and estimator in Beirut and Kazakhstan, and also a private tutor in math, physics, biology and chemistry. She is pursuing further education in Social Studies at the Lebanese University.
Help bring these talented young refugee women to North American audiences.
Our fundraising always starts with almost no balance from previous project, yet we have managed to raise tens of thousands of dollars to cover the heavy costs of these important tours. Please be generous and make this tour another smashing success. Click here to make your donation online.