Diya Moushahwar /
Mada al Carmel Arab Center for Social Research /
Haifa, Palestine /
Mada’s work can best be described as “action-oriented research.” They produce research with the goal of informing grassroots activist organizations as well as laws and policies within and beyond the 1948 borders in order to further Palestinian human rights.
A large part of Mada’s research from the past year has prioritized analyzing the coronavirus epidemic as it affects Palestinians. In fact, Mada’s 2021 annual conference was titled “Palestinians in Israel in the Context of the Coronavirus Epidemic: Socio-Political and Economic Approaches.” Much of the conference focused on the increase in violence against women, the implications for health and education for Palestinians, and the militarization of the pandemic. Most recently, Israel attempted to offer occupied Palestinians expired vaccines. Medical apartheid and the violation of medical neutrality continues.
Last week I met with my supervisor, the managing director at Mada al Carmel, for the first time. He oriented me for the summer and introduced me to my colleagues, and we spent some time getting to know one another better. One of my first assignments was to research different human rights organizations outside of the region to partner with Mada. I am also writing and editing grant proposals.
Mada published its most recent quarterly newsletter. I am currently translating the newsletter from Arabic to English in order to support Mada’s goal of reaching a wider audience.
A project of mine for the summer includes editing English content to make Mada’s work more available to the English-speaking world. Mada is unique in that it prioritizes Arabic, to center Palestinian voices and make scholars as comfortable as possible working within their native language, as opposed to Hebrew or English. One disadvantage is that it can be difficult to build partnerships with non-Arabic speaking organizations and to grow as a research center and make their research more widely available.
One of my colleagues shared her experience of the difficulties navigating Israeli universities as a Palestinian. For her thesis, she proposed to research the dehumanization of Palestinians, and her idea was aggressively opposed by Israeli faculty. She has only been able to continue her research with the support of one professor at the university and with the community support of Mada, where she’s able to collaborate with other Palestinian scholars and work in Arabic. Her goal is to produce research that serves the movement and progressive policies.
I look forward to supporting Mada this summer with these projects, helping to expand their network and assisting scholars with their research