Diya Moushahwar /
Mada al Carmel Arab Center for Social Research /
Haifa, Palestine /
This summer I have been focusing on Mada’s public relations and translation work. Earlier this summer, I worked on the English translation of Mada’s quarterly newsletter. Most recently, I edited the English translation of the final report of Mada’s 2021 annual conference: “Political and Social Approaches Between the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Current Uprising.”
I have also supported Mada’s work in expanding its network. This has included making connections with various scholars and organizations identified as potential research partners. This work has been particularly interesting because it has introduced me to individuals and collectives dedicated to the Palestinian struggle across several disciplines whose approaches are all unique yet necessary, from funding Palestinian students specializing in STEM to extensive research on indigenous feminisms to international faculty pushing for action in response to the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel. All of my work has been produced under the direct supervision of Mada’s director of management, Fathi Marshood, who has been generous with his feedback. I am especially grateful to get to know him due to his years of experience in this field.
Interning with Mada has reinforced for me the significance of research in social movements, specifically as a tool for creating counter-narratives to dominant messaging, by Israeli and Western media in particular. Mada themselves conducted a survey this summer to determine the causes of the Palestinian unrest in Israel. Corporate media paints Palestinian resistance to the Israeli militarization of the pandemic, ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, and inhuman conditions of occupation and apartheid as belligerent. This research, in concert with countless others’ reporting and activism gives voice to the collective Palestinian self-defense against human rights violations.
One of my main goals throughout this fellowship has been to build bonds of sincere solidarity in my work. Something that is not new to me is the numbness that one often develops in the face of horrific violence, especially the desensitization I am experiencing surrounding settler colonial violence in Palestine while reading the news thousands of miles away, in the heart of the imperial core. I want to unlearn this desensitization, because although corporate media no longer covers Palestine and although the protests here in NYC have died down, I want to learn how to be more disciplined in my solidarity work as the struggle continues.