AFSC's #GazaMarchTour, featuring Palestinian writer and peace activist Ahmed Abu Artema, came to an end in the last week of March. Yet Ahmed's tour of more than ten cities in the United States, left significant footprints in all the places he visited.
AFSC's #GazaMarchTour, featuring Palestinian writer and peace activist Ahmed Abu Artema, came to an end in the last week of March. Yet Ahmed's tour of more than ten cities in the United States, left significant footprints in all the places he visited. The goal of the tour was to highlight aspects of the Palestinian plight and struggle for justice. The Great March of Return, based in the Gaza Strip in the south western region of Palestine, is a recent episode in a long history of Palestinian mass popular moblization. Ahmed Abu Artema, the writer and the intellectual, is one of the people who helped start the Great March of Return.
To hear directly from a grassroots activist like Ahmed was a unique moment for the Palestine rights movement in the U.S. Since the start of the tour, many stories, interviews, and reports were generated about Ahmed as he was touring the U.S. In this blog post, our Gaza Unlocked team lists highlights of media interviews and stories from the #GazaMarchTour.
In this interview on WBEZ's Worldview, one of Chicago's major radio stations, Ahmed spoke with Jerome McDonnell about the origins of the idea of the Great March of Return and how it became a reality. Click here to access the interview.
Ahmed Abu Artema and Jehad Abusalim were interviewed by Esty Dinur on WORT community radio in Madison, Wisconsin.
On this episode of Your Call, Rose Aguilar from KALW a local public radio in San Francisco interviewed Ahmed Aburtema and Jehad Abusalim, alongside Noam Perry, program associate with the Economic Activism program of the American Friends Service Committee.
While in New Mexico, Ahmed and Jehad were interviewed by The Radio Café on sfnewmexican.com
In this article, journalist Azad Essa (@azadessa) of Middle East Eye wrote about the#GazaMarchTour event in New York city with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!
In this article, Jennifer Bing, the Palestine-Israel program director at the American Friends Service Committee, talks about a conversation she had during the tour with a store owner about Razan al-Najjar, the Palestinian young medic who was shot during the March of Return.
In this edition of the Foundation for Middle East Peace's podcast series “Occupied Thoughts,” Peter Beinart interviewed Ahmed Abu Artema and discussed the "impetus behind the march, and what has sustained it for almost one year despite the deadly Israeli response."
In this edition of Sada, a Carnegie online journal focused on Middle East analysis, Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, interviewed Ahmed Abu Artema.
Around the final days of the #GazaMarchTour, the Gaza Strip was a stage for yet another military escalation between Israel and Palestinian factions. Many feared the situation would head into a large-scale confrontation and offensive as Israel called the reserve and deployed its military near the Gaza separation fence. Jehad Abusalim of AFSC was hosted on Democracy Now! to comment on the escalation.
In this article, writer and and organizer Kristian Bailey challenges a talking point often raised by opponents of Palestinian freedoms, saying “The Palestinians need a Gandhi. Where is the Palestinian Martin Luther King?”
In his article, Bailey unpacks this notion and challenges such simplistic ideas.
In this interview, Naomi Dann from Jewish Currents discusses the origins, roots, and evolution of the Great March of Retrun in its first anniversary.
An article by Ahmed Abu Artema in the Washington Post on the anniversary of the March of Return.
Ahmed's Great March of Return one year anniversary article in Middle East Eye, reflecting on what the March has achieved in a year of protests.
In this article in AlJazeera, Abu Artema writes about how the March challenged both Palestinian factionalism and Israeli propaganda.
In this video piece explaining the history, context and present conditions around the Great March of Return by AlJazeera English, Jehad Abusalim gives a brief intervention and talks about the March and the recent cycle of violence against Gaza.
In this AJ+ video, Ahmed talks about the situation in Palestine in general, in Gaza in particular under blockade, the right of return and the plight of Palestinian refugees, and shares reflections from his speaking tour in the US, including the US-Mexico border and his meeting with Native Americans in New Mexico.
In this interview with Viewpoint magazine, psychologist and scholar Lara Sheehi talked to Ahmed Abu Artema about the March of Return.
While in New York City, Ahmed was hosted by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! He talked about the March of Return as an expression of agency and desire for life by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
In this episode of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on KPFA, Mira Nabulsi talked to Ahmed Abu Artema about the Great Mach and the impacts of Israel's decade-long blockade of the Gaza strip.
