At the age of 19, Eman Mohammed became the only female photojournalist based in Gaza, breaking longstanding cultural taboos around the role of women in society. Three weeks into her career, the Gaza War began. Now 26, Mohammed continues to document harrowing and intimate stories of war and its aftermath in Gaza and beyond. Here, Mohammed tells […]
“The political and the sexual are intimate bedfellows,” says Shereen El Feki in yesterday’s talk. “That is true for all of us, no matter where we live and love.” For five years, El Feki talked to people across Middle East about their bedroom behavior, and what she found over and over was a seemingly deep-rooted […]
By the organizers of TEDxBeirut Archaeologists believe that Phoenician traders, who set out from the shores of Lebanon, spread their alphabet across the ancient Mediterranean world, unleashing a chain reaction that they couldn’t have conceived of even in their wildest dreams. Today, we are honored to spread that word again as Suzanne Talhouk’s talk from […]
Bahia Shebab is an artist, activist, and advertising executive who has been living in Cairo since 2003. And she also has been known to head out on the streets in the middle of the night to spray paint stenciled series that protest injustice and reflect on the fast-shifting politics of the city. Of course, Shehab […]
At the UN General Assembly last week, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, warned the U.S. that they were being fooled by Iranian promises of nuclear concessions in peace talks, calling Iranian president Hasan Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” But the real threat, suggests Trita Parsi, isn’t between Iran and the rest of the world […]
In today’s talk, Eli Beer explains how United Hatzalah, his organization of ambucycle-riding volunteer emergency medical responders, has shaved critical minutes off of the average emergency response time — first in Jerusalem, then throughout Israel, and now in several countries around the world. The core mission of United Hatzalah (which is Hebrew for “rescue”) is […]
TEDGlobal Fellow, and author of Sex and the Citadel, Shereen El Feki comes on stage to tell us about Faiza, a woman she met on a recent trip to Casablanca. Unmarried, and a new mother, Faiza proudly told El Feki her story as she showed off her young son. “It was a remarkable tale, but Faiza saved […]
Today on the TEDGlobal stage, two days before election in Iran, political scientist Trita Parsi argues that the Israeli-Iranian conflict is resolvable because its nature is geopolitical, not ideological. To illustrate, Parsi quotes an Israeli prime minister: “Iran is Israel’s best friend, and we do not intend to change our position in relation to Tehran.” […]
Session 6 of TEDGlobal 2013 has a captivating title: “World on Its Head.” Guest curated by Nassim Assefi and Gabriella Gómez-Mont — both from the inaugural class of TEDGlobal 2009 Fellows — the session will be a chance to turn our conceptions of the Middle East and Latin America upside down, and to rethink staid assumptions […]
Two years ago, waves of revolution swept through the Middle East. On February 17, 2011 — two months after civil resistance began in Tunisia and less than a month after the people of Egypt rose up in Tahrir Square — revolt began in Libya to oust dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Activist Zahra’ Langhi was part of […]
[ted id=1636 width=560 height=315] Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry has always loved posting images on Facebook, most of them garnering just a few random likes from his friends. But on March 15, he posted an image that got a different kind of reaction. The image showed him holding his young daughter, an Israeli flag in […]
TIME Editor-at-Large Bobby Ghosh covers global affairs and the Middle East. For five years he served as the magazine’s Baghdad bureau chief and, by the end of his tenure, was the longest serving print journalist in Iraq. Most recently Ghosh wrote a cover story on Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, arguably the most important man in […]
[ted id=1629 width=560 height=315] Comedian Maz Jobrani has some advice for anyone who happens to be Middle Eastern and getting on a plane in the United States. “As a Middle Eastern male, I know there’s certain things I’m not supposed to say on an airplane in the U.S. I can’t walk down the aisle and […]
Shyam Sankar isn’t satisfied with the current state of data analysis. In his recent TEDTalk, “The rise of human-computer cooperation,” Sankar explained why we have a responsibility to create computer programs that drive human-centered decisions, rather than trying to supplant them with computer-centered data processing. In his talk, Sankar — the Director of Forward Deployed Engineering at […]