Zleikha Muhtaseb will speak at AAF function on 11/13/2005

Paterson: October 24, 2005:  the American Arab Forum is happy to announce that Zleikha Muhtaseb will speak at the November 13, 2005 lecture series on Palestine. Ms. Al-Muhtaseb will follow the keynote speech give by Mr. Maen Areikat, Director-General of the PLO Negotiations Dept. 

Zleikha Muhtaseb is a former English teacher who now works as an interviewer and translator for human rights organizations, such as Save the Children and Christian Peacemaker Teams.  She was the interviewer for Human Rights Watch’s 2003 report on Hebron entitled Center of the Storm (2001).  In 1994, she appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes” as an eyewitness to the Goldstein massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque, which is opposite her home in the Old City of Hebron. 

 

In addition, Zleikha is the founder and director of the Children and Women’s Center in the Old City.  She conducts classes for pre-school children and offers classes for older students during Israeli-imposed curfews.  She has designed, overseen, and taught literacy programs for women, economic self-help programs (such as raising rabbits and herbs and making pickles), and family health classes, with particular attention to maternal depression and to dealing with the stress of living with closures, curfews, roadblocks, home demolitions, land confiscation, and settler harassment. 

 

Americans for Middle East Understanding's hope, in bringing over Zleikha and her mother (who has her own story to tell), is that people will be willing to hear directly, without mediation, from Palestinians who are living and working under military occupation, and who, like the vast majority of Palestinians, oppose the occupation and at the same time are committed to non-violence. 

For additional information, please contact Aref Assaf, American Arab Forum