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11/27/2005:

"“Arab Talk With Jess and Jamal” Debuts in San Francisco"

SAN FRANCISCO radio listeners now have a new source for information about the Middle East. By tuning their dials to KPOO public radio station 89.5 FM on Thursdays at 2 p.m., listeners can hear Palestinian-Americans Jess Ghannam and Jamal Dajani deliver up-to-date Middle East news and lively interviews with a wide variety of guests.

The July 28 debut of their one-hour program, “Arab Talk with Jess and Jamal,” featured Washington Report staff photographer (and husband of this reporter) Phil Pasquini as their first interviewee.

Dajani began by questioning Pasquini—a veteran Middle East traveler for 20 years—about his article “Farrek Ta’sud” (divide and conquer), on his experiences of crossing through Israel’s apartheid wall and numerous checkpoints during a June visit to the occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem.

“First, I was overwhelmed by the length, height and dynamics of the wall and how it impacted people’s lives,” Pasquini observed. “It was apparent that if people could become divided they could become conquered and pushed out of the scene.”

Jerusalem-born Dajani, a producer at San Francisco’s LinkTV who travels regularly to the area, shared his guest’s horror at seeing the enormous wall on what used to be a beautiful landscape.

Deploring the wall’s disastrous effect on Palestinians’ day-to-day lives, Pasquini went on to describe the dire situation of his elderly friends in Bethlehem, who as residents of the occupied West Bank cannot travel to Jerusalem for any reason—including medical treatment—and subsequently have trouble obtaining necessary medication.

He also recounted crossing the Kalandia checkpoint with a student friend to visit Birzeit University, and the frustrating and humiliating harassment they experienced from Israeli soldiers.

Ghannam, chief of medical psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a frequent traveler to Gaza, also discussed the ways Palestinians’ lives have been disrupted, particularly in the village of Qalqilya, which is completely enclosed by the wall.
wrmea.com