Hadani Ditmars is the author of Dancing in the No Fly Zone: a Woman's Journey Through Iraq. A former editor at New Internationalist, she has been reporting from the Middle East for two decades.
°®Âþµº Meets: 64-year-old Amjad Assad, who has almost single handedly digitised thousands of cassettes and old 78's that span a century of musical history.
The lullaby sung by young Mary to her son Jesus about the fate that awaits him brings to mind the mothers of Yemen, Syria and Palestine, who sing similar laments.
Blog: Bush Sr gave the green light to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, then presided over a war crime on the infamous 'Highway of Death', notes Hadani Ditmars
Comment: Religious leaders in Canada are right to speak out against hate crimes at home, but their double standards when it comes to Israel/Palestine are unacceptable, writes Hadani Ditmars.
The international film festival featured dozens of films from the Middle East and North Africa, as the appetite grows for cinema from the region, reports Hadani Ditmars
