Tania Tabar

It was Sabreena da Witch’s first time performing tracks from her self-produced album A Woman Under the Influence. When her performance had concluded, the Palestinian hip hop artist, also referred to as the “First lady of Palestinian R&B,” left the Toronto crowd wanting much, much more. Tania Tabar writes for The Electronic Intifada.

The house of Munthir Mahmoud Hamad stood alone. Almost perfectly square in shape and made up of gray cement stone - it stood on a tiny hilltop among rubble - what was likely to have been a previously destroyed home. A makeshift water tank sat on the roof and wires led from the rooftop to a generator nearby. From his house you could see the Jewish settlement of Gilo. All settlements in Israel and the Occupied Territories are easy to point out - houses are obtrusively white in color, perfectly aligned next to one another, and built on a hilltop - like a perfect suburbia and another world.