REFRAME hosted by FATIMA BHUTTO
Reframe is a brand new discussion show for Al Jazeera English hosted by Pakistani author
Fatima Bhutto.
Reframe launches with shows on Tuesday 12th November and Tuesday 19th November 2024 about the worldwide echoes of the Gaza war.
Our audience members are highly encouraged to bring thought-provoking questions for the guests.
On Tuesday 12th November, join Palestinian human rights defender Omar Barghouti and writer Ahmed Masoud in separate conversations with Fatima Bhutto on global boycotts, art as resistance, and the tools of the international solidarity movement for Palestine.
Omar Barghouti is the co-founder of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) and a driving force behind citizen-led economic pressure on Israel over its occupation of Palestine. A prominent commentator whose writing regularly appears in The Guardian (UK) and The Nation (US), Barghouti has faced threats of assassination by high-ranking Israeli politicians and attempts by the government to revoke his residency permit, leading Amnesty International to speak out on his behalf. In addition to economic boycotts, he’s led efforts encouraging scholars to boycott Israeli academic and cultural institutions. For his activism, he received the 2017 Gandhi Peace Award.
Gaza-born author and playwright Ahmed Masoud is best known for his debut novel Vanished, which garnered critical acclaim for its complex and riveting portrayal of life under Israeli occupation. Like his novels, Masoud’s plays explore civilian experiences of war, including Walaa (Loyalty), about a Syrian man seeking refugee status in the UK, and The Shroud Maker, a satirical play told through the eyes of an 80-year-old Gazan seamstress, whose business making burial cloths is always booming. Today, Masoud lives in London, but much of his family, including his siblings and their children, remain in Gaza.
On Tuesday 19th November, join renowned Israeli political activist Yuli Novak and British plastic surgeon Victoria Rose, in separate conversations with Fatima Bhutto, as they discuss documenting human rights abuses, the reality for doctors and civilians on the ground in Gaza, and the importance of bearing witness.
When in June 2023 Yuli Novak became Executive Director of B’Tselem, the leading Israeli NGO documenting human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank, she couldn’t have foreseen the momentous year ahead. B’Tselem’s work investigating deaths, demolitions, in-prison torture and food deprivation inflicted on Palestinians has cemented Novak’s status as an icon of the Israeli left and persona non grata to Israel’s political elite. She previously led Breaking the Silence, an organization made up of Israeli veterans against occupation, for which she became the target of public hate campaigns and death threats from Israeli politicians, leading her to flee the country. Recently, a Knesset member called for the death penalty Novak after she briefed the UN Security Council on behalf of B’Tselem.
Victoria Rose is a senior plastic and reconstructive surgeon with the NHS who has been going on medical missions to Gaza since 2019, performing complex trauma reconstructions and teaching a new generation of Gazan doctors who have no access to plastics training. Returning from her latest missions in May and August, she shared her experiences with Al Jazeera, including the severe lack of specialist doctors, medical supplies and food, and the extreme injuries she saw inflicted on children. In August, she was the only plastic surgeon in Gaza and the first to enter since May. She continues to advise Gazan colleagues remotely and use her platform to fundraise for future missions with her partner organization IDEALS.
Fatima Bhutto is the author of seven books, including her acclaimed novel The Runaways and her much-talked-about memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword, which chronicles her father’s murder and four generations of the powerful Bhutto dynasty that she was born into. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian (UK), Zeteo and Jang, Pakistan’s largest Urdu newspaper.
Reframe records at the Al Jazeera English studios on the 16th floor of The Shard above London Bridge station in London.
If you would like to join us at 6.45pm on Tuesday 12th or Tuesday 19th November 2024 for an evening of compelling conversation, then apply now!
