Halah Ahmad is a policy researcher, writer, and policy communications expert. Most recently, she led legislative affairs as VP for Policy at the Jain Family Institute, an applied social science research institute based in New York City. Halah also served as the US Policy Fellow for Al-Shabaka, and has conducted strategic policy research for government agencies and NGOs in Greece, Albania, Germany, Palestine, and the US. Halah received her Masters in Public Policy from Cambridge University as a Harvard-Cambridge scholar. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Vox, The LA Times, The Hill, USA Today and other outlets.
From this author
Christian Zionism can be defined by the unquestioning support for the Zionist colonial project, from the violent establishment of the Israeli regime in 1948 to continued Jewish settlement in Palestine, as part of one’s faith as a Christian. Christian Zionists’ support for Jewish settlement in Palestine is a precursor to their own (the Church’s) salvation, not that of Jewish people; they actively seek an end of times in which Jews and other non-Christians will be destroyed while they ascend to heaven. This ideological commitment aligns Christian Zionists with Israeli governments and their colonial and belligerent policies toward Palestinians, Iran, and other adversaries of the Israeli regime.
Jerusalem continues to lie at the center of political developments in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and in the shifting landscape of US and EU foreign policy toward Palestine and the Israeli regime.
Halah Ahmad joins Yara Hawari to discuss how tourism, specifically religious tourism, has been a key pillar of the Israeli settler-colonial project, legitimizing and expanding the theft of Palestinian land, since the first Zionists settled in Palestine.
The role of tourism in advancing Israel's settler colonial project dates back to the arrival of Zionists in Palestine.
Tourism has been critical to the Zionist enterprise since the first Zionists settled Palestine. Al-Shabaka policy analyst Halah Ahmad explores the role of tourism, and especially religious tourism, in propagating the Zionist and Israeli-state narratives, focusing on the damaging impacts of Israeli settlement tourism in illegally occupied Palestinian land. She offers recommendations for ethical tourism that promotes Palestinian rights to self-determination.
Numerous civil society organizations have highlighted the role of tourism in legitimizing or advancing Israeli land theft in the West Bank, yet few describe how the tourism investments of the Palestinian Authority (PA) can also undermine Palestinian calls for self-determination. The PA’s investments in Ramallah, particularly in governmental buildings and monuments, solidify the Israeli agenda to deny Palestinians a capital in Jerusalem.
The topic of Palestine is already proving to be divisive within the U.S. Democratic primaries, and it will undoubtedly remain a consistent question throughout the 2020 election season.
Leading US Democratic presidential candidates have chosen to address, among other progressive platforms, the rising demand for racial justice reforms, from prison reform to school funding and reparations. In particular, candidates have embraced reforms that respond to grassroots movements against police brutality and a host of criminal justice issues, and have sought to counter racism directed at refugees and immigrants.
