IMPACT: With Avi Abraham Benlolo

Ahdeya Al Sayed, is the first female President of the Bahrain Journalists Association. She won the 2019 Arab Female Journalist of the Year Award by the London Arabia Organisation for all her contributions towards the progress of her Arab media and promoting women's rights and empowerment. Al Sayed has been the most outspoken Bahraini journalist on the Abraham Accords and the peace agreements between Bahrain, Israel and the UAE, advocating for the importance of fighting against hate speech, extremist ideologies,  anti semitism and encouraging the press to play a positive role in achieving warm peace.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution ushered in a new era of Islamic fundamentalism, oppression and a murderous regime.  Thinking the regime would quickly disappear, Marina Nemat became one of its many victims.  At just 16 yeas old, Nemat was taken to the notorious Evin prison where she was tortured and assaulted.  Many of her peers were murdered.  She eventually escaped to Canada and wrote a global best selling book retelling her story.  Prisoner of Tehran is a hard read - but an important one that recounts the brutality of a regime that has not changed in 40 years. "I don't see this murderous government that has taken thousands of lives and continues to do so, I cannot see it going anywhere for the foreseeable future" says Nemat.  But she does have a solution.  Listen to this podcast and find out what she says.

Jerusalem's Deputy Mayor's Twitter handle says she is a Proud Zionist, a Feminist Advocate for Israel and the Co-Founded of the UAE-Israel Business Council.  But Ms. Fleur Hassan-Nahoum is much more. She is an energetic powerhouse who is advancing Israel in business, standing up proudly for her city, Jerusalem - and has some strong words for BDS advocates and antisemites.  She also has a warning for Joe Biden - look around the gulf to see who your friends and enemies are.  Join me for this engaging conversation.

Its 2020 yet we are still struggling as a society with the problem of equality of opportunity for persons with disability.  Join me for a fascinating conversation with one of the world's top advocates for people with disability, the Honourable David Onley.  People with disability, Mr. Onley says, suffer the same form of discrimination as other groups.  The world still needs to change on how it views and responds to people with disabilities and provide this segment of the population with proper access so that it may have equal opportunity.

On October 17, 2020, The Economist published a major feature about the plight of the Uyghurs.  In its introduction, it said, "The first stories from Xinjiang were hard to believe. Surely the Chinese government was not running a gulag for Muslims? Surely Uyghurs were not being branded “extremists” and locked up simply for praying in public or growing long beards? Yet, as we report in this week’s China section (see article [https://amp.economist.com/china/2020/10/17/how-xinjiangs-gulag-tears-families-apart]), the evidence of a campaign against the Uyghurs at home and abroad becomes more shocking with each scouring of the satellite evidence, each leak of official documents and each survivor’s pitiful account". Join me for an insightful conversation with Mehmet Tohti, the executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project to understand what today many are calling a crime of humanity.  He describes the plight of his people and a cry for help for an end to what he calls a genocide.