Dr. Hasan Imanli discusses health care access for low-income families on April 29 in Baltimore.
(Photo courtesy of the Whitetulip Health Foundation)

The Whitetulip Health Foundation (WHF) is a nonprofit organization that connects health care professionals working in the U.S. who want to give back to society, and is open to whoever may be in need and requests help.

Based in Totowa, New Jersey, the foundation has more than 20 chapters across the country providing an outlet for health care professionals to share ideas and experiences. Through their networking and development of explanatory materials, WHF’s leaders and volunteers help to promote an understanding of the incredibly complex health care system in the U.S.

[In Turkey, all health care and related social welfare activities are coordinated by the Ministry of Health. Turkey has a Universal Health Insurance (Genel Sağlık Sigortası) system under which all residents registered with the Social Security Institution (SGK) can receive medical treatment at an affordable price in hospitals contracted to the SGK. The system, relatively easy to navigate, is heavily subsidized by the government.]

It’s estimated that over the past couple of years, more than a thousand families of Turkish nationals have migrated to the U.S. because of political problems at home. Like most immigrants, they have little knowledge of how the health care system here functions. Thanks to WHF, which was founded in Boston in 2014, a variety of programs and materials offer medical information and assistance to recent arrivals from Turkey.

In addition, WHF offers an important network for doctors and other health care professionals to help them to integrate into the U.S. health system and practice here. WHF’s work is conducted mainly by volunteers who come from a variety of communities to help these immigrants.

WHF establishes programs, seminars, lecture series, counseling and panel discussions for immigrants who do not receive fundamental health care support, and do not know where to go when they have a medical problem.

WHF President Servet Tatli, a radiologist practicing in Pennsylvania who came to the U.S. from Turkey in 1997, said that “culture shock plays an important role in creating these problems. These people really worry about these issues and sometimes spend their limited financial sources for a medical examination, lab, or treatment.” They learn, with the help of WHF, that some of these services they can get for free, and others at much lower cost.

Usually it is the patients who have language difficulties and lack both medical knowledge and financial resources who receive help from the foundation.

Dr. Tatli stated: “They typically do not know the health care system and sources available in the U.S. Some may be eligible for Medicare or Medicaid and others might be able to afford private health insurance. For those with limited financial sources, charity care at various hospitals and governmental and non-governmental free clinics are available in many locations.”

The WHF president said that after a recent influx of immigrants from Turkey, Whitetulip health professionals and volunteers who speak Turkish were not only bombarded with many health care-related questions, but also had to address health care problems suffered by these immigrants. They recognized immigrants’ intense need for medical help.

He explained how the foundation helped Turkish immigrants: “Our members and volunteers helped many people in need personally by examining them and prescribing medicine when necessary, and in doing so, they realized that these people’s medical needs extended far beyond just getting a medical exam and a prescription. We decided to discover the resources out there that were available and introduce them to the people in need in their own language.”

Meeting mental health needs too

So the organization prepared a document in Turkish to explain the health system in the U.S., and describe ways of getting medical care, lab tests and medicine; each Whitetulip branch made a search and put together a list of available local sources for free or low-cost medical care. Documents on the website describe, in Turkish and English, health care services available not only in New York and New Jersey, but also in Ohio,  Indiana and Kentucky and other locations.

The volunteers of the organization also gave seminars and educated many immigrants in this respect – one by one helping them to apply to appropriate institutions, depending on their location and budget, to get the medical care they needed.

WHF’s Tatli continued, “In fact, after dealing with the medical problems of these people, we soon realized that they often also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, and needed mental health support.”

They responded by organizing educational activities and individual counseling programs for those in need. WHF is launching a broader-scale mental health screening and counseling program throughout the U.S.  Through its branches, WHF health professionals will identify and instruct the people who are looking for guidance.

Luckily, most people reach WHF after listening to a presentation or hearing about it from their friends and family members. They contact the foundation through an email or a phone call.

Dr. Tatli gave an example of how the group has helped patients. “One day an elderly lady who moved to the U.S. recently reached out to one of our volunteer doctors to get help with her asthma medication and asked him to write a refill for her medication. After a brief examination, the doctor called the pharmacy with a prescription. However, she called back a few days later and explained that she could not buy the medication because it was too expensive, more than $500. With the help of our volunteers, she checked several other options and coupons to buy the medicine cheaper without any luck. Then our volunteer referred her to one of the hospitals close by, which gives charity care for eligible residents. There she was examined thoroughly by the doctors who provided the appropriate medicine for just $15. She was so happy and has started to go to that hospital whenever she needs any medical care.”

Cemre Ulker is another example of a person who received help for a health condition. Ulker slipped on black ice while walking in New York City and got a segmented fracture in her right ankle. Her colleagues took her to the emergency room and she had her right leg put into a cast. The doctor told her that she had to have surgery to fully recover. She decided to have it in Turkey, her home country, as she did not have insurance in the U.S. After she had surgery for the bimalleolar ankle fracture, she rested for almost three months, then had to return to New York as her sick leave was over.

Ulker, who is working as a director at an international civil society organization, said that “Even though I had physical therapy for a long time, my ankle started to give me pain again. By that time the limited time coverage that I received from Bellevue Hospital was already over.”

Ulker explained how she met with Whitetulip: “Through my friends in New York, I learned about the Whitetulip Health Foundation. When I first called them and explained my situation, they put me in touch with one of the volunteer doctors in their network for a free consultation session. After the doctor examined my ankle, he told me that I need to restart physical therapy. However, I did not have any health coverage; and therapy sessions are quite expensive in New York City. So I contacted Whitetulip Foundation again and they sent me a list of hospitals that I can visit free of charge. Thanks to their help, I was able to find a place to continue my therapy at a very low cost.”

She continued: “As we all know, gaining access to health care services is complicated in this country, even for American citizens. So, as an immigrant working on a temporary visa, the choices that you have for health services are even more limited. Most of the time, the insurance coverage that meets your needs exceeds your budget. As Whitetulip Foundation has volunteer doctors in its network who are dedicated to helping people in medical need, even a phone consultation may be enough to answer some of your simple questions.”

Orhan Akkurt reports for Zaman Amerika. His article was written as part of the 2018 Health Reporting Fellowship of the Center for Community and Ethnic Media at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and funded by a grant from News Corp.

One of the entries in the AST art contest. (From Advocates of Silenced Turkey website)

To bring attention in North America to the human rights violations of Turkish citizens by the Turkish government, Advocates of Silenced Turkey (AST) recently organized an art contest called”  “Human Rights Violations in Turkey Art Contest” for elementary, middle and high school students in the U.S.

According to the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index for 2017-2018, Turkey ranks 101 among 113 countries in its “overall rule of law performance,” two places below where it stood in 2016.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Humans Rights (OHCHR), in a March 2018 report, said based on numerous interviews that “approximately 600 women with young children were being held in detention in Turkey as of December 2017, including women who were pregnant or had just given birth.”   OHCHR further said it had documented at least 50 cases of women who had given birth just prior to or just after being detained and arrested. According to the Stockholm Center for Freedom, in April the Turkish government put the 705^th baby behind bars.

Among more than 60,000 people who have been jailed pending trial, there are numerous human rights advocates and journalists; more than 10,000 women have been in jailed. Tens of thousands of people, including followers of Fethullah Gülen, Kurds, Alevis and others, have been persecuted and forced to leave Turkey.

AST, a non-profit organization based in New Jersey, has published numerous reports on human rights violations in Turkey and is now branching out through the art contest and other activities to highlight the injustices being perpetrated in Turkey. The organization was founded with the mission of addressing all forms of human right violations in Turkey, including in the civil, political, economic, social and cultural spheres. AST reaches out to victims of the Turkish government to document human rights violations, both by trying to interview victims in Turkey via telephone and by talking with those who have already left Turkey.

With the art contest, AST’s aim was to get the fresh and unvarnished perspectives of young people on what is going on in Turkey.

The contest was announced through the social media outlets of AST and on AST’s website. The entries were exhibited in the city such as Houston, Chicago, Toronto and Vienna.

Most of the submissions AST received focused on the fact that babies and children are being held in jail in Turkey.

The art contest’s program coordinator and AST volunteer Elif Lale Yildiz, who came here from Turkey a year and a half ago, said  that “AST found the results of this nation-wide contest very touching.” Now, she says, AST will organize a similar international contest among both children and adults to give people, through the language of art and literature, an opportunity to reflect on and describe the cruelties and oppression encountered in Turkey.

Nineteen children who were forced to leave Turkey with their families or whose schools in Turkey had been shut down by the government entered the AST art contest. While only six of these 19 kids left Turkey after the post-coup emergency rules were enacted, all the children give the impression that they are aware of everything going on in Turkey.

According to Yildiz, there will be eight categories for the international art contest: drawing, photography, cartoon, ‘true story’, short movie, written song and poetry.

She continued: “Contestants selected as finalists will be awarded a monetary prize. The work will be published in a comprehensive booklet and submitted to relevant local and international institutions.” She added that “when we look at a picture we can feel what happened to those people in Turkey. Some students who just came from Turkey, did really great art and showed us their feelings during the contest.”

One of the contestants, Ulker Bulut, wrote this about her work: “I draw to be voice of innocents of the babies who are kept innocent with their mothers. It has deeply affected me and the people around me that the unfairness of injustice has never been seen before, and that even the babies are very closely affected. A baby living behind bars reminds me of painful injustices.”

AST’s program director Kafi Cifci, a PhD student at Penn State University who works as a volunteer for AST, said that “human rights violations in Turkey, in the form of maltreatment and victimization as they have been covered widely in a plethora of international reports by organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and the United Nations, have touched the lives of thousands of innocent people.”

He explained how AST was founded: “AST is supported by volunteers from many different fields and includes lawyers, judges, academics, journalists and hundreds of activists.”

“Thousands of people have been forced into exile over the past several years,” said Cifci, who came here in 2009 as a student.

Cifci noted that “the  Kurdish population, the biggest minority group in Turkey, has been subjected to severe human rights abuses, and leaders and countless deputies of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) have been unjustly imprisoned. Discrimination against religious minorities and harassment of liberals and secularists have become the norm, not the exception,” he said.  “With limited resources we are trying bring attention to people who have been forced into exile, trying to make their voices heard as much as we can.”

Orhan Akkurt reports for Zaman Amerika.

Ajna Dance Company (from Ajna Facebook profile pictures)

On Sunday Aug. 5, for the fifth year, Brooklynites and others will come together in downtown Brooklyn to celebrate flags and peoples of many lands. BK Reader previews the event.

“I am excited to be hosting our fifth International Day of Friendship celebration so that we can come together as a community and learn about each other’s stories, struggles and strengths,” said Borough President [Eric] Adams. “This celebration is not only about embracing our own hyphens but also learning from others. By embracing our own and others’ hyphens such as Italian-American, Jamaican-American and Russian-American, we can all be a part of One Brooklyn.”

The day will begin at 1:00pm with a Unity Parade of Flags, featuring the flags of 195 nations marching down Fulton Street toward Brooklyn Borough Hall. Following the parade, there will be artistic and cultural performances at the main stage in Columbus Park Plaza. The program, which will be hosted by Radio 103.9’s Roxie, will run through 5:00pm with performances by folkloric Panamanian dance group Nuevo Milenio, Ajna Indian Dance Company, Braata Productions, the Brooklyn Ballet and Tahitian dance school Ori Manea, as well as a global dance party with tunes provided by London-based global garage music DJ EZ and the Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center.

A “Global Village” and food trucks offering various cuisines will also be featured at the event. Read more in BK Reader.

Work of Lebanese artist Ginane Makki Bacho (Photo by Tarek Haddad via the Brooklyn Museum)

“Syria, Then and Now: Stories from Refugees a Century Apart” exhibits ceramics from the 13th century alongside modern sculptures to tell the experiences of two generations of refugees – the Circassians who fled to Syria in the early 1900s and the Syrians today who flee to other countries. Julianne McShane covered the show for Brooklyn Paper.

“The exhibit is about the changing stories of refugees in Syria,” said Aysin Yoltar, who works in museum’s Islamic Art division. “Once Syria could be a shelter to refugees; now people from Syria are leaving as refugees.”

The show features several black-and-turquoise 13th-century ceramics discovered by a group of Russians who fled their country’s oppressive government at the turn of the 20th century and settled in the Syrian city of Raqqa — recently the capital of the Islamic State. While building new homes, the refugees uncovered the medieval vases, which were later sold to the Brooklyn Museum.

The elegant ceramics contrast with the work of the three contemporary artists, each of whom used scrap metal and other discarded materials to convey the suffering facing Syrian refugees as they flee their homeland.

A conversation featuring the three artists will take place Oct. 18 at the museum. Read more about their artwork – which feature burned matches and scrap metal – and details on the Thursday event and exhibit at Brooklyn Paper.

Widad Hassan, a Yemeni-American activist, in New York City. (Photo by Michael Nigro via Law at the Margins)

Activist Widad Hassan, business owner Zaid Nagi and Riyadh Alhirdi, separated from his family which now resides in Egypt, are among the Yemenis in the U.S. who spoke recently with Michael Nigro about how they became more vocal about their community’s rights following the administration’s Muslim ban in early 2017. His deep dive into the community’s turnaround appears in Law at the Margins, as part of its Community Based News Room reporting project on immigrants.

Hassan, for instance, describes having been “overwhelmed with despair” when Trump announced the ban. Yet the success of the Yemeni bodega strike a week later made her “the proudest I’ve ever been of my community.” Ultimately, more than 1,000 Yemeni stores in New York’s five boroughs temporarily closed for business on Feb. 2, 2017. Writes Nigro:

The significance of Hassan’s emotional 180 is emblematic of the majority of Yemeni-Americans during this time. To understand this, one needs to know that within the Muslim and Arab immigrant communities, Yemenis are, by and large, considered a quiet citizenry. According to Hassan, who was one of the organizers of the bodega strike, Yemenis seldom engage civically and rarely are active politically on a national scale.

To a degree, this Yemeni mindset was ingrained in her, too. Prior to Trump’s executive order, Hassan confesses, she was a “behind-the-scenes activist” and “never wanted to be visible, never wanted to take a speaking role.”

The Yemeni American Merchants Association (YAMA) was created following the bodega strike, and activists in the Arab-American community note that other organizing started happening. Here’s what Somia Elrowmeim, the women’s advocacy manager for the Arab American Association of New York (AAANY), had to say:

“If we want to make a change in the White House, we first have to organize locally,” she states. “Unlike our country (Yemen), where voting doesn’t matter, here it does. We must educate our community.”

“Fifty percent of Yemeni people have never been to school,” Elrowein continues, “but 45 percent of the students here at AAANY are Yemeni.”

Go to Law at the Margins to read more about the changes within the community, and to find out why Nigro writes that a lot has been achieved, but that “there is still a long way to go.”

State Sen. elect Andrew Gounardes, center, joined members of the AAANY and its guests at the event. (Photo by Arthur de Gaeta via Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

The Arab-American Association of New York (AAANY) held its 17th annual gala on Nov. 8 and honored political and human rights activists as part of its “solidarity” theme, writes Paula Katinas in Brooklyn Daily Eagle. AAANY singled out a new organization for a special award.

The AAANY presented the Freedom Fighter Award to Shaun King, the well-known writer and civil rights activist. The group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice received the Community Champion Award. The Community Defender Award was given to representatives of the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

Representatives of the Beit Hanina Cultural Center, a new center in Bay Ridge, picked up the Basemah Atweh Legacy Award. “It is a new center that opened and we very much want to work with them,” Enas Almadhwahi, the human resources manager for the Arab-American Association of New York (AAANY), told this newspaper.

The gala, held at the Widdi Catering Hall, 5602 Sixth Ave. in Sunset Park, drew a large crowd, organizers said. Go to Brooklyn Daily Eagle to read why Almadhwahi said leaders of AAANY believed “this year was different,”  and how that informed their decisions about who to honor.

Justin Brannan, with fellow Council member Mark Treyger to his left, announces a bill that would provide Arabic interpretation services at polling sites. (Photo via Justin Brannan/Twitter)

From the steps of City Hall on Nov. 27, City Council member Justin Brennan (District 43 – Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach) announced legislation that would require Arabic interpretation services at poll sites in locations with more than 50 Arabic-speaking eligible voters with limited English-language skills.

In a tweet, Brannan said he was “lucky, proud and honored to represent one of the largest Arabic speaking communities in the entire country right in the heart of my district in Bay Ridge.”

Community organizer Widad Hassan of Yalla Brooklyn, a political club empowering Arab and Muslim voters, explained to Kings County Politics’ Michael Rock what some Arabic-speaking voters encounter at polling places.

“There’s a lot of difficulty. Many can’t read English, so there’s lots of anxiety,” she explained. “They often rely on other community members to inform them how to vote.”

Council member Mark Treyger (District 47 – Bensonhurst, Coney Island, Gravesend, Sea Gate), who co-sponsored the bill, expressed his support by describing an incident at a poll site that involved an attempt to have Russian speakers arrested. Read more on this at Kings County Politics, as well as remarks from other attendees.

Treyger is also introducing a bill that would expand interpretation services at polling sites to include the rest of the 10 most spoken non-English languages in the city. In addition to Spanish, Chinese, Bengali and Korean, services would be available for speakers of Russian, Haitian Creole, Arabic, Urdu, French and Polish. On Election Day, interpretation services for some of those languages were available at select polling sites but only from a distance.

The official movie poster for “FATHER K.” (Photo courtesy of 1001 Media via Brooklyn Reporter)

Rev. Khader El-Yateem may have lost the Democratic primary for the District 43 City Council seat (Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach) last year but the campaign left a lasting impression on the district’s youth, especially in Bay Ridge’s Arab-American community. His run and its aftermath are the subject of a new documentary showing this weekend in the neighborhood.

The grassroots movement that grew out of El-Yateem’s campaign served as the motivation for director Judd Ehrlich to proceed with his documentary on the former pastor of the Salam Arabic Lutheran Church, reports Paula Katinas in a story that appeared in Brooklyn Reporter. On Dec. 9 “FATHER K” will be screened at the Alpine Cinema, followed by a Q&A session with Ehrlich, producer Aidan Tumas and El-Yateem himself, who will be visiting from Florida where he now lives and works as the director of ministries for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

Had he won, El-Yateem would have made history by becoming the first Palestinian-American to be elected to the New York City Council. His foray into politics galvanized young people, particularly Arab-Americans in Bay Ridge, many of whom have remained active politically.

“Father K is somebody who represents an alternative way of framing difference to find common ground. We need more people like him right now in our politics, and in our public discourse,” Ehrlich said in a statement.

Before he left in late May for Florida, El-Yateem started the Yalla (“let’s go” in Arabic) Brooklyn political club to increase civic engagement and empowerment in the Arab community. Ehrlich describes how this news changed the direction of the film. Go to Brooklyn Reporter to read his comments, along with more on El-Yateem’s background and the awards “FATHER K” has already picked up across the country.

Rev. Khader El-Yateem (right) with Council member Justin Brannan. (Photo by John Alexander via Brooklyn Reporter)

Rev. Khader El-Yateem returned to Bay Ridge for a screening of “Father K,” the award-winning documentary based on his City Council campaign in 2017 and his political activism, writes John Alexander for Brooklyn Reporter. The founder of the Salam Arabic Lutheran Church, and the first Palestinian American to run for a Council seat, moved in May to Florida where he is the director of ministries for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Before leaving, he founded the Yalla (“let’s go” in Arabic) Brooklyn political club to empower Arab voters.

The film, directed by Flatbush resident Judd Ehrlich, begins with El-Yateem’s life in Palestine where, as a college student, he was arrested by Israeli authorities, and survived nearly two months of torture before he was allowed to leave. He said he would not retaliate: “I am going to commit to non-violence. I’m going to commit to dialogue.”

El-Yateem came to America in 1992 and became a U.S. citizen in 1996. That was a cathartic time for him.

“For the first time in my life, I registered to vote,” he said. “That was something I never had the right to do. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was somebody.”

And that was when he decided to engage people in the political system and strive for needed changes.

Justin Brannan, El-Yateem’s opponent in the Democratic primary who would go on to win the seat, joined the reverend at a Q&A after the screening, which took place at Alpine Cinema.

El-Yateem was asked about the status of his fight for Arabic interpreters to assist non-English speaking voters at polling sites, an issue that might have cost El-Yateem votes during his primary run. He lost to Brannan by less than 800 votes.

How did Brannan, who recently introduced a bill that would require Arabic interpreters at select polling sites, respond? And how did El-Yateem, when he first arrived in Bay Ridge, commit to what he vowed when released from prison, and later on when he ran for City Council? Find out at Brooklyn Reporter.

Mayada Anjari (Photo by Liz Clayman via West Side Rag)

In March 2016, Mayada Anjari and her family arrived in the U.S., welcomed by members of the Rutgers Presbyterian Church’s New Americans Committee on the Upper West Side. The group had sponsored the Syrian refugees and brought the family to their Jersey City apartment where food, clothing and furniture awaited. Six months later, Mayada expressed her gratitude with a home-cooked meal for the volunteers in her apartment. West Side Rag’s Lisa Kava reports that they were so impressed with her cooking, “We thought to organize some fundraisers at the church where Mayada could cook,” said committee chair Nancy Muirhead.

Shortly after, on November 6, 2018, an event called “Dinner with Mayada and Friends” took place at the Rutgers Church. Mayada cooked in the church’s kitchen and the dinner was open to all church members, neighbors and friends. There was plenty of good food and interesting conversation. “The dinner helped build understanding and support for refugees among the community,” explained Dave Mammen, Church Administrator for Rutgers Presbyterian Church.

The event was so successful that it inspired a series of additional dinners, which expanded to other churches and synagogues in Manhattan, according to Mammen.

Some guests suggested that Mayada create a cookbook. With the help of church members and their connections, everything came together in September 2018 with the release of “The Bread and Salt Between Us.”

Kava notes that in the early stages of putting together the cookbook, they ran into an initial hurdle – Mayada cooked from experience, not any written recipes. How did these family recipes end up getting documented? Find out at West Side Rag.

Ilhan Omar at the Yemeni American Merchants Association (YAMA) Gala on Saturday, February 2. (Photo by Ala’a Assamawy courtesy of the Yemeni American Merchants Assn., via Bklyner)

Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, from Minnesota’s 5th Congressional district, was the keynote speaker at the first annual Yemeni American Merchants Association (YAMA) gala held on Saturday, February 2 in Sunset Park.

Bklyner’s Zainab Iqbal reports on the event.

“I know that the Yemeni community has a special fight in their heart, that they have a big drive, they know what hard work looks like, they are tenacious, they can be a little tough, they have a lot of fight in them, and there’s a special spirit that is in their blood,” Omar said about the Yemeni community in attendance. “It’s the spirit that used to be in my ummi’s blood, in my mom’s blood. It’s the spirit that was in my grandfather’s blood. It’s what he passed on to me.”

YAMA formed two years ago after 5,000 bodega owners in Brooklyn went on strike following the Muslim Ban. At the same time Omar was busy organizing people in Minnesota to talk and stand up “against this ban that would forever put a stain on our nation’s history.”

“The work that was getting done in NY was going to be one that transformed the conversation,” she said. “Because when people saw 5,000 Yemeni merchants and their neighbors rising up, they knew that Muslims here in the United States were not playing. That we were no longer going to sit on the sidelines. That we weren’t afraid and we recognized our power.”

Go to Bklyner to read more about the event, the many local politicians in attendance, what Omar had to say about the importance of voting and of motivating Muslim candidates to run for office, and about “being a Muslim unapologetically.”

Tony and Marie Aflak holding their freshly baked pita bread. (Photo by John Alexander via Brooklyn Reporter)

Mid-East Bakery, which has been selling pita bread, spinach pies and more in Bay Ridge since 1976, is getting a new lease on life thanks to the daughter and son-in-law of the original owners, writes John Alexander in Brooklyn Reporter.

Marie Aflak, who is the daughter of original owners Antoine and Frangie Tabet, will be running the bakery with her husband Tony Aflak and their sons Alex and Thomas.

Her parents were contemplating closing the store last December. Both had worked hard over the years and were looking forward to retirement. Marie’s brother Michael, who had been managing the shop for 17 years, had accepted a job opportunity in New Jersey and could no longer oversee the bakery.

“Dad came here in 1970 from a small town in northern Lebanon where the Cedars grow and worked at Damascus Bakery,” Marie told this paper. “After six years of working there, he had the opportunity to open this store. He had a cousin of his help him out and it’s just been a family business since then.”

When her parents made the decision to close up shop, Tony and Marie expressed their desire to take over the business.

Marie had learned to cook all kinds of Middle Eastern specialties from her mother and works as a chef at Xaverian High School. She had also opened her own shop, Grapevine, a few years ago.

The Aflaks want the bakery’s ever-popular pita bread to be available all day, not sold out by 11:30 a.m. as it often has been in the past.

In fact, Marie’s father — a fixture at the bakery who could always be found sitting in a chair by the store’s entrance — was even known by some as the “pita bread Nazi,” much like the soup Nazi character on “Seinfeld,” because he would ration the bread in favor of his regular customers.

“It’s very important for us that the people know that the bread is available in any quantity that they need all day long,” Tony added. “If customers want 10 dozen, they can have 10 dozen. There will be no more rationing.”

Go to Brooklyn Reporter to read about other changes in store at the bakery.

Hamid Kermanshah unfurls antique Persian rugs in his eponymous Kermanshah Oriental Rugs shop near Union Square. (Photo via NY City Lens)

In a story that appeared in NY City Lens, Moira Lavelle takes a look at how the U.S.’s renewed sanctions against imported goods from Iran are impacting Persian rug businesses in the city. Sanctions are nothing new, having come and gone for the past three decades. Following the Iran nuclear deal, sealed in 2015, “the Persian carpet business boomed once again.”

In Iran, carpet exports went up 39 percent in the first four months, with American imports making up a large portion. Here in New York, carpet shops brought in a slew of the handmade pieces.

Now, they cannot—and everything has ground to a halt once again. Being thrust back into an embargo this fall was unwelcome news for carpet dealers, but not a surprise, and most shop owners suspect the ban won’t last.

“It’s hard to forecast the future, but we’ve been through this in the past,” said David Basalely, 65, one of the owners of Eliko Antique Rugs on Madison Avenue. “The embargo has never lasted for more than a few years.”

Meanwhile, on Fifth Avenue by Union Square, Hamid Kermanshah has other concerns. He has been running Kermanshah Oriental Rugs with his brother for 35 years and buys many antique rugs from dealers in the U.S. so “the worry isn’t an inability to import genuine Persian rugs but that the influx of imitations rugs in other stores will threaten his business.”

“I have to compete with the imitations,” Kermanshah said. “The sanctions are one of the reasons these copies started.” Kermanshah says he can spot an imitation carpet instantly, and that he will not sell them. Even rolled up in his shop, he can spot different styles of Persian rugs, named after the regions they are from – Tabriz, Shiraz, Naim.

Basalely, like other store owners, has been having rugs made “that mimic the color and design, but they are not specifically the same texture and quality” and has also imported rugs from Turkey and South Asia “but it’s not exactly the same look.” How have customers reacted? How are authentic Persian rugs made? And how have the sanctions affected the ability to make repairs? Read more at NY City Lens.

Dr. Debbie Almontaser (center) joined members of the Yemeni American Merchants Association and others outside the News Corp offices in New York. They are calling for a boycott of the New York Post. (Photo by Alice Chambers via NY City Lens)

On April 13, some bodega owners in the Yemeni American Merchants Association in NYC started a boycott of the New York Post by not selling the newspaper in their stores. The paper’s April 11 front page had an image of the World Trade Center attacks with a quote from Rep. Ilhan Omar saying that 9/11 was “some people did something.” Its headline read: “Here’s your something – 2,977 people dead by terrorism.” In a media advisory, YAMA wrote that it strongly condemns the “editorial decision to weaponize images of 9/11 to provoke hatred and fear.” On March 23, the Minnesota representative said at a Council on American-Islamic Relations event, in relation to Muslims being treated as second-class citizens, that CAIR was founded after 9/11 “because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

On Sunday, YAMA board secretary Dr. Debbie Almontaser joined members of the organization at a press conference in front of the News Corp building in midtown Manhattan, the parent company of the New York Post. Alice Chambers covered the event for NY City Lens.

Yemeni bodega owners are among the best organized Muslim groups in New York. The Merchants Association represents about 5,000 bodega owners in the city and sprung out of a mass protest against President Trump’s travel ban in 2017.

“This was the first time for our community to rise, to exist,” says Ayyad Algabyali, advocacy director at the merchants’ association. “Grass roots are powerful,” he added.

As of Sunday, the group estimates that several hundred Yemeni bodega owners have decided to boycott the New York Post by refusing to sell it in their stores. It may take some time for them to sever distribution contracts with the Post, but in the meantime, they are simply not putting the papers on their newsstands. A bodega in Manhattan might be expected to sell 80-90 newspapers a day, according to Algabyali. Multiply this across the city and the Yemeni merchants’ association might wield enough economic power to get the Post to give into their demands.

Go to NY City Lens to see how the YAMA campaign emerged in under a day and read more from the press conference.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and City Council member Carlos Menchaca met with leaders from the Beit El-Maqdis Islamic Center last Friday. (Photo by John McCarten, New York City Council, via Kings County Politics)

The New York City Council Speaker and the chair of the council’s Immigration Committee went to Bay Ridge last Friday to meet with members of the Arab community at a local mosque, in the wake of the dismissal from the committee of Council member Kalman Yeger (D-Borough Park, Bensonhurst, Sunset Park, Midwood, Flatbush), who on his Twitter feed in late March had referred to “so-called Palestinians” and said that “Palestine does not exist.” S. Rodriguez of Kings County Politics reports on the meeting at the Beit El-Maqdis Islamic Center, which the reporter was not allowed to attend. But Rodriguez was provided with a recording of remarks by Johnson, and spoke later with Menchaca.

The Arab community here in New York City, here in Brooklyn is a beautiful important part of our city and Arab Americans, Arab immigrants and Palestinians where ever you come from whatever brought you to the United States of America and brought you to New York City I am grateful you are here,” said Johnson. “I am grateful that you are in New York City, I am grateful that your families are in New York City.”

Johnson said every community deserves peace, every community deserves self-determination, and every community deserves safety that is what every community deserves here and around the world.

“It is the most important thing that when there is rising anti-Semitism, that when there is rising Islamphobia, when there is rising acts of hate that leaders in government come forward to talk about that, to condemn that and to ensure that no one feels that it’s appropriate to behave that way,” Johnson said.

Menchaca, for his part, stressed that “everyone needs to feel welcomed to come before me as the president of this committee and be heard and feel safe. The Palestinian community, the Arab community, the Muslim community, the immigrant community needs to hear from us.”

Read more at Kings County Politics.