Yasmin El-Rifae is a writer and co-producer of the Palestine Festival of Literature. She is at work completing her first book, a history of an extraordinary feminist resistance group within the Egyptian revolution. This website is a collection of her writings.
Portfolio
Selected Essays
What the Egyptian Revolution Can Offer #MeToo
People remember the mob attacks, but they mostly do not know about the women who resisted them.
I'm sitting in my office in New York, lingering over the draft of an email I need to send to the staff. It explains my complicated trip through Saudi Arabia and Germany and...
The Air Was Hot with Hysterical Nationalism
A year ago I woke up in Cairo to the news of a massacre, the second of the summer. I was subletting a friend's apartment downtown, a beautiful place that gave me solitude above...
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What the Egyptian Revolution Can Offer #MeToo
People remember the mob attacks, but they mostly do not know about the women who resisted them.
I'm sitting in my office in New York, lingering over the draft of an email I need to send to the staff. It explains my complicated trip through Saudi Arabia and Germany and...
Defeat's possibilities: 3 activists recount 1967 as formative
It is June 3, and evening is falling on a rainy Paris. I have learned about the Festival Cine-Palestine, which has a screening of Al-Lail (The Night) by Syrian director Mohamed...
I have spent time in Palestine over the last five years as an organizer of the annual Palestine Festival of Literature , which just took place this May. *** Houses in...
Giulio Regeni's death reminds us no one is safe from Egypt's brutal police
There is a scene filled with terrifying suspense in the 1995 French film La Haine. Police have detained two young men, having found them to be in possession of a small piece of...
That Metallic Sound That Hits Us
Waves of people have disappeared, been killed, too many count, too many to mourn properly. But Giulio’s death makes us confront the effect of this violence, of witnessing it, on...
For journalists, freedom from jail is a qualified liberty
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in its latest report that Egypt is second to China as the world's worst jailer of journalists...
Circles about circles: On writing about sexual violence
I was part of Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault (OpAntiSH), one of several groups that fought mob attacks against women in Tahrir from 2012 onward. This piece is about my...
I am writing this in the car on the way from Haifa to Ramallah. Cell phones beep as we cross between Israeli and West Bank coverage. The view out the window has changed from the...
I walked through downtown Cairo on a quiet Friday morning in March 2015, late to a conference I had helped organize and a little bit anxious. The conference was about the...
Egypt's Economy: Hanging in the Balance
As 2014 drew to a close, the Egyptian economy was making international headlines. The Financial Times called Egypt the world's best destination for stock market investment.[1]...
Yesterday they shot and killed a woman on Talaat Harb Street. She was walking, along with other members of the Socialist Alliance Party, through downtown to commemorate those...
Yasmin El-Rifae: The Air Was Hot with Hysterical Nationalism
Image from Flickr via (flicts) By Yasmin El-Rifae A year ago I woke up in Cairo to the news of a massacre, the second of the summer. I was subletting a friend's apartment...
Egypt's Sexual Harassment Law: An Insufficient Measure to End Sexual Violence
A few days ago, heavy court sentences were imposed on seven men who were convicted of attempted rape, attempted murder, and torture, in a ruling seen by many as unprecedented in...
I am sitting in Ramallah reading this article about the controversy surrounding the deaths of two Palestinian teenagers, shot by Israeli bullets (one through the back) last week...