| Islam Sesame Street Popular in Palestine |
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| by Tom McGregor | Sun, Oct 4, 2009, 10:27 PM |
 This season's episodes of 'Shara'as Simsim,' the Palestinian version of the internationally-renowned 'Sesame Street' franchise, were filmed in a satelliite campus of Al-Quds University, a shabby four-story concrete structure that houses the school's media department and a local televeision station. The building stands in an upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of the West Bank twon of Ramallah, not far from the edge of Pasgot, the Israeli settlement. Just like many structures on the West Bank, the Al-Qud's structure appears to be simultaneously under construction and falling into decay. Some walls are obliterated by bullet holes, from when the Israeli army occupied the building for 19 days in 2001, during the second intifada. The building was hotel in another life, and the balconies up front where TV crews and students enjoy smoking breaks overlooking the crumbling aspect of its swimming pool.
According to the NY Times, "the TV-station at Al-Quds, called Al-Quds ducational Television, had started a decade ago by Daoud Kultab, a 54-year-ol Palestinian journalist who is also the executive producer of 'Shara'a Simsim.' Kultab (who wrote a dispatch for The New York Times Magazine in 2003 on the way Arab TV covered the outbreak of the Iraq War) lives in Ammam and worksd both in Jordan and in the Palestinian territories. He owns the channel - one of dozens of tiny mom-and-pop-style microbroadcast operations in the West Bank - in part so that he would have a venue, however small, from which to broadcast 'Shara'a Simsim.' At the time in the late 1990s, the official Palestinian TV station was unwilling to show 'Shara'a Simsim,' because it was produced jointly with 'Rachov Sumsium,' the Israeli version of Sesame Street." Since the beginning of Sesame Street in the U.S. 40 years ago, the non-profit New York City-based organization which produces the show that is currently called Sesame Workshop, has created 25 global co-productions. Each nation's show has its own identity, a prominent streetscape, live-action segments featuring local children and a distictive crew of Muppets. To read the entire article from the New York times, link here: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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