Tag: Rami Hamdallah

08032018-toastmasters.jpg Ahmad Shami, one of the founders of Toastmasters Ramallah and currently a spokesperson for Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, speaks to the room about the importance of planning to achieve professional success at a Toastmasters meeting on July 23, 2018. Credit: Ari Plachta/PRI Laith Azzam, 19, is delivering a speech about artificial intelligence to dozens of Palestinians in their 20s and 30s in a Ramallah office boardroom. Yet the reason he’s here at Toastmasters Ramallah, part of a network of public speaking clubs around the US and abroad, has everything to do with the fact that he and the club’s other members grew up under decades of Israeli military occupation in the West Bank. “Toastmasters can open the doors for Palestinians and Palestine to be more integrated with the world, with international institutions and to actually bring our important story,” he says. “But when I came here, I realized that my story is as important as others. “I love that fact, that we don’t talk about religion and politics,” he says. “Because everything in our daily lives is interfered with [by] politics and religion or both. It’s heavy for the soul.” When club members or guests inevitably raise political subjects in their speeches, Ardoni says he has ways to politely shut them down. After thinking back to one particular speech he gave, his most political, Ardoni suggests that he wants Toastmasters to become more of an open forum where people can discuss political issues. In that speech, he said that he opposes Israeli policies in the West Bank not out of deeply held Palestinian nationalism, but rather his own liberal principles. Support PRI with a monthly donation TODAY!