* In addition to her work as a journalist, Rula Jebreal has also been a successful author and screenwriter. Her first novel, Miral (2003), was the bestselling story of a woman who sacrificed everything she owned in order to establish a school for refugee Palestinian girls in East Jerusalem. Jebreal also wrote a screenplay based on the story, which in 2010 was made into a filmdirected by Julian Schnabel. Jebreal’s second novel, The Bride of Aswan, was published in 2007 and won the International Fince Europa Award. Her thirdbook, Rejected, is a non-fiction study about the history of immigration in Europe.
* As a filmmaker, Jebreal wrote and produced a 2008 documentary titled Permesso di Sogiorno, which criticized the use of capital punishment in China, the United States, and Iran.
* During a June 2014 panel discussion on violence against women worldwide, Jebreal told MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry that “sexism and misogyny produce rape and sexual assaults.” This “happens here in this country [the United States] on [a] daily basis,” she added. As evidence, Jebreal cited feminist activist Sandra Fluke‘s testimony in to a congressional panel in 2012, in which Fluke had discussed the “financial, emotional, and medical burdens” caused by health insurance plans with a “lack of contraceptive coverage.”