About PACC:
Creators of Alquds Jerusalem
PACC, the Palestinian American Community Center, is a registered 501c3 nonprofit and tax-exempt organization. PACC is strictly a non-political and non-religious organization whose mission is to sustain and strengthen ties to Palestinian heritage, while empowering the success and well-being of the entire community. PACC has four focus areas: 1. Educating about Palestine 2. Empowering the Local Community 3. Civically engaging with the larger community and 4. Referring people to the services they need.
To do that, PACC provides social, cultural, educational, athletic and recreational activities. PACC’s goal is to unite, serve, and empower the Northern New Jersey community as well as to collaborate with other organizations for the betterment of the community at large. PACC is in the City of Clifton, situated in Passaic County, and seeks to serve the roughly 1.5 million residents in Passaic County and neighboring Bergen County. These counties are known for their large Arab and Muslim populations. The City of Paterson, in Passaic County, has the second largest Muslim population in the United States.
As part of our first focus area, PACC has organized the Palestinian community in Northern New Jersey and has decided to reclaim the Jerusalem narrative. Due to the absence of such a resource, PACC created alqudsjerusalem.com to provide a legitimate source on Jerusalem written and researched by Palestinians. Alquds Jerusalem is designated to target English speakers of all ages and interests. The aim of this research is to provide researchers, community members, students of all levels, both Palestinians and non-Palestinians with a credited, cohesive and well-documented hub of information about the city of Jerusalem.
Among the many accomplishments of PACC, PACC was able to make the New Jersey state voter registration form available in the Arabic language. For 2020, PACC has committed itself to reaching hard-to-count communities and making sure everyone gets counted this census. PACC was awarded a NJ state grant to carry out their census events and efforts. PACC is also an active member of the National Network of Arab American Communities.
The aim behind this website is to provide facts on the city of Jerusalem. People who find themselves surrounded by the Israeli narrative, will be able to find the Palestinian and Arab narrative on this website. Throughout material provided in the website, our readers will come to a better and clearer understanding of Jerusalem, specifically its history, legal position, sights, daily life, and culture.
About Hiba:
Lead Author & Editor of Alquds Jerusalem
PACC hired Hiba B’irat as a researcher who dedicated over a year of her time reading through over 30 books and researched all aspects of the city of Jerusalem. Our aim to open this website up to other Jerusalm experts so that they can complement and build on the foundation that we have placed. Hiba used to research for and write a legal blog for PACC where she would write about different legal angles of the Palestinian struggle. Her ability to research and write comprehensive articles stood out to PACC and so they reached out to Hiba to lead the Alquds Jerusalem initiative
Hiba holds a masters degree in international law and human rights from Washington College of Law- American University in Washington DC. She has 10 years of experience in the field of research enabling her to do the thorough study required to create the huge and in depth amounts of content on Alquds Jerusalem. She worked as legal research with many NGOs including Open Society Justice Initiatives, Human Rights First and Palestinian American Community Center. Hiba recently passed New York Bar Examination and currently awaits to swear in to get her license as an attorney in New York.