Katelyn Polantz, editor-in-chief for The Pitt News

This year, the pro-Israeli and the pro-Palestinian student groups held opposing protests on campus, inciting many passionate students to speak out and express their heated opinions. The same week, Elham, a practicing Muslim of Iranian heritage, ran a series of three columns describing her experiences on a recent trip to Israel she took to tour the disputed territory. Not only were her columns timely, they brought the international conflict to our campus audience in a way that both explained and tastefully made arguments on the situation from the point of view of a Pitt student. Elham has an unwavering respect for her Iranian heritage and uses her travel experiences in the Middle East to inform her opinions. Driven from this directly, her work at The Pitt News has raised the standard of college journalists localizing international issues and of column-writing overall.

Harry Kloman, news adviser for The Pitt News

Elham is an intrepid journalist willing to go where others might fear to go. Her trip to Israel landed her in security detention for a few hours while they questioned her about her Iranian ancestry. She faced the situation with calm and wrote well about it. And she may face this questioning again when she next goes to visit her relatives in Iran: She now has an Israeli stamp on her passport!

Annie Tubbs, copy editor for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, former editor-in-chief for The Pitt News

Elham, who is from Iran and speaks Farsi, is fascinating from the moment you meet her. She's soft spoken and considerate -- a trait not often attributed to amateur (or professional) journalists. Her stories from her travels to both Iran and Israel were thoughtful and carefully written, and they sparked some thoughtful feedback from members of the University of Pittsburgh community.

Source | The Pitt News
When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published the controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist in September 2005, the Muslim world was in an uproar, to say the least. In the months that followed, Muslims from Islamabad to Jakarta participated in violent and sometimes deadly protests, embassies were set on fire and leaders from several Islamic countries condemned the publication of the cartoons.

Source | The Pitt News
On the plane ride to Tel Aviv, I sat in my seat, legs crossed and arms folded across my chest, wide awake with worry. It's not every day, I'm sure, that an Iranian-American Muslim who happens to have the same last name as the former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, visits Israel.

Source | The Pitt News
From the vitality and beauty of Jerusalem, the drive to the Alfei Menashe Jewish settlement in the West Bank is long and depressing. Green trees fade into dryer land. The number of people grows sparse, until there is hardly anyone in sight. Houses turn into shacks that can be seen far in the distance. Police cars patrol the area. And then, barbed wire - a fence that runs for miles and miles. Further away, a wall stands ominously, dividing lives that seem to be worlds apart.

Source | The Pitt News
On our last day in Israel, my group and I met with Ido Aharoni, Israel's assistant foreign minister and brand team manager. Aharoni discussed the importance of creating a positive image for the state of Israel. It was vital, he said, for Israel to "rebrand" itself so that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has plagued its image for decades, is no longer in the foreground.