Understanding Israel Palestine

Send us a textIn the first of a new series called "What Is Zionism?" Professor Barry Trachtenberg talks to Margot Patterson about the origins of Zionism in the late 1800s. By the turn of the 20th century, Jews living in Eastern Europe had experienced two decades of rising anti-Semitism. Some sought to change the conditions of the societies they lived in; others responded to emerging nationalism in Europe by developing ideologies of Jewish nationalism. Unlike other European peoples, however, J...

Send us a textSwarthmore students have faced unprecedented repression in their Palestine solidarity organizing in the past year, despite using tactics embraced in earlier campus struggles. A recent graduate of Swarthmore involved in campus divestment organizing details the double standard that exists at Swarthmore for Palestine-related speech. Students speaking out against the Gaza genocide, many of them low-income and/or people of color, face an array of administrative charges in an internal...

Send us a textMichael Lynk, professor of law at the University of Western Ontario and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied by Israel since 1967, discusses international law, Israel's defiance of it and its recent attack on U.N. peacekeeping troops in Lebanon. He notes that undergirding Western support for Israel is the residue of colonialism and the influence of a powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.

Send us a textAziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon are tourism entrepreneurs and peace activists that have been working for peace in Palestine and Israel for years. Hamas militants killed Maoz's parents on October 7th and Israeli prison guards beat Aziz's brother so severely that he died after being released from prison. Recently, they joined forces and are now traveling across the United States speaking about the need for Americans to act now for peace in the Middle East because inaction itself is a...

Send us a textRet. Ambassador Chas Freeman, Jr., discusses the widening wars in the Middle East, Israel's hegemonic ambitions, and the catastrophic collapse of U.S. influence in the region as a result of the Biden administration's one-sided, ineffectual diplomacy. By arming and funding Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza and brutal war in Lebanon, the United States is breeding hatred in hundreds of thousands of people who are being bombed by U.S. weapons. He notes that "If you bomb peop...

Send us a textHeiko Wimmen of the International Crisis Group details the quickly changing situation in Lebanon and northern Israel after the assassination of Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and Iran's launch of ballistic missiles on Israel. We compare Israel's stated goals and tactics in Gaza with those in Lebanon. Absent a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel is unlikely to achieve its war aims in Lebanon.

Send us a textMargot Patterson talks to Mideast scholar Juan Cole about last week’s dramatic escalation in the year-long cross-border attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel's maximalist goals in Lebanon, the history of Hezbollah and how the failure of the Biden administration’s policy on Gaza is scrambling traditional alliances in the Middle East and configuring new ones. Cole is the the Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan. He is the author ...

Send us a textAnna Martin is a Montana-based journalist who writes about resistance movements and politics and how the two intersect with each other. We spoke with her as she was wrapping up her recent reporting trip to Egypt and the West Bank. In Egypt, Anna spoke with families separated by the closure of the Rafah Border Crossing and their struggle to survive without documents as their loved ones remain trapped in Gaza. In the West Bank, she traveled to Beita, where American activist Aysenu...

Send us a textIn a 2023 Christmas Eve sermon that drew global attention, the Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem charged the Western church with complicity in genocide in Gaza. Attending that Christmas Eve service in Bethlehem was David Wildman, executive secretary for human rights and racial justice with the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Global Ministries. He serves as its liaison to the United Nations, the Middle East and Afghanistan.&nb...

Send us a textThis week on Understanding Israel/Palestine, we're rebroadcasting an episode from Let's Talk UNRWA, entitled An American in Gaza with Scott Anderson. Mara Kronenfeld, Executive Director of UNRWA USA, speaks with Scott Anderson, who is leading UNRWA's efforts in the Gaza Strip. They discuss the need for a ceasefire, the ongoing polio vaccination campaign, and the challenges of providing for millions of displaced people in Gaza amid the immense and ongoing damage to critical infra...

Send us a textJames Gelvin, professor of history at UCLA and author of "The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War," discusses the war in Gaza and the student protest movement it's spawned. He says there is no military solution to the war or to the century-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians other than an independent Palestinian state, unlikely as that now seems. He advises student protesters to go off-campus and get into the Democratic Party if they want to change U....

Send us a textRetired Col. Ann Wright of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla details the numerous ships that have attempted to break the siege of Gaza over the years. After a summer sailing to European ports to raise awareness of the Gaza genocide, the Handala will be on its way to Gaza after repairs are completed. Zane Wolfang also reports from the DNC in Chicago, where police and protestors have been squaring off for a week while Uncommitted Movement delegates push for an arms embargo on the inside.

Send us a textTerrorism is generally held to be political violence that is illegitimate, but what confers legitimacy on some acts of political violence and illegitimacy on others? Is terrorism simply the name we give to the violence we do not like or support, while finding euphemisms for the violence we do like or support? Professor of history Richard Drake asks these questions in his popular course Terrorism - Violence in the Modern World at the University of Montana. With this critical fram...

Send us a textThe former endowed chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Keene State College, Keene, NH, Dr. Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey is the co-founder and executive director of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. In Part II of her conversation with Margot Patterson, she discusses what the Lemkin Institute identifies as genocide not just in Gaza but throughout Palestine and the assault on democracy that Western support for Israel's genocide in Palestine involves.

Send us a textGenocide scholar Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey discusses what constitutes genocide, how and why she and international human rights lawyer Irene Victoria Massimino came to found the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention to avert it, and why the West is supporting genocide in Palestine. Dr. von Joeden-Forgey is the former Endowed Chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Keene State College, Keene, NH, and the Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Professor of Holocaust and Genocide ...

Send us a textDr. Emilio Dabed, a Palestinian-Chilean lawyer specializing in constitutional matters, international law, and human rights, discusses his recent article for 972 Magazine entitled, "By failing to stop the Gaza genocide, the ICJ is working exactly as intended." We discuss the ICJ's failure to order a ceasefire in Gaza in the South Africa vs. Israel genocide case. Dabed argues that this reveals the true purpose of the international legal order: the administration of colonial violen...

Send us a textMickey Gitzin is director of the Jerusalem office of the New Israel Fund, a non-profit funding Israeli civil society groups working to promote democracy and human rights in Israel. He talks about the democratic fissures in Israeli society before and after Oct. 7, the repression of Arab Israelis' rights since the Hamas attack, the limits of Israeli power vis a vis the Palestinians, and why he is hopeful that progressive values can prevail despite the far-right government now lead...

Send us a textDr. Annelle Sheline, fellow at the Quincy Institute, speaks about her resignation from the State Department in protest over the Biden administration's role in backing Israel's assault in Gaza. She's now one of a dozen US government employees who have resigned. An astute student of the region, she talks about the regional consequences of the war in Gaza, including the escalations with Hezbollah in Lebanon and with Yemen's Ansar Allah in the Red Sea. She closes by discussing Iran'...

Send us a textKhaled Elgindy, director of the program on Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute, discusses growing concerns about war on the Israel-Lebanon border, deteriorating conditions in the West Bank, and the whack-a-mole game Israel is playing in Gaza.

Send us a textJournalist Mahmoud Mushtaha, assistant manager of We Are Not Numbers, a non-profit in Gaza that pairs young Palestinian writers with professional journalists to help them tell their stories to an English-speaking audience, describes the harrowing conditions in Gaza. Mushtaha left Gaza a month ago and is now in Egypt. He discusses his journey, the difficulties that confront those who leave Gaza and those who stay, and the eyewitness accounts and stories We Are Not Numbers i...

Send us a textRana Salman and Eszter Koranyi of the Israeli-Palestinian NGO Combatants for Peace joined the show this week to discuss their work over the years and its challenges in the wake of October 7. Combatants for Peace espouses mutual understanding of each others' sides, nonviolent resistance as a tool for change, and joint struggle to end the occupation and bring peace and equal rights for all in the region. Their organization organizes events such as the Joint Memorial Day Ceremony a...

Send us a textKhaled Hroub talked to Margot Patterson about the evolution of Hamas, the Oct. 7th attack on Israel, and the ceasefire plan proposed by President Biden to end the war in Gaza. A professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwestern University in Qatar, Hroub has studied and written about Hamas for 25 years. His essay about the Oct. 7th Hamas attack appeared in the recently published book "Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm."

Send us a textDr. Shira Klein, Associate Professor and Chair of History at Chapman University, discusses Israel's turn toward fascism in the wake of the National Union of Israeli Students proposing a new law that would require universities to fire all academics who express dissent, including tenured professors. An Israeli by birth, Dr. Klein is an expert in the history of Italy's Jews, including during Mussolini's Fascist government. We touch on the academics who have been targets of repressi...

Send us a textMargot Patterson talks to Neve Gordon, a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London. Gordon discusses the significance of the International Criminal Court’s decision on May 20th to seek arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders (Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismael Haniyeh) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. He also examines the International Court of Justice’s May 24th ruling...

Send us a textNow a political analyst in Washington, D.C. focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Khalil Sayegh grew up as a Palestinian Christian in Gaza, home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Sayegh speaks of the Christian role in Gaza, the recent loss of family members there, the diverse responses of Christian churches in the United States to the war in Gaza, Israel’s war aims — ethnic cleansing and the resettlement of the Gaza Strip with Jewish settlers...

Send us a textSometimes called the Arab Gandhi, Palestinian peace activist Mubarak Awad talks to Margot Patterson about how he came to embrace the principles of non-violence, his views of the war in Gaza and the future of the Palestinian movement. Expelled from Israel in 1988 for leading non-violent resistance during the First Intifada, Awad is the founder of Nonviolence International, an NGO in Washington D.C. that advocates for creative nonviolence in the struggle for liberation of op...

Send us a textThis week we speak with Robert Bletcher, Director of the Future of Conflict program at International Crisis Group (ICG). He was the lead author of the ICG's recent report Stopping Famine in Gaza. We discuss how famine is defined and measured in the realm of international politics and the key axes to consider when attempting to mitigate famine: distribution and access. Israel's actions in Gaza, including its harsh restrictions on aid entering Gaza and its targeting of individuals...

Send us a textRutgers University law professor Sahar Aziz and Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy, discuss student protests of Israel’s war in Gaza, the growing threat to free speech on college campuses, and how pervasive anti-Muslim bias in U.S. society and U.S. foreign policy perpetuates a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Aziz and Plitnick are co-authors of the report “Presumptively Anti-Semitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse,...

Send us a textThe Gaza Freedom Flotilla movement began with a 2006 email from a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement sent to other volunteers struggling with how to bring to the attention of the world that Israel, while attacking Lebanon, was imprisoning Gaza. The email proposed chartering a big boat to sail from New York to Gaza, to Break the Siege, while acknowledging their proposal was so big it might need a sanity check. Rising to the challenge, two years later in 2008 a b...

Send us a textIn the last part of a series on the Israel lobby in the United States, Margot Patterson talks to Alison Weir, founder and executive director of If Americans Knew, a non-profit established more than 20 years ago to educate Americans about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Weir discusses some of the many groups and individuals that comprise the Israel lobby, why and what Americans should know about the lobby, and how Israel's advocates have been responding to the Oct. 7 attacks on...

Send us a textDr. Sam Brody, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at The University of Kansas, discusses the history of the Anti-Defamation League (or the ADL) and the role it plays as a part of the Israel lobby. Dr. Brody contends that the ADL’s stance that anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism is wrong-headed, cynical, and ahistorical. He argues that countering anti-Semitism can only be done in coalition with other liberation movements, including the Palestine solidarity movement. We co...

Send us a textAward-winning journalist, author and documentary film-maker James Bamford discusses his recent article in The Nation magazine, "The Anti-Defamation League: Israel's Attack Dog in the U.S." Since the war in Gaza began in October, the ADL is claiming a dramatic rise in anti-Semitism, citing statistics disputed by its own staff, some of whom have quit the ADL in protest at the conflation of anti-war protests with anti-Semitism. Bamford speaks to Margot Patterson about t...

Send us a textMJ Rosenberg, political commentator, joined the show this week to discuss the Israel lobby from his vantage point as a former insider. After working on Capitol Hill for various Democratic members of the House and Senate for 15 years, Rosenberg worked for AIPAC for four years. Rosenberg recounts his experiences being threatened with destruction of his career as a Hill staffer. He also shares how AIPAC has intervenes in Congressional elections through directing donations to candid...

Send us a textGrant F. Smith, the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, discusses the influential American-Israel Public Affairs Committe (AIPAC). Smith has written several books on AIPAC. which was started with $6 million in foreign funding, largely from Israel, but eluded U.S. efforts to register it as a foreign agent. While it's treated as a domestic lobbying organization, Smith says AIPAC today continues to act as a foreign agent for Israel, employing campaign con...

Send us a textIn Part I of a series on the Israel lobby, Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard and co-author of the book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," discusses the effect of the lobby on U.S. foreign policy and the ongoing war in Gaza. The Israel lobby is an informal alliance of various interest groups that work to foster unconditional American support for Israel by pressuring Congress, the executive branch, media institutions and the academy. Professor Wa...

Send us a textLast week's conversation with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson about the U.S.-Israeli relationship concludes. Wilkerson was chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and now teaches government and public policy at the College of Willliam and Mary. Margot Patterson then speaks to Dr. Majdi Hamarshi, founder of the Palestinian-American Medical Association (PAMA). Since 2013, PAMA has been sending medical missions to Gaza and the Occupied West Bank to help meet t...

Send us a textColonel Lawrence Wilkerson discusses U.S.-Israel relations today and how the Israel lobby shapes U.S. politics and U.S. foreign policy. He speaks to Margot Patterson about the war in Gaza, what he believes Israel’s intentions are for it, the anger the war is creating and the blowback he sees in store for the United States for its role in arming and enabling Israel’s campaign. Colonel Wilkerson served as special assistant to General Colin Powell when Powell was Chairman of the Jo...

Send us a textWun Wong (they/them) from Librarians and Archivists with Palestine speaks about the destruction of cultural heritage in Palestine at the hands of the Israeli armed forces. Israel has targeted Palestinian institutions of cultural production since the Nakba, but the ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza has seen an intensification of this scholasticide, or the destruction of knowledge. They also speak about how Palestinians have resisted the destruction of their cultural heritage and...

Send us a textScott Paul, associate director of peace and security at Oxfam America, talks about why 20 aid organizations have issued a public letter protesting a pause in Western funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main aid agency in Gaza offering services that the aid groups says are indispensable in the current crisis. Oxfam, Save the Children, the AFSC and other aid groups working in Gaza say cutting aid to UNRWA will have devastating effects on what i...

Send us a textDocumentary filmmaker Maurice Jacobsen speaks about his efforts to tell Gaza's stories amid the carnage and destruction of Israel's onslaught. Maurice works with a team of Gazan filmmakers called the Gaza Media Group who have been documenting the last several months of war despite much of their equipment being destroyed. We focused on individual stories that testify to the resilience of the Palestinian people and displayed on we-gaza.com. We also discussed the Hamas government i...

Send us a textRichard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of Palestinian human rights in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, discusses the case South Africa has brought to the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide in Gaza and asking the ICJ to order preventive actions. Falk discusses the divide between white settler-colonial states and European former colonial powers o...

Send us a textDr. Noam Perry of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) joined the show this week to discuss his organization's research into the business of military occupation and apartheid in Palestine/Israel and the USA. Since Israel began assaulting Gaza after Oct. 7, the AFSC has put together a comprehensive resource on their website detailing the weapons companies fueling Israel's genocidal campaign. This resource is part of a larger investigative project detailing the intersecti...

Send us a textMideast expert Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, discusses how U.S. militarism is raising the risk of a wider Mideast war, what more the United Nations could do to press Israel and the United States to adopt a ceaefire in Gaza, and the suit South Africa has filed at the International Court of Justice charging Israel with the crime of genocide. At the Institute for Policy Studies, Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project,...

Send us a textThe Rev. Dr. Robert Smith discusses his scholarly work on Christian Zionism and his activism for Palestinian liberation. An enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and professor history, Smith lived in Palestine for several years working for the University of Notre Dame before returning to Turtle Island/United States. Our conversation began with a discussion about the intersection between Smith's work in Palesti...

Send us a textHistorian Rashid Khalidi discusses the Israel-Hamas war in the context of the past century of Israeli settler colonialism and Palestinian resistance. The current war has seen Israel push Palestinians in Gaza from the north to the south and is another step in a process of ethnic cleansing and depopulation long pursued by Zionist forces and the Israeli state, with the support first of Great Britain and later the United States. This episode repeats one aired 6 weeks ago

Send us a textAfter over 11 years working as a Director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Josh Paul recently resigned from the State Department. In this role he was responsible for U.S. defense diplomacy, security assistance, and arms transfers. He joined the show this week to discuss the pipeline of US weapons being sent to Israel. While the letter of the law has perhaps been followed regarding these arms transfers, Josh argues that its spirit has not. Congress is failing to perfo...

Send us a textThree experts on the Holocaust discuss the uses and abuses of Holocaust memory in the context of current events in Israel/Palestine and the war in Gaza. They note that since Oct. 7 the Holocaust has been invoked by Israeli leaders with accompanying calls for mass violence against Palestinians and a war in Gaza that has now killed close to 20,000 people. The conversation was convened in November by Jewish Currents magazine and the Diaspora Alliance. The historians are Omer...

Send us a textProfessor Barry Trachtenberg, the Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History at Wake Forest University, talks about turmoil on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war, critical concerns about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, why the Holocaust is not a justification for oppression, and why he thinks arguments for Jewish exceptionalism are flawed and not in Jews’ best interests.

Send us a textTala Nasir, lawyer at Addameer, Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association sheds light on the issue of the Palestinian political prisoners. Addameer, the Arabic word for conscience, is a Palestinian non-governmental, civil institution that works to support Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli and Palestinian prisons. In the first half of our interview, we talked about the Palestinian prisoners being released by Israel as a part of the recently-negotiated deal betwe...

Send us a textKhaled Elgindy, director of the program on Israeli-Palestinian Affairs at the Middle East Institute, discusses mounting violence in the West Bank, the crack-down on free speech inside Israel, the ongoing war and looming prospect of starvation in Gaza and a shambolic U.S. policy, characterized as a run-away train with no brakes and no destination.

Send us a textHistorian Rashid Khalidi discusses the current Israel-Hamas war in the context of the past century of Israeli settler colonialism and Palestinian resistance. The current war has seen Israel push Palestinians in Gaza from the north to the south and is another step in a process of ethnic cleansing and depopulation long pursued by Zionist forces and the state of Israel, supported first by Great Britain and then by the United States. An advisor to the Palestinian delegat...

Send us a textIn his 2011 book Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations: 1820-2001, Professor Ussama Makdisi of University California Berkeley wrote, “No matter how one turns the kaleidoscope of US-Arab relations, one always returns, or is returned to, the picture of Palestine.” In his book Makdisi highlights several historical pivot points to chart the trajectory of the two-hundred-year-long relationship between the Arab world and United States, one that has been fraught wi...

Send us a textProf. Mazin Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem University discusses the longue durée of the progressive Zionist colonization of the Holy Land. He highlights the current siege-like situation in the ghetto of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, before going on to discuss the numerous Israeli assaults in the West Bank and their context in international law. He notes the deleterious effects on Palestine's environment of colonization before turning his attention to Israel's attempt to starve out...

Send us a textFilm-maker Maurice Jacobsen speaks about efforts he and long-time colleagues in Gaza have been making to document the war as best they can with "We All Live in Gaza: The War Chronicles," short videos posted on the Internet. Journalist Yousef Al-Jamal talks about the recent book he contributed to, "Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire," his growing up in Gaza, the 16-year siege imposed by Israel and the Israel-Hamas war now devastating Gaza.

Send us a textFormer U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied by Israel since 1967, Michael Lynk discusses international law as it applies to the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. The Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas as well as Hamas' ongoing missile strikes on Israel violate international law. So too does Israel's indiscriminate shelling of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and its tightening siege. Lynk addresses the dire humanitarian crisis...

Send us a textMaya Berry, executive director of the Arab-American Institute, discusses Arab-Americans' outrage at the Biden administration's announcement Sept. 27th that it is accepting Israel into the U.S. visa waiver program, a program which allows citizens from select countries to travel to the United States without a visa. Arab-American, Palestinian-American and U.S. Muslim civil rights groups say Israel doesn't meet the United States' own established criteria for admission to the program...

Send us a textThe Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel joined Understanding Israel Palestine to share about his journey from his childhood in Palestine to becoming a pastor in the Presbyterian Church USA and then Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, the highest elected position in the church. In the latter half our discussion, we turned our attention towards interfaith dialogue on the conflict, the theology operating in the Holy Land, and Rev. Abu-Akel's view of the current si...

Send us a textEyal Hareuveni of the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem discusses how and why Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank face a chronic shortage of water. He is the author of a new study by B'Tselem called "Parched: Israel's Policy of Water Deprivation in the West Bank," which examines Israel's discriminatory use of water to control the Palestinian population under military occupation. Though Israel is a water super-power, producing twice as much water as it receives from n...

Send us a textYousef Munayyer, Senior Fellow and head of the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C., discusses the complexity of Israel's internal fissures, changing battlefield dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians, and the increasing turn to armed resistance among Palestinians.

Send us a textA day after Israel's passage of a highly contested bill to curb the power of the Supreme Court, Mickey Gitzin, director of the New Israel Fund, a non-profit in Jerusale that works to advance liberal democracy in Israel, and Nivine Sandouka, a Palestinian who heads the NGO Our Rights in Jerusalem, discuss its significance, the dangers of the far-right government, the contradictions in the Israeli protest movement and some new openings for progress they see emerging. Gili Getz, ch...

Send us a textJehad Abusalim is executive director of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development and author of a recent article in "The New Arab" that looks at Gaza 16 years after Israel imposed its ongoing siege. He discusses Gaza today amid new concerns raised in the wake of the Israeli attack on Jenin in July that Israel may begin treating the West Bank as it does Gaza, subjecting it to increased closures and aerial bombardment. Abusalim notes that the international communi...

Send us a textHuman rights advocate Samer Daoudi and international human rights attorney Jonathan Kuttab discuss the recent demolition of the Jubbet adh-Dhib village school by the Israeli army on May 7, 2023. The demolition of the school is emblematic of a larger strategy to deny Palestinians access to education and, accordingly, the ability to even live in area C, argues Samer Daoudi. Jonathan Kuttab contends that the demolition of the school is in keeping with the goal of preventing the Pal...

Send us a textChief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2001-2005, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson talks frankly about the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel. Fear and intimidation lead the United States to ignore or condone human rights violations by Israel, even when U.S. lives are involved. Wilkerson discusses the parallels between the killing of U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie 20 years ago by an Israeli soldier and Al Jazeera journalist Shir...

Send us a textMay 15 marks the 75th aniversaryof the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” when 3/4 of the indigenous population of Palestine lost their homeland in the establishment of the state of Israel. Commemorations of the anniversary are taking place across the United States, including in Kansas City where Palestinian- Americans and their friends will gather Saturday, May 20, at 6 p.m. at the Islamc Center of Greater Kansas City both to recognize the Nakba and to celebrate the survi...

Send us a textThe Rev. Mae Elise Cannon, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, says Jerusalem’s status as a city that is home to two peoples and sacred to three faiths has never been more endangered in the modern era than it is today. Recently returned from a trip to the Middle East, she discusses the Israeli government’s intentional erosion of the historic status quo that has governed Jews, Christians and Muslims’ access to the holy sites in Jerusalem and the dramatic rise in...

Send us a textStephen M. Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, talks about the Israel lobby in the United States and the negative effect unconditional support for Israel has had on U.S. foreign policy in the Mideast and on Israel itself. Walt is the author, along with John Mearsheimer, of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Published in 2007, the book was controversial when it first came out but many of its arguments are now widely accepted....

Send us a textPolitical scientist Norman Finkelstein discusses the massive protests taking place in Israel, describing them not as a battle for democracy but as a culture war not unlike the tensions seen in U.S. society. He discusses the role and record of Israel's high court, U.S. Jews' shifting relationship with Israel, the role of the pro-Israel lobby. A prolific scholar who has spent his life examining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Finkelstein says the word "democracy" doe...

Send us a textAcclaimed writer and poet Naomi Shihab Nye discusses her poetry, her experiences as the daughter of a Palestinian refugee, her many trips of witness to Israel and Palestine, her thoughts on the current tensions there.

Send us a textOri Nir, vice-president of public affairs for the liberal Zionist peace group, Americans for Peace Now, talks about tensions within the U.S. Jewish community over Israel. An Israeli journalist for 24 years, Nir says the frenzy of legislation coming out of the new right-wing government in Israel reflects how the anti-democratic nature of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine is now seeping into Israel, with right-wing extremists seeking to permanently entrench the Occupation and ma...

Send us a textWriter, anthropologist and activist Jeff Halper, chair of the Israeli Committee Against House Demlitions, discusses current conditions in Israel/Palestine -- the Israeli campaign against the last vestiges of resistance to the Judaization of Palestine, the dire choices facing Palestinians today, the acceptance of apartheid Israel by the international community, the massive protests by Jewish Israelis seeking to preserve democracy for Jews while ignoring the apartheid nature of th...

Send us a textRichard Falk, international law expert and former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, discusses the significance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent assertion that Israel possesses exclusive right to all of the Land of Israel. In addition to brazenly defying international law, the assertion repudiates the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle that has been promot...

Send us a textOmar Barghouti, iconic leader of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights, disccusses the aims of the BDS campaign against Israeli apartheid and how it differs from the indiscriminate sanctions the West is applying to Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine. Barghouti discusses the hypocrisy in the West's response to Russia and its response to Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land and says the racism of the West is on full d...

Send us a textDov Waxman, professor of political science and the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Israel Studies at UCLA, assesses the likely consequnces of the far-right coalition government taking shape following the November elections in Israel. Waxman discusses how and why the right has grown steadily in Israel over the last 30 years and what policies the new far-right government will pursue.