The Palestine Pod

This week Lara and Michael discuss the uprisings in LA and the solidarity seen at the protests. We also cover updates around the groundbreaking lawsuit brought by pod alum Damia Taharraoui which seeks to hold Israeli/French citizens accountable for genocide in French courts. 

Lara and Michael sit down separately this week. Lara reads from her submission on the political economy of the Gaza genocide prepared as part of her work for the Gaza Tribunal's Sarajevo session and Michael talks about being digitally disappeared from Instagram by one of Meta's main executives who used to work for the Israeli government as part of an application-wide sweep of several accounts speaking about Palestinian rights  

This week Lara and Mikey cover the Israeli forced starvation campaign against the Palestinian people. How for over two months food water and aid have been withheld.  The Palestinian people are being starved to death and dying from avoidable medical ailments and lack of access to healthcare and medicine because of the Israeli siege. We also cover how the armed forces of Yemen defeated the US navy and forced Donald Trump to cut a separate deal that sidelines Netanyahu. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Professor Maura Finkelstein, a formerly tenured professor who was one of the first people targeted in academics after the Al Aqsa Flood. Maura is one of the many Jewish antizionist voices that rejects normalization. We discuss academic repression, the disappearance of students for political affiliations, and the horrors we see coming out of the genocide in Palestine every single day. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss the unilateral breakdown of the ceasefire by the zionist entity. We cover the Israeli massacres on the Palestinian people during Eid, and how it's all connected to the state-sponsored disappearances of students protesting the genocide in Turtle Island. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with the acclaimed Palestinian researcher, Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, a Nakba survivor who has dedicated his life to the Palestinian cause. Dr. Salman Abu Sitta is the founder and President of Palestine Land Society in London, dedicated to the documentation of Palestine's land and people. He is most known for mapping Palestine and developing a practical plan for implementing the right of return for Palestinian refugees. His work also includes the compendium Atlas of Palestine 1917-1966.

This week Lara and Michael discuss the bizarre admission by Milekowsky (aka Netanyahu) that he is proudly committing war crimes by depriving the Palestinian people of food and aid. We talk about the numerous Israeli violations of the ceasefire and cover the onslaught of colonial violence in the West Bank as well as other stories from the last few weeks. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Lena El-Malak a Palestinian-British author and lawyer to discuss her new book, Stolen Nation. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down to talk about the disturbing case of Dr. Abu Safiya who stood steadfast and protected his patients at Kamal Adwan Hospital during the Israeli assault on the medical facility. He was injured with shrapnel in a previous assault, his son was martyred, and he broadcasted almost daily plea's to the international community before he was abducted by the Israeli occupation forces. He has since been tortured by the Israelis, and transferred to the concentration camp. We urge all medical professionals to speak out in defense of Dr. Abu Safiya and call for his immediate release. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Mansoor Adayfi, a Yemeni citizen who was wrongfully kidnapped at the age of 18, sold to the CIA, and spent 15 years in Guantanamo before being released without charge or trial. After surviving the torture and terrorism of the United States government, Mansoor is now working tirelessly for accountability in accordance with international law, including an apology, reparations, and the closure of the torture facility where 15 detainees remain, their fates unknown. Released in parallel with the 23rd anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay, this episode hopes to contribute to the urgent campaign to close this abomination of the US so-called "War on Terror." For more on Mansoor's experiences, check out his book "Don't Forget US Here". 

This week Lara and Michael cover the new lawsuit brought by Palestinian-Americans and DAWN against the U.S. State Department under the Administrative Procedure Act seeking to oblige the U.S. government to comply with the Leahy law and cease military assistance to Israel which is involved in grave violations of human rights through the conduct of its occupation forces in Gaza and the West Bank. Michael comments on Israel's occupation of hundreds of square kilometers of Syrian land in the aftermath of the vacuum created by the fall of Bashar Al-Assad and Lara characterizes this as an act of aggression under international law which has hardly been described as such by mainstream corporate media. Lara refers to the latest reports from international organizations characterizing Israel's conduct as genocide including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Lara mentions an Israeli massacre of seven children from the same family in the Northern Part of Gaza and the frustration that accompanies the lack of policy change in the face of the most horrific admissions by Israeli soldiers of their crimes reported by the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Mike Africa Jr., author and Legacy Director of MOVE, a Philadelphia-based activist collective and liberation movement. Mike recalls the history of the MOVE and the 1985 Move bombing, during which Philadelphia police fired thousands of rounds at MOVE members in their homes killing six adults and five children. Mike Africa Jr. addresses police impunity and efforts to seek justice for the MOVE bombing, which are ongoing until today. Mike Africa Jr. expresses solidarity with Palestinians undergoing genocide and describes his awakening to the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Lara asks Mike Africa Jr. what justice would look like for him. Mike Africa Jr. responds that it begins with getting back his family's house which was taken by the US government through the legal process known as eminent domain.

This week, Lara and Michael sit down with Damia Taharraoui, a lawyer at the Paris bar, who recently filed a criminal complaint for complicity with genocide and incitement to genocide in Paris against an NGO whose members blocked the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza and posted about it on social media, calling on others to join them in their efforts. Damia explains the importance of holding perpetrators of atrocity crimes accountable, how open source investigation was facilitated in this case because of the individuals' brazenness, the difference between extraterritorial and universal jurisdiction, and the political context and public discourse in France when it comes to struggling for Palestinian rights. Lara contextualizes this case as part of a pattern of emboldened perpetrators of the Gaza Genocide gleefully posting their crimes on social media noting that the Hind Rajab Foundation recently filed a submission before the ICC with evidence connecting 1000 Israeli soldiers to crimes in Gaza.

This week, Lara and Michael sit down with acclaimed Lebanese-American journalist, Rania Khalek. Reporting from Beirut, Rania comments on Israel's use of a 2000-pound bunker-buster bomb on a residential building filled with families in Central Beirut on the evening of November 22, 2024. Noting that killing sleeping families was a policy first rolled out in the Gaza Genocide through the use of the Israeli AI “Where's Daddy”, Lara asks Rania to elaborate on the similarities and differences between Israel's assaults on Gaza and Lebanon. Rania comments on the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. Michael provides an update on the Israeli occupation's military losses in Lebanon. Lara reminds listeners of the essential truth that Palestinians are struggling for their freedom against colonialism, which is the gravest affront to a people's right to self-determination.

This week Lara and Michael cover the formal announcement by the zionist government of the plan to depopulate the northern part of Gaza and not allow for the return of Palestinians many of whom are already refugees. We discuss the fiasco in Amsterdam, and Michael explains his theory as to why it happened, to recruit more people to the apartheid state. Michael references Professor Avi Schlaim where zionists used a similar playbook to get Iraqi Jews to move after Mossad orchestrated terrorist attacks in Baghdad in the 1950's. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian activist, and lawyer who co-founded the International Solidarity Movement. We discuss her previous trips to sail into Gaza with humanitarian aid and journalists to break the Israeli siege on Gaza. We chat about the time they successfully docked in Gaza without zionist permission. We also cover the other attempts where Israel either commandeered their boats or murdered the humanitarian aid volunteers like with the Mavi Marmara. We also talk about her most recent effort to set sail from Turkey but how the government of Turkey will not let the ship sail. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with the one and only Amanda Seales. Amanda shares her path to learning about and speaking up for Palestine as an artist, explaining that it takes about seven minutes to figure out what is going on, especially if one is armed with knowledge and understanding of white supremacy and colonialism. She invites listeners to check out her latest project, “What would the ancestors say” which explores Black-Palestinian solidarity amongst other social justice issues through a comedic and artistic intellectual lens. Amanda understandably reminds us of George Bernard Shaw's saying that “if you're going to tell people the truth, make them laugh them or else they'll kill you”.  Lara teaches Amanda Arabic. Michael wonders why Amanda still moves her own boxes. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss the occupations' expansion of the Nakba into Lebanon. We cover the zionist pager terrorist attacks, give a brief overview of the history of Hezbollah, and discuss the impact of the martyred leader Hassan Nasrallah. We cover how 902 Palestinian families have been wiped off the civil registry. Many Palestinians are the only surviving member of their families, which as Michael points out, is the Batman origin story. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Dr. Mark Perlmutter, Past President of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons to discuss the horrors he saw while volunteering in Gaza. He describes seeing multiple sniper wounds to the heads AND hearts of many children, indicating there is no way it was "accidental" as Israel often claims. He speaks about the cost on his own life and gives us a sense of what it was like to treat people in Palestine during a genocide. 

This week Lara and Michael talk about the occupation's latest scheme to recruit African asylum seekers to the genocide effort. We discuss how many people have repeated a frozen death toll despite daily massacres. We cover how the stats around settler migration from the colony are incorrect because the statistician himself has left and so much more! 

This week on the Palestine Pod, Lara and Michael cover the ongoing genocide in Palestine with updates from on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank including Israel's bombing of the Al-Ahly Baptist Hospital (again) on August 31, 2024 and the invasion of multiple cities and refugee camps in the West Bank including Jenin where Israeli occupation forces besieged the city, destroyed 70% of the city's roads in a manner of days and, at the time of recording of this episode, killed 22 Palestinians. Lara reminds us this is all part of the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine which has been ongoing since Day 1 over 76 years ago noting that Israeli officials are even calling for the “temporary” displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank, a tactic which has historically never proven to be temporary and has only ever been used as a means by Israel to steal more Palestinian land. Lara and Michael also critique a recent move by NYU to propose that “Zionist” be considered a protected class under the school's code of conduct, a move which comes on the heels of social media giant Meta announcing that content targeting Zionism or Zionists could be removed under the company's hate speech policy. Finally, the Palestine Pod recalls the brutal killing of the brilliant Palestinian content creator Medo Halimy and the legal case for the mainstream media's role in perpetuating the genocide of the Palestinian people.

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Jewish anti-zionist activist and writer Amanda Gelender. We discuss how the Jewish community has a major fascism problem in Zionism; and how to best bring it to an end. Amanda speaks frankly that Jewish ally-ship is not more important than any other, and implores fellow Jews to do more in support of Palestine and Palestinian liberation. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss the grotesque hysteria around Washington's reception to a heinous war criminal. We cover the spread of preventable skin diseases in Gaza where Israel forbids the entry of even the most basic medical supplies. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Associate Professor of Law at Queens University, Dr. Ardi Imseis. Dr. Imseis is the author of the UN and the Question of Palestine, a study into what historically went wrong in the UN's treatment of the question of Palestine since its inception. Dr. Imseis exposes how at various critical moments in the last century, the prevailing international law of the time was flouted by the UN in favor of policy that violated Palestinian rights and democratic principles. The work reminds us how the law can be used as one of many tools, but certainly has its limits. Laws can be oppressive (like the Nuremberg laws, South African Apartheid laws) and the choice to respect them or not is inherently political. We discuss how a lack of accountability for Israel's violations has only caused the Zionist occupation to become worse and worse over time, what public international law principles require of Israel in terms of reparation for its international wrongs against the Palestinian people, and the handful of current legal efforts brought by Palestinians and their allies to use the law for emancipatory aims including the ICJ case in relation to the illegality of Israel's presence in the occupied Palestinians territories, a case where Dr. Imseis acted as part of the legal team.

This week Lara and Michael discuss the recent reports on the carnage of the Palestinian death toll. We cover Susan Abulhawa's article published in the Electronic Intifada, and also The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal that replicates much of the same research. We talk about how often Palestinians are not believed when speaking about their own lived experience. Palestinians are constantly gaslit by Zionists and others who seek to invalidate the research and analysis of Palestinian experts. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with the former President of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), Jwan Haddadd. We talk about the successful organizing effort to pass a resolution divesting from companies who support genocide, and the coalition of organizations, students, and faculty who made it happen. UCSB becomes the sixth University to institutionalize a boycott within the UC system. 

This week Lara and Michael cover the Israeli massacres in Jabalia and Jenin. We discuss the premature infants forced out of their incubators by zionist bombs. The last two functioning hospitals in Gaza are besieged by the IOF and have been without clean drinking water for days. We also cover the ICC Prosecutor's application to the pre-trial judges for the arrest warrants of Netanyahu and Gallant. 

This week, Lara and Michael play a recorded interview with UCLA students in the encampment and sit down with Presidential candidate for the Green Party, Dr. Jill Stein. We discuss the role of electoral politics, how it has failed us, and how now more than ever we need a third party to threaten the two-party duopoly. Dr. Jill Stein has centered her campaign around being the only option on the ballot across the country to call for an end to the genocide in Palestine, and she promises to dismantle the US empire. 

This week Lara and Michael cover the Pro-Publica report that internal state department recommendations advise sanctioning and cutting the supply of weapons to the the occupation. A recommendation Anthony Blinken has been suppressing and lying about since December of 2023. We also discuss the phenomena of college campus student solidarity encampments starting with Columbia and then leading to others at Harvard and Yale. 

This week Lara and Michael cover the details emerging around the massacre at Al Shifa. This massacre will be remembered in the same way as Deir Yassin and Tantura. Doctors who refused to leave their patients were executed. IOF terrorists separated people by color-coded bracelets. We cover the wildly racist coverage of the assassinated aid workers, and how the lives of foreign nationals are not more important than Palestinian lives.  

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Palestinian American ER doctor Mohammad Subeh. He came to the US as a Palestinian refugee during the Gulf War. His grandparents were expelled from Palestine during the Nakba, and he just returned from a 5-week long medical mission to Gaza where he provided medical services at a field hospital with the International Medical Core in Rafah. 

This week Lara and Michael cover the deliberate starvation of the Palestinian people by the zionist regime. We discuss the zionist propensity to torture. How they often torture Palestinians and this time even UNRWA staff got a sample of the treatment Palestinians have been subjected to for over 75 years 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Hala Hanina a  Palestinian activist, a 4th-generation Palestinian refugee from Gaza Palestine. She is a dentist and PhD researcher in sociology. She has experience volunteering in hospitals during previous Israeli bombardments. We hear from Hana about how 5 generations of her family has suffered under Zionism. From her great-grandfather experiencing the 1948 Nakba, all the way up until her family home was destroyed in the 2023/24 Nakba. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss the zionists' genocidal assault on Rafah during the evening of the Super Bowl, targeting at least two mosques containing sheltering families and dozens of Palestinian family houses and tents containing displaced families. During this night, Israel killed Sidra Hassouna, 7 years old. The pressure from the impact of the bomb catapulted her body, which hung by a wire when she was found. We cover the reports concerning Egypt's construction of a so-called “fortified buffer zone” in the Sinai — a concentration camp presumably to hold Palestinians in the event of a mass expulsion of Palestinians by Israel, which remains looming as Israel continues to promise a mass escalation in Rafah, the very area it has spent the last 4 months concentrating the majority of the Palestinian population in Gaza.

This week Lara and Michael cover the story of the missing 6-year-old child by the name of Hind whose terrified phone calls circulated worldwide and the tragic disappearance of two civil defense workers who went looking for her. We just received an update today (after recording the pod) that Hind and the defense workers were murdered by the zionist entity. We also cover the zionist settlers blocking the entrance of aid into Gaza in violation of the ICJ order while Palestinian children die of starvation in Gaza. We report on the discovery of a mass grave of 30 bound numbered bodies in a school in Northern Gaza and comment on the long-term impact on the freedom struggle of the public narrative shifting to discuss the genocidal intent of the Zionist ideology.

This week Lara and Michael (mostly Lara) break down the significance of the ICJ ruling in the Genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel from the perspective of a Palestinian lawyer with an emphasis on international law.   
While this decision will not in and of itself compel Israel to stop bombing and starving Gaza, it gives us a useful tool to be used in furtherance of the freedom struggle. As Nkosi Mandela said when he appeared on the Palestine Pod in May 2021, all forms of resistance must be applied at once to cause the disruption necessary to bring about the collapse of the settler colonial apartheid Zionist entity.

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Plestia Alaqad one of the leading voices from the ground in Gaza. She's a primary source who survived and documented the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

This week Lara and Michael sit down with the President of the Amazon Labor Union Chris Smalls. We read the ALU statement of solidarity with Palestine, talk about the history of unions both good and bad, and the importance of organizing your workplace to get us closer to a place where we can call for a general strike.

This week Lara and Michael sit down with rapper activist and revolutionary, Immortal Technique. We discuss how he became aware of Palestine, and his lyrics which helped to educate generations of liberators. We also provide updates from the ground of the ongoing genocide in Palestine committed by the zionist entity and its fanatic genocide supporters.

This week Lara and Michael cover the calls from Bethlehem to cancel Christmas celebrations because of the genocide happening to the Palestinian people at the hands of the zionist regime. We talk about how oppressed people are reliable narrators of their oppression and we shouldn't wait for the colonizers or their allies in the mainstream media to confirm the lived experience of the colonized.

This week Lara and Michael cover the US blocking the UN Security Council vote on a ceasefire. Lara reads through just one day's worth of updates from Telegram. We also cover the assassination of beloved poet and academic Refaat Alareer, and his sister's family.

This week Lara and Michael cover the death march in Gaza, the difference between the conditions of released hostages, and gruesome accounts from the ground about the premature babies left to die because of the Israeli occupation siege on Al-Nasr hospital in Gaza.

This week Lara and Michael cover the extreme censorship by streaming and social media companies. Episodes 1-5 of @thepalestinepod have disappeared, and numerous accounts were disappeared or disrupted on the ground and in the diaspora like organizing acct @wolpalestine Lara provides accounts and updates from the ground. We talk about the occupation forces storming Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, occupation forces making life unlivable for everyone in Gaza, and impossible for medical staff to save people. Lack of medicine food fuel and water is causing disease in a planned genocide on the people and infrastructure of Palestine.

This week Lara and Michael cover the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Israelis. Lara shares gruesome updates from her family on the ground. We bring you the news the corporate media won't. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with student and activist Soha Khatib, a senior at UIC and board member at Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at her University. We discuss the events that led up to her and her classmates teaming up with Palestine Legal to file a civil rights lawsuit against the University for their disparate treatment of Palestinian students. She explains how she and other members of SJP were barred from entering an informational Zoom setting pertaining to a study abroad program inside 48. While flyering she explains the university staff called the cops and one police officer grabbed a female student by her hijab. She also tells us about subsequent meetings she's had with study-abroad personnel and the climate for Palestinian activists on campus at UIC. The episode speaks to the overall connections between oppressive state forces like the police, zionist think tanks, and higher education institutions in the United States. 

This week Lara and Michael cover the egregious story about Zionist female soldiers who forced Palestinian women to strip at the threat of attack dogs and automatic weapons. We discuss Netanyahu's proposal to deport "all African migrants" after flare-ups in the Eritrean communities inside 48. Lara breaks down the reality of navigating a maze of 21st-century settler colonialism in which all the most physical locations for your life are interrupted by checkpoints, violent settlers, and a literal apartheid wall. Also, we talk about online censorship as The Palestine Pod was recently demonetized on Instagram for no other reason than our reporting. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss Mayor Eric Adams of NYC visiting the occupation, legitimizing land theft, and generally being a bad person. We discuss the upcoming film Golda and how it normalizes the oppression of Palestinians by framing a war criminal as the movie's hero. We also cover the story of the Russian-Israeli citizen who is likely a Mossad spy and was captured by a Shia militia in Iraq while claiming to be doing field research for Princeton. Spoiler alert: Princeton does not claim this woman. 

This week Lara and Michael cover the atrocious story of a Palestinian man branded with the Star of David on his face by Israeli police we discuss how the entire society lives in cognitive dissonance, including the protests against the government. We cover the trial proceedings of a zionist settler who murdered Qusai Mutan. The zionist courts have released him to house arrest in a stolen home.

This week Lara and Michael sit down with acclaimed Rabbi, author, and rabbinical scholar, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro to discuss what it actually means to be Jewish. He dives deep into Jewish history and shows how the Zionist movement belonged to Christians before Theodore Herzl came around. He explains how the founders of Zionism hijacked the religion while holding a lot of the same beliefs as the antisemites of their day. He defines what it means to practice Judaism and how the future of Jewish identity hinges on defeating Zionism

This week Lara and Michael discuss the occupation's failed invasion of Jenin including making thousands of individuals new refugees for the second time in their family's history (most inhabitants of Jenin were refugees from Haifa in 1948 during the Nakba). We also cover the occupation's killing of 12 Palestinians and wounding over one hundred. The media ran with zionist propaganda that dehumanizes Palestinians and promotes the false notion that the invasion of occupied Jenin was Israeli “self-defense” but spoiler alert Israel, as an occupying power, has no right to invade Palestinian cities nor does it have a right to “self-defense” from the people it occupies but Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against illegal and permanent occupation. We also cover the story of French police reaching out to Zionist occupation forces for tips on how to better oppress after riots have shaken many French cities in the wake of the police murder of 17-year-old French-Algerian boy, Nael.

This week Lara and Michael sit down to talk about the recent zionist pogroms in Turumusaya, a town in the occupied West Bank. We share accounts of some of the victims of the pogrom, some of them Palestinian-Americans visiting home for the first time in twenty years. Lara recaps her family reunion and gives a fiery speech. Finally, Lara and Michael cover the recent Haaretz article “Zionist Militia's Efforts to Recruit Nazis in Fight Against the British Are Revealed” further to release to the public of documents last month by the Israeli State Archives proving the coordination between Zionists and Nazi Germany. Michael reads excerpts from a book called, The Secret Contacts, which elaborates on this sinister relationship.