Podcasts about First Intifada

For many years, Palestine had one of the strongest left-wing movements in the Arab world, represented by prominent figures such as Emile Habibi, Leila Khaled, and Ghassan Kanafani. At the beginning of the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinian left groups were still the main challengers to the hegemony of Fatah, although the Left has lost much of its influence in the period since then. Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left is a six-part series from Long Reads exploring radical movements and progressive organizations of the region. We examine the experience of Palestinian communism and the left-wing currents inside the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization. We also look at the outsized impact of the Left on Palestinian cultural life. Our fifth episode focuses on the period from the First Intifada, arguably the high-point of the Palestinian left-wing movement, to the Oslo Accords. Red Star Over Palestine is hosted by Daniel Finn and produced by Conor Gillies. Music provided by Fadi Tabbal.

Arab News 50th anniversary podcast: Recounting the moments that changed the Middle East. Powered by Google's NotebookLM AI tool. Episode II: 1985-1994 Saudi prince in space, First Intifada starts, Lebanon war ends, Kuwait invaded, Oslo Accords signed Read more here: https://www.arabnews.com/arabnews50

For many years, Palestine had one of the strongest left-wing movements in the Arab world, represented by prominent figures such as Leila Khaled and Ghassan Kanafani. At the beginning of the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinian left groups were the main challengers to the hegemony of Fatah. Although the Palestinian left has lost much of its influence since the 1980s, they still play an important role today. Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left is a six-part series from Long Reads exploring radical movements and progressive organizations of the region. We examine the experience of Palestinian communism and the left-wing currents inside the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization. We also look at the outsized impact of the Left on Palestinian cultural life. Our fourth episode focuses on the movement's turn to Lebanon, where Palestinian radicals found a new base and hoped to launch a wider Arab revolution. Red Star Over Palestine is hosted by Daniel Finn and produced by Conor Gillies. Music provided by Fadi Tabbal.

For many years, Palestine had one of the strongest left-wing movements in the Arab world, represented by prominent figures such as Leila Khaled and Ghassan Kanafani. At the beginning of the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinian left groups were the main challengers to the hegemony of Fatah. Although the Palestinian left has lost much of its influence since the 1980s, they still play an important role today. Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left is a six-part series from Long Reads exploring radical movements and progressive organizations of the region. The podcast examines the experience of Palestinian communism and the left-wing currents inside the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization. We also look at the outsized impact of the Left on Palestinian cultural life. In our third episode, we discuss two of the most prominent figures associated with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine: Ghassan Kanafani and Leila Khaled. Get a digital subscription to Jacobin for just $1, or $10 for the print magazine, by following this link: https://jacobin.com/subscribe/?code=MAYDAY2025 Red Star Over Palestine is hosted by Daniel Finn and produced by Conor Gillies. Music provided by Fadi Tabbal.

For many years, Palestine had one of the strongest left-wing movements in the Arab world, represented by prominent figures such as Leila Khaled and Ghassan Kanafani. At the beginning of the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinian left groups were the main challengers to the hegemony of Fatah. Although the Palestinian Left has lost much of its influence since the 1980s, they still play an important role today. Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left is a six-part series from Long Reads exploring radical movements and progressive organizations of the region. We'll be looking at the experience of Palestinian communism and the left-wing currents inside the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization. We'll also be looking at the outsized impact of the Left on Palestinian cultural life. This second episode examines the left-wing movement that took shape under the banner of the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the role of figures such as George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh. Red Star Over Palestine is hosted by Daniel Finn and produced by Conor Gillies. Music provided by Fadi Tabbal.

For many years, Palestine had one of the strongest left-wing movements in the Arab world, represented by prominent figures such as Leila Khaled and Ghassan Kanafani. At the beginning of the First Intifada in the 1980s, Palestinian left groups were the main challengers to the hegemony of Fatah. Although the Palestinian left has lost much of its influence since the 1980s, they still play an important role today. Red Star Over Palestine: Histories of the Palestinian Left is a six-part series from Long Reads exploring radical movements and progressive organizations of the region. We'll be looking at the experience of Palestinian communism and the left-wing currents inside the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization. We'll also be looking at the outsized impact of the Left on Palestinian cultural life. This first episode focuses on the communist movement in Palestine from its early years until the 1960s. Red Star Over Palestine is hosted by Daniel Finn and produced by Conor Gillies. Music provided by Fadi Tabbal.

Music has long been central to Palestinian culture in general and specifically to the culture of resistance. Reem Talhami is a Palestinian actress and singer who gained recognition for her singing during the First Intifada in the late 1980's. Today, she continues to sing and act, despite the situation for Palestinians deteriorating rapidly. During our conversation we speak about Palestinian folklore and political expressions of music – as well as what has been lost in today's generation. You can find Reem's music via her Youtube channel.Like all episodes from our Ramallah Series, this was recorded in the summer of 2024 in Sirdab Studio on the Occupied West Bank. If you enjoy Kalam Podcast and want to support the show, there is an excellent way to do so - by signing up to our Patreon. For just $3/month you'll gain access to full length interviews with all our guests and lots of bonus material - including our series Kalam Shorts: 10-15 explainers of concepts like Zionism and Orientalism. Join at patreon.com/kalampodcastFor continuous updates on the podcast and content about Palestine and the Middle East, follow us on Instagram @kalampodcast Please subscribe to Kalam Podcast in whatever podcast application you're listening to right now - and give us a rating. It helps other people find out about us.

✨Special thanks to our sponsors:  Palestine Drinks Shop: https://www.palestinedrinksshop.com/ | @palestinedrinks_shop on Instagram Visualizing Palestine: https://visualizingpalestine.org/ | @visualizing_palestine on Instagram On this episode of #SumudPodcast, we are honored to feature award-winning Palestinian author, social activist, policy analyst, and journalist Laila El-Haddad. Laila's work spans topics such as life in Gaza, the intersection of food and politics, contemporary Islam, and her experiences as a Palestinian mother and journalist. In 2014, she appeared on CNN's Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain, where she guided him through the Gaza Strip, offering a rare and humanizing portrayal of the region. Born in Kuwait, raised in Saudi Arabia, and spending her summers in Gaza, Laila's journey is a testament to the resilience of Palestinians in diaspora. A graduate of Duke University and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in the United States, Laila brings a unique perspective informed by her personal and professional experiences. Join us as our hosts, @DrEdHasan and @ZeinaAshrawi, explore Laila's reflections on navigating borders, the challenges of motherhood under occupation, and how food becomes an act of storytelling and resistance.

Why are Palestinians among the most educated populations in the world? Many people cite community education initiatives that came out of the non-violent resistance movement in the late 80's, the First Intifada. One such organisation is Tamer Institute and earlier this year we had the pleasure of speaking to the General Director of Tamer, Renad Qubbaj. In 2023, Tamer Institute won the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) for children and young peoples' literature. This episode, along with all of our Ramallah series, is video recorded. If you'd like to see the full video of Renad and Edgar speaking in Sirdab Studio in Ramallah then head over to our Youtube channel.

We look back on the region's history and discuss what it can teach us about the future.Jonny Dymond brings together a carefully curated panel of experts, academics and journalists to talk about the conflict in the region.What has happened in history to lead us to this point? And, what can history teach us about what might happen next? This week, Jonny is joined by BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, Dr Dina Rezk, associate professor of modern Middle Eastern history at Reading University and Dr H A Hellyer, senior associate fellow at the think tank RUSI.They explore the First Intifada, a mass uprising by Palestinians, in 1987 against 20 years of Israeli occupation, and its lasting impact on the region.This episode was made by Keiligh Baker with Ivana Davidovic. The technical producer was Dafydd Evans and David Crackles. The assistant editor is Ben Mundy. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.This episode is part of a BBC Sounds series. It was recorded at 14:00 on Wednesday 27 November 2024.

Palestinian theatre has been around for thousands of years through the tradition of the Hakawati, the storyteller. In modern times, the Palestinian theatre has inevitably served as an liberatory artistic platform. Palestinian theatre cannot be separated from the Palestinian struggle more generally. But as today's guest, Iman Aoun argues, there's a more universal dimension to this: Palestinian theatre serves not only to liberate Palestine but all of humanity, from the evils of colonialism, oppression and racism. Iman Aoun and her husband Edward Muallam founded Ashtar Theatre in 1991, riding the wave of the highly inspirational popular First Intifada. An innovative, non-violent, women and grassroots-led revolt against Israeli domination. In today's episode, Iman reflects on the particularities of Palestinian theatre as well as the abyss of our current moment. If you enjoy Kalam Podcast and want to support the show, there is an excellent way to do so - by signing up to our Patreon. For just $3 a month you'll gain access to full length interviews with all our guests and lots of bonus material - including our series Kalam Shorts: 10-15 explainers of concepts like Zionism and Orientalism. Join at patreon.com/kalampodcastFor continuous updates on the podcast and content about Palestine and the Middle East, follow us on Instagram @kalampodcast Please subscribe to Kalam Podcast in whatever podcast application you're listening to right now - and give us a rating. It helps other people find out about us.

Episode 441 - Jennifer Lang - Places We Left Behind, commitment and compromise, faith and familyAn American-French-Israeli hybrid, I write about identity, language, home. While raising kids in the San Francisco Bay Area at the dawning of the internet, I worked as copy editor/editor/content writer for BabyCenter, PlanetRx, and many other now obsolete .coms. But I dreamed of seeing my name on paper, in print, eventually writing for Parenting, Parents, Natural Solutions, Scholastic, Woman's Day, Real Simple. Then, in the early 2000s, something else caught my eye: the back-page essays. Who were these first-person voices and how did they tell such moving stories? Curious and on the opposite coast, I enrolled in a creative nonfiction class: one, which led to another, and then another, finally culminating in my MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Thank you so much to each of my mentors for teaching me something different and dear, for bolstering me to walk this path as writer.When American-born Jennifer falls in love with French-born Philippe during the First Intifada in Israel, she understands their relationship isn't perfect. Both 23, both Jewish, they lead very different lives: she's a secular tourist, he's an observant immigrant. Despite their opposing outlooks on two fundamental issues—country and religion—they are determined to make it work. For the next 20 years, they root and uproot their growing family, each longing for a singular place to call home. In Places We Left Behind, Jennifer puts her marriage under a microscope, examining commitment and compromise, faith and family while moving between prose and poetry, playing with language and form, daring the reader to read between the lines.Distributed through Ingram, the book is available on Vine Leaves Press store, Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and more.In a book club? Invite her to your next event.israelwriterstudio.comSupport the show___https://livingthenextchapter.com/podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!https://buymeacoffee.com/truemediaca

It wasn't just a movement. It wasn't just a demonstration. It was an uprising. The First Intifada was a six-year "shaking off" of the conditions of occupation--a revolutionary period in which the homeland was transformed into the primary front for confronting Zionism, and every Palestinian was transformed into a resistor of occupation.Popular Cradle is made in partnership with the Palestinian Youth Movement. Thank you to the many people who contributed to the making of this episode. Our editor is Soraya Shockley. Our artwork is by shenby G and Vivek Venkatraman. Our theme music is composed by Salma Taleb, and performed by Clarissa Bitar and Hesham Jarmakani. Follow, like, and subscribe to us on YouTube, Twitter, and IG - @popularcradle.

Patreon: https://bit.ly/3v8OhY7 Robinson's Fashion Empire: http://bit.ly/3XBKqO2 Norman Finkelstein received his PhD from the Princeton University Politics Department, and is best known for his research on Israel and Palestine. In this episode, Norman and Robinson sit down for a discussion centered around the anniversary of October 7th, and they speak about the immensity of what has happened in the Israel-Palestine region in the time before and since. Norman also appeared on episode 192, where he and Robinson discussed allegations of genocide and apartheid, Hamas and Hezbollah, and connections between the war and the Holocaust. Norman was also featured on episode 218, where he addressed the facts and fictions generated by the Israel-Hamas War. Norman's most recent book is I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom (Sublation Media, 2023). Norman's Website: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com OUTLINE 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:44 Why Norman Couldn't Have Predicted October 7th 00:04:45 Gaza's Last Victim 00:07:55 Is the Palestine Question Dead? 00:11:13 What Hamas in Gaza and American Slave Rebellions Have in Common 00:17:22 How the Nakba Created Gaza in 1948 00:21:21 Is Gaza a Concentration Camp? 00:25:20 High-Tech Israeli Killing Sprees in Gaza 00:29:23 The Butcher of Beirut & The Sabra and Shatila Massacre 00:31:20 On the First Intifada and the Silencing of Gaza 00:37:11 On Hassan Nasrallah, Leader of Hezbollah 00:41:59 How Israel Will Destroy Hezbollah 00:42:35 Israel Vs The Party of God 00:45:32 On the Courage of Dying for a Cause 00:48:24 On His Time with Hezbollah and Nasrallah 00:52:41 Noam Chomsky on Hezbollah's Threat to Israel 00:56:30 On Nasrallah's Prophetic Speech Before His Assassination 01:02:10 On Martin Luther King Jr's Final Words 01:04:35 On Nasrallah and the Assassination of Pro-Palestine Leaders 01:07:08 The Parallel Between American Slaves and Gazan Palestinians 01:12:37 Will the Gazans Be Emancipated like American Blacks from Slavery? 01:19:16 Norman's Big Question for Noam Chomsky 01:21:26 The Question of Gaza as a Concentration Camp 01:23:03 The Crushing Toll of the Holocaust on Norman 01:32:08 On His Mother, Piers Morgan, and Gaza as a Holocaust 01:34:14 On the Rise of Hamas 01:38:49 On Hamas, Nasrallah, and the Sealed Fate of Gaza 01:41:36 Does Israel Have the Right to Commit Genocide? 01:45:48 Does Israel Intentionally Murder Innocent Civilians? 01:50:10 Just How Brutal Are Israel's High Tech Military Operations? 01:54:09 On Gandhi's Meditations in Jail 01:56:07 Does Israel Go on Killing Sprees in Palestine? 01:58:43 Are the Leaders of Hamas Rich Billionaires? 02:04:43 Comparing Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto 02:09:33 The Absurdity of Gaza's Economy 02:15:11 What Was Hamas's Intentions on October 7th? 02:18:14 Did Hamas Commit Sexual Violence Against Israelis on October 7th? 02:24:07 On Israel's Violent Revenge Against Hamas 02:26:50 Has Israel Restored Its Fearsome Reputation in the Middle East? 02:30:34 Has Israel Exterminated Gaza? 02:36:31 The Bottom Line on Israel and the Desolation of Gaza 02:39:39 Will There Be a Ceasefire in Gaza? 02:43:58 Why Does Israel Always Win? 02:52:40 On Philosophy, Chattel Slavery, and Justice in Palestine 02:58:02 On Justice and Norman Finkelstein's Purpose in Life Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, historians, economists, and everyone in-between. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/support

On this Moats, George Galloway gives his take as Labour cuts the throats of pensioners in the UK as half the cost of freezing pensioners, £600m, handed to kleptomaniac Zelensky. In the US Trump loses his zing and looks bemused as Kamala soars, ish. And the Dutch auction over who loves Israel most in genocide face off.Insufficient inquiry. A British family demands an inquest on 9/11 death reopened. Do we really believe the official version? The evidence and public opinion say no. Ted Walter shares his knowledge and experience as more evidence comes to light.Sarah Wilkinson: Activist and Campaigner for Palestine since the First Intifada & Reporter for MENAUncensored joins Moats to talk about her recent arrest for tweets she made about Gaza.Trump falls like a stone, Kamala soars like a seagull, look out below. Caleb Maupin joins Moats to give his verdict on who came out on top from the debates.Ted Walter: Advocate for 9/11 justice, ED for the International Centre for 9/11 justice & Director of Peace, War and 9/11. - Twitter: https://x.com/tedfwalter?s=21&t=v2l-RSSyYJNWQeO1efpMegSarah Wilkinson: Activist and Campaigner for Palestine since the First Intifada & Reporter for MENAUncensored. - Twitter: https://x.com/swilkinsonbc?s=21&t=v2l-RSSyYJNWQeO1efpMeg- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swilkinsonbc2021?igsh=czd3a3lzNTVwZDN1- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarah.wilkinson.35977Caleb Maupin: American Journalist and Political Analyst:- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA0N4UVTnqiFB7D3oS_xdWg Become a MOATS Graduate at https://plus.acast.com/s/moatswithgorgegalloway. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first of a two-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today's installment covers the Iranian Islamic Revolution's huge impact across the Arab East alongside Saudi and Egyptian efforts to foster religious conservative movements in an effort to supplant and suppress the secular nationalist left. Plus the Iran-Iraq War, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the First Intifada, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the first US-led invasion of Iraq, and the PLO's march toward the Oslo Accords–and how Hamas and Islamic Jihad stepped into the resulting vacuum, picking up a Palestinian armed struggle the PLO had renounced.Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDigBuy Nuclear Is Not The Solution at versobooks.comBuy The Wannabe Fascists at UCPress.edu Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first of a two-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today's installment covers the Iranian Islamic Revolution's huge impact across the Arab East alongside Saudi and Egyptian efforts to foster religious conservative movements in an effort to supplant and suppress the secular nationalist left. Plus the Iran-Iraq War, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the First Intifada, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the first US-led invasion of Iraq, and the PLO's march toward the Oslo Accords–and how Hamas and Islamic Jihad stepped into the resulting vacuum, picking up a Palestinian armed struggle the PLO had renounced. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Nuclear Is Not The Solution at versobooks.com Buy The Wannabe Fascists at UCPress.edu

Nasser has a long-form conversation with Mai Saif, a Palestinian activist, Free Palestine Melbourne organiser, and member of the Palestinian Community Association for Victoria. They speak about Mai's Nakba story during the First Intifada, her activist work with Free Palestine Melbourne, and how reporting of genocide and apartheid have entered the lexicon of the media landscape and public narratives. For info on Free Palestine Melbourne's work and to get involved, visit linktr.ee/fpmelbourne.Denial in a time of genocide with Prof. Saree Makdisi and Louise Adler, RMIT City Campus, Thu 29 Aug, 6 - 8:30 pm. Details.Free Palestine rally, State Library Victoria, Sundays 12pm.Info on upcoming events and actions via APAN and Free Palestine Melbourne.Daily broadcast updates via Let's Talk Palestine. Image credit: Free Palestine Melbourne 

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Rania Batrice speaks with Hani Almadhoun, Gaza native, Director of Philanthropy at UNRWA USA, and co-founder, along with his family in Gaza, of Gaza Soup Kitchen. They discuss survival and loss in Gaza, where Hani's parents, siblings, and extended family live, and the project his family created to provide meals and clean water to thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. Rania and Hani also talk about the hopes and priorities for Palestinians in the United States and how people in America see the Palestinian cause. They draw from Hani's work at UNRWA USA -- including the recent jump in donors to UNRWA USA from 10,000 to 120,000 donors -- as well as Hani's experience attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent speech in Congress as a guest of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.  Hani Almadhoun is the Director of Philanthropy at UNRWA USA and co-founder of Gaza Soup Kitchen. Born in the Emirates, Hani's family fled to the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. It was tough adjusting to the harsh conditions in Gaza during the First Intifada, but his family was made whole again when his dad got a job at an UNRWA school teaching English to refugees. A child of an educator, Hani was raised with the mantra of school being the top priority, and in this pursuit, he eventually found his way to the United States, thanks to a university scholarship from the LDS Church. After earning both his Masters in Public Administration and his BA in International Studies and Latin American studies from Brigham Young University, Hani settled in Washington, DC where he fell into the world of fundraising for various causes that spoke to him, including civil rights and social justice groups for Muslim and Arab Americans and charities that serve the Palestinian people and other marginalized communities in the Middle East.  Rania Batrice is an activist and strategist for progressive change, a public relations specialist, and a political consultant. She is one of two FMEP 2024 Palestinian non-resident Fellows. Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

Naila Ayesh (1960-present) is a grassroots organizer who demonstrated for Palestinian liberation during the First Intifada in the late 1980s. She endured detention and torture to protest Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank win freedom, and she continued to fight for freedom and opportunities for Palestinian women.  For Further Reading: Naila and the Uprising (2017) A life in resistance: Naila Ayesh and the women of the First Palestinian Intifada   How the Oslo Accords Betrayed the Palestinian Women Behind the First Intifada 'My story is one of many': The Palestinian women behind the First Intifada | Middle East Eye    This month we're talking about adversaries. These women fought against systems, governments and – sometimes each other to break barriers in their respective fields. They did unthinkable and sometimes unspeakable things to carve out their place in history. History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn't help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should. Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we'll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures. Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones, Abbey Delk, Hannah Bottum, Lauren Willams, and Adrien Behn. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. Original theme music composed by Miles Moran. Follow Wonder Media Network: Website Instagram Twitter See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

pWotD Episode 2647: Ismail Haniyeh Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 636,456 views on Wednesday, 31 July 2024 our article of the day is Ismail Haniyeh.Ismail Haniyeh (1962/1963 – 31 July 2024) was a Palestinian political figure who was the political leader of the Hamas organization that has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007. From 2017 until his assassination in 2024, he had mostly lived in Qatar.Haniyeh was born in the al-Shati refugee camp in the then Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip in 1962 or 1963, to parents who were expelled or fled from Ashkelon during the 1948 Palestine war. He gained a bachelor's degree in Arabic literature in 1987 from the Islamic University of Gaza, where he first became involved with Hamas after it was created during the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation, leading to his imprisonment for three short periods after having participated in protests. After his release in 1992, he was exiled to Lebanon, returning a year later to become a dean at Gaza's Islamic University. Haniyeh was appointed to head a Hamas office in 1997 and subsequently rose in the ranks of the organization.Haniyeh was head of the Hamas list that won the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006, which campaigned on armed resistance against the Israeli occupation, and so became Prime Minister of the State of Palestine. However, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007. Due to the then-ongoing Fatah–Hamas conflict, Haniyeh did not acknowledge Abbas' decree and continued to exercise prime ministerial authority in the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh was the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip from 2006 until February 2017, when he was replaced by Yahya Sinwar. Haniyeh was seen as relatively one of the more pragmatic and moderate figures in Hamas.On 6 May 2017, Haniyeh was elected chairman of Hamas's Political Bureau, replacing Khaled Mashal; at the time, Haniyeh relocated to Qatar from the Gaza Strip. Following the start of the Israel-Hamas war in late 2023, Israel declared its intention to assassinate all Hamas leaders. In early 2024, three of his sons and three grandchildren were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip. In May 2024, Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced his intention to apply for an arrest warrant for Haniyeh, and other Hamas leaders, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as part of the ICC investigation in Palestine. On 31 July 2024, Haniyeh was assassinated, allegedly by an Israeli strike, in his residence in Tehran during his visit in Iran for the inauguration of its newly-elected president.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:29 UTC on Thursday, 1 August 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Ismail Haniyeh on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Aria.

We proudly present Dr. Hanan Ashrawi – one of the foremost Palestinian activist and politicians of the last half century. On this episode she speaks to Edgar about the First Intifada, of which she was a guiding spirit and a crucial player. And the Oslo Peace Process – which was the fruit of much of her labour, while resulting in catastrophe. So what does this Palestinian political veteran think about our current moment? Find out on this Kalam Podcast EXCLUSIVE - Hanan Ashrawi is not giving interviews currently, but made an exception for us. If you'd like to support the work we're doing at Kalam Podcast you can do so, by joining Klub Kalam on patreon.com/kalampodcast - for just $3/month you'll gain access to full length interviews with all our guests as well as awesome bonus content. For continuous updates follow us on Instagram @kalampodcast

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Yafa Sakkejha was named after the city of Jaffa, where, until 1948, her Palestinian grandparents lived and owned property and managed orange groves. Sakkejha's mother grew up in East Jerusalem, but left the country during the First Intifada in the late 1980s. Sakkejha, who was born and raised in Toronto, feels deep pain over the devastation that has resulted from Oct. 7—not just for the Palestinian people and her own relatives still living in the war zone, but also for the Israeli victims, hostages and Canadian Jews facing antisemitism. Which is why Sakkejha is now taking an active role in an Israeli peace-building initiative called Friends of Standing Together. It's a branch of the original organization founded in 2015 by Israelis–both Jews and Palestinians living in Israel–to work for peace, civil and human rights, and security for both sides. Since the war began, Standing Together has focused on calls to end the fighting. Yafa Sakkejha joins The CJN Daily to speak about her personal experiences since Oct. 7, and what she wants her Jewish neighbours to understand. What we talked about: Read more about Standing Together and why it is gaining popularity in Canada, in The CJN Learn more about Yafa Sakkejha on Instagram, and listen to her podcast on Spotify Credits: The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine.  We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here. Hear why The CJN is important to me.

Sometimes 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 oppressed peoples around the world.

Dr. Mubarak Awad discusses “Seven steps to ending the cycle of violence in Israel-Palestine”. Awad may be the world’s leading expert on the nonviolence of the First Intifada. He is Palestinian, […] The post Seven steps to ending the cycle of violence in Israel-Palestine appeared first on KKFI.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comEli is a journalist and friend. He's a former senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast and Newsweek, and a former columnist for the Bloomberg View. He's now a reporter for The Free Press, a contributing editor at Commentary Magazine, and the host of his own podcast, The Re-Education. I thought I should have a strong Israel supporter to come on and challenge my recent columns.For two clips of our convo — on the West Bank settlements, and Trump's record on Israel — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Eli raised as a latchkey kid in Philly; his leftwing Jewish parents; turning neocon in college during the ‘90s PC wars; Milton Friedman's Free to Choose a formative book; Eli's love of rap from an early age; Tribe Called Quest and the Native Tongue movement of “rap hippies”; Black Nationalism; David Samuels' story on white kids driving hip-hop; Kanye's genius and grappling with his anti-Semitism; the bigotry of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot; Nietzsche's madness; the persistence of Jew hatred across history and cultures; dissidents in the Catholic Church; Augustine; Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah; the faux sophistication of conspiracy theorists; Bob Dole as a Gen Xer; envy and resentment over Israel's success; the First Intifada; Labor Zionism; Ben-Gurion and Arab resistance; Menachem Begin; Netanyahu's dad; the IRA bombing British leaders; Arafat walking away from Camp David; the Second Intifada; 9/11 and Islamofascism; the Iraq War and Abu Ghraib; the settler movement and Judeo-fascists; Jared Kushner; the Abraham Accords; Arabs serving in the Knesset; Israel withdrawing from Gaza and southern Lebanon; the evil of Hamas; Yossi Klein Halevi; the IDF's AI program; the tunnels and 2,000-lb bombs; Dresden; John Spencer's Understanding Urban Warfare; Rafah; Trump's vanity; Soleimani and the Damascus embassy; and the US supplying weapons to Israel.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Next up: Kara Swisher on Silicon Valley. After that: Adam Moss on the artistic process, George Will on Trump and conservatism, Johann Hari on weight-loss drugs, Noah Smith on the economy, Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution, Bill Maher on everything, and the great Van Jones! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

The Second Intifada (~2000-2008) came out of the failure of the Oslo Accords, the failure of the PLO to create a Palestinian state, the crippling of the Palestinian economy through Israeli restrictions and Israel's increasingly aggressive and violent settler expansion and colonial oppression.In contrast to the First Intifada, the Second Intifada was marked by a series of bloody terrorist bombings against Israeli civilians. The renowned Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi laments this dark development in his book “The 100 Years' War on Palestine”, describing how different Palestinian armed factions from Hamas to Fatah expressed their rivalry through a kind of competition in suicide bombings. Part of it was desperation, part of it was blind revenge against the Israeli population for the Israeli Occupation Forces' heavy handed response to Palestinian protests - where thousands of Palestinians throwing rocks were gunned down down by Israeli soldiers.It was always the case however, and still is, that far more Palestinians were killed than Israelis. During this uprising, Khalidi estimates that 4,916 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis were killed.Episode 5 of the Kalam podcast explores this difficult period, with the General Director of the Palestinian prisoner support organisation, Addameeer, Sahar Francis. Follow us on social media @kalampodcast and join our Patreon community for full length interviews and bonus material.

In Late 1987 Palestine erupted. The Israeli occupation was closing in on 20 years and getting comfortable. But seemingly out of nowhere, a mass movement of protests, strikes and boycotts shook Israel and the world. For the first time, the West gained sympathy for Palestine, as images of heavily armed Israeli soldiers brutalising Palestinian women and children were broadcast on TV screens around the world. Today, Associate Professor Islah Jad joins Edgar for a conversation about the First Intifada. Islah has written the book, Palestinian Women's Activism: Nationalism, Secularism, Islamism and was an active participant in the First Intifada. Follow us on social media @kalampodcastFor full length episodes, poetry and reading lists and bonus episodes, please consider donating to us at Patreon.

Content warning for discussions of antisemitism and genocide. Also, note that from 19:10 until 20:05 you can hear an electric saw in the background. Nothing I can do about that. Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time Day 2 will dive deeply into the historic context of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and the Gazan Genocide. Starting 3700 years ago this episode will hit the major beats of the story and attempt to make everything a little bit clearer, if not really easier to understand. Episode transcript follows: Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome to Day 2 of Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard. Thank you for everyone who tuned in for Day 1 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. Today we're going to be discussing the Gazan Genocide, what is often called, in mainstream, Western, media the Israel-Palestine Conflict. However, we're not going to be starting in 2023, we're not even going to be starting in 1948. To the best of my abilities we are going to drill into the historic context of this genocide and the ongoing historic and ethnic tensions that exist in the region. Before we start with that context I would like to state for the record that what is being done to the people of Gaza is, unequivocally, a genocide. Now, to find the beginning of this we are going to have to go back about 3700 years to the Levantine region. The regions known as the Levant is comprised of the modern nations of Cyprus, parts of Turkey southwest of the Euphrates, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and of course Israel and Palestine. Both historical record and genetic testing of modern Jewish and Palestinian people show them both being descended from ancient Canaanite cultures. While Biblical narratives show the Israelites entering the region from Egypt and conquering the region under the command of Moses' successor Joshua. Modern archeology and the historical view has, however, discounted this. The Bible is not and should not ever be used as a valid historical source. Indeed, modern archeology and historical research shows that the Jewish ethnicity emerged naturally as an offshoot of the Canaanites in much the same way that the Palestinian ethnicity did. It is also interesting to note that historically, Palestine appears to have been a name for a region and not a distinct nation or kingdom. Indeed, during the seventh century BC, no fewer than eight nations were settled in Palestine. These included the Arameans of the kingdom of Geshur; the Samaritans who replaced the Israelite kingdom in Samaria; the Phoenicians in the northern cities and parts of Galilee; the Philistines in the Philistine pentapolis; the three kingdoms of the Transjordan– Ammon, Moab and Edom; and the Judaeans of Kingdom of Judah. The first written record of the region being called Palestine, by the way, comes from 12th century BCE Egypt, which used the term Peleset for the area. Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy, a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region. During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, experienced a period of economic, as well as population growth. Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon. This marks the first historic diaspora of Jewish people from their indigenous homeland. Jewish people in the region enjoyed a brief period of political independence and national sovereignty following the Maccabean Revolt. This would only last for a few brief decades before the area would be conquered by the Romans. During the first Roman-Jewish War Jerusalem and the Second Temple, which has been built back in about 516 BCE were both destroyed. From that point on Roman rule would crack down even harder on Jewish people living in the empire. Many of these tensions were caused by the cultural and religions differences between the Romans and Jewish people. Their refusal to worship Roman gods and their refusal to venerate the emperor made them perpetual pariahs.  Jewish communities would continue to resist Roman rule and oppression and this resistance would come to a violent head in events like the Kitos War and the Bar Kokhba Revolt. The Bar Kokhba revolt, led by Simon Bar Kokhba was certainly influenced by the Romans building a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Temple. The revolt, as with the First and Second Roman-Jewish Wars was a complete military defeat for the Jewish people. The Jewish Talmud relates that, when the fortress of Betar was besieged in 135 CE that the Romans went on killing until their horses were submerged in blood up to their nostrils. This revolt would result in Judea being literally wiped off the map. And I mean that quite literally, while the Jewish population was greatly reduced from the area, both by slaughter at the hands of the Romans and because many people were forced from the region, there was still and there has always been a Jewish population in the Levant. But any Roman map from after the Bar Kokhba Revolt would now show the region labeled as Syria Palestina. The Diaspora of Jewish people from Israel and Judea would result in Jewish populations congregating all around Eurasia. Jewish communities would settle near the Rhine, eventually collating into the Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity. Jewish communities would settle on the Iberian Peninsula and in Northern Africa collating into the Sephardi Jewish ethnicity. Jewish communities would also remain in the Middle East, in Syria Palestina (though they were forbidden by the Romans to live in Jerusalem) and collate into the Mizrahim Jewish ethnicity. There are also smaller Jewish ethnicities like the Bene Israel from India and the Beta Israel from Ethiopia. One of the conclusions that is important to take away at this point is that both Palestinians and Jewish people, Judaism being both a religion and an ethnicity, are indigenous to the lands of Israel and Palestine. I don't really care if you favor a one state or two state solution, but the fact of their mutual indigineousness is undeniable. Now, at this point we're going to take a huge jump forward in time to 1516 when Syria Palestina falls under Ottoman rule. As many ethnically Palestinian people had converted to Islam following the Islamic Conquests of the Middle East in the 7th century CE they were largely seen as good Ottoman citizens and interfered with very little. Jewish people, on the other hand, because they were not followers of Islam found themselves living under the dhimmi system. This was a common system under Muslim empires that allowed people to practice other religions, but with limited rights and at the cost of increased taxes. Some of the restrictions placed on Dhimmi were: In addition to other legal limitations, dhimmis were not considered equals to Muslims, despite being considered “people of the book” Their testimony against Muslims was inadmissible in courts of law wherein a Muslim could be punished; this meant that their testimony could only be considered in commercial cases. They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride atop horses and camels, and their houses could not overlook those of Muslims.  All that being said, the lives of Jewish people in the Ottoman Empire were still demonstrably better than those of Jewish communities living in Europe and they were much more freely able to practice their religion. We're going to jump ahead again to the First Aliyah which took place between 1881 and 1903. Aliyah is a Hebrew word meaning “ascent”. There have been five “official” Aliyah throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These Aliyah are periods of increased Jewish immigration to their ancestral homeland. This First Aliyah saw Jewish people, mostly from Eastern Europe and Yeman move to Ottoman Palestine because of an increased number of pogroms. Most of the Jewish people from Eastern Europe came from the Pale of Settlement and by 1903, saw about 25,000 Jewish people immigrate. This period also saw many thousands of Jewish people immigrate to the US in order to escape the ever increasing amounts of antisemitic violence around Europe. This First Aliyah also marks, more or less, the beginning of the Zionist movement. Political Zionism as a movement was founded by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. He saw antisemitism and antisemitic violence as an indelible part of any society in which Jewish people lived as minorities. He also believed that the only way a Jewish State could be established would be with the help of European powers. He also described the Jewish State as an outpost of civilization against Barbarism and compared himself to Cecil Rhodes. So, safe to say that Herzl was not a man with good intentions for the people that would become his neighbors. Throughout the first decade of the Zionist movement, there were several instances where some Zionist figures, including Herzl, supported a Jewish state in places outside Palestine, such as "Uganda" (actually parts of British East Africa today in Kenya), Argentina, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Mozambique, and the Sinai Peninsula.]  Herzl, was initially content with any Jewish self-governed state. Jewish settlement of Argentina was the project of Maurice de Hirsch. It is unclear if Herzl seriously considered this alternative plan, and he later reaffirmed that Palestine would have greater attraction because of the historic ties of Jewish people to that area. This, as it was always going to, brings us to the Balfour Declaration. As soon as World War I began the Great Powers of Europe began deciding how they were going to carve up the Ottoman Empire, the Sick Man of Europe, like a Thanksgiving turkey. The Balfour Declaration was part of this planning. The declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 stating their support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The entire Declaration reads as follows: His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. They clearly failed in all regards of their declaration after the first statement. The end of World War I saw the League of Nations place Palestine under British colonial control, leading to the creation of Mandatory Palestine in 1920, with the League officially giving Britain a Class A mandate in 1922. Britain was originally supposed to guarantee Arab independence following the defeat of the Ottomans in exchange for the Great Arab Revolt that took place against Ottoman rule. The creation of Mandatory Palestine and the existence of the Balfour declaration was partially responsible for Jewish immigration over the next 30 years. As Jewish immigration increased, Palestinian peasants, known as fellahin (fellahin were often tenant farmers or other such peoples who didn't own the land they worked) were forced off the land they worked to survive. These tensions would result in small-scale conflicts between Jewish and Arab people living in Mandatory Palestine, though the first conflict of real historic note would be the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936. The revolt lasted until 1939. It was a popular uprising of Palestinian Arabs that demanded Arab independence and and end to open-ended Jewish immigration to Palestine. The revolt eventually ended with the issuance of the White Paper in 1939. The White Paper was going to attempt to create a national home for the Jewish people within an independent Palestine within 10 years. However this proposal was rejected by both the Arab and Zionist sides of the negotiation. Before the White Paper, and before the massive violence of the Great Revolt was an Arab General strike that lasted for 6 months in order to try and get their voices heard. This led to the creation of the Peel Commission, which recommended partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. This plan was, like the White Paper that would come after it, rejected by both sides. Of force everything would change after World War 2. After the war the British Mandate for Palestine was dissolved and the Israeli Declaration of Independence was issued later that same day. This declaration came as part of the UN partition plan which was outlined in UN Resolution 181 (II). The Resolution set forth to create an Independent Jewish State, an Independent Arab State and a Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem. This UN Resolution came during the context of the 1947 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine which began after the UN initially voted on the partition plan resolution. This war would have far reaching consequences for everyone in the region and would lead to events like the Nakba and the Israeli government initiating Plan Dalet. Nakba, an Arabic word meaning Catastrophe, refers to the initial ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes following the 1947 Civil War and the broader 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Some 750,000 Palestinian people were forced to flee their homes and their country after the First Arab Israeli War saw Israel in control of all of the land the UN had granted them in the partition plan as well as roughly 60% of the land that was to be Palestine. Causes of Arab flight from Palestine include: Jewish military advances, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare and fears of another massacre by Zionist militias after the Deir Yassin massacre, which caused many to leave out of panic; direct expulsion orders by Israeli authorities; the voluntary self-removal of the wealthier classes; collapse in Palestinian leadership and Arab evacuation orders. This period of time would also see many thousands of Jewish people expelled from the surrounding Muslim countries. As you might expect the majority of those people would move to Israel. While we can see that tensions in the region and Zionist abuses of Palestinian people existed before this point, if we HAD to point to a single moment that defined the entire conflict, ethnic cleansing, and genocide it would be this moment. Following the flight of the majority of the Palestinians from Palestine, Israel passed a number of laws, known as Israel land and property laws, disallowing the Palestinians their right to return to their homes in Palestine. Wars would continue over the decades, but the point at which things start to get particularly heinous comes at the end of the Six Day War, also known as the Arab Israeli War. Following this war, which Israel fought against Syria, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq, Israel now had control of the Golan Heights, The West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula leaving very little land still under Palestinian sovereign control. Israel would eventually cede the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt in 1978 as part of the Camp David Accords in exchange for peace and Egyptian recognition of the State of Israel. They retained control over the rest of the territories they had seized. The actions of Israel during this time put increasing strain on Palestinians as more and more of them were forced into refugee camps, and while Gaza is technically under the control of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hamas and the West Bank is under the partial control of the Palestinian National Authority both still find themselves heavily under the control of the Israeli government and military. Especially since October of 2023. Human Rights Watch, a non-government organization, considers Israel to still be an invading and occupying force in these two Palestinian regions.  The two of which are separated from each other by the nation of Israel. “Even though Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and settlements from Gaza in 2005, it continues to have obligations as an occupying power in Gaza under the Fourth Geneva Convention because of its almost complete control over Gaza's borders, sea and air space, tax revenue, utilities, population registry, and the internal economy of Gaza. At a minimum, Israel continues to be responsible for the basic welfare of the Palestinian population in Gaza.” We actually have to backtrack a little bit here before we can finally catch up to the modern day. We need to pop back to 1987, the First Intifada, and the creation of Hamas. The First Intifada lasted from December 1987 until, basically the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, although some date the end in 1991 with the Madrid Conference. The Intifafa, or Uprising, was a sustained series of protests, strikes, and riots that began after an IDF truck hit another car carrying Palestinian workers, all four of whom died in the crash. Now, where does Hamas come into this, well in the long history of the Western world, they were created by the people they now fight against. Hamas, in the beginning of its existence, received funding from the Israeli government to act as a counterweight against the more moderate elements of the PLO. Israel would then turn around and try and destroy Hamas when they started to get too powerful. It was Hamas who was behind the October 7th Attacks on Israel. Hamas, by the way, has been the defacto ruling party of Gaza since 2007. Hamas said its attack was in response to the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, rising Israeli settler violence, and recent escalations. The attack on October 7th began with some 300 missiles being fired into Israeli territory along with coordinated attacks at locations and events like the Re'im Music Festival and various kibbutz's such as Kfar Aza and Be'eri. The attack lasted into the 8th of October and saw 1,143 people killed, 767 of whom were civilians and 36 of whom were children. Also roughly 250 civilians and soldiers were taken hostage with the intent of using them to try and secure the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. It does bear mentioning that Israel has knowledge of such an attack a year in advance, according to the New York Times, but dismissed it as impossible. Since this attack by Hamas Israel has been increasing the violence and slaughter that it is committing against the Palestinian people. In the name of their alleged war with Hamas Israel has forced the people of Gaza to move farther and farther to the south as they bombed the northern part of the Strip to glass. Today most of the surviving population of Gaza, some 1.5 million people are forced to live in the city of Rafah, a city that they were told they'd be safe in. They is no longer the case as Israel is now bombing Rafah as well.  Israel has also been blockading Gaza since 2007 and, effectively, has complete control over the food, water, electricity, and medicine that gets into Gaza. Part of this control comes from the fact that Israel keeps bombing hospitals, like they did with Al Shifa in November of 2023. Israel claims that Hamas was using the hospital as a staging ground, despite this being proven false by independent investigations. We know from our previous video that genocide isn't just the mass slaughter of a particular group of people. It is also inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part. By this definition, concentrating 1.5 million people into a small area without adequate food, water, or medicine, and then bombing that area demonstrates clear intent to destroy.  An even more clear example of this intent was the Flour Massacre that occurred on February 29, 2024. On that day Israel let food aid into Gaza after over a month of not letting anything through their blockade. When people lined up to receive this aid, the Israeli military shot them. The Israeli military set a deliberate trap to lure in starving civilians and then shot and killed over 100 people. We also have massive amounts of intent demonstrated in the words of members of the Israeli government. Such as with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called the people of Gaza Human Animals and said that they would allow no food or water to get in. Or when Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister said they'd turn Gaza into a deserted island.  There can be no denying the genocide in Gaza. None whatsoever. The actions of the Israeli government are inexcusable and must be condemned with all possible haste. We are in the midst of a genocide, and so if you've ever wondered what you would have done during something like the Holocaust, now you know. Whatever you're doing now, is what you would have done then. Hopefully what we covered today will provide some needed context for everything that is going on right now. I don't know if it will make anything clearer, and I doubt it will provide you with any solutions, but just because you learn information doesn't mean you can necessarily apply it. Thank you for joining me for Day 2. This was a very heavy topic and next week will not get any lighter. Next week we will be diving into the history and context of the ongoing trans genocide that is currently ongoing in the United States.  Last thing we're gonna do today before we do is the outro is read some reviews that came in on Apple Podcasts over the week. I say over the week, all three of these came in on the 21st. 2 of them came from Canada! And now my notes say “read the reviews* Oh… wait, that was something i was supposed to DO. Not an actual sentence i was supposed to read. I hope i remember to edit this out… Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. PLease remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day and Free Palestine.    

Jennifer Lang's Places We Left Behind: A Memoir in Miniature (Vine Leaf Press, 2023) uses short chapterettes and experimental prose to examine he marriage, commitment and compromise, faith and family while moving between prose and poetry, playing with language and form, daring the reader to read between the lines. When American-born Jennifer falls in love with French-born Philippe during the First Intifada in Israel, she understands their relationship isn't perfect. Both 23, both Jewish, they lead very different lives: she's a secular tourist, he's an observant immigrant. Despite their opposing outlooks on two fundamental issues—country and religion—they are determined to make it work. For the next 20 years, they root and uproot their growing family, each longing for a singular place to call home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Jennifer Lang's Places We Left Behind: A Memoir in Miniature (Vine Leaf Press, 2023) uses short chapterettes and experimental prose to examine he marriage, commitment and compromise, faith and family while moving between prose and poetry, playing with language and form, daring the reader to read between the lines. When American-born Jennifer falls in love with French-born Philippe during the First Intifada in Israel, she understands their relationship isn't perfect. Both 23, both Jewish, they lead very different lives: she's a secular tourist, he's an observant immigrant. Despite their opposing outlooks on two fundamental issues—country and religion—they are determined to make it work. For the next 20 years, they root and uproot their growing family, each longing for a singular place to call home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Happy Monday! Sam and Emma speak with Rashid Khalidi, professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, to discuss his 2020 book The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, and his views on the Israel-Gaza conflict as it stands now. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on the Supreme Court keeping Trump on the ballot for November, the GOP primary, the US airdropping aid to Gaza, Super Tuesday, Haiti's State of Emergency, the GOP's struggle to run the House, and the major anti-trust victory over the Jet Blue-Spirit merger, also parsing through Joe Biden and Kamala Harris tentatively wading into the “temporary ceasefire” conversation. Professor Rashid Khalidi then joins, first stepping back to explain why he began his work on Palestinian resistance in 1917, well before the establishment of the state of Israel, looking at the central role of the West – namely Britain and the US – in support and facilitating the violent establishment and maintenance of a Zionist apartheid state. Beginning in 1917, Professor Khalidi then works his way through the history of Palestinian's last century of struggle, first exploring occupation under the British mandate, the role of European nationalism and anti-semitism in facilitating the Balfour declaration and the establishment of a Zionist state, and the combination of violent British and Zionist repression against Palestinians, alongside mass ethnic cleansing, in the decades leading up to World War II. After touching on the evolution of both the Palestinian nationalist movement and the extremist zionist cause over this era, Rashid walks Sam and Emma through Israel's various extreme massacres and ethnic cleansing that occurred leading up to and during the 1948 Nakba, the role of the one-sided UN Partition plan in pushing the start of the catastrophe, and the devastating impact it had on the state of the Palestinian nationalist movement. Next, Professor Khalidi, Sam, and Emma look at the evolution of Israel's apartheid rule and ethnic cleansing over the two decades before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and the impact of that war in furthering the devastation, before looking at the rebirth of the Palestinian nationalist movement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization and First Intifada. After tackling the failure of the Oslo Accords (and the negotiations around them), Professor Khalidi runs through the major influence of US politics in all evolutions of the conflict in the second half of the century, a trend that would grow in the wake of the Second Intifada in 2000, and continues to this day, before wrapping the interview up with a quick assessment of the central role of the US in facilitating the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the role of the other Arab states in the region. And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma talk with John from San Antonio as he previews major Super Tuesday races including finding Feinstein's replacement and progressive battles in Texas, New York, North Carolina, and more. They also watch CNN's Christiane Amanpour nail Netanyahu's Special Advisor on Israel's involvement in the Flour Massacre, and Jesse Watters spotlights Tulsi Gabbard for Trump's VP. Trump stumbles over the Q-Anon anthem, Tyler from Washington explores the new era of social media, and Mitch McConnell's GOP colleagues begin to demand he align with Trump's agenda, plus, your calls and IMs! 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That's code majority50 at https://factormeals.com/majority50 to get 50% off! Blueland Cleaning Products:  Blueland has a special offer for listeners. Right now, get 15% off your first order by going to https://Blueland.com/majority. You won't want to miss this! That's https://Blueland.com/majority Blueland dot com slash majority to get 15% off. Sunset Lake CBD: Folks, right now, when you use code DELTA at checkout, you can get 25% off ALL of Sunset Lake's gummies, including new (Delta)(Nine) gummies. This sale ends on March 6th. See https://SunsetLakeCBD.com for terms and conditions. And as always you can get 20% off sitewide with code “leftisbest” one word. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

In de tweede aflevering gaan we terug naar 1988. Deze zomer was de Palestijnse opstand op de Westelijke Jordaanoever en de Gazastrook in volle gang. Het woord intifada betekent letterlijk ‘beving' of ‘opschudding'. Al snel kreeg het de naam van de Palestijnse opstand tegen de Israëlische bezetting. In deze periode gaan Palestijnen, jong en oud, de straat op en protesteren tegen de bezetting. Ook mijn neven en nichten demonstreren voor vrijheid.Op 1 augustus 1989 werd mijn neef opgepakt door het Israëlische leger en tijdens zijn verhoor gemarteld. Na zijn vrijlating werd hij in 1992 opnieuw opgepakt, verhoord en gefolterd. Tijdens die periode overleed een Palestijn in dezelfde gevangenis waar zijn neef werd verhoord. Advocaten brengen de illegaliteit van deze praktijk naar de Hoge Raad.Bronnen en citaten: NOS Jaaroverzichten, CBS, RTL Nieuws, AP, Freeze Frame, Ha'aretz, 14 januari 2011 en UN Audiovisual LibraryRapporten: A Nation Under Siege, Al Haq, 1989; The Interrogation of Palestinians During the Intifada, B'Tselem, 1992; Israeli Interrogation Methods under Fire after Death of Detained Palestinian, Human Rights Watch, 1994.Artikelen: Critics Decry Israeli Prison Abuses, CSM, 18 maart 1992; The First Intifada, IPS - The Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question; Fear of torture or ill-treatment, Amnesty, March 1992 (MDE 15/05/92).Documentaires: Advocate, Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche (2019); Naila and the Uprising, Julia Bacha (2017); The Wanted 18, Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan (2014); Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians, Jo Franklin-Trout (1989)_____________ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Uncover the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with me and esteemed guest Mason Herson-Hord, director of the Institute for Social Ecology. Together, we'll navigate the often misunderstood narratives and ideologies that have shaped this historical struggle. From the deep-seated roots of Zionism to the rise of grassroots resistance movements, this discussion offers an enlightening perspective on the events and figures that have influenced the region's political evolution.In a series of candid conversations, we trace the contours of power and politics, dissecting the Six-Day War's transformative impact, the emergence of local Palestinian councils during the First Intifada, and the fusion of extremist ideologies within Israeli mainstream politics. It's a journey through the decades, examining the interplay of socio-economic factors, the fracturing of Zionist unity, and the rise of new voices challenging established narratives. Our dialogue scrutinizes the influence of figures like Meir Kahane and Yitzhak Rabin, as well as the implications of the second Intifada on current political stances.Our exploration culminates with a present-day analysis of the strategies employed by groups like Hamas, the concerning trends among Israeli youth, and the shifting attitudes within the American Jewish community towards Zionism. As we grapple with the international complexities of this conflict, the importance of grassroot movements and the power of community action are emphasized. Join us for a thought-provoking episode that not only sheds light on a deeply entrenched conflict but also inspires active participation in the pursuit of a just and lasting peace.We discuss this article: https://strangematters.coop/israel-gaza-war-genocide/ Support the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnAudio Producer: Paul Channel Strip ( @aufhebenkultur )Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @skepoetYou can find the additional streams on Youtube

“The Seam Line” , a groundbreaking five-part series, created  and narrated by  Avi Melamed explores the conflict in and over Jerusalem. Melamed, a fourth-generation Arabic-speaking Jerusalemite Jew, and Middle East expert  was the Advisor on Arab Affairs during one of the most violent and chaotic chapters in the history of Jerusalem – the First Intifada.   The Begin Center in Jerusalem  is screening three episodes from The Seam Line this Wednesday at 7-30 pm. KAN's Mark Weiss spoke with Avi Melamed about the series. (Photo: Reuters)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Riad Awwad, Hanan Awwad, and Mahmoud Darwish - "I'm From Jerusalem" from the 2023 album The Intifada 1987 on Majazz Project In December 1987, the First Intifada of protests and violent riots broke out, carried out by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. Palestinian Riad Awwad was an electrical engineer with a passion for music, and within a week, he began recording this album in the family living room, using instruments he built himself. Today's Song of the Day features Riad's sister Hanan, as well as lyrics by Riad's friend, Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish.  He titled the 11-track album The Intifada 1987, pressing 3,000 cassette tapes and circulating them around the Old City of Jerusalem and across the West Bank until the Israeli military intervened. Riad was arrested and detained for several months. To this day, copies of the album remain in the military archives, but in 2020, one copy managed to find its way to artist and music collector Mo'min Swaitat, who established the Majazz Project to release musical treasures like this.  Unfortunately, Awwad never lived to see his album pressed and released worldwide like this. He was killed in a car accident in 2005. His legacy lives on, not only in his music, but in the children of the West Bank who he inspired. Before his passing, he founded a school there, teaching children how to create their own electronic musical equipment. Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the first of two episodes, join me for a deep dive on the history of what has led up to the current conflict raging between Israel and Palestine. Follow on instagram @getwoke_dietrying for additional resources and thoughful dialogue! Don't forget to subscribe, rate, leave a review, and dhare with a friend! Resources referenced: origins of Israel, ethnic cleansing efforts, the Nakba, 1967 UN resolution, First Intifada, Oslo accords, Second Intifada, 2008 attack, 2012 attack, 2014 ground invasion, 2021 attack --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robyn-toran/support

Elias D'eis, Executive Director of the Holy Land Trust, shares about his life as a Palestinian Christian in the West Bank, life under the Israeli military occupation, the role of a Christian in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the work of The Holy Land Trust. Elias D'eis was born into a Christian family with a long history of nonviolent resistance in Beit Sahour. His life was shaped during the First Intifada, watching his father and his community find the path towards justice through peaceful resistance. It was through his Christian upbringing, holding onto Jesus's sacred words of "loving thy neighbor," that led Elias into a life journey of engaging his community in transformation. Joining Holy Land Trust in 2007 as a travel coordinator, Elias has grown the Travel & Encounter program. His department now facilitates tours and educational packages to some 1,500 peacemakers and sojourners a year. In June 2019, Elias got promoted to the Executive Director of Holy Land Trust after he spent the last decade investing his life into the mission and vision because it is something that he truly believes in: "Building communities of trust and respect." Holy Land Trust: https://www.holylandtrust.org/ You can listen to Multifaith Matters on your favorite podcast platform, including Podbean, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and iHeart Radio. Learn more about our work at https://www.multifaithmatters.org  Support this work: One-time donation: https://multifaithmatters.org/donate Become my patron: https://patron.podbean.com/johnwmorehead #HolyLandTrust #IsraeliPalestinianConflict #GazaWar

Today's episode is an effort to unpack, chronologically and objectively, the history of Israel-Palestine for the past 4,000 years. The discussion focuses on the religious, cultural and political history of the region – from the time of Abraham, the father of both Judaism and Islam – until the day of the Hamas attack. We hope you find it helpful in developing a more nuanced and grounded assessment of the current situation. Maps mentioned in the discussionMaps PDFFor access to our Membership library, which includes full-length courses with all the teachers you are about to hear, go to onecomune.com/trial.In this episode we cover:0:06:28 – What is the history of the region going back 4000 years?0:25:24 – What groups are indigenous to this region?0:27:05 – What happened during the Ottoman period?0:29:30 – What is Zionism?0:35:13 – What was the Balfour Declaration?0:41:25 – What was the British Mandate?0:44:30 – What was the two-state solution?0:48:51 – What was the second two-state solution?0:52:28 – What happened on May 14, 1948?0:53:40 – Was there an official vote within the United Nations to approve that partition plan?0:54:59 – What were the results of the Nakba/War of Independence?0:59:47 – What is the right of return?1:01:38 – Why did the international community not demand Israel give the land back?1:06:35 – What is the Israeli paradox?1:07:51 – Are Arab Israeli's mostly Muslim?1:14:10 – What is the status of a Palestinian refugee?1:16:25 – What happens in 1967?1:39:19 – What happened in 1973?1:41:31 – What was the First Intifada?1:43:50 – What were the results of the 1992 election?1:44:44 – What were the Oslo Accords?1:53:16 – What was the Israel-Jordan peace treaty of 1994?1:57:19 – What was the Camp David Summit?2:04:21 – What was the Second Intifada?2:09:50 – Why the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005?2:13:26 – What happened in the 2006 election?2:26:28 – What happens in the early 2010's?2:32:41 – What is the situation in Gaza?This podcast is supported by:LivOn Labs This week's podcast is made possible by LivOn Labs. Discover why Jeff Krasno, Schuyler Grant, and people who know wellness are ditching pills, powders, and gummies for this powerful, nutrient-packed goo. GET FREE SAMPLES WITH ANY PURCHASE livonlabs.com/commune LMNTLMNT is offering Commune listeners a free sample pack with any purchase, That's 8single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. This is a great way to try all 8 flavorsor share LMNT with a salty friend. Get yours at DrinkLMNT.com/COMMUNE Thrive MarketJoin Thrive Market today and get a FREE $80 in free groceries when you go to thrivemarket.com/communeION Founded by Zach Bush MD, ION* is derived from 60 million-year-old soil, utilizing the intelligence of nature to drive our bodies' innate power to heal and thrive. Gentle enough for the whole family, ION* supports whole-body health so you can live your best gut-happy life.Level up your daily wellness ritual today with 15% OFF at intelligenceofnature.com with code NATURE15: https://intelligenceofnature.com/products/gut-health-supplementStripes Meet Stripes. Smart-targeted symptom solutions powered by the exclusive combination of Ectoine and Squalane. This ultra-hydrating duo improves hydration, increases cell turnover and protects our delicate skin barrier. Head over to iamstripes.com and enter promo code COMMUNE20 at checkout to get a fabulous 20% off your entire order.

In 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against Israel, Hamas was founded by Palestinian imam and activist Ahmed Yassin. It emerged out of his Mujama al-Islamiya, which had been established in Gaza in 1973 as an Islamic charity involved with the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.[21] Hamas became increasingly involved in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by the late 1990s The Good: Tunnels Hummus The Bad: Human Shields Terrorism Money Towards Rockets Not to Better Life The Culty (is there anything in this cult worth incorporating into our own?): Hummus Sources: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas DNI: https://www.dni.gov/nctc/groups/hamas.html US DT: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1816 The Nice Cult: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thenicecult.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at the origins of this conflict, which began with the steady influx of Jewish settlers in Palestinian territories and culminated in the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. In the second part, we explored the key developments of the conflict from 1948 to the present – the wars that took place in 1948, 1956, 1962, 1982, the First Intifada, the Second Intifada, the Oslo process, the rise of Hamas, and so on. In this final episode of the three part series, we will explore the key factors driving the current explosion of conflict in the region and its potential fallout over the medium term. Listen to all three parts of this podcast series here.

In the first part of this series, we looked at the origins of this conflict, which began with the steady influx of Jewish settlers in Palestinian territories and culminated in the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. In this episode, we explore key developments from 1948 to the present – the wars that took place in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, the Camp David agreement, the First Intifada, the Oslo process and reasons for its collapse, the Second Intifada, the rise of Hamas, and other aspects of the conflict. Listen to all three parts of this podcast series here.

Hamas is a Palestinian political and military organization that emerged in the late 1980s. It was founded during the First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. Hamas combines religious and nationalist elements in its ideology, seeking the establishment of an Islamic state in historic Palestine, which includes modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories. While some leaders have indicated flexibility, the organization's core objective remains the liberation of all of Palestine. Hamas is known for its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and has been designated as a terrorist organization by multiple countries, including Israel, the United States, the European Union, and others. It has engaged in armed conflict with Israel, including rocket attacks and guerrilla warfare, and also provides social services within the Gaza Strip, where it holds political control. Hamas remains a central player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.In this episode, we take a look at the group battling against Israel as we continue to deepen our understanding of the conflict. (commercial at 6:15)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5080327/advertisement

Hamas is a Palestinian political and military organization that emerged in the late 1980s. It was founded during the First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. Hamas combines religious and nationalist elements in its ideology, seeking the establishment of an Islamic state in historic Palestine, which includes modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories. While some leaders have indicated flexibility, the organization's core objective remains the liberation of all of Palestine. Hamas is known for its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and has been designated as a terrorist organization by multiple countries, including Israel, the United States, the European Union, and others. It has engaged in armed conflict with Israel, including rocket attacks and guerrilla warfare, and also provides social services within the Gaza Strip, where it holds political control. Hamas remains a central player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.In this episode, we take a look at the group battling against Israel as we continue to deepen our understanding of the conflict. (commercial at 6:15)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5003294/advertisement

Hi there, Today I am excited to be arts calling the brilliant author, yogi, and writing teacher Jennifer Lang! (israelwriterstudio.com/about) About our guest: Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jennifer Lang lives in Tel Aviv, where she runs Israel Writers Studio. Her essays have appeared in Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Under the Sun, Ascent, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize, Best of Net, and Best American Essays nominee, she holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and serves as Assistant Editor for Brevity. Often findable on her yoga mat with her legs up her living room wall: practicing since 1995, teaching since 2003. Places We Left Behind _was a finalist in _Chestnut Review's chapbook prose competition. Instagram @jenlangwrites | Facebook: @israelwriterstudio Places We Left Behind, now available from Vine Leaves Press! https://www.vineleavespress.com/places-we-left-behind-by-jennifer-lang.html About Places We Left Behind: When American-born Jennifer falls in love with French-born Philippe during the First Intifada in Israel, she understands their relationship isn't perfect. Both 23, both Jewish, they lead very different lives: she's a secular tourist, he's an observant immigrant. Despite their opposing outlooks on two fundamental issues—country and religion—they are determined to make it work. For the next 20 years, they root and uproot their growing family, each longing for a singular place to call home. In Places We Left Behind, Jennifer puts her marriage under a microscope, examining commitment and compromise, faith and family while moving between prose and poetry, playing with language and form, daring the reader to read ~~between the lines~~. Thanks for this delightful conversation, Jennifer! All the best! -- Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com). If you like the show: leave a review, or share it with someone who's starting their creative journey! Your support truly makes a difference! Go make a dent: much love, j https://artscalling.com

Although Israelis view the events of 1948 as liberation, to Palestinians, this was “Nakba”, or “disaster”. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the events of those first few years were tantamount to “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, a fact that neither Israel nor the international community have been able to properly deal with. How to resettle hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants? Was the original partition of Palestine equitable and just, and if not, what would a logical compensation package look like? Was Israel interested in a genuine peace process, or do the Oslo Accords, Camp David, Taba, and events surrounding the First and Second Intifada suggest that Israel, according to Norman Finkelstein, is frightened of a Palestinian “peace offensive”? In this video, Norman Finkelstein, scholar of Palestine and the Holocaust, author of “Beyond Chutzpah”, “The Holocaust Industry”, “Gaza”, and “I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It”, convenes a panel with Alex Sheremet and several Palestinian refugees. These are scholar Mouin Rabbani, activist Sana Kassem, B'Tselem researcher Musa Abu Hashhash, and activist Arwa Hashhash. They discuss their families' experience fleeing Israel's war of independence, the destruction of Palestinian homes, the apartheid system of law, arrest, detention, harassment, and subsequent wars. Norman Finkelstein, who is himself the son of Holocaust survivors, often tells the story of his parents' shock at Israel's mistreatment of Palestinian refugees. He credits them with his moral understanding of the world and his interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Norman Finkelstein's website: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com/ Mouin Rabbani's work at Jadaliyya: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Author/4114 Sana Kassem's Twitter: https://twitter.com/SanaKassem If you found this video useful, support us on our Patreon page and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com Read Alex's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/automachination Timestamps: 1:25 – introducing the panel and their recollections 10:41 – 1947-1948; the Israeli War of Independence; Palestine's Nakba Day; how the Israeli Declaration of Independence tapped international law to create Israel; Musa shares his refugee experience after fleeing the last Palestinian village in 1949; Sana relates her family's experience of fleeing war; Mouin describes his family's escape from the last Palestinian village in Haifa; Arwa's claim that the logic of oppression and occupation cannot last 36:04 – the 1967 War; Mouin describes Israel's use of napalm; Sana describes painting her light bulbs blue to avoid Israeli airstrikes; Musa describes his family's loss of property 47:40 – Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Sabra and Shatila massacres; Israel's reputation begins to decline; Sana's experiences in Beirut during the war; legal racism against Palestinians in Lebanon; Palestinian inability to inherit property; Mouin describes post-1947 Israeli laws dispossessing Palestinian property; the role of Jordan in the Palestinian refugee crisis, Jordanian claims over the West Bank 01:03:51 – the First and Second Intifadas; Arwa recalls her father's arrests, inability to go to school, Second Intifada; Musa recounts Israeli harassment of him and his family, detention conditions; Musa shares his disappointment with the First Intifada; Mouin describes the closure of schools and universities as collective punishment against Palestinians; the use of identity cards to restrict movement; labor rights in Israel and Palestine; Musa on continued targeting and harassment of his family; Norman Finkelstein describes house demolitions for stone-throwing; debating hope in Palestine; Norman Finkelstein on Gaza's March of Return as the Third Intifada; lack of support from West Bank, Fatah 02:06:14 – the Oslo Accords; why the Letters of Mutual Recognition were a red flag for negotiations; Norman Finkelstein recalls his reactions to Oslo; Noam Chomsky's warning about the Oslo Accords; the Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE; Morocco's normalization agreement, Trump's recognition of Morocco's claims over Western Sahara and the Sahrawi people; the role of Arab states in Palestine; Mouin clarifies Arab-Palestinian relations; Sana on the role of money in the PLO Tags: #NormanFinkelstein, #freepalestine, #gaza, #israelpalestine, #apartheid, #westbank

Mo'min Swaitat unearthed a vast trove of forgotten Palestinian music. Not only did it hold long-lost recordings of his own Bedouin family, but also a mysterious yellow cassette of protest songs set to an electro-disco beat. Mo'min became captivated by the yellow tape. It would open up a world of underground music from one of the most turbulent times in Palestinian history, the First Intifada. But could he track down who'd made it? Presenter: Mobeen Azhar Producer: Maryam Maruf Editor: Munazza Khan Sound design: Joel Cox Mix: Giles Aspen With thanks to Diana Alghoul for translation support

The unity government wasn't born yesterday, it has a long history in Israel. Tune in to this ongoing exploration of the evolution of Israel's electoral system to learn about the government shared by ex-underground fighter Yitzchak Shamir and Shimon Peres through the 80s, how it held together Mizrachi pride, religious tension and territorial confusion. A government that withdrew from Lebanon, tamed galloping inflation and faced the First Intifada before being brought down by the infamous "dirty trick." Photo Credit: Israel GPO HARNIK NATI, 03/15/1988 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode

The unity government wasn't born yesterday, it has a long history in Israel. Tune in to this ongoing exploration of the evolution of Israel's electoral system to learn about the government shared by ex-underground fighter Yitzchak Shamir and Shimon Peres through the 80s, how it held together Mizrachi pride, religious tension and territorial confusion. A government that withdrew from Lebanon, tamed galloping inflation and faced the First Intifada before being brought down by the infamous "dirty trick." Image lic - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode attribution: Israel GPO HARNIK NATI, 03/15/1988

In this episode, Sobhi Youssef (@sobhiyoussef2) discusses his upcoming game, After the Last Sky, which is about the First Intifada. Beyond Solitaire is proudly sponsored by Central Michigan University's Center for Learning Through Games and Simulations, where learning can be both playful and compelling. Check them out here: https://www.cmich.edu/colleges/class/Centers/CLGS/Pages/default.aspxBIG NEWS: CLGS is now doing online game design classes that you can take from home, and they will have several new offerings this year. Keep an eye on this page:  https://www.cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social-sciences/centers-institutes/center-for-learning-through-games-and-simulations/certificate-in-applied-game-designAll episodes of my podcast are available here: https://beyondsolitaire.buzzsprout.com/Enjoy my work? Consider supporting me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/beyondsolitaire or getting me a "coffee" on Ko-fi! https://ko-fi.com/beyondsolitaireContact Me: Email: beyondsolitaire at gmail.comTwitter: @beyondsolitaireInstagram: @beyondsolitaireFacebook: www.facebook.com/beyondsolitaireWebsite: www.beyondsolitaire.net

Welcome back to Fresh Look! We're excited to have you join us today for Episode 5 featuring world-renowned Palestinian human rights activist, Bassem Eid. Bassem was born in East Jerusalem and rose to prominence during the First Intifada as a senior researcher for B'Tselem. He founded the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group and later assumed the role of chairman of the Center for Near East Policy Research. In response to the deterioration of the human rights situation under the Palestinian Authority, Bassem Eid founded the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, a non-partisan human rights organization dedicated to exposing human rights violations and supporting a democratic and pluralistic Palestine. Bassem has spent decades researching UNRWA policies and has written extensively on the subject of UNRWA reform. He also is an outspoken critic of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Welcome to the show Bassem Eid!

AD KAN (NO MORE) was founded in 1988 by a group of academics at Tel Aviv University. The initiative, a public pressure group, was prompted by public indifference (at best) about Israel's 20-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, and its forceful attempts to suppress the nascent First Intifada popular uprising in the West Bank. Whilst outward facing in their basic ambitions, the founder members of AD KAN also understood that academia's failure to engage with the realities of the moment—through debate, protest, even applied research—could easily be taken too as acceptance of the status quo, embodying as it did the subaltern position of the Palestinian people. Can Academics Change the World? An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus (Berghahn Books, 2020) by Moshe Shokeid, is a personal account of the author's experiences as co-founder of AD KAN. An account of dissent on campus, the book is at once a memoir, a historical account, and an anthropological consideration of the academic's responsibility as a public intellectual. Can Academics Change the World? remains relevant today, with many of the issues underpinning the formation and activities of AD KAN still live: the occupation of the West Bank; attempts to force Israel into concession and compromise, principally through the Boycott, Diversification, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign; and the continued status of the academic as public intellectual, in Israel and elsewhere—this cast against a university landscape that has reorganized itself around a different set of principles in the three decades since AD KAN ceased its activities. Professor Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His other books include Three Jewish Journeys through the Anthropologist's Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to the Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah; A Gay Synagogue in New York; Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York; and The Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli Village. Akin Ajayi (@AkinAjayi) is a writer and editor, based in Tel Aviv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

AD KAN (NO MORE) was founded in 1988 by a group of academics at Tel Aviv University. The initiative, a public pressure group, was prompted by public indifference (at best) about Israel's 20-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, and its forceful attempts to suppress the nascent First Intifada popular uprising in the West Bank. Whilst outward facing in their basic ambitions, the founder members of AD KAN also understood that academia's failure to engage with the realities of the moment—through debate, protest, even applied research—could easily be taken too as acceptance of the status quo, embodying as it did the subaltern position of the Palestinian people. Can Academics Change the World? An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus (Berghahn Books, 2020) by Moshe Shokeid, is a personal account of the author's experiences as co-founder of AD KAN. An account of dissent on campus, the book is at once a memoir, a historical account, and an anthropological consideration of the academic's responsibility as a public intellectual. Can Academics Change the World? remains relevant today, with many of the issues underpinning the formation and activities of AD KAN still live: the occupation of the West Bank; attempts to force Israel into concession and compromise, principally through the Boycott, Diversification, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign; and the continued status of the academic as public intellectual, in Israel and elsewhere—this cast against a university landscape that has reorganized itself around a different set of principles in the three decades since AD KAN ceased its activities. Professor Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His other books include Three Jewish Journeys through the Anthropologist's Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to the Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah; A Gay Synagogue in New York; Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York; and The Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli Village. Akin Ajayi (@AkinAjayi) is a writer and editor, based in Tel Aviv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

AD KAN (NO MORE) was founded in 1988 by a group of academics at Tel Aviv University. The initiative, a public pressure group, was prompted by public indifference (at best) about Israel's 20-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, and its forceful attempts to suppress the nascent First Intifada popular uprising in the West Bank. Whilst outward facing in their basic ambitions, the founder members of AD KAN also understood that academia's failure to engage with the realities of the moment—through debate, protest, even applied research—could easily be taken too as acceptance of the status quo, embodying as it did the subaltern position of the Palestinian people. Can Academics Change the World? An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus (Berghahn Books, 2020) by Moshe Shokeid, is a personal account of the author's experiences as co-founder of AD KAN. An account of dissent on campus, the book is at once a memoir, a historical account, and an anthropological consideration of the academic's responsibility as a public intellectual. Can Academics Change the World? remains relevant today, with many of the issues underpinning the formation and activities of AD KAN still live: the occupation of the West Bank; attempts to force Israel into concession and compromise, principally through the Boycott, Diversification, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign; and the continued status of the academic as public intellectual, in Israel and elsewhere—this cast against a university landscape that has reorganized itself around a different set of principles in the three decades since AD KAN ceased its activities. Professor Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His other books include Three Jewish Journeys through the Anthropologist's Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to the Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah; A Gay Synagogue in New York; Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York; and The Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli Village. Akin Ajayi (@AkinAjayi) is a writer and editor, based in Tel Aviv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

AD KAN (NO MORE) was founded in 1988 by a group of academics at Tel Aviv University. The initiative, a public pressure group, was prompted by public indifference (at best) about Israel's 20-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, and its forceful attempts to suppress the nascent First Intifada popular uprising in the West Bank. Whilst outward facing in their basic ambitions, the founder members of AD KAN also understood that academia's failure to engage with the realities of the moment—through debate, protest, even applied research—could easily be taken too as acceptance of the status quo, embodying as it did the subaltern position of the Palestinian people. Can Academics Change the World? An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus (Berghahn Books, 2020) by Moshe Shokeid, is a personal account of the author's experiences as co-founder of AD KAN. An account of dissent on campus, the book is at once a memoir, a historical account, and an anthropological consideration of the academic's responsibility as a public intellectual. Can Academics Change the World? remains relevant today, with many of the issues underpinning the formation and activities of AD KAN still live: the occupation of the West Bank; attempts to force Israel into concession and compromise, principally through the Boycott, Diversification, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign; and the continued status of the academic as public intellectual, in Israel and elsewhere—this cast against a university landscape that has reorganized itself around a different set of principles in the three decades since AD KAN ceased its activities. Professor Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His other books include Three Jewish Journeys through the Anthropologist's Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to the Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah; A Gay Synagogue in New York; Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York; and The Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli Village. Akin Ajayi (@AkinAjayi) is a writer and editor, based in Tel Aviv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

AD KAN (NO MORE) was founded in 1988 by a group of academics at Tel Aviv University. The initiative, a public pressure group, was prompted by public indifference (at best) about Israel's 20-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, and its forceful attempts to suppress the nascent First Intifada popular uprising in the West Bank. Whilst outward facing in their basic ambitions, the founder members of AD KAN also understood that academia's failure to engage with the realities of the moment—through debate, protest, even applied research—could easily be taken too as acceptance of the status quo, embodying as it did the subaltern position of the Palestinian people. Can Academics Change the World? An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus (Berghahn Books, 2020) by Moshe Shokeid, is a personal account of the author's experiences as co-founder of AD KAN. An account of dissent on campus, the book is at once a memoir, a historical account, and an anthropological consideration of the academic's responsibility as a public intellectual. Can Academics Change the World? remains relevant today, with many of the issues underpinning the formation and activities of AD KAN still live: the occupation of the West Bank; attempts to force Israel into concession and compromise, principally through the Boycott, Diversification, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign; and the continued status of the academic as public intellectual, in Israel and elsewhere—this cast against a university landscape that has reorganized itself around a different set of principles in the three decades since AD KAN ceased its activities. Professor Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His other books include Three Jewish Journeys through the Anthropologist's Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to the Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah; A Gay Synagogue in New York; Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York; and The Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli Village. Akin Ajayi (@AkinAjayi) is a writer and editor, based in Tel Aviv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

AD KAN (NO MORE) was founded in 1988 by a group of academics at Tel Aviv University. The initiative, a public pressure group, was prompted by public indifference (at best) about Israel's 20-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, and its forceful attempts to suppress the nascent First Intifada popular uprising in the West Bank. Whilst outward facing in their basic ambitions, the founder members of AD KAN also understood that academia's failure to engage with the realities of the moment—through debate, protest, even applied research—could easily be taken too as acceptance of the status quo, embodying as it did the subaltern position of the Palestinian people. Can Academics Change the World? An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus (Berghahn Books, 2020) by Moshe Shokeid, is a personal account of the author's experiences as co-founder of AD KAN. An account of dissent on campus, the book is at once a memoir, a historical account, and an anthropological consideration of the academic's responsibility as a public intellectual. Can Academics Change the World? remains relevant today, with many of the issues underpinning the formation and activities of AD KAN still live: the occupation of the West Bank; attempts to force Israel into concession and compromise, principally through the Boycott, Diversification, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign; and the continued status of the academic as public intellectual, in Israel and elsewhere—this cast against a university landscape that has reorganized itself around a different set of principles in the three decades since AD KAN ceased its activities. Professor Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His other books include Three Jewish Journeys through the Anthropologist's Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to the Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah; A Gay Synagogue in New York; Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York; and The Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli Village. Akin Ajayi (@AkinAjayi) is a writer and editor, based in Tel Aviv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

AD KAN (NO MORE) was founded in 1988 by a group of academics at Tel Aviv University. The initiative, a public pressure group, was prompted by public indifference (at best) about Israel's 20-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, and its forceful attempts to suppress the nascent First Intifada popular uprising in the West Bank. Whilst outward facing in their basic ambitions, the founder members of AD KAN also understood that academia's failure to engage with the realities of the moment—through debate, protest, even applied research—could easily be taken too as acceptance of the status quo, embodying as it did the subaltern position of the Palestinian people. Can Academics Change the World? An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus (Berghahn Books, 2020) by Moshe Shokeid, is a personal account of the author's experiences as co-founder of AD KAN. An account of dissent on campus, the book is at once a memoir, a historical account, and an anthropological consideration of the academic's responsibility as a public intellectual. Can Academics Change the World? remains relevant today, with many of the issues underpinning the formation and activities of AD KAN still live: the occupation of the West Bank; attempts to force Israel into concession and compromise, principally through the Boycott, Diversification, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign; and the continued status of the academic as public intellectual, in Israel and elsewhere—this cast against a university landscape that has reorganized itself around a different set of principles in the three decades since AD KAN ceased its activities. Professor Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His other books include Three Jewish Journeys through the Anthropologist's Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to the Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah; A Gay Synagogue in New York; Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York; and The Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli Village. Akin Ajayi (@AkinAjayi) is a writer and editor, based in Tel Aviv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

AD KAN (NO MORE) was founded in 1988 by a group of academics at Tel Aviv University. The initiative, a public pressure group, was prompted by public indifference (at best) about Israel's 20-year occupation of the Palestinian Territories, and its forceful attempts to suppress the nascent First Intifada popular uprising in the West Bank. Whilst outward facing in their basic ambitions, the founder members of AD KAN also understood that academia's failure to engage with the realities of the moment—through debate, protest, even applied research—could easily be taken too as acceptance of the status quo, embodying as it did the subaltern position of the Palestinian people. Can Academics Change the World? An Israeli Anthropologist's Testimony on the Rise and Fall of a Protest Movement on Campus (Berghahn Books, 2020) by Moshe Shokeid, is a personal account of the author's experiences as co-founder of AD KAN. An account of dissent on campus, the book is at once a memoir, a historical account, and an anthropological consideration of the academic's responsibility as a public intellectual. Can Academics Change the World? remains relevant today, with many of the issues underpinning the formation and activities of AD KAN still live: the occupation of the West Bank; attempts to force Israel into concession and compromise, principally through the Boycott, Diversification, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign; and the continued status of the academic as public intellectual, in Israel and elsewhere—this cast against a university landscape that has reorganized itself around a different set of principles in the three decades since AD KAN ceased its activities. Professor Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His other books include Three Jewish Journeys through the Anthropologist's Lens: From Morocco to the Negev, Zion to the Big Apple, the Closet to the Bimah; A Gay Synagogue in New York; Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York; and The Dual Heritage: Immigrants from the Atlas Mountains in an Israeli Village. Akin Ajayi (@AkinAjayi) is a writer and editor, based in Tel Aviv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Leeh tells the story of Palestine from the 50's to the present, completing our trilogy about the struggles of the indigenous Palestinians who have lived and died under brutal Israeli occupation. In addition to providing a clear overview of recent history, this episode highlights the role that capitalism has played in this ongoing humanitarian crisis. Beginning by discussing apartheid, we explain Israel's systematic creation of a Palestinian underclass through deliberate displacement, ethnic cleansing, segregation, and economic colonialism. Leeh describes some of the worst massacres inflicted upon the Palestinian people during the past 70 years. She outlines the many failed efforts to establish peace, including the Oslo Accords. She even describes Palestinian uprisings against Israeli oppression during the first and second intifadas. Together, Leeh and Erika explain America's motivations for providing over $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel every single year, highlighting the Six Day War.You'll also learn about:The Quibya Massacre (1953)The Kafr Qasim Massacre (1956)Israel's shift towards neoliberal capitalismThe First & Second IntifadaThe Cave of Patriarchs Massacre (1994)Camp David SummitThis 2021 Gaza MassacreIsrael's bombing of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera buildingIsrael's designation of 6 human rights organizations as terrorist groupsDe-developmentYou can follow Leeh on TikTok and Instagram. She shares highly informative videos and important content pertaining to the Palestinian struggle against violent zionist oppression.  ZIONIST TEARS      60  ml Gin Mare       20     ml La Quintinye Vermouth Blanc      One small slice of preserved lemon, halved      or, a small pinch of salt       A few drops of Zatoun Palestinian Extra Virgin Olive OilAdd preserved lemon and gin into a mixing glass and gently press the lemon with a muddler to infuse the gin with the lemon. Add the vermouth and fill the glass with cubed ice. Stir until drink is very cold—about 20 seconds. Fine strain into a well-chilled Martini glass and very carefully add a few drops of olive on the top to float. Express a lemon peel over the drink, cut, and garnish. Add a flower and enjoy. Glassware:  Martini GlassGarnish:  Lemon Peel and FlowerABV: 30%Shoutout to Jesse Torres for preparing this delicious cocktail based on Leeh and Erika's suggestions. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/cocktailsandcapitalism)

Photo:  A captured SLA Army tank, featuring a wooden portrait of the late Ayatollah Khomeini in the village of Hula . Hamas in Lebanon.  Sarit Zehavi @ZehaviAlma, @Israel_Alma_org.  Malcolm Hoenlein @Conf_of_pres @mhoenlein1 ·         https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/10/middleeast/hamas-warehouse-explosion-lebanon-intl/index.html ·         https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-said-to-form-lebanon-branch-to-open-new-front-against-israel/ ·         https://jcpa.org/hamas-is-preparing-to-attack-israel-from-southern-lebanon/ ·         https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-blames-fatah-for-deadly-shooting-in-lebanon-refugee-camp/ Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Sarit Zehavi is the CEO and founder of Alma – a nonprofit and an independent research and education center specialized in Israel's security challenges on its northern border. She served for 15 years in the Israeli Defense Forces, specializing in Military Intelligence. .. Hamas was founded in 1987, soon after the First Intifada broke out, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamist fundamentalist organization,[18][19] which is regarded, either in whole or in part, as a terrorist organization by several countries and international organizations.

Suhad Babaa is the Executive Director of Just Vision, an organization that fills a media gap on Israel-Palestine through independent storytelling and strategic audience engagement. Suhad executive produced their 2017 acclaimed feature-length documentary, Naila and the Uprising, which portrays the women at the forefront of the First Intifada in the late 80s. Suhad was also an integral member of the impact campaigns around Just Vision's critically acclaimed film Budrus, and the Peabody award-winning documentary, My Neighbourhood. She is also a producer, news publisher, media strategist, human rights advocate and leads Just Vision's journalistic efforts as the Co-Director of the award-winning Hebrew-language news site, Local Call. 

While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways.Audio narration by Ad-Auris.  India Policy Watch #1: Jabki Dimaag Khaali Hai (While The Mind Is Empty) Insights on burning policy issues in India- RSJThe sound and the fury surrounding all that’s happening in India now is quite maddening. Any kind of meaningful analysis risks drowning in it. In any case, there’s no analysis possible any more in India. There are only positions. We have fallen in love with the culture of intellectual nihilism. All arguments start with a bad faith assumption. And before you end it, you are tagged with toxic monikers and a litany of half-truths in the garb of whatboutery. And they bookend any discussion between two ‘argumentative’ Indians these days. We cannot say we didn’t see it coming. It is easy to cast democracy into a vessel that channels the passions of the majority. You can ride those passions to the levers of power. But it is another thing to govern and meet the aspirations of the demos. The easy way then to cover for failures is to continue fighting some mythical ancient regime or entrenched enemies who are undermining your efforts. This is imagined victimhood. When this becomes a political, social and cultural defence to any challenge, intellectual nihilism follows. Facts don’t matter then. Only faith does.We are in a tight spot today. To come out of it requires leadership, farsighted policymaking capabilities and a consensus on the path to nation building almost at par with the task we had on hands right after independence. This isn’t easy even with the best of intentions and capabilities at your disposal. Instead, I fear we have real constraints in thinking our way clearly through this. Acknowledging The ProblemThe economy wasn’t in a great shape going into the pandemic in April 2020. The twin balance sheet problem and the shock of demonetisation meant a modest 4-5 percent growth was beginning to look the best we could do. The national lockdown and the impact of the first wave has meant we will end up with about an eight percent decline in GDP in FY20-21. The general consensus within the government early this year was India had seen off the pandemic and a V-shaped recovery is well on its way. This second wave has set us back again. So, where does that leave us on the economy? There are a few factors to consider here:Unlike wave 1, this time the impact has been felt more directly by the consuming class. This is evident from conversations with friends and colleagues, social media posts and the case counts. People have been scarred and sentiments have taken a hit. More importantly, people will wait to get vaccinated before lowering their guards. The lessons of complacency seem to have been learnt. The talk of wave 3 and its likely impact on kids have only queered the pitch. Vaccination to about 50 percent of people looks unlikely before the end of 2021. This would mean when the wave 2 subsides, there won’t be a quick bounce back in terms of increased mobility and consumption spends. There will only be a gradual return to any kind of normalcy. Unlike last wave, this wave has impacted the hinterland. The extent of the impact is difficult to ascertain but the ground reporting from rural UP and Bihar has been heartbreaking. Rural supply chains have been disrupted and the expectation that rural economy will hold out like last year are misplaced.Much of the heavy lifting last year to support the economy was done by the RBI through monetary policy. There’s a limit to that and it seems we have reached the end of it. The fiscal room available to the government is quite limited. It is worse than last year. The fiscal deficit is the highest it has been in a long time. Yet, the government will have to come out with some kind of a stimulus soon. People are hurting. But where will the money for stimulus come from? Expect more headline management like the Rs. 20 lac crores Aatmanirbhar Bharat package announced last year.Exports could be a silver lining considering most of the developed world will be back on growth path by next quarter. The challenge is how well are our businesses (especially SMEs) positioned right now to take advantage of it. It is difficult to be an export powerhouse while simultaneously dealing with an unprecedented health crisis impacting the workforce. The consensus growth projections for FY21-22 have already been lowered from 11.5 percent to 9-9.5 percent. My fear is this will slide down to 7-7.5 percent range by the time we have seen through wave 2. Since this wave is unique to India in terms of spread and impact, our economic performance, deficit and the future prospects will be an outlier compared to most of the world in FY22. We will have to keep an eye on the sovereign rating given our circumstances. There’s a danger lurking there. Given these, it is evident we will need to bring together our best minds across government, administration and industry to navigate these waters. But that will require to acknowledge we got things wrong to reach here. This isn’t likely going by precedence. It will also be interesting to see how Indian industry and capital responds to this. Of course, the public stance, like always, will be cheerleading the dispensation. But it is no secret that private capital investment has been stagnant for most of last decade. Indian capital doesn’t put its money where its mouth is. It is far too clever for that. As 4-6 percent growth (if that) becomes the accepted norm for this decade, it is likely that Indian industry and the wealthy will try and conserve what they have instead of taking risks. There are other second order social implications that might arise out of another ‘lost decade’ of tepid growth that Indian capital will be worried about. They might continue to prefer a ‘strong leader’ given these concerns. It is also clear now that any recovery will be K-shaped to begin with. The formal, organised and larger players will consolidate their gains and grow at the expense of the informal and smaller players. This trend has been seen over the past 12 months. The stock market, divorced from the real economy, already knows it and it is reflected in the performance of the benchmark indices that represent 30-50 top companies. This structural shift to an oligopoly in most sectors is evident. This will allow the state to control capital more easily as markets turn less free. In any case, the benefits of aligning to the political dispensation are already evident in the list of richest Asians. So, the industry will be more than willing to be subservient. These aren’t the best of conditions for releasing the animal spirits of enterprise. The Absent Media And OppositionIt isn’t difficult to foresee the challenges outlined here and to set up a policy framework to address it. There are two problems here. First, the centralised nature of governance in the current establishment precludes any acknowledgement of missteps or an honest assessment of the problems on hand. Second, the conventional outlets of holding the government to account, the opposition and the media, are mostly absent. Large sections of mainstream media are owned directly by the industry who would rather cheerlead than ask tough questions. Many in the industry and the media may even be ideologically aligned to the establishment. The opposition is fragmented with regional leaders often holding their own in the assembly elections. But any kind of national mobilisation to politically counter the party in power is not in sight. The PM continues to be popular despite the wave 2 failings. The political genius of the PM has been to dissolve the natural fragments of region, caste, or even, language, that precluded over-centralisation of power in the past. The Lok Sabha elections will continue to be presidential in nature for the foreseeable future. So, any real political opposition will need to contend with this. The other source of opposition, class, has disappeared from Indian politics for long. Students’ unions are politicised along party lines and have no independent line of thinking, trade unions have no teeth and farmers movement is splintered despite the protests we see against farm laws. The near absence of media and opposition has meant policy debates and discussions have suffered. There’s complacency and lack of rigour in policy making as has been evident in the past many years. There is no price to be paid for policy failure. And any failure is quickly papered over with some kind of narrative.The Surrender Of ElitesLastly, let’s turn to the elites. The section that often tends to have a disproportionate share of voice in the polity. The institutional elite have either been co-opted or they have thrown in the towel in the face of an overwhelmingly popular establishment. Universities, courts, bureaucracy, police and what’s referred to as civil society can no longer be counted on to be independent voices that will uphold the tradition of the institutions they serve. This isn’t a first in our history. But, remember, the last time it happened the consequences were terrible. That should, therefore, give us no solace. The other set of elites are those who have provided intellectual scaffolding to this dispensation over the years. Loosely put, this group would identify themselves ideologically as either conservatives or belonging to the right. I have articulated their grouses in earlier editions. It runs the spectrum - the resentment with a liberal constitution that was not rooted in our civilisational values, the anger at the radical act of forgetting our history that the Nehruvian elites thrust upon us in their wisdom, the overbearing state and the failures of leftist economic policies during the 60s-80s that held us back and the deracinated deep state (“Lutyens Delhi”) that apparently controlled the levers of power regardless of who was in power. In the past seven years it should have been clear to them these grouses aren’t easy to set right nor will their elimination lead to any kind of great reawakening in the masses. The intellectual articulation of a political philosophy that’s suited to the modern world while addressing these grouses isn’t clear yet. Instead, what we have on our hands are thuggish attempts at settling imaginary scores and continuing degradation of scientific temper in the hope it will usher in a modern version of our glorious past. If these intellectuals want the supposed UP model of today to be what India of tomorrow should look like, good luck with that ending well. I have been reading the great Hindi essayist, historian and scholar, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi over the past few months. Dwivedi was an intellectual powerhouse who was deeply rooted in the Indic tradition and philosophy. A great Sanskrit linguist who spent a lifetime studying the Sastras and writing beautiful expositions on them, Dwivedi should be more widely read today. His essays, their themes and his arguments, betray no trace of western enlightenment influence. He had a clear-eyed view of the richness of our heritage and its relevance in the modern age. In his anthology, Vichar Aur Vitark (Thoughts And Debates), there’s an essay titled ‘Jabki Dimaag Khaali Hai’ (“While The Mind Is Empty”) published by Sachitra Bharti in 1939, which is often quoted by Pratap Bhanu Mehta to make a specific point about our current obsession with our glorious past and the identity crisis among Hindus. As Mehta writes:This identity is constituted by a paradoxical mixture of sentiments: a sense of lack, Hinduism is not sure what makes it the identity that it is; a sense of injury, the idea that Hindus have been victims of history; a sense of superiority, Hinduism as the highest achievement of spirituality and uniquely tolerant; a sense of weakness, Hindus are unable to respond to those who attack them; a sense of uncertainty, how will this tradition make its transition to modernity without denigrating its own past; and finally, a yearning for belonging, a quest for a community that can do justice to them as Hindus. This psychic baggage can express itself in many ways, sometimes benign and creative, sometimes, malign and close minded. But these burdens cast their unmistakable shadow upon modern Hindu self-reflection, often leading to a discourse on identity that Dwivedi memorably described as one, where the ‘‘heart is full and the mind empty (dil bhara hai aur dimag khali hai).’’ The passions that have been fanned to animate the majority cannot lead to nation building in the absence of intellectual rigour and clear reasoning. The problem is once that genie of passions is out, it is impossible to put it back in the bottle. Its demand will never be sated.I will leave you with an extract from Dwivedi’s essay (my mediocre English translation follows):My translation:But when the mind is empty while the heart is brimming over, there cannot be any possibility of an engaging exposition of the Sastras. Otherwise, there isn't any reason to be anxious about a race whose writ once ran from the shores of River Vaksh in Central Asia to the end of South Asia, the imprint of whose culture transcended the Himalayas and the great oceans and whose mighty fleet once controlled the waters of the eastern seas. It is true that this mighty race is a pale shadow of itself today. The sons of Panini (the great Sanskrit grammarian from Gandhara) sell dry fruits and heeng on streets today while the descendants of Kumarjiva are involved in the basest of trades. Yet, there's a hope that there must be a semblance of that glory still running in the veins of this race. And it will show its true colour some day. But then I wonder. After all, a tree is known by the fruits it bears. The state of disrepair that the Hindu society is in today must trace its cause to that once glorious civilisation of the past. How can that tree be so glorious when its fruits we see all around today are so terrible?There was indeed an age of prosperity for this race. That is true. Those verdant streets of Ujjain, the gurgling sounds of river Shipra and the celestial music of the kinnaras still echo in the Himalayan valleys - these memories remain fresh in our minds. And amidst these riches, our eyes can clearly see the attack of the Huns and the defiant stand of the Aryans, the numerous rise and fall of empires, the thunderous roar of Vikramaditya. The glories of Magadh and Avanti were unparalleled. Its elite could wield the sword and the brush with equal felicity. They could fight fire with fire and let their hair down when they wanted. But things changed. The elite suppressed the masses; they paralysed the polity. The chasm within the society began to open up. The elites immersed themselves in the pleasures of the material world while the masses were tied down to scriptures and their orthodoxy. One took refuge in merriment while the other was often lampooned for their outdated beliefs. And the fissure in the Hindu society widened further. Over the centuries every invader used this to their advantage - Huns, Sakas, Tartars, Muslims and the British. They divided us further and they ruled. Today that Pathan dry fruit seller asked me if that beautiful house belonged to a Muslim or a Christian and could scarcely believe it could be that of a Hindu. And I wondered if the chasm continues widening everyday. But then the Sastras don't bother about such identity issues of the Hindus and I lack the courage to intellectually confront this issue any further. When the mind is empty and the heart full of passion, isn't it enough to have even mentally contended with the existential conundrum of our race.            Matsyanyaaya: A Cautionary Tale on the ‘Israel Model’Big fish eating small fish = Foreign Policy in action— Pranay KotasthaneFull diplomatic ties between India and Israel were established quite late in 1992. Even so, this bilateral relationship has quickly grown into a robust and multi-dimensional partnership over the last three decades. This is a welcome development. Israel’s technological prowess finds many admirers in India. In casual conversations, this admiration often escalates into a desire for emulation — "see how they tackled terrorism, we should learn from it", or "we should also have mandatory military service, like Israel does", or "why can't India kill terrorists in Pakistan the way Israel assassinates Iranian nuclear scientists?" The latest round of Israel-Palestine conflict should, however, force uncritical admirers of the Israel model to update their Bayesian priors. A side note before I begin: what model Israel adopts is its own problem and I have neither the competence nor the inclination to challenge its approach. Every conflict today has its own set of initial conditions and a long and bloody path-dependent history. I am only interested cautioning people who seek to transpose Israel’s strategy to an Indian context. Here are my four strategic insights from the Indian perspective for those in awe of the 'Israel Model'.#1 Force alone cannot end insurgenciesEven an overwhelming superiority in force structure is insufficient for ending insurgencies. The US experience in Afghanistan and the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict both demonstrate that insurgencies are not easy to dislodge. Neither the Iron Dome nor the ‘Mother of all Bombs’ can fully deter an insurgent force from retaliating in the future. Force can, at best, modulate terrorism but it can't end insurgencies. Ending insurgencies also requires co-opting rival elites and making compromises with insurgent factions. More the disproportional use of force, more elusive such dealmaking becomes. #2 Assassinating terrorists can be both ineffective and high-costFed on a diet of Hollywood movies, the assassination programmes of Mossad and Shin Bet are admired by many people in India. Every terrorist attack in India raises one question: if Israel can kill Iranian nuclear scientists, why can’t India kill the likes of Hafiz Saeed? This romanticisation of an extensive assassination programme misses the fact that such operations have often been strategically ineffective. Praveen Swami’s take in MoneyControl on Israel’s assassination programme highlights this point well:“From 1971, when a new Palestinian resistance emerged in the West Bank and Gaza, both targeted assassination and sometimes-indiscriminate civilian killing were deployed on a growing scale. Forty-man covert assassination squads, code-named Rimon, or Pomegranate received target lists from Israel’s internal intelligence service, Shin Bet for execution.The killings formed the backdrop to the rise of terrorism, culminating in the savage massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972. Mossad responded by unleashing Operation Wrath of God—arguably the best known of all its efforts—which, over the course of twenty years, used covert teams to target their alleged killers across Europe and the Middle-East.Leaving ethics aside, the gains from Israel’s tactics are controversial: Rimon’s killings didn’t deter the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987; indeed, it could be argued to have radicalised an entire generation. Even leadership-decapitation operations, like the 1988 assassination of Palestine Liberation Organisation second-in-command Khalil al-Wazir, did little to change the course of history. Arguably, Israel’s anti-PLO operations only served to open the way for more dangerous Islamist groups.”Another unintended and yet anticipated consequence of such an approach is the potential of domestic spillover. If a State repeatedly uses assassination against State enemies, how long before it becomes an acceptable method against domestic anti-national ‘enemies’ ?A key cognitive dissonance is at the centre of democratic statecraft — in the amoral world of international relations, the grammar of power applies while in a liberal domestic realm, rule of law explicitly restrains the primacy of power. This delicate balance is tougher to achieve in a State with an extensive assassination programme. A secondary consequence is that conflicting parties become incapable of compromise and dialogue and resort to acts that further aggravate the situation.#3 People matter more than territoryThe Israel-Palestine conflict is a visceral conflict over a piece of land. Such is its history and deep-seated animosity that today, even localised fights over pieces of neighbourhood land have the potential to trigger a full-scale arms exchange. The lesson for India is that the desire for territorial integrity should not override the primary goal of peace and prosperity for all Indians. Take the instance of India’s land border with Bangladesh. In the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement, India gave away more land than it got back from Bangladesh. In a strict sense, India’s territorial integrity was violated. And yet, it was a prudent decision because, among other things, it put an end to the abomination called a third-order enclave — a piece of India within a piece of Bangladesh within a piece of India within Bangladesh. The hitherto uncertainty over the border had led to a denial of basic services to Indians in such enclaves.#4 Excessive use of force is counterproductive in the Information Age Despite its clout, the international narrative has gone against Israel over the past month. International coverage has portrayed Israel as the aggressor. The armed attacks by Israel were broadcasted widely and the bloodied faces of Palestinians led many countries to pressurise Israel for a ceasefire. The key lesson here for India is that information age conflicts will be global by default. In the Industrial Age, state suppression could be covered up; that’s no longer the case in radically networked communities. State use of force against non-combatants is almost certain to receive instant condemnation from other countries. This further calls for prudence in using force.In sum, there’s a lot to be gained for both sides from a stronger India-Israel partnership. But a blindfolded emulation of the Israel Model will do far more harm than good.India Policy Watch #2: Vaccine Inequity Insights on burning policy issues in India- Pranay KotasthaneVaccine inequity — you are going to be hearing a lot of over the next few months. It is a hydra-headed term being used in a variety of contexts — some make sense and others don’t. Let’s explore all its facets.#1 Vaccine inequity in the international relations contextCanada, UK, EU and other rich countries are hoarding vaccines for its citizens. Citing inequity, repeated calls have been made by concerned citizens, groups, and WHO for releasing these hoarded doses.However, equity is orthogonal to the amoral world of international relations. Equity presupposes morality but when the international relations operates on the principle of matsysnaaya, every country is on its own. Calls for vaccine equity then may well make some countries donate a few token doses from their hoarded stock to ward off future criticism but it is unlikely to cause a significant shift in national stances. Instead of asking for vaccine equity, appealing to national interest will work better. At present, India is perhaps not in a position to cause pain to a state that doesn’t offload its excess supply. But it can definitely promise to deliver benefits to countries that do. A lowering of tariffs on some goods or conceding on a less-important point in a trade negotiation in exchange of vaccine donations, has higher chances of securing vaccines from abroad.#2 Inter-state vaccine inequityState-wise allocations have also come under fire on the grounds of vaccine inequity. This is not surprising. Neither is it solvable to everyone’s satisfaction. The paradox of distribution, in Deborah Stone’s words, is that “equality often means inequality, and equal treatment often means unequal treatment. The same distribution may look equal or unequal, depending on where you focus.” Till there’s supply scarcity, equalising distribution across states is impossible. Regardless of the formula used, it will be contested on the ground of being unequal by states that don’t fare well on a particular formula. In such a case, the goal should be distribute fairly and not equally. In the current circumstances, the fairest way out is to transparently declare a formula for distribution of vaccines from the union government quota and simultaneously allow states to procure additional doses on their own. #3 Digitally inflicted vaccine inequityGetting a vaccine appointment requires you to have a phone, an internet connection, and the ability to read English, and that this is unfair to people who have access to none of them. This is the vaccine equity dimension I sympathise with most. The CEO of the National Health Authority dismissed these concerns in an Indian Express article thus:“Imagine the chaos if online appointments had not been compulsory. Vaccination centres would have been swamped by people, creating not only law-and-order issues but also risk of infections. Invoking the digital divide, as the authors do, is premature and misplaced, for the vaccination drive is evolving as it unfolds, and data is the torchlight for correcting the anomalies.”“CoWin provides for on-site registration of people without access to the internet, smartphones or even a feature phone. Out of the 18.22 crore doses administered as on May 16, only 43 per cent have been administered through online appointments, the rest availed of on-site registration. Self-registration is just one component of CoWin. On-the-spot registration, walk-ins, registration of four citizens on one mobile number and use of common service centres for assisted registration underline the inclusive nature of CoWin.”Of course, what he hasn’t mentioned is that walk-in registration and appointment is not available for 18-44 age group. It would be fair if a predetermined percentage of vaccine slots are opened up for walk-in registrations. Even cinema halls allows on-spot movie ticket bookings in addition to the online-booked ones; surely our COVID-19 vaccination drive can accommodate for this requirement. Further, some centres can be dedicated for walk-in registrations. As the supply constraint eases, this problem should become less serious.#4 Income inflicted vaccine inequityThe argument here is that since the rich, formally employed citizens can get themselves vaccinated through their employers, the employers must in turn vaccinate low-income earners for equity reasons. This is a flawed argument. A government-run channel providing free vaccines is a better alternative. Mandating the private sector to cover up whenever the government fails is morally repugnant. It is precisely the kind of thinking that has allowed us to give our omni-absent state a free pass.A reminder to end this section. Given that vaccines have positive externalities, the primary goal of the vaccination drive should be to give jabs to as many people as soon as possible. Doing so in a fair and transparent way is the best that can be done for equity. To prioritise equity over speed would be counterproductive. The option is to choose between two suboptimal outcomes. After all, confronting trade-offs is the what separates better policymaking from the worse one.HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Audio] Dr. Rajendra Prasad Memorial Lectures series, 1969: Acharya Hazari Prasad Dwivedi on Guru Nanak: Personality, Concerns and Objective. Wonderful speech combining history and philosophy. [Article] An excerpt from a promising new book on ending counterinsurgencies. Get on the email list at publicpolicy.substack.com

The word Intifada (sometimes Intifadah) means uprising.  More specifically it means “shaking off,” but uprising is close enough.  There were two Intifadas, one in 1987-1993, just called the Intifada.  The other is called the Al Aqsa Intifada from 2000 to 2005.  These were very different from each other. I have two podcasts on these.  One on the Intifada, one on the Al Aqsa Intifada. I wrote two articles on Intifada Death Patterns.  One of those, analyzing the first two years of fatalities, is available in Deep Blue.  I also wrote a shorter newspaper analysis of deaths during the first Intifada.  This was accepted for publication by a Jerusalem newspaper (Al Fajr) but was censored. Israel has two censors, a military censor and a political censor.  My article was cleared for publication by the military censors but rejected by the political censors.  This is odd because the information I used (individual data about age, gender, day of death, possible cause of death, location of death) was publicly available.  I guess having that analysis available in a Palestinian newspaper was seen as too dangerous  (although similar analysis was covered in the Israeli press on a regular basis, and Defense Minister Rabin issued similar analyses on a regular basis).  As far as I know, I am the only University of Michigan-Dearborn professor  who ever had his research officially censored.   (I have the draft newspaper article with the censor's mark on it.  It is framed and on my wall).  There are quite a few terms, places, names, etc. that you might not recognize.  Here are some of them (in no particular order).  You might read those before you listen.  Places: Ecce Homo; Dome of the Rock; Al Quds;  Four Quarters; Via Dolorosa; Stations of the Cross; Jabalya, Gaza; Balata camp; Negev Desert; Hebron, Nablus, Jenin; Birzeit University; People:  Um Kulthum (famous Egyptian singer); Yitzhak Shamir; Ariel Sharon; Yitzhak Rabin; Yasser Arafat. Other: Lechi/Stern Gang; extra-territorial entity;   Status Quo Agreement; kill ratio;, Iron Fist; Hezbollah;  Uprising of the Stones; Breaking Bones Policy; Biladi (my land, a song). Note:  The kill ratio in the Intifada was 23:1.  Sometimes in a lecture someone's brain goes off track and comes up with bizarre numbers. Also Note:  Al Aqsa refers to the mosque compound, Al Quds refers to Jerusalem.  I might have got that backwards at one point. 

We spend the hour with Independent Middle East Media Center founder, Portland-based Palestinian-American journalist and veteran of the First Intifada, Saed Bannoura.

The Eighties are full of turmoil with a civil war in Lebanon, a war between Iran and Iraq, and the First Intifada.  But the world is hopeful for peace between Palestine and Israel.

What are some of the differences between advocacy and education? What limits might advocacy have that education can surpass? Today on the podcast, David speaks with Noam Weissman. Noam is the Senior Vice President of OpenDor Media and the host of the Unpacking Israeli History podcast. Noam has a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Southern California and has many years of experience working as an educator. OpenDor Media is an educational media company that produces and distributes content about everything Jewish and Israeli.Noam and David talk about the difference between Israel advocacy and education about Israel. We speak about Noam's podcast and why he chose Israeli history as its subject. We also speak about some of the episodes that have appeared on Noam's podcast, like the massacre at Dair Yassin and the First Intifada. Noam also shares some of his thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how both sides could finally reach some kind of reconciliation. To check out all that OpenDor Media has to offer please check out their website. To listen to all episodes of the Unpacking Israeli History podcast click here. To see OpenDor Media's Unpacked YouTube channel click here.We would love to hear from you!Leave feedback on this episode or the podcast on our newly-launched website.Like us on Facebook to be notified of episode releases and other announcements about the podcast!Music Credit: Joseph McDade, ElevationPodcast Art: Courtesy of Emily Wallick

Remembering the rist intifada from the 8th December 1987 we are playing an interview produced by Palestine remembered with Palestian spoken word poet Rafeef Ziadah and Musician Phil Monsour.  https://www.3cr.org.au/palestine/episode-202011140930/palestine-remembered-rafeef-and-philSupport Rafeefs new album Three generations https://www.pozible.com/profile/rafeef-ziadah About Rafeef http://www.rafeefziadah.net/about/

عربي تحت An untold story for most, the women's movement that headed and sustained the First Intifada was a source of tremendous popular power and useful lessons. Noah Black sat down with the director of the award-winning film Naila and the Uprising, Julia Bacha, to discuss this history and more. The film was produced by Rula Salameh and Rebekah Wingert-Jabi. الجندر والاحتجاج وسياسة الفيلم: مناقشة مع جوليا باشا حول "نائلة والانتفاضة" يتحدث نوح بلاك مع جوليا باشا مخرجة الفيلم الحائز على جوائز "نائلة والانتفاضة" ، لمناقشة التاريخ غير المروي عن الحركة النسائية التي قادت الانتفاضة الأولى وشكلت لها مصدر قوة شعبية هائل.

The First Intifada, or uprising, differed greatly from the intense violence and bloodshed seen in the Second Intifada. Even without the same level of violence, the events from 1987-1993 completely altered Israeli history. Noam Weissman asks what caused the Intifada, how it shifted the Arab-Israeli relationship and why it changed Israel’s reputation on the global stage forever. ~~~~ The Unpacking Israeli History Podcast series is sponsored by Andrea & Larry Gill ~~~~ Learn more about Unpacked: https://unpacked.media/Visit Unpacked on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/unpacked Teaching about this topic? Check out our relevant educator resources here: https://unpacked.education/video/what-was-the-first-intifada/  ~~~~ Sources:  https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/09/world/arafat-guerrillas-forced-out-of-beirut.html?mtrref=www.google.com https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/the-death-of-arab-secularism-1.589937 http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/his_periods9.html https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-presbyterian-church-bds-and-that-largely-non-violent-first-intifada/ https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-first-intifada-a-watershed-moment-1.5272288 https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/IT-HAS-BEEN-30-YEARS-SINCE-THE-OUTBREAK-OF-THE-FIRST-INTIFADA-532851 https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-journey-back-to-the-first-intifada-1.5272270 https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4678530,00.html https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/IT-HAS-BEEN-30-YEARS-SINCE-THE-OUTBREAK-OF-THE-FIRST-INTIFADA-532851 https://www.jta.org/1989/11/07/archive/idf-furloughs-officer-for-beatings https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/yasser-arafat#8 https://www.brookings.edu/on-the-record/is-yasser-arafat-a-credible-partner-for-peace/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Terrorist_attacks_against_Israelis_in_the_1970s https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-first-intifada-a-watershed-moment-1.5272288 https://www.knesset.gov.il/faction/eng/FactionPage_eng.asp?PG=21 https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-first-intifada-a-watershed-moment-1.5272288 https://www.haaretz.com/1.5192013 https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-journey-back-to-the-first-intifada-1.5272270 ~~~~ Unpacked is a division of OpenDor Media

This interview is part of a three-episode series featuring our original bilingual opera En Mis Palabras/In My Own Words and exploring equity, diversity and inclusion in the arts. Central City Opera (CCO) commissioned En Mis Palabras more than 15 years ago, with the goal of acknowledging the 1/5 Latino population here in Colorado. The opera tackles themes of immigration, family and coming of age and is performed regularly as a part of Central City Opera’s year-round education and community engagement programming. Over 19,000 people have seen it since its 2006 premiere.   Today, we discuss the ongoing growth and evolution of the opera’s bilingual text, the idea of enriching story-telling through inclusion of many creative voices and, finally, what En Mis Palabras means to artists and audiences who’ve experienced it. Guests include En Mis Palabras composer Roger Ames, pianist and coach for the production Steven Aguiló-Arbues and CCO Director of Education Emily Murdock with host and CCO Marketing Content Manager Margaret Siegrist.   Settle in for coffee and conversation with us! Text PALABRAS to 20123, and find great deals on over 400 coffees roasted to order and shipped to you by the bag from the nation’s best roasters. A portion of all purchases goes to Central City Opera thanks to our partners at Eat4Art. Cheers!   Roger Ames co-wrote Music! Words! Opera!, a “create and produce” curriculum for Opera America’s textbook series, in the late 1980s with Clifford Brooks. It’s been an important part of Central City Opera’s education and community engagement programs for many years with Roger at the helm. Central City Opera offers Music! Words! Opera! Residencies for students and an annual workshop teaching educators how to bring the program their own classrooms. Learn more on our 2020 fall virtual programming webpage.   Listen to compositions by Roger Ames referenced during this episode:  2008 Pulitzer-nominated composition, A Requiem for Our Time.  Excerpts from Roger’s first opera, Amistad, (1977), dealing with the first instance in which slavery became an incident in the United States Supreme Court. Libretto by Virginia Artist and Roger Ames. Commissioned by the Board of Homeland Ministries and awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant.   Abraham’s Land, a new musical by Roger Ames with book and lyrics by Lauren Goldman Marshall, was scheduled to premiere in 2020 and has been postponed to summer 2021 due to the pandemic. “Set against the backdrop of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict during the time of the First Intifada, and framed by the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Abraham’s Land tells a story of atonement.” Learn more: abrahamslandmusical.com.   A note on En Mis Palabras personnel and casting: “Touring artists,” a term you may have heard during the interview, refers to the singers, instrumentalists and production staff who perform as part of our year-round education programs. Most shows, including En Mis Palabras, are cast with multiple artists in each role so that Central City Opera is able to best serve our communities from a scheduling perspective. The artists you’ll meet in these episodes are just a few of the many current and past cast members of the show!   We’d be remiss if we did not introduce Emily and Steven’s dog, Millie, who made a cameo at the end of the interview. To paint a picture for our podcast audiences, she’s some ambiguous and adorable combination of beagle, basset hound, lab and corgi.  This episode features musical excerpts from our 2008 archival recording of En Mis Palabras:   Composer, Roger Ames  Librettist, Jeffrey Gilden   Ana Maria, Jennifer DeDominici   Rodolfo, Adam Sattley   Esteban, Steven Taylor   Abuela, Leslie Remmert Soich  Piano, Deborah Schmit-Lobis  Guitar, Rick Chinisci   

Join Mae Elise Cannon as she discusses the 70 year conflict between Palestine and Israel. That's where Combatants of Peace comes in - a group of Palestinians and Israelis, urging the region to seek peace. Mae talks with Sulaiman Khatib and Tuly Flint of Combatants of Peace about what those of us across the world can do to aid those most affected by this ongoing conflict. RESOURCES: Guests for the episode:  Palestinian peace activist - Sulaiman (or Suli) Khatib Israeli peace activist - Tuly Flint Organizations: Combatants for Peace (CFP) Memorial Day Information CFP Twitter CFP Facebook Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) Global Immersion Project The Parents Circle - Families Forum (PCFF) Background Information/Articles: The Palestinian Faction Fatah: A Primer - NPR Military Detention - Defense for Children International - Palestine Second Lebanon War - Israeli Defense Forces Timeline: Lebanon Conflict - Al Jazeera Operation Protective Edge - Israeli Defense Forces Gaza: The Last Picture - Al Jazeera Gaza conflict 2014: 'War crimes by both sides' - UN - BBC News Films/TV/Webinars: Disturbing the Peace - The “Combatants for Peace,” a group of Palestinians and Israelis working together to promote human rights and peace for all, are the only bi-partisan, nonviolent activist group of enemy combatants working together in an ongoing armed conflict in the world today. They are an inspiring modern day example of the importance of using nonviolent solutions to our conflicts.  Faith and Activism. Freedom or Oppression. A Pilgrimage to Peace (P2P) Event. - Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) Our Boys - Filmed in Israel, the HBO series, Our Boys is based on the true events which led to the outbreak of war in Gaza. The series follows the investigation of Mohammed Abu Khdeir's murder and tells the story of all those involved, Jews and Arabs alike, whose lives were forever changed by these events. Schindler's List - Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler who managed to save about 1100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp.  Just Vision Increasing the power and reach of Palestinians and Israelis working to end the occupation and build a future of freedom, dignity, and equality for all.  The Wanted 18 - In the award-winning documentary The Wanted 18, directors Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan bring to life a remarkable story of nonviolent resistance during the First Intifada.

Rabbi Binny Freedman is a highly engaging and inspirational educator who has a gift for synthesizing difficult, sophisticated material in a way that inspires both the novice and the scholar. His proficiency in applying classic Jewish concepts to contemporary life in a personal and meaningful way has made him a sought after speaker throughout North America and around the world.This Shiur was given in the Yeshiva Orayta,where Rabbi Freedman serves as Rosh YeshivaThe Rabbi suggests a rationale for the chaos that has engulfed the world.He suggests that God has given us a pause-a two week long Shabbat to help change our ways and enhance our attitudes.Rav Binny illustrates this with one of his stirring battlefield stories taken from the First Intifada from 1988.We thank the Orayta Yeshivah for the use of this material-Check out more Shiurim and information on their websitehttps://www.orayta.org/Please leave us a review or comment at ravkiv@gmail.comfor more information on this podcast visityeshivaofnewark.jewishpodcasts.org See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This podcast is powered by JewishPodcasts.org. Start your own podcast today and share your content with the world. Click jewishpodcasts.fm/signup to get started.

Rabbi Binny Freedman is a highly engaging and inspirational educator who has a gift for synthesizing difficult, sophisticated material in a way that inspires both the novice and the scholar. His proficiency in applying classic Jewish concepts to contemporary life in a personal and meaningful way has made him a sought after speaker throughout North America and around the world.This Shiur was given in the Yeshiva Orayta,where Rabbi Freedman serves as Rosh YeshivaThe Rabbi suggests a rationale for the chaos that has engulfed the world.He suggests that God has given us a pause-a two week long Shabbat to help change our ways and enhance our attitudes.Rav Binny illustrates this with one of his stirring battlefield stories taken from the First Intifada from 1988.We thank the Orayta Yeshivah for the use of this material-Check out more Shiurim and information on their websitehttps://www.orayta.org/Please leave us a review or comment at ravkiv@gmail.comfor more information on this podcast visityeshivaofnewark.jewishpodcasts.org See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On April 22nd, 1991, a young Palestinian named Saed Bannoura was shot 6 times by IDF soldiers — but he refused to die.

John Metaxas speaks with Michael Rosenblum, the self-proclaimed "Father of Videojournalism" who has trained more than 40,000 VJs and built VJ-driven networks worldwide. In a wide-ranging talk on the history of media, Michael recounts his career, from his time living with and covering a Palestinian family in Gaza during the First Intifada to his current quest to use modern media for the common good.

May 15th marks the 70th anniversary of Israel's statehood. Palestinians refer to this as the Nakba, the Catastrophe, when more than 700,000 Palestinians left their homes from fear or were forcibly removed by Israelis who took their homes. On this 70th anniversary of the occupation, the people of Gaza have been staging a non-violent demonstration, The Great March of Returnthat culminates Tuesday the 15th. According to the Middle Eastern Monitor, "The demonstrations of the Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege started on 30 March 2018. Since then Israeli forces have killed 53 demonstrators and wounded more than 8,500 others." On this special edition of the Beloved Community, John Shuck's guests will speak about the ongoing Nakba for the people of Palestine and Gaza from their unique perspectives. Waddah Sofan was shot and paralyzed by Israeli soldiers during the First Intifada in 1989. Waddah lives in Portland and considers himself "part of Palestinian/American, Muslim, Middle Eastern, people of color and disabled communities." Gilad Atzmon, is a British Jazz artist and author. Gilad was born in Israel in 1963 and trained at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (Composition and Jazz). Gilad writes on political matters, social issues,  Jewish identity and culture. He will be in Portland for a jazz concert May 14th and a talk on Truthfulness May 15th. Retired Episcopal priest, Richard Toll, also of Portland, is president of the Board of Trustees of Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA). Rev. Toll received an honorary doctorate from the Church Divinity School of the School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California for his  commitment to justice and peace in the Holy Land.

On this episode, we took a look back at the First Intifada following its 30th anniversary. We spoke with Mezna Qato (Palestinian activist & academic) about the history of the First Intifada, it’s legacy, and how it can help us better understand our present moment. Show Notes: https://www.treyfpodcast.com/2018/02/23/first_intifada/

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is an internationally-recognized human rights crime—but those being impacted are harshly punished for not only acts of resistance, but even mere advocacy for their rights. Getting detailed facts about Israel’s imposition of Military Law in the West Bank, Abby Martin visits the the Ramallah offices of Addameer—the most prominent prisoners’ rights organizations in Palestine—for a shocking investigation into the use of Israeli jails and arbitrary laws as a weapon. Chronicling this history of resistance and repression from the First Intifada through the 2015 uprising, this episode shows what brutal lengths the Israeli occupation will go to silence any and all advocacy for freedom. FOLLOW // http://twitter.com/empirefiles LIKE // http://facebook.com/theempirefiles

“Culture is the only human practice that can actually dig into the root of a trauma and try to undo it in the first place. And this is why people are so afraid of culture, and in particular theatre. ‘Cause when there’s a human being in front of you having an experience, it’s very difficult to ignore them. It’s hard to ignore a play.” — Dan Fishback Dan Fishback and Motaz Malhees both made waves in the New York theater scene this fall with plays about Palestine. Motaz performed with the Freedom Theatre of Jenin in "The Siege," at the NYU Skirball Center. Meanwhile, Dan's play "Rubble Rubble" was abruptly and controversially cancelled by the American Jewish Historical Society. In this joint interview, Dan and Motaz talk about their work, and explain why culture is their weapon of choice against the injustices of the occupation. This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Max Freedman. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded at The 'cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York on November 6, 2017. Edited for length and clarity by Ilana Levinson.  Photo credit: Sammy Tunis Dan Fishback is a playwright, performer, musician, and director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. His musical “The Material World” was called one of the Top Ten Plays of 2012 by Time Out New York. His play “You Will Experience Silence” was called “sassier and more fun than 'Angels in America'” by the Village Voice. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback has released several albums and toured Europe and North America, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread. Other theater works include “Waiting for Barbara” (New Museum, 2013), “thirtynothing” (Dixon Place, 2011) and “No Direction Homo” (P.S. 122, 2006). As director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, Fishback curates and organizes a range of festivals, workshops and public events, including the annual series, “La MaMa’s Squirts.” Fishback has received grants for his theater work from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He has been a resident artist at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where he has developed all of his theater work since 2010. Fishback is a proud member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artist Council. He is currently developing two new musicals, “Rubble Rubble” and “Water Signs,” and will release a new album by Cheese On Bread in 2018. Motaz Malhees is a Palestinian actor born in 1992. He received his professional training in Stanislavsky, Brecht and Shakespeare at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp (Palestine), and in Commedia dell’Arte at Theatre Hotel Courage in Amsterdam (Holland). Motaz has trained with internationally acclaimed directors such as Juliano Mer-Khamis and Nabil Al-Raee (The Freedom Theatre), Di Trevis (Royal Shakespeare Company), Thomas Ostermeier (Schaubühne Theatre), and Katrien van Beurden (Theatre Hotel Courage). His stage credits with The Freedom Theatre include: “Alice in Wonderland” (2011), “What Else – Sho Kman?” (2011), Pinter’s “The Caretaker” (2012), “Freaky Boy” (2012), “Courage, Ouda, Courage” (2013), “Suicide Note from Palestine” (2014), “Power/Poison” (2014), and most recently “The Siege” at the NYU Skirball Center. Motaz has also acted in films, including: “Think Out of the Box” (2014, dir. Mohammad Dasoqe), which screened in Palestine, Germany and Mexico; and “Past Tense Continuous” (2014, dir. Dima Hourani). As a versatile actor, Motaz has performed in multilingual plays as well as in scripted, devised, physical, epic and fantasy theatre. Motaz also produces and performs in short films about social issues in Palestine, which have received a wide following on social media platforms. Having grown up in Palestine, and experienced the economic and political hardships of life under occupation, Motaz has been actively interested in acting since he was nine years old. He lives through theatre, and believes in the potential of art to transform people’s ideas and lives. REFERENCES "Arna's Children" (dir. Juliano Mer-Khamis, 2004) "The Life and Death of Juliano Mer-Khamis" (Adam Shatz, London Review of Books, November 2013) "Center for Jewish History Chief Comes Under Fierce Attack By Right-Wingers" (Josh Nathan-Kazis, Forward, September 6, 2017) "Jewish Center Faces Backlash After Canceling Play Criticized as Anti-Israel" (Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times_, _October 11, 2017) Program note by Oskar Eustis for "The Siege" at NYU Skirball Center (October 2017) Indiegogo campaign for Dan Fishback's "Rubble Rubble" "Return to Palestine"(The Freedom Theatre, 2016) in Arabic without subtitles Theatre of the Oppressed NYC Housing Works  "All Your Sisters" (Cheese On Bread, 2017) danfishback.com @motazmalhees thefreedomtheatre.org TRANSCRIPT DAN: So many people warned me against making work like this. And yeah, I got canceled, but in the process, I have tremendously powerful friends now that I didn't make before. MOTAZ: Doesn't it make you stronger after they cancel it? DAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah. MOTAZ: Didn't it make you more like want to do it? DAN: Oh, yeah. MOTAZ: That's a good thing, then.   [MUSIC: Unsettled theme by Nat Rosenzweig]   MAX: Welcome to Unsettled. My name is Max Freedman, I’m one of the producers of Unsettled and your host for today’s episode. Now when I’m not working on this podcast, I’m a theater artist, and I know how hard it can be to make a life in the theater and get your work out there. However hard you think it is, imagine you’re trying to tell stories about the occupied West Bank. Enter Dan Fishback and Motaz Malhees. Dan and Motaz both made waves in the New York theater scene this fall with plays about Palestine. Motaz was in New York performing with the Freedom Theatre of Jenin in “The Siege,” a play about the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, during the Second Intifada. Dan, on the other hand, made waves because of a play that didn’t happen, rather than one that did. His play, “Rubble Rubble,” was supposed to go up at the American Jewish Historical Society, but they cancelled it. I’ll let him tell you why -- and what happened next. Dan and Motaz didn’t know each other before, but I had the privilege to get them in the same room to talk about their work and as you’ll hear, they had a lot in common. In preparation for this interview, I dug through years of old journals and found my entry from the day I first met Motaz, when I was in Jenin, three summers ago. Really big and underlined a few times, I had written two words: CULTURAL RESISTANCE. So that’s our theme for today. Quick note: besides the three of us, at one point you’ll hear the voice of my co-producer Ilana Levinson. I think that’s all you need to know, so, let’s get started!   MAX: Welcome to Unsettled. Uh, why don't you start by introducing yourselves? MOTAZ: Eh, first of all I am so happy to be here with you guys that's before I introduce myself. I am Motaz Malhees, so I am an actor from Palestine, I used to work with the Freedom Theatre since 2010. I do a lot of politics theatre but also the same time I do also for community, I do like for kids show. But I feel like, whatever needs, I give, like...it’s not important the type of theatre I do. But nowadays I'm freelance, and I work like with all theatres in Palestine, my country, because I don't want to be just involved with one place -- even that's I always say that the Freedom Theatre, that's my place and my home. DAN: I’m Dan Fishback, I’m a...I make performance and music and theatre in New York, I’ve been here since 2003 -- I don't know, what do you want to know? MAX: Where’d you grow up? DAN: Oh my gosh! I grew up in a pretty normal American Reform Jewish family, outside Washington, DC in Maryland. In a family that...was essentially a liberal Zionist family, although I don't think they would have necessary articulated themselves like that, they just imagine themselves being normal. And I heard growing up, “If only the Palestinians were nonviolent, then they would get what they want. Because they're asking for something reasonable, but it's because they're violent that things are problem....that that's the reason why there's a problem.” And like, the older people around me as I was growing up were always saying, “If only there was a Palestinian Gandhi” -- that was like the refrain, over and over again. And now I find myself 36 years old, going back to my communities and being like, “There’s this huge non-violent Palestinian movement! And it’s international and we can be part of it, it’s boycott, and blah blah blah.” And everyone’s like, “Oh no, no no, this makes us uncomfortable too.” I'm like, “This is what you were begging for my whole childhood! And now it’s here! Why aren’t you excited? Why aren't you as excited as I am?” That’s where I’m from. MOTAZ: That’s cool. DAN: And it’s an honor to be here with Motaz, whose performance in “The Siege” was absolutely amazing. MOTAZ: We not sure, but there is like people who really want to bring it back to the U.S. again, because it was a really successful show like for the Skirball Theatre, even like they almost sold out. MAX: Let me back you up a second, because, I want you to imagine that I have never heard of “The Siege,” have never heard of the Freedom Theatre. Can you tell me -- tell me what it was, tell me what it is. MOTAZ: “The Siege” it's a story about the invasion happened in 2002 in Palestine. There was like eh...invasion for the whole West Bank: in Jenin, in Nablus, all the cities. Like, one of them was Bethlehem, and in Bethlehem there was like a group of fighters, freedom fighters, who fight and defend back from their homeland. They have like many guns defending themselves, and they have in the other side -- the Israeli side -- there is tanks, Apache, Jeeps, all kind of guns you can imagine your life, heavy guns. And they were like around 45 fighters, 250, 245 civilian -- priests, nuns, children, women, and men, from both different religions -- who’s like stuck inside the Nativity Church for 39 days. With the like first five days they have food, after that they have no food. And they surrounded with around 60,000 soldiers from the Israeli army. They want, like, to finish it. So they, they have pressure, they don't wanna -- even the fighters, says khalas, it’s enough. Their people are suffering, their families are suffering outside because of that. So, they sent them like a paper, they have to write their names, the number of their IDs they have, and their signature. So, the fighters sign on it, and they know that's thirteen going to Europe and twenty-five are going to Gaza. They don't know even where they going. So, they sent them to exile the same day. DAN: When my friends and I were leaving the theatre, all we were talking about is, we were so curious about what their lives would be like after fifteen years of exile and we couldn’t wrap our minds around it. MOTAZ: I know one of them is personally, and he told me a lot about it. And it’s really important to bring this piece because of one reason: they didn't choose. Even they signed the paper that say they have to go to exile, but like they was under pressure, and they thought it's temporary and that they would return. And eh, I know how much they are really broken from inside. They never show this to people.But from inside, if you know them personally, they are really broken, and they just...all they want, just to see like at least their families. Some of them, they can’t. Their family, like they can't get the visa to go to visit them -- like, for example, the two guys, Rami Kamel, and Jihadi Jaara who living in Dublin, they haven't seen their families at all. One of them, like Jihadi he have a son that's his wife give birth like after one week he was sent to exile. He didn't even touch his son, he's fifteen years old, like...at least, like, okay, you don't want to send him back to Palestine. Let his family visit him! Like, this is the minimum of humanity. And eh...a really important point we have like always to say: those people was in their homeland, they was in their own city, and they fight back. They didn't went to...yeah, to Tel Aviv to fight, or to somewhere inside Israel, to fight the people over there. They was fighting the…defending themselves from the Israeli army. MAX: How did you get started with the Freedom Theatre? MOTAZ: Woo hoo! Since I was like, eh…fourteen I heard about it, or thirteen -- and I was dreaming about to be in there cause I’m, since like eight, nine, I start doing acting. It's like something I really love from inside, like I really really want to be an actor. Not because like I wanted a name. Because I can hold the stories, I can share stories for all over the world, I enjoy it, it's something beautiful and strong in the same time. So when I was sixteen, I heard about the hip-hop workshop, dance hip-hop workshop in the Freedom Theatre. So I went there and I apply for it, and I get involved with the workshop, and the last few days Juliano just came and he said, “We open a new class for theatre.”   MAX: Juliano, who Motaz just mentioned, is Juliano Mer Khamis, who started what is today, the Freedom Theatre. Real quick, I want to tell you the remarkable story of the Freedom Theatre of Jenin. During the First Intifada, Juliano’s mother, a Jewish Israeli Communist named Arna Mer, came to Jenin, where she helped to establish housing and educational programs for children in the refugee camp there -- and eventually a children’s theatre called The Stone. Arna died of cancer in 1995, and during the Second Intifada, the Stone Theatre was destroyed. Arna’s son Juliano returned to Jenin for the first time since his mother’s death in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Jenin, and made an incredible film called "Arna’s Children" -- Motaz will tell you more about this in a bit, but it’s on YouTube and I highly recommend it. It was after finishing this film that Juliano returned again to Jenin to found the Freedom Theatre. In 2011, Juliano was assassinated, but the Freedom Theatre has persisted. Alright -- back to Motaz.   MOTAZ: So I get involved and I put myself in that place since 2010. And it’s been like around...now, now you could say like eight years almost. It is...hard and eh, good in the same time. It is, ‘cause you face emotion, a lot of different emotion. But I love it. It's like, it’s become my home now. I’m always there. Even if I have nothing, I go pass by drinking coffee there like, chill, see what's going on, if they need help or something, because I'm part of the family. MAX: Well we met because I went to visit the Freedom Theatre. And you were just hanging around and we sat there and talked for an hour. MOTAZ: Yeah yeah. MAX: Alright, so, Dan. DAN: Yeah. MAX: Tell me about your work and particularly tell me about “Rubble Rubble” and the genesis of that project. MOTAZ: I wanna hear about it. DAN: Well I've been working for the past decade on a trilogy of plays that sort of explore the inner life of the Jewish left in the United States over the past century. And this last play, “Rubble Rubble,” which I've been developing for the past few years, starts in the West Bank in an Israeli settlement. And you find this family that I've been writing plays about -- which is a very far leftist socialist radical family -- you see that that family has split off, and there's like a right-wing side of the family that has become settlers. And the left-wing anti-Zionist member of their family travels to visit them, after they haven’t spoken in twenty years. MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: And the family confronts each other over his huge chasm, where one person is like a Palestinian solidarity BDS supporter and the rest of the family are like... MOTAZ: Pro-Israel. DAN: They're like settlers! Like living on stolen land, even though, but they’re middle aged American Jews who in the sixties were like radical New Left, you know, people. I’m fascinated by how many American-Israeli Jews were like super far on the left in the United States and then became these horrible oppressors in Israel. It blows my mind that it's possible to make that transition within the course of one life. And so, and that's where the play starts, and um…and I've been developing it for a few years, I went to Israel-Palestine to research for the play, I spent two weeks with interfaith peace builders traveling all through the West Bank and meeting with different non violent Palestinian and Israeli activists. I spent a week interviewing settlers, which was extremely disturbing. Um, and then I’ve been developing this play, and it was gonna have its first public reading at the American Jewish Historical Society in Manhattan and, um, a couple weeks ago -- I guess now around a month ago -- we went to their offices for a meeting and everything was very positive, they were very excited to have us, the staff was very supportive of the work. And we heard that there was a right-wing smear campaign against the organization's new CEO. And we were told, “This is all happening but don't let it bother you. We might have to cancel that other thing, but we're not going to cancel your play, because we, we're really excited about it.” And literally the conversation we had was about raising the budget for our play. Eight hours later, I got an email saying that the play had been canceled. MOTAZ: What? Was there any explanation about it? DAN: Well, I knew that it was... The institution itself never sent me like a formal letter or anything, but I knew that it was because of this right-wing Zionist pressure campaign that they were being pressured to fire their new CEO, and in order to try to get rid of that critique, they were just going to get rid of us. And the staff of the American Jewish Historical Society was very supportive of me, and I don't see them as my enemies at all. It was the board of directors, or at least a small group from the board, met in the middle of the night and made this decision. And this is what happens all the time in Jewish organizations: the people actually doing work are willing to make brave choices, and the people who are funding that work are not willing to let anyone make those choices. MOTAZ: Yeah yeah yeah, this happened with the same thing almost with us. DAN: Yeah, at the Public, right? MOTAZ: Yeah yeah yeah, it's almost the same, I like, I don't know who’s stand with us or who is against us, but we had this question for Oskar, which is the Artistic Director of the Public Theater, and his answer was really diplomatic answer and I respect -- no Oskar, he’s really great guy and he was one of the supporters to bring this play over here, and the most important thing, he says, that's to bring “The Siege” for the New Yorker people and we did it. It’s not about the place. DAN: Well, that was interesting about Oskar Eustis and “The Siege,” is that it was supposed to be at the Public Theater, the board canceled that choice. But Oskar, who is the Artistic Director of the Public Theater, he had notes in the program for “The Siege” production at the Skirball Center. And I was like, this is so unusual that you open the program and you see notes from the director of the theatre that canceled the play! MOTAZ: Yeah yeah. But, I want to hear more about Dan play, man. DAN: Sure, yeah. MOTAZ: I would like to know what is the story? DAN: Well, I can tell you about the story of what happens in the play, but what I also want to say is that, after we were canceled, the New York theatre world became incredibly supportive of us. And people really came out of nowhere to offer support and offer help. We raised our budget that had been canceled from American Jewish Historical Society within three days. MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: Yeah. And we were offered resources that we couldn't have ever imagined. And to me, that was a huge sign that the people who are trying to censor dissident voices around Israel-Palestine are going to fail in humiliation. Because our work is stronger than ever after having been canceled, because people are so angry about it. People who are, who don't really know very much about it, are angry about it. And there are left-wing Zionists in my life who don't agree with me, but who are so angry that the play was canceled -- and it’s put them in a situation where they are more open to my ideas, and more open to considering the ideas of the play. So, I mean -- and we’re going to do the reading of the play, it's going happen next year, the details aren't confirmed, but it's going to be bigger and more interesting and more spectacular than it would have been if it hadn’t been canceled in the first place. Which is interesting. The play itself -- it’s funny because the people who canceled it never read it. And it's weird, like if they read it I think they'd be like, “Oh, this is weird.” It's a weird play. The first act is like a very traditional living room drama in a family. So, there's the aunt and uncle, who are middle-aged formerly left-wing radical American Jews who live in a settlement. There's their radical nephew, who shares my politics but is not a sympathetic person. He’s kind of...nasty and annoying and neurotic. And he’s there with his partner who’s Colombian and has no context for any of this. So I really wanted there to be a character who doesn't really have any stake in the game, doesn't have any history with Israel-Palestine, just comes from another part of the world entirely, but who has...a personal history of violence. Because he grew up in a part of Colombia that experienced a lot of violence. Whereas, I think a lot of white American Jews, violence, revolution, all these ideas are abstract concepts, and we don't experience them in our real lives. So he's coming at -- that character, who in a way is the central character of the play -- is coming at things from a totally different context. And I don't want to give anything away, but by the end of the first act, things go horribly wrong, and the first act ends with an enormous disaster. And the second act begins, and it's a musical, and it takes place in Moscow in 1905. And it's the same family, but a century before, and the matriarch of the family is building bombs for the socialist revolution of 1905. MOTAZ: So it’s almost flashback? DAN: It’s like a flash -- it's like an ancestral flashback. MOTAZ: That’s interesting. DAN: So you see the ancestor of the same family, and she's like a socialist revolutionary. She's building a bomb, she wants to like blow up the Tsar. And...and the ideas of the first act are sort of filtered through the music of the second act, where you see her with her socialist comrades. And what I want to ask is: How did this family go from here to there? How did it get from one place to the other? And, and the other question that I'm really interested in asking is like: Once you learn that there's an enormous injustice around you, how far are you willing to go to stop it from happening? How much violence are you willing to accept in order to stop something? Which is a huge question, I think, for anti-Zionist Jews when it comes to Palestine, like how...what are we supposed to do, knowing this horrible thing is going on? It's a huge question within Palestinian society, obviously, like what are you willing to do to stop this from happening? And it’s been a huge question throughout Jewish political history, which is full of violent resistance to injustice, and we act like were so horrified by violence, but Jewish history is full of it. So, those are the questions that I'm dealing with, and I don't think that the play offers any straightforward answers. And that's the interesting thing about the play being canceled or censored, is that the play itself is about what happens when two sides of a Jewish family can't communicate, and shun each other. And that’s what’s happened with the play, that we were being shunned just like family members are being shunned. And when I was in Israel, researching the play, and I would tell people what the play was about -- you know, it's about a Jewish family that's separated over Israel, and the Israeli side doesn't talk to the American side -- and every single person I talked to was like, “Oh, that's just like my family. That's my family, that happened to us.” And I was like, oh, right. This is bad for everybody. This destroys families, this injustice is destroying everybody involved in it. MOTAZ: Yeah, I mean like, even if it’s happened, like something like, my grandparents, whatever it takes place, I will not do the same thing in a different place. DAN: Right? This is the big Jewish catastrophe of the twentieth century, that you take one of two decisions, right? You either, you take all the trauma and you say, “This will never happen to us again, and we will do anything to protect us.” Or you say, “This will never happen to anyone again.” MOTAZ: What, like, Jewish used to live in Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, many Arab countries, there was normal to see like this Muslim, Christian and a Jewish neighbor and eh, like an atheist beside him, and all of them are living in the Arab world like normally, like -- let's be honest, even though the Arab history is not clear, like there is many bad things from the Arab history also like... But eh, we used to live like together, so the thing is not religion. I don’t believe it’s religion, it’s mentality. It’s... DAN: I was talking, I was having an argument in a restaurant a couple years ago with a Zionist Jew, and we were fighting really passionately. And someone, a stranger came up to our table and said, “Guys, stop fighting about this. It's an ancient struggle that's been going on thousands of years.” And we both looked at him, both of us agreed, we were like, “No, it isn't! This is new, this is in the past like less than 200 years that this has happened, come on.” We were like, “Go sit down. Finish your lunch, hon. Get out of our faces.” There's so many lies about it. But this is...I feel like this is the work, this is the cultural work of American Jewishness right now. We've been brought up with such a distorted understanding of the world. And it's gonna take so much cultural work to undo it all. MOTAZ: Yeah, and it's gonna make a lot of enemies at the same time. DAN: Oh yeah. But I think my situation proves that it's also gonna get…it's not gonna be completely a disaster. You know, everyone -- so many people warned me against making work like this. And yeah, I got canceled, but in the process, I have tremendously powerful friends now that I didn't make before. MOTAZ: Doesn't it make you stronger after they cancel it? DAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah. MOTAZ: Didn't it make you more like want to do it? DAN: Oh, yeah. MOTAZ: That's a good thing, then. Okay, what’s the next question? MAX: So, for both of you, why is culture your weapon of choice? MOTAZ: Woo hoo! Because eh… Dan, you go ahead. DAN: ‘Cause its more powerful! Like…violence only ever creates more violence. I think this, like, even when it's necessary, it ends up being true. Culture is the only human practice that can actually dig into the root of a trauma and try to undo it in the first place. Um, and this is why people are so afraid of culture, and in particular theatre. ‘Cause when there's a human being in front of you having an experience, it’s very difficult to ignore them. It's hard to ignore a play. And, and so many…especially, so many American Zionist Jews are under -- on an emotional level, understand that their perspective is impossible. ‘Cause if you ask most American Jews, “Do you believe that it is right for a country to privilege one ethno-religious group over others?” Most of them will say, “No, that’s wrong. That is a wrong thing.” And then you say, “Well, what about Israel?” and they'll go, “Uhhhhhh…” But the fundamental truth, the deeper truth is that none of us actually support this. It's, the the support for Israel is the more superficial belief. The deeper belief is that this is wrong. Good plays, good art, good visual art, good music, good anything about this will help strip away the sort of superficial attachment to the, to the story of Israel, and help people get to the deeper belief that supremacy is wrong. No matter who is supreme in any given situation, it will always be wrong. ILANA: Sorry, I just wanna um, in the conversation about Zionism, I’m wondering... DAN: Do you want me to define that? ILANA: Yeah, I’m wondering specifically if you think any form of Zionism involves supremacy and that kind of thing. DAN: You know, I identify as an anti-Zionist Jew, and a lot of people, a lot of people will say, “Oh, don't say that, because it’s icky, it makes us uncomfortable to say you're anti-Zionist. Because, 'cause what does that really mean.” And for me, if it was the early 1900s, maybe I would have identified as like a Cultural Zionist. But to me, the way the word Zionism functions in the world, it’s support for a Jewish state of Israel. And to me, that means that Zionism inherently requires one to believe that Jews should reign supreme in this land, and I think that that's an untenable option. MAX: I…I sort of wanna respond. DAN: You wanna get into it, Max? MAX: No, I don't -- no, I don’t wanna argue with you…that's not… I will confess that I am skeptical of people who call themselves anti-Zionists who are not Jewish and not Palestinian. I... DAN:  Yeah yeah yeah, me too. I think that part of the, part of what it means to liberate Jews in the world, is to liberate us from our trauma, and to liberate us from that pain that…that distracts us from the reality of the world. And that requires our friends to help us get through that trauma, and to help us liberate ourselves from that trauma, and that requires non-Jewish people who oppose Zionism to make sure that we are emotionally capable of, um, of joining with them and being in community with them. And to me that's always like a challenge to my non-Jewish friends and comrades to be like, if we’re gonna do this together you need to understand that we’re…we just barely made it alive into this century, and a lot of us have like legitimate fears for our lives. I mean, we’re living in the United States where there's like a Nazi problem, right? Like our fear of violence is real and legitimate and um, when people say there's like no anti-semitism on the left in the United States, to me that's like so foolish. Like obviously, there's some anti-semitism in any part of the world, in any community. MOTAZ: Of course, of course…that's true. DAN: And when we pretend it doesn't exist, then we’re...I think we make so many other Jews feel unsafe joining us in this movement, because we're saying something that's obviously untrue and they don't trust us ‘cause it sounds like we’re lying to them. From my perspective, we need to say it: yeah, there's totally some anti-semitism on the left. And we need to deal with it, and our non-Jewish comrades need to deal with it, so that we can see that this is a safe place for us to be. MOTAZ: Nobody called you before, like you are anti-semitic after all the things you did? DAN: Oh yeah. MOTAZ: And you are Jewish. DAN: Oh yeah. Motaz, I need to tell you, I've gotten a lot of hate mail in my life and it's never as aggressive as other Jews. They’re the ones that tell me I should die. What they always say is, “You should go to Palestine, where they’d kill you.” They say this all the time, and I’m like, “I’ve been to Palestine, dude!” MOTAZ: So if some of the guys gonna hear this interview, Dan, you more than welcome in my house in Jenin. Nobody gonna kill you, you gonna love it. So come back to the first question? MAX: Yes, yes, finally... MOTAZ: Why cultural... Because I'm fed up. I have seen like many people got killed in this entire world since I was born. And see blood everywhere, why it’s need to be violent? Why that question? Why don't we turn the opposite question: why we have to be violent? Because it's like, we fed up, we are like, we are human. There is many people that think, like, “Oh, they was born like this.” No, they was not born like this. There is something happen to them. Like, if you watch there is a really important and good movie, it’s called “Arna’s Children,” Little kids, he talking about this story a lot, little kids. And they was dreaming about to be a Romeo of Palestine, them want to be Juliet, one of them he want to be Al Pacino. They wanna be actors. Suddenly, in a moment in 2002, you see those people got killed. And they became a freedom fighter before. Why? One of them his mother got killed by a sniper. One of them, after they bomb a school, he went to the school and he grabbed the body of a girl and she was almost alive, while he was running through the hospital, she died. So, his...of course he was gonna have a flip in his mind, and he gonna hold the gun and fight. So those people, they didn't like came from nothing. There is a reason always to do this. Even like I'm not into like guns or things, that's why I choose also art because I believe art is more stronger than a gun. And I don’t want to see any person on earth suffer. Like death is coming anyway, like you gonna die, but why we have to kill each other? Destroying, destroying. Like, I can make art which is strong, I can bring the messages, not just from my place, from all over the world and develop it to the stage. And eh… I think it's, let's make it, let's be cultural more. Let's let the art talk. And eh, we not gonna fake history, we not gonna fake stories, we gonna bring the story as it is. DAN: And this is why they’re so afraid of theatre. MOTAZ: Yeah! DAN: Because theatre shows the reasons why a person does something, and they don't wanna look at the reasons. MOTAZ: Man, I start to believe in this thing in 2012. I was going to the theatre in a taxi and there was checkpoint, and they stop me. ‘Cause I have no ID. I told him, like “I’m late for my theatre.” And he said, “Oh, you’re going to the Freedom Theatre.” He said like, “Come on man, they killed Juliano, they could kill you too.” And I said like “Why?” He said like, “Art will not change anything man. Why you need it?” And I said, “It's fine, for you it's nothing, but for me...” And he told me, “If you don't have your ID next time, you go to prison. And I promise you.” So since that time I just realize how much art is strong, and how much they afraid from art.   MAX: Here’s Motaz in a scene from “Return to Palestine,” devised by graduates of the Freedom Theatre acting school. [Excerpt from "Return to Palestine," in Arabic]   MAX: So, the work I do here in New York City is mostly with an organization called Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. MOTAZ: Yeah, I know. MAX: Where I work with a lot of different groups of people. Right now I’m working at Housing Works, which is an organization that um…I think this is the blurb from their website, “works to end the twin crises of HIV/AIDS and homelessness.” MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: Easy. MAX: Yeah, right? I’m working with a group of folks from Housing Works on a play that they created about their experiences trying to keep and get affordable housing, with housing vouchers that they have because of their status. And… that’s just one example, I’ve worked on a lot of plays, and the way that sometimes I think about what those plays are meant to do, is is kind of in two areas: there’s the sort of, I mean, the way that I talk about it with my family, which is very much in the kind of like raising awareness camp, in the sense that people come to see these plays, they don’t know anything about tenant harassment in New York City and they learn about it. And then, really what it was designed to do by the folks who came up with this stuff in Brazil in the seventies, which is to build capacity in that community. Um, these theater tools are tools for people to work together to make change. I’m wondering if that resonates with you at all, and sort of -- what do you see your work in theater doing? DAN: Obviously I like plays that do all of these things at the same time. MOTAZ: Yeah. DAN: But, as a playwright, if you go into a project with too much of a vision of like what kind of responses you want from your audience -- an audience knows when you’re trying to manipulate them, and at the end of the day, an audience knows when something is authentic. So, being a playwright is about balancing your vision for what you want to happen in the room, and your relationship to your own imagination and your own impulses. MOTAZ: And the thing is like, if you don’t believe it, the actors will never believe it, then the audience will never believe it. DAN: Yeah, totally, and a lot of political theatre gets a bad rap, because I think a lot of political theatre is only thinking about, how can we make an impact with this audience? And it feels false. MOTAZ: I’m interested to know about, Dan, like -- normally, when you write, you give solution for the people? Or you give them a question to find the solution? DAN: I don’t give solutions, no. MOTAZ: You give a question. DAN: I give the questions. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. MOTAZ: Good, yeah. DAN: If I feel like I know concretely an answer to something, then I don’t need to write the play. I will just write an essay.   [MUSIC: Cheese on Bread, “All Your Sisters”]   MAX: Motaz had to leave, and I got to talk to Dan for a little while longer about the difference between boycott and censorship, and why he wants to start identifying as a “liberationist Jew.” If you’re not already subscribed, SUBSCRIBE to Unsettled on your podcatcher of choice -- because, in a couple weeks, you’ll get a bonus episode with the rest of our conversation. In the meantime, you can find Dan’s work at his website, danfishback.com, and follow Motaz on Instagram @motazmalhees, that’s M-O-T-A-Z-M-A-L-H-E-E-S. The song you’ve been hearing is "All Your Sisters" by Dan Fishback’s band, Cheese On Bread, from their forthcoming album "The One Who Wanted More,” coming out next year. You can find the song, a full transcript of the episode and other resources at our website, unsettledpod.com. Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Yoshi Fields, Ilana Levinson, and me. This episode was edited by Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. We recorded this episode in a studio for the first time -- shout out to Cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York. Go to our website, unsettledpod.com, for more show information. We want to bring you more content in more different forms, and to make that happen, we need your support! So you can become a monthly sustainer at Patreon.com/unsettled. You can like Unsettled on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, to make sure you never miss an episode of Unsettled.

“Culture is the only human practice that can actually dig into the root of a trauma and try to undo it in the first place. And this is why people are so afraid of culture, and in particular theatre. ‘Cause when there’s a human being in front of you having an experience, it’s very difficult to ignore them. It’s hard to ignore a play.” — Dan Fishback Dan Fishback and Motaz Malhees both made waves in the New York theater scene this fall with plays about Palestine. Motaz performed with the Freedom Theatre of Jenin in "The Siege," at the NYU Skirball Center. Meanwhile, Dan's play "Rubble Rubble" was abruptly and controversially cancelled by the American Jewish Historical Society. In this joint interview, Dan and Motaz talk about their work, and explain why culture is their weapon of choice against the injustices of the occupation. This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Max Freedman. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded at The 'cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York on November 6, 2017. Edited for length and clarity by Ilana Levinson.  Photo credit: Sammy Tunis Dan Fishback is a playwright, performer, musician, and director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. His musical “The Material World” was called one of the Top Ten Plays of 2012 by Time Out New York. His play “You Will Experience Silence” was called “sassier and more fun than 'Angels in America'” by the Village Voice. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback has released several albums and toured Europe and North America, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread. Other theater works include “Waiting for Barbara” (New Museum, 2013), “thirtynothing” (Dixon Place, 2011) and “No Direction Homo” (P.S. 122, 2006). As director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, Fishback curates and organizes a range of festivals, workshops and public events, including the annual series, “La MaMa’s Squirts.” Fishback has received grants for his theater work from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He has been a resident artist at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where he has developed all of his theater work since 2010. Fishback is a proud member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artist Council. He is currently developing two new musicals, “Rubble Rubble” and “Water Signs,” and will release a new album by Cheese On Bread in 2018. Motaz Malhees is a Palestinian actor born in 1992. He received his professional training in Stanislavsky, Brecht and Shakespeare at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp (Palestine), and in Commedia dell’Arte at Theatre Hotel Courage in Amsterdam (Holland). Motaz has trained with internationally acclaimed directors such as Juliano Mer-Khamis and Nabil Al-Raee (The Freedom Theatre), Di Trevis (Royal Shakespeare Company), Thomas Ostermeier (Schaubühne Theatre), and Katrien van Beurden (Theatre Hotel Courage). His stage credits with The Freedom Theatre include: “Alice in Wonderland” (2011), “What Else – Sho Kman?” (2011), Pinter’s “The Caretaker” (2012), “Freaky Boy” (2012), “Courage, Ouda, Courage” (2013), “Suicide Note from Palestine” (2014), “Power/Poison” (2014), and most recently “The Siege” at the NYU Skirball Center. Motaz has also acted in films, including: “Think Out of the Box” (2014, dir. Mohammad Dasoqe), which screened in Palestine, Germany and Mexico; and “Past Tense Continuous” (2014, dir. Dima Hourani). As a versatile actor, Motaz has performed in multilingual plays as well as in scripted, devised, physical, epic and fantasy theatre. Motaz also produces and performs in short films about social issues in Palestine, which have received a wide following on social media platforms. Having grown up in Palestine, and experienced the economic and political hardships of life under occupation, Motaz has been actively interested in acting since he was nine years old. He lives through theatre, and believes in the potential of art to transform people’s ideas and lives. REFERENCES "Arna's Children" (dir. Juliano Mer-Khamis, 2004) "The Life and Death of Juliano Mer-Khamis" (Adam Shatz, London Review of Books, November 2013) "Center for Jewish History Chief Comes Under Fierce Attack By Right-Wingers" (Josh Nathan-Kazis, Forward, September 6, 2017) "Jewish Center Faces Backlash After Canceling Play Criticized as Anti-Israel" (Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times_, _October 11, 2017) Program note by Oskar Eustis for "The Siege" at NYU Skirball Center (October 2017) Indiegogo campaign for Dan Fishback's "Rubble Rubble" "Return to Palestine"(The Freedom Theatre, 2016) in Arabic without subtitles Theatre of the Oppressed NYC Housing Works  "All Your Sisters" (Cheese On Bread, 2017) danfishback.com @motazmalhees thefreedomtheatre.org TRANSCRIPT DAN: So many people warned me against making work like this. And yeah, I got canceled, but in the process, I have tremendously powerful friends now that I didn't make before. MOTAZ: Doesn't it make you stronger after they cancel it? DAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah. MOTAZ: Didn't it make you more like want to do it? DAN: Oh, yeah. MOTAZ: That's a good thing, then.   [MUSIC: Unsettled theme by Nat Rosenzweig]   MAX: Welcome to Unsettled. My name is Max Freedman, I’m one of the producers of Unsettled and your host for today’s episode. Now when I’m not working on this podcast, I’m a theater artist, and I know how hard it can be to make a life in the theater and get your work out there. However hard you think it is, imagine you’re trying to tell stories about the occupied West Bank. Enter Dan Fishback and Motaz Malhees. Dan and Motaz both made waves in the New York theater scene this fall with plays about Palestine. Motaz was in New York performing with the Freedom Theatre of Jenin in “The Siege,” a play about the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, during the Second Intifada. Dan, on the other hand, made waves because of a play that didn’t happen, rather than one that did. His play, “Rubble Rubble,” was supposed to go up at the American Jewish Historical Society, but they cancelled it. I’ll let him tell you why -- and what happened next. Dan and Motaz didn’t know each other before, but I had the privilege to get them in the same room to talk about their work and as you’ll hear, they had a lot in common. In preparation for this interview, I dug through years of old journals and found my entry from the day I first met Motaz, when I was in Jenin, three summers ago. Really big and underlined a few times, I had written two words: CULTURAL RESISTANCE. So that’s our theme for today. Quick note: besides the three of us, at one point you’ll hear the voice of my co-producer Ilana Levinson. I think that’s all you need to know, so, let’s get started!   MAX: Welcome to Unsettled. Uh, why don't you start by introducing yourselves? MOTAZ: Eh, first of all I am so happy to be here with you guys that's before I introduce myself. I am Motaz Malhees, so I am an actor from Palestine, I used to work with the Freedom Theatre since 2010. I do a lot of politics theatre but also the same time I do also for community, I do like for kids show. But I feel like, whatever needs, I give, like...it’s not important the type of theatre I do. But nowadays I'm freelance, and I work like with all theatres in Palestine, my country, because I don't want to be just involved with one place -- even that's I always say that the Freedom Theatre, that's my place and my home. DAN: I’m Dan Fishback, I’m a...I make performance and music and theatre in New York, I’ve been here since 2003 -- I don't know, what do you want to know? MAX: Where’d you grow up? DAN: Oh my gosh! I grew up in a pretty normal American Reform Jewish family, outside Washington, DC in Maryland. In a family that...was essentially a liberal Zionist family, although I don't think they would have necessary articulated themselves like that, they just imagine themselves being normal. And I heard growing up, “If only the Palestinians were nonviolent, then they would get what they want. Because they're asking for something reasonable, but it's because they're violent that things are problem....that that's the reason why there's a problem.” And like, the older people around me as I was growing up were always saying, “If only there was a Palestinian Gandhi” -- that was like the refrain, over and over again. And now I find myself 36 years old, going back to my communities and being like, “There’s this huge non-violent Palestinian movement! And it’s international and we can be part of it, it’s boycott, and blah blah blah.” And everyone’s like, “Oh no, no no, this makes us uncomfortable too.” I'm like, “This is what you were begging for my whole childhood! And now it’s here! Why aren’t you excited? Why aren't you as excited as I am?” That’s where I’m from. MOTAZ: That’s cool. DAN: And it’s an honor to be here with Motaz, whose performance in “The Siege” was absolutely amazing. MOTAZ: We not sure, but there is like people who really want to bring it back to the U.S. again, because it was a really successful show like for the Skirball Theatre, even like they almost sold out. MAX: Let me back you up a second, because, I want you to imagine that I have never heard of “The Siege,” have never heard of the Freedom Theatre. Can you tell me -- tell me what it was, tell me what it is. MOTAZ: “The Siege” it's a story about the invasion happened in 2002 in Palestine. There was like eh...invasion for the whole West Bank: in Jenin, in Nablus, all the cities. Like, one of them was Bethlehem, and in Bethlehem there was like a group of fighters, freedom fighters, who fight and defend back from their homeland. They have like many guns defending themselves, and they have in the other side -- the Israeli side -- there is tanks, Apache, Jeeps, all kind of guns you can imagine your life, heavy guns. And they were like around 45 fighters, 250, 245 civilian -- priests, nuns, children, women, and men, from both different religions -- who’s like stuck inside the Nativity Church for 39 days. With the like first five days they have food, after that they have no food. And they surrounded with around 60,000 soldiers from the Israeli army. They want, like, to finish it. So they, they have pressure, they don't wanna -- even the fighters, says khalas, it’s enough. Their people are suffering, their families are suffering outside because of that. So, they sent them like a paper, they have to write their names, the number of their IDs they have, and their signature. So, the fighters sign on it, and they know that's thirteen going to Europe and twenty-five are going to Gaza. They don't know even where they going. So, they sent them to exile the same day. DAN: When my friends and I were leaving the theatre, all we were talking about is, we were so curious about what their lives would be like after fifteen years of exile and we couldn’t wrap our minds around it. MOTAZ: I know one of them is personally, and he told me a lot about it. And it’s really important to bring this piece because of one reason: they didn't choose. Even they signed the paper that say they have to go to exile, but like they was under pressure, and they thought it's temporary and that they would return. And eh, I know how much they are really broken from inside. They never show this to people.But from inside, if you know them personally, they are really broken, and they just...all they want, just to see like at least their families. Some of them, they can’t. Their family, like they can't get the visa to go to visit them -- like, for example, the two guys, Rami Kamel, and Jihadi Jaara who living in Dublin, they haven't seen their families at all. One of them, like Jihadi he have a son that's his wife give birth like after one week he was sent to exile. He didn't even touch his son, he's fifteen years old, like...at least, like, okay, you don't want to send him back to Palestine. Let his family visit him! Like, this is the minimum of humanity. And eh...a really important point we have like always to say: those people was in their homeland, they was in their own city, and they fight back. They didn't went to...yeah, to Tel Aviv to fight, or to somewhere inside Israel, to fight the people over there. They was fighting the…defending themselves from the Israeli army. MAX: How did you get started with the Freedom Theatre? MOTAZ: Woo hoo! Since I was like, eh…fourteen I heard about it, or thirteen -- and I was dreaming about to be in there cause I’m, since like eight, nine, I start doing acting. It's like something I really love from inside, like I really really want to be an actor. Not because like I wanted a name. Because I can hold the stories, I can share stories for all over the world, I enjoy it, it's something beautiful and strong in the same time. So when I was sixteen, I heard about the hip-hop workshop, dance hip-hop workshop in the Freedom Theatre. So I went there and I apply for it, and I get involved with the workshop, and the last few days Juliano just came and he said, “We open a new class for theatre.”   MAX: Juliano, who Motaz just mentioned, is Juliano Mer Khamis, who started what is today, the Freedom Theatre. Real quick, I want to tell you the remarkable story of the Freedom Theatre of Jenin. During the First Intifada, Juliano’s mother, a Jewish Israeli Communist named Arna Mer, came to Jenin, where she helped to establish housing and educational programs for children in the refugee camp there -- and eventually a children’s theatre called The Stone. Arna died of cancer in 1995, and during the Second Intifada, the Stone Theatre was destroyed. Arna’s son Juliano returned to Jenin for the first time since his mother’s death in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Jenin, and made an incredible film called "Arna’s Children" -- Motaz will tell you more about this in a bit, but it’s on YouTube and I highly recommend it. It was after finishing this film that Juliano returned again to Jenin to found the Freedom Theatre. In 2011, Juliano was assassinated, but the Freedom Theatre has persisted. Alright -- back to Motaz.   MOTAZ: So I get involved and I put myself in that place since 2010. And it’s been like around...now, now you could say like eight years almost. It is...hard and eh, good in the same time. It is, ‘cause you face emotion, a lot of different emotion. But I love it. It's like, it’s become my home now. I’m always there. Even if I have nothing, I go pass by drinking coffee there like, chill, see what's going on, if they need help or something, because I'm part of the family. MAX: Well we met because I went to visit the Freedom Theatre. And you were just hanging around and we sat there and talked for an hour. MOTAZ: Yeah yeah. MAX: Alright, so, Dan. DAN: Yeah. MAX: Tell me about your work and particularly tell me about “Rubble Rubble” and the genesis of that project. MOTAZ: I wanna hear about it. DAN: Well I've been working for the past decade on a trilogy of plays that sort of explore the inner life of the Jewish left in the United States over the past century. And this last play, “Rubble Rubble,” which I've been developing for the past few years, starts in the West Bank in an Israeli settlement. And you find this family that I've been writing plays about -- which is a very far leftist socialist radical family -- you see that that family has split off, and there's like a right-wing side of the family that has become settlers. And the left-wing anti-Zionist member of their family travels to visit them, after they haven’t spoken in twenty years. MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: And the family confronts each other over his huge chasm, where one person is like a Palestinian solidarity BDS supporter and the rest of the family are like... MOTAZ: Pro-Israel. DAN: They're like settlers! Like living on stolen land, even though, but they’re middle aged American Jews who in the sixties were like radical New Left, you know, people. I’m fascinated by how many American-Israeli Jews were like super far on the left in the United States and then became these horrible oppressors in Israel. It blows my mind that it's possible to make that transition within the course of one life. And so, and that's where the play starts, and um…and I've been developing it for a few years, I went to Israel-Palestine to research for the play, I spent two weeks with interfaith peace builders traveling all through the West Bank and meeting with different non violent Palestinian and Israeli activists. I spent a week interviewing settlers, which was extremely disturbing. Um, and then I’ve been developing this play, and it was gonna have its first public reading at the American Jewish Historical Society in Manhattan and, um, a couple weeks ago -- I guess now around a month ago -- we went to their offices for a meeting and everything was very positive, they were very excited to have us, the staff was very supportive of the work. And we heard that there was a right-wing smear campaign against the organization's new CEO. And we were told, “This is all happening but don't let it bother you. We might have to cancel that other thing, but we're not going to cancel your play, because we, we're really excited about it.” And literally the conversation we had was about raising the budget for our play. Eight hours later, I got an email saying that the play had been canceled. MOTAZ: What? Was there any explanation about it? DAN: Well, I knew that it was... The institution itself never sent me like a formal letter or anything, but I knew that it was because of this right-wing Zionist pressure campaign that they were being pressured to fire their new CEO, and in order to try to get rid of that critique, they were just going to get rid of us. And the staff of the American Jewish Historical Society was very supportive of me, and I don't see them as my enemies at all. It was the board of directors, or at least a small group from the board, met in the middle of the night and made this decision. And this is what happens all the time in Jewish organizations: the people actually doing work are willing to make brave choices, and the people who are funding that work are not willing to let anyone make those choices. MOTAZ: Yeah yeah yeah, this happened with the same thing almost with us. DAN: Yeah, at the Public, right? MOTAZ: Yeah yeah yeah, it's almost the same, I like, I don't know who’s stand with us or who is against us, but we had this question for Oskar, which is the Artistic Director of the Public Theater, and his answer was really diplomatic answer and I respect -- no Oskar, he’s really great guy and he was one of the supporters to bring this play over here, and the most important thing, he says, that's to bring “The Siege” for the New Yorker people and we did it. It’s not about the place. DAN: Well, that was interesting about Oskar Eustis and “The Siege,” is that it was supposed to be at the Public Theater, the board canceled that choice. But Oskar, who is the Artistic Director of the Public Theater, he had notes in the program for “The Siege” production at the Skirball Center. And I was like, this is so unusual that you open the program and you see notes from the director of the theatre that canceled the play! MOTAZ: Yeah yeah. But, I want to hear more about Dan play, man. DAN: Sure, yeah. MOTAZ: I would like to know what is the story? DAN: Well, I can tell you about the story of what happens in the play, but what I also want to say is that, after we were canceled, the New York theatre world became incredibly supportive of us. And people really came out of nowhere to offer support and offer help. We raised our budget that had been canceled from American Jewish Historical Society within three days. MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: Yeah. And we were offered resources that we couldn't have ever imagined. And to me, that was a huge sign that the people who are trying to censor dissident voices around Israel-Palestine are going to fail in humiliation. Because our work is stronger than ever after having been canceled, because people are so angry about it. People who are, who don't really know very much about it, are angry about it. And there are left-wing Zionists in my life who don't agree with me, but who are so angry that the play was canceled -- and it’s put them in a situation where they are more open to my ideas, and more open to considering the ideas of the play. So, I mean -- and we’re going to do the reading of the play, it's going happen next year, the details aren't confirmed, but it's going to be bigger and more interesting and more spectacular than it would have been if it hadn’t been canceled in the first place. Which is interesting. The play itself -- it’s funny because the people who canceled it never read it. And it's weird, like if they read it I think they'd be like, “Oh, this is weird.” It's a weird play. The first act is like a very traditional living room drama in a family. So, there's the aunt and uncle, who are middle-aged formerly left-wing radical American Jews who live in a settlement. There's their radical nephew, who shares my politics but is not a sympathetic person. He’s kind of...nasty and annoying and neurotic. And he’s there with his partner who’s Colombian and has no context for any of this. So I really wanted there to be a character who doesn't really have any stake in the game, doesn't have any history with Israel-Palestine, just comes from another part of the world entirely, but who has...a personal history of violence. Because he grew up in a part of Colombia that experienced a lot of violence. Whereas, I think a lot of white American Jews, violence, revolution, all these ideas are abstract concepts, and we don't experience them in our real lives. So he's coming at -- that character, who in a way is the central character of the play -- is coming at things from a totally different context. And I don't want to give anything away, but by the end of the first act, things go horribly wrong, and the first act ends with an enormous disaster. And the second act begins, and it's a musical, and it takes place in Moscow in 1905. And it's the same family, but a century before, and the matriarch of the family is building bombs for the socialist revolution of 1905. MOTAZ: So it’s almost flashback? DAN: It’s like a flash -- it's like an ancestral flashback. MOTAZ: That’s interesting. DAN: So you see the ancestor of the same family, and she's like a socialist revolutionary. She's building a bomb, she wants to like blow up the Tsar. And...and the ideas of the first act are sort of filtered through the music of the second act, where you see her with her socialist comrades. And what I want to ask is: How did this family go from here to there? How did it get from one place to the other? And, and the other question that I'm really interested in asking is like: Once you learn that there's an enormous injustice around you, how far are you willing to go to stop it from happening? How much violence are you willing to accept in order to stop something? Which is a huge question, I think, for anti-Zionist Jews when it comes to Palestine, like how...what are we supposed to do, knowing this horrible thing is going on? It's a huge question within Palestinian society, obviously, like what are you willing to do to stop this from happening? And it’s been a huge question throughout Jewish political history, which is full of violent resistance to injustice, and we act like were so horrified by violence, but Jewish history is full of it. So, those are the questions that I'm dealing with, and I don't think that the play offers any straightforward answers. And that's the interesting thing about the play being canceled or censored, is that the play itself is about what happens when two sides of a Jewish family can't communicate, and shun each other. And that’s what’s happened with the play, that we were being shunned just like family members are being shunned. And when I was in Israel, researching the play, and I would tell people what the play was about -- you know, it's about a Jewish family that's separated over Israel, and the Israeli side doesn't talk to the American side -- and every single person I talked to was like, “Oh, that's just like my family. That's my family, that happened to us.” And I was like, oh, right. This is bad for everybody. This destroys families, this injustice is destroying everybody involved in it. MOTAZ: Yeah, I mean like, even if it’s happened, like something like, my grandparents, whatever it takes place, I will not do the same thing in a different place. DAN: Right? This is the big Jewish catastrophe of the twentieth century, that you take one of two decisions, right? You either, you take all the trauma and you say, “This will never happen to us again, and we will do anything to protect us.” Or you say, “This will never happen to anyone again.” MOTAZ: What, like, Jewish used to live in Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, many Arab countries, there was normal to see like this Muslim, Christian and a Jewish neighbor and eh, like an atheist beside him, and all of them are living in the Arab world like normally, like -- let's be honest, even though the Arab history is not clear, like there is many bad things from the Arab history also like... But eh, we used to live like together, so the thing is not religion. I don’t believe it’s religion, it’s mentality. It’s... DAN: I was talking, I was having an argument in a restaurant a couple years ago with a Zionist Jew, and we were fighting really passionately. And someone, a stranger came up to our table and said, “Guys, stop fighting about this. It's an ancient struggle that's been going on thousands of years.” And we both looked at him, both of us agreed, we were like, “No, it isn't! This is new, this is in the past like less than 200 years that this has happened, come on.” We were like, “Go sit down. Finish your lunch, hon. Get out of our faces.” There's so many lies about it. But this is...I feel like this is the work, this is the cultural work of American Jewishness right now. We've been brought up with such a distorted understanding of the world. And it's gonna take so much cultural work to undo it all. MOTAZ: Yeah, and it's gonna make a lot of enemies at the same time. DAN: Oh yeah. But I think my situation proves that it's also gonna get…it's not gonna be completely a disaster. You know, everyone -- so many people warned me against making work like this. And yeah, I got canceled, but in the process, I have tremendously powerful friends now that I didn't make before. MOTAZ: Doesn't it make you stronger after they cancel it? DAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah. MOTAZ: Didn't it make you more like want to do it? DAN: Oh, yeah. MOTAZ: That's a good thing, then. Okay, what’s the next question? MAX: So, for both of you, why is culture your weapon of choice? MOTAZ: Woo hoo! Because eh… Dan, you go ahead. DAN: ‘Cause its more powerful! Like…violence only ever creates more violence. I think this, like, even when it's necessary, it ends up being true. Culture is the only human practice that can actually dig into the root of a trauma and try to undo it in the first place. Um, and this is why people are so afraid of culture, and in particular theatre. ‘Cause when there's a human being in front of you having an experience, it’s very difficult to ignore them. It's hard to ignore a play. And, and so many…especially, so many American Zionist Jews are under -- on an emotional level, understand that their perspective is impossible. ‘Cause if you ask most American Jews, “Do you believe that it is right for a country to privilege one ethno-religious group over others?” Most of them will say, “No, that’s wrong. That is a wrong thing.” And then you say, “Well, what about Israel?” and they'll go, “Uhhhhhh…” But the fundamental truth, the deeper truth is that none of us actually support this. It's, the the support for Israel is the more superficial belief. The deeper belief is that this is wrong. Good plays, good art, good visual art, good music, good anything about this will help strip away the sort of superficial attachment to the, to the story of Israel, and help people get to the deeper belief that supremacy is wrong. No matter who is supreme in any given situation, it will always be wrong. ILANA: Sorry, I just wanna um, in the conversation about Zionism, I’m wondering... DAN: Do you want me to define that? ILANA: Yeah, I’m wondering specifically if you think any form of Zionism involves supremacy and that kind of thing. DAN: You know, I identify as an anti-Zionist Jew, and a lot of people, a lot of people will say, “Oh, don't say that, because it’s icky, it makes us uncomfortable to say you're anti-Zionist. Because, 'cause what does that really mean.” And for me, if it was the early 1900s, maybe I would have identified as like a Cultural Zionist. But to me, the way the word Zionism functions in the world, it’s support for a Jewish state of Israel. And to me, that means that Zionism inherently requires one to believe that Jews should reign supreme in this land, and I think that that's an untenable option. MAX: I…I sort of wanna respond. DAN: You wanna get into it, Max? MAX: No, I don't -- no, I don’t wanna argue with you…that's not… I will confess that I am skeptical of people who call themselves anti-Zionists who are not Jewish and not Palestinian. I... DAN:  Yeah yeah yeah, me too. I think that part of the, part of what it means to liberate Jews in the world, is to liberate us from our trauma, and to liberate us from that pain that…that distracts us from the reality of the world. And that requires our friends to help us get through that trauma, and to help us liberate ourselves from that trauma, and that requires non-Jewish people who oppose Zionism to make sure that we are emotionally capable of, um, of joining with them and being in community with them. And to me that's always like a challenge to my non-Jewish friends and comrades to be like, if we’re gonna do this together you need to understand that we’re…we just barely made it alive into this century, and a lot of us have like legitimate fears for our lives. I mean, we’re living in the United States where there's like a Nazi problem, right? Like our fear of violence is real and legitimate and um, when people say there's like no anti-semitism on the left in the United States, to me that's like so foolish. Like obviously, there's some anti-semitism in any part of the world, in any community. MOTAZ: Of course, of course…that's true. DAN: And when we pretend it doesn't exist, then we’re...I think we make so many other Jews feel unsafe joining us in this movement, because we're saying something that's obviously untrue and they don't trust us ‘cause it sounds like we’re lying to them. From my perspective, we need to say it: yeah, there's totally some anti-semitism on the left. And we need to deal with it, and our non-Jewish comrades need to deal with it, so that we can see that this is a safe place for us to be. MOTAZ: Nobody called you before, like you are anti-semitic after all the things you did? DAN: Oh yeah. MOTAZ: And you are Jewish. DAN: Oh yeah. Motaz, I need to tell you, I've gotten a lot of hate mail in my life and it's never as aggressive as other Jews. They’re the ones that tell me I should die. What they always say is, “You should go to Palestine, where they’d kill you.” They say this all the time, and I’m like, “I’ve been to Palestine, dude!” MOTAZ: So if some of the guys gonna hear this interview, Dan, you more than welcome in my house in Jenin. Nobody gonna kill you, you gonna love it. So come back to the first question? MAX: Yes, yes, finally... MOTAZ: Why cultural... Because I'm fed up. I have seen like many people got killed in this entire world since I was born. And see blood everywhere, why it’s need to be violent? Why that question? Why don't we turn the opposite question: why we have to be violent? Because it's like, we fed up, we are like, we are human. There is many people that think, like, “Oh, they was born like this.” No, they was not born like this. There is something happen to them. Like, if you watch there is a really important and good movie, it’s called “Arna’s Children,” Little kids, he talking about this story a lot, little kids. And they was dreaming about to be a Romeo of Palestine, them want to be Juliet, one of them he want to be Al Pacino. They wanna be actors. Suddenly, in a moment in 2002, you see those people got killed. And they became a freedom fighter before. Why? One of them his mother got killed by a sniper. One of them, after they bomb a school, he went to the school and he grabbed the body of a girl and she was almost alive, while he was running through the hospital, she died. So, his...of course he was gonna have a flip in his mind, and he gonna hold the gun and fight. So those people, they didn't like came from nothing. There is a reason always to do this. Even like I'm not into like guns or things, that's why I choose also art because I believe art is more stronger than a gun. And I don’t want to see any person on earth suffer. Like death is coming anyway, like you gonna die, but why we have to kill each other? Destroying, destroying. Like, I can make art which is strong, I can bring the messages, not just from my place, from all over the world and develop it to the stage. And eh… I think it's, let's make it, let's be cultural more. Let's let the art talk. And eh, we not gonna fake history, we not gonna fake stories, we gonna bring the story as it is. DAN: And this is why they’re so afraid of theatre. MOTAZ: Yeah! DAN: Because theatre shows the reasons why a person does something, and they don't wanna look at the reasons. MOTAZ: Man, I start to believe in this thing in 2012. I was going to the theatre in a taxi and there was checkpoint, and they stop me. ‘Cause I have no ID. I told him, like “I’m late for my theatre.” And he said, “Oh, you’re going to the Freedom Theatre.” He said like, “Come on man, they killed Juliano, they could kill you too.” And I said like “Why?” He said like, “Art will not change anything man. Why you need it?” And I said, “It's fine, for you it's nothing, but for me...” And he told me, “If you don't have your ID next time, you go to prison. And I promise you.” So since that time I just realize how much art is strong, and how much they afraid from art.   MAX: Here’s Motaz in a scene from “Return to Palestine,” devised by graduates of the Freedom Theatre acting school. [Excerpt from "Return to Palestine," in Arabic]   MAX: So, the work I do here in New York City is mostly with an organization called Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. MOTAZ: Yeah, I know. MAX: Where I work with a lot of different groups of people. Right now I’m working at Housing Works, which is an organization that um…I think this is the blurb from their website, “works to end the twin crises of HIV/AIDS and homelessness.” MOTAZ: Whoa. DAN: Easy. MAX: Yeah, right? I’m working with a group of folks from Housing Works on a play that they created about their experiences trying to keep and get affordable housing, with housing vouchers that they have because of their status. And… that’s just one example, I’ve worked on a lot of plays, and the way that sometimes I think about what those plays are meant to do, is is kind of in two areas: there’s the sort of, I mean, the way that I talk about it with my family, which is very much in the kind of like raising awareness camp, in the sense that people come to see these plays, they don’t know anything about tenant harassment in New York City and they learn about it. And then, really what it was designed to do by the folks who came up with this stuff in Brazil in the seventies, which is to build capacity in that community. Um, these theater tools are tools for people to work together to make change. I’m wondering if that resonates with you at all, and sort of -- what do you see your work in theater doing? DAN: Obviously I like plays that do all of these things at the same time. MOTAZ: Yeah. DAN: But, as a playwright, if you go into a project with too much of a vision of like what kind of responses you want from your audience -- an audience knows when you’re trying to manipulate them, and at the end of the day, an audience knows when something is authentic. So, being a playwright is about balancing your vision for what you want to happen in the room, and your relationship to your own imagination and your own impulses. MOTAZ: And the thing is like, if you don’t believe it, the actors will never believe it, then the audience will never believe it. DAN: Yeah, totally, and a lot of political theatre gets a bad rap, because I think a lot of political theatre is only thinking about, how can we make an impact with this audience? And it feels false. MOTAZ: I’m interested to know about, Dan, like -- normally, when you write, you give solution for the people? Or you give them a question to find the solution? DAN: I don’t give solutions, no. MOTAZ: You give a question. DAN: I give the questions. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. MOTAZ: Good, yeah. DAN: If I feel like I know concretely an answer to something, then I don’t need to write the play. I will just write an essay.   [MUSIC: Cheese on Bread, “All Your Sisters”]   MAX: Motaz had to leave, and I got to talk to Dan for a little while longer about the difference between boycott and censorship, and why he wants to start identifying as a “liberationist Jew.” If you’re not already subscribed, SUBSCRIBE to Unsettled on your podcatcher of choice -- because, in a couple weeks, you’ll get a bonus episode with the rest of our conversation. In the meantime, you can find Dan’s work at his website, danfishback.com, and follow Motaz on Instagram @motazmalhees, that’s M-O-T-A-Z-M-A-L-H-E-E-S. The song you’ve been hearing is "All Your Sisters" by Dan Fishback’s band, Cheese On Bread, from their forthcoming album "The One Who Wanted More,” coming out next year. You can find the song, a full transcript of the episode and other resources at our website, unsettledpod.com. Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Yoshi Fields, Ilana Levinson, and me. This episode was edited by Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. We recorded this episode in a studio for the first time -- shout out to Cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York. Go to our website, unsettledpod.com, for more show information. We want to bring you more content in more different forms, and to make that happen, we need your support! So you can become a monthly sustainer at Patreon.com/unsettled. You can like Unsettled on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, to make sure you never miss an episode of Unsettled.