Arab Digest podcasts

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the Sudanese political analyst Kholood Khair. Their conversation focusses on a war that has gone on for 18 months and has caused the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. Sudan's people are the victims of two generals vying for dominance backed by outside players who like the generals have no concern for them. Nor judging by its silence does the rest...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Quincy Institute's Annelle Sheline who quit the US State Department in protest at her government's Gaza policy. She argues that rather than restraining Israel the Biden administration is backing Netanyahu's efforts to provoke a major war with Iran in order to redraw the map of the Middle East. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join th...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the head of the Middle East programme at London's Chatham House Sanam Vakil. Their conversation focusses on Iran and Israel as the confrontation between the two edges ever closer to a hot war. Also on the agenda are Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the efforts they are making to avoid such a war. What too should the UK be doing to champion diplomacy...

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the security and defence analyst Andreas Krieg. As the intensity of Israeli attacks increases Dr Krieg - who has written a groundbreaking book on the weaponisation of narratives by state and non-state actors - details how such narratives are driving the Middle East toward all out war and he offers proposals about what the UK and the Starmer government co...

With tensions rising daily in the region, Arab Digest editor William Law welcomes the Cato Institute's Jon Hoffman to the podcast. As Israel pounds Lebanon and Hezbollah fires rockets back the slide into a full scale war looms but Washington's response is the same as it ever was: call for restraint while backing Israel to the hilt. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start...

Arab Digest editor William Law speaks with Hasan Ramadan. Before the 7 October war Hasan was a teacher at a school in North Gaza where he lived with his wife and three sons. Now he and his family are among the nearly 2 million IDPs in Gaza. After several attempts we were able to reach him at an IDP camp in the south of Gaza. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receivi...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Beirut-based author and commentator Amal Ghandour. Their conversation explores the impact of the Gaza war on the Levant and beyond and looks at how young Arabs have been galvanised by Israel's genocidal conduct into a new sense of themselves and the role they will play in securing what Amal calls a "rewrite" of the Middle East narrative. The...

Arab Digest editor William Law kicks off a new season with the editor of a new book titled The Queer Arab Glossary, the graphic designer, artist and writer Marwan Kaabour. Art book, Arab gay slang glossary and essay collection from a diverse and distinguished group of Arab artists, writers and activists The Queer Arab Glossary is both a provocative statement of independence and a declaration of re...

Summary: the IDF’s prosecution of the war in Gaza and attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank have revived popular support in Arab states for Palestine, forcing MENA governments to back away from further normalisation with Israel. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Summary: Israel with the support of its Western backers consistently violates international law and the rules-based order on which democracies are founded to impose its violent military will on Palestine and the Palestinians. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Summary: a book published last year explores the way in which the UAE and Israel have weaponised narratives to undermine and sabotage civil society efforts in the Arab world that are aimed at challenging authoritarian rule. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Summary: Saudi Arabia and the UAE have developed a strategy of promoting a version of Islam branded moderate as a soft power tool designed to reassure Western allies while advancing their regional interests and continuing domestic repression. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Summary: a prescient podcast that detailed the failures of US foreign policy in the Middle East under the Biden administration and correctly foresaw how unqualified military support for Netanyahu and the region’s authoritarian regimes was leading to consequences that would prove disastrous. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly po...

Summary: backed by Western democracies, Arab Gulf states and a steady flow of weapons dictatorships and warlords are flourishing in MENA and creating new and dangerous levels of instability in an already deeply unstable region. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Summary: a recent book by a leading Gulf analyst argues that the Gulf monarchies have successfully ridden out threats posed by the Arab Spring to their autocratic rule with an adept use of multipolar alliances and effective governance. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Summary: a new book by Maged Mandour details the ways in which President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has used hyper nationalism and the military to create a new form of dictatorship, hitherto unseen in Egypt. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

Summary: Iraqi Kurdistan remains at odds with the central government in Baghdad over oil revenues and within KRG two families tussle for power and divide the spoils between them with ordinary citizens continuing to be denied their rights as corruption runs rife. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & weekly podcasts.

This Arab Life: Author and blogger Amal Ghandour joins editor William Law as his guest on the Arab Digest podcast. Their conversation about Lebanon, Jordan and the wider Arab world takes as its point of departure Amal's latest book This Arab Life which is both an intensely personal memoir and a ruthlessly honest assessment of the past, the present and the near future of a region riven by social, p...

Editor William Law is joined by Arab Digest's resident energy analyst Alastair Newton. Their conversation drills down on the current state of the oil market and where it is headed in the second half of 2024 ranging across peak oil, grey rhinos, net zero, the looming possibility of a war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Biden decision to stand down, the state of the Gulf's national oil companies,...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is Annelle Sheline. She quit the US State Department in protest at the Biden adminstration's unqualified support for the Israeli government's ongoing war of genocide in Gaza and she tells Arab Digest that the road on which America is embarked could spark a wider catastrophic war in the Middle East. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the North Africa energy and political analyst Francis Ghilès. Their conversation looks at the Maghreb states of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya and explores how each one is delivering on the economic opportunities the current global geopolitical landscape is offering up. Morocco is proving both adept and resilient in seizing those opportuniti...

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined from Washington by the Middle East analyst and writer Aslı Aydıntaşbaş. The focus is on Türkiye's President Erdoğan and how he has positioned himself in the Gaza war and in his relations with Middle East states. In a US election year when the signs are growing of a Trump return to the White House Aslı Aydıntaşbaş reflects on what that will mean for the Midd...

Defence and security analyst Andreas Krieg is Arab Digest editor Willliam Law's guest this week. The Gaza war has laid bare a regional security and stability crisis, one that impacts Middle East states as much as it does Israel. It is a crisis that the Biden administration has allowed to burgeon as state and non-state actors vie for ascendancy in the vacuum caused by a collapsing US hegemon and Is...

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the New Lines Institute's Caroline Rose. The trade in the illicit synthetic drug Captagon continues to boom and much of it is run by Syria's Assad family. The Assads have built up a manufacturing and distribution network that brings them more than $2 billion a year. Despite Bashar al-Assad's promise to curtail the trade in return for being allowe...

Arab Digest editor William Law is joined by the Egyptian journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy. Their conversation traverses the relationship between Egypt and Israel from the point of the signing of the 1979 peace deal to the present Gaza war. With each passing decade Egypt's influence has waned to the point that, as the Gaza genocide continues, Cairo is forced to bow to Israel while playing...