Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast

In this episode I discussed with Jacob Norris his latest book, born after he heard about the canonization of two Palestinian nuns, who amongst the various miracles also brought back to life Jubrail Dabdoub. This is the fantastical, yet real, story of the merchants of Bethlehem, the young men who traveled to every corner of the globe in the nineteenth century. These men set...

In this solo episode I am discussing the question of teaching Jerusalem. While the bookshelves of countless libraries around the world host at least a book on Jerusalem, a superficial browsing of classes taught about the city’s history reveals a different picture. Writing and publishing material about Jerusalem is as easy as it gets, but to teach about it, it is a complete...

The 1936–1939 revolt was the crucible in which Palestinian identity coalesced, uniting rival families, city and country, rich and poor in a single struggle for independence. British forces’ aggressive counterinsurgency took care of the rest, finally quashing the uprising on the eve of World War II. In this episode I engage in an interesting  conversation with Oren Kessler,...

In this second part dedicated to the presentation and discussion of Jerusalem Quarterly 92 'Jerusalem's Interrupted Futures' I have asked the authors to provide more details related to their articles and to speculate what would have happened if these unfulfilled projects would have actually been completed. History cannot be changed, however these missed opportunities tell...

In this first episode dedicated to the publication of Jerusalem Quarterly 92 ""Jerusalem's Interrupted Futures"" the guest editor Falestin Naili and several authors including Yair Wallach, Michelle Campos, Maria Chiara Rioli, Harris Ford and Semih Gokatalay talk about the unfilled plans for Jerusalem. The authors take hold of threads of unfinished schemes conceived just be...

Palestine exists in our minds, says Zachary Foster, not in nature. If Palestine doesn’t exist, why do we identify with it? We identify with Palestine, first, because it has a name. In fact, we only identify with  places we’ve named. Unnamed places, such as 22°29′05″N 22.48 to 53°46′19″E 53.77, have no identities based on them. But we don’t identify with every place we’ve n...

In this episode I talked to Professor Mahmoud Hawari, a leading scholar in the history of Ayyubid Jerusalem. The conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin in  583/1187, after nearly nine decades of Frankish rule, opened a new era of cultural, socio-economic and architectural changes. The renewed political fervour that followed it gave a fresh impetus to an extensive building activi...

John Munayer is a researcher, writer, theologian and interreligious facilitator from Jerusalem. Most of his research focuses on Palestinian Theology, the Palestinian Christian community in the Holy Land and interreligious dialogue. With him we discussed Palestinian Christianity in Palestine, who are the Christians and what are the current theological debates amongst the va...

UNRWA has often been described as a quasi-government or even a quasi-state for millions of Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. Active since 1950 it provides services more typically the domain of the modern nation-state, including a large-scale education program, healthcare, municipal services in the camps, and registration procedures. UNRWA is the only organizatio...

Israeli politics has underwent a visible radicalization pointing to right-wing policies designed to be exclusive rather than inclusive. The political spectrum has been dominated by the Likud party and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu. In this episode I talked to Gilad Halpern with the idea to make sense of current Israeli politics and understand the moves of the newly elected...

Almost 40,000 Palestinians relocated to Latin America in the late 19th century, from Bethlehem, Bei Jala and indeed Jerusalem. In this episode Nadim Bawalsa talks about his new book that looks at Palestinian migrants to Mexico and Chile and how they negotiated the changes occurring in Palestine, including the end of Ottoman rule and the beginning of British rule. Since 192...

All things Jerusalem, says his twitter account @DanielSeidemann. Daniel is not just a lawyer specializing in difficult issues related to East Jerusalem, but he has an intimate knowledge of the city, its dynamics and his visitors. Daniel has lived in Jerusalem since he made Aliyah in 1973 and since 1991, he has focused on the geopolitics of contemporary Jerusalem and the Is...

In this episode I have interviewed Kate Rouhana, Founder and Director of Jerusalem Story. As we unpacked the mission and structure of the website, we also delved into some of the stories told by the contributors of the website. Jerusalem Story aims to tell the story of a unique city through a new lens—that of the city’s large and diverse indigenous Palestinian community. T...

In this episode I had the pleasure to interview one of the most visible figures in East Jerusalem today: Mahmoud Muna. We have talked about why and how his father established the Educational Bookshop and from there we delved into an intimate conversation about Jerusalem, its present and its possible futures.  Originally published on 11/30/2022 Welcome to Jerusalem Unplugge...

Ramsey Hanhan, having come to America from Palestine in his teens, had experienced first-hand both the Israeli occupation of his country, and the immigrant journey of rebuilding life anew. In his former career, he was a physics professor noted for his computer models that describe and predict complexity in nature. Nowadays, you can find him on a jogging trail, deep in the...

Heritage claims are unequivocally tied to the idea of socio-political legitimacy. This applies most poignantly amongst communities bound by a shared ethnic, religious, historical, or indeed national, identity. Joel’s research investigates fluctuations of socio-political legitimacy *vis-à-vis* heritage within cross-cultural, and often contested spaces. More specifically, Joel&nb...

As the British Mandate in Palestine ended in mid-May 1948, responsibility for the territory shifted to the newly-formed United Nations. With tensions between Zionist settler Jews and Indigenous Arab Palestinians at an apex, the international organization sought to engender peace by implementing an internationalization of the Holy City of Jerusalem and its environs. In this...

The opening of Season 4 is dedicated to one of the most iconic buildings of Jerusalem: the Dome of the Rock. While the Dome has become a sort of brand defining the image of Jerusalem, there is a lot of confusion about its history and purpose. Built by the Umayyads in the late 7th century, scholars developed different ideas about the Dome and our guest, Beatrice St. Laurent...

The month is ending, but not the more or less naughty comments being made about the projected wedding of Djemal Pasha with a beautiful Jewish lady named Leah Tennenbaum. The news seemed so unlikely to me that I gave it the least importance, but it persists, and there is no one in the city who is not commenting on it. – Consul Conde de Ballobar, Jerusalem, 31 May 1915. In this f...

Season 3 ends with a fantastic guest: Ilan Pappe. In this intimate episode, the most famous Israeli historian talks about his early life and work, the journey to discover the real meaning of Israeli rule over the Palestinians and how he started, through his work, to fight back and offer an alternative historical narrative from the traditional Zionist one. As we discussed h...

In the summer 1913, a young Spanish diplomat set out for the Holy Land in order to take office as the Spanish consul in Jerusalem. Antonio de la Cierva y Lewita, Count of Ballobar arrived in Jerusalem during an extremely problematic period for the Ottoman Empire: constantly under internal and external threats. Central to Ballobar’s mission in Jerusalem was the protection a...

In this third installment of Jerusalem in World War One, I will explore the role of America in Palestine and of the American Consul Otis Glazebrook. U.S. humanitarian activity in Jerusalem, and Palestine as a whole, from the early nineteenth century onward challenges the traditional view that the United States played a relatively marginal role in the region until the end o...

In December 2020, an Israeli football club made worldwide headlines. The news that a UAE royal had bought 50 per cent of Beitar's shares shook Israel and the football world. Beitar, proclaimed by some of its own fans as 'the most racist club in the country', is a club like no other in Israel. While Israeli football as a whole is a space where Israelis of all ethnicities an...

Between 1947 and 1948 Palestinian Arab and Jewish communities fought over Palestine, a war that clearly encompassed Jerusalem and Jaffa. Jerusalem was the focal point of the war due its centrality and symbolic importance. In this episode Itamar Radai discusses his work on Jerusalem and Jaffa in 1948. Our conversation is one that will certainly elicit controversy and questi...

The British conquest of Jerusalem took place in December 1917. In the second episode dedicated to Jerusalem in World War One, I discuss the value of Jerusalem for the British during the war, how this changed but more importantly once the British began to plan the conquest of Palestine, how policy makers began to invest time and effort in order to prepare for the much await...