Just World Podcasts

This episode is an inter-season special: an interview Just World Educational President Helena Cobban conducted with Frank Joyce, a veteran antiwar and workers-rights organizer who was the co-editor, along with Dr. Karin Aguilar-San Juan, of the 2015 anthology The People Make the Peace: Lessons from the Vietnam Antiwar Movement . In July this year, Frank Joyce and four other American antiwar activi...

On this week’s podcast, Just World Educational's president, Helena Cobban , discusses the currently high tensions between the United States and Iran with Amb. Chas W Freeman, Jr ., a very distinguished former American diplomatist and the author of a number of very informative books. The most recent of these are collections of his essays on, respectively, US-Chinese relations and US policies i...

This week’s podcast is Number Twelve in our multi-week “Story/Backstory” project, which explores Washington’s current policies in the Middle East, and the Middle East itself, in a broader historical perspective. It is a complement to a column by Just World Ed President Helena Cobban that ran May 8th on the Mondoweiss website, “Thinking fast and slow in reporting Israeli-Gaza fighting” , in which s...

This timely episode focuses on Saudi Arabia's very destructive and now four-year-long war on Yemen, and the direct participation in it of some units of the U.S. military. In early April, the two houses of Congress enacted legislation to end this participation. Pres. Trump vetoed that legislation. Then yesterday, May 2, the Senate held a vote to try to over-ride the veto, and they failed.   Th...

This episode in the "Story-Backstory" series is a complement to the article that Helena Cobban published on Mondoweiss on April 25, exploring a small window that the Mueller Report provided into the world of the influence-buying operations undertaken by the UAE and other rich Arab Gulf states in Washington DC. In this episode, Ms. Cobban interviews Ben Freeman of the Center for Internati...

Since late February, the large North African country of Algeria has been the site of a massive popular movement that every Friday brings millions of people into the streets demanding deepseated reform. The protests were sparked when the country’s ageing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced that he would be seeking a fifth term in office. Last week, Bouteflika announced that he would not run ag...

Just World Educational President Helena Cobban and guest Nora Lester Murad discuss Israel's continuing waves of attack against Palestinian life in Jerusalem, which Ms. Murad describes here as "The front-line of the Palestinians' ongoing Nakba." Ms. Murad is the co-author of the recently published book Rest In My Shade . This episode is a complement to the column Ms. Cobban publ...

Just World Educational president Helena Cobban and guest Amb. Peter Ford look at the implications of Pres. Trump's March 25 decision to break with decades of US policy and provide official US support for Israel's annexation of Syria's Golan. This episode is a complement to the column Ms. Cobban published on this topic in Mondoweiss, March 26. Support the show

This episode of the "Story/Backstory" series is related to the column "Beating Israel's 'But Khamas!' ploy" that was released on the Mondoweiss website on March 20. In this episode, JWE president Helena Cobban tries something a little new. Instead of starting off by reading the text of the column, she briefly summarizes it, and then dives right into the deeper ba...

Just World Ed president Helena Cobban reads the column she had on this topic on Mondoweiss on March 13, which asked whether the Great March of Return movement that has swept the Gaza Strip for the past 50 weeks, may be the third great political movement to be born in Gaza. In the second half of this episode she discusses the Great March of Return with British-Palestinian author and activist Dr. Az...

Just World Ed president Helena Cobban first of all reads the column she published March 6 on Mondoweiss, "The two-state solution is dead. Let's plan for the one state." Then, she discusses the issue of one-state vs. two-state with special guest William B. Quandt, former Middle East advisor to Pres. Jimmy Carter... Support the show

In this episode in our "Story/Backstory" miniseries, JWE president Helena Cobban first reads, then reflects on her most recent 1,300-word op-ed on U.S. policies in the Middle East. For more details on this project, visit the blog on our website. Support the show

This is the first episode in our new "Story/Backstory" miniseries, which combines both the reading by JWE president Helena Cobban of her most recent 1,300-word op-ed on U.S. policies in the Middle East, with a slightly longer segment in which she reflects on some of the issues raised by the op-ed. For more details, visit the blog on our website. Support the show

In this episode you’ll hear a conversation I held recently with Laila El-Haddad, a political analyst, author, and rights activist who is from a family deeply rooted in Gaza, Palestine, though she currently lives near Baltimore, Maryland. Laila is the author or co-author of three Gaza-themed books, including the famed "ethnographic" cookbook, The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journ...

This episode features a conversation Just World Ed President Helena Cobban held  with Alice Rothchild, who’s a member of our Board of Directors and a veteran activist in the field of health and human rights. Alice is a recently retired OB/GYN who has authored three books on the health and rights situation in the areas currently under Israel’s control. The latest was Condition Critical: Life and De...

In this episode, you’ll hear a conversation that Helena Cobban held recently with Joe Catron, Just World Educational's Director of Outreach, about the legacies of Cast Lead. Joe is a veteran social-justice activist who spent three-plus years in Gaza, from March 2011 through Fall 2014.   This is the fifth episode in a special mini-series we’re releasing as part of our “Cast Lead Plus Ten” proj...

In this episode you’ll hear the second half of a conversation I recently held about Cast Lead and its legacies, with Dr. Basem Naim. At the time of Cast Lead, Dr. Naim was the Minister of Health in the Palestinian government in Gaza.  Today, he heads the Gaza-based Center for International Relations. This is the fourth episode in a special  mini-series we’re releasing as part of our “Cast Lead Plu...

This episode of our podcast is the third in a special mini-series we’re releasing as part of our “Cast Lead Plus Ten” project , which started last December 27 and is running for 22 days. The project marks the anniversary of the “Operation Cast Lead” assault that Israel waged against Gaza during these same 22 days, ten years ago.   In this episode you’ll hear the first half of a conversation I had...

This episode of our podcast is the second in a special mini-series we’re releasing as part of our “Cast Lead Plus Ten” project. In this episode of our mini-series you can hear the second half of the conversation Helena Cobban had about Cast Lead, with the distinguished international jurist Richard Falk. In the previous episode, Cobban and Falk had discussed mainly what happened during the Cast Lea...

This episode of our podcast is part of a special mini-series we’re releasing as part of our “Cast Lead Plus Ten” project, which will run for 22 days, December 27, 2018 through January 17, 2019, to mark the tenth anniversary of Israel’s brutal “Operation Cast Lead” assault against Gaza, which ran for precisely those same 22 days, ten years ago.  In the first episode in this mini-series you can hear...

We are pleased to present an interview that JWE President Helena Cobban conducted July 24th with Peter Ford, who was Britain’s ambassador to Syria, 2003 through 2006, and who has remained an informed and close observer of Syrian affairs ever since. He was also, for several years after he left the British diplomatic service, the representative of the UN agency UNRWA to the Arab world, based in Amma...

In this second half of Helena Cobban's recent conversation about Turkish politics with Prof. Richard Falk, they discuss the implications for Turkey's regional and to some extent global policies. Support the show

The distinguished international jurist Richard Falk, who's a member of Just World Educational's Board of Directors, has had a long association with Turkey, where he spends most of his summers. Recently, there was an election in Turkey for both the 600-person legislature and the presidency in its new, enhanced "executive president" form. On July 10, JWE President Helena Cobban r...

Helena Cobban introduces "Understanding Gaza and Hamas", the factsheet she produced for Just World Educational, which demolishes seven key myths the Israelis have fostered regarding these crucial topics. Support the show

Support the show