Kalam

A lot has been made of the terminology applied to Israeli "hostages" or "captives" and Palestinian "prisoners" or "terrorists". While the Israelis certainly are hostages and captives, thousands of Palestinians are languishing in Israeli prisons without a trial or formal charge. Many are tortured and sexually violated, and many are children and minors. Milena Ansari is the Israel-Palestine research...

Arab-socialism is deeply intertwined with arab nationalism – to the extent that they are sometimes used interchangeably: Pan-arabism, Arab Nationalism and Arab Socialism, to talk about especially its most well known movements, of the 1950s-1970s. In this series however, we will focus specifically on the rise of a peculiar "arab socialism", as a part of understanding the back story of the regime th...

Direkt från Teater Tribunalen pratar Edgar och Sam om det brittiska mandatet i Palestina under mellankrigsåren. Vad var det för system, och hur bidrog det till Israels bildande och Nakba? Samtalet är inspelat inför en uppsättning av pjäsen Mandatet som behandlar samma tidsperiod, som sålt ut Teater Tribunalen i Stockholm i flera veckor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At long last it seems we have a ceasefire in Gaza, after over a year of war and genocide. But just as we were all breathing a collective sigh of relief, the Netanyahu regime seemed to sabotage the deal in the last minute. What does this mean? In the 20th instalment of Kalam Digest, Edgar, Sam and Nora take us through the implications of the ceasefire agreement and how the f*ck it took this long to...

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 folklo...

Minor military operations are still ongoing in Syria as HTS attempts to root out Assad loyalists in the city of Homs. In Gaza the genocide is ongoing, and Israel has forcibly disappeared doctor Hossam Abu Safiya, Director of the Kamal Adwan Medical Complex. Trump has promised to unleash hell in Gaza if hostages are not released – this comes just over a week before his inauguration on January 20. I...

In the fourth instalment of Munadama, where the team behind Kalam "shoot the shit over alcoholic beverages", Sam, Nora, Edgar and Arthur discuss everything from Arabic grammar to dive bars in Damascus. These episodes are usually exclusively available for our Patreon subscribers, but in the (belated) spirit of the holidays we're unlocking this episode for all our listeners. If you enjoy Kalam Podca...

The Syrian writer and political theorist, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, has lived a remarkable life. As a student activist affiliated with one of Syria's communist parties, Yassin spent 16 years in Hafez al Assad's prisons. Then, shortly after the revolution of 2011, Yassin's wife, Samira Khalil, was abucted by the Islamist militia Jaysh al Islam. Samira was also an activist and hasn't been heard from in o...

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 A...

The Palestinian Authority is cracking down on non-state militias in Jenin on the occupied West Bank – find out why Fatah is fighting Fatah. Israel is making incursions into Syria and bombing its weapons arsenal to bits – why is it doing this, and what does it mean? Finally, the Kurdish-controlled area in northeastern Syria is coming into question. Raqqa, for example, is a majority sunni Arab city...

The Islamist militia HTS (Hay't Tahrir al-Sham≈Committee for the Liberation of Syria) has toppled the dictatorial Assad regime. Its leader, 42-year-old Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, started his career under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of ISIS. This extremist jihadist background is worrisome, but al-Julani has proven to be a pragmatist....

When Bashar al Assad’s government fell just a couple of days ago, after a two week whirlwind campaign by opposition forces which surprised the entire world, it signalled the end of more than 54 years of rule by the Assad family and it’s the so called Ba’th-party. While it has been no secret that Syria under Assad was a repressive and violent state, the images and stories of the prisoners released...

It's official, at least if you ask the world's leading human rights organisation, Amnesty International: Israel is guilty of committing the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. In today's episode the Secretary General of Amnesty International herself, Agnes Callamard, walks us through the organisation's damning report on the genocide in Gaza. We know there’s a lot going on in...

The regime of Bashar al Assad has fallen and Syrians around the world are celebrating. So what happens now? Anything is possible in such times, and we must hope for the best for the people of Syria who so desperately deserve freedom, dignity and the right to choose their government. In today's episode we look at what recent events mean for regional and global players like Turkey, Israel, Russia, S...

The Syrian conflict has reignited as opposition forces under the leadership of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) broke out of Idlib, capturing key cities like Aleppo, Hama and finally Damascus, with minimal resistance. What does the apparent fall of the Assad Family's half-century hold on power mean for the country? In today's episode, Nora Adin Fares interviews Dr. Neil Quilliam, an analyst and associa...

The ripple effects of Israel's wars in the Middle East are spinning out of control. Just last week, the Islamist Syrian rebel group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) retook the city of Aleppo, the second-largest city in Syria. How did they manage to do so, and how does the severe weakening of Hezbollah play into it? Will this spell the end of Bashar al Assad's regime? In other news we speak about the fr...

In the second part of this miniseries Samuel and Edgar discuss the development of the Likud Party since its landslide victory in 1977. What demographic and political shifts cause its rise to dominance. How did the party of Benjamin Netanyahu come to dominate Israeli politics as massively as it has done for the last couple of decades? How did it achieve this position, who are its voters and support...

A lot has happened since our last news summary on Kalam Podcast. The ICC has officially issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant and as of today, a ceasefire deal has taken effect in Lebanon. 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 interv...

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 the...

This episode is in Arabic! Sorry to all our non-Arabic speakers. You can watch the full episode with English subtitles on Youtube . Is there such thing as Palestinian cinema? And what has the genoc!de in Gaza meant for film in the strip? Ola Salama, herself from Gaza, is the Executive Director of Film Lab Palestine, an organisation aimed at revitalising the culture of films in Palestine, liberatin...

What will a Trump presidency mean for the war in Gaza and Lebanon and for the Middle East more broadly? Probably complete disaster, but still worth a discussion. Sam and Edgar spend the lion's part of the 14th installment of Kalam Digest speaking about Trump's stunning and decisive victory. As well as the crucial Arab vote which mostly sided with the man who last time around implemented the "Musli...

Unbelievably, the destruction and killing of Gaza continues and is, in fact, escalating. Israel's relentless and genocidal war seems to know no bounds. In this week's news summary, Sam, Edgar and Nora speak about the impending doom that is the US elections. Muslims for Trump and floating piles of garbage aka Rudy Giuliani. The political opposition in Israel, Yair Lapid of the party Yesh Atid, admi...

What are the politics of Palestine, who can take over a Palestinian state when it is conceived? Aboud Hamayel, also known under his pen name Abdaljawad Omar is a writer and theorist and a Lecturer of Philosophy at Bir Zeit University on the Occupied West Bank. Abdaljawad gives us a detailed outline of the history of different political currents in Palestine. Interestingly, he does not give as much...

In this the first part of a miniseries Samuel and Edgar discuss the origins of Likud Party. For the last 30 years the Likud has dominated Israeli politics, and thus set the tone for the international politics of the region, not to mention the question of Palestine. Today it is an ultra-conservative party with neoliberal economics, bent on making the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territorie...

Once again we are delighted to have Lebanese political analyst and researcher Ralph Baydoun on the show. Ralph joins us live from Beirut, a city under constant Israeli bombardment. In today's episode Ralph and Edgar speak about Israel's plan to redraw the map of the Middle East, and how this can have unintended consequences as other powerful actors in the region attempt to take advantage – namely...