Occupied Thoughts

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama, about the US & Israel's attack on Iran and the subsequent war. They look at the role that Israel is playing in American decisions around this war as well as the relationship that Zionism and other ideologies and points of view play or can play in American...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP President Lara Friedman speaks with author and scholar Dr. Nathan J. Brown about his recent article, For Younger Palestinians, Crisis Has Become a Way of Life. -Dr. Brown's bio: https://carnegieendowment.org/people/nathan-j-brown -the article: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/02/youth-palestine-west-bank-crisis

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with University of Maryland Professor Dr. Shibley Telhami and FMEP President Lara Friedman. The three discuss the new US & Israeli war against Iran, the strategic changes in the Persian Gulf and the polling data in the U.S. demonstrating a lack of support for the war. They discuss the fate of the Abraham Accords and normalization...

FMEP Non-resident Fellow Peter Beinart interviews researcher and journalist Dr. Sophia Goodfriend on the pernicious flow of repressive surveillance technology between the U.S. and Israel, which is now being seen deployed by Israel in Gaza and by ICE in the U.S.. Goodfriend recently published,"ICE operations increasingly resemble Israeli occupation. That’s no coincidence" in +972 Magazine where she...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with human rights attorney and writer Sari Bashi about her new memoir, Upside-Down Love: A Memoir in Two Voices, came out in English in January. Upside-Down Love tells the story of how Sari, an Israeli-American human rights attorney, created a shared life with her husband, a Palestinian professor from Gaza who is based in the West...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with Myssana Morany, a lawyer and coordinator of the Land and Planning Rights Unit of Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, and Sarit Michaeli, the International Advocacy Director at the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. They discuss forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and th...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with Jaser Abu Mousa, a 2025 Yale Peace Fellow and past Program Officer working for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Gaza. The two discuss life and death in Gaza on personal and collective levels. They look at Hamas, which Jaser calls a "symptom" of the problem of occupation; at how the past two-plus ye...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, 2025 FMEP Fellow Hilary Rantisi speaks with filmmaker and activist Jen Marlowe about the film Severed, which Jen directed. The film, released in late 2025, tells the story of Mohamad Saleh, a teenager from Gaza who has endured five major Israeli assaults, lost his home, close family members, his best friends, and—at the age of 12—his leg. Hilary and Jen discus...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Nick Rodelo, a researcher employed by the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) and the primary author of the report, Report to the UN Committee Against Torture: Systemic Israeli Practices of Torture Against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, submitted to the UN in late 2025. The report describes and pro...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor interviews Liz Allcock, the former head of humanitarian protection at Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), an organization that has worked in Gaza, the West Bank, and elsewhere for decades. They discuss healthcare in Palestine before the genocide in Gaza, the impact of the genocide on healthcare in Palestine, and the increase in gender-ba...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with author Benjamin Moser about Jewish supremacy, diasporic Jewish life, and the life and legacy of the writer Susan Sontag. Moser recently published the article "We have Talked Enough About Ourselves: How the marriage of American exceptionalism and liberal Zionism led to genocide" in the magazine Equator. His next book, Anti-Zio...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with analyst Yousef Munayyer about shifts in US public policy and public opinion over the past 20 years and especially the last 2.5 years, including an analysis of the Biden Administration's support for Israeli genocide. They discuss the BDS movement and the impact of the Palestinian boycott of the New York Times in light of dispe...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Sarah Leah Whitson and Michael Omer-Man of DAWN, an organization supporting human rights and democracy in the Middle East & North Africa. They discuss the recently-published book that Whitson and Omer-Man co-authored, From Apartheid to Democracy: A Blueprint for Peace in Israel-Palestine. Practically, the book acts as a bluep...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Hilary Rantisi speaks with Dr. Yousef Kamal AlKhouri, Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies and Academic Dean at Bethlehem Bible College and a Christian Arab Palestinian theologian from Gaza. They discuss the Christian community in Gaza, the importance of Gaza in Christianity and Christian history, and the destruction of Christians in Gaza, which...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with author Naomi Klein about her new essay, "Surrealism Against Fascism," (published in the Equator, 11/26/25), and the questions of whether we need new institutions, what happens next in Palestine, the meaning of fascism and what resistance to it can and may look like. Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and t...

FMEP fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Peter Beinart (also an FMEP fellow) about Peter's decision to speak at Tel Aviv University, his apology for doing so, and criticisms of both.

FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor is joined by Palestinian analyst Tareq Baconi to discuss his newly published book, "Fire in Every Direction." For bios and resources, please visit: https://fmep.org/resource/queerness-and-li…ith-tareq-baconi/

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Arielle Angel and Alissa Wise about Jewish navel-gazing, Jewish institutions, and growing the anti-Zionist movement. For bios and resources, please visit: https://fmep.org/resource/jewish_institutions_anti_zionism/

In this episode of FMEP's Occupied Thoughts podcast, FMEP President Lara Friedman speaks with Zo Brown (an alias), the founder of Databases for Palestine about the project, and about why actively working to preserve evidence and memory of Israel's genocide of Gaza -- and actively working to fight the erasure of both -- is central to the achievement of accountability and justice. You can follow the...

FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute about Jordan, the Gulf and US policy on Palestine. They also discuss the Biden administration's complicity in genocide, who is profiting from the mass killing, and what careerism means for those who have chosen to continue to serve in the State Dept. Resources and bios at: https://fmep.org/resource/jordan-the-gulf-and-ameri...

FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with author and journalist Antony Loewenstein about his upbringing in Australia, his film "Germany's Israel Obsession", and the seminal book he published in 2023, "The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World", and the possibility of a one-state outcome after a genocide.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with civil rights attorney and activist Huweida Arraf about Huweida's work to co-found the International Solidarity Movement as well as the different flotilla efforts, including the 2008 Freedom Flotilla, which arrived in Gaza; the 2010 Mavi Marmara, which was stormed by Israeli troops, who killed and injured participants; and the...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Mondoweiss editor Adam Horowitz about the role that Mondoweiss, an independent news organization, has played in the struggle for Palestinian rights over the past 25 years. They also discuss the moral case for the cultural boycott of Israel and what constitutes justice after genocide. Adam Horowitz is the Executive Editor of M...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Jenin Younes, National Legal Director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). They focus on Freedom of Speech in the United States, looking at the Covid pandemic and speech restrictions at that time and the acceleration of the assault on speech by Israel advocates. They discuss the contours of a principled s...

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with human rights attorney Sari Bashi and policy expert Bushra Khalidi about the current state of humanitarian aid in Gaza, the bureaucracy of restrictions -- including the stated purpose of restricting aid -- and whether international law continues to carry meaning after two years of genocide. Recorded on October 14, 2025. Ahmed ...