The Big Picture with Mohamed Hassan

We are living through a moment of social and political upheaval - one that has somehow aligned the Houthi rebels in Yemen, South Africa’s greatest legal minds and students across the wealthiest campuses in the world.  They’re all fighting for Gaza, and against an increasingly isolated Israeli government and its Western backers. So are we witnessing a historic tipping point? Norman Finkelstein has...

Fiona Lali wants to bring down the British government, as well as capitalism.  The marxist organiser turned independent candidate in the upcoming UK general elections says there’s a link between the powerful protest movement for Palestine and the widespread anger felt by young people and workers alike. Lali went viral in May when she confronted former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman on TV,...

Will Benjamin Netanyahu face justice at the Hague? The International Criminal Court on Monday issued arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas leaders over their actions in Gaza and on 7 October, accusing them both of committing war crimes. It’s an unprecedented move, the first time a US-ally has been pursued by the ICC. Prosecutor Karim Khan says that the reputation of international law itself h...

Winston Churchill is one of the most biographed figures in modern history, and held up as an orator and wartime strategist that turned the tide against Hitler and Nazi Germany. But how accurate is this image? And is it hiding a darker reality? This week on The Big Picture, we sit down with British-Pakistani writer, political activist and public intellectual Tariq Ali. Ali published his own biograp...

“I was definitely raised to be a Jewish leader of some kind.” With college campuses all over the US gripped by intense battles around free speech, antisemitism and Palestinian rights - the voices of young Jewish Americans have led the way.  One of the boldest and most prominent voices is that of Simone Zimmerman. Zimmerman was raised in a conservative Zionist household, taught to idolise and suppo...

Did Iran fall into Israel’s trap when it attacked on Saturday, or did it outmanoeuvre Netanyahu? Are we on the brink of regional war, or can the US contain the spill? When Israel bombed an Iranian embassy compound in Damascus on 1 April, killing top Iranian commanders, many saw it as bait laid out by Benjamin Netanyahu to force a direct confrontation that would drag the US into a wider regional co...

Is Europe ‘nostalgic for a racist past’ when it didn’t have to apologise for its colonialism?  In this week’s episode of The Big Picture, we sit down with renowned Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage.  Hage is currently fighting against the prestigious Max Planck Society in Germany over accusations of ‘antisemitism’ over his critiques of Israel. This week, Germany’s government had to defend its...

In this episode of The Big Picture, we sit down with Sadiq Khan for a wide ranging conversation about Labour’s election hopes, his political regrets and his vision for the future of London. Sadiq Khan wants to make history by winning a third term as London’s mayor - but his confidence is shaky. A winter of mass protests, a smear campaign in the media and a new set of voting regulations ushered in...

How do you humanise people facing unimaginable odds? That was the task Plestia Alaqad gave herself when she first put on her press vest on October 7. Freshly graduated from journalism school and dreaming of a bright future, she suddenly found herself in the middle of a war zone, with the eyes of the world watching. Armed with her phone and internet access, she began documenting the lives of her fa...

In this episode of The Big Picture Podcast, we sit down with investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein to talk about how for decades, Israel used its occupation of Palestinians as a testing ground for new weaponry, which it then packages and sells to governments around the world. In fact, Loewenstein argues that since its inception, Israel built its economy around military and surveillance techn...

What does coverage of Gaza tell us about how the West sees the rest of the world? A recent report into mainstream news coverage found Islamophobic and anti-Arab language was widely used in coverage of the events after 7 October, with Israeli victims described using emotive language 11 times more than Palestinian victims. It also documented how pro-Palestinian voices were frequently vilified and tr...

Why are Western societies so fearful of Islam and Muslims? One can answer this question by examining history, particularly that of European colonial powers, and the ways in which they justified their actions in the Global South by painting its peoples and religions as alien and in need of reformation. Another answer can be found in the murky ties between our modern political parties, powerful medi...

How deep does racism run within the Labour Party? Since the start of the Gaza war, there's been a growing anger within British Muslim communities at Labour's perceived lack of leadership on the Palestinian issue, and on the calls for a ceasefire. Under Sir Keir Starmer, the opposition party has towed the government line, publicly supporting Israel's devastating war, despite the outcry of many Labo...

This week on the Big Picture, we speak with British political activist, author and deputy chair of the Stop The War Coalition, Chris Nineham. Nineham was instrumental in organising the historic anti-war demonstrations in 2003 against the invasion of Iraq - which saw millions flood the streets in major cities across the globe - and is considered the largest protest in UK history. Now he's helping b...

It is impossible not to feel overwhelmed by the ongoing war in Gaza - the death toll, the horrific footage, the world’s inability to bring it to an end. That is compounded for Palestinians, many with family members directly impacted, who feel they’ve always been seen through a racist and islamophobic lens, and that speaking out is a political act with consequences. So how do Palestinians and Musli...

What does it take to shift the UK’s position on Palestine? One lawmaker, Layla Moran, has a deeply personal drive to fight for change. Her relatives have been trapped in a Gaza Church for days, surrounded by Israeli snipers and tanks and running out of food and water. Moran has been fighting to change the position of her Liberal Democrats Party for years, to introduce policies about recognizing a...

Can Western leaders be held to account for their role in the Gaza war? This week on The Big Picture Podcast, we sit down with one lawyer determined to do just that, and who has already put many of them on public notice. Tayab Ali is Solicitor Advocate, a partner at the London Law firm Bindmans LLP and the director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP). For years, Ali fough...

Joe Biden has pursued a ‘no red lines’ policy in his support for Israel’s war in Gaza, despite it being deeply unpopular among his own voters. The growing anger in Arab and Muslim American communities in key swing states has pushed many to vow they won’t vote for him in the 2024 Presidential elections.  While only making up 1% of the population - it’s where they live that could make all the differ...

Josh Paul created a big stir when he resigned from the US State Department in protest of the sale of weapons to Israel.  In a highly publicised letter, he said the rush to arm Israel’s war in Gaza was “shortsighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory”  The former arms trade expert, who helped the US train the Iraqi police and the Palestinian Authority, and oversaw weapons deals to a number of c...

Is there a path back from the brink for Israel and Palestine? Under the blinding influence of fury and revenge after the October 7 attack, Israel has waged a relentless war in Gaza which killed more than 11,000 Palestinians and displaced more than 1.5 million people. But beyond its stated aim to eliminate Hamas, there seems to be no plan for what happens the day after, or what would stop the wheel...

Are there Hamas tunnels under hospitals? Did Israel give up Gaza in 2005? Did the Palestinians reject their own state? This week on The Big Picture, we examine a widely shared interview with Hillary Clinton, praised as informative and illuminating.  Except most of what she says about Gaza isn’t true - so why is she misleading the public? It could be her financial ties to Israel, and influential Is...

Are Western leaders sleepwalking into a disaster in the Middle East? As regional tensions surge amid Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, its allies in the US and Europe have refused calls to de-escalate the conflict and prevent the staggering toll on human life from spiralling further.  Western countries vowed to stand by Israel as it responds to the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas, with many invok...

On Wednesday, the world woke up to newspapers plastered with a horrific headline about ‘40 Israeli babies decapitated by Hamas’.  But was the story true? We dig into the dizzying, circular debate around the darkest story of an already devastating week and ask whether journalists fulfilled their duty to fact-check it, or instead helped Israel justify its policy of ‘collective punishment’ in Gaza. W...

The history of Palestinian liberation movements is paved with setbacks, betrayals and bitter rivalries. What began as an attempt to unify the resistance against Israeli occupation has over time been undermined by regional and global political interests, ideological differences and disagreements over the justification, and use, of guerilla tactics. Today the question of who represents Palestinian i...

What is the fate of Imran Khan? After more than a year of political turmoil following his ousting, the embattled former Pakistani leader is in prison, fighting dozens of charges from corruption to sedition to selling state secrets. He’s also been barred from taking part in the country’s upcoming elections, and his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, is slowly being dismantled. Senior leaders have bee...