The Big Picture with Mohamed Hassan

This week on The Big Picture Podcast we’re joined by celebrated photographer and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Misan Harriman. Harriman has built a global following through his moving black and white photography of the world’s most recognisable faces, becoming the first ever Black photographer to shoot the cover of Vogue. Since then, he made his directorial debut with the emotional short film ruminati...

Just two days after we sat down with Francesca Albanese, the Trump Administration placed her under sanctions. They accuse the UN Special Rapporteur of waging “economic warfare” on the United States. She says the sanctions are “mafia style intimidation techniques” and vows to continue her work to remind states of their obligations to “stop and punish genocide. And those who profit from it.” So why...

What does the war look like in the age of AI? This week on the Big Picture Podcast, we’re joined by author and investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein. We spoke to Loewenstein early in 2024 about his best-selling book ‘The Palestine Laboratory’ - which chronicled how Israel tests high tech weapons in Gaza before exporting them to the world. Since then, The Palestine Laboratory has been turned...

In a fiery and deeply personal return to The Big Picture Podcast, professor Norman Finkelstein explains why Israel and its allies in the West have destroyed the international order, and how the election of a Muslim socialist in New York threatens their grip on power. Finkelstein is a political scientist and one of the world’s foremost scholars on Israel-Palestine, as well as a critic of culture an...

This week on The Big Picture Podcast, we sit down with Middle East Eye’s Editor in Chief David Hearst to talk about the rapidly unfolding war between Israel and Iran, why the West supports it and what it threatens to unleash on the global order. So what does Israel really want to achieve, what options does Iran have to deescalate, and will the United States stop the war, or join it? We'd love...

NOTE: This conversation was recorded in November 2024, which is why you'll hear references to the elections and the Biden Administration. This week on The Big Picture, we sit down with military analyst and author William Hartung. Hartung is a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and in 2010 published Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Military Industrial-Com...

Why haven’t there been mass protests against Trump like there were in 2017? Part of the reason is the climate of fear and uncertainty that now proliferates throughout many communities, from student activists on IV league campuses to undocumented migrants. The arrests of pro-Palestine students Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysa Ozturk among others, and the deportation of hundreds of immigra...

The catholic world is grieving the loss of Pope Francis, but so is much of the Muslim one. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, Pope Francis spent much of his life reaching out across religious lines, forming monumental friendships with Muslims, from refugee families to Islamic scholars to Palestinians. In his final Easter Sunday sermon just hours before his death, he called on the world to pr...

This week on The Big Picture Podcast, we speak to Momodou Taal, a Cornell Unveristy scholar forced to flee from US immigration officers. The crackdown by the Trump administration on pro-Palestine activists has continued to intensify despite legal challenges. Undercover agents belonging to the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE for short, have been filmed arresting university st...

A trauma surgeon stationed at one of Gaza’s largest hospitals says the carnage this week is beyond anything he has seen in Ukraine or anywhere. More than 500 have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since Tuesday, when Israel’s government broke a two-month ceasefire with Hamas and has escalated attacks since. Hospitals continue to be overwhelmed with more than 900 injuries and facing ongoing shortag...

At least 400 people have been killed after a surprise Israeli attack on Gaza in the early hours of Tuesday.  Israel’s government vows to continue escalating these military attacks, saying it’s in response to Hamas’ refusal to extend the ceasefire, which has been in place since January. But is this the real reason for this morning’s attack? Or is there a much more cynical explanation - one tied to...

Is Judaism itself an anti-Zionist religion? According to Rabbi and organiser Alissa Wise, it's precisely the teachings of her faith that informs her stance against Israel, and her advocacy for a free Palestine. Rabbi Wise is a former organiser with Jewish Voice for Peace, and in December 2023 founded the group Rabbis for Ceasefire, calling for an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza. The gro...

What has Hamas achieved after 15 months of war with Israel? With the assassination of two of its most senior leaders, and the devastating human toll in Gaza, the future of Hamas appears uncertain. But the scenes of its militia re-emerging hours after the ceasefire sent a message of defiance. The scenes outraged an Israeli public, who were told that  victory would only come after the complete destr...

Netanyahu’s social contract has collapsed, and Israelis are in a state of shock. That is how former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy sees the outcome of 15 months of war in Gaza, after a ceasefire was brokered without Hamas conceding defeat. Instead, Israelis watch the scenes of Hamas militants celebrating in fresh uniforms and wonder what exactly did their Prime Minister achieve after promising not...

When Fatima Payman was first elected to Australia’s senate - she didn’t imagine she’d go to war with the Prime Minister two years later. Back in May, the country’s first ever hijabi lawmaker broke ranks with the governing Labor Party and accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. Despite attempts by her party to rein her in, she refused to stay quiet about what she saw happening in Gaza, and became incre...

What makes a perfect victim? For Palestinians fighting to keep their stories alive in the media, it often feels that they must audition for the sympathies of their Western audiences. If they don’t fit the mould - then their voices are ignored. In 2021, Mohammed al-Kurd was catapulted into the spotlight when his family’s home in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah was being forcefully...

Two years after our conversation with Waad al-Kateab about the desperate plight of Syrian refugees, we return to have a very different conversation. Less than a week after the dramatic and unexpected collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal reign, Syrians are beginning to dream once again of a future they believed had died. Waad al-Kateab and her family had settled in the UK, though they continued to...

Has Donald Trump peeled back the veil on the toxicity of America? What will his second term mean for Israel, Palestine and the pursuit of justice? This week on The Big Picture Podcast, we welcome back Norman Finkelstein, political scientist, author and legal scholar, to talk about the aftermath of the US elections, Israel’s war in Gaza and shifting tactics of the Palestine movement. Finkelstein ha...

What is the link between Zionism, capitalism and the American empire? Fresh off the back of a deeply toxic, all consuming US election - one in which the issue of Palestine and the war in Gaza was largely ignored - we examine what it means to survive a system intent on silencing and marginalising dissenting voices. Despite the key role the Biden Administration has played in arming and supporting Is...

Can Zionism survive the current war in Gaza? Israeli historian Ilan Pappé believes it can’t. In fact, he argues that the liberation of Palestine is an inevitability. Pappé is the author of 24 books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and most recently published two books: ‘Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic’ and ‘A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict’. This week on Th...

Before the formation of the Israeli Defence Forces in 1948, there were three underground Zionist militias - The Haganah, the Irgun and the Lehi. They differed in tactics and beliefs, and at times fought with each other - but together they terrorised Palestinian villages and executed bombings and assassinations against the British to force them to give up control of the land. They blew up hotels in...

Can Kamala Harris defeat Donald Trump without ending the war in Gaza? That could be up to a handful of key swing states, including Michigan, home to 150,000 Arab-American voters.  This is a community that has never had a political voice in Washington, that is, until now. A group of activists, community organisers and political insiders have come together to galvanise the anger around Gaza and forc...

Does Elon Musk have too much power over how we communicate online?  Is he using that power to fuel dangerous far-right conspiracies? This week on The Big Picture Podcast, we’re joined by Marc Owen Jones, social media analyst, author and assistant professor at Northwestern University in Doha. Over the last few weeks, he’s been documenting the Southport anti-immigrant riots across the UK, and the li...

What is the price tag for convincing Iran to back down? The US is desperately trying to keep a lid on the heightened tensions in the Middle East, following Israel’s assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Hanieyeh in Iran’s capital, and the airstrike on a Beirut suburb that killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr. Benjamin Netanyahu, the gambler and accused war criminal, seems determined to escal...

Two assassinations. Two capital cities. Less than 24 hours. One struck an apartment in downtown Beirut, killing a woman and two children - targeting a Hezbollah senior commander. Then just hours later, a strike in the heart of Tehran, assassinating Hamas’ most high profile figure, and its political chief - Ismail Hanieyah. Israel has claimed the first attack, though not the second - at least not y...