Understanding Israel Palestine

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Noam Perry of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) joined the show this week to discuss his organization's research into the business of military occupation and apartheid in Palestine/Israel and the USA. Since Israel began assaulting Gaza after Oct. 7, the AFSC has put together a comprehensive resource on their website detailing the weapons companies fueling Isra...

Send us Fan Mail Mideast expert Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC,  discusses how U.S. militarism is raising the risk of a wider Mideast war, what more the United Nations could do to press Israel and the United States to adopt a ceaefire in Gaza, and the suit South Africa has filed at the International Court of Justice charging Israel with the crime of...

Send us Fan Mail The Rev. Dr. Robert Smith discusses his scholarly work on Christian Zionism and his activism for Palestinian liberation. An enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and professor history, Smith lived in Palestine for several years working for the University of Notre Dame before returning to Turtle Island/United Sta...

Send us Fan Mail Historian Rashid Khalidi discusses the Israel-Hamas war in the context of the past century of Israeli settler colonialism and Palestinian resistance.  The current war has seen Israel push Palestinians in Gaza from the north to the south and is another step in a process of ethnic cleansing and depopulation long pursued by Zionist forces and the Israeli state, with the support first...

Send us Fan Mail After over 11 years working as a Director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Josh Paul recently resigned from the State Department. In this role he was responsible for U.S. defense diplomacy, security assistance, and arms transfers. He joined the show this week to discuss the pipeline of US weapons being sent to Israel. While the letter of the law has perhaps been follow...

Send us Fan Mail Three experts on the Holocaust discuss the uses and abuses of Holocaust memory in the context of current events in Israel/Palestine and the war in Gaza. They note that since Oct. 7 the Holocaust has been invoked by Israeli leaders with accompanying calls for mass violence against Palestinians and a war in Gaza that has now killed close to 20,000 people.   The conversation was conv...

Send us Fan Mail Professor Barry Trachtenberg, the Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History at Wake Forest University, talks about turmoil on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war, critical concerns about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, why the Holocaust is not a justification for oppression, and why he thinks arguments for Jewish exceptionalism are flawed and not in Jews’ best interests.

Send us Fan Mail Tala Nasir, lawyer at Addameer, Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association sheds light on the issue of the Palestinian political prisoners. Addameer, the Arabic word for conscience, is a Palestinian non-governmental, civil institution that works to support Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli and Palestinian prisons. In the first half of our interview, we talked abou...

Send us Fan Mail Khaled Elgindy, director of the program on Israeli-Palestinian Affairs at the Middle East Institute, discusses mounting violence in the West Bank, the crack-down on free speech inside Israel, the ongoing war and looming prospect of starvation in Gaza and a shambolic U.S. policy, characterized as a run-away train with no brakes and no destination.

Send us Fan Mail Historian Rashid Khalidi discusses  the current Israel-Hamas war in the context of the past century of Israeli settler colonialism and Palestinian resistance.  The current war has seen Israel push Palestinians in Gaza from the north to the south and is another step in a process of ethnic cleansing and depopulation long pursued by Zionist forces and the state of Israel, supported f...

Send us Fan Mail In his 2011 book Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations: 1820-2001, Professor Ussama Makdisi of University California Berkeley wrote, “No matter how one turns the kaleidoscope of US-Arab relations, one always returns, or is returned to, the picture of Palestine.” In his book Makdisi highlights several historical pivot points to chart the trajectory of the two-h...

Send us Fan Mail Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem University discusses the longue durée of the progressive Zionist colonization of the Holy Land. He highlights the current siege-like situation in the ghetto of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, before going on to discuss the numerous Israeli assaults in the West Bank and their context in international law. He notes the deleterious effects on Pa...

Send us Fan Mail Film-maker Maurice Jacobsen speaks about efforts he and long-time colleagues in Gaza have been making to document the war as best they can with "We All Live in Gaza: The War Chronicles," short videos posted on the Internet. Journalist Yousef Al-Jamal talks about the recent book he contributed to, "Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire," his growing up in Gaza, t...

Send us Fan Mail Former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied by Israel since 1967, Michael Lynk discusses international law as it applies to the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. The Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas as well as Hamas' ongoing missile strikes on Israel violate international law. So too does Israel's indiscriminate s...

Send us Fan Mail Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab-American Institute, discusses Arab-Americans' outrage at the Biden administration's announcement Sept. 27th that it is accepting Israel into the U.S. visa waiver program, a program which allows citizens from select countries to travel to the United States without a visa. Arab-American, Palestinian-American and U.S. Muslim civil...

Send us Fan Mail The Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel joined Understanding Israel Palestine to share about his journey from his childhood in Palestine to becoming a pastor in the Presbyterian Church USA and then Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, the highest elected position in the church. In the latter half our discussion, we turned our attention towards interfaith dialogue...

Send us Fan Mail Eyal Hareuveni of the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem discusses how and why Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank face a chronic shortage of water. He is the author of a new study by B'Tselem called "Parched: Israel's Policy of Water Deprivation in the West Bank," which examines Israel's discriminatory use of water to control the Palestini...

Send us Fan Mail Yousef Munayyer, Senior Fellow and head of the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C., discusses the complexity of Israel's internal fissures, changing battlefield dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians, and the increasing turn to armed resistance among Palestinians.

Send us Fan Mail A day after Israel's passage of a highly contested bill to curb the power of the Supreme Court, Mickey Gitzin, director of the New Israel Fund, a non-profit in Jerusale that works to advance liberal democracy in Israel, and Nivine Sandouka, a Palestinian who heads the NGO Our Rights in Jerusalem, discuss its significance, the dangers of the far-right government, the contradic...

Send us Fan Mail Human rights advocate Samer Daoudi and international human rights attorney Jonathan Kuttab discuss the recent demolition of the Jubbet adh-Dhib village school by the Israeli army on May 7, 2023. The demolition of the school is emblematic of a larger strategy to deny Palestinians access to education and, accordingly, the ability to even live in area C, argues Samer Daoudi. Jonathan...

Send us Fan Mail Jehad Abusalim is executive director of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development and author of a recent article in "The New Arab" that looks at Gaza 16 years after Israel imposed its ongoing siege. He discusses Gaza today amid new concerns raised in the wake of the Israeli attack on Jenin in July that Israel may begin treating the West Bank as it does G...

Send us Fan Mail Chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2001-2005, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson talks frankly about the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel. Fear and intimidation lead the United States to ignore or condone human rights violations by Israel, even when U.S. lives are involved. Wilkerson discusses the parallels between the...

Send us Fan Mail May 15 marks the 75th aniversaryof the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” when 3/4 of the indigenous population of Palestine lost their homeland in the establishment of the state of Israel. Commemorations of the anniversary are taking place across the United States, including in Kansas City where Palestinian- Americans and their friends will gather Saturday, May 20, at 6 p.m...

Send us Fan Mail The Rev. Mae Elise Cannon, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, says Jerusalem’s status as a city that is home to two peoples and sacred to three faiths has never been more endangered in the modern era than it is today. Recently returned from a trip to the Middle East, she discusses the Israeli government’s intentional erosion of the historic status quo that has g...

Send us Fan Mail Stephen M. Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University,  talks about the Israel lobby in the United States and the negative effect unconditional support for Israel has had on U.S. foreign policy in the Mideast and on Israel itself. Walt is the author, along with John Mearsheimer, of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.  Published in 2007, the book was con...