Understanding Israel Palestine

In this rebroadcast of an earlier episode, Eamon speaks with Hind Shraydeh, Jerusalem-based journalist, about the practice of administrative detention in Palestine and her own husband's ordeal as a prisoner (administrative detainee).

Acclaimed poet and writer Naomi Shihab Nye discusses her life and work in this conversation that originally aired on Understanding Israel Palestine in March of 2023. The daughter of a Palestinian refugee and an American mother, Nye was a teenager living with her family near Jerusalem when the Six-Day War broke out in 1967, causing the family to return to the United States. She reads from her poetr...

Ben Freeman discusses a provision in the fy 2027 National Defence Authorization Act that would deepen U.S.-Israeli military ties to an unparalleled degree, making them difficult to unravel and removing Congressional oversight and accountability. An equally alarming provision in the Intelligence Autorization Act would force the U.S to share almost all intelligence about the Middle East with Israel....

The Premeditated Clampdown: Alison Weir on the Calculated Campaign to Protect Israeli State-Sponsored Destruction In this archival dive from September 2021, Alison Weir , executive director of   If Americans Knew , exposes the calculated rollout of weaponized antisemitism laws. Five years later, the true design behind that campaign is undeniable. Host Jeremy Rothe-Kushel breaks out the tape to rev...

In this rebroadcast of the program of April 17,  Sonia Meyerson-Knox provides historical context for Israel's war in Lebanon, its seventh since the founding of Israel in 1948. She discusses Israel's decades-long ambition to expand into Lebanon and why she believes Israel is intent not just on destroying Hezbollah but the fabric of Lebanese society and Lebanon's territorial integrity.  Now communic...

Mideast peace negotiator Robert Malley continues his conversation with Margot Patterson about the road to Oct. 7th. Part I of the interview aired May 15.  In Part II, he speaks about the differing strategies pursued by Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. misconceptions of Palestinian politics, the lack of accountability for failed U.S. policies in the Middle East, the worseni...

The Architecture of Empire: Walter L. Hixson on the Israel Lobby and the Machinery of Endless War Part Two: The Nakba’s Blast Radius and the Capture of U.S. Foreign Policy Episode Description Seventy-eight years ago, the Nakba dismantled Palestinian society. Today, we are living inside its blast radius. What began in 1948 with the violent mass displacement of over 700,000 people has metastasized i...

Longtime Mideast peace negotiator Robert Malley talks about his and Hussein Agha's recently published book, Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine. Malley discusses  how diplomatic illusions, blunders and deceptions undermined the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, created an endless, unproductive peace process and led to the atrocities of Oct. 7 and Israel's cal...

Abdelfattah Abusrour, founder and director of Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Society in Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, Palestine, joined the show this week to discuss his life's work. We discussed how he came to found Alrowwad and the many inspirational students and works of art that have come of it.

Understanding Israel Palestine: A Beyond the Walls Edition Episode: The Structural Origins of AIPAC & The History of Israeli Espionage in the U.S. Guest: Grant Smith, Research Director at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) Host: Jeremy Rothe-Kushel Episode Overview In this deep political analysis of US-Israel relations, we examine the foundational architecture and histor...

Sonya Meyerson-Knox spent 16 years in Beirut, Lebanon working as a journalist and for U.N. agencies before becoming communications director of Jewish Voice for Peace. She discusses the new war in Lebanon that began after the United States and Israel attacked Iran February 28, 2026, describing it within the context of previous Israeli wars in Lebanon. She views the current war as not just an attack...

Beyond the Walls: The Israel-Silicon Valley Nexus and the Penetration of U.S. Critical Infrastructure (with Mary Silva) Episode Overview: While public discourse naturally gravitates toward the physical realities of the occupation and destruction in Palestine, a parallel, largely invisible architecture of control operates far beyond the checkpoints of Gaza and the West Bank. This digital infrastruc...

Journalist, author, academic and editor of  the news site The Palestine Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud discusses the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and how it relates to Israel's war in Lebanon and Israel's effort to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the Occupied West Bank. He says Israeli actions in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere in the region are all part of a coherent st...

Journalist, author, academic and editor of  the news site The Palestine Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud discusses the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and how it relates to Israel's war in Lebanon and Israel's effort to  ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the Occupied West Bank. He says Israeli actions in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and elsewehre are part of a coherent strategic plan to q...

As the devastation in Gaza threatens to be spilled over into a full-scale annihilation of Beirut, the Middle East crossed a Rubicon the morning this episode was recorded. With Israel’s sudden announcement of high-level assassinations targeting the upper echelons of Iranian leadership, the region faces an unprecedented era of engineered chaos. Is this a sudden escalation, or the culmination of a de...

Civilian casualties continue to climb in the region, especially in Iran and Lebanon, as the US and Israel intensify their assault on Iran. Iran retaliates by using its array of drones and missiles to hit US and Israeli military targets in the region, oil infrastructure, and other civilian targets. Hundreds of ships continue to be unable to transit the Strait of Hormuz, raising global energy prices...

Mai Shaheen is a Palestinian peace activist and therapist who uses nonviolent communication in her work with victims of trauma.  She talks to Margot Patterson about how nonviolent dialogue brings Israelis, Palestinians and internationals together for healing, solidarity and nonviolent action.  A founder of the Satyam Homeland Peace Center in the Occupied West Bank, she discusses the growing number...

Overcoming the Structures of Erasure and the Semantics of Genocidal Management  with  Aseel AlBajeh   "How do we talk about a reality that is being systematically erased in real-time?" On this episode of  Understanding Israel Palestine: Beyond the Walls , we examine the  epistemology of erasure  and how to transcend it through factual reframing. We explore the reality that a genocide is not just c...

Beyond the Language of the Israel-Palestine 'Conflict' and the Unconscious Grammar of Genocidal Consent with Alex McDonald On this episode of Understanding Israel Palestine, a Beyond the Walls edition , we move beyond the kinetic warfare on the ground to examine the cognitive warfare in our own minds. We investigate the "deep structural politics" of language—the specific mechanisms used to manufac...

Rasha Abouselem has been a humanitarian aid worker since 2014. In December she was in Gaza. She reports on the conditions she found there, the violence Palestinians continue to live with despite the ceasefire, the ongoing shortfall in aid, and the uncertainty and trauma Palestinians are living with. She says the media is not reporting the reality on the ground there.

Josh Paul joins the show again to discuss A New Policy, the organization that he co-founded with Tareq Habash. A New Policy is an organization dedicated to transforming American foreign policy toward Israel/Palestine to reflect American values and foundational principles of liberty, equality, democracy, and human rights; advancing American interests abroad; and protecting American freedoms at home...

Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, speaks to Margot Patterson about the war in Gaza in 2025 and the Trump administration's efforts to repress Palestinian activism in the United States over U.S. support for it. Abuznaid discusses changes in U.S. politics over Palestine, which he acnowledges have not so far translated into changes in U.S. policy or fundin...

This is a rebroadcast of the second portion of a talk organized by Eyewitness Palestine entitled We Refuse to Be Silent: Having Faith in the Truth. This portion was given by Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement and a member of the Steering Committee of the Freedom Flotilla. The first portion of the talk was given by Amazon Labor Union Organizer Chris Smalls.

Milena Ansari, Israel and Palestine Assistant Researcher at Human Rights Watch, joins the show to share the findings of their latest report about the forced depopulation of refugee camps in the West Bank. These actions of the Israeli army in early 2025, which constitute a crime against humanity, forcibly displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians, who have been prevented from returning.

The Rev. Dr. Allison Tanner is a Baptist pastor and national coordinator of the Apartheid-Free Communities Initiative . She discusses the effort to get Christian churches to pledge to become apartheid-free communities and oppose Israeli occupation and apartheid. Dr. Tanner will bring her perspective and experience to a panel discussion Sunday, Dec. 14 on “A Deafening Silence? U.S. Church Leadershi...