Understanding Israel Palestine

“The Detonator and the Survival Kit: Recovering the Map Beyond the Wreckage” featuring Jonathan Kuttab   "Welcome back to Understanding Israel Palestine , a Beyond the Walls edition. I’m Jeremy Rothe-Kushel. Today, we re-open a black box recording from a time of useful consciousness : my March 2021 conversation with long-serving Palestinian human rights attorney Jonathan Kuttab . Back then, the UN...

Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Director of Israel-Palestine Research at the non-profit DAWN (Democracy in the Arab World Now), speaks about the accelerating pace of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank,  which is raising fears of a new genocide. He describes the history of settler violence, the U.S. role in enabling Israeli occupation and apartheid, and what measures could prompt Israel to chart a diffe...

Mamdani’s Panopticon Burden: To Inherit the Hardened and Databased Political Epistemology of the Security State(s)? By Jeremy Rothe-Kushel Host/Producer, Understanding Israel Palestine: Beyond The Walls New York City is a paradox disguised as a metropolis. Above, the glass-and-steel canyons of Midtown reflect the accumulated wealth of empire—the real estate dynasties, the hedge funds, the global i...

Jen Marlowe, the founder of Donkeysaddle Projects, and producer of the recent film Severed, joins the show to talk about the crisis of disability in Palestine and particularly in Gaza, where thousands of amputees struggle to get the care in the aftermath of Israel's escalated genocide and its suffocating blockade.

The project director on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group, an independent non-profit focused on preventing and resolving deadly conflict,  Max Rodenbeck discusses the Crisis Group's recent report on the Gaza Peace Plan advanced by President Trump. He describes how Trump's 20-point plan developed, its unavoidable ambiguity, the many questions about  the ceasefire's terms and prosp...

Two years after the October 7th attacks, a so-called Gaza peace deal is roughly unfolding. But there widely remains no serious analytical investigation into the full origins of that inciting event. Was it really a surprise? Or was it part of a deeper provocation, escalated by security stand-downs and the 'Mass Hannibal Directive'? We cast back to an AnteDote analysis from October 2023 to begin re-...

In the fall of 2023, a shady land deal signed a few years earlier between the Armenian Patriarchate and an Australian-Israeli businessman came to light. Despite the Patriarchate's cancellation of the deal on Nov. 1, 2023, Israeli surveyors and settlers pushed ahead with their plans to develop the property into a luxury hotel and permanently alter the character and demography of the Old City's Arme...

In anticipation of Voices from the Holy Land's upcoming October 19th online film salon "The Israel Occupation Tech Lab," we will hear a segment Jeremy Rothe-Kushel produced in December 2020 and then remixed for August 2021 titled "Cyberweaponry, Kill-Switch Diplomacy and the Technology of Occupation." To find out about and register for Voices from the Holy Land's October 19th "Israel Occupation Te...

From the People's Conference for Palestine 2025: Over the past year, we have seen a shift in public consciousness: from demanding an immediate ceasefire to demanding a full arms embargo on Israel. Mass protests have erupted in the ports of Morocco, French dockworkers have refused to handle military cargo destined to Israel, and Spain has passed a policy to enact an arms embargo against Israel. Thi...

Amidst the smoke and ruin of Gaza City, as the world grapples with the UN's analysis of genocide, a haunting logic unfolds—one written a century ago. Amidst the flames, ruin & human destruction currently being escalated by the Israeli military in Gaza City and the UN's finally emergent declaratory analysis of genocide, a more than century-old haunting logic has destructively unfolded. In the U...

Emmaia Gelman, director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, discusses Zionism's relationship to racism and colonialism,   the threat to Americans' First Amendment rights posed by the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism promoted by the Anti-Defamation League and other Zionist groups, and the emergence of Zionism as an arm of fascism in the United States.

For this week’s episode, we are excerpting portions of a panel entitled The Struggle Continues: The Fight for Palestine in North America held on Aug 30, 2025 at the second annual People's Conference for Palestine in Detroit. We are excerpting PYM organizer Mohammed Nabulsi’s responses to questions posed by the moderator Loubna Qatami. In response to the last two years of Zionist genocide in Gaza,...

Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of New Jewish Narrative, talks about Israel's decision to advance a controversial, long-planned and long-delayed settlement regarded as a death knell for an independent Palestinian […] The post Israel Advances "Doomsday" Settlement Seen as Fatal to the Two-State Solution appeared first on KKFI .

On this Beyond the Walls edition of Understanding Israel Palestine, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel proposes an evolving Beyond the Walls edition mission statement, covers the news and speaks with Harry Davies — […] The post The Azure Unit 8200 Dragnet: Cloud, Code & Complicity Inside Microsoft & Israeli Military Intelligence’s Mass Palestinian Surveillance Machine appeared first on KKFI .

Since 1967, Israel has imprisoned as many as one million Palestinians—men, women, and children. Many are “administrative detainees,” taken without charge or a fixed release date, and receiving little or […] The post Guilt Not Required: Palestinian Prisoners, Hostages, and Detainees appeared first on KKFI .

Lecturer, anthropologist and activist Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, continues talking with Margot Patterson about Israel's past, present and future. He discusses how Jewish Israelis […] The post The Necessity for One Democratic State for Israelis and Palestinians appeared first on KKFI .

Anthropologist, activist and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Jeff Halper speaks to Margot Patterson about how Israel's genocide in Gaza and recent attack on Iran fit into […] The post "Normalization" Is Israel's Goal in Palestine appeared first on KKFI .

Dr. Emilio Dabed, who we last spoke with one year ago in July of 2024, returns to the show to offer a retrospective on the argument he advanced in an article published around that time. In that article, Dr. Dabed argues that the true purpose of international law is to administer colonial violence, and he […] The post The Promises and Pitfalls of International Law vis-à-vis Palestine appeared first...

For this episode of Understanding Israel Palestine — a Beyond the Walls edition — Jeremy Rothe-Kushel speaks with Matthew Ghobrial Cockerill, a doctoral candidate in International History at the London […] The post Genocidal Deceptions, Palestine Denied & the Public Responsibilities of how History might Speak appeared first on KKFI .

Masafer Yatta is a collection of hamlets in the South Hebron Hills that Israel has long tried to wrest from Palestinians living there. The intensifying struggle there is the topic […] The post Providing Protective Presence in Masafer Yatta: One Man's Story of Activism in Palestine appeared first on KKFI .

In this rebroadcast of our July 2024 interview with Dr. Emilio Dabed, a Palestinian-Chilean lawyer specializing in constitutional matters, international law, and human rights, we discuss his article for 972 Magazine entitled, "By failing to stop the Gaza genocide, the ICJ is working exactly as intended." We discuss the ICJ's failure to order a ceasefire […] The post As Israel's Colonial Genocide I...

Pollster and Middle East scholar James Zogby discusses his recent column on the Drobles Plan for Palestine, which he says Israel is advancing in Gaza and the West Bank despite […] The post Israel Implements the Drobles Plan for Palestine amid War on Iran appeared first on KKFI .

Since it's founding in 1996, Jewish Voice for Peace has advocated for Palestinian freedom and an end to Israeli occupation, apartheid and war. In early May, JVP held its first […] The post Jewish Voice for Peace Rallies Members to Fight Genocide in Gaza appeared first on KKFI .

How have humanitarian organizations managed to deliver life-saving aid to millions of Gazans despite the dangerous and difficult conditions since Oct 7? Despite their success, why have the US and […] The post Famine and Farce: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation appeared first on KKFI .

Zeiad Abbas Shamroukh, Executive Director of the Middle East Childrens Alliance joins the show to talk about the conditions people in Gaza are facing, as Israel's total blockade on food, […] The post Starvation and Sumud in Gaza appeared first on KKFI .