West Bank

115: Media Malpractice on Palestine and Iran

According to an update on the World Health Organization website from July 27th:

“Nearly one in five children under five in Gaza city is now acutely malnourished.”

Additionally: “It is not only hunger that is killing people, but also the desperate search for food. Families are being forced to risk their lives for a handful of food, often under dangerous and chaotic conditions. Since 27 May, more than 1,060 people have been killed and 7200 injured while trying to access food.”

 

Our guest for this show is Dr. Assal Rad. Dr. Rad received her PhD in Middle Eastern History from the University of California, Irvine in 2018. Her PhD research focused on Modern Iran, with an emphasis on national identity formation, and identity in post-revolutionary Iran. She’s also author of “The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran. 

 

More recently Dr. Rad has used her platforms on Twitter and Instagram to expose and deconstruct what can only be described as institutionalized media malpractice concerning coverage of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and regarding Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran between the 13th and 24th of June. These topics form the basis for our rather free-form conversation, where I also answer her questions about my brief detention and torture by Israeli forces in the West Bank, back in May. 

 

For more information about Dr. Rad’s academic work and public advocacy, follow her on Instagram and Twitter: @assalrad_

 
 
 

82: Palestinian Voices - East Jerusalem: Colonialism & Apartheid

For this second of two episodes about current events in Palestine we will be focusing specifically on the situation in East Jerusalem, and in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. East Jerusalem, which contains the old city, has been illegally occupied by Israel since the Israeli military captured it, along with the rest of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, in the “Six Day War” of 1967.

Since that time its Palestinian residents have been the targets of ongoing harassment, violence, and forced displacement by illegal Jewish settlers. The most recent instance of this ethnic cleansing campaign targeted residents of east Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. When Palestinians attempted to protest and resist, a brutal crackdown was waged by the Israeli authorities, a crackdown that is now reverberating across the West Bank, inside Israel, and in the form of yet another horrific Israeli bombing campaign on Gaza.

We hope that what you hear in this show inspires you to share it and to take action.

Join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and follow the Five things you can do to support Palestinian human rights, right now.

 
 

Recommended Resources:

 
 
 
 

81: Palestinian Voices: Gaza - Resilience & Mental Health

This episode is the first of a two part series we are doing on Palestine. This episode focuses on voices from Gaza, while the next episode highlights voices from east Jerusalem. You don’t need to listen to them in any particular order, but we strongly recommend that you listen to both in their entirety. 

You will hear a lot today about the psychological toll that repeated wars, devastation, poverty, deprivation, and abandonment by the international community have had on the 2 million residents of one of the most densely populated stretches of land on earth. 

We hope that what you hear inspires you to share this show with others and to take action.

Both of our guests also write for “We Are Not Numbers”.

Be sure to read this essay by guest Haneen AbdAlnabi about her experiences as a child in Gaza.

And read this piece by guest Anas Jnena about the past week of attacks on Gaza.

Join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and follow the Five things you can do to support Palestinian human rights, right now.

 
 

Recommended resources:

 
 
 
 

Episode 46: Gaza Sky Geeks & Women in Palestine

Dalia Shurrab is the Communication and Social Media Coordinator at Gaza Sky Geeks. We talk about the challenges of running the first tech hub in the Gaza Strip and the status of women's rights in Palestine.

 
 
 
 
 

Episode 33: Bringing Palestine to the US

Faisel Saleh was born the 11th of 11 children in the West Bank town of El Bireh after his parents fled from their home in Salama (near Tel Aviv) during the 1948 war. Those events created the state of Israel and what 700,000 Palestinians and their millions of descendants refer to as “The Nakba”, or the catastrophe. Faisal came to the US in 1969 to pursue his education, later becoming a successful entrepreneur. Last year he founded the Palestine Museum US, in Woodbridge, Connecticut, the first museum of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

In addition to providing a space to share and preserve the culture for Palestinian Americans, Palestinians of the global diaspora, and for Palestinians in Palestine, it’s also a space for non-Palestinians who create art or commentary about the community and its history.


But to talk about the art, culture, and history of Palestine and its people opens the door to a much wider conversation about the current conditions of the community, and in particular the circumstances of Palestinian refugees, and of those who have been enduring more than a decade of life under siege in the Gaza Strip and 52 years of Israeli military occupation.