The Fire These Times 201/ This Cannot Be The New Normal
In this special episode of The Fire These Times, Elia is joined by four members of the From The Periphery media collective to talk about the ongoing famine in Gaza, Israel's genocide and the world's complicity. Despite the obviously horrific nature of this topic, we insisted on not giving in to despair. The génocidaires cannot win.
The five participants connected to the Gaza genocide through their own respective experiences: Leila Al-Shami (Syria: The Inconvenient Revolution) is a Syrian-British activist and writer who lived in Gaza for three years; Karena Avedissian (Obscuristan) is an Armenian scholar who continues to reflect on the legacy of the Armenian genocide and the role of Genocide studies today; Daniel Voskoboynik (Hidah: Jewish Counter-Colonial Thoughts) joined us from what used to be the Warsaw Ghetto, site of one of the most infamous episodes of the Holocaust; israa' (The Mutual Aid Podcast) has been involved in Gaza mutual aid (click here for the link); and finally Elia is a Palestinian-Lebanese whose grandfather was a Palestinian refugee.
They spoke about pushing back against despair, and the importance of rejecting Israel's genocide as the new normal. It got very personal at times.
The Fire These Times is a proud member of From The Periphery (FTP) Media Collective. Check out other projects in our media ecosystem: Syria: The Inconvenient Revolution, From The Periphery Podcast, The Mutual Aid Podcast, Politically Depressed, Obscuristan, and Antidote Zine.
If you're not a supporter yet, please consider doing so with only $5 a month on Patreon.com/fromtheperiphery
For more:
Elia Ayoub is on Bluesky, Mastodon and blogs at Hauntologies.net
Leila Al-Shami is on Bluesky, Mastodon and blogs here
Karena Avedissian is on Bluesky
israa is on Bluesky
Daniel Voskoboynik is on Bluesky and blogs at The Ecology of Us
The Fire These Times is on Bluesky, IG and has a website
From The Periphery is on Patreon, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, and has a website
Transcriptions: Transcriptions are done by Antidote Zine and will be published on The Fire These Times' transcript archive.
Credits:
Elia Ayoub (host, producer, sound editor, episode design), Leila Al Shami (host), israa (host), Daniel Voskoboynik (host), Karena Avedissian (host), Rap and Revenge (Music), Wenyi Geng (TFTT theme design), Hisham Rifai (FTP theme design) and Molly Crabapple (FTP team profile pics).