The Palestine Pod

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Noor Elkhaldi, Palestinian-American fashion model/influencer, and host of the popular podcast Arab-American Psycho, discussing the success of her podcast, its origins, and the meaningful conversations she has had on it with Palestinians like her mother, Hawaiian activists, and other people impacted by colonialism. Lara and Michael do a deep dive into Noor's family history learning that she only found out her parents were refugees this year because of their reluctance to relive past trauma. Noor reflects on traveling to Palestine as an American citizen and the privileges she experienced over Palestinians on the ground. Noor reminds us of Zionist cultural appropriation of Palestinian food, and the beautiful and rich Palestinian food community in New York. Finally, Noor enlightens the Palestine Pod on her experience being a visibly Muslim woman in fashion, with the perils and the joys included.

This week Lara and Michael discuss RIFQA, Mohammed El-Kurd's newly released book of poetry, pondering some of the book's messages like "anger is a luxury we cannot afford." Indeed, Palestinians are expected to be calm and composed while being ethnically cleansed. Lara and Michael talk mental health and the toll Palestinian liberation takes on the lives of those who engage in the work. Lara considers the passages of the book that resonated the most with her, including the reflection "I cried not for the house but for the memories I could have made inside.” Lara imagines what could have been if not for the gangs of Zionist militias who stole Palestine, and expelled and murdered much of the native population. Mohammed El-Kurd writes it's been over "70 years and we have not yet lived a day." Life and time stand still for Palestinians who are waiting to return to Palestine, waiting for rights, waiting for justice. Finally, we discuss a recent B'tselem report that connects settler violence to the state policy of stealing Palestinian land (duh). Michael makes the parallel between the extracurricular terrorist activities of the settlers in Palestine and the KKK in the US.

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Israeli comedian and activist, Noam Shuster Eliassi. We talk about Noam's family history, her mother is an Iranian Jew and her father was born in Jerusalem to Romanian parents who survived the Holocaust. We chat about Noam's desire to preserve the traditions and return even just to visit the birthplace of her mother and honor her Iranian lineage which spans back thousands of years. She expresses her empathy and understanding of Palestinians desire to return to Palestine. We discuss why both Noam and her father refused to serve in the IDF, and the trials and tribulations they faced as a family for being refuseniks. Michael discusses the story of Givat Amal a once Palestinian village ethnically cleansed by the European zionists who resettled the Mizrahi's in areas without adequate infrastructure. Only to also kick them out violently in order to build high rise condominiums. Noam talks about how her Mizrahi identity and her upbringing around Palestinians allowed her to better sympathize with the plight of Palestinians. We conclude by cementing that we all play our own roles, Noam from on the ground, Lara as a Palestinian in exile, and Michael as an American Jew. It is not radical to demand equality among people, and freeing Palestine will free Israeli Jews from being occupiers.

This week Lara leads us on a deep dive into the legal frameworks that came into place in the aftermath of the Nakba, including the absentee property law, the law of return, and the nationality law. All these legal devices helped codify the actions of ethnic cleansing and land theft by the rogue Zionist militias into the "legal" actions of a state. We also cover the various ways Zionists stopped Palestinians from returning to their native lands. Lara discusses the examples of Iqrit and Kufr Bir'im, both towns where the Supreme Court of Israel had in one case already ruled in favor of Palestinian return, and the other where the case was pending before the court. In both cases, the IOF demolished the villages so as to render the return of Palestinians impossible. Lara talks about the many thousands of Palestinians who did try to return despite these measures who were murdered in cold blood. We discuss how these policies like the Nakba are ongoing and not something rooted in the past. Finally, we switch gears, covering the censorship of Palestinian content on Tik Tok as a strategy passed down from region-specific moderation teams where Israeli moderators set the standards and Arab moderators were kept in subordinate positions.

This week Lara and Michael talk to one of Lara's dear friends Max from Palestine Action. Palestine Action is an activist collective engaging in direct action in the UK to shut down the factories of weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, one of the largest suppliers of weapons to Apartheid Israel. Max guides us through recent actions including one where he chained himself to the gates of the Elbit Systems factory, and others where activists have staked out the factory roofs to halt production for as long as possible. Max explains how Palestine Action's strategy is actually to end up in court so that it can leverage the discovery process to request documents that would expose Elbit's dealings and possible violations of international law and/or UK laws on human rights and weapons trade. Max enlightens us on the difference between jails in the US and the UK.... (spoiler alert: only one of them has a call button for tea and ramen). Max and Michael discuss the lack of any true radical anti-zionist Jewish organizations in the United States and Max bemoans that the only Jewish organization getting arrested in the US is the one group that does not support BDS. We talk about the importance of showing up, not just once, but consistently, in order to build a movement that the representatives in power cannot ignore.

This week Lara and Michael discuss the bombshell Washington Post article exposing a vast dragnet surveillance system used by the IOF against Palestinian society. Programs Blue Wolf and Wolfpack use state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to track and identify all movements by Palestinians, and has been called "a secret Facebook for Palestinians" according to an IOF soldier. Palestinians are given ratings and the programs use flashing colors to indicate whether the Israeli soldier should arrest, detain, or leave Palestinians alone. Squid Game anyone? The system was built in part by incentivizing the occupation's military units to take pictures of as many Palestinians as possible from children to elders by awarding prizes to those units that took the most pictures. The Palestine Pod covers the work being done to expose the occupation by Citizen Lab in Toronto and provide an update on the use of Israel's Pegasus spy software against Palestinian human rights organizations recently deemed "terrorist" organizations by the Apartheid State. Michael also discusses how Zionism is suffocating academic freedom in the UK with the termination of Professor David Miller and Lara reminds that these restrictions are related to the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, which has so far been adopted by around 30 countries. Lara and Michael chuckle at Biden's milquetoast platitudes towards funding UNWRA as their financial situation deteriorates by the day. Finally, we talk about how the occupation is attempting to acquire Bunker Buster bombs from the USA because bombing above ground is so early 2000s. 

Trigger warning: Rape, sexual assault, coercion. This week, we cover the phenomenon of rape, sexual assault, and psychological warfare threatening rape and sexual assault employed by Apartheid Israel against Palestinians, whether they be political prisoners, male or female, younger or older, friends and family of political prisoners, or simply Palestinians on the land of Palestine. Lara notes how this phenomenon is nothing new and goes back decades to the Nakba of 1948 and the founding of the state of Israel when these violent tactics were employed against Palestinians by Zionist militias, in a manner fully consistent with the express beliefs of Zionist leaders like David Ben-Gurion, during documented massacres in order to intimidate and threaten the indigenous population to flee their homes. Lara also ponders the intersection between the celebration of the military, advanced weaponry, and mandatory service, which is at the center of Israeli society and the propagation of rape culture. She concludes that rape and sexual assault (or the threat of it) is used as a tactic in a systemic matter by the colonizer against the colonized reinforcing the colonial violence central to settler colonialism, the inequality at the heart of the Apartheid system, and the dehumanization required to sustain both forms of oppression. Michael covers recent stories illustrating the connection between Israel and human trafficking as well as the emergence of Israel as a “safe haven” for Jews fleeing prosecution in the US for sex-related crimes. There are not many jokes in this episode.

This week we sit down with Joudie Kalla, also known to the world as @palestineonaplate. A Palestinian-British chef hailing from a family of Nakba survivors who spent time in Syria before settling in London and author of two best selling Palestinian cook books, Palestine on a Plate: Memories from my Mother’s Kitchen and Baladi: A Celebration of Food from Land and Sea. Joudie talks to us about anti-Palestinian media bias she experienced, how divide and conquer manifests in the culinary world, and whether Palestinian cuisine would make a good fusion cuisine. Listen to find out Joudie’s recommendation for the best introductory recipe for a newcomer to Palestinian cuisine and hear Michael instigate bamya-gate part 3. Joudie’s dogs provide the soundtrack to this episode. If you liked this episode, join our Patreon where you will get exclusive access to an additional 45 minutes of footage from this conversation where we dive deep into trauma, memories, and exile and play a round of rapid fire questions to get to know Joudie better. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss Instagram censoring our profile by announcing that as of October 25, 2021 we would no longer have access to the link button on @thepalestinepod account for purported violations of community guidelines. Lara queries what threshold Instagram is applying to make this decision to deprive users of critical features since @thepalestinepod account has only ever had one post removed from its account (which in any event did not violate Community Guidelines). Several other Palestinian content creators have received the alert that they too would lose access to the link button with the application providing no recourse to challenge this decision. This unfortunate move appears to be a coordinated effort to continue to crackdown on free speech on the platform especially as it concerns Palestinian human rights. This is all the more so since Instagram’s decision to deprive certain users of the link feature comes only a week after a Human Rights Watch report detailing censorship of posts and accounts by Instagram including with specific reference to posts unjustly removed from Lara’s account @gazangirl. Instead of heeding the call by Human Rights Watch to carry out an independent investigation into the censorship of Palestinian content, Instagram has doubled down by unjustly depriving Palestinian content creators of their right to link to further sources through their profiles. Lara and Michael also cover the recent meeting of the UN Security Council where the US envoy to the UN made some ludicrous statements condemning Hamas for allegedly holding two Israelis prisoners while nearly five thousand Palestinian men, women, and children languish inside Israeli political prisons. Lara provides an update on the Burnat brothers, and sadly Muhammad Burnat, the younger brother remains imprisoned by the Apartheid State without charge with a so-called court date that continues to be postponed. The Palestine Pod also discusses the pivotal role Colin Powell played in getting the United States on the course to invade Iraq, something the Israeli lobby took credit for. Michael covers an article in Jewish Currents that exposes American Jewish businessmen who are funding the Palestinian activist blacklist, Canary Mission.

This week, the Palestine Pod hosts Yousef Mema aka @JoeGaza93. Yousef is a nurse, social media activist, and humanitarian. His Instagram profile rose to prominence during the May 2021 Israeli assaults on Gaza where he spent every day of the 11-day attacks showing the world first-hand accounts from life in Gaza. He shared photo and video (including live) footage from his home in Gaza City during the shelling as well as from Al Shifa Hospital, one of the main hospitals in Gaza where he was working at the time as a nurse in the orthopedic department. Joe talks to us about what it was like to survive these Israeli assaults. Lara recalls filming an Instagram live with Joe in May while he was at home during the shelling and the sound of Israeli drones and missiles interrupting the conversation every couple of seconds. Lara and Joe discuss one of the most brutal nights of the May assaults, May 16, 2021, when Israel committed the Al-Wehda Street Massacre, and heavily shelled one of the most prominent residential and commercial streets in Gaza, leveling entire apartment buildings and killing entire families including Dr. Ayman Abu al-Ouf, one of Gaza’s leading doctors, and several of his family members as they slept. The Israeli occupation forces are said to have used 11 advanced precision-guided missiles along several meters of Al-Wehda Street without warning, leading to the killing of around 50 Palestinians and significant damage to the street and infrastructure. In response to international condemnation, the Occupation forces said that the casualties were an unforeseen “freak” consequences of an attempt to target tunnels under the street. Michael queries whether anyone really believes their outrageous claim that this was unforeseeable (they did use advanced weaponry designed specifically to kill on one of the densest residential streets in Gaza after all - what else would you expect to happen?). Joe reminds us that the Israeli siege is intended to keep Palestinians in Gaza preoccupied with basic needs such as food and electricity to hinder the pursuit of liberation. Michael compliments Joe’s beard and Lara suggests Michael’s facial hair resembles that of Julian Assange.