The Palestine Pod

Lara and Michael are back to the Palestine Pod after a few weeks off (shout-out self-care) and start the episode with a survey of stories from the last few weeks on the ground in Palestine. The Israeli settler colony and its Apartheid regime are up to business as usual, expelling Palestinians from their homes, using the colonial courts to entrench ethnic cleansing, and shooting and killing Palestinians who dare protest against living under Israeli siege. Lara and Michael discuss one of the biggest stories of this summer: the decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling their infamous ice cream on settlements built on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and the Israeli government’s ensuing global public meltdown and disproportionate response. Lara points out that Apartheid Israel’s reaction is an indication of its recognition that it is losing legitimacy (despite its frantic efforts to control its image) and fear that other high-profile companies will follow suit calling into question its ever-expanding settlement enterprise and colonial project more generally. Lara and Michael cover a new twist in the Ben & Jerry’s saga that is so absurd it could only be satire (but it’s real-life). Lara covers Palestine Legal’s new infographic laying out the services and support it provides to activists who are being targeted, surveilled, or censored encouraging all activists in making themselves aware of the support available for carrying out the work of the liberation struggle. Lara and Michael comment on the sinister nature of Naftali Bennett’s visit to the US to meet with President Biden on the heels of his latest declaration that he would be expanding the illegal settlement enterprise.

This week on the Palestine Pod, we sit down with Hadar Cohen, a Mizrahi feminist multi-media artist, healer and educator originally from Jerusalem with lineage from all over the Middle East including Iran, Iraq, Syria and and Palestine. Hadar is a Jewish mystic with Sephardic roots who works to build decolonial frameworks for worshiping God. Her artistic mediums include performance, movement, writing, weaving, sound and ritual. During the global intifada of unity, Hadar came out as a strong anti-Zionist Jewish voice from on the ground. She speaks to us about her family's presence in Palestine harkening to a time long before Zionism, the power of memory as a liberation tool, and the meaning and importance of decolonizing the mind. Lara quotes Hadar's fierce rebuke of Zionism while imagining a life in Palestine post Zionism. Hadar insists on reclaiming the Arab Jewish identity as something separate and unique from European notions of Judaism in response to Arab Jewish trauma that resulted from the Zionist movement. Michael and Hadar dive deeper into the Zionist weaponization of anti-semitism and Michael reminds us that "nobody does anti-semitism like Zionists do." 

This week, the Palestine Pod interviews Lyla June, an Indigenous public speaker, artist, scholar and community organizer of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) nations from Taos, New Mexico. Lyla speaks to us about the ill-effects of colonialism in Turtle Island (i.e. the United States) especially on food and ecosystems and Lara draws comparisons to Palestine. Lyla describes what makes a sustainable culture and recalls the sustainability of indigenous culture as well as the suitability of indigenous food to indigenous communities on a personal level. We speak about the importance of Land Back in Turtle Island and the Palestinian right of return and Lyla shares with us her journey to learning about and supporting the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Michael queries how white settlers in Turtle Island can best get involved in a Land Back movement. 

We sit down this week to cover news stories from the ground including the murder of Nizar Banat, a fierce defender of freedom of speech and Palestinian human rights by the Palestinian Authority, the story of Palestinian political prisoner and administrative detainee, held without charge for no crime, Ghandafar Abu Atwan who successfully secured his release after 65 days on a hunger strike, and the continued torture and medical experimentation on political prisoner Iyad Hraibat, as well as the occupation’s brutal unwillingness to let the Jarrar family grieve the sudden death of Suha Jarrar in peace. We shout out the successful resistance in Beita and recall the continued demolitions and forced expulsions in occupied Silwan. We wrap up by noting that even Evangelicals and Jews in the US are falling out of love with the occupation leading the Zionists to desperately recruit new settlers from Brazil and other South American countries for their settler-colonial project known as Israel.

This week, Palestinian model Qaher Harhash joins the Palestine Pod. Qaher speaks first hand about his experience receiving a barrage of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic messages from Zara's head of design, Vanessa Perilman, in response to an Instagram story he posted from his room showing the infamous black water tanks on top of Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem compared to the Jewish Israeli rooftops which have no tanks at all since they are hooked up to water 24/7, highlighting the racist distribution of resources on occupied Palestinian land to favor to occupier and disadvantage the occupied. Michael recalls Zara's long history of racist policies and practices towards employees and shoppers alike. Lara dismantles Vanessa's racist diatribe and the Pod revisits how some of Vanessa's comments are an extension of Israeli pinkwashing, the official government policy to paint Israel as being this haven for LGBT+ folks in an effort to conceal its apartheid policies towards Palestinians and divert international condemnation by associating itself with freedom and liberal values. Qaher reminds us that even the notion of Israel being an LGBT+ safe haven is an awful distortion of the reality of life for LGBT+ folks in Israel. Qaher lets us in on what it is like to work as a Palestinian in high fashion and Michael reminds us why Palestinians can never see "eye to eye" with their colonizer.      

This week, Laila El-Haddad, co-author of the Gaza Kitchen, joins the Palestine Pod. In honor of the publication of the third edition of the book, Laila shares with us some of the new recipes that she learned on her last trip to Gaza in 2019. Laila paints for us a culinary picture of Gaza and explains how intimately the history and politics, including in particular the Nakba of 1948, affect the local cuisine. Laila and Michael go back in time to recall a rich history of Gaza since Alexander the Great. Laila provides an update on her family in Gaza further to Israel's latest assaults which she notes focused on Gaza's commercial hub and city center unlike previous Israeli assaults which tended to focus on the periphery of the besieged enclave. Lara queries where Gaza's love for the chili pepper came from. Laila recalls that conversations about Gaza's resistance should never lose sight of the fact that resistance itself is not the goal: Liberation is the goal and resistance is the means. Michael instigates bamya-gate part two.

This week we sit down with Farah Nabulsi, Palestinian-British Oscar-nominated, and BAFTA award-winning filmmaker and human rights advocate. We do a deep dive into The Present exploring its themes, the thought process behind certain characters and exchanges, and the notion that we learn just as much about Palestinian cultural tendencies of hospitality and compassion as we do about the realities of life under Israeli military occupation. Farah also clues us into the only part of the Present which is fictional and reveals why she chose to focus this film around the checkpoint - just one of the settler-colonial state’s violent many structures and apparatuses. We discuss the importance of language in a liberation struggle and the interplay between the dehumanization of the Palestinians and the oppressor’s capacity to oppress (shoutout Stanley Milgrim). Farah and Lara talk Fanon and Michael recall Chomsky’s warnings about the emergence of Judeo-Nazi tendencies in Apartheid Israel. Farah suggests Lara and Michael go into radio.

This week, Lara and Michael sit down with Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, Amir of the Royal House of Mandela, tribal chief of the Mvezo Traditional Council, member of Parliament (MP) in the South Africa National Assembly since 2009, grandson of the anti-apartheid revolutionary and former president of South Africa Nelson Mandela and a fierce advocate of Palestinian liberation. This episode is a deep dive into Apartheid South Africa, the parallels between South African Apartheid and Israeli Apartheid, and the deep bonds between Palestinian liberation activists and South African anti-apartheid activists. It is also a moment of education into what the Palestinian liberation struggle can learn from our comrades in South Africa. Nkosi Mandela speaks of the importance of armed resistance, BDS, and direct action, the politics and legacy of President Mandela, the importance of youth activism and more. Lara queries how far are we from liberation in Palestine by drawing from the history of South Africa and Michael asks Chief Mandela to set the record straight on letting the oppressor define modes of resistance and identity politics.  

A Palestinian-American Lawyer & Jewish-American comedian break down the latest Palestine-related news with commentary & interviews every week.

This week's main story is the arrest of Abdul Khaliq Burnat and Muhammad Burnat, two brothers from the occupied village of Bil'in and the children of Lara's dear friend Iyad Burnat, a community organizer from the village. Abdul Khaliq and and Muhammed were kidnapped by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in two separate middle of the night raids on Iyad's house in May 2021 where the IOF destroyed the Burnat family's personal belongings including their personal electronics and beat the boys before throwing them into the back of a military vehicle. No charges have been brought against Abdul Khaliq and Muhammad and all evidence suggests that these arrests have been entirely arbitrary. As of June 2, 2021, Iyad and his wife still have no idea of the whereabouts of their two children who join the hundreds of other children being unjustly held by Israel. Iyad Burnat is a key figure who, for years now, has been resisting Israel's land theft of his village's land. Israel started uprooting Bil'in's olive groves and stealing thousands of dunams of the village's land in order to build the Apartheid wall (which was deemed illegal by the ICJ in 2004 and which Israel has yet to dismantle in 2021). The portion of the Apartheid wall that cuts through Bil'in separates people like Iyad and his family from their land which was intentionally placed on the other side of the wall to allow the illegal Jewish settlement Modi'in Illit to expand in line with Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing and illegal settlement. Lara and Michael discuss BDS wins like the campaign named Musicians for Palestine where over 600 musicians signed a letter pledging to boycott Israel and calling on other musicians of conscience to do the same as well as the news that over 600 Amazon employees urged Jeff Bezos to cut ties with the Israeli military following the recent news that Amazon was entering into a billion-dollar contract with Israel, in which they would be providing cloud services for the government and Israeli armed forces for at least seven years. Michael brings us more news of anti-Zionist rabbis and goes down the rabbit hole to expose the link between Israel's economy and the (blood) diamond industry which funds its military and intelligence services. Lara and Michael affirm that they are not depressed and have no suicidal tendencies.