The Palestine Pod

This week Lara and Michael cover the calls from occupied Bethlehem to cancel Christmas celebrations because of the genocide happening to the Palestinian people at the hands of the zionist regime in Gaza. We talk about how oppressed people are reliable narrators of their oppression and we should not wait for the colonizers or their allies in the mainstream media to confirm the lived experience of the colonized.

This week Lara and Michael cover the US blocking the UN Security Council vote on a permanent immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Lara reads through just one day's worth of death and destruction updates from Telegram. We also cover the assassination of beloved poet and academic Refaat Alareer and his sister's family in a targeted airstrike on his sister’s home in Gaza.

This week Lara and Michael cover the death march in Gaza whereby hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes in the northern part of Gaza to the south on Salah Aldin road amidst sniper attacks, arbitrary searches, interrogations and more. We comment on the difference between the conditions of released hostages and gruesome accounts from the ground about the premature babies left to die because of the Israeli occupation siege on Al-Nasr hospital in the northern part of Gaza.

This week Lara and Michael cover the extreme censorship by streaming and social media companies. Episodes 1-5 of @thepalestinepod have disappeared, and numerous accounts were disappeared or disrupted on the ground and in the diaspora like organizing acct @wolpalestine Lara provides accounts and updates from the ground. We talk about the occupation forces storming Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, occupation forces making life unlivable for everyone in Gaza, and impossible for medical staff to save people. Lack of medicine food fuel and water is causing disease in a planned genocide on the people and infrastructure of Palestine.

This week Lara and Michael cover the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Israelis. Lara shares gruesome updates from her family on the ground. We bring you the news the corporate media won't. 

Student activist Soha Khatib discusses civil rights violations faced by Palestinian students at UIC, including being barred from an informational session and being treated unfairly by university staff. The episode explores the connections between oppressive state forces, Zionist think tanks, and higher education institutions in the US. It emphasizes the importance of educational free speech and the need to challenge the education system. The speaker shares personal experiences and encourages standing up for Palestinian rights despite discouragement.

Discussion on mistreatment of Palestinian women, plan to remove African migrants, danger of anti-Palestinian racism, impact of Zionism on Palestinians, sexual and colonial violence against Palestinian women, acknowledgement of apartheid system in Israel

Topics discussed include Mayor Eric Adams visiting the occupation, the film Golda normalizing oppression of Palestinians, controversy surrounding a possible Mossad spy in Iraq, Mayor Eric Adams legitimizing land theft, discrimination in sex offense laws, comparing Zionism to Fight Club, and unequal access to 3G services in the West Bank.

This week Lara and Michael cover the atrocious story of a Palestinian man branded with the Star of David on his face by Israeli police we discuss how the entire society lives in cognitive dissonance, including the protests against the government. We cover the trial proceedings of a zionist settler who murdered Qusai Mutan. The zionist courts have released him to house arrest in a stolen home.

This week Lara and Michael sit down with acclaimed Rabbi, author, and rabbinical scholar, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro to discuss what it actually means to be Jewish. He dives deep into Jewish history and shows how the Zionist movement belonged to Christians before Theodore Herzl came around. He explains how the founders of Zionism hijacked the religion while holding a lot of the same beliefs as the antisemites of their day. He defines what it means to practice Judaism and how the future of Jewish identity hinges on defeating Zionism