The Palestine Pod

This week Lara and Michael sit down with one of our generation's most courageous investigative journalists, Abby Martin. Her current work can be seen at Empire Files and she directed the acclaimed documentary "Gaza Fights for Freedom" (2019). Her work took her to Palestine and got her banned from it. She takes us behind the scenes of what it was like to film in Palestine and recounts moments like her infamous interviews where everyday Israelis casually endorse genocide. Abby talks about spending time with the Tamimi family and the warmth of Palestinian culture. Abby shares that many journalist colleagues have emplored her not to talk about Palestine if she wants to keep her job, but she knew that you're not being human if you're not using your platform to call for the freedom of Palestine, and all indigenous peoples and land protectors.  

This week Lara and Michael break down the results from the latest so-called election from the apartheid state. Usually in politics, you choose the "lesser of two evils" but the latest election shows a lean in the other direction. While still under investigation for his last term Netanyahu is back with a ghastly list of characters including far-right fascist Ben-Gvir. Michael details how Zionists have historically and continue to collaborate with Nazis citing a recent interview with The Electronic Intifada, and a book Secret Contacts Zionism and Nazi Germany. Lara details how Kahanists who are represented by Ben-Gvir took their platform from the Nazis verbatim.  We memorialize the freedom fighter and Afro-Palestinian feminist, Fatima Bernawi. We end by covering the story of Shadi Khoury, a child brutalized by the occupation forces and held in detention, a familiar sequence of events for Palestinian children. 

This week Lara and Michael cover the martyrs produced by the zionist raid on occupied Nablus. The spirit of Palestinian resistance can never be broken. We cover the story of Uday al-Tamimi who was gunned down while resisting occupation. He had inspired many Palestinian men to shave their heads in an attempt to thwart Israeli surveillance. Michael rants about how Zionists are being amplified and turned to as experts on antisemitism. They're experts alright, nobody does it better than them. Michael takes zionists to task for pretending to care about Jews while they are beating up elderly Jewish antizionist activists and funding literal Nazis in Ukraine. We also address the Kanye situation and the proliferation of antisemitism and anti-Blackness we've seen in Los Angeles recently, and how all liberation of oppressed people is linked. 

This week Lara and Michael cover the occupation siege on the Palestinian town of Huwara, where the zionist settlers are carrying out pogroms daily. We also discuss the siege on the Shu'fat refugee camp following some success from Palestinian resistance. We hold space for the names of the martyrs killed by the occupation this week and talk about how because of the brutal conditions, Palestinian are unable to live life on the most basic of levels. This is why resistance is the only option. We chat about the efforts of Palestinian resistance to repel the zionist colonial settlers and soldiers in Sheikh Jarrah and Isawiya. Lara sheds light on the early Zionist plan to poison the drinking water of Palestinians as a part of a multipronged effort of murder and forceable displacement. War criminal Netanyahu released a new book, and Michael is speechless as The Jerusalem post concedes that anti-zionist Jews have existed for longer than Zionist Jews. 

This week Lara and Michael talk about the four youth murdered by the occupation in 24 hours in the occupied West Bank. We cover the story reported by the Haaretz of Jewish Zionist worshippers who flipped over a Palestinian car on Yom Kippur (not the traditional method of celebration). Lara recaps the case of a 13-year-old Gazan child shot 17 times, and the colonial court’s nauseating attempt to intellectualize her murder and deny her family compensation despite finding that the Israeli so called commander violated international law adding to the endless pile of heinous crimes for which Israel has not been held accountable. We cover Katie Halper being censored and fired from The Hill for having prepared a monologue referring to the recent barrage of reports of international and Israeli institutions concluding that Israel is an Apartheid state, and how this latest effort to censor and silence a journalist is part of a well known pattern among media bosses in the mainstream media to fire anyone who speaks out for Palestinian human rights. We shed light on the situation unfolding at Berekely Law School and provide an update on the Palestine Action trials. We briefly cover the out of touch video uploaded by Nas Daily “both sidesing” settler colonialism and apartheid. We end with a word on the positive reception of the recent documentary by Pod alums Vin Arfuso and Anwar Hadid, Walled Off.

This week (technically last week) Lara and Michael follow up on the Marvel story to show the direct connections between Marvel executives and the zionist occupation of Palestine. Along the same lines, we pull up an email chain from 2014 published by Wikileaks known as "The Sony Archives" wherein powerful executives and producers colluded to protect the image of the apartheid regime. Lara takes us through some of the viral videos that circulated the internet this week, including children at a Kindergarten in occupied Jenin terrified at the sounds of zionist bombs dropping. We cover the murder of 7-year-old child Rayan Suleiman who was chased to death by occupation soldiers, and uplift the other martyrs this week from Jenin, and Jerusalem. We discuss the story of Ariel Koren, a Jewish antizionist former Google employee who publicly resigned over the $1.2B Project Nimbus, a contract between the tech giant and the Zionist Apartheid state. We refer to the new AI gun installed at a Zionist checkpoint in occupied Hebron that all Palestinians in Hebron are going to have to pass through daily. Finally, we discuss the insane propaganda video of Israeli women claiming to stand with the women of Iran, pointing out that US imperialism has never improved the conditions of women in the countries it has occupied and stolen the resources of.

This week Lara and Michael discuss Liz Truss’s statement saying that she wanted to move the UK embassy to Jerusalem, and how this constitutes an act of aggression. We cover the self-commissioned Facebook/Meta report that admits the company censored Palestinians and favored Hebrew content during the moderation process in May 2021. We joke that we knew that already because we were on the business side of the censorship. We discuss the Chilean President recently standing before the UN, calling on all nations to protect Palestinian human rights as well as his cancellation of a credentials ceremony for an Israeli ambassador after finding out about yet another extra-judicial assassination by the occupation, and the political fallout that ensued as a result. We also cover how every week there is a new body, a new state, and a new media outlet that has come to the conclusion that the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh was in fact intentional, and carried out by the Zionist regime. To which we say, no sh*t sherlock.

This week Lara and Michael react to the introduction of a zionist character into the Marvel universe, named after the massacre of Palestinians. We cover the immediate and inevitable backlash that comes from any time zionists try to colonize popular culture. We give an update on the Shenstone location Palestine Action encampment and provide ways to get involved. Lara covers the increase in violent raids and assassinations in the West Bank of Palestinian resistance fighters. We chat about one of the many murderers turned Israeli celebrities, Elor Azaria. We provide an update on the ongoing litigation between Foodbenders and the JDL in Canada. Finally, we cover the disgusting escape room that lets zionist settlers cosplay as the 6 Palestinian prisoners who broke out of Gilboa prison. 

This week Mikey went into the field to interview the activists involved in the campaign to #ShutElbitDown. Mikey covers the ongoing encampment outside the Shenstone factory and speaks to a variety of people involved in the action. We discuss the reasons for this action (to stop drones from being made and delivered to murder Palestinians). We chat about the response from the community in Shenstone, the brutality of the private security guards hired by Elbit, and their coordination with local police forces. The activists explain the various skills and tactics being utilized, and the community being built by the brave group of people putting their life and liberty at risk to stand on the right side of history. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss the case of Khalil Awawdeh who has been on hunger strike for upwards of 180 days, and the disgusting psychology of the zionists smiling as they return the body of Palestinian martyr Mai Afaneh over a year after murdering her. We cover police brutality against Palestinian-Americans in Chicago, and across the United States. We confront the failure to find any evidence to support the claim that Palestinian NGOs are a front for terrorism, and we discuss some of the aspects of normalization that appear in the new Netflix tv show, Mo.