The Palestine Pod

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Palestinian-American journalist and advocate Hebh Jamal. Hebh is based between Berlin and New York. We discuss her recent trip to Gaza and she describes the harrowing journey and traumatizing experiences with the Egyptian military and how they are profiting off the oppression of Palestinians. She tells us about the beauty within Gaza and how she still found people with hope despite the occupation's attempts to crush people's spirits. We speak about her journalism in Germany surrounding anti-Palestinian racism and how Germany thinks their problem with antisemitism is imported vs. homegrown. She talks about the time she casually did a TED Talk, and we honor the fallen martyr of Palestine, Ibrahim Nabulsi. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with student, activist, and burgeoning journalist 22 year old Yara Eid who comes to us from Gaza, Palestine. She takes us through the events of the latest Israeli assault of August 6-8, 2022 when Israeli shelling and bombardement mercilessly killed over 45 Palestinians including 16 children. She describes the impact of this assault on people and animals in Palestine, sharing with us several horrific scenes her and her news team witnessed, including Israeli attacks on a watermelon horse cart driven by a man bringing groceries and cake back to his family, a cemetery, and Jabaliya refugee camp. Yara shares with us her disappointment and frustration after being subject to racist interviewing by an RT reporter who both sides-ed her as the Apartheid state shelled her neighborhood. We cover the assassination of resistance leader Ibrahim Nabulsi earlier this week. Lara remarks that resistance fighters like Nabulsi are the real leaders of the Palestinian struggle. Michael jokes about the IOF and veganism.

This week Lara and Michael cover the zionist occupation’s genocide against the Palestinian people via their renewed assaults against the people of Gaza. We talk about the growing resistance in Nablus and AIPAC bragging about purchasing US congresspeople. Michael points out the deafening silence from everyone with a Ukrainian flag in their bio. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down to talk about how every day we wake up to the news of another Palestinian being martyred, another child snatched from their home in the middle of the night by the occupation forces. Every day another house or village is demolished, and more childhoods, adulthoods, and entire lives are stolen inside the occupation's concentration camps. We discuss specifically the cases of the Burnat brothers, Ahmed Manasra, and other political prisoners. We talk about the aftermath of Biden's visit, as well as the phenomena of Zionist settlers trying to sneak into mecca. The zionists set up another illegal outpost, and families and teens are encouraged to attend! 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with our second return guest to The Palestine Pod. It's Max from Palestine Action. He's back to celebrate the closing of 2 of Elbit's weapons systems in the UK and kicking the company out of London entirely with the direct action network, Palestine Action. We discuss the various tactics the group employed to drive up the cost of doing business for the war profiteers in the business of bloodshed. We talk about the importance of getting involved in whatever capacity you can to help be a part of the liberation of Palestine. We only feel like we have no power when we choose not to exercise our own. We conclude with a discussion about respectability vs. effectiveness. Lara makes the point that in the heat of the moment, most people never get the respect they deserve but if they are effective, history will respect them forever. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss the egregious case of the Lapid's occupying a stolen Palestinian house and announcing it as a "new beginning" on Instagram. We cover a couple of instances of Germany silencing both Palestinian and anti-Zionist Jewish activists. Lara talks about the so-called "Doomsday settlements" and how over 7 decades of occupation is already a Doomsday scenario: We discuss the anniversary of Algerian independence, talk about the deep bond between Palestinians and Algerians, and recall how Algerian resistance to colonialism lasted for over 100 years. We cover the latest news in the phenomena of Arab Zionists (an Arab Zionist NATO?). We conclude with an update about the Ben & Jerry's fiasco - the company sued its parent company Unilever for circumventing their decision to refrain from selling their products in the occupied West Bank. Michael stays unimpressed with the PR tactics of the company. The duo query the meaning of the word “anomaly.”

This week Lara and Michael are back to break down the latest in Palestine-related news. We start by covering the latest decision of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals which ruled (after some funny business) that BDS is not a protected form of free speech. This decision runs counter to the bevy of other judges across the nation who have found the opposite. The ACLU is poised to take this case to the Supreme Court and let those old gargoyles of jurisprudence weigh in on the matter. We also cover the recent decision by the European Union to resume funding to Palestinian human rights organizations the occupation baselessly accused of terrorism. The EU stated that there was no evidence to support the claim, but that didn't stop them from freezing funds for over a year! Lara covers a motif that appears in various news outlets wherein a story of an Israeli being "lightly wounded" takes the front page over the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israelis. We take time to cover the story of Ahmad Manasra, a child who has been tortured by the occupation in their jails since he was 13.  We ridicule Pelosi’s reading a settler-colonial poem in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the PA’s decision to turn over the bullet used to murder Shireen Abu Akleh to the Americans for some reason. Israel is keeping the US out of the loop on covert attacks in Iran and Ukraine takes the occupation to task for failing to provide medical supplies (likely because they are too busy disfiguring Palestinians).

This week Lara and Michael sit down with language teacher, musician, and Jewish anti-zionist activist Nur. A video of Nur being attacked by settlers in Massafer Yatta went viral and she sits down with us to recount the incident. She describes how the settlers threw a rock through her car window injuring her and how the occupation forces followed suit by assaulting her and her friends. The settler who attacked Nur and her friends was not even held for questioning (obviously). We discuss the plight of the people of Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills. Nur tells us that everyone inside ‘48 must go through a mental transformation that allows them to connect with their hearts and not their minds, or nothing will ever change.

This week Lara and Michael sat down with the CEO of Zaytoun Publicity, 2x Award-winning Palestinian storyteller, and TEDx speaker, Jenan Matari. We talk about how she found her voice as a Palestinian woman and developed the courage to speak out for Palestinian liberation. Jenan asserts the importance of Palestinians in exile in the collective liberation of Palestine. We cover how she was forced to leave the corporate world and how that incident helped her take control of her own destiny. Jenan takes us through her family history dating back to the early 1300s when one of her ancestors. a Sufi sheik opened up a center in Al Quds/Jerusalem that was frequented by Muslims from all over the world. Jenan tells us the inspiration for starting Zaytoun Publicity was to center BIPOC entrepreneurs, actors, directors, and other creatives that don't get the media coverage or publicity they deserve. Zaytoun Publicity seeks to bridge that gap. Michael cracks jokes the whole episode like it's an involuntary tic.

This week Lara and Michael sat down with award-winning journalist for Al Jazeera, Jamal Elshayyal. We cover the occupation's continued attack on the press in the wake of the execution of Shireen Abu Akleh. The occupation once again killed another Palestinian female journalist, Ghufran Harun Warasneh, and attacked her funeral procession (but you probably haven’t heard about this because she doesn’t hold an American passport). Lara talks about how terrifying it is that the occupation is doubling down and murdering more journalists. Jamal provides us the context that it might be that they are acting out most because they are near the end of their tether. Jamal relives his experience aboard the Mavi Mamara in 2010, the humanitarian flotilla headed towards Gaza that was shot at in international waters by the occupation commandos who then boarded the ship and took everyone hostage. Jamal's was the last signal broadcasting before the Israelis cut power. Michael queries Jamal about the insides of Gaddafi's intelligence compound where Jamal discovered some wild stuff in the wake of the Libyan revolution.