Rania Khalek Dispatches

Lowkey joins Rania Khalek to talk Palestine and global resistance to Zionist apartheid.

As the violence continues across Israel-Palestine, to help make sense of how we got here and what happens next, Rania Khalek is joined by Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist at Haaretz who is based in Ramallah and has spent years reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. Hass provides an in-depth analysis on the radicalization of Israeli Jewish society, which is becoming increasingly right-wing as the religious settler mentality is exported from the West Bank into Israeli cities. “Settler colonialism is part of Israeli DNA” with Israeli settlers being “a privatized arm of Israeli state violence.”  This is at the root of the constant aggression against Palestinians. And absent outside pressure, Israel will continue down an increasingly dangerous and eliminationist path. 

The rising violence in Israel-Palestine has reached new levels of depravity, with roving gangs of Israeli Jewish mobs hunting for Palestinian citizens of Israel to attack while chanting for genocide, at times with the protection of the police. Suha Salman-Mousa, the executive director of the Mossawa Center, which advocates for Palestinian citizens of Israel, joins Rania Khalek on BT’s program Dispatches to help us understand the explosion of hate consuming Israel from within and the danger it poses to Palestinians.

As escalations continue across Israel-Palestine, from Israel bombing Gaza to Palestinian factions in Gaza launching rockets into Israel and the Israeli security apparatus escalating across the West Bank and even against Palestinian citizens of Israel protesting in their cities, to help make sense of all of it, Rania Khalek is joined by journalist and author Gideon Levy.

What the hell is going on in Jerusalem? Has Israel totally lost it? Is this the beginning of a third intifada? Rania Khalek is joined by Ramallah-based activist Hadeel Shatara, coordinator of the Palestinian prisoner rights group Samidoun, to discuss Israeli violence in Sheikh Jarrah and Al Aqsa mosque, what’s driving Palestinian resistance, internal Palestinian political divisions, western media bias and how those outside of Palestine can help. In recent weeks Israeli settlers and police have escalated their violence in occupied east Jerusalem,. violently storming the al Aqsa mosque during Ramadan and attacking  the neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah where Palestinian families are fighting efforts by Israeli settler groups backed by the courts to evict and replace them with Jewish settlers. Hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested, injured and hospitalized as they resist increasing Israeli brutality in Sheikh Jarrah and in and around al Aqsa. All of this is ahead of the Jerusalem day March, when far right Israeli Mobs are set to march through the streets of occupied East Jerusalem chanting hateful anti-palestinian slogans to celebrate Israel’s illegal capture of the city in 1967. These Israeli provocations have spurred worldwide condemnation and horror, with Israel’s allies expressing deep concerns about the mounting violence. Hadeel explains that this is what Zionism and ethnic cleansing look like. 

As Israeli violence against Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem heats up amid looming evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and Israeli police storming the al Aqsa mosque, Rania Khalek is joined by investigative journalist David Sheen from Haifa for insight into the Israeli side of the equation. Israeli Jewish extremism has been on the rise for years, explains David, with the religious Zionist movement gaining power in government and in the streets. Their messianic movement wants to demolish the Al Aqsa mosque and build a third Jewish temple in its place. They want to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from all of historic Palestine. They want a theocracy. And Netanyahu has empowered them to maintain his own diminishing power.Why is this happening now? What are the Israeli political divisions and machinations driving the violence? What’s behind the Israeli lurch to the religious far right? And is there any chance for reversing these developments? Or are Palestinians trapped at the mercy of an increasingly genocidal Israeli politics with zero obstacles to carrying out their apocalyptic vision?

Intersectional regime change? Queer drone strikes? Katie Halper joins Rania Khalek to discuss the CIA’s latest recruitment video series “Humans of CIA,” which weaponizes identity politics and left buzzwords to woke-wash imperialism and advance the agendas of war and empire.

What are Colombians protesting? Why are police gunning them down? And why is it being ignored? Rania Khalek is joined by Camila Escalante and Ollie Vargas, Bolivian-based journalists for the independent outlet Kawsachun News. They speak about the police killing protesters in Colombia, state-backed massacres of social activists, Colombia’s role as a US-backed destabilizing force in the region and how where ever the US meddles in Latin America, drug trafficking and right-wing violence follow. They also touch on the latest developments in post-coup Bolivia, what’s really behind the violence at the border between Colombia and Venezuela and the CIA’s recent woke video ad. 

Is the US really ending the “forever war”? What does it mean for Afghans on all sides of the conflict? Rania Khalek is joined by Aziz Hakimi, an Afghan expert and researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute, who has done extensive field work throughout Afghanistan, for a comprehensive discussion on Afghanistan’s past and future in light of the American intervention and coming withdrawal.

In recent days, disturbing videos emerged of far right Israeli Jewish mobs roaming the streets of occupied East Jerusalem openly chanting for genocide and attacking Palestinians. Over 100 Palestinians were injured and at least 20 were hospitalized. Israeli police fired at Palestinians attempting to defend themselves with stun grenades, tear gas, skunk spray, and water cannons. They were also filmed brutality beating Palestinians. Meanwhile, mainstream media reports and US officials whitewashed the horrors as “clashes” faulting both sides.Rania Khalek is joined by Ali Abunimah, director of The Electronic Intifada and author of the Battle for Justice In Palestine, to discuss these developments as well as the role of US imperialism and the broader regional context of Israel’s aggression.