Arab Talk with Jess & Jamal

The 80th United Nations General Assembly’s High-Level Week begins on September 22, bringing together heads of state to deliver speeches and set the policy agenda for the year ahead. The prospect of several major Western powers—such as the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and Canada—formally recognizing Palestinian statehood has drawn significant media attention. At the same time, it has prompted warnings of serious consequences from both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Dr. Ardi Imseis, Professor of International Law at Queen’s University in Canada and legal counsel to the State of Palestine in its case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), offers insight into the potential impact of this recognition and what developments might unfold at the UN in the coming weeks.

Can a Gaza reconstruction that excludes Palestinian heritage, silences their participation, and denies their suffering truly succeed? Journalist and analyst Sean Mathews argues the 'Gaza Riviera' is doomed to fail.

In addition to the United States, several key European governments continue to provide intelligence and arms to the Israeli military—support that enables the ongoing genocide in Gaza and obstructs the path toward a political solution. Germany is among these governments, and its complicity is particularly striking given its own history of genocides in the 20th century. In a recent article for Middle East Eye titled “As Gaza becomes a death camp, German complicity reveals the West’s racist biopolitics,” Dr. Jürgen Mackert analyzes how this ideology determines who is deemed worthy of life and resources, and who is not. Dr. Mackert is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and the author of several works. His most recent book, On Social Closure: Theorizing Exclusion, Exploitation, and Elimination, explores the mechanisms by which societies create and enforce boundaries of belonging.

Ian Williams, President of the Foreign Press Association, discusses the targeting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Williams, who is also an author, writer, and broadcaster, highlighted the silence of western journalists and the growing toll on Palestinian media workers in the besieged territory. Israel has systematically targeted and killed Palestinian journalists in Gaza for nearly two years. Since October 2023, more than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed. In the most recent incident, the Israeli military killed six journalists who had been sheltering in a tent used by media staff in Gaza City. Among those killed was 28-year-old Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, along with other members of the network’s team reporting from Gaza.

The number of international human rights organizations, genocide scholars, public officials, and UN representatives making this assertion continues to grow. Now, two well-respected Israeli human rights groups have released reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide. One is B’Tselem, the Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. The other, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, issued a report titled "Destruction of Conditions of Life: A Health Analysis of the Gaza Genocide," which focuses on the dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare and other life-sustaining systems. Aseel Aburass, Director of the Occupied Territories Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel, discussed the findings that led to the report’s genocide determination.

Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, discusses the growing evidence of famine and widespread starvation in Gaza. Famine is officially confirmed when three core thresholds are breached: a drastic decline in food consumption, high levels of acute malnutrition, and deaths caused by starvation. However, gathering reliable data on malnutrition and starvation-related deaths is extremely difficult due to the collapse of health systems, according to a joint alert from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Jess and Jamal discuss the worsening starvation crisis in Gaza, where over 100,000 children under the age of two—including 40,000 infants—are at imminent risk of mass death due to the total absence of infant formula and nutritional supplements. Earlier, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) warned that child malnutrition among children under five in Gaza doubled between March and June, a result of the ongoing blockade imposed by Israeli forces.

Former Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol, David Miller, discusses the British Parliament’s vote to ban Palestine Action, a civil disobedience and direct action protest group. He also addresses a private prosecution brought against him by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which alleges that he “used X to send messages of a menacing character.”

Jess and Jamal discuss the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s bombings in Gaza. According to an analysis of over 35,000 pieces of content produced by the UK’s public broadcaster, the BBC is “systematically biased against Palestinians.” They are also joined by Professor Hicham Safieddine, who discusses his recent article titled “Nawaf Salam is Failing to Rebuild Lebanon—While Bending to US-Israeli Interests.”

For decades, Christians in the Middle East have witnessed their numbers dwindle due to war, occupation and sectarianism, threatening centuries of cultural and religious pluralism that characterized the region. In his recent article "The Damascus Church Bombing and the Collapse of Middle East Christianity," Daoud Kuttab discusses the imperative of reversing this trend. Daoud Kuttab is a former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and publisher of Milhilard.org, dedicated to the Christian community in Jordan and Palestine.