Arab Talk with Jess & Jamal

Jonathan Purcell, Senior Public Affairs Officer for the International Centre of Justice for Palestine (ICJP), discusses the ICJP's role in submitting evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza to the ICC. Evidence submitted was collected from first-hand eyewitnesses, many of them medical professionals who had been in Gaza since October.

Arwa Damon, former CNN Senior International Correspondent and founder of INARA (International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance), talks about the scale of the humanitarian crisis in southern Gaza. She says that there are no humanitarian safe zones in Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations and sit-ins are spreading at universities across the United States and to campuses around the world. From the US to Australia, students are calling for their universities to divest and sever ties with Israel. Will this affect President Joe Biden's re-election prospects? Our reporter in Washington, DC, Phil Pasquini, interviewed students from George Washington & Georgetown Universities.

Dr. Ussama Makdisi discusses Israel's genocide in Gaza and global anti-Israel movement on college campuses. The podcast explores parallels between current protests and Vietnam era activism, censorship on campuses, and Netanyahu's push for US involvement in Iran. It also debates Israeli actions as a settler colonial state, American policy towards Palestine, and the disconnect between rhetoric and reality.

Ahmed Benchemsi, Advocacy and Communications Director for Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) division, discusses HRW's recently released report entitled "Gaza: Israel’s Imposed Starvation Deadly for Children." The report gives a grim assessment of an ongoing famine in Gaza. Since January, humanitarian organizations have been warning that famine in Gaza is imminent. Famine is now a reality, and Palestinians in Gaza are dying from starvation, with the overwhelming majority being children. Eighty percent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide now are Palestinians living in Gaza.

Jess & Jamal discuss Israel's military killing of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza. WCK has called for an independent investigation, saying that the Israeli military “cannot credibly investigate its own failure”. Several aid agencies described the attack as emblematic of the Israeli military’s systematic disregard for the safety of civilians, including aid workers, during six months of war. The killing of the WCK staff – six of whom were internationals – has drawn strong rebuke, including from Israel’s main allies, the UK and the US.

Lara Kiswani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC), discusses why some Arab and Muslim-American organizations and individuals living in the San Francisco Bay Area boycotted the San Francisco City Hall Iftar, stating that Mayor London Breed and several city officials have made racist, harmful, and dangerous comments about Palestinians, Muslim and Arab-American communities during the ongoing Israeli Genocide in Gaza where more than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, and while Israel is deliberately starving 2.2 million Palestinians by denying the entry of food and other essential supplies into Gaza.

Why does the Israel lobby wield such power on American politics? Author Walter Hixson deconstructs AIPAC’s influence on U.S. politics. His book entitled "Architects of Repression: How Israel and its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy" is a comprehensive history of the crucial role of the Israel lobby.

Francesca Albanese is the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. She talks about the continuing aggression and killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Israel’s imposed famine on Gaza, and the imperative of the signers of the Genocide Convention to act. She has stated that "Arms embargo and economic sanctions on Israel are the only way to stop the genocide in Gaza."

Dr. Rola El-Farra, a medical doctor from Houston, Texas, whose family originates from Gaza, has had more than 150 members of her extended family murdered during Israel’s ongoing onslaught and withholding of food and medical care. Dr. El-Farra speaks to the victims’ humanity with poignant accounts and pictures. She demands an immediate, permanent ceasefire, stating that every minute signifies the loss of a life, the starvation of a child.