In this episode of "Gaza & the World" JWE President Helena Cobban's guest was  Prof. John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and the co-author with Stephen Walt of the groundbreaking 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. This conversation took place less than 24 hours after the November 17 passage by the UN Security Council of Resolution 2803, by which the Security Council threw its full support behind the whole of the (very controversial) 20-point "Peace Plan" for Gaza that Pres. Trump had unveiled September 29.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Ms. Cobban and Prof. Mearsheimer explored the impact that Seceurity Council might have, both on developments in Gaza and the rest of West Asia and on the standing of the UN itself going forward.

The two  discussed the details of how the "Israel Lobby" has functioned over the years and the serious impact it currently has on essential aspects of the free-speech situation in the United States.

The conversation ended with more discussion of the changing shape of the global order, which Prof. Mearsheimer describes as having been a multipolar one "since 2017."

See the multimedia records of all the conversation s conducted in the "Gaza & the World" project, here.

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In this episode of our "Gaza & the World" series, Helena Cobban talked with Dr. Ghada Karmi about the intersection of the genocide in Gaza and the shifting global balance of power. Dr. Karmi is a British-Palestinian who had a strong career in London as a physician and a medical historian; then between 2002 and 2023 she published four  thoughtful books that explored not only her own personal experiences as a member of the Nakba generation and a justice activist, but also the broader realities faced by Palestinians inside and outside the homeland. Her most recent work of non-fiction was One State:  The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel. 

Dr. Karmi described the unprecedented groundswell of popular support for Palestinian rights the British public has displayed since October 2023, which she contrasted with the continued pro-Israel stance of the British government and many of the country's elite institutions. 

She detailed her role as a juror of conscience at the Gaza People’s Tribunal in Istanbul, where she and others weighed the extremely harrowing testimonies of Israel's atrocities in Gaza. 

She was unequivocal: the underlying cause of the Palestinians' suffering is Zionism, which must therefore, she argued, be dismantled— which would not be the same as the physical destruction of Israel or its people. She was deeply skeptical of the wisdom of striving for a two-state solution, seeing it as perpetuating the destructive ideology of Zionism. She called instead for the reconstitution of pre-Zionist Palestine and the establishment of a single democratic state for all. 

She also described some of the experiences she had had while working as a consultant for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, back in 2005.

She recognized the significance of the hopeful shifts among younger generations and new political actors in the West but warned that time is running out for Palestinian rights and existence. 

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In this episode of our "Gaza & the World" series, Helena Cobban talked with Vijay Prashad about the intersection of the genocide in Gaza and the shifting global balance of power. 

Vijay Prashad is a visionary global justice activist, the executive director of the Tri Continental Institute for Social Research, the editor of Left Word Books, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at the Chong Yang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China. He was speaking with Cobban from Beijing.

In this episode, Prashad argued that while the world's economic center of gravity had shifted away from the United States, the US maintained overwhelming dominance through its military and information power.  He discussed the role of China in providing an alternative economic pole, which allowed Global South nations to speak more freely against Western policies, arguing that the genocide in Gaza had exposed the moral bankruptcy of the West to the global majority and evoked historical memories of colonialism. [

He contended that any discussion of post-conflict governance in Gaza was meaningless without the release of all Palestinian political leaders, whose imprisonment by Israel had crippled Palestinian political life. He concluded on a sobering note, saying that a direct confrontation with the US military was not currently feasible for rising powers and that meaningful change required a political transformation within the United States to dismantle its military-first approach to global affairs.

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This is the second episode of "Gaza & the World," a weekly podcast from Just World Educational, hosted by our president, Helena Cobban. This project explores the many interactions between the ongoing, genocidal crisis in Gaza and the world-changing shifts that the global balance of power is currently undergoing.

In this episode, Helena's guest is JWE's valued board member Prof. Richard Falk, a veteran scholar of international law who has also served a crucial term as the UN's Special Rapporteur on Palestinian rights. Shortly before joining this conversation Falk had presided over  the final, four-day-long session of the globe-girdling Gaza People's Tribunal, which was held in Istanbul Türkiye. 

The two discussed the tribunal's conclusion that Israel had committed genocide, and explored the tribunal's findings on the multiple forms that genocide has taken, including domicide and ecocide. They discussed the complicity of Western governments. 

Falk also analyzed the failures of the United Nations, especially the Security Council, contrasting it with the more principled stances of the International Court of Justice and UN Special Rapporteurs.  

He argued that despite Israel's military dominance, it had lost the "legitimacy war," which he believed would ultimately be the decisive factor, drawing parallels with other anti-colonial struggles in the past. 

We're planning to release new episodes weekly, each Wednesday. Be sure to catch them all!

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This is the first episode of "Gaza & the World," a new weekly podcast from Just World Educational, hosted by our president, Helena Cobban. This series explores the crucial role that the two-year genocide & the horrendous ongoing crisis in Gaza-- and also the resilience and resistance of the Palestinian people of Gaza-- are playing in the deep, world-changing shifts that the global balance of power is seeing in our current era. 

In this opening episode, Helena and JWE's valued board member Rami G. Khouri discuss the historical and present realities of Palestine, the impact of colonial legacies, the role of global powers, and the growing international movement for justice. Their conversation sheds light on shifting political attitudes, the rise of civil society activism, and the broader fight for Palestinian rights as part of global anti-colonial struggles.

We're planning to release new episodes weekly, each Wednesday. Be sure to catch them!

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On June 13, 2024, JWE President Helena Cobban gave a talk at the Rossmoor community in Walnut Creek, CA, hosted by Rossmoor Voices for Justice in Palestine. The talk was titled "Palestinian resistance from the PLO to Hamas." In it Helena drew on her 50 years of experience of studying, reporting on, interviewing the leaders of, and analyzing all the main Palestinian resistance movements of the modern era. Look on the JWE blog  for links to the video of this event, the transcript, and more information about JWE's "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters" project.

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This was the fifth and final session in a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed presented in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series as a whole was presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest in this episode was Dr. Azzam Tamimi,  who's the editor-in-chief of the London-based Al Hiwar ("Dialogue") TV channel. He's a specialist on issues related to Islamic political thought, Islamic movements, and Middle Eastern (or West Asian) politics; and a distinguished author of several well-received books on these topics. The book on Hamas that Dr. Azzam published in 2007 came out in the USA with the intriguing title of Hamas: a History from Within.

In this session in our series, Helena and Rami were joined on the "interviewing panel" by three other JWE board members: Zoharah Simmons, Nora Barrows-Friedman, and Zoharah Simmons.

You can learn much more about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and all the others, at this Online Learning Hub on our website.

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This was the fourth of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest in this episode was Mouin Rabbani, a super-smart Dutch-Palestinian researcher and analyst who specializes in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and contemporary West Asia, the region also known by its Eurocentric monicker, "the Middle East."

Rabbani has previously served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria; as Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group: and a Researcher with Al-Haq, the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. He is currently Co-Editor of Jadaliyya and has numerous other important affiliations. 

You can see much more information about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and all the others as they occur, at this Online Learning Hub on our website.

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This was the third of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest was Dr. Jeroen Gunning, a Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and Conflict Studies at King’s College, London. Dr. Gunning is also a Visiting Professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, and at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.  He is one of the founders of the field of critical terrorism studies and has taught and advised both policy-makers and civil society organizations.

In 2010, he published a book titled, Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence.  You can learn about the broad array of articles and books he has published on different aspects of the work of radical non-state actors in various parts of West Asia, at his page on the KCL website.

You can see much more information about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and all the others as they occur, at this Online Learning Hub on our website.

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This was the second of a series of Public Conversations that Just World Ed is presenting in May 2024, on the theme of "Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters." The series is presented by JWE President Helena Cobban and board member Rami G. Khouri. Our  guest was Dr. Khaled Hroub, a Professor in residence with the faculty of liberal arts at Northwestern University in Qatar, whose focus is Middle Eastern studies and politics with particular interest on Islam and politics, Arab-Israeli conflict and Arab media studies. 

Dr. Hroub’s many works include Hamas, A Beginner’s Guide, 2nd edn, 2010, and a chapter, “Nothing Fails Like Success: Hamas and the Gaza Explosion” in the recently published book Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm (OR Books, 2024.)

You can see much more information about this project and access the multimedia records of this session and all the others as they occur, at this Online Learning Hub on our website.

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