Just World Podcasts

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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This was the first 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 first guest was journalist and author Dr. Paola Caridi.

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.

Dr. Caridi is a Lecturer at the University of Palermo, is a founding member of the News Agency “Lettera22”, and was their correspondent in Cairo, 2001-03, and in Jerusalem, 2003-12. While she was reporting from Jerusalem she conducted intensive coverage of the crucial series of events that ran from Israel's 2004 assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, through the movement's participation in Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 (and their victory therein)... and then to the series of fierce, always US-supported, attacks that Israel maintained against Hamas and the whole population of Gaza from 2007 on... The second of Dr. Caridi's three published books was Hamas: From Resistance to Government, which first appeared in Italian in 2009, and in English in 2012. (An updated version was released last October 10.)

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In March 2024, the Middle East Committee of Westmoreland Church, which is a very active  "UCC" congregation located on the borderline between Maryland and Washington DC, invited Helena to go and speak to their members on the topic "Hamas: A Primer."

The event took place on April 21, 2024, and took the form of a conversation conducted, for the first 35 minutes, by longtime Middle East Committee member Robert Mertz. In the second half of the program, several attendees at the gathering asked questions, both in-person from the church parlor, and online via the event's well-populated Zoom feed.

This episode contains the recording of nearly the whole of the April 21 event. Here is the "resource list" referred to toward the end of the episode:

•Online resource list: bit.ly/Keys-4-H

•Sign up for Helena’s (roughly weekly) newsletter at: eepurl.com/b-5d_9

•Learn about her company’s many books on Gaza, Palestine, etc, at: Justworldbooks.com

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The second episode of Palcast discusses the shared struggle of the Palestinian and Irish peoples. From Captain Boycott, to Bloody Balfour, to hunger strikes, Dr Yousef Aljamal, Helena Cobban and Tony Groves delve into the shared struggle between the two nations, and indeed the anti-apartheid movements globally. We also look at the mistakes that Ireland has made and what the movement for Palestinian self-determination can learn from them. Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack

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 As Israel's genocide in Gaza continues, PalCast's Dr Yousef Aljamal and his co-host Helena Cobban survey the situation on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank and the waves of pro-Palestinian sympathy that have swept around the whole world, including throughout the Global South and even at the grassroots level within most Western countries. They note the continued ability of Washington DC to block effective U.N. action for a ceasefire, the declining power of the United States in world affairs, and the need for a deep renewal of the Palestinian political leadership. Please join us at patreon.com/tortoiseshack

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This episode introduces the people behind a brand new series, PalCast, which will be hosted by Palestinian refugee (and friend of the shack) Dr Yousef Aljamal and his longtime collaborator and friend Helena Cobban, herself an activist and author of great renown. PalCast is a collaboration between Just World Educational and Tortoise Shack Media, which produces the series from its base in Dublin, Ireland. This twice weekly series will discuss the ongoing Gaza-Israel crisis, the geopolitics at play, the place of Palestine in the world, and the struggle for Palestinian liberation, as summed up in the mantra 'One World, One Struggle.' One World, One Struggle which is being used with the permission of the Blood Sunday Families. Music is Sabreen (West Bank 1987) 

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