A special edition of the Makdisi Street podcast in which Ussama interviews fellow historian Avi Shlaim in Jaipur, India where both were attending the Jaipur Literature Festival. Ussama asks Avi about his new book Genocide in Gaza, the history of coexistence devastated by the project of colonial Zionism, and about when and why Avi became an anti-Zionist. They discuss the importance of archives, ethical history writing, the virulent anti-Palestinian racism of Benny Morris, and the significance about the refusal of the historical profession's leading bodies in the West to take a clear stand against genocide.

Date of recording: January 15, 2026

Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials:

X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to access all the bonus content, including the latest Q&A

The brothers welcome Professor Greg Grandin to the show to discuss the US kidnapping of the Venezuelan president against the historical context of other American imperial interventions in Latin America, the recurring use of Latin America as a stage to reboot US interventions elsewhere around the world, different models of regime change, the collapse of international law and legitimacy and the specificities of Trump as a symptom of American decline and the crisis of empire. Date of recording: January 7th, 2026

Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials:

X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to access all the bonus content, including the latest Q&A

The brothers talk with the prominent Palestinian politician, activist and medical doctor Mustafa Barghouti, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, and presidential candidate during the last elections in Palestine in 2005. We discuss the awful realities of Palestinians living under Israeli genocide and attempted ethnic cleansing despite a "ceasefire," the essence of Palestinian steadfastness and the importance of international solidarity. We also debate the meaning of Palestinian unity as key to the liberation struggle connecting forces, movements and people globally. We end by talking proposed upcoming elections, the importance of democratizing the PLO, and the gap in solidarity between Arab peoples and their leaders. Date of recording: December 23, 2025

Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials:

X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii

Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to access all the bonus content, including the latest Q&A

Special Christmas/New Year edition with the brothers' mother! The brothers welcome their mother, the author and educator Jean Said Makdisi, to the show, to discuss her books, her memories of growing up between Palestine and Egypt, living in America in the 1950s and 1960s and returning to Lebanon, where she raised her children through the 1975-1990 war while teaching at Beirut University College.

She is the author of "Teta, Mother and Me: An Arab Woman's Memoir" and "Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir." This episode was recorded live and produced by Layla Makdisi.

Date of recording: August 8, 2025.

Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials:

X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii

Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to access all the bonus content, including the latest Q&A

***Producer's note: This is a repost of an episode we released two years ago. Wishing you a Merry Christmas from the Makdisi Street team! Thanks for your support! FREE PALESTINE*** The brothers welcome Dr. Mitri Raheb to the show to talk about the role and visibility of Christians in Palestine's ecumenical culture, so-called Christian Zionism, and how the Bible can be read either as a text authorizing empire and genocide (as with Netanyahu citing the extirpation of the Amalek) or as a text calling for liberation, equality, justice and resistance to empire. Check out his books, Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible (2023) and I Am a Palestinian Christian God and Politics in the Holy Land: A Personal Testimony (1995)

Date of recording: December 22, 2023.

Watch this episode on YouTube Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet

Music by Hadiiiiii

The brothers welcome Professor Darryl Li of the University of Chicago to the show to discuss the new AAUP/MESA report on federal "antisemitism" investigations on US college campuses, revealing the extent to which US civil rights laws have been distorted and weaponized to suppress the advocacy of Palestinian rights across the United States, to suppress American academic freedom in order to protect the Zionist project in Palestine, as well as the extent to which this process, though taken to a new level by Trump, was actually initiated by liberal and Democratic administrations long before Trump came along.

Date of recording: December 2, 2025

Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials:

X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii

Support the show on Patreon for access to all the great bonus content, including the latest bonus episode.

The brothers welcome Ali Abunimah of The Electronic Intifada to the show to discuss mainstream media distortion of Palestine and the rise of alternative media, shifting public opinions on Zionism and solidarity for Palestine in the West, the growing divide between ordinary people and political elites, and the shared sense that we are witnessing the terminal decline of Zionism in the West.

Date of recording: November 3, 2025

Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials:

X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii

Support the show on Patreon for access to all the great bonus content, including the latest bonus episode.

**NOTE: The brothers are hosting a live Q&A on NOVEMBER 18 for patrons only. Please sign up today and drop your questions!**

The brothers welcome Melani McAlister, professor of American Studies at George Washington University, author of the new book Promises, Then the Storm and scholar of American culture and evangelical culture. They discuss the meaning and nature of Christian Zionism, Melani's own insight after growing up an evangelical in North Carolina, how she learned about Israel before discovering the question of Palestine, the diversity within the evangelical movement, the different ways American evangelicals are Zionist, the significance of the evident generational fracture over Palestine, and her sense of the indictment of American liberalism over its denial of the Gaza genocide.

Date of recording: Oct 13, 2025.

Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials:

X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii

Support the show on Patreon for access to all the great bonus content, including the latest bonus episode.

The brothers welcome Mandy Turner, a senior researcher with Security in Context, to discuss the world of think tanks, how they operate as hegemony factories, and the divergence between public opinion and elites on the Gaza genocide

Check out her article, "Hegemony factories or independent thinkers? Western think tanks on Israel and Palestine after October 7"

Date of recording: Sept 16, 2025.

Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials:

X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii

Support the show on Patreon for access to all the great bonus content, including the latest bonus episode.

The brothers discuss the "ceasefire" in Gaza, the Trump plan, and the potential contradictions between Israel and its partners and enablers.

Date of recording: Oct 21, 2025.

Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials:

X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii Support the show on Patreon for access to all the great bonus content, including the latest bonus episode.

www.patreon.com/makdisistreet