Note: we recorded this before the appalling AHA leadership veto on Jan. 17 of the democratic vote of its membership to condemn Israeli scholasticide

The brothers welcome Professor Sherene Seikaly, historian of University of California at Santa Barbara and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and Anthony Alessandrini, Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and of Middle Eastern Studies at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, to discuss the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA) engagement with the question of Palestine. We discuss the historic vote by the AHA membership on January 5, 2025 to condemn Israel’s scholasticide in Gaza despite the deeply anti-Palestinian stance of the leadership of the AHA.

We discuss how this leadership mobilized fear, "anticipatory obedience" to avoid taking an ethical position against the obliteration of every Palestinian university in Gaza, despite explicitly condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. We also discuss how the MLA leadership has systematically undermined discussions and resolutions about Palestinian liberation. They also discussed how ethical scholars have confronted the extraordinary silence and complicity of the two major scholarly associations about the Gaza genocide.

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Date of recording: January 13, 2025.

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The brothers welcome the world-renowned economics professor and bestselling author, and Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs of Columbia University. They discuss the nature of U.S. global hegemony, idealism vs. realism, the possibility of de-dollarization, BRICS, the delusional notions of perpetual US and Israel hegemony, and why their killing lots of civilians does not translate into political victory, the influence of the Israel lobby in pushing for wars in the Middle East that goes against US interests, money in American politics, Arab state inaction given their leverage, what a “two state” solution actually means in the context of the genocide in Gaza and the end of the Biden administration. 

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Date of recording: January 7, 2025.

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The brothers welcome University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer to the show to discuss the power of the Israel lobby in the US, the relationship between the US and the Israeli state (and whether the dog wags the tail or the other way around), the possibility of change in US policy on Palestine and the Arab world, recent developments in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, and, finally, how transformations taking place in the United States may eventually overwhelm the lobby and its ability to manipulate decision-making from US college campuses to the White House.

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Date of recording: December 17, 2024.

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The brothers welcome Syrian political economist and Hampshire College professor Omar S. Dahi (@omardahi) to offer personal reflections on the early days of the post-Assad era in Syria, who exactly Ahmad Shara/ Al Jolani is, Syrian policy choices and national interests in the context of external interventions and Turkish influence, and the implications of Israeli expansionism and destruction of Syria’s military infrastructure.

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Date of recording: December 16, 2024.

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The brothers welcome Nimer Sultany, a Reader in Public Law at SOAS University of London. They discuss the difference between the hypocrisy of the Western liberal legal order versus the Western liberal abandonment of its own international order to protect Israel, the imperatives of justice in Syria at a time of injustice in Palestine, the ICC and ICJ cases, the fact that South Africa stopped appealing to the ICJ earlier this year, the idea of law as a site of struggle, the need to prevent instead of simply documenting genocide after the fact, and Western and liberal genocide denial.

Check out his recent article "A Threshold Crossed: On Genocidal Intent and the Duty to Prevent Genocide in Palestine" https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2024.2351261

ICJ Case against Israeli apartheid https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186 ICC Palestine  https://www.icc-cpi.int/palestine

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Date of recording: December 10, 2024.

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The brothers welcome National Book Award for Poetry Finalist Fady Joudah (@fadyjoudah) for a searing and intimate discussion of Palestine in English versus Palestine in Arabic, about writing poetry in a time of genocide, about the limits and hubris of solidarity, about the necessity of common decency in the face of horror, and about the meaning of Palestinian love confronting the Israeli inferno of annihilation.

Featuring a powerful reading of "Dedication" from his latest book [...] published by Milkweed Editions in 2024.

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Date of recording: November 6, 2024.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates joins the brothers for a wide-ranging discussion drawing on his new book, The Message (2024), and covering the parallels and differences between the Black American and Palestinian experiences, the culture of denial suppressing the realities of the system of apartheid in Palestine, the challenges of gaining access to Palestinian voices, the power of conveying the raw reality of Palestinian life under apartheid tactics of resistance to oppression, and the historical contours of the Palestinian liberation struggle.

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Date of recording: Oct 14, 2024.

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The brothers welcome analyst Tareq Baconi, author of Hamas Contained (Stanford University Press, 2018) and president of the board of Al-Shabaka. One year into the Gaza genocide, they discuss the emergence Hamas and its role in the Palestinian political polity, its sweeping electoral victory in Gaza in 2006 as well as its subsequent governance in Gaza and attempts to contain its growth through blockade. They explore how October 7th upended the entire strategic alignments of the Western imperialist powers that are part of Israeli apartheid structure.

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Date of recording: Oct 15, 2024.

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The Brothers welcome journalist and founder of Zeteo, Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) to the pod. They have a spirited discussion about anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias in the mainstream media, the price of compromise to gain access, and whether voting for Harris is a vote against fascism or a vote endorsing genocide.

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Date of recording: Oct 22, 2024.

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Maya Berry (@imayaberry), Executive Director of the Arab American Institute, joins the brothers for a wide-ranging conversation covering anti-Arab racism in the United States, hate crime tracking, the location of Arab Americans in the US racial lexicon, and the impossible position Arab Americans find themselves in the build-up to the 2024 presidential election.

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Date of recording: Oct 10, 2024.

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