Makdisi Street

The brothers welcome Palestinian anthropologist (and former chemical engineer) Hadeel Assali. They discuss the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil, the history of tunnels and the ecology of Gaza, the ontological relationship of the Palestinians to their indigenous environment that the US-backed Zionist colonizers seek to destroy, the different forms of resistance to incessant colonial surveillance, the story of a secret Israeli population transfer scheme to move Palestinians from Gaza to Paraguay, and the possibilities of life and mutual aid amidst the ongoing genocide.

"Opacity in Gaza" http://www.arabstudiesjournal.org/

"Maintaining the Social Fabric: Mutual Aid in Gaza" https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1656919

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Date of recording: March 10, 2025.

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The brothers welcome psychoanalytic scholar, professor and licensed clinical psychologist Lara Sheehi to discuss the historic role of psychoanalysis in national liberation struggles, the connection between the revolutionary work of Franz Fanon and the Palestinian resistance, and how liberal educational institutions are facilitating fascist attacks on oppositional voices.

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Date of recording: March 3, 2025.

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The brothers welcome Ramallah-based journalist Mariam Barghouti (@MariamBarghouti) to discuss the ongoing de facto annexation of the West Bank, the unchecked growth of colonial outposts, the role of the mainstream Western media in whitewashing and censoring this violence, and the position of the Palestinian Authority as a subcontractor to the Israeli occupation.

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Date of recording: Feb 11, 2025.

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The brothers welcome journalist and writer Mohammed el-Kurd to the show to discuss his new book, Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal (2025), his family's surreal experiences with Jewish Israeli settlers in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the role of resistance in the broader meaning of the term, and why Palestinians can never surrender to the "politics of appeal."

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Date of recording: Feb 3, 2025.

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The brothers welcome Aslı Bâli, Professor of Law at Yale Law School and President of the Middle East Studies Association. They discuss the increasingly repressive academic climate in the United States over the question of Palestine led by private sector as well as the current Trump Administration, how anti-Palestinian racism is used as a wedge issue in contemporary culture wars, how Zionist and rightwing organizations seek to criminalize dissent by claiming that it is discriminatory, and then how this politics is connected to the increasingly repressive Pax Americana in the Middle East itself. Finally, they discuss the stakes of fighting for international law and human rights, and the minimum duty of solidarity with Palestinians incumbent upon ethical scholars committed to justice.

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Date of recording: January 28, 2025.

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The brothers welcome their cousin Wadie Said, Professor of Law at the University of Colorado, to reflect on Donald Trump's personalized domestic and Middle East agenda, the Gaza ceasefire deal and the demise of international legal order. The conversation then focuses on insidious concepts of "terrorism" in the US, and its legal implications for those accused on trumped up charges as well its weaponization against college students.

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Date of recording: January 21, 2025.

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

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