In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP President Lara Friedman speaks with Ramallah-based Palestinian journalist/analyst/commentator Nour Odeh. Nour is an independent media professional and communications consultant with 20 years of experience as a distinguished journalist. In 2012, Ms. Odeh became Palestine’s first female government spokesperson and she served in various capacities as a senior communications and public diplomacy advisor to the Palestinian leadership. She writes opinion and analysis in English and Arabic and is a regular guest in international news outlets.

In this far-ranging conversation, Lara and Nour discuss the situation in the West Bank today; trends in West Bank settler and IDF terror and ethnic cleansing dating from before 10/7/23, escalating through 2.5 years of genocide, and now escalating again during the Israeli-U.S. war on Iran; the situation in Jerusalem and the Harm al-Sharif; the implementation of Israel's Gaza playbook in Lebanon and Iran; the role of the international community; the state of Palestinian domestic politics and the national movement for Palestinian rights and self-determination; and how all of this is playing out with respect to grassroots attitudes and activism around the globe.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama, about the US & Israel's attack on Iran and the subsequent war. They look at the role that Israel is playing in American decisions around this war as well as the relationship that Zionism and other ideologies and points of view play or can play in American foreign policy decision-making more broadly. They also address Ben's new essay in the NYRB, "An American Reckoning," looking at the idea of American exceptionalism, the need for and absence of accountability in American wars, and the ways that American coercive behavior overseas -- including narratives, technology, tactics, and even equipment -- is currently being deployed on the domestic population of the US.

Ben Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, and The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. He is currently co-host of Pod Save the World; a contributor for MS NOW; a senior advisor to former President Barack Obama; and chair of National Security Action, which he co-founded with Jake Sullivan in 2018. From 2009-2017, Ben served as a speechwriter and Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama.

Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a Fellow at FMEP. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian rights, co-editor of After Zionism (Saqi Books) and is currently writing a book about Palestine. He also currently serves on the board of the Independence Media Foundation. His work has been published in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and elsewhere. He earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MPP at Harvard University. You can follow Ahmed on Substack.

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP President Lara Friedman speaks with author and scholar Dr. Nathan J. Brown about his recent article, For Younger Palestinians, Crisis Has Become a Way of Life.

-Dr. Brown's bio: https://carnegieendowment.org/people/nathan-j-brown

-the article: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/02/youth-palestine-west-bank-crisis

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with University of Maryland Professor Dr. Shibley Telhami and FMEP President Lara Friedman. The three discuss the new US & Israeli war against Iran, the strategic changes in the Persian Gulf and the polling data in the U.S. demonstrating a lack of support for the war. They discuss the fate of the Abraham Accords and normalization more broadly. They also discuss the role and politics of Israel in the U.S. now, including recent polling data and the impact on current and future leadership. 

See Dr. Telhami's most recent poll, "Do Americans Favor Attacking Iran Under the Current Circumstances? The Latest Critical Issues Poll Findings," conducted in early February 2026, before the U.S. & Israel launched the recent war.

Dr. Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and the Director of the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll. He is also Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Lara Friedman is FMEP’s president.

Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a Fellow at FMEP.

Original music by Jalal Yaquob.

FMEP Non-resident Fellow Peter Beinart interviews researcher and journalist Dr. Sophia Goodfriend on the pernicious flow of repressive surveillance technology between the U.S. and Israel, which is now being seen deployed by Israel in Gaza and by ICE in the U.S.. Goodfriend recently published,"ICE operations increasingly resemble Israeli occupation. That’s no coincidence" in +972 Magazine where she takes a deep dive into this issue.

For resources, please visit: https://fmep.org/resource/ice-gaza-the-flow-of-surveillance-technology-to-fuel-repression/

Music by Jalal Yaqoub

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with human rights attorney and writer Sari Bashi about her new memoir, Upside-Down Love: A Memoir in Two Voices, came out in English in January. Upside-Down Love tells the story of how Sari, an Israeli-American human rights attorney, created a shared life with her husband, a Palestinian professor from Gaza who is based in the West Bank. Ahmed and Sari discuss Sari's experience of building and raising her Jewish-Palestinian family in the West Bank and the process of writing and publishing the memoir, which originally came out in Hebrew. They also talk about the moral and individual culpability of Jewish Israelis for genocide/warm crimes, the future of Israel/Palestine, and the state of human rights more broadly. Sari is a long-distance runner -- her relationship to freedom of movement is core to her human rights advocacy and a theme throughout the memoir --  and she and Ahmed, who is also a marathoner, discuss Sari's ultramarathons and the importance of running. 

Sari Bashi is an internationally renowned human rights lawyer, the former program director of Human Rights Watch, the cofounder of the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, and the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture-Israel (PCATI). She is a graduate of Yale Law School and has previously clerked on the Israeli Supreme Court. She has taught international humanitarian law at Yale Law School and Tel Aviv University. She has also been a Jerusalem correspondent for The Associated Press and has appeared on, and been interviewed by, major English-language outlets. She and Osama (a pseudonym) are married and living in the West Bank.

Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a Fellow at FMEP. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian rights, co-editor of After Zionism (Saqi Books) and is currently writing a book about Palestine. He also currently serves on the board of the Independence Media Foundation. His work has been published in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and elsewhere. He earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MPP at Harvard University. You can follow Ahmed on Substack at: https://ahmedmoor.substack.com. 

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with Myssana Morany, a lawyer and coordinator of the Land and Planning Rights Unit of Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, and Sarit Michaeli, the International Advocacy Director at the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. They discuss forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and the Naqab/Negev, looking at shared patterns of policy and action that supports Jewish control over land, enacting and entrenching the regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea. They look at specific mechanisms of displacement and dispossession of Palestinian communities, particularly rural herding and farming communities, and the dozens of communities - including tens of thousands of Palestinians - made homeless or vulnerable by this regime. Patterns include: increased home demolitions, segregationist urban planning processes, the refusal of the Supreme Court to protect or defend Palestinian land rights, and the increase in political support for crowding Palestinians into urban areas or removing them from their land altogether. Additionally, the last two-plus years has seen a massive acceleration of settler violence and terror against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, which is backed by every arm of the Israeli state.

Speakers: 

Myssana Morany joined Adalah as a lawyer in 2014. In 2019, she was appointed coordinator of the Land and Planning Rights Unit. Myssana's work in the Naqab includes representing several Bedouin communities facing displacement and challenging state intiatives and master plans that induce displacement.

Sarit Michaeli is International Advocacy Director at B’Tselem. She joined B’Tselem in 2004 as its media spokesperson and director of public outreach. Sarit has an MA (Distinction) in Gender Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a BA in graphic design from Camberwell College of Art, the London Institute.

Peter Beinart is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, a Contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, an Editor-at-Large at Jewish Currents, and an MSNBC Political Commentator. His newest book (published 2025) is Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with Jaser Abu Mousa, a 2025 Yale Peace Fellow and past Program Officer working for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Gaza. The two discuss life and death in Gaza on personal and collective levels. They look at Hamas, which Jaser calls a "symptom" of the problem of occupation; at how the past two-plus years of war have destroyed not only all the infrastructure needed for life in Gaza but also the social fabric, as starvation and deprivation have broken human bonds and relationships; and the ways in which Israel works to make Gaza unlivable. On a personal level, Jaser speaks of his experiences in Gaza, from the violence he witnessed as a child during the second Intifada to the devastation he experienced on and since October 7, 2023: his wife, Heba, and two of his children were killed by Israeli missiles in mid-October 2023; after two years of starvation and deprivation, his mother, sister, and sister's children were killed in the war in July 2025; and his family suffered other losses, including the killing of a nephew in the beginning of the war, injuring of his father, and arrest, detention, and violence against his brother along with other medical workers. Navigating these unfathomable losses, Jaser points to his faith in God and religion as guides as he seeks to protect his living children and look towards the future. Finally, Jaser reflects on how he relates to Israelis and declares that "if I strip him from his right to tell his story, that does not make me more just, but will make me less human.”

Jaser Abu Mousa is a Yale Peace Fellow examining how Gaza's postwar reconstruction can reflect Palestinians' priorities while repairing the social fabric of society. Most recently, he was a Program Officer working for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Gaza, Palestine until the breakout of the current war in October 2023. During the war, Jaser lost his wife, Heba, and two children, Hmaid (18) and Abdulrahman (8), and left Gaza with his remaining two children, Abdallah and Sham, for treatment in the United Arab Emirates.

Prior to his work with Swiss, Jaser served in the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS), working under immense pressure during the 2014 war to report incidents, coordinated and communicate movements and follow intense political developments. Prior to that, Jaser worked as a social worker for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the aftermath of the 2009 war, including leading a team of 50 social workers to run the poverty survey for UNRWA in the area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. He also led a team of engineers to verify the work of a European contribution 30 million Euros known as the Private Sector Reconstruction in Gaza (PSRG). Between 2006-2009, he worked extensively as a political researcher in a Gaza-based think tank; during this period he reported on and analyzed Hamas’ rise to power in the Strip.

Jaser holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the Islamic University of Gaza and a Master of Science degree in Project Management. In addition to his work as an analyst and a development/humanitarian practitioner, he has worked as a civil engineer at private construction companies and UN agencies.

Peter Beinart is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, a Contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, an Editor-at-Large at Jewish Currents, and an MSNBC Political Commentator. His newest book (published 2025) is Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, 2025 FMEP Fellow Hilary Rantisi speaks with filmmaker and activist Jen Marlowe about the film Severed, which Jen directed. The film, released in late 2025, tells the story of Mohamad Saleh, a teenager from Gaza who has endured five major Israeli assaults, lost his home, close family members, his best friends, and—at the age of 12—his leg. Hilary and Jen discuss disablement, disability justice, and Gaza, which now has the largest cohort of child amputees in the world. 

Jen Marlowe is the founder of Donkeysaddle Projects and a Consulting Producer for Just Vision. She is an independent filmmaker, journalist, author, playwright and human rights activist. Her books include I Am Troy Davis (Haymarket Books, 2013), The Hour of Sunlight (2011, Bold Type Books) and Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival (2006, Bold Type Books). Her films include Severed, There Is A Field, and Remembering the Gaza War.

Hilary Rantisi grew up in Palestine and has been involved with education and advocacy on the Middle East since her move to the US. She was a 2025 Fellow at FMEP and was most recently the Associate Director of the Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative (RCPI) and co-instructor of Learning in Context: Narratives of Displacement and Belonging in Israel/Palestine at Harvard Divinity School. She has over two decades of experience in institution building at Harvard, having been the Director of the Middle East Initiative (MEI) at Harvard Kennedy School of Government prior to her current role. She has a BA in Political Science/International Studies from Aurora University and a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. Before moving to the US, Hilary worked at Birzeit University and at the Jerusalem-based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. There, she co-edited a photo essay book Our Story: The Palestinians with the Rev. Naim Ateek.

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Nick Rodelo, a researcher employed by the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) and the primary author of the report, Report to the UN Committee Against Torture: Systemic Israeli Practices of Torture Against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, submitted to the UN in late 2025. The report describes and provides extensive evidence of torture and abuse against Palestinian detainees and prisoners, demonstrating that "[t]his abuse – including, but not limited to, beatings to the point of broken bones and permanent injury; gang rape and rape by foreign objects; nonconsensual amputations; and extreme deprivation of food, water, sunlight, hygiene, and sleep – are systematic policies and practices of the State of Israel and its actors." Ahmed and Nick discuss the research process and the findings of the UNHR report, the experience of presenting this evidence to the UN Committee Against Torture, and the UN Committee's recommendations. 

Nick Rodelo is a researcher employed by the University Network for Human Rights and the primary author of the report "Report to the UN Committee Against Torture: Systemic Israeli Practices of Torture Against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory" (submitted October 2025 and republished in November 2025). 

Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a Fellow at FMEP. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian rights, co-editor of After Zionism (Saqi Books) and is currently writing a book about Palestine. He also currently serves on the board of the Independence Media Foundation. His work has been published in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and elsewhere. He earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MPP at Harvard University. You can follow Ahmed on Substack at: https://ahmedmoor.substack.com.