Occupied Thoughts

In this episode of "Occupied Thoughts," FMEP's Peter Beinart interviews Yousef Munayyer and Dahlia Scheindlin about the Israeli intelligence firm NSO Group, which leases military-grade surveillance tools to authoritarian regimes around the world. A new investigation revealed a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that had been targeted by NSO's spyware tools and included human rights advocates, journalists, and world leaders. This week, Yousef published "Exporting the Tools of Apartheid" in Jewish Currents and Dahlia published "Why Israel is more concerned about Ben & Jerry’s than the Pegasus revelations" in the Guardian.

Join FMEP and Palestinian analysts discussing the current state of Palestinian leadership and how Palestinians are contending with multiple layers of authoritarian rule (Israel, the PA, and Hamas). The discussion will address issues including: What are the challenges to Palestinian liberation? What roles - positive and negative - do the Palestinian Authority and Hamas play? What role does Palestinian civil society play in mobilizing against Israel and the PA? What can Palestinian resistance to Israel look like? What is behind Hamas’s rise in popularity since the most recent escalation with Israel? What is the status of the uprising against the PA and how is it part of a larger struggle against occupation, annexation, and apartheid? And how do Palestinians inside of Israel and in the Diaspora - from Lebanon to the U.S. - fit into the puzzle of Palestinian liberation? 

With Tareq Baconi (Crisis Group) and Inès Abdel Razek (PIPD), moderated by FMEP’s Lara Friedman. 

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub

In this episode of “Occupied Thoughts,” FMEP's Kristin McCarthy talks to Avner Gvaryahu (Breaking the Silence) about a new collection of testimonies from former Israeli soldiers highlighting the IDF's complicity in settler violence - and the larger system within which Israeli soldiers and settlers operate. You can read the new collection - entitled "On Duty: Settler Violence in the West Bank" - online here: https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/inside/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/OnDuty-Testimonies-En.pdf

In this episode of "Occupied Thoughts," Peter Beinart interviews FMEP President Lara Friedman about the potential blowback Ben & Jerry's faces for their decision to stop selling their products in Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Lara is an expert in the efforts to exploit U.S. laws (state and federal) and courts to quash criticism and activism challenging Israeli policies, which she has been documenting for years. Her databases are available on www.fmep.org.

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, Lara Friedman talks to Arab Spring veteran activist Iyad El-Baghdadi about the way forward for Palestinians -- both on the ground in Palestine and in the diaspora.

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

Full bios available at https://fmep.org/resource/palestine-at-the-intersection-of-regional-global-and-historical-struggles/

From the Daily Show and Saturday Night Live, to Egypt’s Bassem Youssef, to Israel’s Eretz Nehederet, comedy has long played a powerful role in shaping how people think about politics and the world around them, and challenging them to question their own assumptions and the political status quo.

FMEP hosted world-famous Palestinian-American actress, political commentator, disability rights advocate, and Palestinian rights activist Maysoon Zayid; and Israeli former-UN-staffer-turned-comedian Noam Shuster, subject of the recently-released short film by Al Jazeera, Reckoning with Laughter, to discuss the role comedy can play in advancing justice for Palestinians.

Aseel AlBajeh (Al Haq), Dr. Yara Hawari (Al Shabaka), and Mona Shtaya (7amleh)join FMEP's Sarah Anne Minkin to discuss grassroots protests in the wake of the murder of prominent Palestinian activist Nizar Banat, and the PA’s violent response to those protests.

The discussion touches on questions including: who are the people going out to protest against the PA and what are their demands? What risks do they face in protests? What is behind the PA’s violent response? Where might things go from here? And how is the uprising against the PA part of a larger struggle against occupation, annexation, and apartheid?

Last week, a Palestinian political activist, Nizar Banat, was arrested by the Palestinian Authority and died soon after in their custody. His family accuses the PA of murdering him. Following his death, Palestinians in the West Bank gathered for protests, and the PA responded with violence and repression. According to the Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq, PA security forces - both in uniform and dressed as civilians - attacked protesters with batons and tear gas, attacked several journalists, and attacked human rights researchers who were monitoring the protests and confiscated their phones. In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, Peter Beinart interviews political organizer and activist Fadi Quran about why Palestinians are rising up against the Palestinian Authority.

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub

In this episode of FMEP's Occupied Thoughts podcast, Jessica Montell, Executive Director of the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked, joins FMEP's Lara Friedman to discuss the ongoing battle to prevent Israel from demolishing the West Bank home of a Palestinian-American mother and her children, as an act of collective punishment for a crime committed by her estranged husband. For more on this story, see: Palestinian mom fights to stave off punitive home demolition (Associated Press, June 7).

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub

featuring Leena Dallasheh (Humboldt State University), Shay Hazkani (University of Maryland), Sherene Seikaly (University of California, Santa Barbara) with Sarah Anne Minkin (FMEP).

In recent weeks the world’s attention turned to Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods fighting forced displacement from their longtime homes — displacement that, in the eyes of many Palestinians, is part of an ongoing process of dispossession that started in 1948 and continues through the present day. Palestinians call this process of displacement, dispossession, and exile “the Nakba” – Arabic for “the catastrophe” – which refers to the estimated 750,000 Palestinians who were expelled from their homes and lands during the creation of the state of Israel.

For decades, stories of the Nakba – both personal experiences and an historical accounting of facts – have been systematically hidden, discredited, or ignored. Scholars, both Palestinian and non-Palestinian, have struggled to document and establish that history and challenge the denialism and mythologies – like the myths that “the Arabs” intended to “push the Jews into the sea,” that Palestinians left their homes at the behest of Arab armies, or that pre-1948, Arab residents of Palestine had no shared Palestinian identity or real links to the land – that have flourished in its place.

In this context, we have invited three leading scholars of the Nakba to talk about how they approach researching, writing, and teaching this history — and the importance of amplifying personal, individual stories as a critical point of access to understanding nationalism, colonialism, citizenship, and the construction of racial categories in the Middle East.