Since October 2023, much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble. But architect and Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman argues that destruction alone does not capture what is taking place. Drawing on his new book, “Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide,” he describes a process that goes beyond erasure: the “rubbing out of any trace of existence” aimed at expelling the Palestinian population and permanently preventing their return.

Right now, we’re running a one-month fundraising campaign with a goal of welcoming 200 new members. +972 Magazine is fiercely independent, and that’s only possible because of listeners and readers like you. Head over to 972mag.com to learn more and support our journalism by becoming a member today.

Additional reading:

• ‘Render it unusable’: Israel’s mission of total urban destruction (+972 Magazine)
• The Killing Of Hind Rajab (Forensic Architecture)
• Israeli Disinformation: Al-Ahli Hospital (Forensic Architecture)
• The Massacre of Aid Workers in Tel Al-Sultan (Forensic Architecture)
• A Cartography of Genocide (Forensic Architecture)

The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show

The global movement for Palestinian justice has achieved real gains — in international courts, in diplomatic shifts, in a transformation of public opinion. Yet the official Palestinian leadership remains deeply fractured, ill-equipped to meet the moment. Omar Rahman, fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, makes the case that the Palestinian leadership crisis is a national emergency: those in power prioritize their own survival over any coherent response to Israel’s genocide, leaving Palestinians without a national vision and strategy at the moment they need it most.

Additional Reading:

• Omar Rahman’s archive at +972
• October 7 Exposed the Depth of the Palestinian Leadership Crisis
• Rupture and Representation: The Palestinian National Movement After October 7

The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show

For generations, Jewish-Israeli children have been brought up in an education system where Palestinians rarely appear as Palestinians. Instead, they are "Arabs," “enemies,” and a "demographic threat" — or, in the words of scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan, "a problem to be solved." A professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Peled-Elhanan has spent years documenting how Israeli textbooks erase Palestinian life, mobilize Holocaust memory to produce existential fear, and present occupation and ethnic hierarchy as natural facts of life. As Israel's genocide in Gaza lays bare the consequences of decades of dehumanization, she reflects on what this system has produced — and, having experienced the post-October 7 crackdown on dissent firsthand, what it does to those who challenge it.

The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show

Jaffa was once a cosmopolitan port city deeply connected to the Arab world. Then, within a few years after 1948, it was transformed: most of its Palestinian population was expelled, its institutions seized and repurposed, and the few residents who remained were confined to a ghetto, often in houses that were not their own, under laws designed to make that dispossession permanent. Abed Abou Shhadeh, a community organizer and researcher, comes from one of the few families that never left. Today, he is raising his children in the city his great-grandfather refused to flee. Abou Shhadeh traces how the catastrophe of 1948 unfolded specifically in Jaffa, the parallels he draws between the ethnic cleansing of the city and the genocide in Gaza, and what it means to resist erasure across generations.

Additional reading:

• Abed Abou Shhadeh’s archive at +972
• For Palestinian parents, every day of this war provokes existential anxiety

The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show

In April 2024, a sixteen-year-old boy named Hassan Al-Qatta rode his bicycle out of his neighborhood in Gaza and never came back. He is not confirmed dead. He is not confirmed alive. He has simply disappeared. Hassan is one of an estimated 9,000 to 15,000 people missing in Gaza. Journalist Mahmoud Mushtaha spent eight months reporting on what that number actually means.

This investigation was produced by the Palestine Reporting Lab, a project of Just Vision. The investigation was published last month in partnership with WIRED and published in Arabic on Raseef22.

Additional reading:

• What Happens When You Can’t Get a Death Certificate in Gaza
• Hassan Took a Bike Ride. Now He’s One of the Thousands Missing in Gaza
• Mahmoud Mushtaha’s archive at +972

The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show

How has Israeli society become so deeply militarized, and what does that mean for how “security” is defined? Sahar Vardi, a veteran anti-militarist activist and researcher, traces how militarization shapes everyday life, drives policy, and exports arms and doctrines of control far beyond Israel's borders — and asks who profits, who pays, and why we accept this as inevitable.

Additional reading:

Israel’s arms sales are surging. So why are its weapons expos smaller than ever?

Is Israel’s genocide economy on the brink? 

The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show

Israel spent 30 years depicting the Iranian regime as an existential threat, and now it is trying to eliminate it. But if the regime falls, which enemy will it choose next? Meron Rapoport joins us under Tel Aviv sirens to talk about the war's real goals, what it means for Israel’s relations with the Palestinians, and why “victory” may only set the stage for an even bigger challenge.

The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website. 

Additional reading:

Meron Rapoport’s archive at +972

Israel’s last war alongside an imperial power backfired. This one could, too

Netanyahu’s pardon request is a lens into Israel’s political psyche

Follow +972 Magazine:
972mag.com
Instagram, Facebook, and  X

Support +972 Magazine:
Become a Member
Sign up for our newsletters

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show

For more than half a century, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was framed as temporary, even as realities on the ground told a different story. Now, legal experts say recent government measures have pushed Israel into de facto annexation. In the face of these moves, and in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority has never looked so weak. Longtime Palestinian affairs journalist Dalia Hatuqa unpacks what all of this means and how it is playing out on the ground.

A full transcript of this episode will be available on our website. 

Additional reading:

Dalia Hatuqa archive at +972

Has Israel crossed the annexation threshold in the West Bank?

Follow +972 Magazine:
972mag.com
Instagram, Facebook, and  X

Support +972 Magazine:
Become a Member
Sign up for our newsletters

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show

Across the occupied West Bank, Palestinian communities are being expelled at an alarming pace. Violent settler attacks are increasingly routine—and often ignored by authorities and much of the Israeli media. For the past two decades, Oren Ziv has documented these communities’ struggles to stay on their land when much of the Israeli press would not. In this episode, he shares how the constant threat of expulsion—whether from coordinated settler attacks, state policies, or both—reshapes lives, and explores what acts of dissent against this new status quo can realistically achieve.

Additional reading:

Oren Ziv’s Archive at +972

The calculated erasure of Ras Ein Al-Auja

At settlers’ bidding, Israel arrests prominent Palestinian activist

Israeli army, settlers unite in collective punishment of Al-Mughayyir

With West Bank annexation in the air, settlers revel in their impunity

Follow +972 Magazine:
972mag.com
Instagram, Facebook, and  X

Support +972 Magazine:
Become a Member
Sign up for our newsletters

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show

As violent organized crime and police violence reshape everyday life in Palestinian communities in Israel, and as another election approaches, MK Aida Touma-Suleiman reflects on a decade inside the Knesset –– and on the moment she decided she could no longer stay. In a conversation about feminist leadership, political exhaustion, and the limits of trying to fight from within  the Israeli system built to exclude Palestinians, Touma-Suleiman  leaves us to ask: where can the struggle move  when institutional politics can’t deliver justice?

Additional reading:

Israel is ‘restoring governance’ to the Negev — by terrorizing Palestinians

In Nazareth, holiday festivities mask a ‘deep rot’

Follow +972 Magazine:
972mag.com
Instagram, Facebook, and  X

Support +972 Magazine:
Become a Member
Sign up for our newsletters

Theme music by Ghassan Birumi

Support the show