Singer-songwriter Maysa Daw always knew she wanted to become a musician. At 27, the Haifa native has a debut album out and is a member of two bands: famed Palestinian hip hop group DAM and new, all-women ensemble Kallemi. 

In this episode, Maysa talks about the importance of shattering social taboos and airing out the dirty laundry, about her journey toward radical self-acceptance, about writing music in Arabic without access to the Arab world, and about the struggle to remain authentic while going mainstream.

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa and DAM.

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The deportation of Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch, put a spotlight on Israel's attempts to suppress dissent and criticism of its policies in the occupied territories.

For Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, one of the lawyers representing Shakir in his lengthy battle to stay in the country, the deportation “has huge potential ramifications” not only for foreign nationals trying to enter the country to work, study, or visit family, but also Israeli citizens and particularly Palestinians living under occupation.

“The minute that Israel decides that it’s its right to vet who gets to come in and work for human rights organizations is the minute that we see crystal clear that Israel’s democracy is eroding," Schaeffer Omer-Man told The +972 Podcast.

While Israel has always had laws that allow it to conduct security screenings and background checks on people living in and entering the country — as other countries also do — she says that Shakir's case shows Israel's turn toward policing speech and political opinions.

Advocates around the world have condemned Israel’s decision to kick Shakir out, warning of a chilling effect against other human rights workers in the country. Those effects, says Schaeffer Omer-Man, can already be felt: visitors, citizens, and activists alike are now silencing themselves in fear of retaliation.

“That obviously harms any movement to progress forward with Palestinian human rights and Palestinian freedom," she says. "It also denies Palestinians access to those who would otherwise support them, stand in solidarity with them and speak out on their behalf and alongside them. And it means that the Israeli human rights community starts to feel smaller and smaller."

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa and Chad Crouch. The news clip is courtesy of Activestills.

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Almost two weeks after Israeli voters cast their ballots for a second time this year, it is still unclear which candidate will lead the country. To make sense of all this, The +972 Podcast turns to leading public opinion analyst Dahlia Scheindlin, who says not much has changed since the April elections. 

What’s different this time, however, is the growing debate over the separation of religion and state in Israel. This internal conflict “is not new, but it became a new arena of political competition in these elections,” explains Scheindlin. She posits that this extremely narrow view of liberalism could potentially grow into something bigger. 

“Ultimately, that will open people’s eyes to all the other related values of a liberal society,” she says. That shift could inspire a deeper discussion on civil and individual rights in Israel, and perhaps push many Israelis to rethink the consequences of endless occupation.

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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Whereas in 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu tried to appeal to his voter base by warning of Arabs going to vote “in droves,” now he is openly accusing Palestinian citizens of voter fraud and of “stealing” the elections.

Sawsan Zaher of Adalah, the legal center for Palestinian rights in Israel, talks to The +972 Podcast about how this voter intimidation campaign is affecting Palestinians in Israel, what Arab voters care about, and why some are deciding to vote for Zionist parties.

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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By understanding Zionism as a white supremacist project, the division between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians becomes reductionist, says Noura Erakat, Palestinian human rights activist and author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.

Thinking of racism merely as a distinction between Jews and non-Jews pits Palestinians against the very groups who also suffer from Israel’s aspiration to whiteness, like Arab Jews and African immigrants and asylum seekers.

Reconstructing the racial dimensions of the Palestinian struggle can therefore offer new alliances and ways of thinking about the future. It can “create a place where we can all have dignity,” and where justice can be achieved for all, argues Erakat.

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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It is no secret that for decades, the Zionist left discriminated against Mizrahim, or Jews with roots in Arab and Muslim countries, treating them as second-class citizens and pushing them to the economic, political, and cultural margins of Israeli society.  

Mizrahim took matters into their own hands, forming political movements and parties of their own. Their resentment against the left pushed many of them into the arms of the right-wing Likud party. 

And yet, says +972 writer and veteran Mizrahi activist Orly Noy, more than 70 years after Israel’s founding, Mizrahim are still fighting for crumbs from the Ashkenazi elite, whether on the left or the right.

Mizrahim now have an opportunity to move beyond the politics that have kept them marginalized, Noy says, by standing alongside Palestinian citizens of Israel. 

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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The United States’ approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has dramatically transformed since Trump took office, but a lot of those changes — from legislation to defund the Palestinian Authority to an attempt to criminalize boycotting Israel — actually came from Congress.

It’s BDS and the idea of boycotting Israel to pressure into changing its policies, however, that has turned into a major wedge issues in American politics. Republicans are pushing radical legislation that would criminalize boycotting Israel, a move opposed by the ACLU and others as unconstitutional, and Democrats are falling into their trap.

"There's got to be a point when you say, whether or not I adopt this tactic, this is a legitimate nonviolent tactic that we will defend," says Lara Friedman, an expert on everything Israel-Palestine on the Hill, and president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

Democrats need to decide not to throw those in their party who do support boycotts under the bus "in order to make the right, which will never ever be satisfied with our position, feel better about us. We're never going to be in that tent — we don't want to be in that tent," she says.

Follow Lara Friedman on Twitter: @LaraFriedmanDC

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack is working to uncover both Israel’s historic ties to brutal military regimes, such as Pinochet’s Chile, as well as its current arms exports to countries carrying out gross violations of human rights, like South Sudan and Myanmar.

Israel's ticket to becoming an arms exporter — with deals dating as far back as the 1950s, when the global arms industry was already saturated — is Israel’s “no questions asked” policy, explains Mack: “You don’t criticize what we are doing in the occupied territories and inside Israel, and we won’t say anything and won’t ask questions about what you’re doing.”

Read more about uncovering Israel’s shady arms sales:

• Supreme Court rules against exposing Israel’s role in Bosnian genocide
• Israelis demand state open up past ties to Argentina junta
• Despite war crimes, Israel insists on selling arms to Myanmar
• The untold story of Israeli military exports to South Sudan

Just a reminder that +972 Magazine and The +972 Podcast are nonprofit journalism. Like what you hear? Please consider making a donation: https://972mag.com/donate.

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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For more than a year now, Israel has been trying to deport the Israel and Palestine Director of Human Rights Watch, Omar Shakir. The ongoing litigation began in May 2018, when Israel decided to revoke Shakir’s work authorization in Israel.

This was the first time the Israeli government had used a 2017 amendment to its Law of Entry, which denies entry to those who publicly support a boycott of Israel, to deport someone already present in the country.

Shakir's case has become a watershed moment for democracy and free speech in Israel. In the latest episode of the podcast, he talks about Israel's attempt to limit criticism of its policies in the occupied territories, and the impact this crackdown has on Palestinian rights in particular.

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The music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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Is the two-state solution really dead? Who knows if it ever will be. But an equitable one-state solution isn’t a given, and there are other models out there for creating a Palestinian state.

Confederation keeps the basic idea of two states but without separation between them. Borders are open and meant to facilitate movement instead of hinder it. Palestinians and Israelis alike can live anywhere between the river and the sea. But both peoples have their own government and get to exercise their right to national self-determination.

Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin joins The +972 Podcast to talk about how the plan addresses Palestinian refugees, why physically splitting Jerusalem is a horrible idea, and to discuss other models of confederation and what we can learn from them.

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The theme music in this episode is by Ketsa.

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