The Palestine Pod

This week Lara and Michael cover the formal announcement by Apartheid Israel of the plan to not allow for the return of Palestinians to the Northern part of Gaza while it continues to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from there towards the center and southern part of Gaza. Michael comments on the recent fiasco in Amsterdam where Israeli hooligans chanted genocidal songs celebrating that there were no schools in Gaza because there were no children left, while committing acts of violence and destruction of property. Predictably, the Global North's politicians and media painted the incident, whereby genocide apologists were confronted by locals for their anti-Palestinian threats as "anti-semitic" and a "pogrom". Michael explains his theory as to why it happened, namely to strike fear into Jewish communities in Europe for the purpose of recruiting more people to settle in Israel and the OPT. Lara references Professor Avi Schlaim's findings that Iraqi Jews left their homelands after Mossad orchestrated terrorist attacks in Baghdad in the 1950s. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian activist and lawyer who co-founded the International Solidarity Movement. We discuss her previous efforts to break the Israeli siege on Gaza with various flotillas over the years. One was successful, having successfully docked in Gaza without Israeli permission while in 2010, Israeli commandos attacked one of their ships (the Mavi Marmara) in international waters, killing several humanitarian aid volunteers. Huwaida revealed that attempts to bring another flotilla to Gaza to provide relief during the ongoing US-Israeli genocide are currently being blocked by Türkiye. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with the one and only Amanda Seales. Amanda shares her path to learning about and speaking up for Palestine as an artist, explaining that it takes about seven minutes to figure out what is going on, especially if one is armed with knowledge and understanding of white supremacy and colonialism. She invites listeners to check out her latest project, “What would the ancestors say” which explores Black-Palestinian solidarity amongst other social justice issues through a comedic and artistic intellectual lens. Amanda understandably reminds us of George Bernard Shaw’s saying that “if you’re going to tell people the truth, make them laugh them or else they’ll kill you.” Lara teaches Amanda Arabic. Michael wonders why Amanda still moves her own boxes. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss Israel's expansion of its Nakba and ongoing genocide into Lebanon, with a word on the pager terrorist attacks, and the history of Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah. Turning back to Gaza, Lara reminds that by now 902 Palestinian families have been wiped off the civil registry and will no longer be a part of a Palestinian future. With over 1000 Palestinians now also the only surviving member of their families (including many children), Michael notes that this is the Batman origin story. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a hand surgeon and recent humanitarian volunteer in Gaza during the genocide. He describes seeing a number of children with multiple sniper shots to the heads and hearts, indicating there is no way such wounds are "accidental" as Israel often claims. He speaks of why he was inspired to go to Gaza and why he cannot wait to go back. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss Israel's latest scheme to recruit African asylum seekers to the genocide effort and the frozen death toll in Gaza in the mainstream media despite Israel's continue daily livestreamed massacres. Lara covers a recent piece indicating an economic collapse in Israel based on available data since the genocide began. 

This week on the Palestine Pod, Lara and Michael cover the ongoing genocide in Palestine with updates from on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank including Israel’s bombing of the Al-Ahly Baptist Hospital (again) on August 31, 2024 and the invasion of multiple cities and refugee camps in the West Bank including Jenin where Israeli occupation forces besieged the city, destroyed 70% of the city’s roads in a manner of days and, at the time of recording of this episode, killed 22 Palestinians. Lara reminds us this is all part of the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine which has been ongoing since Day 1 over 76 years ago noting that Israeli officials are even calling for the “temporary” displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank, a tactic which has historically never proven to be temporary and has only ever been used as a means by Israel to steal more Palestinian land. Lara and Michael also critique a recent move by NYU to propose that “Zionist” be considered a protected class under the school’s code of conduct, a move which comes on the heels of social media giant Meta announcing that content targeting Zionism or Zionists could be removed under the company’s hate speech policy. Finally, the Palestine Pod recalls the brutal killing of the brilliant Palestinian content creator Medo Halimy and the legal case for the mainstream media’s role in perpetuating the genocide of the Palestinian people.

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Jewish anti-Zionist activist and writer Amanda Gelender. Amanda argues that the Jewish community has a fascism problem through its support for Zionism while imploring fellow Jewish folks to do more in support of Palestine and Palestinian freedom and liberation. 

This week Lara and Michael discuss the hysteria surrounding Washington's reception of Benjamin Netanyahu, the genocidaire overseeing Israel's current genocidal campaign in Gaza. Lara discusses the spread of preventable skin diseases in Gaza where Israel's siege continues to forbid the entry of even the most basic medical supplies. 

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Associate Professor of Law at Queens University, Dr. Ardi Imseis. Dr. Imseis is the author of the UN and the Question of Palestine, a study into what historically went wrong in the UN’s treatment of the Question of Palestine since its inception. Dr. Imseis exposes how at various critical moments in the last century, the prevailing international law of the time was flouted by the UN in favor of policy that violated Palestinian rights and democratic principles. The work reminds us how the law can be used as one of many tools, but certainly has its limits. Laws can be oppressive (like the Nuremberg laws, South African Apartheid laws) and the choice to respect them or not is inherently political. We discuss how a lack of accountability for Israel’s violations has only caused the Zionist occupation to become more entrenched over time, what public international law principles require of Israel in terms of reparation for its international wrongs against the Palestinian people, and the handful of current legal efforts brought by Palestinians and their allies to use the law for emancipatory aims including the ICJ case in relation to the illegality of Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinians Territory, a case where Dr. Imseis acted as part of the legal team.