Political scientist and historian Norman Finkelstein joins this special edition of UNAPOLOGETIC that marks two years since the October 7 Hamas-led attack and Israel’s devastating retaliation against Gaza, which the majority of genocide scholars around the world have labelled a genocide.

In this nearly three-hour conversation, we ask whether Hamas regrets its actions, probe the realities of Trump’s Gaza plan - and question if this is just another ruse to create cover for more of Netanyahu’s atrocities.

Norman laments the depth of Israel’s brutality over the past 24 months and the roles of Israeli society, Arab states, Western governments, and the media in enabling it.

He also reflects on the collapse of international law and shifting global politics.

We discuss whether recognition of Palestine makes any difference, where the genocide leaves the future of the Palestinian liberation struggle, and why the horrors of Gaza defy facts alone.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, joins UNAPOLOGETIC to discuss his new book Righting Wrongs.

Part memoir, part strategy guide, part global analysis, the book offers a rare inside look at how human rights advocacy really works. In this conversation, we explore how Roth built HRW from a team of just 60 people into a global organisation with more than 550 staff.

He reflects on political strategy, the limits of “naming and shaming,” and the constant struggle to fund independent rights work.

We also dive into HRW’s landmark reports—on apartheid and genocide in Gaza, the devastation of Syria’s war, Rwanda, China, Russia, and more. Roth shares what he learned from world leaders, victims, and dictators, and how those encounters shaped his understanding of power and human nature.

A wide-ranging conversation on justice, accountability, and whether the world is becoming a better place.

“An Israel for all its citizens has disappeared, it has literally been extinguished, and it's a myth that Israel is a nice friendly state”

David Hearst, editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, joins us on this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC to discuss what he describes as the ‘worst evil the world is witnessing’ in the 21st century.

Hearst shares his views on why Israel’s genocide is not just intentional but ‘calculated’. He also speaks about the UK’s complicity and how Israel, through its actions, has isolated not just the global public opinion, but former reliable allies such as Tucker Carlson and Piers Morgan, who are now among the most damning and articulate (if not necessarily sober and coherent) critics of Israel.

Palestinian writer and analyst, Muhammad Shehada joins UNAPOLOGETIC in this special episode to explain how Israel's bombing of senior Hamas leaders in Qatar along with its order for 1 million Palestinians in Gaza city to evacuate once again to the South of Gaza has one common objective - to coldly and calculatedly make its ethic cleansing of Gaza inevitable.

"You have to think about people who are sitting in war rooms and plan the next bombing on civilians populations who are actually in tents in one place that they cannot move (from)"

Al Jazeera has been at the center of one of the deadliest assaults on journalists in modern history. Since October 2023, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 270 journalists, including at least 11 from Al Jazeera. Despite losing colleagues, facing office bombings, and being banned from reporting inside Israel and the West Bank, Al Jazeera continues its coverage of Gaza.

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Ashfaaq Carim speaks with Salah Negm, the head of news for Al Jazeera English. With more than 45 years of experience in international journalism, Negm reflects on what it means to cover a genocide, how Israel targets reporters to silence coverage, and why eyewitness accounts remain essential.

Negm discusses:

The pressures and dangers faced by his newsroom

The killings of Shireen Abu Akleh and other Al Jazeera journalists

How Western media often relies on Israeli narratives

Why objectivity is misunderstood and misused in journalism

Al Jazeera’s process for recruiting and protecting local reporters

This is a rare inside look at how a newsroom endures grief, censorship, and political attacks while trying to hold power to account amidst an unfolding genocide in Gaza.

Editors Note: This episode was filmed on August 21st, before Monday deadly by Israel that killed another Al Jazeera Journalist, Muhammad Salama

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

3:40 Israel’s war on journalism

7:00 Media bias and objectivity

10:50 Why Al Jazeera hires locals

15:30 Fear and character attacks

19:00 Press freedom under threat

23:40 Gaza reporting under siege

29:00 Covering genocide in real time

47:20 Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing

51:00 Journalists killed in Gaza

1:00:00 Bans, raids, and censorship

1:08:00 Future of journalism in war

Muhammad Shahada grew up in Gaza during two decades of blockade and repeated wars. His father died after being denied medical treatment outside the Strip — one of countless lives lost to Israel’s permit system.

Now a journalist and analyst, Shahada joins UNAPOLOGETIC to trace Gaza’s story from 2005 to 2025 — years that saw the removal of Israeli settlers, the imposition of siege, and the shift from Apache helicopters to F-16 bombardments, culminating in genocide.

The conversation covers Hamas’s attempt to reach a political settlement that was rejected by Israel after its election victory, Israel’s role in fuelling a Palestinian civil war, daily life under siege, and the repeated wars waged under Israel's “mowing the lawn” doctrine.

Shahada also reflects on the short period of relief when Egypt opened the Rafah crossing under President Morsi, the tunnelling economy and its risks, Israel’s policy of maiming protesters during the Great March of Return, the events of 7 October, and Israel’s ongoing 22-month assault on Gaza — alongside the silence and complicity of world leaders, media and policymakers.

Orly Noy is the chairperson of B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation that has been documenting Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians since 1989. I

n this episode, we discuss B’Tselem’s new report, titled ‘Our Genocide’. Through rigorous research, the report makes the case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

We also discuss the sociological culture in Israel that has led to a society that largely supports the Israeli state’s annihilation of Gaza and its people, and the lies and myths that have produced a global narrative where power brokers enable or are complicit in the genocide.

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC Professor John Esposito — one of the world’s foremost scholars on political Islam — unpacks 120 years of modern Islamic movements.

From Afghani and Abdu’s 19th-century reformist vision, through Hassan al-Banna and Maududi’s activism, to Sayyid Qutb’s radical turn, we trace the intellectual and political forces that shaped the Muslim world.

We explore the Iranian Revolution, the Afghan war, democratic Islamists, authoritarian crackdowns, and how the West’s perceptions of Islamism were forged. This is a masterclass in the history, ideas, and global impact of political Islam.

UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim

Chapters

0:00 – Intro & episode setup

2:33 – Esposito’s unlikely journey

5:41 – Immersion in Muslim scholarship

10:14 – Plan: 120 years’ history

12:14 – Afghani & Abdu’s vision 15:45 – Islam as civilization & faith

18:09 – Abdu’s modernist reform ideas 22:02 – Anti-colonial political Islam roots

23:54 – Al-Banna & Maududi emerge

26:44 – Movements spread transnationally

30:58 – Ideas spread without media

33:15 – Critique of elites & clerics

38:58 – Sayyid Qutb’s radical turn

43:39 – America through Qutb’s eyes

47:14 – Nasser’s crackdown & prisons

50:33 – Cross-pollination of movements

52:47 – Iranian revolution reshapes politics

55:03 – Authoritarianism fuels radicalisation

57:12 – Gradualists vs violent factions

1:04:05 – Revolution’s impact on perceptions

1:09:58 – Shah, hostage crisis, US errors

1:18:22 – Afghan jihad to al-Qaeda

1:27:05 – Democratic Islamists in power

1:35:48 – Post-Cold War Islamism shifts

1:40:19 – 9/11 & war on terror

1:49:15 – Arab Spring & Brotherhood

1:53:32 – Egypt’s coup & repression

2:02:08 – Islamism, democracy & inclusion

2:07:39 – Misrepresentation in Western discourse

“Every inch of that precious city is Rome and Paris and New York put together, and these barbaric savages go, ‘Oh Isfahan, we just bombed Isfahan’; they don’t even know where Isfahan is.”

Hamid Dabashi, is an American and Iranian professor at Columbia University.

He joined UNAPOLGETIC on this episode to give a scathing critique of US and Israeli adventurism and aggression in Iran and the region. Dabashi rebukes both states for having “absolutely no moral legitimacy” to export either freedom or democracy, especially while Israel continues to carry out a “genocide” in Gaza and the US under Trump cracks down on its own democratic institutions.

The episode also delves into Iran's contemporary history, looking at how the CIA orchestrated coup of Iran’s elected leader allowed the Pahlavi dynasty to reestablish “autocratic” rule in Iran, which led to a popular uprising that paved the way for Ayatollah Khomeini to opportunistically establish Iran’s theocracy that has presided over Iran with a “totalitarian” fist, ever since.

UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim

Chapters

00:00 - Intro

02:22 - Israel-US no legitimacy on nuclear bombs

07:08 - Iran belongs to Iranian people

12:33 - US-Israel actions will be remembered

17:06 - The empire’s collapse

21:40 - West’s hypocrisy on Iran

26:55 - Israel’s war on Iran

33:18 - West's history with Iran

38:11 - The 1953 CIA coup

44:20 - Pahlavi and autocracy

49:35 - Khomeini seizes opportunity

55:58 - Iran’s totalitarian theocracy

1:02:41 - Trump and democratic decline

1:10:25 - Freedom as imperial excuse

1:17:04 - Moral clarity from the South

1:24:45 - Final reflections

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges joins us on UNAPOLOGETIC for a conversation on what the consequences could be if Israel draws the USA into a full-blown war with Iran.

Hedges reflects on his years reporting from war zones, the cynical nihilism driving Netanyahu’s assault, and how Israel’s genocide in Gaza has become a “spectacle” that has irreparably broken trust between North and South.

Are Israel’s and the Pentagon’s stated shifting priorities real, or a façade to continue diminishing societal infrastructure in the region? Will the complicity of Arab states in the genocide lead to blowback? Is regime change the goal, or is this just an excuse?

UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim