This is the first episode in a mini-series called "From Above," which looks at the Zionist organizations that have been laying the groundwork for Trump-era fascism and are now helping it advance. This mini-series isn’t so much a “how did we get here” as an effort to demystify the ongoing structures of Zionism that underwrite this present moment. In this episode, we’re joined by Zach Samalin from New York University to discuss the group called Mothers Against College Antisemitism (MACA), which was among the first Zionist groups to publicly embrace Trump’s deportation machine.

RESOURCES

https://www.nyu-aaup.org/aaup-nyu-report-nyus-president-mills-interfered-with-student-disciplinary-process-at-request-of-islamophobic-anti-palestinian-group/

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/31/nyu-gaza-protesters-deport-maca-antisemitism/

https://politicalresearch.org/2024/10/30/understanding-rise-multiracial-right-and-why-it-matters

"From Above" is a new mini-series in our Unpacking Zionism podcast. It launches next week, but our teaser this week is a mini-show in itself. This series looks at the Zionist institutions that have been smearing, doxxing, and fueling ICE abductions and deportations in their efforts to shut down criticism of the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

To kick off the series, we talk with researcher Hil Aked about the important idea of Zionism as "a social movement from above." Listen here and read Hil's book Friends of Israel for a more detailed explanation.

In this episode, we are joined by Mama Ganuush, a Palestinian drag artist and activist, to unpack “Cultural Boycott” as a keyword in Critical Zionism Studies. We discuss San Francisco’s Civic Joy Fund, its Zionist backers, and the joy-washing event the Fund is organizing on April 5 – the Tenderloin Eid Night Market. Mama Ganuush shares the investigative report into San Francisco’s Civic Joy Fund and explains why it is imperative to boycott that Eid event, other Civic Joy Fund’s activities, and all expressions of Zionist culture and propaganda.

Mama Ganuush is a Palestinian drag artist, activist, and cultural organizer whose work is rooted in anti-Zionist, anti-colonial politics. They are a founding member of theHALACollective.com and co-host of the AIPACZombies.com podcast. Ganuush also founded the JAHAFilmFestival.com, a radical, joyful celebration of queer and trans voices through cinema. Through their drag performances and community organizing, they aim to build joy-centered spaces of intersectional resistance across all communities while centering trans voices, blending their artistic practice with their political activism to foster collective liberation.

In this episode, we’re unpacking “corporate capital” as a keyword in Critical Zionism Studies with our guest Felice Gelman. We are discussing the article she wrote for Mondoweiss titled “The ADL’s war on socially conscious investing is in service to Israel and the new oligarchy.” It is about the investment research firm Morningstar that earlier this year caved to an ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) pressure campaign and exempted Israel from the firm’s socially responsible investing ratings. So in unpacking the entanglements of corporate capital with Zionism, our conversation touches on the ADL and its long-standing campaign against the BDS movement, the Trump regime and the new oligarchy, and the broader implications of Morningstar’s decision to exempt Israel from investor accountability.

Felice Gelman had a 25 year career on Wall St. as an investment manager and securities analyst, specializing in analyzing and investing in banks and other financial companies. She worked for two investment banks and then started her own asset management business which became the largest firm specializing in financial company investments. She has participated in Palestine solidarity efforts for 20 years.

In this episode we’re talking about building liberatory institutions — institutions of resistive, anti-Zionist knowledge production. We’re with Bassam Haddad of the Arab Studies Institute, the parent organization of Jadaliyya, Gaza in Context, and multiple other projects. Join us to talk about knowledge-making as a political project, escaping the constraints of capital, countering the power of conservative think tanks, and refusing the limits of the university.

In the fifth and final episode of “The Trouble with White Feminism” series, Jessie Daniels talks to ICSZ founding collective member Lara Sheehi about maintaining clarity about the material reality of Zionist settler colonialism while resisting psycho-affective tactics that Zionists use to unsettle us.

Sheehi, Lara, and Stephen Sheehi. Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine. Routledge, 2021.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429487880/psychoanalysis-occupation-lara-sheehi-stephen-sheehi

Sheehi, Stephen. "Psychoanalysis under occupation: Nonviolence and dialogue initiatives as a psychic extension of the closure system." Psychoanalysis and History 20, no. 3 (2018): 353-369.

Stovall, Natasha. “Whiteness on the Couch,” Longreads, 12 August 2019.

https://longreads.com/2019/08/12/whiteness-on-the-couch/

The Zionist playbook is literally this

Hasbara Handbook: https://www.middle-east-info.org/take/wujshasbara.pdf

Mary Louise Fellows and Sherene Razack, The Race to Innocence: Confronting Hierarchical Relations among Women, 1 J. Gender Race & Just. 335 (1998), available at https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/274.

Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang: "Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor," Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.

Wekker, Gloria. White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. (2016). Duke: Durham, NC. https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/86/White-InnocenceParadoxes-of-Colonialism-and-Race

In the fourth episode of "The Trouble with White Feminism" series, Kim-Hong Nguyen talks to Jessie Daniels, author of Nice White Ladies, about white ladies celebrities. They unpack why white Jewish celebrities like Debra Messing, Amy Schumer, and Sheryl Sandberg stake a claim on their brand of feminism in service of Zionism.

Daniels, Jessie. Nice White Ladies: The Truth about White Supremacy, Our Role In It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It (Seal Press, 2021). https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jessie-daniels/nice-white-ladies/9781541675865/

In the third episode of "The Trouble with White Feminism" series, Jessie Daniels interviews Kim-Hong Nguyen, professor at University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, and author of Mean Girl Feminism: How White Feminists Gaslight, Gatekeep, and Girlboss (University of Illinois Press, 2024). This conversation takes us through the IHRA definition of antisemitism - which has been discussed here on the podcast before - and connects it to other forms of “supremacism,” including white imperial feminism.

Nguyen, Kim Hong. Mean Girl Feminism: How White Feminists Gaslight, Gatekeep, and Girlboss (University of Illinois Press, 2024). https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087684

Nguyen, Kim Hong. "Contemporary Fascism’s de-Judified Homo Sacer." Cultural Politics 11, no. 3 (2015): 315-328. https://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article/11/3/315/25823/Contemporary-Fascism-s-de-Judified-Homo-Sacer

International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, working definition of antisemitism

https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism

Kenneth Stern, one of the drafters of this definition, with regrets about it (from 2019):

“I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/antisemitism-executive-order-trump-chilling-effect

In this episode, Jessie Daniels and Kim-Hong Nguyen ask Melissa Weiner about her work exploring the affective ties that the Zionist project generates through Birthright trips and summer camps and how these ties become imbricated within heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism.

“The Blue Box” - documentary

https://www.norma.co.il/blue-box/

https://www.cineaste.com/winter2023/blue-box

“Birthright Israel and #MeToo”

https://jewishcurrents.org/birthright-israel-and-metoo

Dr. Ruth, Sniper

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/dr-ruth-sniper

“How Broadway Helped the Zionist Revolt Against Britain”

https://newlinesmag.com/essays/how-broadway-helped-the-zionist-revolt-against-britain/

In the first episode of our special mini-series "The Trouble with White Feminism," host Jessie Daniels interviews Randa Tawil about the ways that white feminism serves the Zionist project.

Randa Tawil is an Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Texas Christian University and a fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies. Tawil is also a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective.

Resources:

Tawil, Randa. "A" Flying Carpet to Doom": Retracing Gender and Orientalism through the Transnational Journeys of a Syrian Migrant Woman, 1912–1949." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 43, no. 1 (2022): 120-144. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/846735

Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide, by Elyse Semerdjian (Stanford University Press, 2023). https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29963

Tawil, Randa. Race in Transit: Mobilities between Syria and U.S. Empire (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).