Unsettled

By Unsettled Podcast

What's Unsettled about?

Unsettled is a podcast about Israel-Palestine and the Jewish diaspora. We're here to provide a space for the difficult conversations and diverse viewpoints that are all too rare in institutional American Jewish communities.

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Unsettled episodes:

02.20.2024
'Ayeka': a new song from Aly Halpert
For this episode of Unsettled, we’re doing something we’ve never done before: premiering a new song. Aly Halpert makes music used in synagogues and Jewish song circles. If you listened to our last episode featuring Rabbi Miriam Grossman, you heard Aly’s...
02.13.2024
Rabbi Miriam Grossman: “We act and we do not wait for hope”
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, grief and rage have brought thousands of people to the streets to demand a ceasefire. One of the many groups that have mobilized in the U.S. is Rabbis for Ceasefire. One of these...
01.23.2024
An update from Isam Hamad
The last time we featured Isam Hamad on Unsettled was a few days after the October 7th attacks, when Israel had just begun its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. At the time, Isam and his family — including his 93-year...
12.12.2023
Talking to Our Families
Just before Thanksgiving, we asked listeners to call in and tell us about how they’re navigating conversations with their families, friends, and communities in this moment—as Israel responds to the October 7th attacks with unprecedented destruction in Gaza. What has...
11.30.2023
Milena Ansari: “Detention without trial or charge”
As of Thursday, November 30th, a temporary ceasefire is in place between Israel and Hamas. The truce allows for an exchange of hostages who have been held in Gaza by Hamas since October 7th for Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel,...
11.13.2023
Noam Shuster-Eliassi: “We are broken”
It's hard to find anyone in Israel who isn't shaken to the core by the magnitude of Hamas' attack on October 7. For many in Israel, their pain and shock has translated into support for bombing Gaza. But despite public...
11.06.2023
“The worst it’s ever been”: the South Hebron Hills after October 7
It’s been a month since October 7, when Hamas fighters killed 1,400 Israelis and captured more than 200 hostages. It’s also been a month of Israel's retaliation: air raids and ground operations in the Gaza Strip that have killed almost...
10.31.2023
Shahd Safi: "We need electricity, we need fuel, we need flour, we need bread"
On Friday, October 27th, Israel cut off internet in the Gaza Strip for 36-hours, as it expanded its ground operations. This total internet blackout left Gaza without the ability to communicate, both internally and with the outside world. Human rights...
10.27.2023
A Painful Week for the AbuRakia-Einhorns
The AbuRakia-Einhorns are Jewish, Muslim, American, Palestinian citizens of Israel living in the United States. At the beginning of this week, previous Unsettled guest Becca AbuRakia-Einhorn faced painful questions about how to raise young kids who could be subjected to...
10.19.2023
Arie Hasit: "Everybody has opened a situation room"
In this conversation, Producer Ilana Levinson speaks with Rabbi Arie Hasit in Israel. Ilana and Arie, who grew up going to the same synagogue and and summer camp, discuss what it was like to be in Israel on October 7th,...
10.17.2023
Matt Duss: "This is not a moment where people are making good policy"
The United States has always been Israel’s strongest ally, and President Biden has pledged his steadfast support for Israel since Hamas's surprise attack over the Gaza border on October 7. Many American supporters of Israel and even Israeli officials have...
10.16.2023
Isam Hamad: "What sort of a life is this?"
On Saturday, October 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack across the Gaza border, killing more than 1,300 Israelis, mostly civilians, and taking at least 150 Israeli hostages, most of whom are still captive in the Gaza Strip. Israel responded to...
10.13.2023
Tareq Baconi: "There's no going back"
Over the next few days, Unsettled is going to bring you the voices of many different people who have been affected by this week's devastating escalation of violence in Israel and Gaza. We’re starting with an episode about Hamas, whose...
10.07.2023
A note from Unsettled producers
Earlier today Hamas launched an attack on Israeli towns near the Gaza border, and has also been launching rockets towards Israeli population centers as north as Tel Aviv. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians are dead and dozens have been...
07.20.2023
Groundwork: Three Bullets
Groundwork is a podcast about Palestinians and Jews refusing to accept the status quo and working together for change. This episode from their recently released second season follows activist Maisam Jaljuli as she visits the grieving families of Palestinian citizens...
03.31.2023
Amjad Iraqi: The Myth of Israeli Democracy
Israel is often called "the only Democracy in the Middle East,” with activists, politicians, and even journalists pointing to Israel's Supreme Court as a prime example. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to weaken the Israeli judiciary, sending Israeli Jews...
01.27.2023
Escalation in the South Hebron Hills: Awdah Hathaleen
Awdah Hathaleen lives in the village of Umm al-Khair, in the South Hebron Hills: a region of the West Bank where Israel has full civil and military control. At the start of 2023, the Israeli military announced plans to forcibly...
01.23.2023
Escalation in the South Hebron Hills: Musa Abdullah Ali Awad
Musa Abdullah Ali Awad lives in the village of Isfey al-Fauqa. Isfey is located in a part of the West Bank called Masafer Yatta, where Israel has total civil and military control. While the Israeli military has claimed for decades...
01.17.2023
Escalation in the South Hebron Hills: Ali Awad
Two weeks ago, the Israeli army informed Palestinian officials that they would soon begin carrying out the forced transfer of more than a thousand people in Masafer Yatta, a group of villages in the South Hebron Hills in the West...
12.08.2022
Producer Pick: Politicized Pain
To commemorate five years of Unsettled, we’re closing out 2022 by diving into our archive. Each member of the team has picked a favorite past episode to republish. For this episode, producer Asaf Calderon shares Politicized Pain, a conversation between...
12.06.2022
Producer Pick: Amal Sumarin
To commemorate five years of Unsettled, we’re closing out 2022 by diving into our archive. Each member of the team has picked a favorite past episode to republish. For this episode, producer Emily Bell shares a documentary produced in collaboration...
12.01.2022
Producer Pick: The Great March
To commemorate five years of Unsettled, we’re closing out 2022 by diving into our archive. Each member of the team has picked a favorite past episode to republish. For this episode, producer Ilana Levinson shares The Great March, a report...
11.29.2022
Producer Pick: Dan Fishback & Motaz Malhees
To commemorate five years of Unsettled, we’re closing out 2022 by diving into our archive. Each member of the team has picked a favorite past episode to republish. First up, producer Max Freedman shares his interview with two theater artists:...
06.03.2022
Be Back Soon
Unsettled is currently on a break from releasing new content, but we’ll be back on your feed in the Fall. While we’re gone, make sure to catch up on some of our latest episodes. This past Spring, we released a...
05.13.2022
Mona Mansour & Hadi Tabbal: The Vagrant Trilogy
In 1967, a young Palestinian scholar is invited to London to lecture on his mastery of a William Wordsworth poem. But after he arrives, war breaks out back home and he's forced to decide between staying in London or going...
05.09.2022
"Playgrounds for the military"
Last week, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued an opinion that could lead to one of the largest population transfers in recent history. After a decades-long legal battle, the court gave the Israeli military a green light to evacuate...
04.15.2022
The Birthday Party, Pt. 4: The Spring
Ein al-Beida is a fresh water spring that used to be the main source of water for several Palestinian villages — until Israeli settlers moved in and claimed the spring as their own. On a cold Friday morning, two hundred...
04.13.2022
The Birthday Party, Pt. 3: Lilly
Lilly is a young activist from North London who has been to the West Bank many times before — just never with other Jews. In this episode of “The Birthday Party,” Lilly talks about the teenage rebellion that first brought...
04.12.2022
The Birthday Party, Pt. 2: Bob
Bob first visited Israel in 1969, when he was on leave from his U.S. military service in Vietnam. He was raised in a Zionist home; he has relatives who proudly live in former Palestinian houses; he once volunteered on an...
04.11.2022
The Birthday Party, Pt. 1: Tariq
In this special miniseries from Unsettled, producer Max Freedman spends nine days in the South Hebron Hills with Palestinians and Jews working together to oppose and obstruct the occupation. This trip, organized by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, culminates in...
04.07.2022
The Campaign to Save Masafer Yatta
On March 15, Israel’s High Court of Justice heard a case that could lead to one of the largest forced population transfers in recent history. For more than 20 years, Israel has been trying to expel the residents of 12...
03.24.2022
Maya Rosen & Daniel Roth: KKL-JNF
Before there was a state of Israel, there was the Jewish National Fund. The JNF, or Keren Kayamet L’Yisrael in Hebrew, was founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. Today, most American Jews know the JNF...
02.25.2022
Milena Ansari: Palestinian Prisoners’ Rights
When Hisham Abu-Hawash ended his 141-day hunger strike last month, he had been imprisoned by Israel for more than a year without charges or a trial. He was just one of about 500 Palestinians held in “administrative detention.” In this episode,...
02.09.2022
Mahmoud Muna: Educational Bookshop
Mahmoud Muna is part of the family that runs the Educational Bookshop: the only English language bookstore in East Jerusalem. The current iteration of the Bookshop was opened in the 1980s by Mahmoud’s father, Ahmed. Today, the shop has multiple...
01.20.2022
The Calderons are unsettled (part 2)
Unsettled producer Asaf Calderon grew up in Israel in a household of “smolanim”: leftists. His parents raised him to think critically and to fight against injustice, even if it means going against what most people consider normal. But today, even...
01.20.2022
The Calderons are unsettled (part 1)
Unsettled producer Asaf Calderon grew up in Israel in a household of “smolanim”: leftists. His parents raised him to think critically and to fight against injustice, even if it means going against what most people consider normal. But today, even...
12.23.2021
Earworms for the Movement
This summer, New York City’s Astor Place hosted a bat mitzvah ceremony unlike any other: the Anti-Zionist Bat Mitzvah, an all-day musical extravaganza created by Morgan Bassichis and Ira Khonen Temple. The event started with tutoring sessions on Palestinian popular...
12.07.2021
Why Israel is calling Palestinian rights groups 'terrorists'
In October, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz declared six Palestinian civil society organizations “terror groups." These groups work in issue areas like women’s rights, children’s rights, and agricultural labor. The "terror" designation is based on alleged connections to the Popular...
10.12.2021
Naomi Shihab Nye: Poetry as Refuge
Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian-American writer, educator, and editor. Her published work includes poetry, children’s books and essays, and she has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle. She has also spent decades as...
08.24.2021
Marwa Fatafta: Digital Rights
In the spring, the prominent twin activists Muna and Mohammed al-Kurd were regularly speaking out about an Israeli settler takeover of their home in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem. But just after Muhammad and Muna started to get international attention,...
08.09.2021
Introducing Groundwork
Groundwork is a new podcast about Palestinians and Jews refusing to accept the status quo and working together for change. When war broke out between Israel and Gaza this past May, some of the worst inter-ethnic fighting in Israel’s history...
07.27.2021
Jonathan Brenneman and Aidan Orly: Christian Zionism
As international attention turned to Israel-Palestine this May, Jonathan Brenneman and Aidan Orly co-authored an op-ed for Truthout titled “Progressives Can’t Ignore Role of Christian Zionism in Colonization of Palestine.” In this episode, producer Emily Bell interviews Brenneman and Orly...
07.12.2021
Kathleen Peratis: Visiting Gaza
The Gaza strip has been under Israeli siege for 14 years, with cycles of violence happening over and over again. In the latest round of fighting, at least 254 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died. 2 million people live in the...
05.27.2021
Update from the South Hebron Hills
The recent escalation of violence in Israel-Palestine seemed to be happening everywhere, all at once. But one place that’s been getting less public attention is a rural part of the West Bank called the South Hebron Hills. Last weekend, Jewish...
05.24.2021
Amjad Iraqi: Palestinians Rising
Over the last two weeks, even in the face of state and mob violence, Palestinians have been organizing mass demonstrations on both sides of the Green Line: from Jerusalem to Nazareth to Ramallah. After decades of policy designed to keep...
05.21.2021
Politicized Pain
When violence erupts in Israel-Palestine, talking in public about Palestinian suffering is often met automatically with an assertion of Israeli suffering — as if one somehow cancels out, or even justifies, the other. It feels like compassion has become a...
05.19.2021
Shaul Magid: The Life and Afterlife of Meir Kahane
Meir Kahane is one of the most polarizing figures in modern Jewish history. His Jewish Defense League was labeled a terrorist group by the FBI. His KACH party was banned from the Knesset for racism. Kahane was assassinated in 1990,...
05.18.2021
Leena Dallasheh: "East Jerusalem is under attack"
The imminent displacement of several Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah set off a chain of events that led to the violence we’re now seeing all over Israel-Palestine. But what’s happening in Sheikh Jarrah isn't new....
05.17.2021
Tareq Baconi: Hamas, Explained
Since last week, nearly two hundred Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Israel's defenders say the state is simply defending itself against rocket fire from Hamas; loss of life is tragic, but Hamas is to blame. But...
05.14.2021
Rasha Budeiri: Sheikh Jarrah
There’s a lot going on right now in Israel-Palestine. Right-wing Jewish Israeli mobs are attacking Palestinians in cities like Lod and Haifa. Israel is bombing Gaza. Hamas is firing rockets into Israel. Just last week, Israeli police were attacking worshippers...

What's Unsettled about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Unsettled episodes:

'Ayeka': a new song from Aly Halpert

Rabbi Miriam Grossman: “We act and we do not wait for hope”

An update from Isam Hamad

Talking to Our Families

Milena Ansari: “Detention without trial or charge”

Noam Shuster-Eliassi: “We are broken”

“The worst it’s ever been”: the South Hebron Hills after October 7

Shahd Safi: "We need electricity, we need fuel, we need flour, we need bread"

A Painful Week for the AbuRakia-Einhorns

Arie Hasit: "Everybody has opened a situation room"

Matt Duss: "This is not a moment where people are making good policy"

Isam Hamad: "What sort of a life is this?"

Tareq Baconi: "There's no going back"

A note from Unsettled producers

Groundwork: Three Bullets

Amjad Iraqi: The Myth of Israeli Democracy

Escalation in the South Hebron Hills: Awdah Hathaleen

Escalation in the South Hebron Hills: Musa Abdullah Ali Awad

Escalation in the South Hebron Hills: Ali Awad

Producer Pick: Politicized Pain

Producer Pick: Amal Sumarin

Producer Pick: The Great March

Producer Pick: Dan Fishback & Motaz Malhees

Be Back Soon

Mona Mansour & Hadi Tabbal: The Vagrant Trilogy

"Playgrounds for the military"

The Birthday Party, Pt. 4: The Spring

The Birthday Party, Pt. 3: Lilly

The Birthday Party, Pt. 2: Bob

The Birthday Party, Pt. 1: Tariq

The Campaign to Save Masafer Yatta

Maya Rosen & Daniel Roth: KKL-JNF

Milena Ansari: Palestinian Prisoners’ Rights

Mahmoud Muna: Educational Bookshop

The Calderons are unsettled (part 2)

The Calderons are unsettled (part 1)

Earworms for the Movement

Why Israel is calling Palestinian rights groups 'terrorists'

Naomi Shihab Nye: Poetry as Refuge

Marwa Fatafta: Digital Rights

Introducing Groundwork

Jonathan Brenneman and Aidan Orly: Christian Zionism

Kathleen Peratis: Visiting Gaza

Update from the South Hebron Hills

Amjad Iraqi: Palestinians Rising

Politicized Pain

Shaul Magid: The Life and Afterlife of Meir Kahane

Leena Dallasheh: "East Jerusalem is under attack"

Tareq Baconi: Hamas, Explained

Rasha Budeiri: Sheikh Jarrah