Unsettled

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, they were detained and interrogated by Israeli authorities. The al-Kurd twins are not alone. Palestinians say they’ve been subject to censorship from social media companies and by the Israeli authorities for decades. On this episode of Unsettled, Marwa Fatafta, the Middle East and North Africa Policy Manager at Access Now, talks about censorship of Palestinian voices. 

Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Marwa Fatafta leads Access Now’s work on digital rights in the Middle East and North Africa region as the MENA Policy Manager. She has written extensively on technology, human rights, and internet freedoms in Palestine and the wider MENA region. Marwa is also a Policy Analyst at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network where she co-led the organization's policy work on questions of Palestinian political leadership, governance, and accountability. Previously, Marwa was the MENA Regional Advisor for Transparency International Secretariat in Berlin and served as the Communications Manager at the British Consulate-General in Jerusalem. Marwa was a Fulbright scholar to the US, and holds an MA in International Relations from Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She holds a second MA in Development and Governance from University of Duisburg-Essen.
 

• Access Now's statement on Facebook and Twitter systematically silencing protests  (5/7/2021)
• Access Now's 'Facebook Stop Silencing Palestine' campaign
• "Elections or not, the PA is intensifying its authoritarian rule online" (Marwa Fatafta, +972 Magazine, 4/29/21)
• “Facebook's Secret Rules About the Word 'Zionist' Impede Criticism of Israel" (Sam Biddle, The Intercept, 5/14/21)

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 erupted between its own citizens. The violence showed that even in mixed cities, where people often talk of coexistence, there are deep political, ethnic, and economic divides.

Lod was the epicenter of this recent violence: there were shootings in the streets, neighbors attacking one another, lynching. In this episode, Groundwork’s hosts Dina Kraft and Sally Abed speak with Lod activists Rula Daood and Dror Rubin about the complicated history of Lod, what they think led to the violence in May, and what’s next.

Sally Abed is a staff member and an elected member of the national leadership at Standing Together. In recent years, Sally has become a prominent Palestinian voice in Israel that is putting forward the holistic view that identifies the interrelation between the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories, growing social and economic disparities within Israeli society, the threat of climate change, and attacks by the government on democratic freedoms and Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Dina Kraft is a veteran foreign correspondent based in Tel Aviv where she’s The Christian Science Monitor correspondent. She began her overseas career in the Jerusalem bureau of The Associated Press. She was later posted to AP’s Johannesburg bureau where she covered southern Africa. She’s also reported from Senegal, Kenya, Pakistan, Jordan, Tunisia, Russia, and Ukraine. Dina has taught journalism at Northeastern University, Harvard University, and Boston University. She was a 2012 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and a 2015 Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.

Dina hosted “The Branch” podcast, about ties between Jews and Palestinians and her work has also been published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Haaretz among other news outlets.

Yoshi Fields is the co-founder and producer of Groundwork and has worked in the podcast industry for about 5 years. In 2018, he moved to Israel-Palestine and has worked on several podcasts in the region, focusing on both political and human interest stories, including as a producer at Israel Story, The Branch, and Unsettled.

Through his work, Yoshi aims to empower the voices of others, and facilitate the expression of their stories. He has previously hiked the Himalayas while carrying out a research study on the intersection of love and Buddhism, and worked in a hospice for a year writing about the experience of mortality for health workers.

Groundwork is powered by the Alliance for Middle East Peace and the New Israel Fund.

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 about the origins of Christian Zionism; the relationship between Christian Zionism, Jewish Zionism, and U.S. foreign policy; and what it means to challenge Christian Zionism.

Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Jonathan Brenneman is a Palestinian-American Christian. He has undergraduate degrees in History and Philosophy from Huntington University, and in 2016 completed a Masters at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Before going to Notre Dame, Jonathan was part of Christian Peacemaker Teams Palestine project in Hebron/Al-Khalil, where he worked in solidarity with Palestinian communities to challenge unjust Israeli policies and the structures that uphold them. Today, he continues his advocacy in the United States primarily through challenging Christian Zionist theology.

Aidan Orly is an Israeli-American Ashkenazi Jew who is active in donor and social justice organizing, especially around issues related to Jewish communities, the Christian Right, and Palestine.

• “Progressives Can’t Ignore Role of Christian Zionism in Colonization of Palestine” (Jonathan Brenneman & Aidan Orly, Truthout, 5/20/21)
• “Will this Palestinian matriarch get to keep her Jerusalem home?” (Unsettled, produced in collaboration with +972 Magazine, 4/12/21)
• “Inside the Most Insanely Pro-Israel Meeting You Could Ever Attend” (David Weigel, Slate, 7/22/14)
• “An unholy alliance” (Natasha Roth-Rowland, +972 Magazine, 11/5/20)
• “The Terrifying Alliance Between End Times Christian Zionists and Donald Trump” (Sarah Lazare, In These Times, 10/5/20)
• “AIPAC Isn’t the Whole Story” (Jonah S. Boyarin, Jewish Currents, 3/4/19)

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 Gaza strip, and they’ve endured over a decade of air raids, and an economic blockade that deprives them of basic necessities, like power and clean water. But in the Jewish community, conversations about Gaza tend to focus only on Hamas terrorism and claims of widespread antisemitism. Kathleen Peratis has been to Gaza five times in the last decade, and what she saw there tells a very different story. In this episode of Unsettled, Kathleen talks about what she learned from her experiences in Gaza and the people she met while she was there.

Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Kathleen Peratis is a Partner at Outten and Golden, an employment justice law firm in Manhattan. She's also the Co-Chair of the Middle East and North Africa Division for Human Rights Watch, and the former director of the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, succeeding Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Kathleen's published works on her time in Gaza:

• One Day in Gaza (May 2011)
• If You Want Two States, Support BDS (October 2013)
• Remember Gaza (November 2013)
• Walking Amid the Rubble of Gaza (September 2014)

Unsettled's 4-part series on Gaza:

• The Great March (Gaza, ep. 1)
• Refugees (Gaza, ep. 2)
• Hamas (Gaza, ep. 3)
• Energy (Gaza, ep. 4)

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 settlers set fire to Palestinian fields and tried to destroy a cave in the village of Sarura.

We have dedicated two past episodes of Unsettled to the story of this cave: how it was first reclaimed four years ago by Palestinian and Jewish activists; and how it has remained in local Palestinian hands ever since, thanks to a group called Youth of Sumud. Today, we’re sharing those two episodes as one. 

Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

• Youth of Sumud: Facebook, Instagram
• Center for Jewish Nonviolence: Facebook, Instagram
• “Palestinian children travel dangerous route to school in At-Tuwani” (DCI Palestine, 9/10/13)
• Amira Hass and Hagar Sheizaf, “The Village Where Palestinians Are Completely Powerless” (Haaretz, 1/5/21)
• Spotify playlist: Unsettled essentials, May 2021

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 the Palestinian people fragmented, they have taken to the streets in unison to demand radical change.  

What does this new Palestinian uprising look like? And where will it go next? Producer Ilana Levinson speaks to Amjad Iraqi, a writer and editor for +972 Magazine based in Haifa.

Unsettled is produced by Ilana Levinson, Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, and Max Freedman. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Amjad Iraqi is an editor and writer at +972 Magazine. He is also a policy analyst at the think tank Al-Shabaka, and was previously an advocacy coordinator at the legal center Adalah. He is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, based in Haifa.

• "Against the horror, Palestinians are still rising" (Amjad Iraqi, +972 Magazine, 5/13/21)
• The Nation-State Law w/Amjad Iraqi (Unsettled, 7/24/18)
• Spotify playlist: Unsettled essentials, May 2021
   

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 scarce commodity. How do we grieve publicly without negating the experience of the “other side"?

This episode is not an expert interview, it's a conversation between two friends: one American, one Israeli. Unsettled producers Ilana Levinson and Asaf Calderon discuss empathy and anger, power, trauma, and responsibility.

Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

• “Want to help Israelis? Become an anti-Zionist” (Asaf Calderon, +972 Magazine, 5/19/21)
• “What it’s like to have a Jewish terrorist in the family” (Asaf Calderon, Haaretz, 5/3/17)
• Spotify playlist: Unsettled essentials, May 2021

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, but his name and ideas live on.

Kahanist mobs have recently marched through the streets of Israeli cities chanting “Death to Arabs” and attacking random Palestinians. A Kahanist politician was blamed by Israel's Police Commissioner for inciting a new intifada. What is Kahanism, who was Meir Kahane, and how did the ideas of such an extremist figure become, in many ways, mainstream?

In this episode, producer Max Freedman speaks to Shaul Magid, professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and author of the forthcoming book, Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical.

Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Shaul Magid is Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Author of many books and essays, his two latest books are The Bible, the Talmud and the New Testament: Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik’s Commentary to the Gospel, and Piety and Rebellion: Essay in Hasidism, both published in 2019. His new book Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical will be published with Princeton University Press in October, 2021. He is presently working on a project understanding contemporary Jewish scholarship on antisemitism through the lens of critical race theory.

• Shaul Magid, Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton University Press, 2021)
• Josef Federman and Joseph Krauss, “Radical rabbi’s followers rise in Israel amid new violence” (Associated Press, 5/14/2021)
• “Police chief said to blame far-right lawmaker Ben Gvir for ‘internal intifada’” (Times of Israel, 5/14/2021)
• School Colors, Episode 2: “Power to the People”
• School Colors, Episode 3: “Third Strike”
• Spotify playlist: Unsettled essentials, May 2021

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. Ever since Israel gained control of East Jerusalem in 1967, the state has been making life difficult for Palestinians -- and trying to get them out.

In this episode, producer Ilana Levinson speaks to historian Leena Dallasheh about the many forms of exclusion faced by Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Leena Dallasheh is an Associate Professor of History at Humboldt State University. Her research focuses on modern Palestinian and Israeli history, and her training covered the broad social and political history of the modern Middle East, with a particular interest in understanding identity and citizenship in colonial transition. She received her PhD in the joint History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies program at NYU. Her work focuses on the social and political history of Nazareth from 1940 to 1966, tracing how Palestinians who remained in Israel in 1948 negotiated their incorporation in the state, affirming their rights as citizens and their identity as Palestinian. Before coming to NYU, she received a law degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

• Spotify playlist: Unsettled essentials, May 2021
• Rasha Budeiri: Sheikh Jarrah (Unsettled, 5/14/21)
• Refugees: Gaza, ep. 2 (Unsettled, 2/4/19)
• Jerusalem: Leena Dallasheh (Unsettled, 12/22/17)

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 many of us know very little about Hamas itself.

In this episode, originally published in 2019, producer Max Freedman speaks with Tareq Baconi, author of the book Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance. They discuss the origins of Hamas, how Hamas governs the Gaza Strip, and its complicated relationship with the state of Israel.

Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Asaf Calderon, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Tareq Baconi is the International Crisis Group’s Analyst for Israel/Palestine and Economics of Conflict. His book, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance, was published by Stanford University Press in 2018. His writing has appeared in Arabic in Al-Ghad and Al-Quds al-Arabi, and in English in The New York Review Daily, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, The Nation, The Daily Star (Lebanon), and al-Jazeera. He has provided analysis for print and broadcast media, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, BBC, National Public Radio, and Democracy Now!

• Spotify playlist: Unsettled essentials, May 2021
• Fares Akram and Ravi Nessram, "Israel stages new round of heavy airstrikes on Gaza City" (Associated Press,  May 16, 2021)
• Tareq Baconi, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018)
• Tareq Baconi interviewed by Rami Younis (+972 Magazine, January 11, 2019)
• Tareq Baconi, "Sheikh Jarrah and After" (London Review of Books, May 14, 2021)
• Hamas’s original charter (August 18, 1988)
• Hamas’s new political document (May 1, 2017)