The +972 Podcast

On July 1, Israel and the United States signed an agreement to build a permanent U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on confiscated Palestinian property. Among the descendants of the Palestinian families who own the site is historian Rashid Khalidi. He details his family’s nearly 30 year legal battle against the planned embassy — and reflects on whether the hundred-year war on Palestine may finally be entering a new chapter, given historic shifts in global public opinion. Right now, we’re running a one-month fundraising campaign with a goal of welcoming 200 new members. +972 Magazine is fiercely independent, and that’s only possible because of listeners and readers like you. Head over to 972mag.com to learn more and support our journalism by becoming a member today.https://www.972mag.com/membersThe full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Since October 2023, much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble. But architect and Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman argues that destruction alone does not capture what is taking place. Drawing on his new book, “Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide,” he describes a process that goes beyond erasure: the “rubbing out of any trace of existence” aimed at expelling the Palestinian population and permanently preventing their return.Right now, we’re running a one-month fundraising campaign with a goal of welcoming 200 new members. +972 Magazine is fiercely independent, and that’s only possible because of listeners and readers like you. Head over to 972mag.com to learn more and support our journalism by becoming a member today.Additional reading:‘Render it unusable’: Israel’s mission of total urban destruction (+972 Magazine)The Killing Of Hind Rajab (Forensic Architecture)Israeli Disinformation: Al-Ahli Hospital (Forensic Architecture)The Massacre of Aid Workers in Tel Al-Sultan (Forensic Architecture)A Cartography of Genocide (Forensic Architecture)The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

The global movement for Palestinian justice has achieved real gains — in international courts, in diplomatic shifts, in a transformation of public opinion. Yet the official Palestinian leadership remains deeply fractured, ill-equipped to meet the moment. Omar Rahman, fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, makes the case that the Palestinian leadership crisis is a national emergency: those in power prioritize their own survival over any coherent response to Israel’s genocide, leaving Palestinians without a national vision and strategy at the moment they need it most.Additional Reading:Omar Rahman’s archive at +972October 7 Exposed the Depth of the Palestinian Leadership CrisisRupture and Representation: The Palestinian National Movement After October 7The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

For generations, Jewish-Israeli children have been brought up in an education system where Palestinians rarely appear as Palestinians. Instead, they are "Arabs," “enemies,” and a "demographic threat" — or, in the words of scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan, "a problem to be solved." A professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Peled-Elhanan has spent years documenting how Israeli textbooks erase Palestinian life, mobilize Holocaust memory to produce existential fear, and present occupation and ethnic hierarchy as natural facts of life. As Israel's genocide in Gaza lays bare the consequences of decades of dehumanization, she reflects on what this system has produced — and, having experienced the post-October 7 crackdown on dissent firsthand, what it does to those who challenge it.The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Jaffa was once a cosmopolitan port city deeply connected to the Arab world. Then, within a few years after 1948, it was transformed: most of its Palestinian population was expelled, its institutions seized and repurposed, and the few residents who remained were confined to a ghetto, often in houses that were not their own, under laws designed to make that dispossession permanent. Abed Abou Shhadeh, a community organizer and researcher, comes from one of the few families that never left. Today, he is raising his children in the city his great-grandfather refused to flee. Abou Shhadeh traces how the catastrophe of 1948 unfolded specifically in Jaffa, the parallels he draws between the ethnic cleansing of the city and the genocide in Gaza, and what it means to resist erasure across generations.Additional reading:Abed Abou Shhadeh’s archive at +972For Palestinian parents, every day of this war provokes existential anxietyThe full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

In April 2024, a sixteen-year-old boy named Hassan Al-Qatta rode his bicycle out of his neighborhood in Gaza and never came back. He is not confirmed dead. He is not confirmed alive. He has simply disappeared. Hassan is one of an estimated 9,000 to 15,000 people missing in Gaza. Journalist Mahmoud Mushtaha spent eight months reporting on what that number actually means.This investigation was produced by the Palestine Reporting Lab, a project of Just Vision. The investigation was published last month in partnership with WIRED and published in Arabic on Raseef22.Additional reading:What Happens When You Can’t Get a Death Certificate in GazaHassan Took a Bike Ride. Now He’s One of the Thousands Missing in GazaMahmoud Mushtaha’s archive at +972The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

How has Israeli society become so deeply militarized, and what does that mean for how “security” is defined? Sahar Vardi, a veteran anti-militarist activist and researcher, traces how militarization shapes everyday life, drives policy, and exports arms and doctrines of control far beyond Israel's borders — and asks who profits, who pays, and why we accept this as inevitable.Additional reading:Israel’s arms sales are surging. So why are its weapons expos smaller than ever?Is Israel’s genocide economy on the brink? The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan Birumi Support the show

Israel spent 30 years depicting the Iranian regime as an existential threat, and now it is trying to eliminate it. But if the regime falls, which enemy will it choose next? Meron Rapoport joins us under Tel Aviv sirens to talk about the war's real goals, what it means for Israel’s relations with the Palestinians, and why “victory” may only set the stage for an even bigger challenge.The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website. Additional reading:Meron Rapoport’s archive at +972Israel’s last war alongside an imperial power backfired. This one could, tooNetanyahu’s pardon request is a lens into Israel’s political psycheFollow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

For more than half a century, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was framed as temporary, even as realities on the ground told a different story. Now, legal experts say recent government measures have pushed Israel into de facto annexation. In the face of these moves, and in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority has never looked so weak. Longtime Palestinian affairs journalist Dalia Hatuqa unpacks what all of this means and how it is playing out on the ground.A full transcript of this episode will be available on our website. Additional reading:Dalia Hatuqa archive at +972Has Israel crossed the annexation threshold in the West Bank?Follow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Across the occupied West Bank, Palestinian communities are being expelled at an alarming pace. Violent settler attacks are increasingly routine—and often ignored by authorities and much of the Israeli media. For the past two decades, Oren Ziv has documented these communities’ struggles to stay on their land when much of the Israeli press would not. In this episode, he shares how the constant threat of expulsion—whether from coordinated settler attacks, state policies, or both—reshapes lives, and explores what acts of dissent against this new status quo can realistically achieve.Additional reading:Oren Ziv’s Archive at +972The calculated erasure of Ras Ein Al-AujaAt settlers’ bidding, Israel arrests prominent Palestinian activistIsraeli army, settlers unite in collective punishment of Al-MughayyirWith West Bank annexation in the air, settlers revel in their impunityFollow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

As violent organized crime and police violence reshape everyday life in Palestinian communities in Israel, and as another election approaches, MK Aida Touma-Suleiman reflects on a decade inside the Knesset –– and on the moment she decided she could no longer stay. In a conversation about feminist leadership, political exhaustion, and the limits of trying to fight from within  the Israeli system built to exclude Palestinians, Touma-Suleiman  leaves us to ask: where can the struggle move  when institutional politics can’t deliver justice?Additional reading:Israel is ‘restoring governance’ to the Negev — by terrorizing PalestiniansIn Nazareth, holiday festivities mask a ‘deep rot’Follow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Over 9,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons and military detention centers. While the majority of their names will be unfamiliar to most, the name of one Palestinian prisoner stands out above all others: Marwan Barghouti. Decades behind bars haven’t dimmed his influence—thanks, in part, to his family’s tireless advocacy. His son Arab Barghouti shares how Marwan’s life embodies both the ordinary struggles of countless Palestinians and the extraordinary impact of one man’s unwavering vision for his people.Follow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan Birumi Support the show

This time of year, Palestinian Christians are often invoked in media and political discourse as emblems of faith, coexistence, and hope, while the political conditions shaping their lives — including military occupation, genocide, and forced displacement — are ignored. Palestinian theologian and lecturer John Munayer sheds light on the Palestinian Christian experience, from Israeli efforts to separate them from the Arab and Palestinian national movements, to the role of Christian leadership and institutions in legitimizing their subjugation. Arguing that religion and politics cannot be disentangled, he explains why Palestinian liberation theology offers not only a framework for resistance but a challenge to the colonial, Zionist assumptions embedded in Western Christian thought.Right now, your donation is worth up to 12 times more. As part of our end-of-year campaign, a generous donor is multiplying each new +972 membership by 12 and doubling every one-time donation. If you believe in our fight to end impunity and ensure justice for all between the river and the sea, now is your chance to act.Join the +972 family. Make a donation. Make a difference.Additional reading:Sheltering in churches, Gaza’s Christians face another Christmas under firePalestinian Christians do not tolerate life under occupationFollow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Investigative journalist Yuval Abraham takes us inside his reporting on the systems driving Israel’s mass killing in Gaza over the past two years. He discusses the core challenges and ethical dilemmas of uncovering state-backed atrocities, and why the stories revealed so far are just the tip of the iceberg. Abraham highlights the need to hold powerful institutions, like Israel’s military accountable rather than focusing only on individual perpetrators, offering a deeper look at the mechanisms that produce and conceal systemic violence.Additional reading:Yuval Abraham’s archive at +972Follow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Right now, your donation is worth up to 12 times more. As part of our end-of-year campaign, a generous donor is multiplying each new +972 membership by 12 and doubling every one-time donation.If you believe in our fight to end impunity and ensure justice for all between the river and the sea, now is your chance to act.Join the +972 family. Make a donation. Make a difference.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Over a month into the ceasefire, Gaza’s future remains in the hands of Western powers — with Palestinians largely excluded. Gazan political analyst Muhammad Shehada provides an in-depth look at the diplomatic and geopolitical strategies at play, the ongoing realities of displacement and deprivation inside the Strip, and what this moment might mean for Palestinians’ political horizons.Additional Reading: Muhammad Shehada’s archive at +972What’s behind Israel’s new plan to divide Gaza in twoFollow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

In the occupied West Bank today, life looks completely different than it did just two years ago — with unprecedented levels of state-backed settler violence, arbitrary arrests, new road closures, and mounting economic pressure. But resistance, too, is changing. Veteran activist Munther Amira connects this moment to earlier chapters of the Palestinian struggle and reflects on what it means to keep resisting when survival itself has become the fight.Additional Reading: From the Cemetery of the Living: A Plea for the Rights of Palestinian Detainees ‘They intended to kill us’: Masafer Yatta reels from bloody settler assaultsMy father was jailed for believing Palestine must be freeFollow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Two years after October 7, Israeli public opinion remains shaped by fear, grief, and a siege mentality. But could the fragile ceasefire mark a turning point — or will Israel slip back into an “October 6 way of thinking,” ignoring the root causes of the violence and paving the way for future wars? Political analyst, public opinion researcher, and A Land For All member Dahlia Scheindlin joins us to discuss how Israeli attitudes toward the war on Gaza have evolved, whether there’s any possibility of a public reckoning, and what it would take to begin a process of genuine political transformation between the river and the sea — from both within Israeli society and the international community. Additional Reading: Dahlia Scheindlin’s archive at +972‘Israelis are frustrated, but do they want to stop the war? Not exactly’Follow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

How do Palestinians conceive of liberation and hope today, after decades of disillusion, and beyond the narrow language of statehood? In this bleak moment, what forms of governance, sovereignty, or resistance still feel possible?Zayne Abudaka argues that understanding Palestinian public opinion requires a new approach to polling — one that doesn’t flatten or distort Palestinian perspectives. A co-founder and senior fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Progress in Ramallah, Abudaka leads the Institute’s polling efforts in the West Bank and Gaza, adapting methods throughout the war to reach Palestinians under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Among other issues, he discusses his team’s recent findings on Palestinians’ attitudes towards party politics, armed struggle, the two-state paradigm, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement.Additional Reading: Latest Polls from The Institute for Social and Economic Progress Follow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

More journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 than in any other conflict since the Committee to Protect Journalists began collecting data in 1992. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Israel’s onslaught has killed 250 media workers to date. Yet despite facing conditions without parallel in the history of modern warfare, journalists in Gaza continue to bear witness. With Israel barring foreign reporters from entering the Strip for nearly two years now, Palestinian journalists have shouldered the entire burden of informing the world about the ongoing genocide, reporting on a story that is also their own.In this episode, Ruwaida Amer reflects on the difficulties of reporting from Gaza, where the atrocities she documented –– massacres, destruction, displacement, and starvation –– are inseparable from her own lived experience.Additional Reading: Ruwaida Amer’s archive at +972 Follow +972 Magazine: 972mag.com Instagram, Facebook, and  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

It’s been nearly two years, and Israel’s genocide in Gaza shows no signs of abating. At the same time, Israel has further entrenched its control over Palestinians in the West Bank, and accelerated its persecution over Palestinian citizens of Israel, while expanding the war to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. Inside Israel, protests against the war among Jewish and Palestinian citizens are continuing to grow louder, but have not yet reached a tipping point. In this episode, Orly Noy connects the dots between the unfolding genocide in Gaza and Israeli actions and policies everywhere else in this land and beyond. Orly is a regular contributor to +972 Magazine and an editor at the Hebrew language media outlet Local Call. Additional Reading: B’Tselem report: Our GenocideOrly Noy ArchiveIsrael’s greatest threat isn’t Iran or Hamas, but its own hubrisFollow +972 Magazine: Website:972mag.com Instagram, and Facebook,  XSupport +972 Magazine:Become a Member Sign up for our newslettersMusic by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Last month, a controversy erupted in Israel when the Tel Aviv municipality, in time for the new school year, distributed maps to classrooms that showed the Green Line. Although the 1949 armistice lines that formed Israel's unofficial borders at the cessation of the 1948 war are internationally recognized, in Israel the Green Line is a contentious point, seen as incorrectly demarcating between "Israel proper" and the settlements in the occupied West Bank. Indeed, in sending the maps to schools, the Tel Aviv municipality flouted Education Ministry guidelines.The episode was a timely reminder of what +972 editor Amjad Iraqi and Meron Rapoport, an editor at Local Call, argued in a pair of essays they wrote for The Nation in August: that the Green Line, both as a result of Palestinian grassroots resistance and Israeli efforts to undermine the idea that the West Bank is a separate entity, is gradually becoming irrelevant. You can read Iraqi and Rapoport's pieces at +972 Magazine here and here, or at The Nation here and here.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.Become a member of +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/membersSupport the show: 972mag.com/donateSign up for our weekly newsletter, The Landline: 972mag.com/newsletterSupport the show

Noam Shuster-Eliassi, an Israeli comedian based in south Tel Aviv, spent her childhood and early adulthood invested in a traditional model of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. Growing up in Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salam, a mixed community in central Israel where Jews and Palestinains live together by choice, Shuster-Eliassi took to peace activism as a young adult, becoming part of dialogue groups and working with a UN subsidiary.Yet she came to find this mode of activism inadequate, she told the +972 Podcast. "I got to a very extreme point where I couldn't deal anymore with how much we were not making any progress in humanitarian work and in the NGO world." Turning to stand-up comedy, she said, not only helped her feel less alone in struggling against the situation in Israel-Palestine, but also helped the trilingual Shuster-Eliassi — she speaks Hebrew, Arabic, and English — express herself in the way that she wanted. "[Comedy] released my voice. It made me say the things that I dreamed of saying, it made me reach the people I'm dreaming of reaching — it made me speak in all the languages that I know."The music in this episode is by DAM and Ketsa.The audio clips in this episode are taken from the short documentary "Reckoning With Laughter," directed by Amber Fares and produced by Rachel Leah Jones. "Reckoning With Laughter" can be watched at either Al Jazeera or The New Yorker.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.Become a member of +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/members/Support the show: 972mag.com/donate/Sign up for our weekly newsletter, The Landline: 972mag.com/newsletter/Support the show

Archeology is presumed to be a neutral endeavor, a practice of excavation that merely uncovers clues about the past. But according to Israeli archeologist Yonathan Mizrahi, it's easy to frame archeological discoveries in a way that privileges one narrative or one history over another. That's very much what is happening in Israel-Palestine, and a lot of that is concentrated in East Jerusalem.Until recently, Mizrahi served as the executive director of Emek Shaveh, an Israeli NGO that examines the interplay between archeology and the occupation. In his 15 years at the helm, he witnessed the increasing encroachment of right-wing settler groups on the city's Palestinian neighborhoods — a process which has, to a significant extent, relied on archeological excavations.Such digging "brings [settlers] the opportunity to justify the settlement," said Mizrahi. "Instead of looking at the settlers as a group of people living in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, they can come and say, 'Listen, we are living in Jewish history. We have historic rights here. It's not just the Bible — you can see the ruins here."The music in this episode is by Ketsa.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateSupport the show

When Sahar Mustafah, a Palestinian-American author and teacher, heard about the 2015 murder of three Muslim students in North Carolina by their white neighbor, she turned to writing to process the attack and its ramifications."It was the kind of event that just rattled me to my core," says Mustafah, who is based in Chicago. "What compels someone that you know, a neighbor, to bring a gun to your door and shoot you in cold blood?"That Mustafah's 2020 debut novel, “The Beauty of Your Face,” was timely is beyond doubt: it arrived in the final year of a Trump administration that had opened the floodgates of white nationalist violence and further inscribed Islamophobia into federal law. Yet in shopping the book to publishers, Mustafah says, it was precisely the sections involving the shooter's attack on a Muslim girls' school run by the main character, Afaf, that led most publishing houses she approached to pass on the novel.In this episode, editor Natasha Roth-Rowland interviews Mustafah about the responsibility of representing her community to a mainstream audience, the grief of immigration, and writing as a critical tool of emancipation.The music in this episode is by Ketsa.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateSupport the show

Perhaps the most enthralling story in Israel-Palestine last month was the startling escape of six Palestinians from the notorious Gilboa prison, using simple tools like spoons to dig a tunnel out of their cells and on to freedom. Although the prisoners were re-captured several days later, their feat dominated Israeli news headlines and captured the Palestinian popular imagination.To unpack the story, +972 editor Amjad Iraqi interviews attorney Abeer Baker, a Palestinian human rights lawyer based in Akka who represents Palestinian prisoners before Israeli courts, about the sweeping nature of Israel’s incarceration regime, the ways in which Israeli law legitimizes the state’s policies, and how Palestinians are resisting their jailers even behind prison walls.The music in this episode is by Ketsa.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateSupport the show

Earlier this month, American ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s announced that will stop selling their products in Israeli settlements located in the occupied West Bank.The company’s decision has sparked an uproar by Israeli politicians, from the far-right to the Zionist left. Along with cries of “antisemitism” and “economic terrorism,” the Israeli government has called on U.S. states to sanction the company through domestic laws that effectively punish any boycotts or divestments relating to Israel.In the latest episode of The +972 Podcast, editors Edo Konrad and Amjad Iraqi discuss the significance of the company’s decision and the backlash it continues to face, the shifting opinions among American Jews, and what this moment could mean for the movement for Palestinian rights.The music in this episode is by Ketsa and Crowander.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateSupport the show

It was in the early days of the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research that one of the researchers stumbled upon a document that had disappeared since first being published in the mid-1980s. Dubbed the Immigration Document, the 18-page memo authored by an Israeli intelligence officer in 1948 lists the Palestinian villages and towns that had been depopulated by Israeli forces, as well as the ways they had been depopulated.“It says, among other things that some 70 percent of Palestinian depopulation in Palestine, up to that point in early March of 1948, was due to activities by Jewish forces rather than what we learned, a result of Palestinian leadership calls for people to evacuate or other similar reasons,” explains Lior Yavne, the founder and director of Akevot.On the latest episode of The +972 Podcast, Yavne and Akevot researcher Adam Raz talk about the need for archival research in human rights work in Israel, the impact that concealing official documents has on Israeli society, and the challenges the organizations faces in their efforts to declassify and access records.The music in this episode is by Ketsa and Unheard Music Concepts.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateSupport the show

In late May, Israeli police launched the largest nationwide crackdown against Palestinian citizens of Israel in decades. The campaign, known as Operation Law and Order, has led to the arrest of hundreds of Palestinians who participated in last month’s wave of protests, sparked by the imminent expulsion of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, the police raid of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the war on Gaza.The editors of +972 Magazine sat down at the height of the crackdown to discuss what led to this moment, the synchronization of the Palestinian struggle from the river to the sea, and how Israeli and international media have been covering recent events.The music in this episode is by Ketsa.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateSupport the show

In this episode, we interview +972 contributor Orly Noy about the shocking display of racism and brutality in Jerusalem last week, when hundreds of Israeli Jews, many of them young men, marched through the streets of the city chanting "Death to Arabs.” The march was organized by Lehava, a notorious extreme right wing organization, after several videos posted on TikTok showed Palestinians harassing ultra-Orthodox Jews.Noy, who witnessed the violence that night, spoke about how Lehava preys on disempowered young Mizrahi and ultra-Orthodox Jews, how the Israeli and international media got the story wrong, and what kind of hope, if at all, she has for the city she has called home for most of her life.You can also read her essay, titled "I write to remember the brutality of Jewish violence I saw in Jerusalem," here.The music in this episode is by Ketsa.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateSupport the show

As the coronavirus pandemic spread across the world this past year, home has become an especially important source of shelter and safety. While some governments have responded to pressure from activists and paused evictions, Palestinians in East Jerusalem still face uncertainty.That's the case with the Sumarin family, who live just outside Jerusalem's Old City in the Palestinian village of Silwan. The Jewish National Fund and the Elad organization have long been promoting Jewish settlement in the area — often at the expense of the Palestinian residents. In April, after a decades-long legal battle, an Israeli court will finally decide whether the Sumarin family will be forcibly evicted from their home. On this episode of the +972 podcast, we teamed up with Unsettled Podcast to tell the story of the Sumarin family and their struggle to remain in the house they've lived in for generations.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateMusic in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions.Support the show

On June 23, 2020, Ahmad Erakat crashed into the Container checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. Border Police officers shot him six times in two seconds, claiming he had attempted a car-ramming attack. But a new forensic investigation undermines the authorities’ version of events.At the request of the Erakat family, Forensic Architecture, a research agency that relies on spatial and media tools to investigate human rights violations, in collaboration with Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, examined the incident. The visual reconstruction was published this week, eight months after the crash.The investigation sought to establish the circumstances of of the car crash, the use of lethal force, whether Ahmad received medical care after being shot, and how the various Israeli authorities at the scene treated Ahmad’s body.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Circus Marcus, Daniel Birch, and The Joy Drops.Support the show

Israel is heading into its fourth election in less than two years, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, is facing rather uncharted territory. Like previous rounds, these elections are in many ways a referendum on Netanyahu. But there are bigger factors that could determine if the fourth contest will be different from the last.+972 Magazine Editor-in-Chief Edo Konrad and Editor Amjad Iraqi sat down to talk about how the elections are pitting different strands of the Israeli right against each other for control of the government, and the reasons behind the disintegration of the Palestinian-led Joint List.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa and Crowander.Support the show

There was palpable relief, and even joy, throughout the progressive movement when the U.S. presidential race was finally called for Joe Biden at the beginning of November. Four years of an administration that relentlessly attacked every minority group imaginable would finally be coming to an end, and with it, perhaps, a move away from constant firefighting.Yet Biden's election was by no means welcomed by progressives as an unmitigated win. Beyond the unimaginable wreckage left behind by the Trump administration — damage that will likely outlast Biden's presidency — those in the movement are also clear-eyed about the limitations of a centrist Democratic government.Nowhere does that assessment ring as true as in the Palestine movement, where, as Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project, tells the +972 Podcast, activists have to reckon with an administration that is "no friend of Palestine." At the same time, Tamari stresses, there is cause for optimism: unlike the Trump White House, a Biden administration is "a target that can be moved." The current generation of Palestinian activists are more than up for the task, Tamari adds, calling them "more fearless and unapologetic than ever before."Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa and Unheard Music Concepts.Support the show

Significant historic threats have befallen the Palestinian people this year, including the Trump administration’s “Deal of the Century” and Israel’s current push to formally annex parts of the occupied territories. But it is still unclear how Palestinians plan to confront these events, both on the leadership and grassroots levels.For example, why have there been no mass protests akin to the intifadas of 1987 or 2000? Why has the Palestinian leadership not put forward a new political strategy to face these threats? What is preventing Palestinians from breaking the so-called “status quo” designed to suppress them?On the latest episode of The +972 Podcast, Dana El Kurd, an assistant professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, answers these questions and more. El Kurd is the author of “Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine,” a book that examines how the Palestinian Authority, which was created under the Oslo Accords in 1993, repressed and diluted political activity in the occupied territories.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa and Unheard Music Concepts.Support the show

This is the third and final episode in our series on the right of return for Palestinian refugees.In the first, we got a glimpse of what return might feel like with Tarek Bakri’s visual documentation project. Then, BADIL’s Lubnah Shomali discussed the practical ways in which return can be made possible. In this episode, we explore what Jewish Israelis think about return. According to Tom Pessah, the answer is not what you might think.Tom is an academic who serves as the chairperson of the board of Zochrot, an Israeli nonprofit bringing awareness to the Nakba among the Jewish Israeli public.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa and Unheard Music Concepts.Support the show

Palestinian refugees are the longest-standing displaced population in modern history. There are currently more than 8 million displaced Palestinians, including internally displaced persons inside Israel.In the second episode of a three-part series on the right of return for Palestinian refugees, Lubnah Shomali from BADIL, a Palestinian center that advocates for the rights of refugees, discusses the practicalities of return.She answers questions like, how would return be facilitated? Who would be involved in the process? And what happens in cases where refugees aren't able to return to their original homes?Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa and Unheard Music Concepts.Support the show

Almost 10 years ago, Tarek Bakri accidentally started a project called Kunna ou Ma Zilna, Arabic for “we were and are still here,” as a way of visually documenting Palestine in the social media era.Using old photos and oral history, he helps Palestinians find their original homes and villages, many of which are now depopulated, destroyed, or occupied by Jewish Israelis.The right of return for Palestinian refugees is often sidelined in discussions on Palestine-Israel. To shift back the focus on this issue, we at +972 Magazine set out to explore what return means — 72 years since the Nakba, the catastrophe that culminated in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, and which continues to impact millions more to this day. Is return merely a symbolic demand? Is it at all feasible?This episode is the first in a three-part series on the right of return for Palestinian refugees. We will be releasing a new episode every Friday over the next few weeks, starting with Tarek. With his help, we will travel from Safad, to Akka, to Jaffa, to Beit Nabala, and get a sense of what return might look like.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa and Unheard Music Concepts.Support the show

A month after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his Middle East plan, Israelis went to the polls for a third time in a year. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to declare victory, not much has shifted the deadlock from the previous two rounds, and no party is able to form a government yet.For Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights lawyer, analyst, and former advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the contents of the “Trump-Netanyahu plan,” as she calls it, are cause for alarm. The arrogance that characterizes the deal, which deliberately excludes Palestinians from the conversation, reflects an Israeli “fantasy” that “somehow Palestinians are going to agree to their own subjugation,” says Buttu. That exclusion is compounded by the Palestinian Authority’s failure to effectively respond to the plan, she explains.The Trump plan has also “showed Netanyahu’s true face,” says Buttu. “It says to Palestinians who are living in the occupied territories, ‘We don’t want you.’ But the plan is also saying to Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, ‘You also don’t belong in the State of Israel, and so we have the right to get rid of you.’For Buttu, this was one of the reasons Palestinians in Israel voted in even greater numbers this time around. That fact that Netanyahu’s rival, Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party, supports the Trump deal and echoes many of Likud’s policies shows “just how far to the right Israeli society is.”Despite — or perhaps because of — mounting racist attacks, the Palestinian-led Joint List won a record 15 seats, making it the third-largest party once again. But now, its members must decide how to use this political capital.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa and Unheard Music Concepts.Support the show

When Meir Kahane, an extremist rabbi who advocated for Jewish supremacy through the use of violence, ran in Israel’s 1988 elections, the state’s Central Elections Committee barred his party, claiming it incited racism and threatened the democratic nature of the state. Similar to the fascist movements of 1930s Europe, Kahane envisioned a Jewish society that is ethnically and religiously “pure.”Decades later, Kahanism is still viewed as radical in Israeli society. Otzma Yehudit, the political party formed by Kahane’s disciples, remains outside the halls of power — even with support from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.But according to +972 Magazine editor Natasha Roth-Rowland, who is a doctoral student researching the Jewish far right in Israel and the United States, Kahanism doesn’t even need a party for its extremist ideology to permeate Israeli society.“Since Kahane exploded onto the Israeli political scene, the entire spectrum of political discourse and political action has shifted vastly to the right in Israel society,” Roth-Rowland says on The +972 Podcast.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show

Singer-songwriter Maysa Daw always knew she wanted to become a musician. At 27, the Haifa native has a debut album out and is a member of two bands: famed Palestinian hip hop group DAM and new, all-women ensemble Kallemi. In this episode, Maysa talks about the importance of shattering social taboos and airing out the dirty laundry, about her journey toward radical self-acceptance, about writing music in Arabic without access to the Arab world, and about the struggle to remain authentic while going mainstream.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa and DAM.Support the show

The deportation of Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch, put a spotlight on Israel's attempts to suppress dissent and criticism of its policies in the occupied territories.For Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, one of the lawyers representing Shakir in his lengthy battle to stay in the country, the deportation “has huge potential ramifications” not only for foreign nationals trying to enter the country to work, study, or visit family, but also Israeli citizens and particularly Palestinians living under occupation.“The minute that Israel decides that it’s its right to vet who gets to come in and work for human rights organizations is the minute that we see crystal clear that Israel’s democracy is eroding," Schaeffer Omer-Man told The +972 Podcast.While Israel has always had laws that allow it to conduct security screenings and background checks on people living in and entering the country — as other countries also do — she says that Shakir's case shows Israel's turn toward policing speech and political opinions.Advocates around the world have condemned Israel’s decision to kick Shakir out, warning of a chilling effect against other human rights workers in the country. Those effects, says Schaeffer Omer-Man, can already be felt: visitors, citizens, and activists alike are now silencing themselves in fear of retaliation.“That obviously harms any movement to progress forward with Palestinian human rights and Palestinian freedom," she says. "It also denies Palestinians access to those who would otherwise support them, stand in solidarity with them and speak out on their behalf and alongside them. And it means that the Israeli human rights community starts to feel smaller and smaller."Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Help support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa and Chad Crouch. The news clip is courtesy of Activestills.Support the show

Almost two weeks after Israeli voters cast their ballots for a second time this year, it is still unclear which candidate will lead the country. To make sense of all this, The +972 Podcast turns to leading public opinion analyst Dahlia Scheindlin, who says not much has changed since the April elections. What’s different this time, however, is the growing debate over the separation of religion and state in Israel. This internal conflict “is not new, but it became a new arena of political competition in these elections,” explains Scheindlin. She posits that this extremely narrow view of liberalism could potentially grow into something bigger. “Ultimately, that will open people’s eyes to all the other related values of a liberal society,” she says. That shift could inspire a deeper discussion on civil and individual rights in Israel, and perhaps push many Israelis to rethink the consequences of endless occupation.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Help support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show

Whereas in 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu tried to appeal to his voter base by warning of Arabs going to vote “in droves,” now he is openly accusing Palestinian citizens of voter fraud and of “stealing” the elections.Sawsan Zaher of Adalah, the legal center for Palestinian rights in Israel, talks to The +972 Podcast about how this voter intimidation campaign is affecting Palestinians in Israel, what Arab voters care about, and why some are deciding to vote for Zionist parties.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Help support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show

By understanding Zionism as a white supremacist project, the division between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians becomes reductionist, says Noura Erakat, Palestinian human rights activist and author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.Thinking of racism merely as a distinction between Jews and non-Jews pits Palestinians against the very groups who also suffer from Israel’s aspiration to whiteness, like Arab Jews and African immigrants and asylum seekers.Reconstructing the racial dimensions of the Palestinian struggle can therefore offer new alliances and ways of thinking about the future. It can “create a place where we can all have dignity,” and where justice can be achieved for all, argues Erakat.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Help support +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show

It is no secret that for decades, the Zionist left discriminated against Mizrahim, or Jews with roots in Arab and Muslim countries, treating them as second-class citizens and pushing them to the economic, political, and cultural margins of Israeli society.  Mizrahim took matters into their own hands, forming political movements and parties of their own. Their resentment against the left pushed many of them into the arms of the right-wing Likud party. And yet, says +972 writer and veteran Mizrahi activist Orly Noy, more than 70 years after Israel’s founding, Mizrahim are still fighting for crumbs from the Ashkenazi elite, whether on the left or the right.Mizrahim now have an opportunity to move beyond the politics that have kept them marginalized, Noy says, by standing alongside Palestinian citizens of Israel. How to make a donation: https://972mag.com/donateVisit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.The music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show

The United States’ approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has dramatically transformed since Trump took office, but a lot of those changes — from legislation to defund the Palestinian Authority to an attempt to criminalize boycotting Israel — actually came from Congress.It’s BDS and the idea of boycotting Israel to pressure into changing its policies, however, that has turned into a major wedge issues in American politics. Republicans are pushing radical legislation that would criminalize boycotting Israel, a move opposed by the ACLU and others as unconstitutional, and Democrats are falling into their trap."There's got to be a point when you say, whether or not I adopt this tactic, this is a legitimate nonviolent tactic that we will defend," says Lara Friedman, an expert on everything Israel-Palestine on the Hill, and president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.Democrats need to decide not to throw those in their party who do support boycotts under the bus "in order to make the right, which will never ever be satisfied with our position, feel better about us. We're never going to be in that tent — we don't want to be in that tent," she says.Follow Lara Friedman on Twitter: @LaraFriedmanDCSupport +972 Magazine: 972mag.com/donateThe music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show

Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack is working to uncover both Israel’s historic ties to brutal military regimes, such as Pinochet’s Chile, as well as its current arms exports to countries carrying out gross violations of human rights, like South Sudan and Myanmar.Israel's ticket to becoming an arms exporter — with deals dating as far back as the 1950s, when the global arms industry was already saturated — is Israel’s “no questions asked” policy, explains Mack: “You don’t criticize what we are doing in the occupied territories and inside Israel, and we won’t say anything and won’t ask questions about what you’re doing.”Read more about uncovering Israel’s shady arms sales:Supreme Court rules against exposing Israel’s role in Bosnian genocideIsraelis demand state open up past ties to Argentina juntaDespite war crimes, Israel insists on selling arms to MyanmarThe untold story of Israeli military exports to South SudanJust a reminder that +972 Magazine and The +972 Podcast are nonprofit journalism. Like what you hear? Please consider making a donation: https://972mag.com/donate.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.The music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show

For more than a year now, Israel has been trying to deport the Israel and Palestine Director of Human Rights Watch, Omar Shakir. The ongoing litigation began in May 2018, when Israel decided to revoke Shakir’s work authorization in Israel.This was the first time the Israeli government had used a 2017 amendment to its Law of Entry, which denies entry to those who publicly support a boycott of Israel, to deport someone already present in the country.Shakir's case has become a watershed moment for democracy and free speech in Israel. In the latest episode of the podcast, he talks about Israel's attempt to limit criticism of its policies in the occupied territories, and the impact this crackdown has on Palestinian rights in particular.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.The music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show

Is the two-state solution really dead? Who knows if it ever will be. But an equitable one-state solution isn’t a given, and there are other models out there for creating a Palestinian state.Confederation keeps the basic idea of two states but without separation between them. Borders are open and meant to facilitate movement instead of hinder it. Palestinians and Israelis alike can live anywhere between the river and the sea. But both peoples have their own government and get to exercise their right to national self-determination.Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin joins The +972 Podcast to talk about how the plan addresses Palestinian refugees, why physically splitting Jerusalem is a horrible idea, and to discuss other models of confederation and what we can learn from them.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.The theme music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show

Every year, thousands of tourists travel to Tel Aviv in mid-June to take part in the annual Pride Week festivities.For LGBTQ Palestinians living in Israel, however, the celebrations are far more complicated. Israel likes to celebrate how liberal and pluralistic it is while covering up — or “pinkwashing” — its human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, says our guest on this episode, journalist Zizo Abul Hawa.Caught between wanting to celebrate their gender identities and stand up for Palestinian rights, Pride Week brings into focus the balancing act that queer Palestinians often face.Visit +972 Magazine and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.The music in this episode is by Ketsa.Support the show