**Producer's note: This was recorded before the US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities** The brothers welcome returning guest Trita Parsi to discuss the unprovoked and illegal attack on Iran, the potential role of the US in joining the Israeli regime's war, and what, if any, possibilities remain for negotiation or de-escalation. Date of recording: June 19, 2025. Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist T...
Jun 22, 2025•51 min
Ahead of the most important football match in the history of Palestine’s national team, on the cusp of potential qualification for the 2026 World Cup, the brothers discuss with Bassil Mikdadi , Palestinian journalist and creator of footballpalestine.com, the impact of the ongoing Gaza genocide as well as the deeper context of Palestine national team’s rich journey over many decades, its struggle to assert Palestinian national unity in the face of Israel’s occupation, blockade and policy of fragm...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 34 min
**Producer's note: The brothers are hosting their first livestream this coming TUESDAY (O6/03) at 10 am EST! It will be a Patreon-exclusive Q&A so only supporters of the show can submit questions or watch live. Sign up for as little as $5 a month and access all the great bonus content as well** The brothers explore the latest Gaza ceasefire negotiations, the abject failure of the corporate media to cover the crude and explicit expressions of racism and genocidal intent from across the spectr...
Jun 02, 2025•1 hr 15 min
**Producer's note: The brothers are hosting their first livestream! It will be a Patreon-exclusive Q&A so only supporters of the show can submit questions or watch live. Sign up for as little as $5 a month and access all the great bonus content** The brothers welcome legal scholar Noura Erekat to the show to discuss how the Gaza genocide has threatened to end the "rules-based international order;” the failure of international legal institutions to take meaningful action to stop the genocide;...
May 27, 2025•1 hr 25 min
The brothers discuss the extent to which Trump represents a possible shift in US policy in the Middle East, contrasting the possibility of new deal-making in the Gulf region and elsewhere (Iran, Syria) with the retrograde pull of Zionist pressure to extend the genocide in Gaza and derail the drive towards profit-driven capitalist stabilization in the region. Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Date of recording: May 15, 2025. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @Makdi...
May 17, 2025•1 hr 11 min
The brothers welcome preeminent British Israeli historian Avi Shlaim to the show to discuss the richness of Arab Jewish identity, and how the ideology of Zionism is based on the negation and denial of this identity and coexistence, his own family's migration from Iraq to newly-created Israeli state, the reception they received there, and the wider story of Jewish minorities in Iraq and other Arab countries. Shlaim discusses the role Mossad played in the uprooting of Baghdad’s historic Jewish com...
May 07, 2025•1 hr 30 min
The brothers welcome Sarah Leah Whitson , the Executive Director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and former director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, to discuss the role of human rights advocacy amidst the ongoing genocide, the initiative to hold Blinken, Biden, and Lloyd Austin legally accountable, the failure of the ICC, and how Gaza has proven to be the "graveyard" of the "rules-based order." Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Date of ...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 34 min
The brothers welcome Daniel Levy, president of the US Middle East Project (USMEP) and former negotiator, to discuss how Israelis employ negotiations to pursue their political goals of expansionism, the role of the US as a supposed third-party guarantor, and the growing internal political chaos threatening the Israeli political status quo. Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Date of recording: April 7, 2025. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Ma...
Apr 19, 2025•1 hr 33 min
The brothers welcome Palestinian analyst and researcher Abdaljawad Omar (@hhamayel2) to the show to discuss the nature of the Palestinian Authority's collaborative dealings with the Israeli occupation, how it compares against other examples of collaboration historically, how supporters of the PA regime view their role through the prism of national liberation, and why Palestinians in the West Bank are not able to do more to fight colonial expansion. Check out Abduljawad's recent articles and inte...
Apr 12, 2025•1 hr 14 min
The brothers welcome artist and activist Wael Tarbieh from the occupied Golan Heights to discuss the Israeli colonization of the region since 1967, the mixed ethnic and confessional makeup of the Indigenous population, and their decades-long steadfastness in retaining their political and legal identity. For more information on the ethnic cleansing of the Golan, check out Al Marsad https://golan-marsad.org/category/map-en/ Watch the video edition on our Youtube channel Date of recording: March 24...
Apr 05, 2025•1 hr 29 min
The brothers welcome Palestinian anthropologist (and former chemical engineer) Hadeel Assali. They discuss the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil, the history of tunnels and the ecology of Gaza, the ontological relationship of the Palestinians to their indigenous environment that the US-backed Zionist colonizers seek to destroy, the different forms of resistance to incessant colonial surveillance, the story of a secret Israeli population transfer scheme to move Palestinians from Gaza to Paraguay, and ...
Mar 22, 2025•1 hr 21 min
The brothers welcome psychoanalytic scholar, professor and licensed clinical psychologist Lara Sheehi to discuss the historic role of psychoanalysis in national liberation struggles, the connection between the revolutionary work of Franz Fanon and the Palestinian resistance, and how liberal educational institutions are facilitating fascist attacks on oppositional voices. Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: March 3, 2025. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube...
Mar 11, 2025•1 hr 12 min
The brothers welcome Ramallah-based journalist Mariam Barghouti (@MariamBarghouti ) to discuss the ongoing de facto annexation of the West Bank, the unchecked growth of colonial outposts, the role of the mainstream Western media in whitewashing and censoring this violence, and the position of the Palestinian Authority as a subcontractor to the Israeli occupation. Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: Feb 11, 2025. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @Makdis...
Feb 28, 2025•1 hr 17 min
The brothers welcome journalist and writer Mohammed el-Kurd to the show to discuss his new book, Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal (2025) , his family's surreal experiences with Jewish Israeli settlers in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the role of resistance in the broader meaning of the term, and why Palestinians can never surrender to the "politics of appeal." Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: Feb 3, 2025. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiSt...
Feb 18, 2025•1 hr 17 min
The brothers welcome Aslı Bâli, Professor of Law at Yale Law School and President of the Middle East Studies Association. They discuss the increasingly repressive academic climate in the United States over the question of Palestine led by private sector as well as the current Trump Administration, how anti-Palestinian racism is used as a wedge issue in contemporary culture wars, how Zionist and rightwing organizations seek to criminalize dissent by claiming that it is discriminatory, and then ho...
Feb 07, 2025•1 hr 22 min
The brothers welcome their cousin Wadie Said, Professor of Law at the University of Colorado, to reflect on Donald Trump’s personalized domestic and Middle East agenda, the Gaza ceasefire deal and the demise of international legal order. The conversation then focuses on insidious concepts of “terrorism” in the US, and its legal implications for those accused on trumped up charges as well its weaponization against college students. Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: Janua...
Jan 28, 2025•1 hr 25 min
Note: we recorded this before the appalling AHA leadership veto on Jan. 17 of the democratic vote of its membership to condemn Israeli scholasticide The brothers welcome Professor Sherene Seikaly, historian at University of California at Santa Barbara and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and Anthony Alessandrini, Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and of Middle Eastern Studies at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, to discuss the American Histori...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr 21 min
The brothers welcome the world-renowned economics professor and bestselling author, and Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs of Columbia University. They discuss the nature of U.S. global hegemony, idealism vs. realism, the possibility of de-dollarization, BRICS, the delusional notions of perpetual US and Israel hegemony, and why their killing lots of civilians does not translate into political victory, the influence of the Israel lobby in pushing for wars in the Middle East that goes against US interests...
Jan 16, 2025•1 hr 13 min
The brothers welcome University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer to the show to discuss the power of the Israel lobby in the US, the relationship between the US and the Israeli state (and whether the dog wags the tail or the other way around), the possibility of change in US policy on Palestine and the Arab world, recent developments in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, and, finally, how transformations taking place in the United States may eventually overwhelm the lobby and its ability to mani...
Jan 03, 2025•1 hr 32 min
The brothers welcome Syrian political economist and Hampshire College professor Omar S. Dahi (@omardahi) to offer personal reflections on the early days of the post-Assad era in Syria, who exactly Ahmad Shara/ Al Jolani is, Syrian policy choices and national interests in the context of external interventions and Turkish influence, and the implications of Israeli expansionism and destruction of Syria’s military infrastructure. Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: December 1...
Dec 29, 2024•1 hr 47 min
The brothers welcome Nimer Sultany , a Reader in Public Law at SOAS University of London. They discuss the difference between the hypocrisy of the Western liberal legal order versus the Western liberal abandonment of its own international order to protect Israel, the imperatives of justice in Syria at a time of injustice in Palestine, the ICC and ICJ cases, the fact that South Africa stopped appealing to the ICJ earlier this year, the idea of law as a site of struggle, the need to prevent instea...
Dec 16, 2024•1 hr 28 min
The brothers welcome National Book Award for Poetry Finalist Fady Joudah (@fadyjoudah) for a searing and intimate discussion of Palestine in English versus Palestine in Arabic, about writing poetry in a time of genocide, about the limits and hubris of solidarity, about the necessity of common decency in the face of horror, and about the meaning of Palestinian love confronting the Israeli inferno of annihilation. Featuring a powerful reading of "Dedication" from his latest book [...] published by...
Nov 29, 2024•1 hr 38 min
Ta-Nehisi Coates joins the brothers for a wide-ranging discussion drawing on his new book, The Message (2024) , and covering the parallels and differences between the Black American and Palestinian experiences, the culture of denial suppressing the realities of the system of apartheid in Palestine, the challenges of gaining access to Palestinian voices, the power of conveying the raw reality of Palestinian life under apartheid tactics of resistance to oppression, and the historical contours of t...
Nov 18, 2024•1 hr 47 min
The brothers welcome analyst Tareq Baconi , author of Hamas Contained (Stanford University Press, 2018) and president of the board of Al-Shabaka. One year into the Gaza genocide, they discuss the emergence Hamas and its role in the Palestinian political polity, its sweeping electoral victory in Gaza in 2006 as well as its subsequent governance in Gaza and attempts to contain its growth through blockade. They explore how October 7th upended the entire strategic alignments of the Western imperiali...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 32 min
The Brothers welcome journalist and founder of Zeteo, Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan ) to the pod. They have a spirited discussion about anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias in the mainstream media, the price of compromise to gain access, and whether voting for Harris is a vote against fascism or a vote endorsing genocide. Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: Oct 22, 2024. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Mus...
Nov 02, 2024•1 hr 22 min
Maya Berry (@imayaberry) , Executive Director of the Arab American Institute , joins the brothers for a wide-ranging conversation covering anti-Arab racism in the United States, hate crime tracking, the location of Arab Americans in the US racial lexicon, and the impossible position Arab Americans find themselves in the build-up to the 2024 presidential election. Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: Oct 10, 2024. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @Makdis...
Oct 24, 2024•1 hr 30 min
The brothers welcome Laila al-Arian, executive producer for the Al Jazeera English documentary series Fault Lines. They discuss the anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim orthodoxies of the mainstream Western media, the coverage of the genocide in Gaza, the dissenting spaces opened up by critical alternative and social media, and Laila’s harrowing documentary The Night Won’t End that tracks the ordeals of 3 Palestinian families in Gaza, including the family of six-year old Hind Rajab who wa...
Oct 14, 2024•1 hr 6 min
The brothers welcome the war correspondent Elijah Magnier (@ejmalrai) to the show to discuss the expansion of Israel’s war on civilians to Lebanon, as well as the tactical and strategic challenges and opportunities in confronting it on the ground and the implications of Iran’s direct intervention in what is already a regional war. Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: Oct 4, 2024. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: ...
Oct 06, 2024•1 hr 26 min
The brothers welcome Trita Parsi ( @tparsi ), co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, to discuss the three-way relationship between the US, Israel, and Iran, the pathetic state of US diplomacy, the role of the Zionist lobby in defining US interests, and the consequences of any potential Iranian military intervention. Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: Sept 26, 2024. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @...
Sep 28, 2024•1 hr 18 min
The brothers discuss the latest developments from the Gaza genocide, the murder of American citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi followed by the wholesale media silence around it, and to what degree the US is calling the shots over the looming regional war. Watch the episode on our YouTube channel Date of recording: Sept 11, 2024. Follow us on our socials: X: @MakdisiStreet YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Insta: @Makdisist TikTok: @Makdisistreet Music by Hadiiiiii *Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to access al...
Sep 18, 2024•58 min
