This week, the Palestine Pod hosts Yousef Mema aka @JoeGaza93. Yousef is a nurse, social media activist, and humanitarian. His Instagram profile rose to prominence during the May 2021 Israeli assaults on Gaza where he spent every day of the 11-day attacks showing the world first-hand accounts from life in Gaza. He shared photo and video (including live) footage from his home in Gaza City during the shelling as well as from Al Shifa Hospital, one of the main hospitals in Gaza where he was working...
Oct 14, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 28
This week Lara and Michael speak with Jon Elmer, Canadian writer and photojournalist specializing in the Middle East and Canadian foreign and military policy. He has lived in and reported extensively from the occupied Palestinian West Bank and Gaza - specifically based in occupied Jenin, Bethlehem, and Gaza City. He has covered the al-Aqsa intifada, the so-called Israeli "disengagement" of Gaza which was followed by the imposition of a siege on Gaza as well as factional strife in Gaza. His work ...
Oct 08, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 27
This week Lara and Michael cover the recent UK Labor party’s passing of a motion recognizing the “ongoing Nakba in Palestine” and declaring Israel an apartheid state , echoing the findings of Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations. It also called for sanctions against Israel’s illegal settlements that usurp Palestinian land as well as a halt to the UK’s sales of arms to Israel. Delegates further demanded an end to Israel’s belligerent occupation of the West Bank and 15...
Oct 01, 2021•47 min•Season 1Ep. 26
This week we talk to the brilliant Palestinian-American author Rifk Ebeid whose children’s book “Baba What Does My Name Mean?” was recently censored by the “Free” Library of Philadelphia (yes it's really called that) in online anti-racist blog posts created by a librarian for the library’s social media connecting the Palestinian struggle to the struggle for Black liberation in the US. Lara goes line by line to deconstruct and rebut the painfully anti-Palestinian, contradictory and incoherent sta...
Sep 23, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 25
This week Lara and Michael discuss all things related to the Great Escape, the real-life prison break of Mahmoud Abdullah al-Ardah, 46, Yaqoub Mahmoud Qadri, 49, Zakaria Zubeidi, 46, Mohammad al-Ardah, 39, Ayham Nayef Kamanji, 35, and Munadel Infaat, 26 from the high-security Israeli dungeon known as Gilboa prison. On September 6, 2021, the 6 Palestinian political prisoners dug their escape tunnel with a rusty spoon while the colonial guard in the watchtower directly above them had fallen asleep...
Sep 16, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 24
This week we sit down with the vibrant 21-year old Palestinian female artist, painter, and activist Malak Mattar coming to us straight from Gaza, Palestine. Malak takes us through her experience growing up in Gaza under Israeli siege and surviving four Israeli military assaults from early childhood to adulthood. She tells us about her path to painting, the inspiration behind the subjects in her art, her favorite Palestinian painters, and how the Israeli siege on Gaza has affected her ability to ...
Sep 09, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Lara and Michael are back to the Palestine Pod after a few weeks off (shout-out self-care) and start the episode with a survey of stories from the last few weeks on the ground in Palestine. The Israeli settler colony and its Apartheid regime are up to business as usual, expelling Palestinians from their homes, using the colonial courts to entrench ethnic cleansing, and shooting and killing Palestinians who dare protest against living under Israeli siege. Lara and Michael discuss one of the bigge...
Aug 31, 2021•59 min•Season 1Ep. 22
This week on the Palestine Pod, we sit down with Hadar Cohen, a Mizrahi feminist multi-media artist, healer and educator originally from Jerusalem with lineage from all over the Middle East including Iran, Iraq, Syria and and Palestine. Hadar is a Jewish mystic with Sephardic roots who works to build decolonial frameworks for worshiping God. Her artistic mediums include performance, movement, writing, weaving, sound and ritual. During the global intifada of unity, Hadar came out as a strong anti...
Aug 06, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 21
This week, the Palestine Pod interviews Lyla June, an Indigenous public speaker, artist, scholar and community organizer of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) nations from Taos, New Mexico. Lyla speaks to us about the ill-effects of colonialism in Turtle Island (i.e. the United States) especially on food and ecosystems and Lara draws comparisons to Palestine. Lyla describes what makes a sustainable culture and recalls the sustainability of indigenous culture as well as the suitability ...
Jul 26, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 20
We sit down this week to cover news stories from the ground including the murder of Nizar Banat, a fierce defender of freedom of speech and Palestinian human rights by the Palestinian Authority, the story of Palestinian political prisoner and administrative detainee, held without charge for no crime, Ghandafar Abu Atwan who successfully secured his release after 65 days on a hunger strike, and the continued torture and medical experimentation on political prisoner Iyad Hraibat, as well as the oc...
Jul 16, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 19
This week, Palestinian model Qaher Harhash joins the Palestine Pod. Qaher speaks first hand about his experience receiving a barrage of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic messages from Zara's head of design, Vanessa Perilman, in response to an Instagram story he posted from his room showing the infamous black water tanks on top of Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem compared to the Jewish Israeli rooftops which have no tanks at all since they are hooked up to water 24/7, highlighting the...
Jul 08, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 18
This week, Laila El-Haddad, co-author of the Gaza Kitchen, joins the Palestine Pod. In honor of the publication of the third edition of the book, Laila shares with us some of the new recipes that she learned on her last trip to Gaza in 2019. Laila paints for us a culinary picture of Gaza and explains how intimately the history and politics, including in particular the Nakba of 1948, affect the local cuisine. Laila and Michael go back in time to recall a rich history of Gaza since Alexander the G...
Jul 01, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 17
This week we sit down with Farah Nabulsi, Palestinian-British Oscar-nominated, and BAFTA award-winning filmmaker and human rights advocate. We do a deep dive into The Present exploring its themes, the thought process behind certain characters and exchanges, and the notion that we learn just as much about Palestinian cultural tendencies of hospitality and compassion as we do about the realities of life under Israeli military occupation. Farah also clues us into the only part of the Present which ...
Jun 23, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 16
This week, Lara and Michael sit down with Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, Amir of the Royal House of Mandela, tribal chief of the Mvezo Traditional Council, member of Parliament (MP) in the South Africa National Assembly since 2009, grandson of the anti-apartheid revolutionary and former president of South Africa Nelson Mandela and a fierce advocate of Palestinian liberation. This episode is a deep dive into Apartheid South Africa, the parallels between South African Apartheid and Israeli Apartheid, ...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 15
A Palestinian-American Lawyer & Jewish-American comedian break down the latest Palestine-related news with commentary & interviews every week.
Jun 10, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 14
This week's main story is the arrest of Abdul Khaliq Burnat and Muhammad Burnat, two brothers from the occupied village of Bil'in and the children of Lara's dear friend Iyad Burnat, a community organizer from the village. Abdul Khaliq and and Muhammed were kidnapped by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in two separate middle of the night raids on Iyad's house in May 2021 where the IOF destroyed the Burnat family's personal belongings including their personal electronics and beat the boys befor...
Jun 02, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 13
This week we first provide updates on some BDS wins (go Abby Martin !) and recent actions by workers and activists to disrupt the sale and manufacturing of weapons intended for Israel. Lara and Michael also share their thoughts on the wins and losses of this ongoing global intifada of unity before getting into this week's interview with journalist and author Massoud Hayoun. Together with Massoud, we discuss his book When We Were Arabs , a colorful tale of his family's origins, which interweaves ...
May 26, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 12
This week, our guest is Adnan Barq, a young Palestinian student of English literature and journalism from occupied East Jerusalem. Adnan offers his perspective on the latest Palestinian uprising which was born out of resistance to two forms of colonial violence in Occupied East Jerusalem: the settler-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and interference and violence inflicted by the IOF against Palestinian worshippers in Al-Aqsa mosque during the month of Rama...
May 18, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 11
This week, we catch up with the prolific and thoughtful Palestinian-American scholar-activist, author, and speaker Dr. Steve Salaita and do a deep dive into settler-colonialism. What is happening in Palestine is often reduced to unexplainable cycles of violence in a “conflict” between two sides who both make good points (the liberal zionist narrative) and between "chosen" people and terrorists (the zionist zionist narrative). Neither frameworks are rooted in the historical reality. Dr. Steve Sal...
May 12, 2021•1 hr 49 min•Season 1Ep. 10
This week, Lara and Michael discuss the absurdity of " settler Jacob ," the American settler who can be seen in a recent viral video brazenly attempting to the steal the home of Mona al-Kurd , a young Palestinian woman who hails from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem which is currently facing a mass ethnic cleansing campaign at the hands of Zionist settlers who are protected in their colonial pursuits by the Israeli army on a daily basis. #SaveSheikhJarrah because Palesti...
May 05, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 9
This week we are joined by Israeli-American author, activist, and speaker Miko Peled. Author of The General's Son and Injustice , Miko Peled reflects on his path from growing up the son of an Israeli war general in as "strong of a zionist family as you could possibly have" to becoming an anti-zionist activist for Palestinian rights, and supporter of BDS and the creation of one democratic state with equal rights for all in historic Palestine. Miko dismantles the myth that there can be a liberal z...
Apr 27, 2021•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 8
This week, Lara and Michael talk HR 2590 - the monumental new bill proposed by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn) on April 15, 2021 and co-sponsored by over a dozen other representatives that seeks to hold Israel accountable for land theft of Palestinian land, Israeli house demolitions of Palestinian houses and Israel’s jailing of Palestinian children. The bill is wider in scope than previous bills related to Palestinian human rights co-sponsored by Rep. Betty McCollum and establishes annual certifica...
Apr 20, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Lara and Michael provide an update on US policy re: Palestinian rights. While the Biden administration recently announced the lifting of sanctions (finally) on the International Criminal Court and its chief prosecutor and the renewal of funding to UNRWA , Lara offers a word of caution: the US may have lifted sanctions on the ICC, but its position opposing the ICC investigation has not changed. As to UNRWA, Lara calls on us never to lose sight of the big picture (i.e. UNRWA should not even exist ...
Apr 13, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 6
This week we sit down with journalist, activist, author and editor of The Electronic Intifada , Nora Barrows-Friedman to discuss BDS victories, campus activism, and the Palestine exception to free speech. Condemning the push to codify the new IHRA definition of antisemitism as well as its recent alternative, the so-called "Jerusalem declaration" definition of antisemitism, Nora sets the record straight by recalling the regular old definition of antisemitism. Lara reminds us that the reason why Z...
Apr 07, 2021•1 hr 33 min•Season 1Ep. 5
This week Lara and Michael discuss the latest Israeli elections and the voter suppression that rules in the "fauxonly" democracy in the Middle East: 5 million Palestinians whose lives Israel controls in the occupied West Bank and Gaza cannot vote in these elections at all whereas Palestinians who live within the territory declared Israel in 1948 and are technically allowed to vote have been the target of racist campaign rhetoric by political candidates and are filmed as they vote to deter them f...
Mar 31, 2021•51 min•Season 1Ep. 4
This week Amer Zahr joins the Palestine Pod and tells us how he uses comedy as a means of expression, advocacy for Palestinian rights, healing, and art. He shares with us some of his comedy icons and admits what he really thinks about white male comedians (sorry Michael). Commenting on the recent storming of the capitol and attempted coup of the US, Amer contemplates how “ unbelievably awesome ” whiteness is. Amer reflects on his viral video “Akhaduha Mafroosheh” (Arabic for "they took it fully ...
Mar 25, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In this episode, Lara and Michael cover the latest assertions of the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and the UN Gilad Erdan who, following a trip to the " American south, " said he was touched by learning about segregation and the Jim Crow era calling it an " incredibly moving trip ." The Times of Israel reports that the ambassador compared slave plantations in the US to concentration camps but said there was " no comparison " between Israel's treatment of Palestinians and struggles for racial ju...
Mar 19, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Lara and Michael welcome you to The Palestine Pod! Lara discusses her family’s history and origins from Yaffa and Gaza, Palestine including how her family became stateless refugees, the broader history of the Palestinian struggle including the expulsion of the majority of the Palestinian population in 1948 as a result of the establishment of the state of Israel on top of historic Palestine, Israel’s ongoing land theft of Palestinian land as well as its oppressive system of apartheid, occupation,...
Mar 17, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 1
