Stories from Jenin with Jon Elmer

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 appears in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Le Monde diplomatique, and The Progressive. He is also the co-host of an amazing podcast called “The Brief” with Nora Barrows Friedman, a dear friend of the Palestine Pod. In light of the recent 21st anniversary of the Second Intifada, Jon speaks to us about his time reporting on the Second Intifada while he was in Palestine. With first-hand accounts from occupied Jenin, to analysis on the tactics used by Palestinians to resist Israeli colonial violence as well as the impact of the Second Intifada on Palestinian life until today, Jon paints a complex, layered picture of life in occupied Palestine, the cost of resistance to daily life, and the bravery and heroism of Palestinians fighting for their freedom. Lara reminds us that Palestinians are in a rights-based struggle and Michael recalls that Jews of the Warsaw ghetto used similar tactics of resistance as Palestinians, calling anyone who supports the former but not the latter fundamentally inconsistent in their approach to the right to freedom.