To commemorate five years of Unsettled, we’re closing out 2022 by diving into our archive. Each member of the team has picked a favorite past episode to republish. First up, producer Max Freedman shares his interview with two theater artists: playwright/musician Dan Fishback, and actor Motaz Malhees. Dan and Motaz joined us in 2017 to discuss two productions that were literally cancelled because of their content: Dan’s play Rubble Rubble and The Siege by the Freedom Theatre of Jenin. This episod...
Nov 29, 2022•39 min•Ep. 70
Unsettled is currently on a break from releasing new content, but we’ll be back on your feed in the Fall. While we’re gone, make sure to catch up on some of our latest episodes. This past Spring, we released a four-part series, ‘The Birthday Party,’ about a growing movement of Palestinians and Jews working together to oppose the occupation in the South Hebron Hills; a piece about the Jewish National Fund’s role in uprooting Palestinian communities; a feature on the educational bookshop in East J...
Jun 03, 2022•3 min•Ep. 69
In 1967, a young Palestinian scholar is invited to London to lecture on his mastery of a William Wordsworth poem. But after he arrives, war breaks out back home and he's forced to decide between staying in London or going back home to his family where uncertainty and suffering are guaranteed. These are events that begin The Vagrant Trilogy, a show currently playing at The Public Theatre. The audience is taken down two different paths: one where Adham chooses to stay in London, and one that leads...
May 13, 2022•23 min•Ep. 68
Last week, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued an opinion that could lead to one of the largest population transfers in recent history. After a decades-long legal battle, the court gave the Israeli military a green light to evacuate the residents of eight villages in Masafer Yatta — Palestinians who have lived for generations on land the state now claims as a “military firing zone.” A few weeks ago, we published an interview with activist Ali Awad about the campaign to save Masafer Yatta. U...
May 09, 2022•12 min•Ep. 67
Ein al-Beida is a fresh water spring that used to be the main source of water for several Palestinian villages — until Israeli settlers moved in and claimed the spring as their own. On a cold Friday morning, two hundred Palestinians and Jews march together to the spring to take it back. Then the army shows up. Unsettled producer Max Freedman reports from the center of the action: what goes according to plan, what doesn’t, and what happens next. "The Birthday Party" was reported by Max Freedman, ...
Apr 15, 2022•48 min•Ep. 66
Lilly is a young activist from North London who has been to the West Bank many times before — just never with other Jews. In this episode of “The Birthday Party,” Lilly talks about the teenage rebellion that first brought her to Palestine, and why she now believes she can have the greatest impact within her Jewish community. Unsettled producer Max Freedman follows Lilly and other activists with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence as they get to know the people and the landscape of the South Hebron...
Apr 13, 2022•40 min•Ep. 65
Bob first visited Israel in 1969, when he was on leave from his U.S. military service in Vietnam. He was raised in a Zionist home; he has relatives who proudly live in former Palestinian houses; he once volunteered on an IDF base. But now, at 71 years old, Bob is entering the West Bank for the first time. He’s one of 44 diaspora Jews who have come to the South Hebron Hills with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence to practice co-resistance with Palestinians. In the second episode of “The Birthday P...
Apr 12, 2022•39 min•Ep. 64
In this special miniseries from Unsettled, producer Max Freedman spends nine days in the South Hebron Hills with Palestinians and Jews working together to oppose and obstruct the occupation. This trip, organized by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence , culminates in a dramatic direct action known by a code name: “the birthday party.” In the first episode, Max gets to know Tariq, a Palestinian teacher from the village of Umm al-Khair. Umm al-Khair is surrounded on three sides by an Israeli settleme...
Apr 11, 2022•40 min•Ep. 63
On March 15, Israel’s High Court of Justice heard a case that could lead to one of the largest forced population transfers in recent history. For more than 20 years, Israel has been trying to expel the residents of 12 Palestinian villages in a part of the West Bank called Masafer Yatta. The state claims they need the land for a military firing zone. If the court agrees, 1,300 Palestinians might be removed from their homes. In this episode, producer Max Freedman speaks to Ali Awad and Maya Rosen ...
Apr 07, 2022•28 min•Ep. 62
Before there was a state of Israel, there was the Jewish National Fund. The JNF, or Keren Kayamet L’Yisrael in Hebrew, was founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. Today, most American Jews know the JNF for its tin tzedakah boxes and tree planting campaigns. But KKL-JNF owns 13% of the land in Israel — which it allocates exclusively to Jews — and has been involved in evicting Palestinians in the Negev, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. This episode was produced by Ilana L...
Mar 24, 2022•28 min•Ep. 61
When Hisham Abu-Hawash ended his 141-day hunger strike last month, he had been imprisoned by Israel for more than a year without charges or a trial. He was just one of about 500 Palestinians held in “administrative detention.” In this episode, we speak to Milena Ansari, International Advocacy Officer at Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association . Milena explains Israel’s military court system and how Palestinians are fighting to end administrative detention. Unsettled is produced by...
Feb 25, 2022•27 min•Ep. 60
Mahmoud Muna is part of the family that runs the Educational Bookshop : the only English language bookstore in East Jerusalem. The current iteration of the Bookshop was opened in the 1980s by Mahmoud’s father, Ahmed. Today, the shop has multiple locations and thousands of titles on its shelves. "Any book on Palestine-Israel that has ever [been] written," Mahmoud says, "there's a good chance we have it." When Unsettled producer Max Freedman visited Jerusalem at the start of 2020, he stopped by th...
Feb 09, 2022•25 min•Ep. 59
Unsettled producer Asaf Calderon grew up in Israel in a household of “smolanim”: leftists. His parents raised him to think critically and to fight against injustice, even if it means going against what most people consider normal. But today, even while their values remain the same, there is a deep ideological rift between them when it comes to Zionism. In this episode, Asaf sits down with his parents, Nissim and Rivka Calderon, to learn about their political development and discuss whether Zioni...
Jan 20, 2022•37 min•Ep. 58
Unsettled producer Asaf Calderon grew up in Israel in a household of “smolanim”: leftists. His parents raised him to think critically and to fight against injustice, even if it means going against what most people consider normal. But today, even while their values remain the same, there is a deep ideological rift between them when it comes to Zionism. In this episode, Asaf sits down with his parents, Nissim and Rivka Calderon, to learn about their political development and discuss whether Zioni...
Jan 20, 2022•27 min•Ep. 57
This summer, New York City’s Astor Place hosted a bat mitzvah ceremony unlike any other: the Anti-Zionist Bat Mitzvah, an all-day musical extravaganza created by Morgan Bassichis and Ira Khonen Temple. The event started with tutoring sessions on Palestinian popular resistance and the weaponization of the Torah, and ended with a celebratory dance to “Hava Nagila” remixed as an anti-police anthem. In this episode of Unsettled, producer Ilana Levinson talks to Morgan and Ira about their collaborati...
Dec 23, 2021•36 min•Ep. 56
In October, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz declared six Palestinian civil society organizations “terror groups." These groups work in issue areas like women’s rights, children’s rights, and agricultural labor. The "terror" designation is based on alleged connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small political faction. But so far, Israel’s evidence has failed to convince many international leaders. In this episode of Unsettled, we look closely at one of those gro...
Dec 07, 2021•23 min•Ep. 55
"Grief is something that, alas, as human beings we're just going to keep experiencing over and over and over again in all of its many manifestations. And I think poetry can help us know that we're not alone in experiencing it, that it's a place to place our pain, and to place our unresolved questions, our mysteries." - Naomi Shihab Nye Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian-American writer, educator, and editor. Her published work includes poetry, children’s books and essays, and she has been awarded...
Oct 12, 2021•34 min•Ep. 54
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, Mar...
Aug 24, 2021•33 min•Ep. 53
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...
Aug 09, 2021•31 min•Ep. 52
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. CREDITS Unsettled is produced by Em...
Jul 27, 2021•42 min•Ep. 51
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 antise...
Jul 12, 2021•29 min•Ep. 50
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 ...
May 27, 2021•45 min•Ep. 49
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 Magazin...
May 24, 2021•38 min•Ep. 48
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 ...
May 21, 2021•30 min•Ep. 47
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...
May 19, 2021•39 min•Ep. 46
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...
May 18, 2021•23 min•Ep. 45
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...
May 17, 2021•54 min•Ep. 44
There’s a lot going on right now in Israel-Palestine. Right-wing Jewish Israeli mobs are attacking Palestinians in cities like Lod and Haifa. Israel is bombing Gaza. Hamas is firing rockets into Israel. Just last week, Israeli police were attacking worshippers inside Al Aqsa mosque. This round of violence began in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. A number of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah are facing imminent eviction from their homes, to be replaced by Jewish settlers. Pa...
May 14, 2021•17 min•Ep. 43
When it comes to peace in Israel-Palestine, the two-state solution has been the party line for much of the international community for a long time. But lately, many experts and activists have been saying the two-state solution is dead. If that's true, what’s the best path forward? According to Palestinian entrepreneur Sam Bahour, it’s time to try confederation. In this episode, Ilana Levinson talks to Sam about why he believes a confederal model is best for Israelis and Palestinians. Unsettled i...
May 03, 2021•39 min•Ep. 42
For the past year, as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the world, 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 ...
Apr 12, 2021•35 min•Ep. 41
