Stolen Kids and Blood Diamonds

This week on the Palestine Pod, Lara and Michael cover the ongoing genocide in Palestine with updates from on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank including Israel’s bombing of the Al-Ahly Baptist Hospital (again) on August 31, 2024 and the invasion of multiple cities and refugee camps in the West Bank including Jenin where Israeli occupation forces besieged the city, destroyed 70% of the city’s roads in a manner of days and, at the time of recording of this episode, killed 22 Palestinians. Lara reminds us this is all part of the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine which has been ongoing since Day 1 over 76 years ago noting that Israeli officials are even calling for the “temporary” displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank, a tactic which has historically never proven to be temporary and has only ever been used as a means by Israel to steal more Palestinian land. Lara and Michael also critique a recent move by NYU to propose that “Zionist” be considered a protected class under the school’s code of conduct, a move which comes on the heels of social media giant Meta announcing that content targeting Zionism or Zionists could be removed under the company’s hate speech policy. Finally, the Palestine Pod recalls the brutal killing of the brilliant Palestinian content creator Medo Halimy and the legal case for the mainstream media’s role in perpetuating the genocide of the Palestinian people.

3 Syys 202444min

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Jewish anti-Zionist activist and writer Amanda Gelender. Amanda argues that the Jewish community has a fascism problem through its support for Zionism while imploring fellow Jewish folks to do more in support of Palestine and Palestinian freedom and liberation.

17 Elo 202443min

This week Lara and Michael discuss the hysteria surrounding Washington's reception of Benjamin Netanyahu, the genocidaire overseeing Israel's current genocidal campaign in Gaza. Lara discusses the spread of preventable skin diseases in Gaza where Israel's siege continues to forbid the entry of even the most basic medical supplies.

31 Heinä 202443min

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Associate Professor of Law at Queens University, Dr. Ardi Imseis. Dr. Imseis is the author of the UN and the Question of Palestine, a study into what historically went wrong in the UN’s treatment of the Question of Palestine since its inception. Dr. Imseis exposes how at various critical moments in the last century, the prevailing international law of the time was flouted by the UN in favor of policy that violated Palestinian rights and democratic principles. The work reminds us how the law can be used as one of many tools, but certainly has its limits. Laws can be oppressive (like the Nuremberg laws, South African Apartheid laws) and the choice to respect them or not is inherently political. We discuss how a lack of accountability for Israel’s violations has only caused the Zionist occupation to become more entrenched over time, what public international law principles require of Israel in terms of reparation for its international wrongs against the Palestinian people, and the handful of current legal efforts brought by Palestinians and their allies to use the law for emancipatory aims including the ICJ case in relation to the illegality of Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinians Territory, a case where Dr. Imseis acted as part of the legal team.

20 Heinä 202448min

This week Lara and Michael discuss two recent reports challenging the stagnant death toll in Gaza: a recent article by Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa in the Electronic Intifada, concluding the Israel has most likely killed, in 9 months, 194,768-511,824 people in Gaza. Such findings were corroborated weeks later by an article published in The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, providing evidence-based data that the real death toll is likely at least 186,000 Palestinians. These earth-shattering findings are contrasted with the phenomenon of genocide denial and erasure in the US political landscape and the urgent need to stop the annihilation of the Palestinian people.

12 Heinä 202442min

This week Lara and Michael sit down with the former President of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), Jwan Haddadd. We talk about the successful organizing effort to pass a resolution divesting from companies that support Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the coalition of organizations, students, and faculty who made it happen. UCSB becomes the sixth university to institutionalize a boycott within the UC system.

1 Heinä 202435min

This week Lara and Michael cover Israeli massacres in Jabalia and Jenin. Lara covers how the last two functioning hospitals in Gaza are being besieged by the Israeli occupation forces and have been without clean drinking water for days and in international law developments, how the ICC Prosecutor has applied to the pre-trial judges for arrest warrants of Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant in relation to possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

24 Touko 202436min

This week, Lara and Michael play a recorded interview with UCLA students from their student encampment and sit down with Presidential candidate for the Green Party, Dr. Jill Stein. Dr. Stein discusses the role of electoral politics, how it has failed the American people, and how now more than ever, a third party is needed to threaten the two-party duopoly and end the US-Israeli genocide in Palestine.

11 Touko 20241h 1min