Introducing Groundwork

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, neighbors attacking one another, lynching. In this episode, Groundwork’s hosts Dina Kraft and Sally Abed speak with Lod activists Rula Daood and Dror Rubin about the complicated history of Lod, what they think led to the violence in May, and what’s next.

CREDITS

Sally Abed is a staff member and an elected member of the national leadership at Standing Together. In recent years, Sally has become a prominent Palestinian voice in Israel that is putting forward the holistic view that identifies the interrelation between the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories, growing social and economic disparities within Israeli society, the threat of climate change, and attacks by the government on democratic freedoms and Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Dina Kraft is a veteran foreign correspondent based in Tel Aviv where she’s The Christian Science Monitor correspondent. She began her overseas career in the Jerusalem bureau of The Associated Press. She was later posted to AP’s Johannesburg bureau where she covered southern Africa. She’s also reported from Senegal, Kenya, Pakistan, Jordan, Tunisia, Russia, and Ukraine. Dina has taught journalism at Northeastern University, Harvard University, and Boston University. She was a 2012 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and a 2015 Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.

Dina hosted “The Branch” podcast, about ties between Jews and Palestinians and her work has also been published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Haaretz among other news outlets.

Yoshi Fields is the co-founder and producer of Groundwork and has worked in the podcast industry for about 5 years. In 2018, he moved to Israel-Palestine and has worked on several podcasts in the region, focusing on both political and human interest stories, including as a producer at Israel Story, The Branch, and Unsettled.

Through his work, Yoshi aims to empower the voices of others, and facilitate the expression of their stories. He has previously hiked the Himalayas while carrying out a research study on the intersection of love and Buddhism, and worked in a hospice for a year writing about the experience of mortality for health workers.

Groundwork is powered by the Alliance for Middle East Peace and the New Israel Fund.