Rachel Roberts

Rachel Roberts is a DC-based attorney who has been a Jewish activist for Palestinian rights since 2003. She recently worked with the Education Team from IfNotNow DC to pilot a curriculum called "Occupation 101."

In this interview, she talks about her own journey from "Israel, right-or-wrong" to Palestinian solidarity work, then explains some of the history and everyday realities of the West Bank under Israeli occupation.

This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Max Freedman. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded in Brooklyn, New York on June 13, 2017, and edited for length and clarity.

RACHEL ROBERTS is an attorney, an activist, and a writer who lives in Washington, D.C. She has been an activist for Palestinian human rights since 2003 and has worked with numerous organizations and groups, including the International Solidarity Movement, Jews Against the Occupation, and Jewish Voice for Peace. Rachel recently returned from occupied Palestine where she served as part of the Center for Jewish Non-Violence 2017 delegation. Rachel has also served for several years as a civil rights attorney for CAIR-California, where she provided legal and civil rights advocacy services to U.S. Muslim victims of discrimination. In law school, she was the co-editor in chief of the UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law. Her opinion writing has been published in the Forward, the Baltimore Sun, the Oakland Tribune, the Electronic Intifada, and Mondoweiss. She holds degrees from Oberlin College, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the UCLA School of Law.

REFERENCES

• IfNotNow
• International Solidarity Movement
• Birzeit University
• The Black Eyed by Betty Shamieh
• Brit Tzedek v’Shalom
• J Street
• Hillel International
• The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz (2003)
• Interactive Map of the West Bank (B’Tselem)
• Active Stills
• “Why the Palestinian Authority Should Be Shuttered” by Diana Buttu (The New York Times, 2017)
• “Israel and Pinkwashing” by Sarah Schulman (The New York Times, 2011)
• “Hasbara: Why does the world fail to understand us?” by Noam Sheizaf (+972, 2011)
• Interview with Omar Barghouti (The Intercept, 2016)
• That famous handshake
• Baruch Marzel: “The Extremist Who Could Bring Kahanism Back to the Knesset” by Raphael Ahren (The Times of Israel, 2015)
• “Accepting the apartheid label will normalise Israel” by Mark LeVine and Neve Gordon (Al Jazeera, 2017)
• “This Day in History // 1948: N.Y. Times Publishes Letter by Einstein, Other Jews Accusing Menachem Begin of Fascism” (Haaretz, 2014)
• “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel” (Congressional Research Service, 2016)

RACHEL RECOMMENDS

• The Question of Palestine by Edward Said (1992)
• The Origins of the Palestine-Israel Conflict published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East (2001)
• A People Without a Land directed by Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon (2014)
• 500 Dunam on the Moon directed by Rachel Leah Jones (2002)
• Zochrot (an Israeli NGO working to promote acknowledgement of and accountability for the Nakba)