The Palestine Pod

Civil Rights Violations at UIC with Soha Khatib

This week Lara and Michael sit down with student and activist Soha Khatib, a senior at UIC and board member at Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at her University. We discuss the events that led up to her and her classmates teaming up with Palestine Legal to file a civil rights lawsuit against the University for their disparate treatment of Palestinian students. She explains how she and other members of SJP were barred from entering an informational Zoom setting pertaining to a study abroad program inside 48. While flyering she explains the university staff called the cops and one police officer grabbed a female student by her hijab. She also tells us about subsequent meetings she's had with study-abroad personnel and the climate for Palestinian activists on campus at UIC. The episode speaks to the overall connections between oppressive state forces like the police, zionist think tanks, and higher education institutions in the United States. 

Maze of 21st Century Colonialism

This week Lara and Michael cover the egregious story about Zionist female soldiers who forced Palestinian women to strip at the threat of attack dogs and automatic weapons. We discuss Netanyahu's proposal to deport "all African migrants" after flare-ups in the Eritrean communities inside 48. Lara breaks down the reality of navigating a maze of 21st-century settler colonialism in which all the most physical locations for your life are interrupted by checkpoints, violent settlers, and a literal apartheid wall. Also, we talk about online censorship as The Palestine Pod was recently demonetized on Instagram for no other reason than our reporting. 

The First Rule of Fight Club

This week Lara and Michael discuss Mayor Eric Adams of NYC visiting the occupation, legitimizing land theft, and generally being a bad person. We discuss the upcoming film Golda and how it normalizes the oppression of Palestinians by framing a war criminal as the movie's hero. We also cover the story of the Russian-Israeli citizen who is likely a Mossad spy and was captured by a Shia militia in Iraq while claiming to be doing field research for Princeton. Spoiler alert: Princeton does not claim this woman. 

The Star of David is not for branding

This week Lara and Michael cover the atrocious story of a Palestinian man branded with the Star of David on his face by Israeli police we discuss how the entire society lives in cognitive dissonance, including the protests against the government. We cover the trial proceedings of a zionist settler who murdered Qusai Mutan. The zionist courts have released him to house arrest in a stolen home.

How Zionism stole Jewish Identity with Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro

This week Lara and Michael sit down with acclaimed Rabbi, author, and rabbinical scholar, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro to discuss what it actually means to be Jewish. He dives deep into Jewish history and shows how the Zionist movement belonged to Christians before Theodore Herzl came around. He explains how the founders of Zionism hijacked the religion while holding a lot of the same beliefs as the antisemites of their day.

He defines what it means to practice Judaism and how the future of Jewish identity hinges on defeating Zionism

Guantanamo Madlibs

This week Lara and Michael discuss the occupation’s failed invasion of Jenin including making thousands of individuals new refugees for the second time in their family’s history (most inhabitants of Jenin were refugees from Haifa in 1948 during the Nakba). We also cover the occupation’s killing of 12 Palestinians and wounding over one hundred. The media ran with zionist propaganda that dehumanizes Palestinians and promotes the false notion that the invasion of occupied Jenin was Israeli “self-defense” but spoiler alert Israel, as an occupying power, has no right to invade Palestinian cities nor does it have a right to “self-defense” from the people it occupies but Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against illegal and permanent occupation. We also cover the story of French police reaching out to Zionist occupation forces for tips on how to better oppress after riots have shaken many French cities in the wake of the police murder of 17-year-old French-Algerian boy, Nael.

Pogroms on ”birthright”

This week Lara and Michael sit down to talk about the recent zionist pogroms in Turumusaya, a town in the occupied West Bank. We share accounts of some of the victims of the pogrom, some of them Palestinian-Americans visiting home for the first time in twenty years. Lara recaps her family reunion and gives a fiery speech. Finally, Lara and Michael cover the recent Haaretz article “Zionist Militia’s Efforts to Recruit Nazis in Fight Against the British Are Revealed” further to release to the public of documents last month by the Israeli State Archives proving the coordination between Zionists and Nazi Germany. Michael reads excerpts from a book called, The Secret Contacts, which elaborates on this sinister relationship.

Judge Jury and Executioners

Lara and Michael cover the upsetting pattern whereby Palestinians on the ground document in real time their lived experiences as victims of Israeli apartheid and colonialism but are dismissed. On the other hand, time and again mainstream media investigations confirm the veracity of Israeli crimes months after the fact and validate what Palestinians have been saying all along. The latest example are the settler attacks on occupied Huwara which were thoroughly documented by the Palestinians who lived them only to have CNN now carry out an investigation confirming what we already know. Lara and Michael continue with an update on Israeli impunity and critique the occupation’s habit of exonerating itself from its crimes. This week, the IOF declared that nobody would be reprimanded in the killings of 2 year old Muhammed Tamimi who was shot in the head sitting in his car with his father in their driveway by an Israeli sniper and the elderly Palestinian American man, Omar Assad, who was murdered by the occupation after being left bound and gagged on the ground in a street in his village last year. Meanwhile, a Ryan Air pilot was reprimanded for saying “Welcome to Palestine”.

War Crimes with no consequence

This week Lara and Michael covered the child martyr Mohammed Tamimi murdered by the occupation. We also discuss the case of CUNY Law graduate Fatima Mohammed who gave a commencement speech in support of Palestinian liberation and was viciously attacked with racist slurs by media and local politicians. Finally, we discuss Lara's trip to the EU to advocate in the halls of government with Adnan Barq and other Palestinians from on the ground. 

 

Laundering Money for War Crimes

This week Lara and Michael sit down to talk about the zionists' recent calls for genocide in an op-ed, the New York-based charities that are getting tax write-offs for supporting war crimes while members of the Holy Land 5 Foundation are still imprisoned for charity, and the story of the IOF officer who was reprimanded for visiting the firing range naked + much more!