The Palestine Pod

Gaza the Phoenix with Hala Hanina

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Hala Hanina a Palestinian dentist, PhD researcher in sociology, and 4th-generation Palestinian refugee from Gaza, Palestine. She is a former volunteer in hospitals during previous Israeli aggressions. We hear from Hana about how five generations of her family suffered under Zionism (from her great-grandfather experiencing the 1948 Nakba, all the way up until her family home was destroyed in the 2023/24 Nakba and genocide) as well as her reflections on this current moment.

Why are we not like other children?

This week Lara and Michael discuss the Zionists’ genocidal assault on Rafah during the evening of the Super Bowl, targeting at least two mosques containing sheltering families and dozens of Palestinian family houses and tents containing displaced families. During this night, Israel killed Sidra Hassouna, 7 years old. The pressure from the impact of the bomb catapulted her body, which hung by a wire when she was found. We cover the reports concerning Egypt’s construction of a so-called “fortified buffer zone” in the Sinai — a concentration camp presumably intended to hold Palestinians in the event of a mass expulsion of Palestinians by Israel, which remains looming as Israel continues to promise a mass escalation in Rafah, the very area it has spent the last 4 months concentrating the majority of the Palestinian population in Gaza.

Where is Hind?

This week Lara and Michael cover the story of the missing 6-year-old child by the name of Hind whose terrified phone calls circulated worldwide and the tragic disappearance of two civil defense workers who went looking for her. After recording, it was confirmed that Hind and the defense workers were killed by Israeli occupation soldiers. Lara covers stories of Israeli settlers blocking the entrance of aid into Gaza in violation of the ICJ order on provisional measures while Palestinian children die of starvation in Gaza as well as the discovery of a mass grave of 30 bound numbered bodies in a school in Northern Gaza. Michael comments on the long-term impact on the freedom struggle of the public narrative shifting to discuss the genocidal intent of the Zionist ideology.

Briefcase and the shotgun: Sorting out the ICJ ruling

This week Lara and Michael (mostly Lara) break down the significance of the ICJ ruling in the Genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel from the perspective of a Palestinian lawyer with an emphasis on international law. While this decision will not in and of itself compel Israel to stop bombing and starving Gaza, it gives us a useful tool to be used in furtherance of the freedom struggle. As Nkosi Mandela said when he appeared on the Palestine Pod in May 2021, all forms of resistance must be applied at once to cause the disruption necessary to bring about the collapse of the settler colonial apartheid Zionist regime.

More Time with Plestia Alaqad

This week Lara and Michael sit down with Plestia Alaqad, one of the leading voices from the ground in Gaza. She’s a primary source who survived and documented the ongoing genocide in Palestine in real time. Plestia shares reflections on the notion of believing you will have more time, survivor’s guilt, Gaza’s culture and close knit community and the fiction of choice when it comes to being a victim of Nakba.

Genocide Work Balance with Chris Smalls

This week Lara and Michael sit down with the President of the Amazon Labor Union, Chris Smalls. We read the ALU statement of solidarity with Palestine, talk about the history of unions both good and bad when it comes to the Zionist colonization of Palestine and resistance against it and the importance of organizing your workplace to get us closer to a place where we can call for a general strike.

Crash Test Dummies for WWIII with Immortal Technnique

This week Lara and Michael sit down with rapper activist and revolutionary, Immortal Technique. We discuss his path to learning about the Palestinian struggle for freedom and his lyrics critical of mainstream media and western democracy which helped to educate generations of liberators. We also provide updates from the ground of the ongoing genocide in Palestine committed by the zionist regime and its fanatic genocide supporters and enablers.

Christmas is Cancelled

This week Lara and Michael cover the calls from occupied Bethlehem to cancel Christmas celebrations because of the genocide happening to the Palestinian people at the hands of the zionist regime in Gaza. We talk about how oppressed people are reliable narrators of their oppression and we should not wait for the colonizers or their allies in the mainstream media to confirm the lived experience of the colonized.

“Tell My Story” Dedicated to Refaat Alareer

This week Lara and Michael cover the US blocking the UN Security Council vote on a permanent immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Lara reads through just one day's worth of death and destruction updates from Telegram. We also cover the assassination of beloved poet and academic Refaat Alareer and his sister's family in a targeted airstrike on his sister’s home in Gaza.

The Nakba of Gaza

This week Lara and Michael cover the death march in Gaza whereby hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes in the northern part of Gaza to the south on Salah Aldin road amidst sniper attacks, arbitrary searches, interrogations and more. We comment on the difference between the conditions of released hostages and gruesome accounts from the ground about the premature babies left to die because of the Israeli occupation siege on Al-Nasr hospital in the northern part of Gaza.