Explore every episode of the podcast The East is a Podcast

An extra large helping of Tankie Group Therapy featuring Sina, Mikey, Joe, Nick Estes and, in his debut, Adnan Husain, and also two surprise guests! 

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Conor McCabe (@CMacCaba) is a research fellow with Queen’s Business School, Queens University Belfast and editor of The Lost & Early Writings James Connolly (2024), published by Iskra Books.

Small therapy group convenes with Sina, Joe, and Alex. We talk about denial, shame, fear, historical lies and current ones.

Watch the video edition on The Anti-Empire Project YouTube channel

*Audio recording of a panel orgnized by friend of the show Frances Hasso. Video edition coming soon!*

Convened by Dr. Frances S. Hasso, Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, History, and Sociology, as part of The Palestine Seminar at Duke University
https://gendersexualityfeminist.duke.edu/literary-gaza-hybrid

Speakers

“My Age is Thirty-five Years Old and Five Wars"
Basman Aldirawi 

Basman Aldirawi (also Basman Derawi) is a Palestinian and Gazan, a refugee from Bi’r al-Saba`, and currently in Egypt due to the aggression on Gaza. He works as a physiotherapist at the Gaza Ministry of Health and since 2018 has been a member of the Gaza Poets Society, the first spoken word community in Gaza. He has contributed dozens of stories and poems to many online platforms and publications, including We Are Not Numbers (2019), Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire (2022), and the We Are Not Numbers online platform that gives a voice to the victims of Israeli aggression in Gaza/Palestine.

"The Demon of Gaza"
Esmat Elhalaby

Esmat Elhalaby is an Assistant Professor of transnational history at the University of Toronto. He works principally on the intellectual history of West and South Asia, particularly colonial and anti-colonial thought.

“The 5 Stages of Grief, According to a Palestinian”
Samah Serour Fadil

Samah Serour Fadil is an Afro-Palestinian writer, editor and translator. Her work has been featured at the Yale University Art Gallery, Fresno State University and The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, among others. 

“Tent in the Sky”
Alaa Na`eem `Ali Al-Qatrawi:  

Alaa Na`eem `Ali al-Qatrawi completed her PhD in 2022 in Arabic Literature and Criticism at the Islamic University in Gaza, focused on the poetry of Adonis. Her MA thesis at the Islamic University, which examined Ahmed Bakhit’s poetry, won the Award for Best MA thesis in the Humanities in 2015. Dr. Al-Qatrawi is an accomplished poet and short story and operetta writer, winning among others the Abdulaziz Al-Babtain Award for the best poetry collection in the category of young poets in 2022, first in the Union of Palestinian Writers Competition in 2015, first in the Ministry of Culture’s poetry competition among all Palestinian universities in 2013, first in short stories in the Arab world in the international competition organized by Chinese Books and Dar Fadaat Publishing House in Amman (2019), and first in the Letter to Jerusalem competition (2010). She works as an Arabic Language teacher in UNRWA schools at the elementary and secondary levels. She has previously worked as a linguist and screenwriter for UNRWA children’s programming. Dr. Alaa’s Instagram and Facebook pages.

Sponsor

Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Duke University

Co-Sponsor(s)
Asian & Middle Eastern Studies Program (AMES); History Department; Middle East Studies Center (DUMESC); Asian American & Diaspora Studies Program

Asa Winstanley (@AsaWinstanley) is an investigative journalist with the Electronic Intifada and author of Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn (2022).

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Tankie Therapy crew (Nora, Mikey, Alex, Joe, Sina, and Louis) gets together to reflect on one year after Al Aqsa Flood and the Gaza genocide.

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Roqayah Chamseddine (@roqchams) is a journalist and writer based in Lebanon and co-host of Delete Ur Account

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**Note 2: Given everything that's happened, I've unlocked this episode for the main feed**

*Note: This is the part of my conversation with Karim. We continued for another 45 mins! To listen to the entire episode, join The East is a Podcast Patreon. Help keep the show going and access hundreds of hours of bonus content!* 

AUB professor and co-host of Makdisi Street Karim Makdisi (@KarimMakdisi) returns to the show after a five-year hiatus(!) to discuss the history of Israeli state terrorism against Lebanon and the decades-long histories of resistance that have confronted it.

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Louis, Mikey, Nora, Sina, Alex, and Joe join for our usual therapy session. We talk about the developing Israel-Lebanon war, the difficulty performing everyday life, Macklemore's new song, Hinds Hall 2, and the historical changes we're living through.

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*Note: This is the part of my conversation with Adnan. We continued for another hour! To listen to the entire episode, join The East is a Podcast Patreon for $5 a month. Help keep the show going and access hundreds of hours of bonus content.  Alternatively, you can watch the episode for free on our YouTube channel linked below*

Adnan Husain (@adnanahusain) is a Medieval European and Middle Eastern historian at Queen's University and co-host of Guerilla History.  He returns to the show to talk in-depth about the meaning of the Crusades to our understanding of contemporary imperialism.

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Kyle Ferrana (@KyleTrainEmoji) is a writer, software engineer, and tenant organizer.  He is the author of Why the World Needs China: Development, Environmentalism, Conflict Resolution & Common Prosperity (2024)

Check out his latest article,"The Occupation of East Asia" 

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Nora, Alex, Sina, Joe, and Mikey join for our normal therapy session just after Hizbollah's response and after a particularly rough week with the RNC and DNC disconnecting with multiple massacres in Gaza. We talk about our narrowing social circles and how we fend off the siren call of nihilism.

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*Note: This is the first hour of my conversation with Adnan. We continued for another 45 mins! To listen to the entire episode, join The East is a Podcast Patreon for $5 a month. Help keep the show going and access hundreds of hours of bonus content.  Alternatively, you can watch the episode for free on our YouTube channel linked below*

Adnan Husain (@adnanahusain) is a Medieval European and Middle Eastern historian at Queen's University and co-host of Guerilla History.

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The International People’s Tribunal on US Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades and Economic Coercive Measures condemns the Israeli assassination of Yasser Adnan Ibrahim al-Derawi, 31 year old attorney from Gaza, Palestine. He served as an expert witness in our Gaza hearing on May 13, 2023.  

We recently learned of Yasser’s murder after local journalists searched for him to discuss his research on the Israeli blockade and other war crimes in Gaza, Palestine. They informed us that Yasser was targeted during an Israeli bombing campaign of his home in December 2023, following a series of letters he sent to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in collaboration with the Center for the Protection of Human Rights documenting Israeli war crimes in Palestine and Gaza specifically. He testified before the International People’s Tribunal (@sanctionstribunal) during the fifth day of an active Israeli bombardment campaign against Gaza. Two witnesses left the hearing abruptly because the homes near them were being bombed as they testified. 

In the morning of Yasser’s testimony, he attended a fact-gathering meeting at Al-Shifa Hospital, which has since been completely destroyed by the Israelis and is described by the World Health Organization as “an empty shell with human graves.” He explained that this meeting was to document Israeli atrocities committed during the May 2023 bombardment. In his powerful testimony before the Tribunal, he stated repeatedly that the “Israelis don’t distinguish between women, children, elderly. They kill all civilians without distinguishing between targets. They declare war on civilians, targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.”

He noted the use of internationally banned weapons and cited multiple violations of international law, including Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. He stated that the Israeli objective is to “destroy the Palestinian will to resist and live.” Yasser was keenly aware of the US role in perpetrating war crimes against Palestinians and the people of Gaza. He noted that the Israelis cannot make any decisions unless they get an agreement from Washington DC, and that just two days prior, the US blocked the condemnation of Israel before the Security Council. “We call it the United States of imperialism, that’s what supports the Israelis.” Yasser concluded his testimony with the following statement: “We join this Tribunal with the hope that we can prosecute the apartheid regime of Israel. We are ready to present any evidence that you want us to provide to document and show the crimes of the Zionist occupation in Gaza…. We’ve asked multiple times for the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into these crimes, but the Court is slow to respond.”

The People’s Tribunal on US imperialism understands that international institutions such as the ICC are rooted in legacies of colonialism and shaped by the diktats of US imperialism, which materially and politically supports the settler colonial state of Israel as its imperial outpost. This has undermined the international community’s ability to take the action needed–action Yasser so powerfully called for in his testimony–to prevent the genocide currently underway in Gaza. Had the world heeded the calls of Yasser and other Palestinians, we could have prevented the deaths of over 186,000 Palestinians and the extensive destruction and waste of life, land and infrastructure produced by this imperialist-zionist assault on the Palestinian people.

Despite its limitations, Yasser was committed to working within the framework of international law. He held a Masters degree in Public Law and his dissertation was entitled “The Powers of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.” At the time of his assassination, he was attending a doctoral program in International Criminal Law, and had participated in numerous conferences advocating for Palestinian liberation. He was actively training to participate in prosecuting Israel in international legal fora and was a member of the War Crimes Protection Committee of the Center for the Protection of Human Rights. Yasser is survived by his wife and children.

We send our profound condolences to his family during this unimaginable time of grief. In addition to this personal loss, we understand Yasser’s martyrdom as a loss for the Palestinian national liberation movement, as well as for the international community of anti-imperialist lawyers. The best way we can honor Yasser is to continue his fight for justice and accountability for Zionist crimes and for the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

https://solidarityiran.org/2024/08/20/israel-assassinates-sanctions-tribunal-expert-witness-in-gaza/

https://sanctionstribunal.org/

The group gets together after two weeks of assassinations, literal mask-off moments, and massacres. The idea of the "single issue voter" arises - but perhaps it's a single-issue empire. Sina, Nora, Alex and Mikey all join for our therapy session.

Watch the video edition on the Anti-Empire Project YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alYojyLDoZE

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Friend of the show Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) guest hosts a conversation with Fida Jiryis, author of Stranger in My Own Land: Palestine, Israel and One Family's Story of Home (2022)

Read an excerpt of the book here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/27/no-place-like-home-my-bitter-return-to-palestine

Watch the episode on our YouTube channel
https://youtu.be/NIcKWLqQ9iE

Date of recording: July 9, 2024

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Another session of Tankie Group Therapy featuring the old crew: @justinpodur, @norabf, @karaokecomputer, @rosendo_joe,  @alexander_avina, and Urorientalist.The session seemed to revolve mostly around Ansarallah ("Houthis") statements after they attacked Tel Aviv and were bombed by Israeli F-35s. The disconnect between their response and Western solidarity. And then we got the news of Biden stepping down, so some quick reactions to that at the end.

Watch the video edition on Justin's fantastic YouTube channel

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Founder of Liberated Texts and longtime supporter of the show Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) returns to guest host an episode with Mary Turfah (@maryturfah) about her article on Zionist sadism. 

Watch the episode on our YouTube channel

"Running Amok" 
https://thebaffler.com/latest/running-amok-turfah

Liberated Texts
https://liberatedtexts.com/

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Friend of the show Alex Aviña guests hosts an episode with geographer Taylor Miller about the intertwined systems of carceral border control policing the US/Mexico border and Palestine. 

Watch the video edition on The East is a Podcast YouTube channel

"A Pause, On Possibility" 
https://www.averyreview.com/issues/65/a-pause-on-possibility

The University of Arizona's Institutionalized Border Violence
https://thenewinquiry.com/the-university-of-arizonas-institutionalized-border-violence/

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[Producer's note: My conversation with Louis went on for another 30 minutes so if you are interested in listening sign up for Patreon at $5 a month] 

Longtime friend of the show Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) is back to discuss the 52nd anniversary of Ghassan Kanafani's martyrdom.

Check out Anni Kanafani's Ghassan Kanafani which features Louis' fantastic introductory text,  “A Race Against Time”: The life and death of Ghassan Kanafani

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On June 18, The Baffler published an article by Mary Turfah called "Running Amok" in which Mary tried to understand the psychology underlying Israeli troops and citizens' production of trophy videos and photos we have been seeing during the war. Our therapy group (@justinpodur, @norabf, @karaokecomputer, @rosendo_joe, @louis_allday, @alexander_avina), got together with Mary to talk through the article and use it to understand the Israeli mentality that has left us stunned for all these months.

Watch the video edition on Justin's fantastic YouTube channel

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On 10 May 2024, the Early Caribbean Society hosted a virtual, communal, poetry reading noting connections between Haiti, Sudan, DRC, Palestine, and Indigenous people on Turtle Island, facing invasion and genocide.

Program available here
https://earlycaribbeansociety.org/events/poetry-for-liberation-from-haiti-to-palestine/

Watch the video edition of The East is a Podcast YouTube channel

Donate to CareForGaza and to the family of one of our poetry readers

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This is a preview of the latest bonus episode. Sign up for $5 a month to access the entire conversation.

Friend of the show Alex Aviña (@Alexander_Avina) joined me for an episode on the perennial questions of violence and self-defence.

CBC Documentary about Palestinian resistance in Gaza
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J__Burgr8qU&t=312s&ab_channel=AnnaBens

Walaa Alqaisiya (@walqaisiya) is a Palestinian academic born and raised in Hebron in the West Bank. She is a Marie Curie Fellow based at the University of Venice, Italy. Walaa's work draws on anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, and feminist approaches to highlight the deeply gendered and ecocidal nature of Zionist settler colonialism and US-led imperialism.

Madonna Thunder Hawk is a Lakota activist best known as a member and leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM), co-founding Women of All Red Nations (WARN) and the Black Hills Alliance,and as an organizer against the Dakota Access Pipeline. She established the Wasagiya Najin Grandmothers' Group on the Cheyenne River to help build kinship networks while also developing Simply Smiles Children Village. She also serves as the Director of Grassroots Organizing for the Red Road Institute. Thunderhawk has spoken around the world as a delegate to the United Nations and is currently the Lakota People's Law Project principal and Tribal liaison. She was an international Indian Treaty Council delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva and a delegate to the U.N. Decade of Women Conference in Mexico City.

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The US regime has spent over 300 million USD constructing a port on the Gaza coast and is calling it a "humanitarian pier". Ahmed Omar (@MENAUnleashed), a political economist from Gaza based in the UK, explores the darker motivations behind the construction of the port.

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We're back for another round of group therapy talking about the latest developments in the Gaza genocide with a small group of Tankie therapees: Sina (@UrOrientalist), Rob (@robrousseau) and Mikey (@karaokecomputer).

Sadly, our comrade Joe Emersburger was on the call but his file didn't upload so we sometimes reference his contribution. Please send your complaints to Podcastle.ai for their shitty, unstable platform.

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[The latest episode of The End of Sport podcast co-hosted by my old friend Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Johanna Mellis, and Derek SIlva.]

In this episode, Derek and Nathan are immensely privileged to be joined by UCLA historian Robin D. G. Kelley for a discussion of the remarkable and obscene events that took place at the UCLA anti-genocide encampment and an assessment of the encampment movement in the context of the neoliberal university and racial capitalism more broadly. We also talk about the role of sport in protest politics.

Robin D.G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He honestly does not need any introduction from me, but just to gesture to his impact, he is the author of books including,  Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (The Free Press, 2009); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination(Beacon Press, 2002); with Howard Zinn and Dana Frank, Three Strikes: The Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century (Beacon Press, 2001); Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997); Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class  (New York: The Free Press, 1994); Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) [Vol. 10 of the Young Oxford History of African Americans series]; and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Very recently, he is also the author of an astounding appraisal of the events at the UCLA encampment in Boston Review.

The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Our regular therapy session debriefing the events of the week. Rob Rousseau (@robrousseau), Alex Avina (@Alexander_Avina), Joe Emersberger (@rosendo_joe), Nora Barrows Friedman (https://x.com/norabf) all join. Hosted by Justin Podur (@justinpodur)

Watch the episode on The Anti-Empire Project YouTube channel

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**The Arabic half of the conversation begins around minute 72**

Essam Elkorgle (@elkorgle) guesthosts a special dual-language episode with Tunis-based sociologist Haithem Gasmi (@HaithemGasmii) on the sociocultural dimensions of the Zionist boycott and the wider question of delinking from the neocolonial world system.

Check out the short video discussed in the episode.

Cover art by Suhaib Tantoush

Haithem's recent articles (Arabic)

"Disengagement After Boycott: Disengagement From What? (Part One)"

"Disengagement After Boycott: Disengagement From What? (Part Two)"

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Get out your most painful traumies cause it's that time again.  A smaller helping of Tankie Group Therapy featuring Justin, Joe, and Sina.

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(A preview of the latest episode of Justin Podur's World War Civ series on his very excellent Anti-Empire Project podcast)

General Allenby, Sharif Hussein and his son Feisal, and their handler TE Lawrence array the forces of the British Empire and the Arab Revolt against the Turco-German forces in Palestine. The battle starts in Gaza and ends with Allenby walking into the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem. The story of the fateful campaign that brought British imperialism to Palestine (and Lebanon, and Syria…). We note that the British found Gaza to be a “fortress” from which it was impossible to dislodge the Turkish forces; Justin felt TE Lawrence was overrated, just another imperialist; and we compare admiration of the stoicism with which Allenby took news of his son’s death, with an analogous situation today.

https://podur.org/2024/05/13/world-war-civ-40-how-britain-took-palestine-in-1917/

Nora (@norabf), Sina (@UrOrientalist), Rob (@robrousseau), and Alex (@Alexander_Avina) are back on the couch for another session of Tankie Group Therapy.

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An extra large helping of Tankie Therapy featuring a big crowd of patients crammed together on the digital couch: Nora, Rob, Mikey, Arama, Justin, Alex, Joe, and Sina chaotically trying to host. We discussed the very irrational response on the part of the university administrators across the West to the encampments in solidarity with Palestinians sprouting up at dozens of schools.

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Guest host and writer Amal Nura (@amaalnuura) interviews Aziz Faarah (@azizfaarah), independent archivist and collector of Somali artifacts. They discuss his auction adventures and encounters with vendors including one who spent a few weeks in Somali jails in the 1970s https://twitter.com/azizfaarah/status/1736547727821943090.

Their conversation touches on the value of material culture, the museum as a colonial invention and Aziz’s mission to reclaim and repatriate pieces to Somalis in the Horn of Africa and across the diaspora.

To read more and get a glimpse into Aziz’s collection: 
https://africasacountry.com/2024/04/buying-back-our-things

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Rana Barakat is associate professor of history at Birzeit University in Palestine and director of the BZU Museum (@bzu.museum).

Abduljawad Omar (@HHamayel2) is a lecturer at Birzeit University.  

Check out the article, "The parallel human: Walid Daqqah on the 1948 Palestinian political prisoners" by Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh

An archive of Walid Daqqa's writings
https://shorturl.at/hyzQX

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On Day 191 the tankie therapy group convenes (Joe Emersberger (@rosendo_joe), Rob Rousseau (@robrousseau), Mikey Inouye (@karaokecomputer), Sina Rahmani (@UrOrientalist), Alex Aviña (@Alexander_Avina) but for an analytical discussion about Iran's missiles hitting Israeli airbases the day before. A summary of what happened, a media roundup, Jordan's role, the new equation, and more.

Watch this episode on Justin's YouTube channel

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Investigative journalist William Van Wagenen (@WVanwagenen) from The Cradle returns to the podcast to discuss his deep dive into what really happened on Oct 7th.

Watch this episode on our YouTube channel
https://youtu.be/PP7ZBzTJFmU

Check out the article, "What Really Happened on October 7?" https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/what-really-happened-on-october-7/?feed_id=11264&_unique_id=65d3514b9b6fe

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Introductory Remarks by Professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya)

PANEL 3

“Seeing Palestine, Not Seeing the Palestinians: Gaza in the British Pathé Colonial Lens” Shahd Abusalama, Lebanese American University

My presentation will critically engage with the representation of the Palestine question in general and Gaza refugees in particular by British Pathé, which, as a leading media institution of the British Empire, was also a dedicated advocate of Zionist ambitions and Jewish settlement in Mandate Palestine. While presenting corresponding reels, I will interrogate Pathé’s discursive strategies in representing the 1947-48 Nakba (Arabic: catastrophe), the 1956-7 Israeli occupation of Gaza, and Israel’s subsequent occupation of Gaza beginning in 1967, exposing its ideological framing of the Palestinian people as either “terrorists” or “helpless victims” and the glorification of the newborn state of Israel. I argue that British Pathé provided a consolidating hegemonic discourse on Palestine-Israel that prevails to this day in mainstream Western political, media, and academic discourse to shield Israel and its allies from responsibility. (25 minutes)

PLENARY PANEL

Art credit: 

"Untitled 2022" by Heba Zaqout, artist and fine arts teacher, martyred 13 October 2023 with two of her children in Gaza.

PANEL 2
 

Introductory Remarks by Professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya)

"Queer Threads: Activist Fashion in Palestine"
Roberto Filippello, University of Amsterdam

In this presentation I sketch the contours of the formation of an activist fashion scene across Palestine in the face of material challenges that the infrastructures of the occupation pose to the production and circulation of clothes. I theorize the creative practices of Palestinian fashion designers and image-makers as makeshift acts of collective disidentification with the ecocidal, racist, and queerphobic Zionist enterprise, and argue that “queer decolonial fashion practices” offer a model of creative activism wherein environmental ethics, anti-racism, and queer claims are fundamentally interconnected. Conjoining Gramscian analytical categories and queer epistemologies from the South, I highlight how sartorial praxis and embodiment figure in the imagination of Palestinian youth. (25 minutes)

“Laboratories of Speculation: Rethinking Jericho, ‘the City of the Moon’”
Ronak K. Kapadia, University of Illinois Chicago (via Zoom)

Critical queer feminist study has lovingly brought renewed methodological attention to long-forgotten, once-inhabited sites, archives, geographies, and histories, which can be newly reanimated for the service of contemporary collective social life. One such instance in present-day Palestine has been the international art, writing, and research residency called el-Atlal (“The Ruins”) co-founded by Karim Kattan, Victoria Dabdoub, Rebecca Topakian, Céleste Haller from 2014-2019 in the town of Jericho, the “oldest city in the world.” Given its historical heritage and complex station in the local imagination, Jericho is a generative utopian site for enacting new incubatory spaces for alternative political and aesthetic possibility in the dystopian here and now. If Palestine, and the Palestinian people subject to Israeli rule, have long served as one of the foremost paradigmatic “laboratories” for the development of late modern settler security states and their fabrication of new technologies of policing, maiming, and killing perfected on Palestinians under siege, this talk explores how we might reimagine an archetypal “Palestine” instead as an experimental site of decolonial fantasy and creative freedom, one that also portends the ends of the conjoined US/Israeli settler security states and their forever wars on terror. (25 minutes)

Art credit: 

"Untitled 2022" by Heba Zaqout, artist and fine arts teacher, martyred 13 October 2023 with two of her children in Gaza.

Introductory Remarks by Professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya)

“The Urgency of Anti-Imperial Feminism: Lessons from Palestine”
Walaa Alqaisiya, Ca' Foscari University of Venice (via Zoom)
(08:30-38:30)

This talk maps the epistemic, political, and moral grounds informing the urgency of anti-imperial feminism that Palestine brings into sight. Combining decolonial and Third-Worldist Marxist theoretical approaches, the first part of the talk unpacks the functionality of gender to the onto-epistemic foundations of Zionist settler colonialism under US-led imperialism. The second part discusses how the centering of the Palestinian national question redefines the moral and political parameters of feminist and queer mobilisation. In doing so, the last part shows the limitations and tensions that post-structural feminist and queer approaches carry, when dealing with the question of liberation, violence, and development in global South contexts, such as Palestine. (25 minutes)
 

“Christian Zionism, Displacement, and the Role of Travel”
Jennifer Kelly, University of California, Santa Cruz (via Zoom)
(~39:00-1:03:00)

A central tenet of Falwell’s Moral Majority, founded in 1979, was unequivocal support for Israel and, by 1983, he began his first of many “Friendship Tours to Israel,” which included meetings with government officials and tours of Israeli military installations. Today, Christian Zionism tours follow this template, pairing pilgrimage with celebrations of Israel’s sustained displacement of Palestinians. At the center of displacement in Jerusalem, for example, is a biblical theme park—run by settlers—planned for Silwan that comprises a cable car, a seven-story Jewish cultural center on Wadi Hilweh land, and shopping centers and homes for settlers. And, during this current genocidal war on Gaza, Christian Zionists across the U.S. are once again eagerly seeing Israel’s destruction of Gaza as a sign of end times and calling for unchecked Israeli control over all of Palestine. In this paper, I show not only how tourism is never a thing apart from colonial state violence, but also how tourism is part of the fabric of a U.S. Christian Zionism that both enables and facilitates Palestinian displacement. (25 minutes)

Art credit: 

"Untitled 2022" by Heba Zaqout, artist and fine arts teacher, martyred 13 October 2023 with two of her children in Gaza.

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Trying out a new live format and was joined by friends of the show Alex Aviña (@Alexander_Avina) and Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) for an angry deep dive into some of the terrible articles written on the Gaza genocide.

Watch the video edition on The East is a Podcast YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQH3uMQU3mk&ab_channel=TheEastisaPodcast

Some of the "articles" we discussed

https://damagemag.com/2024/03/05/seven-realities-of-israel-palestine/
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21/adam-shatz/vengeful-pathologies

Paris Yeros (@parisyeros) teaches at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil.  Guest host and friend of the show Bikrum Gil (@bikrumsinghgill) discuss Paris' latest article published in Agrarian South, "A Polycentric World Will Only Be Possible by the Intervention of the ‘Sixth Great Power"

Read the article here

https://www.agrariansouth.org/2023/12/16/a-polycentric-world-will-only-be-possible-by-the-intervention-of-the-sixth-great-power/

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Check out the Anti-Imperialist Archive
https://feeds.libsyn.com/437079/rss

Tankie therapy session as we watch the newest atrocities unfolding at al-Shifa, make historical parallels with the Argentine Dirty War and the 1857 War in India, the Battle of Algiers and the film Downfall... with Nora (@norabf), Matteo (@capassomat) , Mikey (@karaokecomputer), Sina (@UrOrientalist), and Alex (@Alexander_Avina).

Watch the video edition on The Anti-Empire Project YouTube channel

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Vijay Prasad (@vijayprashad) in conversation with friend of the podcast Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya).  

Sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Institute for Arts and Humanities, Departments of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and of Communication, and the Curriculums in Global Studies and in Peace, War, & Defense.

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Ottawa-based Physician Dr. Yipeng Ge (@yipengGe) reflects on being attacked by the Zionist lobby for speaking out on the Gaza genocide and his subsequent trip to Rafah as part of a medical delegation.

Watch the episode on The East is a Podcast YouTube channel

Support
www.patreon.com/east_podcast

The crew is back on the couch at the therapist's office with Alex (@Alexander_Avina), Nora  (@norabf), Sina (@urorientalist) and two new guests: Mikey (@karaokecomputer) and Arama.

Watch the video edition on the East is a Podcast YouTube channel

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Abdaljawad Omar is a PhD student and part-time lecturer in the Philosophy and Cultural Studies Department at Birzeit University.

Watch the video edition on The East is a Podcast YouTube channel
https://youtu.be/tDkaO2lmD4o 

Check out his articles on Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/author/abdaljawad-omar/

Listen to his episodes on Millenials are Killing Capitalism
https://millennialsarekillingcapitalism.libsyn.com/turning-grief-into-defiance-abdaljawad-omar-on-resistance-possibility-in-palestine 

Interview with Louis Allday
https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/an-unyielding-will-to-continue  

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Duke Professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya) interviews visual artist and filmmaker Jumana Manna for the third episode of her Palestine Seminar.  

https://www.jumanamanna.com/

Professor Hasso will be convening a conference titled, "Concrete Imaginings: Building a Liberated Palestine" on Feb 28th, 2024.  It will be livestreamed and open access. 

Live stream link
https://duke.zoom.us/j/93556167414

Detailed schedule available here

https://tickets.duke.edu/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=concreteimaginings&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=

From the syllabus:

"My initial goal was to give a platform to Palestinian artists and intellectuals working in Palestine but with limited opportunities to work or share their work outside of a permanent crisis mode produced by the myriad forms of violence attached to Israeli colonization. This violence regularly reaches university campuses and touches every dimension of life. The syllabus is idiosyncratic in the sense that it represents my intellectual and pedagogical interests for this seminar. I encourage people to use it as an educational resource and to take parts for their own teaching."

Download syllabus
https://franceshasso.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/the-palestine-seminar-sp-2024-syllabus.pdf

*This is a preview of the latest bonus episode. Sign up for $5 a month to access the entire conversation and help keep the show going or watch the full episode on our YouTube channel*

Friend of the podcast Max Ajl returns to the show to discuss his latest article, "Palestines's Great Flood: Part 1." 

Download the article here
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378147524_Palestine%27s_Great_Flood_Part_I 

Watch the video edition on The East is a Podcast YouTube channel

Support
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