Makdisi Street

The brothers welcome historian and journalist Vijay Prashad (@vijayprashad) to the show to discuss the emergence of Palestine as the keystone struggle of the Global South, the importance of the PLO, the question of sovereign national interests vs. solidarity with Palestinian liberation, and the radical student movements rising up across the West.

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Date of recording: April 30, 2024.

Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on Insta: @Makdisist Music by Hadiiiiii *You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to access future bonus content, including the first (now published!) Q&A and the latest bonus episode!*  

The brothers welcome the historian Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University to the show to discuss the history of the Palestinian people’s struggle against the Zionist project in Palestine, the colonial affiliations of Zionism, the background to the 1948 Nakba, and the role of Arab and Palestinian leaders and forms of resistance in bringing about change.

Watch the episode on our YouTube channel

Date of recording: Apr 16, 2024.

Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on Insta: @Makdisist Music by Hadiiiiii *You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to access future bonus content, including the first (now published!) Q&A and the latest bonus episode!*  

[Producer's note: This is a preview of the latest bonus episode of Makdisi Street. You can listen to the entire episode by subscribing to the Patreon for as low as $5 a month and get access to other great bonus content. Since we want to make as much content accessible as possible, we have unlocked this for the YouTube channel.]

The brothers discuss the latest developments in and around Palestine, including European denial and complicity, the role of the ICJ and other systems of accountability in international politics, the possible expansion of the conflict, and whether dogs wag tails or tails wag dogs.

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Date of recording: Apr 13, 2024.

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The brothers welcome to the show Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and Professor of Law at the University of Oregon, to discuss the ongoing starvation war against Gaza and how intentional law can be wielded to fight against it.

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Date of recording: Apr 3, 2024.

Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on Insta: @Makdisist Music by Hadiiiiii *You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to get access to future bonus content, including the first (now published!) Q&A*  

The brothers welcome Tony Karon (@TonyKaron) and Sean Jacobs (@africasacountry) to the show to discuss their experience of the politics of sport in their native South Africa, the lessons that the country’s anti-apartheid struggle might have for the struggle for freedom in Palestine, and football as a potential site for galvanizing a broader boycott movement against Israel’s genocidal system of apartheid.

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Date of recording: March 22, 2024

Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on Insta: @Makdisist Music by Hadiiiiii *You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to get access to future bonus content, including the first (now published!) Q&A*  

The brothers discuss, among other things, Zionism and denial; Israel’s engineered starvation of Gaza; US-Israeli collaboration.

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Date of recording: March 19, 2024

Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on Insta: @Makdisist Music by Hadiiiiii *You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to get access to future bonus content, including the first (soon to be released)Q&A*  

The brothers welcome Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) to the show to discuss the role of the Gaza genocide in the generational transformation taking place in the United States (including within Jewish communities across the country), as well as the campaign to redefine antisemitism to include criticism of Zionism and the Zionist state, and the many pathways leading from Zionism to democracy and freedom for all.

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Date of recording: March 12, 2024

Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on Insta: @Makdisist Music by Hadiiiiii *You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to get access to future bonus content, including the first Q&A!*  

The brothers reflect on the suspension of Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian for having committed herself to justice, equality, rights, freedom and love: principles which Zionist institutions and the Zionist state clearly find themselves to be incompatible.

Call to Action: Support academic freedom for Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/call-to-action-support-academic-freedom-for-nadera-shalhoub-kevorkian/

Date of recording: March 15, 2024. 

The brothers talk with Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (link) about life under occupation in East Jerusalem, the scattering and reconstitution of Palestinian bodies and Palestine itself, and the affirmation of life and love that lie at the heart of the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

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Date of recording: March 6, 2024

Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on Insta: @Makdisist Music by Hadiiiiii *You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to get access to future bonus content, including the first Q&A!*  

The brothers interview Chris Gunness (@MyanmarAProject), former chief spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), about journalistic coverage and distortion, the shaping of representation of Palestine, the work of the Agency, the moral responsibility of those funding it, and how calumnies spread by Zionist organizations about its workers provided a pretext for Western countries to cut their support.

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Date of recording: Feb 26, 2024

Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on Insta: @Makdisist Music by Hadiiiiii *You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to get access to future bonus content, including the first Q&A!*  

The brothers welcome the Palestinian educator, political intellectual, and activist Dr. Hanan Ashrawi (@DrHananAshrawi) to discuss the political horizons after the trauma of Gaza, as well as the pitfalls of the so-called peace process, Oslo, the PLO vs PA, and moves to reform the PLO for the path to true liberation and self-determination.

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Date of recording: Feb 20, 2024

Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on Insta: @Makdisist Music by Hadiiiiii *You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to get access to future bonus content, including the first Q&A!*  

The brothers welcome Dima Khalidi, founder and director of Palestine Legal (@pal_legal), to the podcast to talk about the institutionalized Zionist assault on academic freedom and free speech in the United States as well as the convergence between the Zionist suppression of Palestinian rights advocacy on the one hand and right-wing reaction against the diversification of the university system in the US.

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Date of recording: Feb 15, 2024

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Music by Hadiiiiii *Announcement: You can now support Makdisi Street on Patreon! Sign up at Patreon.com/MakdisiStreet to get access to future bonus content, including the first Q&A!*  

The brothers welcome to the show the preeminent scholar and Nakba survivor Dr. Salman Abu Sitta to discuss his personal journey after 1948, the relative simplicity of implementing UN resolution 194 for Palestinians to return to their lands, and his high hopes for younger generations.

Read his article, "I could have been one of those who broke through the siege on October 7"  https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/i-could-have-been-one-of-those-who-broke-through-the-siege-on-october-7/

Check out the Palestine Land Society https://www.plands.org/en/home 

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Date of recording: Feb 5, 2024

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The brothers invite the American historian Robin DG Kelley to the show to discuss the status and visibility of Palestine in Black American political culture from the 1940s through MLK and Malcolm X to Black Lives Matter and the present--and the ways in which Palestine remains one of the keys to a liberated world.

Date of recording: Jan 29, 2024.

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The brothers welcome the investigative journalist, Intercept Senior Correspondent and Intercepted podcast host Jeremy Scahill (@jeremyscahill) to discuss the parameters of the media coverage of the genocide in Gaza and to reflect on the patterns, structures and limitations of Western corporate media as well as the growing alternatives to it.

Date of recording: Jan 23, 2024.

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(Note: We are considering launching a Patreon feed to help defray the costs of producing this show, whereby for a low monthly rate, supporters will get access to different kinds of bonus content: a monthly Q&A, reposting of episodes hosts do with other podcasts, episodes featuring a single host interviewing guests, etc.  We would love your feedback about this.  Please get in touch with the show either through Twitter or email with any ideas for potential bonus content) 

The brothers provide an assessment of where things stand after 100 days of Israel’s war on Gaza, the horror being suffered by the people in Gaza, as well as the forms that resistance takes and the paths toward an outline of liberation.

Date of recording: Jan 16, 2024.

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The brothers talk with the distinguished legal scholar Richard Falk about the possible political, legal, and moral consequences of the International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa against Israel on the charge of genocide.

Date of recording: January 9, 2024.

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The brothers welcome Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu (@dianabuttu) to the show to provide a broader political context for the crisis in Gaza, including the growing contradictions within Israeli politics, the struggle for hegemony within Palestinian politics, the legacy and possible future role of the PLO, and the legal and political consequences of the war in (and on) Gaza.  The conversation also offers perspective on the so-called peace process of the late 1990s and early 2000s, in which Diana was involved, and the parameters in which we can start to imagine possible resolutions of this conflict.

Date of recording: January 2, 2024.

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The brothers welcome Dr. Mitri Raheb to the show to talk about the role and visibility of Christians in Palestine’s ecumenical culture, so-called Christian Zionism, and how the Bible can be read either as a text authorizing empire and genocide (as with Netanyahu citing the extirpation of the Amalek) or as a text calling for liberation, equality, justice and resistance to empire.   Check out his books, Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible (2023) and I Am a Palestinian Christian God and Politics in the Holy Land: A Personal Testimony (1995)

Date of recording: December 22, 2023.

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The brothers welcome this extraordinary Palestinian physician, @GhassanAbuSitt1, to the show, to talk about his recent experience in Gaza in comparison with other Israeli attacks on Gaza (2014, 2008-9).  “One of the aims of catastrophization, the creation of a self-sustaining catastrophe in Gaza,” Abu Sittah warns, “is that, once there is a ceasefire, the catastrophe is able to continue, with the help of the siege. And so, my biggest worry about the day after is that the Israelis will be allowed to achieve, in the siege, in the ceasefire, what they failed to achieve in the war.”

Date of recording: December 20, 2023.

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In this episode, the brothers interview the historian Ilan Pappé, best known for his 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, in order to gain some historical perspective on the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza as well as what the current situation tells us about shifting global and local attitudes and even how one can start to anticipate the terminal stage of the Zionist project in Palestine—and what that means for the future.

Date of recording: December 12, 2023.

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The Makdisi brothers welcome Francesca Albanese (@FranceskAlbs), the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, to the podcast.  The discussion covers international humanitarian law, the concept of self-defense as it is understood in international law, the right to resist military occupation, the specificities of settler colonial occupation, and the question of justice given the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

Date of recording: December 4, 2023

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In this episode, we discuss the international backdrop to the Gaza ceasefire/truce/pause (and what the distinctions are among all those terms).  We also cover Israeli and US aims for Gaza in view of resistance on the ground and their failure to achieve their objectives in the 2006 war in Lebanon, as well as the significance of the prisoner exchange for the local legitimacy and standing of Hamas.

Date of recording: November 26, 2023.

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In this episode, we discuss the coverage and framing of the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza including media narratives, gaps between popular and establishment positions, and the stifling of dissent in the academy.

Date of Recording: November 14, 2023.

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