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Understanding Israel Palestine
This show is inspired by Citizens for Justice in the Middle East, a local group that has advocated for 20 years for a fair and even-handed U.S. foreign policy that recognizes the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis. Our program offers interviews with journalists, scholars, policy experts and activists to offer multiple perspectives, and to clarify the underlying issues that are often obscured by headline news.
Since 1948, Israel has destroyed more than 160,000 Palestinian homes. Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, says house demolitions are the essence of Israel’s drive to replace an Arab state with a Jewish state through ethnic cleansing and expropriations. He reports the process of “Judaization,” a term used by the Israeli government, has been completed in Palestine; Israel controls the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan river in what has become one Israeli apartheid state. Halper details the specifics of house demolitions — the pretexts given for them and the impact they have on Palestinians, who receive a 15-minute warning before their home is destroyed. A member of the One Democratic State Campaign, he discusses the need for a new Palestinian political endgame, how Israel’s security know-how and technologies of repression are useful to other governments, and why civil society organizations and individuals outside Israel are key to ending Israeli apartheid and building a single democracy for Jews and Arabs.
