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Every Friday at 9:30amAbout the Show
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.
Facebook is under pressure to include criticism of Israel in its hate-speech policy. After more than 100 Jewish organizations around the world pressed Facebook to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism in its entirety, including examples seen as controversial, 55 groups joined in a coalition to combat this. On Feb. 16, in multiple cities around the globe, the “Facebook, We Need to Talk” campaign presented Facebook corporate offices with a petition of over 54,000 signatures from people who say a policy under advisement that would consider the word “Zionist” as a proxy for “Jew” would stifle Palestinians’ ability to talk about their history and lived reality as well as Jews’ ability to debate their varied relationship to Zionist political ideology. Seattle activists Matt Weiner and Shelby Handler of Jewish Voice For Peace, the lead organization in the coalition, discuss the reasons for the “Facebook, We Need to Talk” campaign. They say efforts to curb accountability for Israel are counter-productive to efforts to dismantle anti-Semitism and discuss why the examples provided by the 2016 IHRA definition are problematic and should not be used to provide Israel with impunity for its actions.
