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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.
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The Team
Jeremy Rothe-Kushel is a permaculturally-informed, emancipatorily-biased & public interest-based all-source/open-source intelligence analyst, documentarian & broadcaster, and a producer of futureroots & hiphop music.
He has a working background in permaculture design and implementation, and music production, performance and education.
As a Jewish American patriot of conscience, he sees both a moral responsibility & political necessity in honestly addressing the Jewish & American roles in supporting the occupation politics that extend from within Israel Palestine to here at home in the United States.
Margot Patterson is a writer and editor. Most of her experience has been in print journalism, frequently writing on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East. In 2019 she and co-hosts Jamie Jackson and Jeremy Rothe-Kushel started “Understanding Israel-Palestine,” a now-weekly program that seeks to provide listeners with a more informed perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than is often available in the mainstream press. She is a long-time contributor to KKFI’s “Jaws of Justice” program and has interviewed a wide range of policy experts, criminologists, law enforcement officials and former inmates on topics ranging from juvenile justice detention, mass incarceration and police training to domestic extremism, human trafficking, solitary confinement and new technologies of incarceration.
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Citizens for Justice in the Middle East provided our inspiration for this show. For twenty years CJME has advocated for a fair and even-handed U.S. foreign policy. CJME believes an even-handed policy should recognize the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis. An even-handed policy should work for a political solution promoting those rights. Thus, CJME’s mission has been to educate people about the injustices created by the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories.
This show extends that mission. For anyone confused about the current impasse, we offer historical information that helps explain it. For anyone who has been hearing only a one-sided narrative that lacks balance and context, we offer a balanced narrative.
Accordingly, we broadcast interviews with journalists, scholars, policy experts and activists who provide perspectives from both sides. In contrast to headline news that focus on the what but not the why, our programs clarify underlying issues. The programs reveal the counter-productive role the United States has played over the years in supporting one side over the other.
Public debate about the oppression of Palestinians continues to be stifled. For this reason, we offer these programs as a resource for those seeking truthful, uncensored information about relations between Israel, Palestine and the United States. Furthermore, we hope these programs get people to listen, learn, and do their own research into what is and has been taking place in Israel Palestine.
December 2, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
First and Second Intifadas: the story has not yet ended
The word Intifada in Arabic means a shaking off. The First Intifada began in December 1987, thirty-five years ago, and lasted more than five years, ending in 1993 when its momentum was undercut by the Oslo negotiations. Massive grassroots organizing then distinguished it from the many previous attempts to shake off the Zionist domination. The 2nd Intifada broke out in 2000.
The story of the Intifadas has not yet ended.
In this episode we talk with Dr. Emad Moussa, a Palestinian-British writer and researcher who specializes in the political psychology of conflict and intergroup dynamics, focusing especially on Israel-Palestine. He also has a background in human rights and journalism.
Now living in London he first experienced the First Intifada as a 7-year-old child living in a Gaza refugee camp. He was also living in Gaza during the 2nd Intifada.
November 25, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
The Rise of the Right in Israel
Dov Waxman, director of the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA, discusss how and why the right has becomes the dominant force in Israeli politics and what policies the far-right coalition government now emerging after elections in November is likely to pursue.
ListenNovember 18, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
The Settlers and debate about Zionism
Voices From the Holy Land chose The Settlers for its November online film salon. A 60-minute online panel discussion about the film has been edited for this episode of UIP. Under the expert guidance of moderator Lara Friedman, filmmaker Shimon Dotan and Rabbi Yakov Shapiro, both scholars of Zionism, engage in a spirited debate about the essence of Zionism.
Dotan’s film The Settlers is the first comprehensive look at Israel's continued construction of settlements in the West Bank, which is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Radicals, idealists, messianic fanatics, true believers and political opportunists, living on the fault lines of an age-old conflict, come face-to-face with history. Today, the settlers threaten to destroy what little peace remains in the Middle East.
November 11, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Update on U.S. and Israeli Elections; The #SaveShadi Campaign
Beth Miller, political director of JVP Action, talks about the November elections in the U.S. and Israel. Jonathan Kuttab, international human rights lawyer, discusses the #SaveShadi campaign for 16-year-old Shadi Khoury, who was taken from his home in the middle of the night, beaten and blindfolded and put in indefinite detention by Israeli soldiers without access to a lawyer or family. His case is typical of hundreds of other Palestinian youths languishing in Israeli detention.
ListenOctober 21, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Combatants For Peace Share Their Stories
Chen Alon and Osama Iliwat discuss how they came to join Combatants for Peace, a group that brings together combatants on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to work for peace. Now a theatre director, Alon was an Israeli soldier who co-founded the group in 2005; Osama Eiliwat was a Palestinian resistance fighter who joined the group in 2014. The two men discuss the importance of sharing personal experiences and taking responsibility for past actions.
ListenOctober 7, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Miko Peled: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine
Son of a famous Israeli general in the Six-Day War, Israeli peace activist Miko Peled discusses his memoir "The General's Son" and how he came to reject the Zionist principles he grew up with. Service in the Israeli military disillusioned him, but it was family tragedy, his training as a karate master and his involvement in Jewish-Palestinian dialogue in the United States that led him to become the strong advocate for Palestinian freedom that he is today.
ListenSeptember 23, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
“Israeli Forces Keep Killing Americans”
Alice Speri, a journalist for The Intercept, discusses her recent reporting on the U.S. government's failure to demand accountability for the death of its citizens at the hands of Israeli soldiers. She looks at parallels between the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the death in 2003 of U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie whose family continues to battle for accountability for her death.
ListenSeptember 16, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Eyewitness account of 1982 massacre in Sabra Shatila
Ellen Siegel, an American RN, relates her eyewitness account of the 1982 massacre of refugees living in the Sabra Shatila camp in Lebanon. She witnessed the killing of thousands of Palestinian men, women, children and elderly. Although it was the Lebanese Philangists who executed the killing, Ellen observed the complicity of the IDF by lighting flares all night to enable the killing, and of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who watched the massacre from a rooftop outside the camp. Ellen later testified before the Israeli Kahan Commission of Inquiry which led to Sharon’s resignation from the ministry. Less than two decades later Sharon became prime minister.
In the second portion of this episode we hear more of the conversation featured in our 09/09/22 episode, between Alan Edelman, Zionist, Jewish professional and Alex McDonald, non-Zionist, Quaker and activist.
September 9, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
A Zionist and non-Zionist have a conversation
We listen to a conversation between two men: Alan Edelman, a Zionist and longtime Kansas City Jewish professional, and Alex McDonald, a Quaker and non-Zionist who began twenty years ago to study the history of Israel/Palestine and the many unresolved issues of today. They offer differing narratives about Palestinian refugees and differing views on when or if refugees should be given the right to return to their homes in historic Palestine.
ListenSeptember 2, 2022 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Closure of Palestinian NGOS Poses “Existential Threat”
Omar Shakir, Israel-Palestine director of Human Rights Watch, discusses Israel's Aug. 18 closure of seven leading Palestinian human rights organizations and the threat this poses to Palestinian human rights and to Palestinian civil society in general. The shuttering of these organizations follows Israel's charge in October, 2021, that six of the seven groups have ties to terrorists, a charge the organizations deny and which UN experts and the European Union have found unsubstantiated. Shakir says the international community must respond forcefullyt to Israel's silencing of dissent.
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