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.
April 25, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Repost: Stories from Gaza with Mahmoud Mushtaha
This week we are rebroadcasting an interview we aired on June 28, 2024 by my co-host Margot Patterson. She interviewed journalist Mahmoud Mushtaha, assistant manager of We Are Not Numbers, a non-profit in Gaza that pairs young Palestinian writers with professional journalists to help them tell their stories to an English-speaking audience. Mahmoud had left Gaza for Egypt just a month before the interview, in which he describes the harrowing conditions he and his family faced in Gaza. The conditions that Mahmoud describes have only intensified since his interview in June 2024.
ListenApril 11, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism and the Threat to Free Speech
Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, discusses the threat to free speech posed by the International Holocaust Rembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of antisemitism being adopted by many institutions, communities and states in the United States and around the world. The IHRA It is currently under consideration in the Missouri legislature. The definition associates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. While opposed by a broad range of groups, including human rights organizations, civil liberties groups, Palestinian rights defenders, peace activists, progressive Jewish and Christian groups, and even some strong pro-Israel supporters, the IHRA is increasingly being used as a legal standard. Friedman says the IHRA Working Definition of antisemitism is part of a long-standing effort to chill free speech on Israel and Palestine and to limit what can be said about Israeli policies and practices.
ListenApril 4, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Project Esther and the Neuroscience of Solidarity
On Oct. 7, 2024 the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. Since the Trump administration took office, this document has served as the basis for the escalating crackdown on Palestine solidarity in the United States, under the guise of combating antisemitism. To unpack this document, we spoke with Dr. Yoav Litvin, author a recent article entitled Project Esther: A Trumpian blueprint to crush anticolonial resistance. We discussed the document's fascist, McCarthyist overtones and how the initiative can be resisted.
ListenMarch 28, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
The Assault on Universities and Free Speech on Palestine
Margot Patterson talks to Dr. James Zogby about the Trump administration's effort to deport foreign students and scholars who have protested Israel's war on Gaza. The attempt to stifle dissent over U.S. support for Israel is part of a larger attack on free speech and academic freedom at universities that the Trump administration is waging. Pollster, Middle East scholar and the founder and president of the Arab-American Institute, the political and policy research arm of the Arab-American community, Dr. Zogby says what's being dismantled is an architecture of human rights that will not easily be rebuilt.
ListenMarch 21, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Image and Reality of the Gaza Genocide (Part 2)
This is the second part of a talk given by Dr. Norman Finkelstein at the University of Connecticut on February 27. The talk was sponsored by the Northeast Connecticut Gaza Peace Group. In this part, Dr. Finkelstein discusses the consequences of the horror inflicted on Gaza and makes recommendations for the tactics and strategy of the movement moving forward.
ListenMarch 14, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Image and Reality of the Gaza Genocide
This is the first part of a talk given by Dr. Norman Finkelstein at the University of Connecticut on February 27. The talk was sponsored by the Northeast Connecticut Gaza Peace Group. In this part, Dr. Finkelstein dismantles the characterization of the devastation in Gaza as a war between Israel and Hamas. To make this argument, he makes observations about the nature of Israel's actions in Gaza, notes the rulings of international legal institutions, and points out the reports of major human rights organizations.
ListenMarch 7, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part 8 (cont) of “What Is Zionism?”: The Jewish History of Anti-Zionism
Shaul Magid, visiting professor of modern Judaism at Harvard Divinity School, talks to Margot Patterson about the long-standing debate among Jews over Zionism and about the impact of the 1967 Six-Day War on the Zionization of American Jews. The author of several books on Jewish mysticism, radicalism and identity, Magid says anti-Zionism is a Jewish phenomenon as old as Zionism itself, and distinct from anti-Israelism among non-Jews.
ListenFebruary 21, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part 7 of “What is Zionism?”: Zionism after October 7th
What is the spectrum of Zionism in modern-day Israel? How has this changed over time, especially since October 7? And what forces are driving the continuation of the current ceasefire deal? Ori Goldberg, a political analyst and academic based in Israel, joined the show to answer these questions.
ListenFebruary 14, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part 6 of “What is Zionism?”: The Principles and Politics of Liberal Zionism
Historian Michael Brenner discusses the secular roots of Zionism, the difficult stance of liberal Zionists and the shrinking space liberal Zionists occupy in Israel today. A professor of Jewish history and culture at the University of Munich, Brenner also holds the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies at the American University in Washington D.C. There he is also the directer of the Center for Israel Studies.
ListenFebruary 7, 2025 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part 5 of “What is Zionism:” Christian Zionism, a Theology of Western Empire
Though Christian Zionism precedes Jewish Zionism by almost two centuries, this fact is often overlooked in discussions of Palestine and Israel. In this illuminating discussion with Prof. Robert Smith (Chickasaw), he defines Christian Zionism, pinpoints its historical origins, and connects this to the interplay between theology and Western empire in the past and present.
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