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.
September 27, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
A Widening War in Lebanon Evinces Biden’s Failed Approach to Israel
Margot Patterson talks to Mideast scholar Juan Cole about last week’s dramatic escalation in the year-long low-level war between Israel and Hezbollah and how the failure of the Biden administration’s policy on Gaza is scrambling traditional alliances in the Middle East and configuring new ones.
ListenSeptember 20, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
As Palestinians in Egypt Remain Separated from their Families, Israel Escalates in the West Bank
Jenna Martin is a Montana-based journalist who writes about resistance movements and politics and how the two intersect with each other. We spoke with Jenna as she was wrapping up her recent reporting trip to Egypt and the West Bank. In Egypt, Jenna spoke with families separated by the closure of the Rafah Border Crossing and their struggle to survive without documents as their loved ones remain trapped in Gaza. In the West Bank, Jenna traveled to Beita, where American activist Aysenur Eygi was recently killed by the Israeli army. Already tense before October 7, Jenna reports that a massive escalation has taken place in the West Bank.
ListenSeptember 13, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Challenging Churches’ Complicity in Genocide
In a 2023 Christmas Eve sermon that drew global attention, the Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem charged the Western church with complicity in genocide in Gaza. Attending that Christmas Eve service in Bethlehem was David Wildman, executive secretary for human rights and racial justice with the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Global Ministries. He serves as its liaison to the United Nations, the Middle East and Afghanistan. He talks with Margot Patterson about the truth of that charge and what Christians are and are not doing to stop the atrocities in Palestine,
ListenSeptember 6, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
An American in Gaza with Scott Anderson
This week on Understanding Israel/Palestine, we're rebroadcasting an episode from Let's Talk UNRWA, entitled An American in Gaza with Scott Anderson. Mara Kronenfeld, Executive Director of UNRWA USA, speaks with Scott Anderson, who is leading UNRWA's efforts in the Gaza Strip. They discuss the need for a ceasefire, the ongoing polio vaccination campaign, and the challenges of providing for millions of displaced people in Gaza amid the immense and ongoing damage to critical infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Almost everyone in the Gaza Strip has been displaced, many multiple times, with some unable to afford being displaced again.
ListenAugust 30, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
“There Is No Military Solution to the Gaza Conflict”
Historian James Gelvin, author of "The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War," discusses the war in Gaza and the student protest movement it's spawned. He says there is no military solution to the war or to the century-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians other than an independent Palestinian state, unlikely as that now seems. He advises student protesters to go off-campus and get into the Democratic Party to change U.S. policy.
ListenAugust 23, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Freedom Summer: the Handala Prepares to Sail to Gaza
Retired Col. Ann Wright of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla details the numerous ships that have attempted to break the siege of Gaza over the years. After a summer sailing to European ports to raise awareness of the Gaza genocide, the Handala will be on its way to Gaza after repairs are completed. Zane Wolfang also reports from the DNC in Chicago, where police and protestors have been squaring off for a week while Uncommitted Movement delegates push for an arms embargo on the inside.
ListenAugust 16, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Terrorism and its Semantics in the Middle East
Terrorism is generally held to be political violence that is illegitimate, but what confers legitimacy on some acts of political violence and illegitimacy on others? Is terrorism simply the name we give to the violence we do not like or support, while finding euphemisms for the violence we do like or support? Richard Drake, Professor of history at the University of Montana, asks these questions in his popular course Terrorism - Violence in the Modern World. With this critical frame in mind, we approach the history of terrorism in the Middle East, from the post-WWI Treaties of Versailles and Sèvres to the ongoing Gaza genocide. Our conversation concludes with a discussion of how Senator Robert La Follette, the subject of a book by Prof. Drake, came to understand US empire in the Middle East following WWI.
ListenAugust 9, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part II: Why Genocide in Palestine Threatens U.S. Democracy
The former endowed chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Keene State College, Keene, NH, Dr. Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey is the co-founder and executive director of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. In Part II of her conversation with Margot Patterson, she discusses what the Lemkin Institute sees as genocide not just in Gaza but throughout Palestine and the assault on democracy that Western support for Israel's genocide in Palestine involves.
ListenAugust 2, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Understanding and Preventing Genocide
Genocide scholar Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey discusses what constitutes genocide, how and why she and international human rights lawyer Irene Victoria Massimino came to found the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention to avert it, and why the West is supporting genocide in Palestine. Dr. von Joeden-Forgey is the former Endowed Chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Keene State College, Keene, NH,
ListenJuly 26, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
The ICJ and the Administration of Colonial Violence
Dr. Emilio Dabed, a Palestinian-Chilean lawyer specializing in constitutional matters, international law, and human rights, discusses his recent article for 972 Magazine entitled, "By failing to stop the Gaza genocide, the ICJ is working exactly as intended." We discuss the ICJ's failure to order a ceasefire in Gaza in the South Africa vs. Israel genocide case. Dabed argues that this reveals the true purpose of the international legal order: the administration of colonial violence. In light of Dabed's argument, we conclude by turning to the more recent ICJ case demolishing the legal foundations of Israel's occupation of Palestine.
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