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.
May 24, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Khalil Sayegh on Peacemaking, Israel’s War Aims and Gaza’s Future
Khalil Sayegh speaks of his identity as a Christian Palestinian from Gaza, the recent loss of family members there because of the war, how theology affects his work as a peacebuilder, Israel's war aims -- ethnic cleansing and the resettlement of the Gaza Strip with Jewish settlers -- and the different objectives of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as regards Gaza's future. Later in the program Eamon speaks with war crimes prosecutor Reed Brophy about the ICC's decision to seek arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders and the Israeli prime minister and defense minister.
ListenMay 17, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Mubarak Awad on Nonviolence as a Path to Palestinian Liberation
Sometimes called the Arab Gandhi, Palestinian peace activist Mubarak Awad talks to Margot Patterson about how he came to embrace the principles of non-violence, his views of the war in Gaza and the future of the Palestinian movement. Awad is the founder of Nonviolence International, a NGO in Washington D.C. that advocates for creative nonviolence in the struggle for liberation of oppressed peoples around the world.
ListenMay 10, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Stopping Famine in Gaza
This week we speak with Robert Bletcher, Director of the Future of Conflict program at International Crisis Group (ICG). He was the lead author of the ICG's recent report Stopping Famine in Gaza. We discuss how famine is defined and measured in the realm of international politics and the key axes to consider when attempting to mitigate famine: distribution and access. Israel's actions in Gaza, including its harsh restrictions on aid entering Gaza and its targeting of individuals and groups attempting to distribute aid, have resulted in a situation of imminent famine in Gaza. In the absence of a ceasefire, groups distributing aid must not be targeted and humanitarian aid must be allowed to enter. We conclude by discussing the obstacles to this and the war aims of Hamas and Israel.
ListenMay 3, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Islamophobia Is Ignored in Ferment over Anti-Semitism on Campus
Rutgers University law professor Sahar Aziz and Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy, discuss turmoil over Israel's war in Gaza on college campuses, the growing threat to free speech on campus, and how pervasive anti-Muslim bias in U.S. society and U.S. foreign policy perpetuates a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Aziz and Plitnick are co-authors of the report "Presumptively Anti-Semitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse," published in November, 2023, by the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers.
ListenApril 26, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Breaking the Siege of Gaza: Freedom Flotillas since 2008
The Gaza Freedom Flotilla movement began with a 2006 email from a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement sent to other volunteers struggling with how to bring to the attention of the world that Israel, while attacking Lebanon, was imprisoning Gaza. The email proposed chartering a big boat to sail from New York to Gaza, to Break the Siege, while acknowledging their proposal was so big it might need a sanity check. Rising to the challenge, two years later in 2008 a boat sailed all the way into the Gaza harbor, greeted by thousands of enthusiastic Palestinians. The book Freedom Sailors, written and edited by the people who lived this first step, is a vivid description of amazing courage and fortitude. Since 2008 flotillas bound for Gaza have been blocked by Israel. In 2010 Israel attacked the Mavi Marmara, one ship of a 6-ship flotilla, while still in international waters, killing 9 of the crew. The crew was totally unarmed. Alex McDonald, author of How I Learned to Speak Israel, a guide for Americans wanting to better understand the Israel/Palestine situation, was on the Freedom Flotilla boat that sailed to northern ports this summer to raise the world’s awareness of the flotilla movement. Another boat is due to sail to Gaza this spring. Video footage of the 2010 attack is shown in The Truth: Lost at Sea.
ListenApril 19, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part VI of the Israel Lobby: Advocates Double Down after Oct. 7
In the last part of a series on the Israel lobby in the United States, Alison Weir, founder and executive director of If Americans Knew, a non-profit established more than 20 years ago to educate Americans about the Israel-Palestine conflict, discusses some of the many groups and individuals that comprise the Israel lobby, why and what Americans should know about them, and how Israel's advocates have been responding to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the controversy over Israel's war in Gaza.
ListenApril 12, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part V of the Israel Lobby: The ADL’s Exploitation of the Charge of anti-Semitism
Dr. Sam Brody, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at The University of Kansas, discusses the history of the Anti-Defamation League (or the ADL) and the role it plays as a part of the Israel lobby. Dr. Brody contends that the ADL’s stance that anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism is wrong-headed, cynical, and ahistorical. He argues that countering anti-Semitism can only be done in coalition with other liberation movements, including the Palestine solidarity movement. We conclude by discussing the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and how muddying the distinctions between them ultimately makes it harder for Jews to address real instances of anti-Semitism.
ListenApril 5, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part IV of the Israel Lobby: The Unexamined Underside of the ADL
James Bamford speaks about his recent article in The Nation magazine, "The Anti-Defamation League: Israel's Attack Dog in the U.S." Bamford writes that for much of its history, the ADL has operated as a hostile intelligence agency, surveilling a wide array of U.S. groups and passing information about them to Israel, the U.S. government and apartheid South Africa. Since the war began in October, ADL is claiming a dramatic rise in anti-Semitism, citing statistics disputed by its own staff.
ListenMarch 29, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part III of the Israel Lobby: The Evolution of AIPAC from an Insider’s Perspective
MJ Rosenberg, political commentator, joined the show this week to discuss the Israel lobby from his vantage point as a former insider. Rosenberg worked for AIPAC for four years. He shares how AIPAC intervenes in Congressional elections through directing donations to candidates who support Israeli government policy. Until recently, AIPAC formally eschewed the use of a political action committee (PAC). Several years ago, AIPAC evolved and now openly intervenes in Democratic primaries with the use of dark money from primarily Republican donors through its United Democracy Project PAC. Rosenberg blogs on Substack at substack.com/@mjx847.
ListenMarch 22, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Part II of The Israel Lobby: AIPAC’s History as a Foreign Agent
Grant F. Smith, the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, discusses the influential American-Israel Public Affairs Committe (AIPAC). Smith has written several books on AIPAC. which was started with foreign funding, largely from Israel, but eluded U.S. efforts to register it as a foreign agent. While it's treated as a domestic lobbying organization, Smith says AIPAC today continues to act as a foreign agent for Israel, employing campaign contributions, covert pressure campaigns and espionage in collusion with Israel to advance policies that serve the state of Israel but not the United States or the public good.
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