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.
November 1, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
The Palestine Exception at Swarthmore
Swarthmore students have faced unprecedented repression in their Palestine solidarity organizing in the past year, despite using tactics embraced in earlier campus struggles. A recent graduate of Swarthmore involved in campus divestment organizing details the double standard that exists at Swarthmore for Palestine-related speech. Students speaking out against the Gaza genocide, many of them low-income and/or people of color, face an array of administrative charges in an internal justice system that affords them few rights.
ListenOctober 25, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Israel’s Assault on the United Nations
Michael Lynk, professor of law at the University of Western Ontario and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied by Israel since 1967, discusses international law, Israel's defiance of it and its recent attack on U.N. peacekeeping troops in Lebanon. He notes that undergirding Western support for Israel is the residue of colonialism and the influence of a powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.
ListenOctober 18, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
The War is Coming Home: Palestinian and Israeli Peacebuilding Duo Call on Americans to Act
Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon are tourism entrepreneurs and peace activists that have been working for peace in Palestine and Israel for years. Hamas militants killed Maoz's parents on October 7th and Israeli prison guards beat Aziz's brother so severely that he died after being released from prison. Recently, they joined forces and are now traveling across the United States speaking about the need for Americans to act now for peace in the Middle East because inaction itself is a risk. They argue that their relationship, built on the basis of equality, offers a path toward reconciliation. The path of violence has led nowhere and the US has forgotten the art of diplomacy in its foreign policy.
ListenOctober 11, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Support for Israel Is Destroying U.S. Influence in the Mideast
Ambassador Chas Freeman, Jr., discusses the expanding wars in the Middle East, Zionist aims in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran, U.S. ineffectuality, and the catastrophic collapse of U.S. influence in the region.
ListenOctober 4, 2024 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Israel Applies Gaza Tactics in Lebanon as Hizbullah Refuses to Back Down
Heiko Wimmen of the International Crisis Group details the quickly changing situation in Lebanon and northern Israel after the assassination of Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and Iran's launch of ballistic missiles on Israel. We compare Israel's stated goals and tactics in Gaza with those in Lebanon. Absent a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel is unlikely to achieve its war aims in Lebanon.
ListenSeptember 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.
Listen