Understanding Israel Palestine

Eamon

Eamon, a 2023 addition to the program, is an international education professional with a background studying and living in the Middle East. At the University of Montana, he studied the history of the Middle East and the Arabic language. After graduating, he taught English for a year in Lutheran schools in Palestine and worked for an Arabic language school in Morocco.

Most recently, he earned a Masters in Peacebuilding from Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, where he currently works as the Student Services Manager. Eamon is committed to relational forms of peacebuilding and raising awareness about the situation in the Holy Land through dialogue and journalism. He enjoys traveling, dancing, Duolingo, and cooking. When not reading the news, he can be found wandering about the mountains and woods.

Jamie Jackson

My personal understanding of the situation in Israel and Palestine has evolved considerably over the past decade. Because the Israeli narrative predominates in mainstream news and in most synagogues, and because the viewpoint of Palestinians is often suppressed and/or distorted, in the past like many Jews I was largely unaware of the injustice that has been perpetrated on the Palestinian people for more than a century. I endorse all efforts to help bring about peace and justice for all people, and I celebrate this radio program’s efforts to add to those efforts.

Margot Patterson

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.