The Palestinian Authority ended up as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation. Sahar Francis sums it up brilliantly - listen to more from her on the latest episode of @kalampodcast about the Second Intifada, the failed Oslo process and the War on Terror.
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Remember Abu Ghraib? The prison in Iraq where American soldiers tortured and sexually abused Iraqi prisoners during the US invasion in 2003.
Photos were leaked in the early 2000’s showing American prison guards posing on top of a pile of naked Iraqi bodies with cloth sacks over their heads. Many Palestinians recognised this treatment from their time in Israeli prisons.
Sahar Francis is the General Director of the Palestinian prisoner support organisation @addameer_pal and spoke to us for this week’s episode of @kalampodcast.
The episode is out Thursday and will be on the Second Intifada, the shambolic Oslo Accords and the War on Terror.
Free the hostages! Israeli AND Palestinian.
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The First Intifada took place in the classroom 🍉
When Israel banned all political parties, women formed grassroots committees that did “charitable work”, like running daycares. Children were taught about the Israeli occupation and how best to resist it.
Listen to episode 4 of @kalampodcast with Islah Jad for more! 🍓
The above clip is from the documentary Naila and the Uprising, about the role of women in the First Intifada, by @justvisionmedia
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The courageous Islah Jad is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Faculty for Women’s studies at Bir Zeit University in 🍉
Here she recounts a terrifying memory of when she was shot - twice - in the thigh when participating in the First Intifada. She told us this smiling!
Hear more from Islah in tomorrow’s episode on the @kalampodcast
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Dr. Hanan Ashrawi 🧿
In this press conference from 1997 we recognise many themes - Netanyahu being the omnipresent spectre of Israeli politics.
More importantly, we recognise Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, whose contribution to Palestinian liberation is hard to overstate. She came onto the scene as a leader of the First Intifada, and rapidly became one of the most important spokespersons and politicians of the age - and still is to this day.
Ashrawi and her allies challenged the exiled PLO leadership in Tunisia, with the credibility of being on the ground. Today, Dr. Ashrawi gives countless interviews advocating for the Palestinian cause.
Hear more about Hanan Ashrawi and the other icons of the First Intifada on tomorrow’s episode of @kalampodcast.
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🍉 THE FIRST INTIFADA / الانتفاضة الأولى 🍓
Israel’s repression against the first Palestinian uprising was severe. It beat, jailed, exiled and killed those who participated in the mass movement for Palestinian liberation and against Israeli occupation.
But this time the world saw it happen. Due to the non-violent nature of the uprising, the heavy presence of women and the amount of Israeli violence caught on camera, the Western (read white) World were truly exposed to the suffering of the Palestinians. For the first time, the West felt widespread sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
Listen to episode 4 of the @kalampodcast about the First Intifada - out on Thursday on all platforms!
The above video was widely circulated, depicting a Palestinian man brutalised by Israeli soldiers while shouting “I’m innocent” in Hebrew at a nearby camera.
The clip is from the brilliant documentary Naila and the Uprising by @justvisionmedia
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🍉 THE FIRST INTIFADA / الانتفاضة الاولى 🍓
In late 1987 a mass protest movement began in Palestine, aimed at the then 20 year old Israeli occupation.
It began with kids throwing stones and ended with the Oslo Accords - which most people involved in the Intifada consider the movement’s ultimate betrayal. More on that later.
In the upcoming episode of @kalampodcast, we look at women’s role in the first Intifada. For a myriad of reasons, among them the jailing, killing and forced exile of so many Palestinian men, women took their place at the forefront of this movement.
Mass protests in occupied West Bank and Gaza, as well as inside the state of Israel shocked Israelis. A mainly non-violent movement, the First Intifada also saw an economic revolution. Mass Palestinian strikes and a successful boycott campaign crippled the Israeli economy.
This was unacceptable to the Israelis, who came down hard on the protesters, using many violent and severe tactics to quell the rebellion.
The clip above is from the brilliant documentary Naila and the Uprising, which tells the story of women in the First Intifada. Check out @justvisionmedia which produced the film for more!
Episode 4 of the Kalam podcast series on Palestine is out on all platforms on Thursday morning.
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What kind of pressure was Egyptian president and pan-Arab leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser under in 1967?
Find out in the latest episode of Kalam, with the illustrious historian @clotbey. Out now on all platforms!
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“Jerusalem of Gold” was commissioned by then mayor of Israeli Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, in the weeks preceding the 1967 war.
The Israeli songwriter Naomi Shemer wrote the lyrics and the singer Shuli Nathan performed it. The song depicts Jerusalem as empty and decaying without the presence of Jews.
When the Israeli army occupied East Jerusalem and the old city, and found itself at the Wailing Wall (known in the Arab World as Buraq Wall - حائت البراق).
There, the Israeli soldiers sung this song, with a modified second verse declaring that the Jews had now returned to Jerusalem. The song is known as the unofficial Israeli national anthem.
Many years later, however, the lyricist Naomi Shemer admitted that she had largely “borrowed” the song structure from a Portuguese lullaby, popularised by Paco Ibàñez.
@clotbey gives us a fascinating historical lesson in the latest episode of the Kalam podcast - tune in for this and much more!
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Why is the Egyptian regime terrified of allowing pro-Palestinian demonstrations?
Egyptian solidarity with Palestine and the struggle for social justice in Egypt itself are deeply intertwined. If the Egyptian regime allows its people to speak up on Palestine, it won’t take long before it speaks out against the regime itself.
Listen to episode 3 of @kalampodcast with @clotbey for more!
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Welcome to Kalam – a podcast about the Middle East – with Edgar Mannheimer.
Season 1 on Palestine out now on all platforms.
“The Israelis can obstruct and delay, but I think they are playing against history”
Mohamed Hassanein Heikal was a crucial character in Egyptian/Arab politics and media for decades. A truly gifted writer and newspaper man, Heikal was also a close friend and confidant of Gamal Abdel Nasser.
He was ostensibly Nasser’s speech writer, but he was much more than that. Heikal was essentially Nasser’s security and foreign policy advisor. He was also the editor-in-chief of Egypt’s largest daily newspaper, Al Ahram, and lived to see the Egyptian revolution in 2011 - far outliving his friend Nasser. Say what you will about Nasser’s politics, his failures and his oppression of political dissent. Egypt hasn’t had statesmen like Nasser and Heikal in a very long time.
Hear more about Heikal and the characters that shaped Arab and 🍉 politics in the 60’s in the upcoming episode of Kalam.
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“Why me, and not him?”
Abdel Halim Hafez’s crooning was a huge part of 1960’s Egypt and indeed the entire Arab World. His untimely death in 1977 shook an Egypt still railing from the passing of Gamal Abdel Nasser and Umm Kulthum in the preceding years.
He sang love songs, war songs and songs of defeat with equal amounts of intense tenderness.
Listen to the third episode of Kalam for more on him and the era in which the 1967 war took place.
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Arab regimes are ‘bedazzled’ by Israel, says @clotbey Dr Khaled Fahmy. Listen to more of his brilliant analysis on the dynamic interactions of Israeli and Arab regimes in the upcoming episode of @kalampodcast on the Six Day War of 1967.
Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt until his death in 1970. A complicated leader who jailed Communists and the Muslim Brotherhood alike.
But he was adored across the Arab World. Even some of those previously jailed by him applauded his confrontations with European colonialism and his steadfast support for 🍉.
He presided over the 1967 defeat, when Israel destroyed Egypt’s entire air force in a day. A national disaster few leaders could have survived. When he tried to resign, the public pleaded with him to go on, which he did until he died.
In the future, Kalam will do a full episode of not an entire series on Nasser, this is just a short introduction of one of the characters who feature heavily in the coming episode on the Six Day War, featuring @clotbey
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This is the only time the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum ever needed someone to help her remember lyrics on stage. If you look closely, you’ll see a man sitting behind Umm Kulthum reading from a piece of paper and whispering the lyrics of the song to her.
This is because the song she is performing here, راجعين بقوة السلاح (we will return by force of arms) was written and composed in record time. The song was intended to build up morale across the Arab World in anticipation of an armed confrontation with Israel. This was in June 1967, just days before Israel defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a stunning victory.
Before this happened, the entire Arab World as well as most Israelis, were convinced that the Egyptian army would be in Tel Aviv by the end of the summer.
This is the topic of the upcoming episode of the Kalam podcast, with the illustrious Egyptian historian @clotbey. It will be out on Thursday on all platforms.
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The Israeli journalist and political dissident Gideon Levy often speaks about how Israeli society dehumanises Palestinians, in order to justify atrocities like we are witnessing in Gaza right now.
For most Israelis, if they are not plugged in to alternative media outlets, Palestinians are largely invisible. Hardly any of the carnage, death and starvation in Gaza is shown on Israeli TV. They simply do not see it.
Similar dynamics were present during the 1948 Nakba, shortly after which Gideon’s family arrived in Israel.
Gideon Levy is the second guest on the Kalam podcast. His honest and thoughtful answers to my questions provide a valuable insight into the Israeli psyche.
Spotify link in bio.
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Occupation cuts through time, space and meaning. Its meaning is twisted back and forth, as Suad Amiry so brilliantly puts it here. Suad is an architect and an author, and the founder of Riwaq For Documentation & Restoration – a Palestinian organisation for preserving architectural and cultural heritage. Through her work, both as an architect and an author, Suad documents and brings alive the Palestine of today and the Palestine which was nearly completely destroyed in 1948. We’re so honoured to have her as the first guest on Kalam Podcast. Listen to the episode on all platforms. https://kalam.captivate.fm
