The East is a Podcast

Guest host and writer Amal Nura (@amaalnuura) interviews Aziz Faarah (@azizfaarah), independent archivist and collector of Somali artifacts. They discuss his auction adventures and encounters with vendors including one who spent a few weeks in Somali jails in the 1970s https://twitter.com/azizfaarah/status/1736547727821943090. Their conversation touches on the value of material culture, the museum as a colonial invention and Aziz’s mission to reclaim and repatriate pieces to Somalis in the Horn of Africa and across the diaspora. To read more and get a glimpse into Aziz’s collection:  https://africasacountry.com/2024/04/buying-back-our-things   Consider supporting the show www.patreon.com/east_podcast Check out the Anti-Imperialist Archive https://feeds.libsyn.com/437079/rss

Rana Barakat is associate professor of history at Birzeit University in Palestine and director of the BZU Museum (@bzu.museum). Abduljawad Omar (@HHamayel2) is a lecturer at Birzeit University.   Check out the article, "The parallel human: Walid Daqqah on the 1948 Palestinian political prisoners" by Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh An archive of Walid Daqqa's writings https://shorturl.at/hyzQX Watch the video edition on our YouTube channel Consider supporting the show www.patreon.com/east_podcast Check out the Anti-Imperialist Archive https://feeds.libsyn.com/437079/rss

On Day 191 the tankie therapy group convenes (Joe Emersberger (@rosendo_joe), Rob Rousseau (@robrousseau), Mikey Inouye (@karaokecomputer), Sina Rahmani (@UrOrientalist), Alex Aviña (@Alexander_Avina) but for an analytical discussion about Iran's missiles hitting Israeli airbases the day before. A summary of what happened, a media roundup, Jordan's role, the new equation, and more. Watch this episode on Justin's YouTube channel Consider supporting the show www.patreon.com/east_podcast Check out the Anti-Imperialist Archive https://feeds.libsyn.com/437079/rss

Investigative journalist William Van Wagenen (@WVanwagenen) from The Cradle returns to the podcast to discuss his deep dive into what really happened on Oct 7th. Watch this episode on our YouTube channel https://youtu.be/PP7ZBzTJFmU Check out the article, "What Really Happened on October 7?" https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/what-really-happened-on-october-7/?feed_id=11264&_unique_id=65d3514b9b6fe Consider supporting the show www.patreon.com/east_podcast Check out the Anti-Imperialist Archive https://feeds.libsyn.com/437079/rss

  Introductory Remarks by Professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya) PANEL 3 “Seeing Palestine, Not Seeing the Palestinians: Gaza in the British Pathé Colonial Lens” Shahd Abusalama, Lebanese American University My presentation will critically engage with the representation of the Palestine question in general and Gaza refugees in particular by British Pathé, which, as a leading media institution of the British Empire, was also a dedicated advocate of Zionist ambitions and Jewish settlement in Mandate Palestine. While presenting corresponding reels, I will interrogate Pathé’s discursive strategies in representing the 1947-48 Nakba (Arabic: catastrophe), the 1956-7 Israeli occupation of Gaza, and Israel’s subsequent occupation of Gaza beginning in 1967, exposing its ideological framing of the Palestinian people as either “terrorists” or “helpless victims” and the glorification of the newborn state of Israel. I argue that British Pathé provided a consolidating hegemonic discourse on Palestine-Israel that prevails to this day in mainstream Western political, media, and academic discourse to shield Israel and its allies from responsibility. (25 minutes) PLENARY PANEL Art credit:  "Untitled 2022" by Heba Zaqout, artist and fine arts teacher, martyred 13 October 2023 with two of her children in Gaza.

PANEL 2   Introductory Remarks by Professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya)   "Queer Threads: Activist Fashion in Palestine" Roberto Filippello, University of Amsterdam In this presentation I sketch the contours of the formation of an activist fashion scene across Palestine in the face of material challenges that the infrastructures of the occupation pose to the production and circulation of clothes. I theorize the creative practices of Palestinian fashion designers and image-makers as makeshift acts of collective disidentification with the ecocidal, racist, and queerphobic Zionist enterprise, and argue that “queer decolonial fashion practices” offer a model of creative activism wherein environmental ethics, anti-racism, and queer claims are fundamentally interconnected. Conjoining Gramscian analytical categories and queer epistemologies from the South, I highlight how sartorial praxis and embodiment figure in the imagination of Palestinian youth. (25 minutes) “Laboratories of Speculation: Rethinking Jericho, ‘the City of the Moon’” Ronak K. Kapadia, University of Illinois Chicago (via Zoom) Critical queer feminist study has lovingly brought renewed methodological attention to long-forgotten, once-inhabited sites, archives, geographies, and histories, which can be newly reanimated for the service of contemporary collective social life. One such instance in present-day Palestine has been the international art, writing, and research residency called el-Atlal (“The Ruins”) co-founded by Karim Kattan, Victoria Dabdoub, Rebecca Topakian, Céleste Haller from 2014-2019 in the town of Jericho, the “oldest city in the world.” Given its historical heritage and complex station in the local imagination, Jericho is a generative utopian site for enacting new incubatory spaces for alternative political and aesthetic possibility in the dystopian here and now. If Palestine, and the Palestinian people subject to Israeli rule, have long served as one of the foremost paradigmatic “laboratories” for the development of late modern settler security states and their fabrication of new technologies of policing, maiming, and killing perfected on Palestinians under siege, this talk explores how we might reimagine an archetypal “Palestine” instead as an experimental site of decolonial fantasy and creative freedom, one that also portends the ends of the conjoined US/Israeli settler security states and their forever wars on terror. (25 minutes)   Art credit:  "Untitled 2022" by Heba Zaqout, artist and fine arts teacher, martyred 13 October 2023 with two of her children in Gaza.

Concrete Imaginings: Building a Liberated Palestine An In-Person and Livestreamed ConferenceWednesday, February 28, 2024   Panel 1 Introductory Remarks by Professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya)   “The Urgency of Anti-Imperial Feminism: Lessons from Palestine” Walaa Alqaisiya, Ca' Foscari University of Venice (via Zoom) (08:30-38:30) This talk maps the epistemic, political, and moral grounds informing the urgency of anti-imperial feminism that Palestine brings into sight. Combining decolonial and Third-Worldist Marxist theoretical approaches, the first part of the talk unpacks the functionality of gender to the onto-epistemic foundations of Zionist settler colonialism under US-led imperialism. The second part discusses how the centering of the Palestinian national question redefines the moral and political parameters of feminist and queer mobilisation. In doing so, the last part shows the limitations and tensions that post-structural feminist and queer approaches carry, when dealing with the question of liberation, violence, and development in global South contexts, such as Palestine. (25 minutes)   “Christian Zionism, Displacement, and the Role of Travel” Jennifer Kelly, University of California, Santa Cruz (via Zoom)(~39:00-1:03:00) A central tenet of Falwell’s Moral Majority, founded in 1979, was unequivocal support for Israel and, by 1983, he began his first of many “Friendship Tours to Israel,” which included meetings with government officials and tours of Israeli military installations. Today, Christian Zionism tours follow this template, pairing pilgrimage with celebrations of Israel’s sustained displacement of Palestinians. At the center of displacement in Jerusalem, for example, is a biblical theme park—run by settlers—planned for Silwan that comprises a cable car, a seven-story Jewish cultural center on Wadi Hilweh land, and shopping centers and homes for settlers. And, during this current genocidal war on Gaza, Christian Zionists across the U.S. are once again eagerly seeing Israel’s destruction of Gaza as a sign of end times and calling for unchecked Israeli control over all of Palestine. In this paper, I show not only how tourism is never a thing apart from colonial state violence, but also how tourism is part of the fabric of a U.S. Christian Zionism that both enables and facilitates Palestinian displacement. (25 minutes)   Art credit:  "Untitled 2022" by Heba Zaqout, artist and fine arts teacher, martyred 13 October 2023 with two of her children in Gaza.

*This is a preview of the latest bonus episode. Sign up for $5 a month to access the entire conversation and help keep the show going or watch the full episode on our YouTube channel*   Trying out a new live format and was joined by friends of the show Alex Aviña (@Alexander_Avina) and Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) for an angry deep dive into some of the terrible articles written on the Gaza genocide. Watch the video edition on The East is a Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQH3uMQU3mk&ab_channel=TheEastisaPodcast Some of the "articles" we discussed https://damagemag.com/2024/03/05/seven-realities-of-israel-palestine/ https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21/adam-shatz/vengeful-pathologies

Paris Yeros (@parisyeros) teaches at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil.  Guest host and friend of the show Bikrum Gil (@bikrumsinghgill) discuss Paris' latest article published in Agrarian South, "A Polycentric World Will Only Be Possible by the Intervention of the ‘Sixth Great Power" Read the article here https://www.agrariansouth.org/2023/12/16/a-polycentric-world-will-only-be-possible-by-the-intervention-of-the-sixth-great-power/   Consider supporting the show www.patreon.com/east_podcast Check out the Anti-Imperialist Archive https://feeds.libsyn.com/437079/rss

Tankie therapy session as we watch the newest atrocities unfolding at al-Shifa, make historical parallels with the Argentine Dirty War and the 1857 War in India, the Battle of Algiers and the film Downfall... with Nora (@norabf), Matteo (@capassomat) , Mikey (@karaokecomputer), Sina (@UrOrientalist), and Alex (@Alexander_Avina).   Watch the video edition on The Anti-Empire Project YouTube channel   Consider supporting the show www.patreon.com/east_podcast    

Vijay Prasad (@vijayprashad) in conversation with friend of the podcast Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya).     Sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Institute for Arts and Humanities, Departments of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and of Communication, and the Curriculums in Global Studies and in Peace, War, & Defense.   Consider supporting the show www.patreon.com/east_podcast

Ottawa-based Physician Dr. Yipeng Ge (@yipengGe) reflects on being attacked by the Zionist lobby for speaking out on the Gaza genocide and his subsequent trip to Rafah as part of a medical delegation. Watch the episode on The East is a Podcast YouTube channel   Support www.patreon.com/east_podcast

The crew is back on the couch at the therapist's office with Alex (@Alexander_Avina), Nora  (@norabf), Sina (@urorientalist) and two new guests: Mikey (@karaokecomputer) and Arama. Watch the video edition on the East is a Podcast YouTube channel Consider supporting the show www.patreon.com/east_podcast

Abdaljawad Omar is a PhD student and part-time lecturer in the Philosophy and Cultural Studies Department at Birzeit University. Watch the video edition on The East is a Podcast YouTube channel https://youtu.be/tDkaO2lmD4o  Check out his articles on Mondoweiss https://mondoweiss.net/author/abdaljawad-omar/ Listen to his episodes on Millenials are Killing Capitalism https://millennialsarekillingcapitalism.libsyn.com/turning-grief-into-defiance-abdaljawad-omar-on-resistance-possibility-in-palestine  Interview with Louis Allday https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/an-unyielding-will-to-continue     Consider supporting the show www.patreon.com/east_podcast

Duke Professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya) interviews visual artist and filmmaker Jumana Manna for the third episode of her Palestine Seminar.   https://www.jumanamanna.com/ Professor Hasso will be convening a conference titled, "Concrete Imaginings: Building a Liberated Palestine" on Feb 28th, 2024.  It will be livestreamed and open access.  Live stream link https://duke.zoom.us/j/93556167414 Detailed schedule available here https://tickets.duke.edu/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=concreteimaginings&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id= From the syllabus: "My initial goal was to give a platform to Palestinian artists and intellectuals working in Palestine but with limited opportunities to work or share their work outside of a permanent crisis mode produced by the myriad forms of violence attached to Israeli colonization. This violence regularly reaches university campuses and touches every dimension of life. The syllabus is idiosyncratic in the sense that it represents my intellectual and pedagogical interests for this seminar. I encourage people to use it as an educational resource and to take parts for their own teaching." Download syllabus https://franceshasso.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/the-palestine-seminar-sp-2024-syllabus.pdf

*This is a preview of the latest bonus episode. Sign up for $5 a month to access the entire conversation and help keep the show going or watch the full episode on our YouTube channel* Friend of the podcast Max Ajl returns to the show to discuss his latest article, "Palestines's Great Flood: Part 1."  Download the article here https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378147524_Palestine%27s_Great_Flood_Part_I  Watch the video edition on The East is a Podcast YouTube channel Support www.patreon.com/east_podcast

Justin Podur hosts another seesion of Tankie Group Therapy marking Day 135 of the war with Matteo, Alex, and Nora. Watch the video edition on The Anti-Empire Project YouTube channel Consider supporting the podcast www.patreon.com/east_podcast

Duke Professor France Hasso (@nasawiyya) in conversation with University of Exeter professor of History Ilan Pappe as part of her Palestine Seminar.   Professor Hasso will be convening a conference titled, "Concrete Imaginings: Building a Liberated Palestine" on Feb 28th, 2024.  It will be livestreamed and open access.  Live stream link https://duke.zoom.us/j/93556167414 Detailed schedule available here https://tickets.duke.edu/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=concreteimaginings&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id= From the syllabus: "My initial goal was to give a platform to Palestinian artists and intellectuals working in Palestine but with limited opportunities to work or share their work outside of a permanent crisis mode produced by the myriad forms of violence attached to Israeli colonization. This violence regularly reaches university campuses and touches every dimension of life. The syllabus is idiosyncratic in the sense that it represents my intellectual and pedagogical interests for this seminar. I encourage people to use it as an educational resource and to take parts for their own teaching." Download syllabus https://franceshasso.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/the-palestine-seminar-sp-2024-syllabus.pdf Course listing https://gendersexualityfeminist.duke.edu/palestine-seminar-gsf-648 Donate  https://linktr.ee/palestine.donation.suggestions Consider supporting the podcast www.patreon.com/east_podcast

*This is a preview of the latest bonus episode. Sign up for $5 a month to access the entire conversation and help keep the show going or watch the full episode on our YouTube channel* Rob Rousseau (@robrousseau) returns to the podcast to answer the age-old question that has stumped generations of thinkers: what the hell is wrong with Canada?   Check out his Twitch   https://www.twitch.tv/robrousseau Watch the video edition on the East is a Podcast YouTube channel 

Duke professor Frances Hasso (@nasawiyya) guest hosts a conversation with Louis Allday, founding editor of  LiberatedTexts.com, as part of her  Spring 2024 course. The pair discuss the significance, relevance, and insight of three books highlighted by Liberated Texts previously; “Zionist Colonialism in Palestine” by Fayez Sayegh, “On Zionist Literature” by Ghassan Kanafani and “Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany” by Faris Glubb. They also discuss these articles by Louis: “What existence is worth”: The Martyrdom of Refaat Alareer https://electronicintifada.net/content/what-existence-worth-martyrdom-refaat-alareer/42491 “A Race Against Time”: The life and death of Ghassan Kanafani https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/a-race-against-time-the-life-and-death-of-ghassan-kanafani/ From the syllabus: "My initial goal was to give a platform to Palestinian artists and intellectuals working in Palestine but with limited opportunities to work or share their work outside of a permanent crisis mode produced by the myriad forms of violence attached to Israeli colonization. This violence regularly reaches university campuses and touches every dimension of life. The syllabus is idiosyncratic in the sense that it represents my intellectual and pedagogical interests for this seminar. I encourage people to use it as an educational resource and to take parts for their own teaching." Download syllabus https://franceshasso.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/the-palestine-seminar-sp-2024-syllabus.pdf Course listing https://gendersexualityfeminist.duke.edu/palestine-seminar-gsf-648 Consider supporting the podcast www.patreon.com/east_podcast