The Promises and Pitfalls of International Law vis-à-vis Palestine

Send us a textEmmaia Gelman, director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, discusses Zionism's relationship to racism and colonialism, the threat to Americans' First Amendment rights posed by the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism which the Anti-Defamation League and other Zionist groups are promoting, and how Zionism is evolving into an arm of American fascism under the Trump administration.

Send us a textFor this week’s episode, we are excerpting portions of a panel entitled The Struggle Continues: The Fight for Palestine in North America held on Aug 30, 2025 at the second annual People's Conference for Palestine in Detroit. We are excerpting PYM organizer Mohammed Nabulsi’s responses to questions posed by the moderator Loubna Qatami.In response to the last two years of Zionist genocide in Gaza, a powerful mass movement has erupted. From the streets to the workplace, from university campuses to the classrooms, millions of people across North America and the world have been exposed to injustice in Palestine and in their own lives. In this panel, leaders in the movement for Palestinian liberation in North America will reflect on the last two years of struggle and examine the movement’s current state, its key challenges, and its future direction.The full 2 hour long panel can be accessed on the YouTube channel of Breakthrough News. Special thanks to Breakthrough News, PYM and the panelists.

Send us a textHadar Susskind, president and CEO of New Jewish Narrative, talks about Israel's decision to advance a controversial, long-planned and long-delayed settlement regarded as a death knell for an independent Palestinian state. The E1 settlement would add 3,400 new settlement units east of Jerusalem and split the Occupied West Bank in two.  Susskind was previously head of Americans for Peace Now,  a peace group that tracked the growth of Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank. That organization recently merged with Ameinu, another progressive, venerable Jewish group, to establish New Jewish Narrative.  It continues Americans for Peace Now's activities. Susskind describes the vision of full equality of Jews and Palestinians in Israel that the new organization is based on and holds out hope that forces both outside and within Israel may yet stop the E1 settlement and the Israeli government's annexation of the West Bank.

Send us a textOn this Beyond the Walls edition of Understanding Israel Palestine, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel proposes an evolving Beyond the Walls edition mission statement, covers the news and speaks with Harry Davies — Guardian investigations correspondent — about his investigations along with colleagues like Yuval Abraham — at +972 & Local Call — into the major project & contract by Israeli Military Intelligence Unit 8200 with Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Servers in Europe to bulk collect Palestinians’ communications of all sorts in order to mass surveil & target.———-Harry Davies:https://www.theguardian.com/profile/harry-davieshttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-israeli-military-palestinian-phone-calls-cloudhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/10/activists-in-netherlands-protest-on-roof-of-microsoft-site-storing-israeli-military-datahttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/microsoft-launches-inquiry-claims-israel-used-tech-mass-surveillance-palestiniansYuval Abraham:https://www.972mag.com/writer/yuval-abraham/https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-8200-intelligence-surveillance-cloud-azure/https://gijn.org/stories/investigating-israel-war-972-local-call/News Stories:1) https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-west-bank-e1-settlements-8a713939ee6f6552381246dacc8a13012) https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-calls-up-tens-thousands-reservists-before-new-gaza-offensive-2025-08-20/https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/8/19/israeli-attacks-kill-35-palestinians-in-gaza3) https://zeteo.com/p/second-most-powerful-house-democrat-gaza-genocide4) https://www.icij.org/investigations/cyprus-confidential/predator-spyware-firm-intellexa-resurgent-after-u-s-sanctions/https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_815) https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/senior-israel-national-cyber-directorate-official-arrested-suspicion-paedophiliaIf you are interested in future access to further Beyond the Walls edition archives, extended episodes and more, you can sign up for the Beyond the Walls archive/newsletter here:https://beyondthewalls.substack.com

Send us a textSince 1967, Israel has imprisoned as many as one million Palestinians—men, women, and children. Many are “administrative detainees,” taken without charge or a fixed release date, and receiving little or no due process and no trial by jury. Original detention orders can be renewed repeatedly. Many remain imprisoned for years, subjected to mental and physical abuse and torture. Might these detainees, arrested for so-called “public security,” more appropriately be called captives, hostages, or abductees? Journalist Hind Shraydeh joined us to discuss these Israeli arrest practices, prison conditions, prisoner abuse, the impact on families and communities, and efforts to end the occupation and its unjust system of abduction and incarceration. Hind will also be a panelist on this topic for the Voices from the Holy Land Film Salon on 8/17 at 3PM. More info can be found at voicesfromtheholyland.org.

Send us a textLecturer, anthropologist and activist Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, continues talking with Margot Patterson about Israelis and Palestinians' past, present and future together. He discusses how Zionists historically and today perceive Israel's right to Palestine, their views of Palestinians and the ongoing war in Gaza, and  how Israel's brutal conduct of the war is altering Americans' perception of Israel and ending the taboo on criticism of it. A co-founder of the One Democratic State Campaign in Israel, Halper explains why a two-state solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is no longer possible; living together in one democratic state is the only way forward for Israelis and Palestinians.

Send us a textAnthropologist, activist and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Jeff Halper speaks to Margot Patterson about how Israel’s genocide in Gaza and recent attack on Iran fit into its larger geopolitical goal of normalization with the Arab world and regional hegemony. Halper says Israel is intent on breaking Palestinian resistance, pacifying Palestine and creating a period of industrial quiet in which it can normalize relations with the Arab world via the Abraham Accords. 

Send us a textDr. Emilio Dabed, who we last spoke with one year ago in July of 2024, returns to the show to offer a retrospective on the argument he advanced in an article published around that time. In that article, Dr. Dabed argues that the true purpose of international law is to administer colonial violence, and he defends this contention in light of the ICJ ruling that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal. Only with a strategic and disciplined mass solidarity movement behind them will Palestinians may be able to make use of the international legal system.

Send us a textFor this episode of Understanding Israel Palestine — a Beyond the Walls edition — Jeremy Rothe-Kushel speaks with Matthew Ghobrial Cockerill, a doctoral candidate in International History at the London School of Economics (LSE) and holds a law degree from the University of Chicago.Cockerill’s research, especially during the past year, hones in on the demographics of fatalities in the Gaza Strip and their implications for determining the true nature & real intent of Israeli military conduct. His research exposing various Israeli claims as reliant on a falsification of the relevant statistics has been primarily published by the British NGO Action on Armed Violence.Under his History Speaks social & multimedia platforms, Cockerill engages as a public intellectual, in vigorous public interest dialogue, analysis & debate, while contributing to the crucial aforementioned research about the reality of the genocidal Israeli assault on & criminal atrocities in Palestinian Gaza done under the apparent pretext of a war in response to the October 7th attacks.https://x.com/history__speakshttps://www.youtube.com/@historyspeaksYT

Send us a textMasafer Yatta is a collection of hamlets in the Occupied West Bank that Israel has long tried to wrest from Palestinians living there. The intensifying struggle there is the topic of the recent Oscar-winning documenary "No Other Land." Robert Suberi is an American who has been going to Masafer Yatta since 2019 to document human rights abuses and to  be a protective presence for Palestinians under threat of attack by Israeli soldiers and state-backed settlers.  Suberi  talks about his evolution from ardent Zionist to a critic of the Israeli state committed to solidarity with the besieged residents of Masafer Yatta. Tthere are many groups providing protective presence in Palestine; Suberi discusses what they do and his own positive experience with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence.