The making of Israel's Palestinian mafias

An epidemic of criminal violence is devastating Palestinian communities inside Israel, with this year’s death toll reaching 168 at the time of recording. But the numbers tell only part of the story: Mafia networks have penetrated almost every aspect of life — from local governance to education, welfare, banking, and waste collection. On this episode of The +972 Podcast, anthropologist Eilat Maoz examines how this epidemic of organized crime became so deeply entrenched in Palestinian society amid economic liberalization, social fragmentation, and state repression at the turn of the century. Drawing on examples of Palestinian cities in Israel from Arraba to Nazareth, and extending her analysis to the West Bank and Gaza, Maoz shows how the Israeli state relies on violent middlemen to maintain control — ever-present when it comes to political repression, yet deliberately passive when it comes to confronting criminal networks.Additional reading:How organized crime took over Israel’s Palestinian communitiesWhy Palestinians in Israel believe crime is a ‘strategic project of the state’How weapons from the Gaza war are killing Palestinians on Israel’s streetsAbandoned by the state, Palestinian citizens of Israel face record crime waveUnder Israel’s watch, Palestinian gangs are sowing chaos in the West BankFirst Israel silenced Palestinian citizens. Now it turns to their leadersIn first, Israel convicts Palestinian citizens for chanting slogansTheme music by Ghassan BirumiThis episode was edited by Abed Abou ShhadehSupport the show

In the wake of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, it is easy to conclude that international law has failed. But Israeli scholar Neve Gordon argues that the problem runs deeper: states can wield the language and principles of international law not only to evade accountability, but to justify mass violence itself. On this episode of The +972 Podcast, Gordon traces how Israel has used legal concepts to construct a rationale for its assault on Gaza, how human rights advocacy has shifted from political struggle toward an increasingly professionalized field of lawyers and experts, and how the language of human rights can be co-opted to advance the very forms of domination it was meant to challenge. What, then, can international law actually offer a struggle for Palestinian liberation?Watch the episode on YouTube:https://youtu.be/hUQ3nqrstroThe full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Edited by Abed Abou ShhadehTheme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Israel’s abuse of Palestinian prisoners and detainees has reached new heights since October 7, particularly for those arrested in Gaza. But what does this incarceration regime actually look like? Human rights lawyer Sahar Francis knows it better than most. She has spent decades advocating for Palestinian prisoners, and she tells +972 that the past three years are the worst she’s ever seen — even though conditions before the war had long been characterized by arbitrary cruelty. She describes how Israel has weaponized the legal system to hold detainees in inhumane conditions without charge or trial, and calls for international pressure in order to end it.Additional Reading:‘It would’ve been better if they shot us’: Palestinians recount prison abuseInside Israel’s torture camp for Gazan detaineesThe writing was on the wall for Israel’s torture of Palestinian prisoners‘More horrific than Abu Ghraib’: Lawyer recounts visit to Israeli detention center‘My hands are paralyzed from torture’: Gazans reveal horrors of Ofer CampIsraeli intelligence data: Militants account for only 1 in 4 Gaza detaineesNew data reveals 98 Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody since October 7‘I cannot help my clients’: The impossible task of representing Palestinian detainees‘His only crime is that he is a Palestinian doctor’Produced by Jennifer Cutler, edited by Abed Abou Shhadeh.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

As Israel prepares for elections on Oct. 27, the past four years demand a reckoning: what has prolonged far-right rule changed in law, policy, and political culture? And what does it reveal about the ability of Israeli institutions and civil society to protect rights during a time of acute crisis? Noa Sattath, Executive Director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) — one of the country's oldest and most prominent civil and human rights organizations — offers a behind the scenes look at what it means to fight for rights through institutions that have been complicit in horrific state violence, yet remain among the few arenas where that violence can still be challenged. Additional reading:The Association for Civil Rights in IsraelThe full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

In 2011, social media helped topple dictators. Today, platforms deprioritize political content across the board. But for Palestinians, the problem goes deeper than algorithms — it's systematic. A new report from 7amleh, the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, documents more than 3,000 cases of Meta restricting Palestinian content over five years. 7amleh's executive director Nadim Nashif joins us to break down the mechanisms behind this digital erasure — and why Meta is just the clearest example of a digital ecosystem stacked against Palestinians.Right now, we’re running a fundraising campaign with a goal of welcoming 200 new members. +972 Magazine is fiercely independent, and that’s only possible because of listeners and readers like you. Head over to 972mag.com to learn more and support our journalism by becoming a member today.Additional reading:The Platformicide of Palestine (2021–2025): A Data-Based Analysis of Meta’s Policy Application, Moderation Enforcement, and CommunicationMonetizing Occupation: Meta’s Financial Enablement of Settlement Activity and Violent Rhetoric Against Palestinians The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

On July 1, Israel and the United States signed an agreement to build a permanent U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on confiscated Palestinian property. Among the descendants of the Palestinian families who own the site is historian Rashid Khalidi. He details his family’s nearly 30 year legal battle against the planned embassy — and reflects on whether the hundred-year war on Palestine may finally be entering a new chapter, given historic shifts in global public opinion. Right now, we’re running a one-month fundraising campaign with a goal of welcoming 200 new members. +972 Magazine is fiercely independent, and that’s only possible because of listeners and readers like you. Head over to 972mag.com to learn more and support our journalism by becoming a member today.https://www.972mag.com/membersThe full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Since October 2023, much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble. But architect and Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman argues that destruction alone does not capture what is taking place. Drawing on his new book, “Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide,” he describes a process that goes beyond erasure: the “rubbing out of any trace of existence” aimed at expelling the Palestinian population and permanently preventing their return.Right now, we’re running a one-month fundraising campaign with a goal of welcoming 200 new members. +972 Magazine is fiercely independent, and that’s only possible because of listeners and readers like you. Head over to 972mag.com to learn more and support our journalism by becoming a member today.Additional reading:‘Render it unusable’: Israel’s mission of total urban destruction (+972 Magazine)The Killing Of Hind Rajab (Forensic Architecture)Israeli Disinformation: Al-Ahli Hospital (Forensic Architecture)The Massacre of Aid Workers in Tel Al-Sultan (Forensic Architecture)A Cartography of Genocide (Forensic Architecture)The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

The global movement for Palestinian justice has achieved real gains — in international courts, in diplomatic shifts, in a transformation of public opinion. Yet the official Palestinian leadership remains deeply fractured, ill-equipped to meet the moment. Omar Rahman, fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, makes the case that the Palestinian leadership crisis is a national emergency: those in power prioritize their own survival over any coherent response to Israel’s genocide, leaving Palestinians without a national vision and strategy at the moment they need it most.Additional Reading:Omar Rahman’s archive at +972October 7 Exposed the Depth of the Palestinian Leadership CrisisRupture and Representation: The Palestinian National Movement After October 7The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

For generations, Jewish-Israeli children have been brought up in an education system where Palestinians rarely appear as Palestinians. Instead, they are "Arabs," “enemies,” and a "demographic threat" — or, in the words of scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan, "a problem to be solved." A professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Peled-Elhanan has spent years documenting how Israeli textbooks erase Palestinian life, mobilize Holocaust memory to produce existential fear, and present occupation and ethnic hierarchy as natural facts of life. As Israel's genocide in Gaza lays bare the consequences of decades of dehumanization, she reflects on what this system has produced — and, having experienced the post-October 7 crackdown on dissent firsthand, what it does to those who challenge it.The full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show

Jaffa was once a cosmopolitan port city deeply connected to the Arab world. Then, within a few years after 1948, it was transformed: most of its Palestinian population was expelled, its institutions seized and repurposed, and the few residents who remained were confined to a ghetto, often in houses that were not their own, under laws designed to make that dispossession permanent. Abed Abou Shhadeh, a community organizer and researcher, comes from one of the few families that never left. Today, he is raising his children in the city his great-grandfather refused to flee. Abou Shhadeh traces how the catastrophe of 1948 unfolded specifically in Jaffa, the parallels he draws between the ethnic cleansing of the city and the genocide in Gaza, and what it means to resist erasure across generations.Additional reading:Abed Abou Shhadeh’s archive at +972For Palestinian parents, every day of this war provokes existential anxietyThe full transcript of this episode will be available on our website.Theme music by Ghassan BirumiSupport the show