Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

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A Conversation with PETER BEINART:

Many Jews treat a Jewish state the way the Bible feared Jewish monarchs would treat themselves: as a higher power, beholden to no external standard. Again and again, we are ordered to accept a Jewish state’s ‘right to exist.’ But the language is perverse. In Jewish tradition, states have no inherent value. States are not created in the image of God; human beings are. States are mere instruments… The legitimacy of a Jewish state—like the holiness of the Jewish people—is conditional on how it behaves. It is subject to law, not a law in and of itself.

Shaping Iranian Diasporic Identities in Times of Crisis & Change: A Conversation with Persis Karim & Roya Ahmadi

Shaping Iranian Diasporic Identities in Times of Crisis & Change: A Conversation with Persis Karim & Roya Ahmadi

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on a new documentary film, The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life. The film captures the lives of young Iranian-Americans who come to the San Francisco Bay Area around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and find themselves involved with, and helping to shape, a vibrant, international culture of politics and art.

Guernica & Gaza: Linking Antifascist Solidarity & Solidarity with Palestine

Guernica & Gaza: Linking Antifascist Solidarity & Solidarity with Palestine

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Linking Antifascist Solidarity & Solidarity with Palestine

Conversation with LEN and HWEI-RU TSOU, the Taiwanese activists whose main commitment, over a period of decades, has been to discover and disclose the involvement of Asian and South Asian anti-fascists in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Today’s conversation is perhaps one of the most unusual and unusually important ones we have had on the podcast. Not only do we discover their longstanding friendship with the celebrated anarchist David Graeber and his father during this journey, but we also hear them linking their anti-fascist work to their pro-Palestine activism, which included their participation in the flotillas of X and Y protesting Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza. We hear Len and Nancy (Ruwei’s English name) draw the links between the anti-fascist struggle in Spain and the international movement for Palestinian rights. The conversation inspires and gives one hope about international solidarity in the past, and the present.

(Highlights) DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

(Highlights) DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

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Writer, Activist, Comparative Literature Professor
Author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back

To explore different worlds. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their everyday lives outside of the literature. So when I become involved in politics or a cause, it’s a reflection of what I've learned through any number of things including literature. Literature doesn’t stand alone. Literature is part of the world.

DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

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Writer, Activist, Comparative Literature Professor
Author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back

To explore different worlds. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their everyday lives outside of the literature. So when I become involved in politics or a cause, it’s a reflection of what I've learned through any number of things including literature. Literature doesn’t stand alone. Literature is part of the world.