When the Palestinian Nakba (or the catastrophe of 1948) is discussed it's commonly understood to refer to the destruction of villages and the displacement of about 700 thousand Palestinians. What gets left out is what happened to the people who remained in the borders of what became Israel and the transformations the new state created on the land, natural resources, the public space, and urban development. This week Mira Nabulsi speaks with Palestinian architect and urban planner, Lama Shehadeh about Israel's settler-colonial project and how it manifests in urban planning within the 1948 Territories and how it impacted Palestinian citizens of Israel. 

Lama Shehadeh is a Palestinian architect and urban planner based in Haifa. Shedadeh’s research focuses on the intersection of architecture and urban planning with spatial justice, environmental and political conflicts, and social formation. she is currently she works on master plans for Palestinian towns and villages within 1948’s borders.

Additional Resources:
In the Israel-Palestine conflict, urban planning is the ultimate weapon
https://www.fastcompany.com/90640935/in-the-israel-palestine-conflict-urban-planning-is-the-ultimate-weapon

The Rewriting of Palestinian Cities: Spatial Dislocations in Haifa and Akka
https://www.araburbanism.com/magazine/rewriting-palestinian-cities

Articles from EI 
https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gentrification

ISRAELI MANAGEMENT OF WATER RESOURCES: A STORY OF NATION BUILDING, NATURE TRANSFORMATION, AND ALIENATION OF PALESTINIANS FROM THEIR ENVIRONMENT
https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/67020

Acre - عكا: Akka: A Palestinian Priority
https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Acre/Story12400.html

Israeli Settler Colonialism and Urban Planning inside 1948 Territories with Lama Shehadeh

On August 10th, Hamid Nouri, a former prosecutor in Iran, went on trial in Sweden for his alleged role in the executions of thousands of political prisoners in Iran in 1988. According to the indictment brought by Swedish public prosecutors, Nouri is accused as part of the systematic execution of thousands of political prisoners in the summer of 1988. The historic trial against Nouri will hear testimonies from dozens of witnesses and it will be the first time that one of the worst crimes of the past 40 years in Iran will be examined in a court of law.

In July 1988, the Islamic Republic of Iran agreed to bring an end to the brutal eight-year war with Iraq. Over the next two months, under the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, political prisoners around the country were secretly brought before a tribunal panel that would later become known as the Death Commission. They were not told what was happening and did not know that one ‘wrong' answer concerning their faith or political affiliation would send them straight to the gallows. Thousands of men and women were condemned to death, and many were buried in mass graves in Khavaran Cemetery in the vicinity of Tehran.

Through eyewitness accounts of survivors, research by scholars and memories of children and spouses of the deceased, the new book Voices of a Massacre reconstructs the events of that bloody summer, which has still not been officially acknowledged by the Iranian government
In the forward of the Voices of Massacre Professor Angela Davis Writes 		 	 	 						
						
 There may be those who argue that these events took place long ago and that there is little to be done today, but the fact that it has been more than thirty years since this atrocity took place is an even more compelling reason why an international solidarity movement is needed to support the demand to render the Islamic Republic of Iran accountable for past as well as ongoing acts of repression. 

Malihe Spoke with Nasser Mohajer, a prominent Iranian scholar and the author of Voices of a Massacre about The 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, the significance of Hamid Nouri and the charges against him.

Nasser Mohajer is an independent scholar of modern Iranian history. He has authored many books and written numerous articles on contemporary Iran, including on the prison systems of both the Pahlavi dynasty and the Islamic Republic, women's movements for equal rights, and histories of the Iranian left.

KPFA

Nasser Mohajer on his New Book "Voices of a Massacre"

After more than a year of sustained weekly demonstrations, in March 2020 the covid pandemic came to the rescue of a contested government seen as illegitimate by many in Algeria, forcing the popular Hirak movement to suspend its protests throughout the country in the interest of public health and safety. 

One year and a half later, the north African country is now beset by multiple deep crises, after a series of devastating fires swept across the country a month ago, exacerbating the political and health crises that preceded them.

Khalil Bendib speaks with  Algerian activist, Hamza Hamouchene in London about the way these multiple catastrophes are affecting the country and how people are coping.

Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), and Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA)

The Political, Environmental and Health Crisis in Algeria

For most of a century, the region including north Africa and large swaths of west Africa all came under one and the same flag: the red white and blue of the French colonial empire. Following the loss of Louisiana in the early nineteenth century, which at the time encompassed about one third of what we know today as the United States of America, and partly to compensate for that tremendous loss, France began colonizing large swaths of North and West and central Africa, bringing under its rule close to a third of the continent’s total area.

Two hundred years later, and more than half-a-centruy after its former colonies regained their independence, France is struggling to deal with its problematic legacy in that part of the world, finding itself embroiled once again in a bloody conflict six thousand kilometers from home that shows no signs of resolving itself. Operation Barkhane, launched in 2014 by then-president Francois Hollande ostensibly to restore order in Mali and protect France from the consequences of out-of-control terrorism south of the border has become a major strategic embarrassment for the once undisputed master of that land and is proving a costly challenge to a now mid-size world power that is no longer able to spread its wings as far as it once did.

Against that backdrop, locally, the Malian state has to date proven incapable of asserting its authority over large areas of its own territory and this power vacuum has caused serious problems for Mali’s neighbors, including its neighbors to the north, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, and turning the area known as the Sahel into an incubator for terrorist and insurrectionist movements of all stripes.

Today, we talk to professor Bruno Charbonneau at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean about the recent developments in Mali and how this thorny situation is affecting the Maghreb, France and neighboring areas of West Africa.

VOMENA Oct 27 2021- How the crisis in Mali is affecting the Maghreb and France

Last month, a military coup took place in the Sudan, barely two years after a popular uprising forced the removal of dictator, Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled the country for 30 years with an iron grip with the support of the military and Sudanese Islamists.
 
The 2019 protest movement was not able to exclude the military from national politics entirely. In  August of that year, a power sharing arrangement was reached among the military leaders, a coalition of groups and organizations called the Forces for Freedom and Change and a joint ruling body, named  the sovereign Council, which was established to govern the Sudan for a little over three years until elections could be held.  
 
Following last month’s overthrow, coup leader, Gen Burhan, declared the dissolution of the Sovereign Council as well as that of the transitional government of Prime Minister Hamdok. Meanwhile, across the Sudan, millions of  people have engaged in protests, acts of civil disobedience and strikes to denounce the military’s power grab at the peril of their lives.
 
 GUESTS
Khalid Medani is an associate professor of political science and Islamic studies at McGill University  and author of the new book Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa. In this book, Khalid Mustafa Medani explains why youth are attracted to militant organizations, examining the specific role economic globalization, in the form of outmigration and expatriate remittance inflows, plays in determining how and why militant activists emerge. The study challenges existing accounts that rely primarily on ideology to explain militant recruitment. Based on extensive fieldwork, Medani offers an in-depth analysis of the impact of globalization, neoliberal reforms and informal economic networks as a conduit for the rise and evolution of moderate and militant Islamist movement

Elsadig Elsheikh is the Director of the Global Justice Program at the Othering & Belonging Institute, where he oversees the program’s projects on corporate power, food systems, forced migration, inclusiveness index, Islamophobia, and human rights mechanisms; and manages the Shahidi Project, and the Nile Project.

Nov 3, 2021- The military coup in Sudan- part 1

VOMENA Dec 20, 2021-- elections in Libya

February 4, 2022: Natasha Iskandar on migrant workers in Qatar

We discuss green energy and its relationship to colonialism in North Africa with Hamza Hamochin

Green Energy and Colonialism in North Africa

The second part of our conversation with Natasha Iskandar about migrant labor and the World Cup in Qatar.

February 11, 2022: Natasha Iskandar on Migrant workers in Qatar Pt.2

History of student movement in Iran- Part 2

The toxic legacies of the U.S. war in Iraq: A conversation with Kali Rubaii

What explains the dangerous levels of air pollution In Iran's main cities?

With the arrival of notorious fascists in prominent positions of power in Israel, Western news
media everywhere seem surprised at the extreme tenor of Israel’s government since Benjamin
Netanyahu returned to power for the umptieth time, as if racism, colonialism and apartheid
were somehow alien to the very DNA and mission of the so-called Jewish state.

This week, prominent Israeli historian scholar professor Ilan Pappe discusses with us the implications
of the recent change of administrations in Israel, for both Palestine and the entire region.

Ilan Pappe on Israel’s new government, Laura Albast on the media coverage of Palestine

The country of Lebanon has been in social and economic upheaval over the past few years,
sending many of its beleaguered citizens into international exile in search of basic economic survival.

We speak with Lebanese activist and academic Rayan El-Amine who, after a decade
in his native land, has returned to the Bay area with his family, about the travails of a country that is geographically diminutive but has always loomed large in the conscience of the world.

Guest: 
Rayan El- Amine, activist and scholar

The political and economic crisis in Lebanon

Now approaching seventy tons annually, gold has replaced cotton as Mali’s leading export, turning that country into Africa’s third-largest gold producer. The primary destination of artisanal gold seems to be the United Arab Emirates. By all evidence, the gold that shines in the souks of Dubai is the product of a complex web of criminal networks, terrorist groups and internationally sanctioned regimes, who use this non-industrially mined gold to launder their money. The Emirates have long been a global hub for transnational African merchants, who travel to Dubai to purchase imported goods such as Japanese-made auto parts or Chinese-made garments. Emirati authorities and commercial players are now exploiting their country’s existing commercial status to make the UAE an important node for the trade in precious metals, especially gold. These buyers are actively financing associates in Mali and throughout the Sahel and Sahara regions, driving the expansion of artisanal mining into new areas."

Bruce Whitehouse is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lehigh University- HIS WORK and research have concentrated on postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa, anthropological demography, development, with a special emphasis on transnational migration.

I spoke with him about the reasons why Mali is emerging a the main production hub for Sahelian countries and why Dubai is the number one destination for artisanal gold trade.
Guest:
Bruce Whitehouse, associate professor of anthropology at Lehigh University

From Mali to Dubai: The United Arab Emirates & African gold

Guest:
shahrazad Mojab, professor of Adult Education and Community Development and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto

Her most recent books are Marxism & Migration; Women of Kurdistan: A Historical and Bibliographical Study; and Revolutionary Learning: Marxism, Feminism and Knowledge.

The Islamization of the eduction system in Iran, following the 1979 revolution

Even by Israel’s abysmal standards, provocations against the people of Palestine have seen a dramatic
escalation since the arrival of Bibi Netanyahu’s new government three months ago: Hundreds of innocent civilians
murdered, including many children, an outright anti-Palestinian pogrom in the west bank that was cheered on
by the minister of interior, a brutal attack on worshippers inside one of Islam’s holy sites in the middle of Ramadan,
as well as statements by a key government official declaring that the Palestinian people simply does not exist.

At the same time, a historic wave of protests contesting the new government’s attempts to temper with the role
of the judiciary claims to defend democracy in the holy land without a single mention of the central question of Palestinian civil
and human rights. We asked asked prominent Israeli historian Ilan Pappe for his take on these recent developments.

Ilan Pappe on the latest developments in Israel

The 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq resulted in massive death and destruction, and fueled sectarian tensions, which culminated in a violent civil war. More than 300,000 Iraqis have died from direct war violence and 9.2 million people have been internally displaced, according to Brown University's Costs of War Project.
The Brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq entrenched the country in a cycle of sectarian violence and impacted every aspect of life in Iraq, from governance to health care, infrastructure, economy and the environment and long term trauma 

In a recent piece in the Guardian, one of today’s guests Professor sinan antoon writes, “ I had always hoped to see the end of Saddam’s dictatorship at the hands of the Iraqi people, not courtesy of a neocolonial project that would dismantle what had remained of the Iraqi state and replace it with a regime based on ethno-sectarian dynamics, plunging the country into violent chaos and civil wars.

This week, we bring you the first part of our conversation about the reasons behind the catastrophic invasion of Iraq- we are joined by guests 

Sinan Antoon is an award winning Iraqi poet and novelist, and an Associate Professor at New York University's Gallatin School and co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya.  His most recent novel is The Book of Collateral Damage

Dr. Omar Sirri is a research associate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London. His doctoral dissertation, Scarecrows of the State: An Ethnography of Security Checkpoints in Contemporary Baghdad, was named co-winner of the 2022 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences from the Middle East Studies Association.

They spoke with shahram aghamir

Why did the US invade Iraq, 20 years ago? A conversation with Sinan Antoon+Omar Sirri

Part 1- Professor Khahlid Medani discusses the root cause of the ongoing crisis in Sudan

On May 28th, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was re-elected for a third term by winning 52% of the popular vote- His main rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu garnered 48%.

Two weeks earlier, the right wing islamist-nationalist coalition consisting of Erdogan’s rullingJustice and development party AKP and its allies had won the majority in the parliamentary election. 

we spend the hour discussing how and why Erdogan was able to secure a third term in office despite a worsening economy and now chronic hyperinflation, the government's disastrous response to the deadly earthquakes, as well as his increasingly authoritarian rule. What happened? 

In his new article in the new left review, our today’s guest, UC Berkeley sociologist Cihan Tugal writes “There are obvious institutional reasons for the resilience of Erdoğanism. The government has spent years monopolizing the mainstream media and judiciary. Prisons are overflowing with activists, journalists and politicians. The Kurdish opposition, the only truly organized non-right-wing force in the country, has seen its democratically elected mayors replaced with state-appointed officials, who have consolidated the government’s rule over the eastern and southeastern provinces. Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg. The regime’s endurance is not simply a result of its authoritarianism; its popularity runs much deeper than that. Shahram Aghamir spoke with professor Tugal about the outcome of the recent general election in turkey

Professor Cihan Tugal on the outcome of the general election in Turkey

In recent months, Fondomonte Arizona, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia-based Almarai dairy Company has been getting renewed attention for growing alfalfa in drought-prone Arizona, and sending it to Saudi Arabia to feed the country’s cows.

Despite a worsening drought, several factors including Political influence and lack of regulations have allowed the company to draw an unlimited amount of groundwater from the wells it operates in the area. 

According to the Associated Press, the two new wells would have pumped in just three minutes what a family of four uses in a month.
Why did Saudi Arabia choose Arizona for its crop production? 		

In her new book Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arabia and Arizona. University of Syracuse political geographer  professor Natalie Koch explores the exchange of colonial technologies between the Arabian Peninsula and the United States over the last two centuries,

Prof Natalie Koch explores the relationship between Arizona and Saudi Arabia in "Arid Empire"

Israeli' assault on Jenin refugee camp &  'Sinbad Voyage' mural in Berkeley

Making sense of the devastating floods in Libya

American Anthropologist Association voted in favour of boycotting Israeli academic institutions

Gaza: Besieged since 2007, now under Israel’s “total blockade”

What does it take to end the war on the Palestinians in Gaza?

Students face backlash for supporting Palestinian rights, Stage reading of Woman Life Freedom

Hossam el-Hamalawy on Egypt’s role in Israel's war on Gaza

July 28th, 2017: Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid: an interview with Ilan Pappe

Ten years ago, the Arab Spring took the world by surprise, profoundly shaking the status quo in North Africa and the Middle East and bringing hope for a new democratic beginning in that long-suffering region. After several regimes were non-violently toppled in rapid succession through peaceful pressure from the streets, reactionary forces in the region regrouped and launched fierce counter-revolutions in certain countries and outright civil war in others. We take a historical look at the past decade with Egyptian veteran journalist and activist Hossam El Hamalawy
photo by Hossam El-Hamalawy:  arabawy.org

Ten Years After The Arab Spring: A Conversation with Egyptian Activist Hossam el-Hamalawy

Voices of the Middle East and North Africa is a weekly program hosted by Malihe Razazan and Mira Nabulsi. It explores the richly diverse and fascinating world of culture and politics of the Middle East and North Africa through a complex web of class, gender, ethnic, religious and regional differences. Voices of the Middle East and North Africa airs on KPFA radio, 94.1 FM, in Berkeley, CA. Online on kpfa.org or on Apple Podcasts.

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