Understanding Israel Palestine

For this episode of Understanding Israel Palestine: Beyond the Walls, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel speaks with Stacy Gilbert about the background of her public resignation from the Biden State Department, the longterm humanitarian crisis deepened by the ending of US financial aid and political support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, and why all of this deeply haunts her and should publicly and politically haunt all those on up through President Biden who facilitated these crimes against humanity, and against American and International law. Stacy Gilbert is a former Senior Civil-Military Advisor in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, where she worked for more than 20 years in humanitarian emergencies and refugee crises worldwide. She advised U.S. and foreign militaries on humanitarian principles, civilian protection, aid worker security, and emergency response, and deployed to major crises including Kosovo, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In May 2024, she resigned from the State Department in protest after it concluded that Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, a decision that drew national and international attention. She continues to advocate for humanitarian issues, adherence to law, and public accountability. Stacy will be a panelist on this month’s Voices From the Holy Land film and discussion salon titled The Palestinian Exile - 78 Years and No Future about the ongoing reality and necessary humanitarian resolution to the decades long and recently escalated Palestinian UN refugee camp crisis. The salon will take on place on Sunday September 20th, 2026 at 3pm Eastern time. You can go to VoicesFromTheHolyLand.org to find out more and gain access to the films and salon. Understanding Israel Palestine archives: kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/ Beyond the Walls newsletter: beyondthewalls.substack.com

How is anti-Muslim animus driving races around the country, from Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan to Zohran Mamdani in NYC? What accounts for the way in which Muslims, a religious group entitled to freedom of religion, instead are targeted for their participation in American politics? Dr. Sahar Aziz of Rutgers Law School joined the show to unpack these questions. Follow Sahar Aziz on social media @saharazizlaw and learn more about the Center for Security, Race and Rights at csrr.rutgers.edu and on social media @RutgersCSRR and @RUCSRR

Professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist in the history and politics of the modern Middle East, Ian Lustick speaks to Margot Patterson about his and Eli Clifton's new book, Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power. Lustick says the Israel lobby has changed significantly since 2007 when Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published their ground-breaking book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. The existence and influence of the lobby can no longer be denied nor can Israel's policies be publicly defended, Lustick says. He discusses how changes both in the United States and in the world have affected the Israel lobby, altered its strategy and made it more dangerous to Americans' freedom.

In July, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that the United States was launching a government-wide campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court. His announcement follows President Trump's Executive Order 14,203 in February of 2025 imposing economic sanctions on a dozen ICC officials. Citing the ICC's arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Trump administration claims the ICC threatens U.S. sovereignty and that of its allies. Richard Falk, Princeton University professor emeritus of international law and chairman of the board of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, discusses the history of the International Criminal Court, the United States' volatile relationship with it, why some ICC member states are also reluctant to support the court's prosecution of Israeli leaders, and the unacknowledged geopolitics behind Western leaders' support for Israel.    

No Peace Prescription for Gaza, and Dr. El-Sayed's Proscription of AIPAC Impunity (with Richard Silverstein) For this episode of Understanding Israel Palestine: Beyond the Walls, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel is joined by Richard Silverstein. Richard is an independent journalist, a Jewish American moral essayist, and the creator of the Tikun Olam blog, where he has for more than two decades reported on Israel Palestine, the broader geopolitical machinations in and of the Middle East, and how this all intersects at the heart of American politics.   After an overview of Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, the episode focuses on Richard's recent article:  As Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan primary, is it the end of AIPAC? www.newarab.com/opinion/abdul-el-sayed-wins-michigan-primary-it-end-aipac Richard Silverstein' Tikun Olam blog: www.richardsilverstein.com Understanding Israel Palestine archives: kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/ Beyond the Walls newsletter: beyondthewalls.substack.com

Margot Patterson talks to Robin Andersen, professor emerita of communications at Fordham University, about Andersen's  new book, The Complicit Lens: U.S. Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza. In it, Andersen writes that the mainstream media in the United States abandoned journalistic standards of accuracy and impartiality in its coverage of events following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. She asserts that U.S. legacy media recycled Israeli talking points without adequate scrutiny, becoming stenographers of genocide. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, known as  FAIR, for which she writes regularly. She is the author, or co-author, of a dozen books, including A Century of Media, A Century of War, for which she won the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award.  

Do you want to take action but don't know where to start? Ben Case, organizer, author, and co-founder of Project for Responsive Democracy joins the show to talk about Not on Our Dime Pittsburgh, a local campaign to divest from genocide by direct vote. He details how the effort started, its results, and his advice for people hoping to take action.

For this episode, we return to a 2021 interview with Zahir Zaydani, the penname of a grassroots Palestinian intellectual from the West Bank. As the news cycle escalates, returning to deeper, historical lines of analytical frameworks closer to the source ensures that we don't let the headlines obscure the forest for the trees. But first, some news... Story 1: When Ferran Torres scored in the 106th minute to seal Spain’s 1–0 World Cup victory over Argentina, the street celebrations and reactions from Madrid to Buenos Aires—and across Gaza's displaced tent camps—played out as a direct geopolitical clash. The match followed a complete rupture between Madrid and Tel Aviv. After Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez recognized Palestinian statehood, imposed an arms embargo, and banned Israel-bound military cargo from Spanish ports, Benjamin Netanyahu issued a video statement in Hebrew accusing Spain of "waging a diplomatic war" and warning that Madrid "will pay an immediate price". Netanyahu’s office accused Sánchez of issuing a "genocidal threat," escalating diplomatic hostility to an unprecedented peak. On the pitch, 19-year-old prodigy Lamine Yamal carried that political weight; his waving of the Palestinian flag during Barcelona's title parade had drawn public condemnation from Israeli officials. Opposing him was Lionel Messi’s Argentina, aligned with Javier Milei’s pro-Israel stance. Messi’s commercial ties to Tel Aviv AI firm OrCam—founded by Israeli military intelligence veterans—and his reliance on Israeli private security details gave Argentina’s team a distinct perceived Israeli alignment. For some global audiences, Spain’s victory served as a public assertion of Palestinian rights and international law over state-backed & corporatized military intelligence powers of persecution and intimidation. Story 2: Capitol Hill is currently locked in legislative standoff over the future of binational U.S.-Israel security ties. At issue is Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act—derived from the U.S.-Israel FUTURES Act—which creates a Department of War executive agent to hardwire cyber-military intelligence integration between Washington and Tel Aviv. The provision authorizes joint operations in AI target processing, autonomous systems, quantum computing, missile defense and real-time data fusion. The bill has now triggered severe deadlock. House leadership blocked a bipartisan amendment by Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie to strip the measure. Shortly after, Senate leadership brought the broader NDAA to a procedural vote, where a 50–46 majority blocked the bill. Opposing lawmakers cite warnings from former intelligence officials that structural integration risks installing surveillance backdoors and bypassing congressional oversight. The legislative battle now moves to conference committee negotiations. ----- You can find the Understanding Israel Palestine archives at its show page at https://kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/ and the Beyond the Walls newsletter on Substack at https://beyondthewalls.substack.com

The life and work of journalist Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now," is the subject of award-winning film-makers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's new documentary film, "Steal This Story, Please." Goodman has provided close amd consistent attention to  Gaza and the Occupied West Bank since and even before Oct. 7. She talks about the role her Jewish upbringing has played in highlighting the oppression of Palestinians.  She and Lessin discuss Israel-Palestine, the importance of independent media to that and other critical stories,  and the threat to journalism posed today by media conglomeration, a repressive president, and corporate ownership of the media. "Steal This Story,Please," has won multiple awards in international film festivals.

In this rebroadcast of an earlier episode, Eamon speaks with Hind Shraydeh, Jerusalem-based journalist, about the practice of administrative detention in Palestine and her own husband's ordeal as a prisoner (administrative detainee).

Acclaimed poet and writer Naomi Shihab Nye discusses her life and work in this conversation that originally aired on Understanding Israel Palestine in March of 2023. The daughter of a Palestinian refugee and an American mother, Nye was a teenager living with her family near Jerusalem when the Six-Day War broke out in 1967, causing the family to return to the United States. She reads from her poetry and talks about how her experiences in Palestine affected her and her poetry, giving her a perspective that shapes her to this day.

Ben Freeman discusses a provision in the fy 2027 National Defence Authorization Act that would deepen U.S.-Israeli military ties to an unparalleled degree, making them difficult to unravel and removing Congressional oversight and accountability. An equally alarming provision in the Intelligence Autorization Act would force the U.S to share almost all intelligence about the Middle East with Israel. Both Section 224 of the NDAA and Section 622 pose risks to U.S. sovereignty and national security. An expert on defence spending and foreign influence operations, Freeman heads the Democratizing Foreign Police program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

The Premeditated Clampdown: Alison Weir on the Calculated Campaign to Protect Israeli State-Sponsored Destruction In this archival dive from September 2021, Alison Weir, executive director of If Americans Knew, exposes the calculated rollout of weaponized antisemitism laws. Five years later, the true design behind that campaign is undeniable. Host Jeremy Rothe-Kushel breaks out the tape to reveal how this premeditated legal framework was built specifically for this moment: to preemptively criminalize dissent and provide an impenetrable shield for state violence. We are watching the trap spring shut as these laws are actively deployed to protect the Gaza genocide, push the U.S. into an engineered war with Iran, and mask the NDAA's unprecedented fusion of U.S. and Israeli military, cyber, and data infrastructure. From local speech codes locking down states like Kansas and Missouri, to Jeremy’s own 2016 Kansas City Library arrest exposing the DHS-Israel intelligence nexus, the machinery to erase our national interests and silence the public was installed right before our noses. When laws are designed to protect atrocities, the truth becomes our only defense. ------- Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.    https://israelpalestinenews.org/iak-investigation-international-campaign-is-criminalizing-criticism-of-israel-as-antisemitism/   https://israelpalestinenews.org/iak-investigation-international-campaign-is-criminalizing-criticism-of-israel-as-antisemitism/#timeline   https://ifamericansknew.org/download/antisemitismbooklet.pdf Understanding Israel Palestine archives: kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/ Beyond the Walls newsletter: beyondthewalls.substack.com https://mondoweiss.net/2016/10/security-arrests-questioner/

In this rebroadcast of the program of April 17,  Sonia Meyerson-Knox provides historical context for Israel's war in Lebanon, its seventh since the founding of Israel in 1948. She discusses Israel's decades-long ambition to expand into Lebanon and why she believes Israel is intent not just on destroying Hezbollah but the fabric of Lebanese society and Lebanon's territorial integrity.  Now communications director of Jewish Voice for Peace, Sonia Meyerson-Knox spent 16 years in Beirut where she worked for international relief and development agencies and as a journalist.

Mideast peace negotiator Robert Malley continues his conversation with Margot Patterson about the road to Oct. 7th. Part I of the interview aired May 15.  In Part II, he speaks about the differing strategies pursued by Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. misconceptions of Palestinian politics, the lack of accountability for failed U.S. policies in the Middle East, the worsening of the Occupation due to the Oslo Accords and the dangers posed by the unresolved conflicts in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon and the West Bank. Malley held senior positions under three Democratic presidents. He was at the Camp David summit in 2000, served as special assistant to President Obama and lead negotiator of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and was appointed special envoy to Iran by President Biden. He is the author, with Hussein Agha, of the new book Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.

The Architecture of Empire: Walter L. Hixson on the Israel Lobby and the Machinery of Endless War Part Two: The Nakba’s Blast Radius and the Capture of U.S. Foreign Policy Episode Description Seventy-eight years ago, the Nakba dismantled Palestinian society. Today, we are living inside its blast radius. What began in 1948 with the violent mass displacement of over 700,000 people has metastasized into a sprawling, multi-front geopolitical fire. We are now watching the Middle East get swallowed by a disastrous and widely rejected regional war with Iran—a conflict fueled by corrupt demagogues desperate to trade human lives for their own political survival. How does a republic repeatedly bankrupt its moral standing and its treasury to underwrite conflicts its citizens actively despise? It doesn't happen by accident. It is engineered. In Part Two of our historical deep-dive into the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship, host Jeremy Rothe-Kushel reaches back to a profoundly relevant late-2021 conversation with diplomatic and cultural historian Walter L. Hixson. Stripping away the polite fictions of Washington double-speak, Hixson exposes the actual plumbing of imperial power. We break down the modern Israel lobby in plain daylight: the massive flow of capital, the ruthless political coercion, and the organized infrastructure of silence that captures U.S. foreign policy and locks the American public into a perpetual cycle of militarism and repression. If we are ever going to extinguish the fire, we must first understand exactly who built the furnace. Step beyond the walls with us. Guest Bio: Walter L. Hixson is a diplomatic and cultural historian, a contributing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the author of numerous vital books, including Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy and Imperialism and War: The History Americans Need to Own. Listen & Explore Further: Walter Hixson’s Bio & Work: University of Akron Explore the Show Archives: Listen to past episodes, including Part 1 with Grant Smith, at the KKFI Understanding Israel Palestine archive: kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/ Beyond the Walls Substack: beyondthewalls.substack.com Tags: US Foreign Policy, Israel Lobby, AIPAC, Nakba 78, Gaza, Iran War, Middle East Geopolitics, Walter Hixson, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel, Beyond the Walls, KKFI 90.1 FM, Kansas City Radio, Community Radio, Syndicated Radio, Anti-War, Political History, Washington DC, Empire, Imperialism

Longtime Mideast peace negotiator Robert Malley talks about his and Hussein Agha's recently published book, Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine. Malley discusses  how diplomatic illusions, blunders and deceptions undermined the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, created an endless, unproductive peace process and led to the atrocities of Oct. 7 and Israel's calamitous war on Gaza. The book's title refers to the authors' contention that Oct. 7th and Israel's subsequent onslaught on Gaza represented not a rupture with the past but a re-enactment of it. Malley served as a senior advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden and president of the International Crisis Group. He is now at Yale University's Jackson School of Global Affairs.    

Abdelfattah Abusrour, founder and director of Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Society in Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, Palestine, joined the show this week to discuss his life's work. We discussed how he came to found Alrowwad and the many inspirational students and works of art that have come of it.

Understanding Israel Palestine: A Beyond the Walls Edition Episode: The Structural Origins of AIPAC & The History of Israeli Espionage in the U.S. Guest: Grant Smith, Research Director at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) Host: Jeremy Rothe-Kushel Episode Overview In this deep political analysis of US-Israel relations, we examine the foundational architecture and historical continuity of the modern Israel lobby within the United States. Grant Smith, a leading investigative researcher and author of America's Defense Line, Foreign Agents, and Divert, joins the program to unpack the counterintelligence history and covert networks that have shaped American foreign policy in the Middle East. This conversation moves beyond standard political discourse to conduct a forensic examination of the structural immunity surrounding historical espionage and unregistered foreign lobbying in America. From suitcases of campaign cash on presidential whistle-stop tours to the covert smuggling of highly enriched uranium and nuclear triggers, Smith details the intricate, multi-decade efforts to subvert U.S. regulatory and defense frameworks. Key Historical & Structural Topics Explored The Origins of AIPAC & FARA Subversion: How Isaiah Kenen and the American Zionist Council (AZC) navigated the Justice Department's efforts to force them to register as foreign agents under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), ultimately restructuring into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to bypass compliance. Truman & Whistle-Stop Campaign Financing: The pivotal role of Abraham Feinberg in securing a $2 million suitcase of cash to save Harry S. Truman's floundering 1948 presidential campaign, effectively cementing early executive support for the Israeli state. NUMEC & Nuclear Espionage in the U.S.: The diversion of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium from the NUMEC facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania, under Zalman Shapiro, which was covertly funneled to the early Israeli nuclear weapons program. Project Pinto & The MILCO Smuggling Ring: The covert procurement network that successfully smuggled 810 nuclear-triggering krytrons out of the United States, utilizing operatives like Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and involving current political figures like Benjamin Netanyahu. Political Immunity & Quashed DOJ Investigations: The systemic political pressure that successfully shut down Department of Justice and FBI investigations into these smuggling networks, resulting in a distinct lack of prosecutions and quiet pardons for the few operatives who were caught. Resources & Links Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep): irmep.org The Israel Lobby Archive: israellobby.org KKFI Show Page (archives): Understanding Israel Palestine Beyond the Walls (full length audio): https://beyondthewalls.substack.com/

Journalist, author, academic and editor of  the news site The Palestine Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud discusses the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and how it relates to Israel's war in Lebanon and Israel's effort to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the Occupied West Bank. He says Israeli actions in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere in the region are all part of a coherent strategic plan to quash Palestinian resistance and establish regional hegemony in the Middle East.

Farah Nabulsi, the Palestinian-British director and writer of the award-winning short film, “The Present,” discusses her new film. “The Present” tells the story of a Palestinian man who sets out with […] The post “The Present” Shows Today’s Palestine appeared first on KKFI.

Farah Nabulsi, the Palestinian-British director and writer of the award-winning short film, “The Present,” discusses her new film. “The Present” tells the story of a Palestinian man who sets out with […] The post “The Present” Shows Today’s Palestine appeared first on KKFI.