Israel’s End Game
Can Israel Survive Its Policies?
A Limited Podcast Series
Featuring
Miko Peled...................... 18 February
Diana Buttu..................... 25 February
Mohammed El-Kurd....... 23 February
Ilan Pappe........................... 02 March
Mouin Rabbani................... 04 March
Noura Erakat.............................. TBA
Shir Hever.................................. TBA
Host
Bassam Haddad
Presented by Jadaliyya and Gaza in Context Project
www.PalestineInContext.org
"Israel’s End Game" is a podcast series probing whether Israel can indefinitely sustain policies of expansion, dispossession, military occupation, and apartheid, and how shifting geopolitical balances might enable or constrain those policies. We ask our guests whether or how internal divisions within Israel or Israel’s growing international isolation--particularly in the public sphere and despite furious campaigns to suppress scrutiny and criticism—could alter Israel’s strategic choices. This includes indices such as the impact of campaigns targeting lawmakers tied to pro-Israel funding. The series also examines whether recent developments—including the Gaza Genocide, the rupture of the US’s traditional alliances, domestic polarization, and economic woes—have meaningfully changed the global balance of power or merely reinforced established patterns by normalizing a more profound breakdown of an already inconsistent “rules-based order.” Finally, the series addresses whether Israeli leaders misread or deliberately discount emerging political, economic, and social shifts, domestically or internationally, that could alter Israel’s current trajectory.
Featuring
Diana Buttu is a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and analyst based in Haifa and Communications Director to the Institute for Middle East Understanding. Diana previously worked as a legal advisor the Palestinian negotiating team. Diana was one of the lawyers who challenged the legality of Israel’s apartheid wall before the International Court of Justice. She is a frequent commentator and writer on Palestine, with articles appearing in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, Foreign Policy as well as in other major US papers. She holds degrees from the University of Toronto, Queen’s University, Kellogg Northwestern and Stanford Law School. Ms. Buttu has held fellowships at Stanford and Harvard.
Mohammed El-Kurd is an award-winning poet, writer, journalist, and organizer from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. In 2021, He was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine. He is best known for his role as a co-founder of the #SaveSheikhJarrah movement. His work has been featured in numerous international outlets and he has appeared repeatedly as a commentator on major TV networks. Currently, El-Kurd serves as the first-ever Palestine Correspondent for The Nation. His first published essay in this role, "A Night with Palestine's Defenders of the Mountain," was shortlisted for the 2022 One World Media Print Award. RIFQA, his debut collection of poetry, was published by Haymarket Books in October 2021 was later released in Italian by Fandango Libre. El-Kurd holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College (CUNY) and a BFA in Writing from Atlanta’s Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD). He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Arab American Civil Council’s “Truth in Media” Award (2022), as well as the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation (2023).
Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick Department of Africana Studies. Noura is the author of Justice for Some: Law As Politics in the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019). She is a Co-Founding Editor of Jadaliyya e-zine and an Editorial Committee member of the Journal of Palestine Studies. She has served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, as a Legal Advocate for the Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, and as the national grassroots organizer and legal advocate at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Noura is the coeditor of Aborted State? The UN Initiative and New Palestinian Junctures, an anthology related to the 2011 and 2012 Palestine bids for statehood at the UN. More recently, Noura released a pedagogical project on the Gaza Strip and Palestine, which includes a short multimedia documentary, "Gaza In Context," that rehabilitates Israel’s wars on Gaza within a settler-colonial framework. She is also the producer of the short video, "Black Palestinian Solidarity." She is a frequent commentator, with recent appearances on CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NPR, among others, and her writings have been widely published in the national media and academic journals.
Shir Hever is an economist and political scientist. He was born and grew up in Jerusalem, now living in Germany after giving up his Israeli citizenship. He is the Managing Director of the Alliance for Justice Between Israelis and Palestinians, a member of the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, and until recently was the coordinator of the military embargo campaign of BDS. Shir studies and has written widely on the political economy of Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and the arms trade. His most recent book is The Privatization of Israeli Security (Pluto Press, 2017).
Ilan Pappé is a Professor of History at Exeter University and the author of many books, including his latest Israel on the Brink: Eight Steps for a Better Future. He is the founder and co-director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies. Papé obtained his BA degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and the D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1984. He founded and directed the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva, Israel between 1992 to 2000 and was the Chair of the Emil Tuma Institute for Palestine Studies in Haifa between 2000 and 2006. Pappé was a senior lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern History and the Department of Political Science in Haifa University, Israel between 1984 and 2006. He was appointed as chair in the department of History in the Cornwall Campus, 2007-2009 and became a fellow of the IAIS in 2010. His research focuses on the modern Middle East and in particular the history of Israel and Palestine. He has also written on multiculturalism, Critical Discourse Analysis and on Power and Knowledge.
Miko Peled is an author, speaker, and human rights activist living in the United States. He is the author of The General’s Son, a contributor to several publications, authors this blog (mikopeled.com), and produces The Miko Peled Podcast, all of which he dedicated to advocating for the creation of one democratic state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians. Miko is considered by many to be one of the clearest voices calling for justice in Palestine. He has been arrested several times by the Israeli authorities for his activism.
Mouin Rabbani is a researcher, analyst, and commentator specialising in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Head of Middle East with the Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation, and Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. Rabbani is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, where he also hosts the Connections podcast and edits its Quick Thoughts feature, Managing Editor and Associate Editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, and a Contributing Editor of Middle East Report. He is Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS) and at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). A graduate of Tufts University and Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), Rabbani has published, presented and commented widely on Middle East issues.
Bassam Haddad is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Executive Producer of Status Podcast Channel and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding The Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).