Anat Matar is an Israeli academic and philosopher who is leading an open call from Israelis to have sanctions imposed on their own country.

Since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began after the events of 7 October, Matar and a few other Israelis have seen the social space around them get narrower and narrower, as mainstream Israeli society, educators, media institutions and leaders have stood behind Israel’s war.

As we reflect in our conversation, some parts of Israeli society may differ on the tactics being used, but the vast majority stand behind the army's actions on the whole and defend or deny their country’s obvious and very visible atrocities.

This episode was recorded on 11 November 2024.

00:00 Intro

05:25 Macabe Tel Aviv slogans and Israeli media

08:30 How Israeli society justifies war crimes

11:30 What are anti-government protests in Israel all about?

16:20 The open letter to sanction Israel

20:20 What was the societal discourse like 18 months ago

24:00 Academic and social media freedoms in Israel

33:00 Situation for Palestinians who are Israeli citizens

37:40 What has happened to the media in Israel - Haaretz

41:51 Is Israel safe for you?

45:00 Anat’s early life and childhood

48:00 Oslo accords’ shortcomings and settlers

53:45 Endgame for Gantz, Lieberman and Lapid

58:30 Israel’s expansionist nature

01:03:30 Zionism’s future and normalisation

01:09:40 Will the call for sanctions work?

01:14:20 What will the legacy of the genocide be in Israel

Gamal Mansour is a Syrian-Palestinian who was forced to move to Canada in 2012, as the Syrian uprising was turning into a civil war.

Mansour is also a political scientist who is currently researching strategies that the business sector under the Assad regime employed so that they could remain autonomous from the state.

In this marathon three-hour conversation, Gamal Mansour and the host Ashfaaq Carim discuss the genesis of the Syrian uprising amidst the Arab Spring and how it turned into a civil war; what the impact and scale of the war was both in terms of human devastation and in terms of ideological impact it had in the West and the Arab world, as Europe and North America moved to the right and Islamic State was born; and how brutal and devastating Assad's tactics in the war were.

They try to make sense of all the conflicting voices that are clashing over what the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham liberation of Damascus means, and are critical of the reluctance amongst the anti-US-imperial left to embrace the new reality in Damascus as most Syrians are.

“In Israel they are either bigots, fanatics, sometimes murderous ones… and they are cowards… and unfortunately there is no brave figure that I can see” - Offer Cassif, Israeli MP

Israeli MP Offer Cassif has been staunchly against Israel’s long occupation of Palestine and has been highly critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The coalition he is a part of consists of only five seats out of 120 in the Israeli Knesset.

He joined us for a second time on UNAPOLOGETIC to discuss how Israeli society is largely embracing its leadership’s descent into a “fully fledged fascist dictatorship”.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:10 The war and Israeli society’s response

07:37 Understanding the thinking of the Israeli government - subjugation plan

16:58 The genocide and the international reaction to it

23:02 How can this war be scaled back and ICC warrants?

28:52 The make-up of the Israeli Knesset

34:02 Going back to Rafah

36:58 Unpacking the forged documents scandal

42:00 Would Gantz or Lapid be any different?

52:58 How a negotiated peace can occur - South Africa

1:03:03 Unpacking resistance inside Israel

1:07:00 Internal repression in Israel

01:11:07 Is Israel sustainable?

01:16:30 Juxtaposing Palestinian dignity with Israel

Professor Roy Casagranda is an expert in history and political science.

He has hosted a series of lectures that are available on YouTube explaining the history of the Americas, the slave trade, colonialism, and the Arab world and the Middle East.

In this extended interview, Casagranda takes us on a history lesson that includes the Sykes-Picot agreement, CIA-orchestrated coups in Syria and Iran, various wars, doctrines, betrayals and policies that show just how damaging and cynical US meddling in the Middle East has been over the last century.

South Africa’s former minister of international relations, Naledi Pandor, speaks to us about the why South Africa took Israel to court for genocide. We also speak about why the world has still not yet intervened decisively and has allowed Israel to continue its onslaught in Gaza, whether international institutions will break down under a new Trump presidency and in the aftermath of Israel’s impunity, changes in global power away from the North towards a more multipolar reality, and what can be done to stop Israel.

Pandor grew up in a political family and as a child she was exiled from South Africa to go to Lesotho, Zambia and the United Kingdom, where her family contributed to South Africa’s freedom struggle. She draws on that experience and from her experience as being part of South Africa’s democratic government for three decades to tell us the challenges that lie ahead for Palestinian liberation and offers advice on how that road can be trodden.

“Fighting racism in silos that was invented by racism doesn’t make any sense.”

Rachel Shabi is an author, journalist and commentator, and she has recently published her second book, Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism.

Shabi joined us for a conversation about her book, the fate of Arab-Jewish identity, how Israel’s war on Gaza is polarising global society and how the racist logic that defined so many colonial crimes is still at play today, justifying war crimes in the last few decades.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:04 How significant is the war in Gaza

06:24 Why you chose to write Off-White and being an Iraqi Jew

12:30 How did 7th October impact Off-White

15:30 The wealth and loss of her Arab-Jewish identity

19:25 Arab-Jewish displacement from origin countries

27:30 Journey with Palestinian liberation

31:10 The Iraq war

36:20 The fakery of whiteness and origins of antisemitism

42:20 Haven't all empires weaponised racism?

47:54 How the US policy in the Middle East fuels antisemitic tropes

53:15 Why does racist bias self-perpetuate and its consequences

01:03:02 How can Jewish societies be safe

01:08:12 What will be the future of Israel-Palestine?

01:10:14 The single takeaway from your book, Off-White

“I think the Arab leaders are going to be the victims of this genocide in Gaza.”

Wadah Khanfar is the founder and executive director of the Al-Sharq Forum. He is also the former director general of the Al Jazeera Media Network.

We speak to Khanfar about Gaza, the prospect of regional war, what it means to be a Palestinian and an Arab at this moment in time, and how the frustration being felt by Arabs due to “genocide” in Gaza will manifest itself.

Khanfar also recalls his time as a journalist in Afghanistan and Iraq and how the challenges he faced there compare with what journalists in Gaza are going through now. And he speaks about what inspired him to write his book, The first Spring, which is about what drove the strategic goals of the Prophet Muhammad.

In a conversation with Dr. Azzam Tamimi - who is a scholar of political science and has written books on the history of Hamas - we discuss the legacy of Yahya Sinwar.

Was it a miscalculation for Israel to release footage of how the Hamas leader was killed? What will it mean for the war? What are Israel's war ambitions and will they succeed?