Rania Khalek Dispatches

While it’s not often in the news, the Horn of Africa is volatile and often the scene of violence and its countries are victims of international interventions and interference that has played a destabilizing role, from Djibouti and Eritrea to Somalia and Ethiopia. As western imperialism continues to prop up dictators while blocking any moves towards independence, the western-backed Gulf States are transforming the region into a battlefield against Iran and each other. Why is this region subjected to so much meddling? How is the new Cold War between the US and China playing out on the ground? And why should Americans care? To help us understand these developments, Rania Khalek is joined by Djiboutian dissident in hiding Abdirahman Mohamed Ahmed, an expert on the Horn of Africa who is both from the region and has a strong leftist background. 

Joseph Massad, Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, joins Dispatches with Rania Khalek to help break down everything from Israel’s value as an outpost of US imperialism and why the Arab uprisings failed to the recent victory of Palestinian resistance forces and why it’s crucial to incorporate anti-imperialism in our understanding of the Zionist project.

Lowkey joins Rania Khalek to talk Palestine and global resistance to Zionist apartheid.

As the violence continues across Israel-Palestine, to help make sense of how we got here and what happens next, Rania Khalek is joined by Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist at Haaretz who is based in Ramallah and has spent years reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. Hass provides an in-depth analysis on the radicalization of Israeli Jewish society, which is becoming increasingly right-wing as the religious settler mentality is exported from the West Bank into Israeli cities. “Settler colonialism is part of Israeli DNA” with Israeli settlers being “a privatized arm of Israeli state violence.”  This is at the root of the constant aggression against Palestinians. And absent outside pressure, Israel will continue down an increasingly dangerous and eliminationist path. 

The rising violence in Israel-Palestine has reached new levels of depravity, with roving gangs of Israeli Jewish mobs hunting for Palestinian citizens of Israel to attack while chanting for genocide, at times with the protection of the police. Suha Salman-Mousa, the executive director of the Mossawa Center, which advocates for Palestinian citizens of Israel, joins Rania Khalek on BT’s program Dispatches to help us understand the explosion of hate consuming Israel from within and the danger it poses to Palestinians.

As escalations continue across Israel-Palestine, from Israel bombing Gaza to Palestinian factions in Gaza launching rockets into Israel and the Israeli security apparatus escalating across the West Bank and even against Palestinian citizens of Israel protesting in their cities, to help make sense of all of it, Rania Khalek is joined by journalist and author Gideon Levy.

What the hell is going on in Jerusalem? Has Israel totally lost it? Is this the beginning of a third intifada? Rania Khalek is joined by Ramallah-based activist Hadeel Shatara, coordinator of the Palestinian prisoner rights group Samidoun, to discuss Israeli violence in Sheikh Jarrah and Al Aqsa mosque, what’s driving Palestinian resistance, internal Palestinian political divisions, western media bias and how those outside of Palestine can help. In recent weeks Israeli settlers and police have escalated their violence in occupied east Jerusalem,. violently storming the al Aqsa mosque during Ramadan and attacking  the neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah where Palestinian families are fighting efforts by Israeli settler groups backed by the courts to evict and replace them with Jewish settlers. Hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested, injured and hospitalized as they resist increasing Israeli brutality in Sheikh Jarrah and in and around al Aqsa. All of this is ahead of the Jerusalem day March, when far right Israeli Mobs are set to march through the streets of occupied East Jerusalem chanting hateful anti-palestinian slogans to celebrate Israel’s illegal capture of the city in 1967. These Israeli provocations have spurred worldwide condemnation and horror, with Israel’s allies expressing deep concerns about the mounting violence. Hadeel explains that this is what Zionism and ethnic cleansing look like. 

As Israeli violence against Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem heats up amid looming evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and Israeli police storming the al Aqsa mosque, Rania Khalek is joined by investigative journalist David Sheen from Haifa for insight into the Israeli side of the equation. Israeli Jewish extremism has been on the rise for years, explains David, with the religious Zionist movement gaining power in government and in the streets. Their messianic movement wants to demolish the Al Aqsa mosque and build a third Jewish temple in its place. They want to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from all of historic Palestine. They want a theocracy. And Netanyahu has empowered them to maintain his own diminishing power.Why is this happening now? What are the Israeli political divisions and machinations driving the violence? What’s behind the Israeli lurch to the religious far right? And is there any chance for reversing these developments? Or are Palestinians trapped at the mercy of an increasingly genocidal Israeli politics with zero obstacles to carrying out their apocalyptic vision?

Intersectional regime change? Queer drone strikes? Katie Halper joins Rania Khalek to discuss the CIA’s latest recruitment video series “Humans of CIA,” which weaponizes identity politics and left buzzwords to woke-wash imperialism and advance the agendas of war and empire.

What are Colombians protesting? Why are police gunning them down? And why is it being ignored? Rania Khalek is joined by Camila Escalante and Ollie Vargas, Bolivian-based journalists for the independent outlet Kawsachun News. They speak about the police killing protesters in Colombia, state-backed massacres of social activists, Colombia’s role as a US-backed destabilizing force in the region and how where ever the US meddles in Latin America, drug trafficking and right-wing violence follow. They also touch on the latest developments in post-coup Bolivia, what’s really behind the violence at the border between Colombia and Venezuela and the CIA’s recent woke video ad.