The Anti-Imperialist Archive

An archive of speeches, lectures, and interviews compiled by Ian Anderson and published by Sina Rahmani. For educational purposes only. This feed will not be monetized and all materials used in the episodes can be found free online.

WKCR 89.9 - Columbia Occupation, Hind (Hamilton) Hall NYPD Raid (2024) 05/03/2024

Mahdi Nazemroya - NATO, Arab Spring, and the Axis of Resistance (2012) 05/02/2024

Mohammed El-Kurd - His Own Words 04/29/2024

Mohammed El-Kurd - His Own Words You can buy El-Kurd's book Rifqa Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd talks to CNN (2021) Appearance at the UN - The Palestinian Nakba — or catastrophe — happened decades ago, but the people of Palestine continue to suffer under Israeli colonialism, asserts writer and poet Mohammed El-Kurd. Following the air strikes of May 2021, the people of Gaza City have had their homes destroyed or occupied, facing homelessness and heartbreak. But change is still possible, says El-Kurd, as people protest and pressure their leaders to act. In a moving speech at the UN's event for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, he called for justice, liberation and a free Palestine in his lifetime. Democracy Now - October 10 2023 - Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd says Western reaction to Israel’s assault on Gaza has once again highlighted the double standard when it comes to how Israeli and Palestinian lives are valued. Israel is bombarding the densely populated coastal territory in retaliation for Saturday’s Hamas attack on southern Israel, as well as tightening the existing siege even further. Israeli officials have vowed to wipe out Hamas despite warnings of massive civilian casualties inside Gaza. “One wonders how much bloodshed, how much Palestinian death is necessary for people to realize that violence begets violence and that the occupation and the colonization of Palestine, the blockade of the Gaza Strip needs to end for all of this violence to end.” El-Kurd also accuses Israeli officials and Western media outlets of using Islamophobic tropes by spreading as-yet-unverified claims of sexual violence and beheadings by Hamas fighters, while downplaying the documented death and devastation being inflicted on Gaza residents. On November 1st 2023 the Palestine Festival of Literature staged a free, public event in New York titled: But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience. Palestinian poet, activist and journalist, Mohammed El-Kurd opened the evening. “When we try to dictate who is and who isn’t ‘mournable’, when we emphasise the death of women and children as though the death of our men isn’t heart-breaking we are shrinking the scope of humanity for everybody else” Palestinian writer, poet and journalist Mohmmed El-Kurd spoke at an event in London where he mourned the death of Palestinian academic Refaat ElAreer who was killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza. (Dec 13, 2023) Mohammed el-Kurd spoke about the current situation in Palestine at UMass-Amherst on November 13, 2023. As always, edited by Ian Anderson (@), with special thanks / credit to Sina Rahmani + The East is a Podcast. Robin Brickner is our social media coordinator. Our Twitter presence is @, and if you would like to reach out directly we have an email address at: We have AIA business cards with QR codes - please email or DM us to have one mailed to you /episode/index/show/4084a94f-b1ea-4146-9e99-6bd47e9ddcef/id/29317208

Fadi Quran - The Palestinian Freedom Riders (2011) 04/27/2024

Yaakov Shapiro - Has Zionism Hijacked Judaism? (2017) 04/25/2024

Yaakov Shapiro - Has Zionism Hijacked Judaism? (2017) On February 7 2017, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, noted expert on Zionist ideology and history, conducted a lecture at the International Law Institute in Washington D.C., for members of the International Council for Middle East Studies, a think tank dedicated to issues pertaining to the middle east (ICMES.NET), titled "Has Zionism Hijacked Judaism?". The audience included a broad array of academics, scholars, and experts in middle eastern history,political science, international law and other related fields. Key takeaways: The purpose of Zionism was to "normalize" the Jews against the effects of Judaism, essentially to change a nation of scholars and priests with religious aspirations, to a nation of warriors with nationalist aspirations. Judaism was the disease; Zionism was the cure. The Zionist character is the diametrical opposite of, and overcompensation for, the Jewish character. Jewish are neither nationality, nor a race, ethnicity, tribe, or blood family. Their only common characteristic is their religion. The Zionists however, falsely presented themselves - and still do - as the representatives of the Jewish people. Thus: Zionism was not the national liberation movement of the Jewish people but the national liberation movement of the Zionists; Israel is not the nation state of the Jewish people as it claims to be but rather the state of its own citizens. Zionist nationalism is unique in that it claims to represent and demands loyalty of people outside of its national borders and citizenship, by virtue of their being born Jewish. The intellectual origins of Zionism was mostly organic nationalism and Christian Restorationism. Different Zionists also adopted Russian workers' movements, and German Romanticism, and other philosophies popular at the time. A veneer of Judaism was assumed in order to attract Jews to the movement and to present themselves to the Christian restorations as representative of the Jewish people. Zionists elevated to holocaust to the defining moment of Jewish history, and even a defining characteristic of Jewish identity. This instills within receptive Jewish people a binary world view where the choices for the Jewish people are either a Jewish state or annihilation. The Zionists to this day are consumed with the desire to "never again" be like the traditional Torah Jew. This drives much of their seemingly incomprehensible behavior. The most efficient and effective way to negate Zionism is to deny and refute Israel's claim to represent world Jewry and to be the nation-state of the Jewish people. Israel is the nation-state of its citizens and represents them as any other country does. There is no organic connection between world Jewry and the state of Israel, Israel's connection to world Jewry is only a claim it makes. Once that claim is opposed, Zionism is defeated without a single casualty. As always, edited by Ian Anderson (@), with special thanks / credit to Sina Rahmani + The East is a Podcast. Robin Brickner is our social media coordinator. Our Twitter presence is @, and if you would like to reach out directly we have an email address at: We have AIA business cards with QR codes - please email or DM us to have one mailed to you /episode/index/show/4084a94f-b1ea-4146-9e99-6bd47e9ddcef/id/28913013

The Gaza Flotilla Massacre (2010) 04/22/2024

The Gaza Flotilla Massacre (2010) 1st: Sherif Fam speaks to Greta Berlin on launch day. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla consists of six ocean vessels bearing about 10,000 tons of vital building and living materials and 700 unarmed civilians, pledged to nonviolent defiance of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, the only land in the world being denied access to its own sea. The passenger list includes prominent activists, even celebrities and parliamentarians from the world over. One such is a member of the Israeli Knesset, clearly facing prison or worse upon arrival back home. This exclusive historic interview was conducted and aired live from Cyprus just hours before the Gaza Freedom Flotilla launched and was later brutally attacked by Israeli gunfire in international waters, in defiance of international law and common decency. From reactions around the world, there is new hope that Israel has finally lost its impunity. We have not yet learned the names of the dead or the imprisonment/torture situation of the survivors. Various (mostly foreign) websites are carrying update information, among them: gazafreedommarch.org. This Week In Palestine (a weekly part of Truth and Justice Radio) is a monumentally important program of news from Palestine and discussion of issues relevant to the Palestinians' struggle for freedom from Israel's brutal military occupation and colonization, and now bombing, devastation, imprisonment, and murder, of their homeland, thanks in part to U.S. "leaders" and U.S. taxpayer funding. It's part of Truth and Justice Radio, aired Sundays 6-9:30am ET on WZBC 90.3FM, Newton, MA, streaming (and also archived for two weeks) at wzbc.org. Our website, truthandjusticeradio.org, links to audio archives of 2008-2010 editions of This Week In Palestine 2nd: Farooq Burney and Kevin Neish, Flotilla survivors, speak about their experiences abord the Mavi Marmara when it was attacked by Israeli commandos, and give eyewitness accounts of the raid, and their time in detention. 3rd: Jesse Rosenfeld speaks on the media portrayal of the Gaza Flotilla Massacre Jesse is a Canadian print and video journalist based out of Ramallah and Tel Aviv-Jaffa since 2007. He is the print editor of The Daily Nuisance and has written from the Middle East for The Guardian, The Nation, The National (Abu Dhabi English language newspaper), Haaretz English, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, NOW Magazine, Z Net and Electronic Intifada. He has also blogged forAllvoices.com, Mondoweiss and produced video content for The Daily Beast and The Real News. As always, edited by Ian Anderson (@), with special thanks / credit to Sina Rahmani + The East is a Podcast. Robin Brickner is our social media coordinator. Our Twitter presence is @, and if you would like to reach out directly we have an email address at: We have AIA business cards with QR codes - please email or DM us to have one mailed to you /episode/index/show/4084a94f-b1ea-4146-9e99-6bd47e9ddcef/id/29535173

Leslie Feinberg - ASWAT Conference Speech (2007) 04/20/2024

Dr Moussa al-Haddad, Laila al-Haddad - The Battle of al-Furqan (2009) 04/18/2024

Walid Khalidi - The Nakba (2009) 04/15/2024

Grayzone - Inside the Israeli Blockade on Aid to Gaza - Documentary (2024) 04/13/2024

Huwaida Arraf - The Gaza Flotilla (2008, 2009) 04/11/2024

Gerald Horne - The Genocide in Gaza, Impact on International Affairs (2024) 04/08/2024

Marwan Barghouti - Democracy Now Fugitive Interview (December 2001) 04/06/2024

Edward Said - 9/11, Siege of Ramallah, Gaza (2001) 04/04/2024

Rashid Khalidi, Chris Hedges - Collective Punishment in Gaza (2014) 04/01/2024

Dr Ussama Makdisi - King Crane Commission (2019) 03/28/2024

Ghassan Kanafani - Returning to Haifa (Written 1969, Recorded 2023) 03/25/2024

This Week in Palestine w/Sherif Fam - The Zionist-Nazi Connection (2009) 03/21/2024

Al Jazeera - The Holy Land Five Documentary (2016) 03/18/2024

Al Jazeera - The Holy Land Five Documentary (2016) First clip is from Noor Elashi, daughter of Ghassan Elashi - video published prior to the trial in 2007. Soon after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, the largest Muslim charity in the United States - the Holy Land Foundation - was shut down, its assets frozen and five of its senior staff arrested by the FBI. The charity was founded in California in 1989 and provided aid to a number of Palestinian causes. It also offered help to refugee communities in Jordan, Lebanon and other needy people across the Middle East and the rest of the world. As the charity grew and revenue increased, claims emerged against the foundation. The 1990s saw groups like the Anti-Defamation League and politicians such as the former Governor of New York City, Eliot Spitzer, and former Congressman Anthony Wiener lobby against the charity. These groups appealed to the Clinton administration to shut the charity down, but failed. The US government eventually responded to similar accusations, allegedly made by the state of Israel. The claims made were that the charity was a front for an illegal money-laundering operation, diverting funds to Hamas via zakat committees in the Occupied West Bank. Hamas, in turn, had been designated "a terrorist organisation" by the US government. "It was a huge record that the government created, an administrative record - and it was basically garbage. It was newspaper articles, interviews that were translated from Arabic to Hebrew to English," says Nancy Hollander, one of the lawyers defending Shukri Abu Baker, a founder of the foundation. "And we discovered when we did our own translations that their translations were completely wrong, that the government was relying on information that was completely false. But it didn't matter." The five foundation founders were charged with providing "material support" to Hamas. During the first trial in 2007, their defence team struggled to deal effectively with two secret expert witnesses called by the prosecution whose "evidence" was not shared in advance. Nonetheless, the jury failed to agree on the charges brought against them and the judge declared a mistrial. "More than 8,000 documents and the United States government didn't have a single American document that condemns the Holy Land Foundation. They might have had circumstantial evidence or doubts, but the only evidence was Israeli. And these documents were forged," says journalist Osama Abu Irshaid. The former US Consul General in Jerusalem also points out that the US Agency for International Development funded the same zakat committees named in the indictment of the foundation and continued to do so for three years after the charity was shut down. The Holy Land Five is a two-part documentary looking at the controversial trial of the Holy Land Foundation leaders. The films use interviews with defence and prosecution lawyers, family members, phone calls with the men themselves in jail - and reconstruction of court proceedings, to examine the case against the five men. As always, edited by Ian Anderson (@), with special thanks / credit to Sina Rahmani + The East is a Podcast. Robin Brickner is our social media coordinator. Our Twitter presence is @, and if you would like to reach out directly we have an email address at: We have AIA business cards with QR codes - please email or DM us to have one mailed to you /episode/index/show/4084a94f-b1ea-4146-9e99-6bd47e9ddcef/id/29520593

Edmund Ghareeb - The US Media and the Palestine Question (2002) 03/14/2024

Rachel Corrie's Murder - An Interview with Her Parents (2015) 03/11/2024

Al Jazeera - The Price of Oslo Documentary (2013) 03/07/2024

Rashid Khalidi - Western Footprints and America's Perilous Past in the Middle East (2004) 03/04/2024

Rashid Khalidi - Western Footprints and America's Perilous Past in the Middle East (2004) Khalidi speaks on the history of occupying forces the Middle East and how it relates to the United States' invasion of Iraq. He makes several points. First, nothing that Germany and Japan occupations were accepted by the people and that Americans do not have first-hand experience with occupation, he argues that illegitimate Military occupations always produce opposition. Second, he says the people of the Middle East have strongly resisted Western country over two centuries. He argues that America's intentions are irrelevant, that it only matters how the occupied people perceive America's actions. Third, he says there is a strong tradition of constitutionalism in the Middle East for over a century. Fourth, he notes that oil has been controlled by outsiders for most of the 20th Century in the context of the Bush administration's history in the oil business. He believes the war is at least partially about oil rights. Fifth, he notes that the question of Palestine has alienated people in the Middle East regarding the West. Sixth, he believes that people in the Middle East base their opinions on the West on the acts of the West, not words, recalling previous Western occupiers' words. Seventh, he mentions that the United States used to enjoy a popular reputation in the Middle East as it was seen as an anti-colonial body. However, he now believes there is a new era of American foreign policy where it forces outcomes upon others when all other forms of diplomacy have failed. Being extremely critical of the Bush administration's, particularly Paul Wolfowitz, conduct of the war, calling it a faith-based, fact-free policy in Iraq. He calls for a complete withdraw of American forces and for America to hand Iraq over to the international community. As always, edited by Ian Anderson (@), with special thanks / credit to Sina Rahmani + The East is a Podcast. Robin Brickner is our social media coordinator. Our Twitter presence is @, and if you would like to reach out directly we have an email address at: We have AIA business cards with QR codes - please email or DM us to have one mailed to you /episode/index/show/4084a94f-b1ea-4146-9e99-6bd47e9ddcef/id/29658808

Refaat Alareer and Mosab Abu Toha - Discussing Things You May Find in My Ear (2022) 02/29/2024

The Gun and the Olive Branch - Palestine Liberation Organization Documentary (1979) 02/26/2024

Muhammed Hallaj - on the Question of Palestine (1983) 02/24/2024

Yemen in Crisis: The Houthis (Ansarallah) Documentary (2022) 02/22/2024

Hasan Abdel Rahman - PLO Ambassador - Speech (1977) 02/19/2024

Mohammed Dajani - Palestinian Higher Education under Occupation: The Challenges (2005) 02/17/2024

Mohammed Dajani - Palestinian Higher Education under Occupation: The Challenges (2005) What challenges face the Palestinian educational system today in light of the daily and cumulative frustrations of a decades-long occupation? How have Palestinian academics, teachers, and higher education officials produced a population considered by many Arabs one of the most highly educated in the Middle East? What strategies does Al Quds University employ to meet the needs of its student body and broader community, particularly on the Abu Dis campus where Israel's separation Wall confiscates land, prevents expansion, and inhibits student attendance? Mohammed Dajani will speak on these and other issues facing Palestinian educators today. Dajani was appointed professor of political science and founded the American Studies Institute at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem in September 2000, a position he holds to this day. His appointment came within weeks of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's controversial visit with armed guards to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a holy place for Muslims, which set off the second Palestinian popular uprising that continues to this day. Dajani was born in Jerusalem in 1946, two years prior to the Arab-Israeli war and creation of the state of Israel. Dajani holds a PhD in international political relations from the University of Texas, Austin and a PhD in political science from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. He holds a Bachelor's and Master's in communication from the American University of Beirut. 13 April 2005 As always, edited by Ian Anderson (@), with special thanks / credit to Sina Rahmani + The East is a Podcast. Robin Brickner is our social media coordinator. Our Twitter presence is @, and if you would like to reach out directly we have an email address at: We have AIA business cards with QR codes - please email or DM us to have one mailed to you /episode/index/show/4084a94f-b1ea-4146-9e99-6bd47e9ddcef/id/29520468

George Catlett Marshall speaks to the colonial nature of the Zionist entity (1950) 02/15/2024

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