June 8, 2008

Broadcast Date: 
Jun 8 2008

The presidential candidates address Washington's conservative pro-Israel lobby; Trita Parsi digs into the backstory of Iran-Israel-U.S. relations; plus meditations on a vanishing landscape with Raja Shehadeh, author of Palestinian Walks.

Episode segments
  • Following AIPAC's script?
    American Politics, Foreign Policy, National Politics, Jewish
    Daniel Levy is a senior dellow and sirector of the Middle East Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation, a senior fellow and director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative at The Century Foundation, and a member of the advisory council of J Street. He blogs at prospectforpeace.com.
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    John Mc Cain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton all addressed AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) this past week--and they all hit the notes they were expected to hit in the official AIPAC script. But, as Daniel Levy notes, their remarks also differed in important ways.

  • Treacherous Alliance
    Middle East, Israel/Palestine
    Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007). He is a co-founder and current president .of the National Iranian American Council.
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Rumors about a military strike against Iran have been appearing with increasing frequency on the internet; most recently the Asia Times, citing a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state, reported that the Administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months. Author Trita Parsi speaks about the historical context of the current impasse--decades in which Iran and Israel shared security concerns and secretly traded oil for military equipment and know-how.

  • Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape
    Occupation

    Raja Shehadeh is a lawyer, human rights activist, and writer and the co-founder of the Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq. His most recent book is Palestinian Walks: Notes from a Vanishing Landscape.

     
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Raja Shehadeh talks with us about his most recent book, which takes the reader on a series of walks he took through the hills, orchards, wadis, and valleys of his beloved landscape from 1978 to 2006, sharing his love for the land and the devastation wrought by Israeli settlements and settlers.