May 9, 2010

Broadcast Date: 
May 9 2010

Palestinian road construction may be aiding settlement expansion; right-wing pushback intensifies among Jewish organizations in the U.S. and within Israel; plus, for Mother's Day and we rebroadcast our interview with Joyce Antler, author of You Never Call! You Never Write!

Episode segments
  • Palestinian Roads To Dispossession
    Israel/Palestine, Palestinian Politics, Occupation
    Nadia Hijab is an independent analyst and senior fellow at the Washington DC office of the Institute for Palestine Studies.
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Road construction is part of the broader economic development plans of the Palestine National Authority.  But in a recent article in The Nation, Palestinian Roads to Dispossession: Cementing Statehood, or Israeli Annexation, Nadia Hijab and Jesse Rosenfeld argue that while new roads may be facilitating travel for Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, they are also facilitating settlement expansion and the seizure of main West Bank highways for exclusive settler use.

  • Right-Wing Push Back Intensifies in U.S. and Israel
    American Politics, Israeli Politics, Israel/Palestine
    Cecilie Surasky is Deputy Director of Jewish Voice for Peace and founder of Muzzlewatch, JVP's blog that documents efforts to silence open debate about Israel-Palestine policy. (And check out The Only Democracy?, the new JVP blog that monitors the state of civil liberties in Israel and the Occupied Territories.)
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    In this conversation with Cecilie Surasky we talk about ongoing efforts by Jewish organizations in the U.S. and by the Israeli government to silence critics.

    We begin the segment  with audio collected by Max Blumenthal at an April 25th demonstration by "pro-Israel" supporters in New York City.  While the views expressed are extreme, Muzzlewatch reports that they have more moderate but none-the-less disturbing counterparts among mainstream Jewish organizations' efforts to restrict both direct and donor designated funds to groups that meet their notions of ideological purity regarding Israel.

    In Israel, as the government continues to arrest its critics (including its own citizens), a recent public opinion poll finds that Israeli Jews are increasingly willing to limit freedom of expression by human rights organizations and journalists. 

  • You Never Call! You Never Write!
    Arts & Culture, Jewish Life, Literature
    Joyce Antler is the Samuel Lane Professor of American Jewish History and Culture at Brandeis University, where she teaches in the American Studies Department and Women's and Gender Studies Program. Her most recent book is You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother.
    Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

    On this Mother's Day, we rebroadcast Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz's interview with Joyce Antler about her study of the Jewish mother image - how it arose, who it influenced, and how it has been constantly re-invented. (Interview originally broadcast on June 3, 2007.)