logo
episode-header-image
Dec 2023
54m 6s

Unpacking the Phrase “From the River to ...

AFIKRA
About this episode

This conversation offers a brief history of Palestine and its peoples, a look at the Palestinian experience both in exile and within modern-day Israel. 

Professor Maha Nassar – author of Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab world – talks us through the daily indignities, state repression, and racism faced by Palestinians in Israel. She unpacks the origins and meanings of the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" and how she goes about dismantling false narratives. 

This episode was recorded on Friday, November 24 at 5pm Palestine Time Please note that we're recording special podcast episodes relevant to understanding the historical context of what is happening in Palestine. Make sure to check out the other highly informative conversations with guests from completely different disciplines who are generously sharing their time and insight in these dark times. 

About Maha Nassar: Maha Nassar is an Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History and Islamic Studies at the University of Arizona. Specifically, she is a cultural and intellectual historian of the 20th century Arab world with a focus on Palestinian history. Nassar's research looks at the intellectual constructs of social, political and cultural identities to trace the circulation of political vocabularies that construct as well as contest nationalist narratives. 

Nassar's book "Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World" examines how Palestinian cultural producers in Israel during the 1950s and 60s positioned themselves within an Arab and "Third World", social, cultural and intellectual milieu that extended far beyond the confines of the Israeli nation state. By mapping the strategies they deployed, her book demonstrates the importance of Arabic newspapers and literary journals in traversing national boundaries and in creating transnational and transregional communities of solidarity. In 2018 Brothers Apart received a Palestine Book Award for academic titles. 

(via https://menas.arizona.edu/person/maha...

****** ABOUT AFIKRA ******‎ 

afikra | عفكرة is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region – past, present, and future – through conversations driven by curiosity.

📍 Local events in 40+ locations worldwide http://afikra.com/chapters 

🎧 New podcasts + videos weekly http://afikra.com/podcasts 

⚡ Become a member: https://www.afikra.com/membership 

🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afikra_ 

🔗 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afikra.official 

🔗 Twitter: https://twitter.com/afikra

Hosted by: 
Mikey Muhanna 👉 https://www.instagram.com/mikey_mu/?hl=en-gb

FOLLOW & RATE THE AFIKRA PODCAST:
» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/lb/podcast/the-afikra-podcast/id1529437743
» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5nafoF1Zs7F48mGZjlhrze
» Anghami: https://play.anghami.com/podcast/1014643869

THIS SERIES IS PART OF THE AFIKRA PODCAST NETWORK 
Explore all episodes in this series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfYG40bwRKl5xaTkBDrUKLCulvoCE8ubX&feature=shared

ABOUT AFIKRA
afikra | عفكرة is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region – past, present and future – through conversations driven by curiosity.
📍 Local events in 40+ locations worldwide http://afikra.com/chapters
🎧 New podcasts + videos weekly http://afikra.com/podcasts
⚡ Become a member: https://www.afikra.com/membership
🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afikra_
🔗 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afikra.official
🔗 Twitter: https://twitter.com/afikra

Up next
Aug 18
Contemporary Moroccan Thought | Mohammed Hashas
We delve into the need to fill the literary and intellectual gap in Moroccan scholarship, the impacts of notable contemporary Moroccan philosophers and thinkers, and how their ideas engage with local, regional, and global issues like modernity, democracy, and human rights. Dr Moh ... Show More
54m 40s
Aug 11
How Do You Decolonize Care? | Sundus Abdul Hadi & Maktaba Bookshop
We explore the Arab community's evolution in Montreal, the intent behind Maktaba Bookshop as a space for Arab representation and cultural exchange, and the concept of decolonizing care. The founder of Maktaba in Montreal, Iraqi artist and author Sundus Abdul Hadi shares her immig ... Show More
54m 51s
Aug 4
Director of Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT Nasser Rabbat on Al-Maqrizi
We welcome back Prof Nasser Rabbat to discuss his latest book "Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project," which focuses on the 14th-century historian labeled as Egypt's greatest historian. The director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT outlines t ... Show More
1h 2m
Recommended Episodes
Mar 2024
A Moment of Becoming: Understanding Palestine Through Its Art | Yazid Anani
On this episode of This is Not a Watermelon podcast, we sit down with Yazid Anani to discuss Palestinian art, curation, and the role of artists and their work in redefining Palestine and the lexicon used to describe the Zionist project and Israeli occupation.Starting with the Qat ... Show More
56m 24s
Jan 2024
Centuries of Social History in Palestine | Professor Beshara Doumani
In conversation with Professor Beshara Doumani, the inaugural Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies at Brown University.Professor Doumani gives us a critical historical context for what's happening in Palestine right now, explaining why and how Palestine's colonial his ... Show More
58m 41s
Apr 2024
A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature | Refqa Abu-Remaileh
This episode was recorded on March 20th at 4:15pm Palestine time.If you're curious to learn more about Palestinian prison literature, read our full article on it 👉 https://www.afikra.com/daftarjournal/palestinian-prison-literatureRefqa Abu-Remaileh is a professor of Modern Arabi ... Show More
1h 6m
Jan 2024
100 Years War on Palestine with Rashid Khalidi [Rerun 2021 Podcast Episode]
We discussed Rashid Khalidi's work as an editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, as the President of the Middle East Studies Association, and as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.**** ABOUT THIS IS NOT A WATE ... Show More
51m 56s
Jan 2024
German Guilt or Structural Racism Towards Palestinians | Sarah El Bulbeisi
A raw and honest conversation about Palestine, Germany and Palestinians in Germany. Sarah El Bulbeisi discusses the history of the Palestinian diasporic experience in Germany, the erasure, tabooization and criminalization of this very experience and the structural hostility, raci ... Show More
24m 22s
Jan 2024
Palestine Pt. 6: One State with Ghada Karmi
It may seem like a distant dream to imagine that the decades-long settler-colonial project which is Israel could finally end and transform into a state where all faiths, ethnicities, and cultures could thrive together in their diversity and equality. It seems like a distant dream ... Show More
1h 7m
Jun 2024
The British Betrayal of Palestine | Salman Abu Sitta
Dr Salman Abu Sitta was born in 1937 in Ma‘in Abu Sitta, in the Beersheba district of Mandate Palestine. An engineer by profession, and the founder and president of the Palestine Land Society, he is most known for his ground-breaking research project mapping of Palestine in the 2 ... Show More
1h 3m
Oct 2022
Salim Tamari et al., "Camera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine" (U California Press, 2022)
Camera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine (U California Press, 2022) is a critical exploration of Jerusalemite chronicler Wasif Jawhariyyeh (1904–1972) and his seven photography albums entitled The Illustrated History of Palestine. Jawhariyyeh’s nine hun ... Show More
1h 16m
Mar 2024
Changing the narrative around Palestine | Randa Abdel Fattah
What does coverage of Gaza tell us about how the West sees the rest of the world? A recent report into mainstream news coverage found Islamophobic and anti-Arab language was widely used in coverage of the events after 7 October, with Israeli victims described using emotive langua ... Show More
51m 2s
Oct 2023
Special Episode: Roundtable on Israel-Palestine w/ Dana El Kurd, Orly Noy, and Yair Wallach
On October 7th, Hamas fighters breached the militarized fence separating the occupied Gaza strip from Israeli communities in the south, killing 1400 people and taking 200 hostages. Israel immediately retaliated with severe bombardment of the Gaza strip that, at the time of this w ... Show More
1h 31m