In this episode of “Occupied Thoughts,” 2022 FMEP non-resident Fellow Dr. Maha Nassar speaks with Dr. Basil Farraj about the recent death of Khader Adnan – a 45-year-old Palestinian prisoner who died on May 2, 2023 in an Israeli prison cell following a hunger strike that spanned nearly three months. Israel has refused to return Khader Adnan’s body to his family. Adnan was protesting Israel’s widespread policy of arbitrarily detaining Palestinians against fair trial guarantees and in abhorrent conditions. Khader Adnan had been arrested at least 12 times, spent around eight years in Israeli prisons, and went on hunger strike five times.
Subscribe to “Occupied Thoughts” on iTunes | Soundcloud |Spotify
Recorded May 16, 2023
Dr. Basil Farraj received his doctorate in Anthropology and Sociology from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He is also a policy analyst at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian policy network. Basil’s research centers on the Israeli prison system, the impact of Israeli torture and violence on Palestinian prisoners, and the ways in which prisons have come to reflect the broader colonial reality under which Palestinians live.
Dr. Maha Nassar is an associate professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona, where she specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of the modern Arab world. Her award-winning book, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2017), examines how Palestinian intellectuals connected to global decolonization movements during the mid-twentieth century. A 2018 Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project, Dr. Nassar’s analysis and opinion pieces have appeared in numerous publications, including The Washington Post, +972 Magazine, The Conversation, and The Hill. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband, son, and daughter, and she is working on her next book, a global history of Palestine’s people. Follow Dr. Nassar on Twitter here: @mtnassar
Resources & Further Reading
- https://fmep.org/resource/palestinian-political-prisoners-and-israels-carceral-regime/
- https://fmep.org/resource/palestinian-bodies-held-hostage-by-israel/
- https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1652754
- https://www.addameer.org/ar/node/4978