In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with Myssana Morany, a lawyer and coordinator of the Land and Planning Rights Unit of Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, and Sarit Michaeli, the International Advocacy Director at the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. They discuss forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and the Naqab/Negev, looking at shared patterns of policy and action that supports Jewish control over land, enacting and entrenching the regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea. They look at specific mechanisms of displacement and dispossession of Palestinian communities, particularly rural herding and farming communities, and the dozens of communities – including tens of thousands of Palestinians – made homeless or vulnerable by this regime. Patterns include: increased home demolitions, segregationist urban planning processes, the refusal of the Supreme Court to protect or defend Palestinian land rights, and the increase in political support for crowding Palestinians into urban areas or removing them from their land altogether. Additionally, the last two-plus years has seen a massive acceleration of settler violence and terror against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, which is backed by every arm of the Israeli state.

From Adalah on the displacement in the Negev/Naqab: 

• 49 Years After Land Day: Mass Expulsion in the Naqab Unfolding
• Israeli Supreme Court Rejects Final Appeal by the Palestinian Bedouin Residents of Ras Jrabah, Ordering Forced Displacement of Around 500 People within 90 days to Make Way for Expansion of Jewish City of Dimona
• Ras Jrabah: The Legal Struggle Against State-Led Displacement in the Naqab

On the West Bank: 

• ‘The settlers brought the violence’: the ethnic cleansing of a West Bank village (The Guardian 1/14/26); 
• B’Tselem: Armed Israeli militias forcibly transferred 26 families from the southern Jordan Valley Palestinian community of Ras ‘Ein al-‘Auja (1/8/26)
• B’Tselem on forced displacement in the WB more broadly (the blog link on that page will take you to more detailed and updated cases)

Speakers: 

Myssana Morany joined Adalah as a lawyer in 2014. In 2019, she was appointed coordinator of the Land and Planning Rights Unit. Myssana’s work in the Naqab includes representing several Bedouin communities facing displacement and challenging state intiatives and master plans that induce displacement.

Sarit Michaeli is International Advocacy Director at B’Tselem. She joined B’Tselem in 2004 as its media spokesperson and director of public outreach. Sarit has an MA (Distinction) in Gender Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a BA in graphic design from Camberwell College of Art, the London Institute.

Peter Beinart is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, a Contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, an Editor-at-Large at Jewish Currents, and an MSNBC Political Commentator. His newest book (published 2025) is Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with Jaser Abu Mousa, a 2025 Yale Peace Fellow and past Program Officer working for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Gaza. The two discuss life and death in Gaza on personal and collective levels. They look at Hamas, which Jaser calls a “symptom” of the problem of occupation; at how the past two-plus years of war have destroyed not only all the infrastructure needed for life in Gaza but also the social fabric, as starvation and deprivation have broken human bonds and relationships; and the ways in which Israel works to make Gaza unlivable. On a personal level, Jaser speaks of his experiences in Gaza, from the violence he witnessed as a child during the second Intifada to the devastation he experienced on and since October 7, 2023: his wife, Heba, and two of his children were killed by Israeli missiles in mid-October 2023; after two years of starvation and deprivation, his mother, sister, and sister’s children were killed in the war in July 2025; and his family suffered other losses, including the killing of a nephew in the beginning of the war, injuring of his father, and arrest, detention, and violence against his brother along with other medical workers. Navigating these unfathomable losses, Jaser points to his faith in God and religion as guides as he seeks to protect his living children and look towards the future. Finally, Jaser reflects on how he relates to Israelis and declares that “if I strip him from his right to tell his story, that does not make me more just, but will make me less human.”

Peter Beinart is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, a Contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, an Editor-at-Large at Jewish Currents, and an MSNBC Political Commentator. His newest book (published 2025) is Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, 2025 FMEP Fellow Hilary Rantisi speaks with filmmaker and activist Jen Marlowe about the film Severed, which Jen directed. The film, released in late 2025, tells the story of Mohamad Saleh, a teenager from Gaza who has endured five major Israeli assaults, lost his home, close family members, his best friends, and—at the age of 12—his leg. Hilary and Jen discuss disablement, disability justice, and Gaza, which now has the largest cohort of child amputees in the world.

Jen Marlowe is the founder of Donkeysaddle Projects and a Consulting Producer for Just Vision. She is an independent filmmaker, journalist, author, playwright and human rights activist. Her books include I Am Troy Davis (Haymarket Books, 2013), The Hour of Sunlight (2011, Bold Type Books) and Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival (2006, Bold Type Books). Her films include Severed, There Is A Field, and Remembering the Gaza War.

Hilary Rantisi grew up in Palestine and has been involved with education and advocacy on the Middle East since her move to the US. She is a 2025 Fellow at FMEP and was most recently the Associate Director of the Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative (RCPI) and co-instructor of Learning in Context: Narratives of Displacement and Belonging in Israel/Palestine at Harvard Divinity School. She has over two decades of experience in institution building at Harvard, having been the Director of the Middle East Initiative (MEI) at Harvard Kennedy School of Government prior to her current role. She has a BA in Political Science/International Studies from Aurora University and a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. Before moving to the US, Hilary worked at Birzeit University and at the Jerusalem-based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. There, she co-edited a photo essay book Our Story: The Palestinians with the Rev. Naim Ateek.

• Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP)
• “Israeli ban on aid agencies in Gaza will have ‘catastrophic’ consequences, experts say,” The Guardian, 12/31/25

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with author Benjamin Moser about Jewish supremacy, diasporic Jewish life, and the life and legacy of the writer Susan Sontag. Moser recently published the article “We have Talked Enough About Ourselves: How the marriage of American exceptionalism and liberal Zionism led to genocide” in the magazine Equator. His next book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, will be published by published in September 2026.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with analyst Yousef Munayyer about shifts in US public policy and public opinion over the past 20 years and especially the last 2.5 years, including an analysis of the Biden Administration’s support for Israeli genocide. They discuss the BDS movement and the impact of the Palestinian boycott of the New York Times in light of dispersed media access. Finally, drawing from the current landscape, they look ahead at coming threats and shifts.

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Hilary Rantisi speaks with Dr. Yousef Kamal AlKhouri, Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies and Academic Dean at Bethlehem Bible College and a Christian Arab Palestinian theologian from Gaza. They discuss the Christian community in Gaza, the importance of Gaza in Christianity and Christian history, and the destruction of Christians in Gaza, which Dr. AlKhouri has termed ‘ecclesiocide.’ They also discuss the new Kairos document, called Kairos II, launched in Bethlehem in November 2025. According to the Kairos Palestine Initiative, Kairos II “declares the reality in Palestine as genocide and ethnic cleansing, challenges Western silence, and introduces a theology of resistance linking faith with justice. It exposes internal crises and reshapes the role of Christians in the struggle for liberation.” Read the Kairos II document here.

Hilary Rantisi grew up in Palestine and has been involved with education and advocacy on the Middle East since her move to the US. She is a 2025 Fellow at FMEP and was most recently the Associate Director of the Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative (RCPI) and co-instructor of Learning in Context: Narratives of Displacement and Belonging in Israel/Palestine at Harvard Divinity School. She has over two decades of experience in institution building at Harvard, having been the Director of the Middle East Initiative (MEI) at Harvard Kennedy School of Government prior to her current role. She has a BA in Political Science/International Studies from Aurora University and a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. Before moving to the US, Hilary worked at Birzeit University and at the Jerusalem-based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. There, she co-edited a photo essay book Our Story: The Palestinians with the Rev. Naim Ateek.