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Recorded 3/9/2026
In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP President Lara Friedman speaks with author and scholar Dr. Nathan J. Brown (bio) about his recent article, For Younger Palestinians, Crisis Has Become a Way of Life.
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Recorded 3/4/2026
In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with University of Maryland Professor Dr. Shibley Telhami and FMEP President Lara Friedman. The three discuss the new US & Israeli war against Iran, the strategic changes in the Persian Gulf and the polling data in the U.S. demonstrating a lack of support for the war. They discuss the fate of the Abraham Accords and normalization more broadly. They also discuss the role and politics of Israel in the U.S. now, including recent polling data and the impact on current and future leadership.
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Recorded 3/3/2026
See Dr. Telhami’s most recent poll, “Do Americans Favor Attacking Iran Under the Current Circumstances? The Latest Critical Issues Poll Findings,” conducted in early February 2026, before the U.S. & Israel launched the recent war.
Dr. Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and the Director of the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll. He is also Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Telhami is the author and editor of numerous books. His best-selling book, The Stakes: America and the Middle East, was selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the top five books on the Middle East in 2003. His most recent book is a co-edited with contributions volume, The One State Reality: What is Israel/Palestine? which was published in March 2023 with Cornell University Press. He has one forthcoming book: Peace Derailed: Obama, Trump, Biden, and the Decline of Diplomacy on Israel/Palestine, 2011-2022 (co-authored).
Lara Friedman is FMEP’s president. With more than 25 years working in the Middle East foreign policy arena, She is a leading authority on the Middle East, with particular expertise on U.S. foreign policy in the region, on Israel/Palestine, and on the way Middle East and Israel/Palestine-related issues play out in Congress and in U.S. domestic politics, policies, and legislation. Lara is also a preeminent subject-matter expert in the area of anti-Palestinian legislation and “lawfare,” including the weaponization and instrumentalization of the definition of and concerns about antisemitism. Lara’s research on lawfare and antisemitism-related topics – which she makes available to the public – is widely cited and widely recognized as the authoritative data in the field. Prior to joining FMEP, Lara was the Director of Policy and Government Relations at Americans for Peace Now, and before that she was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, serving in Jerusalem, Washington, Tunis and Beirut.
Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a Fellow at FMEP. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian rights, co-editor of After Zionism (Saqi Books) and is currently writing a book about Palestine. He also currently serves on the board of the Independence Media Foundation. His work has been published in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and elsewhere. He earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MPP at Harvard University. You can follow Ahmed on Substack at: https://ahmedmoor.substack.com.
FMEP Non-resident Fellow Peter Beinart interviews researcher and journalist Dr. Sophia Goodfriend on the pernicious flow of repressive surveillance technology between the U.S. and Israel, which is now being seen deployed by Israel in Gaza and by ICE in the U.S.. Goodfriend recently published,”ICE operations increasingly resemble Israeli occupation. That’s no coincidence” in +972 Magazine where she takes a deep dive into this issue.
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Recorded 2/24/2026
More from Sophia Goodfriend
- “AI-powered surveillance firms are gunning for a share of the Gaza spoils” (+972 Magazine, 11/28/2026)
- “With Gaza war and Trump’s return, Silicon Valley embraces a military renaissance” (+972 Magazine, 12/31/2024)
Sophia Goodfriend is the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Pembroke College and a non-resident fellow with the Middle East Initiative. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University and an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Her research examines the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on military conflict in the Middle East.
Dr. Goodfriend’s dissertation, Algorithmic Dispossession: Automating Warfare in Israel and Palestine, is an ethnographic account of how AI has upended what it means to wage and live with war. She is completing book two manuscripts rooted in ethnographic fieldwork across Israel and Palestine. Both provide human-centered accounts of how emerging technologies are transforming military conflict in the region.
Dr. Goodfriend is also a journalist and civil society consultant with years of experience reporting from the Middle East. Her writing on AI, warfare, and human rights has appeared in many popular press and academic outlets. Dr. Goodfriend’s research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Program and the National Science Foundation, among other institutions.
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
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.”
Jaser Abu Mousa is a Yale Peace Fellow examining how Gaza’s postwar reconstruction can reflect Palestinians’ priorities while repairing the social fabric of society. Most recently, he was a Program Officer working for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Gaza, Palestine until the breakout of the current war in October 2023. During the war, Jaser lost his wife, Heba, and two children, Hmaid (18) and Abdulrahman (8), and left Gaza with his remaining two children, Abdallah and Sham, for treatment in the United Arab Emirates.
Prior to his work with Swiss, Jaser served in the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS), working under immense pressure during the 2014 war to report incidents, coordinated and communicate movements and follow intense political developments. Prior to that, Jaser worked as a social worker for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the aftermath of the 2009 war, including leading a team of 50 social workers to run the poverty survey for UNRWA in the area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. He also led a team of engineers to verify the work of a European contribution 30 million Euros known as the Private Sector Reconstruction in Gaza (PSRG). Between 2006-2009, he worked extensively as a political researcher in a Gaza-based think tank; during this period he reported on and analyzed Hamas’ rise to power in the Strip.
Jaser holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the Islamic University of Gaza and a Master of Science degree in Project Management. In addition to his work as an analyst and a development/humanitarian practitioner, he has worked as a civil engineer at private construction companies and UN agencies.
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
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