In this episode of “Occupied Thoughts,” Lara Friedman speaks with Elizabeth Tsurkov about extremist trends in Israel and how they are manifest in the latest elections and coalition building, in Israeli policies across the Occupied Territories (including Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah), in the violence that swept through “mixed cities” during the recent Gaza War, and in Israel’s relations – and normalization – with authoritarian regime in the region.

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Recorded June 8, 2021

Watch this conversation on YouTube.

Elizabeth Tsurkov is a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a Research Fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking. She is also a PhD student at the Princeton University’s department of Politics. Her work focuses on the Syrian civil war, Iraq, Israel-Palestine and movements for social change in the Middle East. Tsurkov’s writings have appeared in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and +972 Magazine, among other outlets. She has over a decade of experience in civil society and human rights organizations in the Middle East, and particularly in Israel. She earned an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, and a second M.A. in Political Science at the University of Chicago. @Elizrael

Lara Friedman (co-moderator) is the president of FMEP and a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer. With more than 25 years working in the Middle East foreign policy arena, Friedman is a leading authority on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, with particular expertise on the Israeli-Arab conflict, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem, and the role of the U.S. Congress. She is published widely in the U.S. and international press and is regularly consulted by members of Congress and their staffs, by Washington-based diplomats, by policy-makers in capitals around the world, and by journalists in the U.S. and abroad. @LaraFriedmanDC