Today I am delighted to speak with Andrew Ross about his new book, The Weather Report: A Journey Through Unsettled Climates. In this study, Ross revisits areas of the world that he has written about before—Palestine, the United Arab Emirates, Phoenix, Arizona, and China. While he found no absolute correlates, he did discover that what he calls a “subterranean current of thought” emerged as he spoke with former interviewees and new ones, and visited old sites that became familiar in a different way. In particular, we follow up Andrew’s claim that in Palestine we find a “grisly future arriving there sooner than elsewhere.”  The book focusses on the idea of population and scarcity, and argues that much of the policies that are based on the presumption of scarce resources are actually predicated on what Ross calls “bogus scarcity,” drawn upon to drive capitalist and genocidal and ecocidal violence. This is a violence that awaits us all unless we can find a better way of living together in the world.

Andrew Ross is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU, where he is director of the Prison Research Lab. A contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, The Nation, New York Review of Books, and Al Jazeera, he is the author or editor of about 30 books, including Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel (which won a Palestine Book Prize), and, most recently, The Weather Report: A Journey Through Unsettled Climates. He is the co-founder of several movement groups, and currently is serving on the national steering committee of the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine network.

You, with your tongue

against the backs of teeth.

You, of ahhhhhhh,

of sssssssss. 

Let me ask you this:

which one of us the drum’s

old skin & which

the stick? You know

why I’m asking.

You’ve been bargaining again.

Death was spreading its fungus

on a fig; eating tomorrow’s honey.

Don’t say you did what you could.

Don’t give me lessons on the wasp

that burrows into the center, losing her wings.

A truck with body bags came in.

People took what they needed.

What did they need?

They needed a cup of flour.

They needed an iron pill.

But instead, you were—where?

whose?

The people counted:

 “One.”

 “One.”

 “One.”

Oh Language, what

hush you made below.

Poem Note: the lines, “One.” /“One.” / “ One.” are a reference to these lines from Pádraig Ó Tuama: “…so I count //one life / one life / one life / one life / one life // because each time / is the first time / that life / has been taken.”

First published by Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora (Palestine Writes Press)

THE CLOCK MEN

All day, the talk is lint.

Committees meet and look at their calendars.

The carpet hardly moves.

The lobby doesn’t even smell of corpses.

It’s Monday here.

There’s a salad bar here.

In Rafah, a wall is blown off by somebody’s son.

He’s gotten his life back on track now.

His father doesn’t cry outside his door anymore.

A tiny nozzle mists the lettuce.

The clock on each laptop jogs on its treadmill.

At 12:31, the meeting resumes.

No one looks at the sky anymore.

Looking has gotten risky.

Once I looked at a birthday cake

and saw a president’s face.

It was burning there

next to a piece of my cousin’s bedroom.

There were no balloons but when I looked up I saw a cloud inflating—round and swollen,

dark around the edges, bleeding through with light, pulling more and more filament into her

breasts, bright powdery hearts and fleshy grays folding into her, and still more, dense fast

moving bars and flat brown sheets that smothered the sun curling into her mass, until she

was heaving, large, now straddling the earth, bearing down–

that day, we sang an old song

and ate cake with our hands

until we had to leave

the world we knew behind.

But there were some who stayed, gripping their keyboards

even as gales lifted the roof off their box, typing:

Fill out this meeting poll today!

You must choose between 2:05 and 2:08!

First published by Social Text: https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/the-clock-men/

GRANT PROPOSAL FOR YOUR EMERGENCY

1. Objective: To hold my beloved’s hand by the sea.

2. Please describe your project in as much detail as possible: 

My hair will fly into my lover’s mouth

and we will smile until the facial muscles

can pull upwards no more. Then, we will enter the sea.

Swill every blue tincture.

3. What is the nature of your emergency? 

What is the nature of your fund?

4. Projected outcomes: 

• My lover’s terrible drawing of the sea
• A slowly emptied pot of mahshi
• One photograph of my beloved’s back entering the sea, palms raised

as though to say, It’s not too cold

5. What investments will your project require?

For my beloved’s hand to be pulled out of a witness’ testimony

and returned to me. The past to not be a bleeding

visitor who asks why the ambulance never arrives.

6. Proposed budget:

7. Please provide a schedule of deliverables: 

And you can find the report of what we did tied to a kite

First published by Adi Magazine: https://adimagazine.com/articles/two-poems-wathington/

Today I have the privilege and pleasure of speaking with Nicholas Mirzoeff and Priscilla Wathington about the genocide in Gaza, and how developing a new way of seeing and writing is demanded of us to address this historical moment. In the words of Silvia Federici, “Palestine is the World.”  We take Nick’s recent book, To See in the Dark, and animate it by having Priscilla read from her poetry.

Nick writes: “After a year of genocide, I think politics is now the meeting of the visible and the unspeakable. Unspeakable in that what is visible is so awful as to be beyond ordinary words. Unspeakable in that what is visible is forbidden to be said.

What has been sayable about the unspeakable? It has been poets who have found ways to make language do what it should not have to do.”

The goal behind this dynamic interplay is to create the grounds for solidarity with Palestine, and with all other oppressed peoples in the world, and with the planet itself.

Please see the blog for this episode to find the poems read by Priscilla Wathington.

Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor and chair in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. To See In The Dark: Palestine and Visual  Activism  (2025) is being translated into Czech, Italian and Spanish. It is the most recent of more than a dozen books, including How To See The World (2015), translated into eleven languages. Since Occupy Wall Street (2011), his work has been in dialogue with social movements, including Black Lives Matter (The Appearance of Black Lives Matter) and #MeToo. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, The Nation and LARB. He lives in New York.

Priscilla Wathington is a Palestinian American poet/editor and the author of the chapbook, Paper and Stick, which draws from her past human rights advocacy work. She is asking you to resist the lie that you are too helpless, or too busy, or too small to change anything. Take your small hand and your small voice and add it to this symphony against the genocide taking place in Gaza; and speak up not only about Gaza but also Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and your own backyard, and everywhere that humanity is at risk.

Intimidation, repression, and punishment with regard to activism for Palestine has only increased over the past year. Today I speak with three campus organizers from Students for Justice in Palestine who remain determined and committed, even in the face of their university’s complicity with genocide.  They come from both coasts of the United States—from the City University of New York and from San Jose State University. They explain what is happening on their campuses, and the ways in which they have created new tactics and actions in order to continue their work.

Haddy Barghouti is the secretary of Students for Justice in Palestine at San José State University.  He is a senior majoring in journalism.

Lucien Baskin is a doctoral student in Urban Education at the Grad Center researching abolition, social movements, and the university. Their dissertation focuses on histories of solidarity and organizing at CUNY. Lucien’s writing has been published in outlets such as Truthout, Society & Space, The Abusable Past, and Mondoweiss. Currently, they serve as co-chair of the American Studies Association Critical Prison Studies Caucus, are an inaugural Freedom and Justice Institute fellow at Scholars for Social Justice, and work as a media and publicity fellow at Conversations in Black Freedom Studies at the Schomburg Center. They organize with Graduate Center for Palestine and are a (strike-ready!) rank-and-file member of the PSC.

Sarah Southey is a third year student at CUNY School of Law and a member of CUNY Law Students for Justice in Palestine and CUNY4Palestine. In 2024, Sarah and other C4P members submitted a freedom of information act request for CUNY’s investments as part of a campaign to demand that CUNY divest from companies aiding and profiting off of israeli settler colonialism and genocide. CUNY illegally denied that request. C4P challenged the denial in court and won disclosure in Southey v CUNY. CUNY is now appealing that decision in a shameful attempt to continue to evade their legal and moral obligation to disclose and divest.

Today I talk with Omar Zahzah about his new book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. This is an immensely informative study, which details the convergence of Zionism, Silicon Valley Big Tech, and the US political and governmental elites in what Zahzah calls the hegemonic form of Zionism. He shows how capitalist profit motives and Zionist settler colonialism and  ethnic cleansing go hand in hand with attempts to censor, silence, and erase Palestinian voices and the voices of those who act in solidarity with Palestine.  Nevertheless, and crucially, Omar fills his book with accounts of how Palestinians have found ways to appropriate, repurpose, and deploy technology in ingenious, creative, and subversive ways that keep the movement alive and growing globally.

Omar Zahzah is a poet, writer, independent journalist, and Assistant Professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University.

Today I am deeply honored to spend time with poet, activist, and scholar Jamaica Osorio. Shortly after October 7, 2023, she began to write a series of astonishing poems about the war in Gaza and the genocide. Osorio graces us with readings of some of those poems, and engages in a rich, complex, and deeply moving discussion of what went into their composition. Throughout, we talk about the power of poetry to suspend time and allow us the space to contemplate the impossible.  We talk about the nature of not knowing, of the inexpressible, and the ways certain poems can give us the strength, energy, and commitment to persist in working for the liberation of all peoples, even when dwelling in grief.

Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli wahine artist / activist / scholar / storyteller born and raised in Pālolo Valley to parents Jonathan and Mary Osorio. Jamaica earned her PhD in English (Hawaiian literature) in 2018 from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Currently, Jamaica is an Associate Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In 2020 her poetry and activism were the subject of an award-winning film, This is the Way we Rise which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2021.  In 2022 she was a lead artist and Co-writer of the revolutionary VR Documentary, On the Morning You Wake (To the end of the world),  that premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022 and won the XR experience Jury award at SXSW 2022. She is a proud past Kaiāpuni student, Ford Dissertation (2017) and Post Doctoral (2022) Fellow, and a graduate of Kamehameha, Stanford University (BA) and New York University (MA). She is the author of the award winning book Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea which was published in 2021 by The University of Minnesota Press. She believes in the power of aloha ʻāina and collective action to pursue liberatory, decolonial, and abolitionist futures of abundance.

Today I have the real pleasure of speaking with Maytha Alhassen and Halah Ahmad, two prominent feminist activists, writers, and scholars deeply committed to exploring the connections between the Arabic language, storytelling, and political agency, from the historical past to the present. We talk about the continuity of storytelling forms and techniques that bridge generations and support and convey a durable set of values and beliefs that resist western appropriation and distortion. These phenomena have everything to do with continuing and advancing the struggle for Palestinian rights and the celebration of Palestinian life.

Halah Ahmad is a Harvard and Cambridge-trained writer, researcher, and political strategist whose work has appeared in multiple outlets from The Hill to Vox and the New York Times. She writes for Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network and provides research and communications services to Palestinian and economic rights organizations across the country. Much of her work focuses on narrative change through storytelling in organizing and media. At a recent Stanford event, Halah discussed the historic forms of Palestinian storytelling, the Hakawati tradition, and the ways it has evolved and continued to be relevant amid the ongoing genocide. As a practitioner in the world of policy and politics, she grapples with the limitations of present avenues for Palestinian storytelling.

Maytha Alhassen is a journalist, poet, community organizer, and scholar whose work bridges media, justice advocacy, research, and artistic expression. She’s a Co-Executive Producer on Hulu’s award-winning Ramy, Executive Producer of the award-nominated PBS docu-series American Muslims: A History Revealed, a Pop Culture Collaborative Pluralist Visionaries Fellow, TED Resident, and Harvard Religion and Public Life Art and Pop Culture Fellow (2021–2024), lectures at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and is currenlty a Research Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA. As a journalist, she has hosted on Al Jazeera English, reported for CNN, Huffington Post, Mic, and The Baffler, and written for Boston Review and LA Review of Books. Her work explores how storytelling shapes cultural and political belonging, with a focus on Muslim representation and equity in popular culture. She co-edited Demanding Dignity: Young Voices from the Front Lines of the Arab Revolutions, authored Haqq and Hollywood: Illuminating 100 Years of Muslim Tropes and Traps and How to Transform Them, and has published widely in academic journals. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies & Ethnicity from USC, an M.A. in Anthropology from Columbia, and a B.A. in Political Science and Arabic & Islamic Studies from UCLA.

Today I am extremely grateful to Ardi Imseis and Chris Gunness for joining me for an urgent discussion of Israel’s accelerated genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank.  These eminent international human rights scholars discuss Israel’s longstanding violations of international law and the complicity of the US. We also discuss at length the responsibility of states to immediately halt their direct and indirect support for the genocide. Our conversation includes an in-depth discussion of the UN, and both the usefulness and shortcomings of international law. We end with a call to international civil society to use the information, rules, and judgments of law to do what too many states fail to do—protect the rights and lives of Palestinians and bring forth justice.

Dr. Ardi Imseis is Associate Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University. He is author of The United Nations and the Question of Palestine: Rule by Law and the Structure of International Legal Subalternity (Cambridge University Press 2023). In 2019 he was named by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to serve as a Member of the UN commission of inquiry into the civil war in Yemen. He has served as legal counsel before the International Court of Justice, including the Court’s groundbreaking 2024 opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. Between 2002 and 2014, he served in senior legal and policy capacities in the Middle East with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). He has provided expert testimony in his personal capacity before various high-level bodies, including the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council, and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Professor Imseis’s scholarship has appeared in a wide array of international journals, and he is former Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law (Brill; 2008-2019) and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow, Columbia Law School. Professor Imseis holds a Ph.D. (Cambridge), an LL.M. (Columbia), LL.B. (Dalhousie), and B.A. (Hons.) (Toronto). He appears today in his personal capacity.

Chris Gunness covered the 1988 democracy uprising for the BBC in what was then Burma. After a 23-year career at the BBC, he joined the United Nations as Director of Strategic Communications and Advocacy in the Middle East. In 2019 he left the UN and returned to London. He founded the Myanmar Accountability Project (MAP) in 2021.

Today I talk with Huda Fakhreddine, writer, translator, and scholar of Arabic literature. Among the many topics we touch upon are the challenges of teaching Arabic literature, especially Palestinian literature, in a time of genocide, when universities, professional organizations, and political groups militate against any honest discussion of these topics, and punish those who do.  We talk about the notion of belonging, and the importance of being able to choose what to belong to, and what not to. Huda speaks of the freedom found in living in Arabic, and explains what that means to her.  She also reads in Arabic and English Nima Hasan’s stunning and wrenchingly beautiful poem, “Old Song.”

Huda J. Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), and the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge, 2023). Among her translations are The Sky That Denied Me: Selections from Jawdat Fakhreddine (University of Texas Press, 2020), The Universe, All at Once: Selections from Salim Barakat (Seagull Books, 2024), and Palestinian: Four Poems by Ibrahim Nasrallah (World Poetry Books, 2024). Her creative work includes a book of creative non-fiction titled Zaman saghīr taḥt shams thāniya (A Brief Time under a Different Sun), Dar al-Nahda, Beirut, 2019 and the forthcoming Wa min thamma al-ālam (And then the World), Manshūrāt Marfa’, Beirut, 2025. Her translations of Arabic poems have appeared in Protean, Lithub, Words Without Borders, Nimrod, ArabLit Quarterly, Asymptote, and Middle Eastern Literatures among many others.  She is co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures and section editor of the Encyclopedia of Islam.

Today we are deeply honored and privileged to speak with journalist-activist Yousef Aljamal, one of the editors of a remarkable, gripping, and altogether inspiring collection, Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide, 27 stories written by Palestinians in Gaza. We talk about the conception behind the book, and concentrate on certain keywords like obligation, pride, inventiveness, and resilience. Aljamal talks about how Palestinians are relying on a long history of survival and persistence—educating, caring for, and continuing life under the most oppressive circumstances imaginable. We end by echoing the voices in this collection, which call on the international community to continue to fill the streets, pressure politicians and to fight for Palestinian freedom.

Yousef Aljamal, born in a refugee camp in Gaza, works as the Gaza coordinator at the Palestine Activism Program at the American Friends Service Committee and recently received his PhD at Sakarya University in Turkey. He is the editor of If I Must Die Poetry and Prose by Refaat Alareer. He is the co-editor of Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide.