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Acclaimed poet and writer Naomi Shihab Nye discusses her life and work in this conversation that originally aired in March of 2023 on KKFI's Understanding Israel Palestine program. The daughter of a Palestinian refugee and an American mother, Nye was a teenager living with her family near Jerusalem when the Six-Day War broke out in 1967, causing the family to return to the United States. She reads from her poetry and talks about how her experiences in Palestine affected her and her poetry, giving her a perspective that shapes her to this day.

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Ben Freeman discusses a provision in the fy 2027 National Defence Authorization Act that would deepen and entrench U.S.-Israeli military cooperation to an unparalleled degree, creating partnerships hard to unravel and gutting Congressional oversight and accountability. An equally alarming provision in the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2027 would force the U.S to share almost all intelligence about the Middle East with Israel. The president would have to go before Congress with a detailed rationale to suspend this. Section 219 (formerly Section 224) of the fy2027 NDAA is called the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative. It and Section 622 of the fy 2027 Intelligence Aithorizatin Act pose risks to U.S. sovereignty and national security. An expert on defence spending and foreign influence operations, Freeman heads the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

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The Premeditated Clampdown: Alison Weir on the Calculated Campaign to Protect Israeli State-Sponsored Destruction

In this archival dive from September 2021, Alison Weir, executive director of If Americans Knew, exposes the calculated rollout of weaponized antisemitism laws. Five years later, the true design behind that campaign is undeniable.

Host Jeremy Rothe-Kushel breaks out the tape to reveal how this premeditated legal framework was built specifically for this moment: to preemptively criminalize dissent and provide an impenetrable shield for state violence. We are watching the trap spring shut as these laws are actively deployed to protect the Gaza genocide, push the U.S. into an engineered war with Iran, and mask the NDAA's unprecedented fusion of U.S. and Israeli military, cyber, and data infrastructure.

From local speech codes locking down states like Kansas and Missouri, to Jeremy’s own 2016 Kansas City Library arrest exposing the DHS-Israel intelligence nexus, the machinery to erase our national interests and silence the public was installed right before our noses. When laws are designed to protect atrocities, the truth becomes our only defense.

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Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

https://israelpalestinenews.org/iak-investigation-international-campaign-is-criminalizing-criticism-of-israel-as-antisemitism/

https://israelpalestinenews.org/iak-investigation-international-campaign-is-criminalizing-criticism-of-israel-as-antisemitism/#timeline

https://ifamericansknew.org/download/antisemitismbooklet.pdf

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Understanding Israel Palestine archives: kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/

Beyond the Walls newsletter: beyondthewalls.substack.com

https://mondoweiss.net/2016/10/security-arrests-questioner/