Makdisi Street

Feb 28 2025 54 ep. 82 mins 200
Makdisi Street Podcast artwork

A podcast co-hosted by Saree Makdisi, Ussama Makdisi, and Karim Makdisi. Follow us on X: @MakdisiStreet Follow us on YouTube: @MakdisiStreet

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"The West Bank is being annexed" w/ Mariam Barghouti

Feb 28 2025 76 mins  
The brothers welcome Ramallah-based journalist Mariam Barghouti (@MariamBarghouti) to discuss the ongoing de facto annexation of the West Bank, the unchecked growth of colonial outposts, the role of the mainstream Western media in whitewashing and censoring this violence, and the position of the Palestinian Authority as a subcontractor to the Israeli occupation. Watch the episode o

"Every single one of us has a role to play" w/ Mohammed el-Kurd

Feb 18 2025 76 mins  
The brothers welcome journalist and writer Mohammed el-Kurd to the show to discuss his new book, Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal (2025), his family's surreal experiences with Jewish Israeli settlers in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the role of resistance in the broader meaning of the term, and why Palestinians can never surrender to the "politics of appeal

"The minimum we owe is solidarity” w/ Asli Bâli

Feb 07 2025 82 mins  
The brothers welcome Aslı Bâli, Professor of Law at Yale Law School and President of the Middle East Studies Association. They discuss the increasingly repressive academic climate in the United States over the question of Palestine led by private sector as well as the current Trump Administration, how anti-Palestinian racism is used as a wedge issue in contemporary culture wars,

"They still think we are 'savages'” w/ Wadie Said

Jan 27 2025 85 mins  
The brothers welcome their cousin Wadie Said, Professor of Law at the University of Colorado, to reflect on Donald Trump’s personalized domestic and Middle East agenda, the Gaza ceasefire deal and the demise of international legal order. The conversation then focuses on insidious concepts of “terrorism” in the US, and its legal implications for those accused on trumped up cha

“You can’t hide the smoking gun of this genocide” w/ Sherene Seikaly and Tony Alessandrini

Jan 20 2025 80 mins  
Note: we recorded this before the appalling AHA leadership veto on Jan. 17 of the democratic vote of its membership to condemn Israeli scholasticide The brothers welcome Professor Sherene Seikaly, historian at University of California at Santa Barbara and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and Anthony Alessandrini, Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and

“Both the US and Israel are delusional” w/ Jeffrey Sachs

Jan 15 2025 72 mins  
The brothers welcome the world-renowned economics professor and bestselling author, and Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs of Columbia University. They discuss the nature of U.S. global hegemony, idealism vs. realism, the possibility of de-dollarization, BRICS, the delusional notions of perpetual US and Israel hegemony, and why their killing lots of civilians does not translate into politi

“The lobby is working overtime" w/ John Mearsheimer

Jan 03 2025 92 mins  
The brothers welcome University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer to the show to discuss the power of the Israel lobby in the US, the relationship between the US and the Israeli state (and whether the dog wags the tail or the other way around), the possibility of change in US policy on Palestine and the Arab world, recent developments in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, and, final

“No one has a national interest in a unilateral declaration of Syria's future” w/ Omar S. Dahi

Dec 29 2024 107 mins  
The brothers welcome Syrian political economist and Hampshire College professor Omar S. Dahi (@omardahi) to offer personal reflections on the early days of the post-Assad era in Syria, who exactly Ahmad Shara/ Al Jolani is, Syrian policy choices and national interests in the context of external interventions and Turkish influence, and the implications of Israeli expansionism and de

“The problem has always been that Israel is above the law" w/ Nimer Sultany

Dec 16 2024 87 mins  
The brothers welcome Nimer Sultany, a Reader in Public Law at SOAS University of London. They discuss the difference between the hypocrisy of the Western liberal legal order versus the Western liberal abandonment of its own international order to protect Israel, the imperatives of justice in Syria at a time of injustice in Palestine, the ICC and ICJ cases, the fact that South Afric

"Palestine will be liberated in Arabic" w/ Fady Joudah

Nov 28 2024 97 mins  
The brothers welcome National Book Award for Poetry Finalist Fady Joudah (@fadyjoudah) for a searing and intimate discussion of Palestine in English versus Palestine in Arabic, about writing poetry in a time of genocide, about the limits and hubris of solidarity, about the necessity of common decency in the face of horror, and about the meaning of Palestinian love confronting the I