Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
with Lenni Brenner, 18 July 2019
Lenni Brenner is the author of many works, including Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, published in 1983 to a very positive review in the London Times.
Meticulously researched, it was the basis for Jim Allen's play, Perdition, and prompted ex-London Mayor Ken Livingston's remarks about Adolf Hitler, the Zionists and the Nazis that ultimately led to Ken's suspension and subsequent departure from the Labour Party for alleged "anti-semitism".
Lenni Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He developed an interest in history from reading Hendrik Willem van Loon's The Story of Mankind which his brother had received as a bar mitzvah present.
with Ran Greenstein, 21 July 2019
Ran Greenstein, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa, challenges the mainstream nationalist narratives and movements that dominated the Israeli-Palestinian situation for too long.
In Zionism and its Discontents, he focusses on four different but connected attempts to resist Zionist dominance and the settlement project before and after 1948 and provides a compelling history of those radical movements of the past hundred years in Israel/Palestine that challenged the conceptual bases of Zionism in theory, and opposed its practices on the ground. It makes for sad and sobering reading, addressing the role of the Palestinian Communist Party, and then the bi-nationalist movement, before moving on to the period after 1948 when Palestinian attempts to challenge their unjust conditions of marginalisation became more frequent. Finally, he confronts the radical anti-Zionist Matzpen group, which operated from the early 1960s–80s.
with Jeff Halper, 2 June 2019
Jeff Halper is the author of War against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification. Jeff's book includes reference to the Israeli military-grade hyper-surveillance system deployed in Glasgow since 2013 as an example of how the technology and expertise developed to crush Palestinian reistance has become a lucrative commodity in the international arms bazaar. We discuss how Western governments anticipate social unrest as inequality intensifies and how Israel facilitates the moves against fundamental human rights that being eroded for populations across the world. The topic of this discussion should concern everyone - in Glasgow, across Scotland and the entire planet.
with Ramzy Baroud, 14 July 2019
Ramzy Baroud is a US-Palestinian journalist, author, columnist and Editor of Palestine Chronicle. He is a former Deputy Managing Editor of Al Jazeera online.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian prisoners' experiences in Israeli jails have rarely been told. Western media portrays them as 'terrorists' while well-meaning third-party human rights advocates paint them as hapless victims. They are neither. The resilience and grit of Palestinians enables them to rise above Israel's cruelty and be emblems of power for their people. Palestinian prisoners resist Israeli colonialism, apartheid and military occupation. Rather than being viewed as unfortunate victims, their steadfastness exemplifies the ongoing fight of the Palestinian people as a whole.
with Salman Abu Sitta, 12 May 2019
Abu Sitta's encyclopedic knowledge and grasp of his subject, his unflinching defence of Palestinian rights, makes this interview a valuable lesson for all those who support the freedom struggle of the Palestinian people. He has shown how the Palestinian right of return is not only essential from an ethical and political pointof view; it is also practical, impeded only by the racist structures of the society and State of Israel.
with Chris Williamson, 9 August 2020
Chris Williamson was the Labour MP for Derby when he was suspended from that Party in February 2019 for daring to question the party's response to the avalanche of spurious, evidence-free antisemitism allegations. He was reinstated in June then - two days later - suspended again and blocked from standing again as a candidate. We discuss the ongoing witch-hunt of Palestine activists and others inside and outside the Labour Party, what we can expect going forward with Sir Kier Starmer as Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, and how to build resistance to those who have allowed over 50,000 UK citizens to die for the most part needlessly.
with Sarah Glynn, 20 October 2019
Sarah Glynn is active in Scottish Solidarity with Kurdistan and visited the Rojava area of Syria controlled by the Kurdish YPG militia and it's allies. She is also a founding member of Scottish Jews against Zionism and a long-term supporter of Palestinian freedom. Sarah discusses with Mick Napier the the relationship between the struggle for freedom of the Syrian Kurds and the struggle of the Palestinian people against the settler-colonial project of Zionism.
with Tom Suarez, 30 June 2019
Mick Napier interviews Tom Suarez, author of State of Terror, a meticulously researched work about Zionism. State of Terror describes a movement that managed to build a state and uses that state to maintain and intensify its pre-state terrorist campaign against the Palestinian people.
1 November 2020
Happy 20th Birthday, Scottish PSC. Comrades look back over twenty years of BDS campaigning.