Half the Answer #16: Palestine in Context

Caitlin M. Green, Trent R. Nelson, Y. L. Al-Sheikh Jun 8, 2025

Trent and Caitlin talk to Layla al-Sheikh, who provides the history and context of the establishment of the Israeli state on Palestinian land, the many displacements and violent ethnic cleansings of the last century in that region, and the evolving relationships of the surrounding nations with the United States.

Half the Answer can be heard on Spotify, on Apple, on YouTube, on Amazon, and elsewhere via its RSS feed.

Resources:

Theodore Herzl https://britannica.com/biography/Theodor-Herzl

Nakba https://un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/

The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile https://monthlyreview.org/product/disinherited/

Dear Palestine https://sup.org/books/middle-east-studies/dear-palestine

Said on the Oslo Accords https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Edward-Said-·-The-Morning-After-·-LRB-21-October-1993.pdf

US as “Israel’s Lawyer” https://aljazeera.com/news/2011/1/24/israels-lawyer-revisited

America and Iran https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/59417/america-and-iran-by-john-ghazvinian/

Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East https://beacon.org/Brokers-of-Deceit-P1029.aspx

Image of Dead Sea: https://openverse.org/image/collection?source=flickr&creator=trialsanderrors

Published in: Half the Answer, Podcast

Authors

Caitlin Green is a linguist specializing in Discourse Studies and Pragmatics. She lives in California with her husband, two daughters, and a very small black cat.

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Trent R. Nelson is a poet, historian, and philosopher, as well as a political and socioeconomic analyst. He is the managing editor for MWF Springfield and a contributing editor with Liberal Currents.

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Y. L. Al-Sheikh is a Palestinian-American writer, historian of the American Left, and member of DSA. They are on Twitter at @EmissaryOfNight and on Substack at aletterfromthenight.substack.com.

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