Episode 27 - Nakba Day/Islamophobia in the US military

On this week's show, Matt Graber is joined by friend and ally in the struggle, Wafai Dias, a Palestinian student at Temple University and member of Temple Students for Justice in Palestine

First, we give an update on the Palestinian prisoner hunger strikes, which have all but ended, with the prisoners' committee reaching an agreement with the Israeli Prison Service (IPS). Four prisoners - Mohammad Taj, Mahmoud Sarsak, Akram Rikhawi, and Mohammad AbdelAziz -  continue their hunger strikes to protest cruel conditions and arbitrary detention policies. About 2,000 prisoners have ended their hunger strikes and taken food, after the Israeli Prison Service agreed to adjust their educational, visitation, solitary confinement, and other policies.

Then, Wafai gives us background on al Nakba - the catastrophe - the forced removal of over 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and their lands from 1946 to 1948 with the founding of the state of Israel. May 15 marks Nakba Day for Palestinians across the globe.

Wafai tells listeners about the massacre of the people of her family's village, Deir Yassin, in 1948.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine was not just a historic event, but it is a casualty that continues today in East Jerusalem, the Negev Desert, and throughout the occupied territories, with Palestinians forced from their lands and their homes by the Israeli Defense Forces and settler organizations such as the Jewish National Fund and the World Zionist Organization.

This, in large part, is why Israel last year passed the 'Nakba law' which prohibits public institutions from recognizing al Nakba.

Finally, Wired.com has a story on a course taught at the Joint Staff Forces College last year which endorsed 'Hiroshima Tactics' in a 'Total War' on the world's 1.4 billion Muslims. With Al Jazeera uncovering a similar course taught at a Virginia military base, we ask, just how widespread is Islamophobia in the US military; and in the US police, particularly with the NYPD spying on Muslims as far as Philadelphia, and Tarek Mehanna being sentenced to 17 years in prison for translating documents into English and expressing support for al Qaeda?

The NYPD spying program has been endorsed by New York's Mayor Bloomberg and the Obama Administration's top 'counterterrorism' official, John Brennan. But Democrats in the House of Representatives are pushing legislature the condemn the spying program and "[bar] federal funds from being used to conduct ethnic or religious profiling", specifically addressing the hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funds supporting the NYPD spying program.