Join us for a discussion with Dr. Jess Ghannam of President Trump’s preposterous proposal for the depopulation of Gaza and the draconian repression aimed at Palestine solidarity activists in the United States.
In the two weeks since his inauguration, President Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders and launched a plethora of proposals, from the imposition of tariffs on allies and rivals alike to the take-over of the territory of allies, from Greenland to Panama. In this week’s show, however, we will focus on two of Trump’s recent pronouncements and orders. The first is his statement this week, alongside accused war criminal and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States would take over Gaza, “own it”, and that he would expel the whole Palestinian population of Gaza–that is, 2.3 million people, from their homeland into neighboring states such as Jordan and Egypt that have forthrightly declined to participate in this criminal violation of human rights. His dream, as he put it, was to make a Mediterranean Riviera of the territory, a real estate magnate’s vision of what to do of this sector of the Palestinian historic homeland. The second is Trump’s executive order, signed last week, calling for aggressive action to fight antisemitism on college campuses and promising to prosecute offenders and revoke visas for international students found to be what he called “Hamas sympathizers.”
Already the DoE has announced that it is following up with indecorous speed on that executive order: "Pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order, Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, the U.S. Department of Education today announced investigations into five institutions of higher education where widespread antisemitic harassment has been reported. The investigations are in response to the explosion of antisemitism on American campuses following the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023." The schools in question are:
Columbia University
Northwestern University
Portland State University
The University of California, Berkeley
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Today we speak with Professor Jess Ghannam of UC San Francisco about both these developments and what they mean both for Palestinians and for those who have undertaken solidarity with Palestine and protested a genocide that Israel has yet to end.
Dr. Jess Ghannam is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences in the School of Medicine at UCSF. His research areas include evaluating the long-term health consequences of war on displaced communities and the psychological and psychiatric effects of armed conflict on children. Dr. Ghannam also does research in the area of Global Health and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and has developed community health clinics in the Middle East that focus on developing community-based treatment programs for families in crisis. Past president of the Arab Cultural and Community Center and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in San Francisco, Dr. Ghannam is also a consultant with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Reprieve and other international NGO's that work with torture survivors. He has been a frequent visitor to Gaza over the past several decades.
