UNAPOLOGETIC with Ashfaaq Carim

On this episode of ‪@MEEunapologetic‬ we sat down with Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, to talk about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the media that reinforced it and the global systems that enable it.
Albanese’s latest report, Truth Under the Rubble, examines media complicity. She argues that destroying a people takes a narrative as well as bombs. She explains how the killing of nearly 300 Palestinian media workers, the destruction of more than 80 percent of Gaza’s media infrastructure and Israel’s daily military censorship worked together to bury the truth. She also describes how Western legacy media barred the word genocide, repeated Israeli army claims and stripped the legal framework out of their coverage.
We go beyond the media to the systems around it. Albanese says Israel is the main architect of the genocide, but states and companies are complicit through weapons, finance, political cover and profit. She traces the erosion of international law back through the war on terror. She warns that the methods used against Palestinians are now being turned on protesters, migrants and refugees in Europe, which she calls the Israelisation of our societies. We also discuss the killing of Gaza’s journalists and the story of photojournalist Fatma Hassona. We close on Britain’s shifting stance, the proscription of Palestine Action, the US sanctions against her and her next report, on militarism and the environment.
UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro highlights
02:05 Truth under the rubble
04:03 A system of complicity 09:42
Banning the word genocide
17:04 Is any of this new?
21:41 Israelisation of our societies
27:10 Britain's shifting stance
30:01 Targeting Gaza's journalists
38:19 The mandate's final reports 47:41 The Palestine Action ban

On this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we sat down with Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst the day after Israel’s elections, with Netanyahu’s bloc on course to be the largest and no side close to a majority.
David explains why a strike on Iran is now more likely than before the vote, how Ben-Gvir’s armed settler base shapes Netanyahu’s options, what a record Palestinian turnout means for citizens of Israel, and why so many observers got this election wrong.
UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.
Chapters
00:00 Intro highlights
01:06 No majority: what next?
08:23 Will Netanyahu strike Iran?
14:26 Ben-Gvir’s armed settlers
18:14 A record Palestinian turnout
22:07 Why outsiders got it wrong
24:59 Netanyahu’s annexation mission
27:36 What if Eisenkot had won?

We sat down with Andrew Feinstein, former ANC MP, arms trade investigator and author of The Shadow World, on ‪@MEEunapologetic‬ to talk about his new book, Making a Killing: How the West Profits From Slaughter in Gaza and Yemen.
The book began with a question from Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq, who lost 21 members of his family in an Israeli strike on their home in Gaza: who made the bomb, and who profited?
We discuss the UK's West Bank sanctions announcement and why Andrew sees it as symbolic, the Al Yamamah deal and the scale of corruption in the arms trade, Tony Blair's relationship with JP Morgan after Iraq, war profiteering around the bombing of Iran, and the defence tech billionaires reshaping warfare, from AI targeting in Gaza to drone footage too poor to tell a child from an adult.
Drawing on his years in the anti-apartheid struggle, Andrew explains why he believes economics, and financial sanctions in particular, will be the tipping point for Israel, just as they were for apartheid South Africa.

UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

Francesca Albanese spoke to UNAPOLOGETIC on the Ed Sheeran-Macklemore debacle, UK sanctions on West Bank settlements, the changing discourse on Israel, and building allyship and solidarity to beat Apartheid in Israel.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro highlights
01:41 UK sanctions and Palestinian erasure
07:57 Macklemore and the billionaire backlash
11:33 Building a global BDS strategy
19:34 Yuval Abraham and colonial grift

Josephine Quinn is Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge, the first woman ever to hold the position, and the author of How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History. On this episode of Unapologetic, we sit down with her in her Cambridge office to take apart one of the most powerful ideas in modern politics: the idea of "civilisations," where it came from, who invented it, and why it's less than 200 years old.
We talk about how the concept of "civilisation" was built, how it was used to justify empire and colonial violence, why the Middle East's borders don't fit the myth of the "ancient nation," what the Crusades actually did to Europe, how cities are really just nodes of connection, how a group of homesick miners in Egypt invented the alphabet, why the "Dark Ages" were never actually dark, and how the House of Wisdom in Baghdad ran one of history's great knowledge-gathering operations.
We also talk about Gaza, the language of "civilisation vs. barbarism," the rise of civilisational thinking under Putin, Modi, and Trump, and whether that whole framework is starting to collapse.
Josephine's book: How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History
UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.