Welcome to the Empire Files podcast. I'm Abby Martin here with producer Mike Prysner.

You may have seen the hashtag going around the past couple days, save Sheikh Jara.

At the time of this recording, May 2nd is the day that Israeli courts have ordered six Palestinian families to vacate their homes in East Jerusalem, which they've had for generations.

This is occurring in a larger context of an upsurge of both settler terrorism and Palestinian resistance.

On April 22nd, the Lahava, a fascist settler gang led a violent rampage of hundreds

through the same area of East Jerusalem,

chanting death to Arabs. An uprising by Palestinians in response actually beat back the attacks

by settlers and were met with a crackdown by Israeli security forces. With the fate of Sheikh Jara

hanging in the balance, we'll spend today's episode on what's

happening and what it means for the bigger picture with Nora Barrow's Friedman.

Nora is a journalist who serves as an associate editor at the essential news source on

Palestine, the electronic and defada, where she also writes articles and runs their podcast.

She's also published a book titled In Our Power, U.S. students organized for justice in Palestine. Norr, thank you so much

for joining us on the Empire Files podcast. You're so welcome. Thank you so much. I first saw you

speaking in Berkeley around God. I don't even want to say how long ago it was now, but like...

A million years ago. It feels like that, like 13 to 15 years ago. And it was an incredible lecture. I mean, you were giving a lecture about the architecture of oppression of how settlements are built in occupied Palestine. And I do have to say it was one of the things that really drove me,

drove my passion on the issue because it was just so incredible the way that you presented this

information, Nora. So thank you for being such an instrumental figure in my own drive for the

issue. Oh, thank you. That means so much to me. Thanks, Abby. It's very cool. And just the whole

connection with project censored and stuff like that. So it means so much that you're coming on

the podcast now to talk about this. And you were the first person I thought of when I saw this

story because it's such an important story. And anytime that's something about Palestine's

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