It Could Happen Here - Reportback from the West Bank

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

James talks with Charles McBryde about his recent trip to the West Bank, the disastrous Gaza Humanitarian Fund, and the ongoing Gaza blockade. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up, they could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life and much more.

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I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murderline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. OpenAI is a financial abomination. A thing that should not be. An aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry, where we're breaking down why open AI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking

with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better Offline on the iHot Radio app, Apple podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts. Hello everyone and welcome to the podcast. It's me, James, today and I'm joined by my friend and yours, Charles McBride, documentary filmmaker, humanitarian activist, writer, and you've just been in Palestine. Is that right, Charles? Yeah, just got back like a week and a half ago.

Nice. Welcome to America and the free. Damn, that's a rough transition actually. Thank you for joining us so soon after you got back. So there's a lot to talk about, right? Like I feel as if in like legacy media when there is less discussion of Palestine recently, maybe just because I'm seeing so much domestic US coverage, like 24 seven, right? We're in another like Trump news cycle, but yeah, especially with reference to the West

Bank actually, like, can you like update people on the last maybe, you know, maybe in the time you were there on what's especially what's happening in the West Bank? So I think that's going to even less coverage. Sure. So I've taken two trips to the West Bank in the past year. Yeah. So August of last year, May of this year, I noticed a rapid deterioration just between those two time periods. So I mean, it was bad last year when we went that was right when I was when my team went there to begin our documentary. They had just launched this new operation in the West Bank, which was pretty much the largest ground operation they'd launched. The Israelis had launched since the second Intibada. And it was targeted

at the northern refugee camps of Tolkotim, Nershams, and Jenin. A lot of people know Jenin. They've heard that in the news. it's relatively familiar. Not a lot of people realize that the situation in Tolkerem and Norshams is quite similar. And those three camps in particular were targeted by the IDF operation. On the second trip, we couldn't even get to those places, not with the UNRWA personnel that we were supposed to go with our documentaries on UNRWA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. And last time we were there, they were able to bring us to the camp.

They showed us where the Israelis had bulldozed their facilities and done various airstrikes in the camp. This time, they couldn't even take us there. So we went to other camps instead. Everyone's spirits were low. Lots of people were talking about West Bank annexation as if it seemed like an inevitability. Yeah.

Yeah, and I actually spent some time inside 48 on this trip. And I went down to Yaffa and to Tel Aviv and interviewed some longtime kind of liberal journalists from Haaretz. And they were just talking about how the shift in Israeli society over the last year has been quite marked as well, particularly around the question of just generally ethnically cleansing Gaza, which was something that was, according to his telling, like really only

heard in very right-wing circles, like conest circles over the past couple of decades. It is now just pretty routinely heard across the spectrum in Israeli society that the best solution to this is to just deport everyone from Gaza. Yeah, that's pretty bleak. I mean, I guess the process of manufacturing consent has been pretty successful and pretty complete in that sense. Like just the dehumanization of Palestinian people has been pretty successful, at least there. I guess if people aren't familiar, we should just like explain that Palestine is, well,

the areas which are now like legally allotted to Palestinians, I guess, are not contiguous, right? Gaza and the West Bank are different areas separated by Israel and like the bulk of what you have seen in the last two years has been Israel's war on the people of Gaza. The West Bank is a different and larger area, which has also seen significant Israeli like military aggression and violence from settlers, right? Like paramilitary aggression, I guess you could call it. People I think maybe will have heard of UNRWA or maybe will at

least be familiar with seeing it. Can you explain like what the agency does? It's a unique agency, right? Like it doesn't work anywhere else in the world. It's quite a unique thing to this Israel-Palestine context. Yeah. So UNRWA is probably the most controversial UN agency and that has everything to do with the context

in which it was founded. It was explicitly set up in coordination between the United States, the newly founded state of Israel, and the Arab League coming to the United Nations and presenting a plan to deal with the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians from their home as a result of the Nakba in 1948. So out of that context, it's designed as a temporary aid refugee organization.

It actually it's set up before UNHCR. So it's mandated specifically for the Palestinians and the Palestinians don't end up falling under UNHCR when it's established. So there's a lot of particularities about UNRWA that make it different from other UN agencies, which is also something that the Israelis like to highlight because they're engaged in a multi-decade credibility campaign against UNRWA. But to the extent that it is almost entirely staffed by Palestinians, it is quite different than other UN agencies, which typically involve multinationals, international personnel. Now, a lot of the

higher leadership at UNRWA is still kind of your same international diplomats. But in the words of the Zionist academic that I interviewed for this documentary, Most of those have quote unquote gone native. So most of the international diplomats do tend to obviously be quite sympathetic to the conditions which the Palestinian staff are working under. So my documentary is a, it's an investigative documentary to some extent, and it uses the frame narrative of the Israeli allegations that UNRWA had been infiltrated by Hamas and that UNRWA personnel had taken

place in the October 7th massacres. It uses that as a hook and a frame narrative to talk about what is this organization? Why did it go from something that was set up as a temporary relief organization to 77 years later, it is responsible for maintaining the livelihood and well-being of 5.9 million registered Palestinian refugees, not only in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but also in Syria and Lebanon and in Jordan. So the politics of it get very hazy very quickly, but it's kind of an inconvenient thing for everyone because the organization

was explicitly designed to end after a few years. But the assumption was after a few years there would have been a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There has not been. And here we are, 76, 77 years later, and we're still at that point. So UNRWA still exists. Yeah. One of the ironic things we found when filming the documentary is that everyone involved in this process wants this organization to go away. Israelis, the Palestinians, the staff themselves.

The only thing they disagree on is when and under what conditions. Why? Yeah. I think it's very interesting, like as refugee agencies go, because like, I was recently reading Sally Hayden's or rereading Sally Hayden's book about refugees in Libya, right? It's called My Fourth Time We Drowned. It's an excellent book. If people haven't read it, they should read it. Very good audio book as well. They incorporate some of the voice notes you got from the refugees,

which I think is good. And as is typical of United Nations refugee workers in many areas, the bulk of them end up living or spending a lot of time in Tunisia, right? Like not in Libya. And coming in, like in, you know, the typical image that you see of the United Nations is like a bunch of people in white land cruises, right? And they pull up and they do that thing and they leave. They're not either part of the population or even with the population. And they're often criticized for this around the world, right world and they're very susceptible to like state narratives. Right? Like in Libya, there's all kinds of accusations of corruption or like sort of state capture, I guess, or

an agency that's supposed to be international and supposed to be impartial and they're supposed to above all things advocate for refugees. Right? And sometimes you can see a tension between the IOM and the UNHCR over this kind of shit. It's different with UNRWA, right? Like, they are, from what I've heard from Palestinian friends, like more respected by Palestinian people, because of the work that they do and the value that they provide. Yeah, I mean, I would say like trust in UNRWA is probably higher than in the Palestinian Authority.

The PA is largely seen as a contractor, a subcontractor for Israel. And UNRWA is seen as flawed. I mean, there are a lot of Palestinians who are deeply critical of UNRWA, particularly the constant efforts it takes to sort of remain neutral on all of these political questions. And inefficiencies that are going to come with any multinational institution NGO. Yeah, of course. But in general, they seem to, I mean, at this point, we've interviewed dozens of people

who had various relations, either they had gone to UNRWA schools or they had taken, you know, they had been to UNRWA health clinics. And by and large, they preferred these and they saw the value in UNRWA. They liked the UNRWA schools. They liked the UNRWA health clinics. And by and large, they preferred these and they saw the value in UNRWA. They liked the UNRWA schools. They liked the UNRWA health clinics. UNRWA is largely responsible for the fact that Palestinians are one of the most literate populations in the Middle East. And many of them speak English incredibly well. I mean, like, it's wild talking to an eight or nine-year-old girl who grew up in a refugee camp. And she's speaking to me in perfect English, talking about how she wants to move to Los Angeles and become an actress.

It's just wild. And that's kind of a testament to what Anur has done. And that's very inconvenient for Israel, because when you educate a lot of refugees who can then learn English and turn around and speak to the world in very eloquent ways about the nature of their oppression and their suffering, it becomes an ideological barrier to your particular political project. Right. And this is one of the things that has distinguished the genocide in Gaza, in terms of like how it's been perceived in the US, at least, right? Is that like, you have a very literate population that is able to articulate what is happening directly via social media and to traditional media, right? Like to people like yourself making documentaries, like this is distinct from populations. Like I think of the Rohingya, right? Like, you know, I speak to Rohingya people pretty often,

but I don't think most Americans see Rohingya folks if they go on TikTok or Instagram. And, you know, as a result, I think people would have cared as deeply, you know, people would have been in the streets for that. But that communication wasn't that and yeah, it is extremely inconvenient if your project is an, an ethno state, right, and you're willing to cleanse areas of other ethnicities to build your ethno state in it, which is what's happening, then it's very convenient if those people you're trying to cleanse can talk to the world in a language that the world understands and very eloquently and make their case for not being ethnically cleansed. Dead. No, it is tribute to the work that Anurag has done. You know what I guess we should do?

I guess we should take an advertising break right now. So let's do that and we'll come back. I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project, reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life and much more. All real, completely uncensored. This is Unique Access with straight forward on the ground reporting, we're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media.

Awadey showcases what the mainstream cannot access. Real underground reporting with real people, no excuses. For the past decade I've been going to places I shouldn't be, meeting people I shouldn't know. Now you can come along too. Listen to the your way days podcast, reporting from the underbelly on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing, no town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her and it haunts me to this day.

Murder is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murderline at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murderline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nailah Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Naila Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was,

my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, cause I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like,

yo, your dad's like really the goat. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good.

Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be, An aberration. A symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley.

And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry, where we're breaking down why OpenAI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts. Alright, we are back. Let's talk about the alternative to Unruh. Alternative is a wrong word. Let's talk about the attempt to make an end run around UNRWA's existence

by installing this farcical NGO, I guess you could call it an NGO or like aid provider. This is the Gaza Humanitarian Fund for people who aren't familiar. Synthetic UNRWA, UNRWA alternatives. Yeah, yeah, yeah. UNRWA substitutes. This is like the Zin of UNRWA, you know. Yeah. Okay, so what's going on with the guide?

Let's talk about what it is and what it claims to do first, and then we'll talk about how it's not doing it very well. Sure. At all. Like people are fucking dying in droves. Yeah. My life view, UNRWA maintains most of the aid going in and out of Gaza. Everyone I know in the humanitarian world has had to interface at

least to some degree with UNRWA during the aid process. And that's difficult because UNRWA has essentially been declared a terrorist entity by the Israeli government and has been banned from operating inside what Israel considers to be its territory, including occupied East Jerusalem. And increasingly in the West Bank, they're trying to limit its operations. And in Gaza, they say they can't work with them because they're Hamas. So the UNRWA people are quite confused because they've had to de-conflict with the Israelis for this entire time. And recently, as a result of this law, it's actually become illegal under Israeli law

for the Israelis to coordinate with UNRWA And so the UNRWA people don't have an actually they don't really understand what's going to happen there's been some limited coordination but still they We talked to people who are very high up in the organization and they essentially had no idea what the Israelis were planning to do To replace UNRWA or to coordinate with them in Gaza And so they just kept kind of doing their thing until the Israelis literally made them stop in certain instances. Right.

My documentary is called The War on UNRWA. And part of this war has been the propaganda efforts and the Israelis going after this organization. And everyone in the humanitarian aid world sort of been asking the question, well, what are you going to do to replace it? Again, this is an organization that deals with like 2 million people in Gaza and like 3 million

in the West Bank. Not all of those are registered with UNRWA, but it's dealing with all the refugee camps there. And Gaza itself is a refugee camp. It only exists as such as a result of the Nakba because it's where they put all of the displaced people who weren't in Jordan. And so the Israelis basically had their backs against the wall and they're like, okay, well, we have to come up

with some alternative to this because we can't come out and say, actually, our main goal is to depopulate Gaza and settle it. And so they cooked up this idea of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, which was kind of this public-private partnership backed by the Israelis and the Americans.

And the intention was to entirely subvert not only UNRWA, This public-private partnership backed by the Israelis and the Americans. And the intention was to entirely subvert not only UNRWA, but the entire UN infrastructure that goes into the Gaza Strip. For instance, every UN agency in the world actually piggybacks off of the World Food Program because they're always the first ones in. So it's WFP infrastructure, trucks, you know, vehicles, everything like that, that goes in first. And then UNHCR, UNICEF, all this thing, they're piggybacking, coordinating with WFP. In this instance, WFP is coordinating with UNRWA.

The Israelis wanted not only to bypass UNRWA, they want to just put the entire UN system out of that. So to do that, they formed this sort of collaborative partnership under the management of the Israelis, which was supposed to be kind of an amalgam of all of these different private NGOs. And I don't want to get too much into the specifics of like who sort of was involved in that. But a lot of people kind of took them at face value. They wanted this to be a real solution. So they offered to help and kind of set up this system, which was supposed to be overseen entirely by the Israelis and the Americans from a security perspective.

One of those was Jake Wood, who was the founder of Team Rubicon, which is an organization that does a fair amount of excellent work all around the world. He resigned from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund a day before it launched and went on record saying, we cannot actually do this while keeping to humanitarian principles of humanity and neutrality, which was a signal to the world that this was a highly politicized project, which is precisely what

the World Food Program under the leadership of radical leftist activist Cindy McCain has been saying about this from the start. And, you know, Anwar Felipe Lazzarini, the head of Anwar said, this is a clearly politicized event. The UN system is the only one capable of actually dealing with this in a humanitarian way. All those concerns were brushed aside. American contractors were brought in. Yeah.

And the results were relatively predictable. We've seen at this point two pseudo massacres. I mean the first one with four Palestinians were killed and just this morning 27 Palestinians were killed at a GHF distribution after gunfire was opened up on them. Yeah, we were recording on the 3rd of June so that was when this this second massacre occurred. And yeah, like I mean just today as we're recording this, I've seen that Boston Consulting Group, again, like not exactly like a bastion of wokeness, has terminated its relationship with the Guards of Humanitarian Foundation, right?

Like the kind of conceit that this is a replacement for UNRWA to begin with was somewhat farcical, right? But people who were prepared to go along with that either because they can make money doing it or because they thought this was the only way to stop people starving are still deciding that having seen the way this is run, it's not worth it, right? Right. And there's also some political heavy handedness going on with this. One of the most obvious features being specific aid distribution points

in the south of Gaza, which are designed to bring... Whereas UNRWA and the WFP were going to people, they were trying to get food through as much of the Gaza Strip as possible, including people who wanted to return to their homes in the north. The GHF is like, nope, you starving population will need to make the journey to this distribution point and this distribution point only, which has the political effect of depopulating these areas that Israel is operating in, which of course is also met criticism. There's some videos going around showing Palestinians celebrating the relief efforts of the GHF. I think some of them have been verified by Reuters, you know, Israeli media is making hay of that. You know, people praising Trump in Gaza, which, you know, these people are starving and they're

very happy to get aid. Yeah, that doesn't mean that like everything is above board and cool. It means that like the people who needed food got food. Yeah. I mean, and that's the political complexity of the situation is that the people of Gaza have just been abandoned by everyone, right? I mean, there's a lot of criticism to be had of how Hamas has handled this. There's a lot of criticism to be had of obviously the way in which Israel has behaved and the UN system and

the international system. So, I mean, I'm glad that like some of them are getting food. That is an improvement of none of them getting food. But everyone in the aid world is starting to go on record saying, the main problem is Israel preventing aid from going into the Gaza Strip. And actually, I want to harp on that a little bit, because the reason that has been given primarily for that is that Hamas is stealing the aid. Every time they're asked about this, they go back to, well, we want to get aid to people of Gaza. Unfortunately, Hamas keeps stealing the aid. And so we can't allow it. We need to allow just to trickle in. Yeah, that's interesting for two

reasons. First of all, they've yet to provide any evidence that that's actually occurring. And second, because all humanitarian experts agree that even if that was the case, say, everything Israel said about Hamas was true, and they were stealing, you know, 90, 95% of the aid that's coming in and selling it back. The humanitarian solution to that would be to flood the strip with so much aid that it would literally be impossible for them to like, to stop that, which we can do like, it would be possible for us to flood the Gaza Strip with so much aid that it would be like an abundance of food. So the decision not to do that is a political one. one. Yes, definitely. Like I was going to say on the face of it, it doesn't matter. There are lots of situations to be clear where people steal aid. It's undesirable. Of course it is. But yeah, the solution is more aid. Not like, oh, unfortunately, the aid has been stolen. So now then children must starve. Yeah. That only works if you're prepared to accept the outcome in which little children die of

starvation. Which the Israelis are. Like they're perfectly, I mean, this new was at University of Pennsylvania poll. They're not saying 84% of Israelis are in favor of the IDF just simply either killing or displacing everyone in the Gaza Strip, 84%. Yeah. It's wild to see like, it's been such a strange couple of years in that sense, right? Because like more people in this country are aware of the plight of the people of Palestine than ever have been and more people are engaged with it. That is mostly good. Some people have engaged with it in a way which is far from good, right?

Like I don't think it's really very much be gained. Fucking throwing Molotov cocktails at people in Boulder is not making anything better for anyone. It's just making everything dangerous, more dangerous for everyone and it's fucking stupid. Yeah. And I would extend that to gunning down, you know, Israeli couples outside the Jewish Museum in DC. I don't think that's necessarily the best way to help people in Gaza. No, like, yeah, standing outside the event for Jewish people and fucking shooting random people is not, that does, again, it doesn't make anyone safer.

It makes all of us less safe. And like it does nothing to stop people dying and starving in Gaza. And like that's, it's not the crux of the problem, I guess, but like that is a problem, right? That people are engaging with Gaza, but nothing is helping people here know how bad it is that children are starving in Gaza, but that hasn't changed the fact that children are starving in Gaza. In fact, like, you know, I've said this a lot of times, like I moved here in 2008 and I had engaged with the movement

before that in the UK, right? And the situation in Palestine, to be clear, was very different then. But like, it wasn't something people had heard of here, for the most part, unless you were within like certain leftist or sort of people of maybe their like, Middle Eastern extraction would know about it, of course. Now people do know and all over the world people know and we've seen huge marches, right? Like the situation is worse than it's ever been. I mean, not ever been, the Nakba was pretty fucked too. But as the world looks on right, like the genocide continues and people continue dying and seemingly the acceptance of the Gaza humanitarian foundation

by states of the world is really troubling, right? Like we're concentrating the starving population in a small area, it's contrary to everything that humanitarian principles stand for. And I don't know, we don't see, I mean, there is a very ready alternative. It's whether anyone is willing to step up and tell Israel to stop stopping aid entering the garden. Like this could end, in my estimation, like very quickly, right? We have enough aid and even aid in the region to feed all those people right now if we needed to. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's tens of millions of pounds of food rotting in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt right now, just waiting to go across the border. Yeah. And people dying. It's the lack of political will, mostly on behalf of the United States,

but also, I think, the members of the Abraham Accords and the EU. Yeah. It's a devastating indictment. And I think the interesting thing the Abraham Accords and the EU. Yeah. It's a devastating indictment. And I think the interesting thing about it is it truly pulls the mask off of the quote-unquote rules-based world order. Yeah. The US-led rules-based world order.

Because you just, I mean, it's just so obvious that no matter how many people want this terrible thing to end, that we're seeing this very obvious genocide as being live streamed to our phones, the powers that be are too invested to let it stop. You know, they're into the hill. We've already seen the degree to which the United States is compromised in its media and in government storytelling in relation to Israel-Palestine, did the long unwillingness of people to speak up about this, followed by the very rapid turnaround of people who are now rats fleeing the ship. They're seeing the unmistakable reality of this genocide. And, you know, it's like everyone says once this is done

everyone will pretend they were against it from the start and you're now starting to see that right you know with like the former White House press secretary yeah yeah Miller right yeah Miller was like yeah they've been committing war crimes and they were doing it while I was there but I didn't speak on my behalf I was speaking on behalf of the United States government right yeah the older the old Nuremberg defense mm-hmm yeah they're like I was just doing my job thing which like it's not actually a day that actually an excuse for for participating in war crimes and like should it be an excuse

for for apologizing or excusing them either? Right. I mean, I know that you guys have talked about and that we'll have spoilers for this, but I know you guys have recently had a series unpacking and or which is my favorite TV show. Yeah. And I was just so happy that they snuck that one line in about when Cyril asks what they're doing here and she just says following orders. Yeah. How often are we going to hear that in the next few years? I guess. Yeah. Yeah. It's so predictable, right? Like, every time this happens, right? Like, and this isn't the first time the United Nations has basically allowed

a genocide to happen right under its nose. No. And it would probably won't be the last because as you said, right, like the idea that we have a rules-based world order, it's a lie, it's a myth that exists to make people feel better and feel like this stuff couldn't happen again. But like, you know, we have ICC warrants for people who are traveling freely around the world.

It doesn't matter that the ICC can't enforce its own warrants, right? Like you can say something's a war crime. It doesn't matter. Like no one's the in the war police aren't going to go and arrest all the people doing it. Yeah, it's mostly just kind of a yeah, it's kind of a placebo. I'm not really sure what the function it serves. I mean, I'm not a big international institutions enjoyer. Like I'm deeply skeptical of the United Nations and almost every one of its aspects. My team and I have talked several times about the point that this documentary has at us

weirdly like it's improved our trust in international NGOs just because we're seeing like the degree to which UNRWA is operating on increasingly less budget every year and still managing to be effective. I think a huge part of that is again it is staffed by the local population who are from these areas and they have a duty and a commitment to care to their people Yeah, but in general no, I mean, I don't understand what the point of the UN is if you don't give it the US military like I mean if As an anarchist, I don't believe that this is a great solution to things But like if you wanted to enforce the UN you would need the world police like you would need to just

Use the United States to like hunt down these people. Yeah. And utilize its 800 military bases in every country to enforce these rules. And we don't really, we allow these things to happen. But yeah, I'm not a big international institution to enjoy either. Like I've seen the UN be fucking useless in most continents that people live on. I would really like it though, if they would do something to stop the suffering of the people of Palestine.

Like, it doesn't mean I wouldn't be happy. It doesn't mean I'm not happy. When I speak to guys from PK Gaza, we've had on our show several times, right? Like when they talk to us about like, where should we send money? They'll be like, oh, UNRWA was to get my family some food this week or whatever. Like I'm happy to hear that. And I'm glad that they're there. Oh, I'm glad I'm happy to hear that yeah and I'm glad that they're there oh I'm glad that they were there at that time I guess.

I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project, reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground, you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life and much more. All real, completely uncensored. This is Unique Access with straightforward on the ground reporting, we're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media

Away days showcases what the mainstream cannot access Real underground reporting with real people no excuses for the past decade I've been going to places. I shouldn't be meeting people. I shouldn't know now you can come along to listen to the Your Way Days podcast reporting from the underbelly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

I was calling about the murder of my husband. It's a cold case. I've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator

to ask the questions no one else is asking. I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother, she was still somebody's daughter, she was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything I might've dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Naila Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was,

my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, cause I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like,

yo, your dad's like really the goat. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good.

Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be, an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of

Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry, where we're breaking down why open AI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts. So, what does the future hold for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation seems to be falling apart within a very short period of this whole thing being stood up, which is unsurprising,

right? Can you explain, like, what does it take for aid that lives up to basic humanitarian principles to get in there? I think that's a really difficult question to answer because we have tried so many options. Yeah. I mean, truly, I mean, the last time I think I was on this podcast, it was to talk about my colleagues at the World Central Kitchen who got killed in Gaza. That was an attempt to try and alleviate the suffering of Palestinian people and it had predictable results. You know, there's all these

groups have been operating in there to the extent that they can. And the result has been too little, too late. And everyone is saying from Cindy McCain at the World Food Program to Philippe Lazzarini to, you know, Jose Andres, like in the private sector, everyone is saying the reason this is a problem is nothing to do with Hamas. It has everything to do with the fact that Israel is restricting the amount of egg going into the Gaza Strip. And now everyone's waking up and asking the obvious question of like, well, why are they actually doing that? And the answer corresponds to those polls we see that indicate that, you know, 50% of Israeli society is open to killing everyone in the Gaza Strip.

84% are open to displacing them all. This is just what Israel wants. And I think the humanitarian world is slowly swallowing that very difficult pill and I don't, I can't really tell you what comes next outside of a political resolution. Yeah, which seems harder and harder to come by in the current international climate. Like certainly it's not coming from the US, right?

Yeah, I mean, like something to watch would be that Senator Welch from Vermont introduced a bill to immediately refund UNRWA. Okay, yeah. And it has a house, a correlate with, I think, yeah, Congresswoman Jayapal and a few others who are trying to kind of push that through. I mean, the United States funds $300 million, which is about over a third of UNRWA's annual budget.

And we've restricted that funding for the past year and a half. So if we restore that, I think that would be a big signal to Israel that we're not playing ball anymore. I just think when you have a rubber stamp Congress and a fascist president, that's probably unlikely to pass. That's a big reach. I actually think this is an area where elected officials are to the right of Trump supporters on this one, I think. I spent a lot of time in rural East County San Diego, right? Like I talk to people who have very different politics to my own. Yeah, it's a nice way of saying that. But like I've had people who straight up I'm sure voted for Trump be like, man, they're

letting little children starve. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you know, like, like I think it's an area where a more sensible politics would be able to build consensus, but here we are. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's there is no opposition, like the Democrats are not an opposition party. They're just happy being like the junior partners in fascism now. Yeah, they're having a little party today where they're giving

out tacos, because they're trying to somehow encourage Trump to go ahead with more sanctions and tariffs and more genocides, I guess. Like I don't quite know what the Trump always chickens out thing. Like, I'm glad he's chickened out of the tariffs. Isn't that a good thing? Yeah. Like, yeah, like what are you trying to say? What are you trying to say here?

I think that maybe I don't want to confront what they're trying to say. But this is a thing that like at the current time, like it needs state action to stop it. We do not have an organization which is able to mobilize people in such a way that they can stop it. And that is, it's really desperate if you care, right? Because the states of the world very clearly for decades and decades and decades have been unconcerned with Palestinian people and their wellbeing and they're not doing shit about it now. I think there are still people who are able to make a meaningful benefit to the lives

of people in the West Bank, right? I understand why people are hopeless when they look at what's happening, guys, and I understand why it seems bleak and it seems like there's nothing you can do. Are there things that, like like concrete actions, organizations, groups that you think people can engage with? And we've heard from some of them on the show before, right? To be in solidarity with or to help people in the West Bank. Yeah, you know, I think like, I honestly, I think there are people who could probably better answer this question for me, who've actually gone and done protective presence operations in the West Bank. I know that they're like

the people in Masafari Yat are often asking for foreigners to come and do that. And a lot of people will go through like Jordan Valley Solidarity or ISM or something like that. I'm usually one to discourage foreigners from jumping feet first into a war zone with great intentions and no knowledge of the language or everything that's going on. Yeah. But there does seem to be a genuine call from amongst the Palestinian community in the West Bank to have people who are willing to physically get in between, you know, Palestinian villages and settlers and the IDF.

Yeah. That is a concrete thing you can do. That's a dangerous thing to ask somebody to do. Yeah. I don't think it's something people should rush into. Right. Like we've, we've interviewed people who have been shot doing. Yeah, exactly. Young woman was killed doing that. Yeah. I should know. I guess she was, she was shot. Yeah. Feet away from my friend who was just in the West Bank and he just got banned from the entire territory for 99 years. And I was talking

to him about that because I wonder about like, you know, my work and sometimes I feel like I'm not going far enough in my solidarity because I'm doing this investigative documentary and I'm not physically putting my body on the line. Yeah, sure. But I can still go to the country. Like, my support for the Palestinians is still ongoing. So I think people need to ask themselves, do I want to take one drastic measure to like show my palace, my solidarity with Palestine in an instant? Yeah. Whether it's joining a like a flotilla that might get air strikes, or, you know, setting yourself on fire outside the Israeli embassy? Or do I want to like contribute in the ways that I can, as best I can? I mean, I'm a

storyteller, right? So I said, I need to find a story that I can as best I can. I mean, I'm a storyteller, right? So I said, I need to find a story that I can tell about the Palestinian that will humanize them in the eyes of people who are not naturally sympathetic. And I think a lot of people think that they need to be putting their body on the line. Or it's like, I talk about this with disaster relief all the time. Like disaster happens and people see you on the TV, they're like, I need to be wearing a high vis vest and distributing a box of aid to someone. Yeah. It's like no you probably don't actually. Like the thing that you can best do to help people is probably the skill that you've been perfecting in your own career as well as

like yeah in your own life right. If you're good at spreadsheets you can help people get access to housing. Yeah a hundred percent. You know if you're good if you're good at lifting things then then maybe you should be lifting boxes. But like I have a friend who's an Emmy award winning director of photography and he's like, I have a truck and I can lift heavy things and like show me where to go. And he was hitting me up the entire like first two weeks of the LA fires being like, where should I go? And I was like, me, you're an Emmy award winning videography.

Tell the story of the fires. Find the survivors. Like bring their stories to life and let the world see what our community looks like. And he did that and it went amazing. Yeah, so like, I think people should think about when they want to help. You know, if you are a ceramicist or you sew or you're a musician, write a song about God.

Like there's so many ways to help that don't involve physically putting yourself in between a settler in their M4 and a Palestinian family whose language you can't speak. Yeah I totally agree like there's and we see that with border stuff right like everyone wants to do hike out to the border and drug water or you know everyone wanted to in Hukumba right like a lot of people wanted to help us and people did help us it was amazing it was really beautiful but like people were also wanted to help us and people did help us. It was amazing. It was really beautiful. But like people were also able to help the skills they had, like making jewelry and selling it or maybe doing a benefit gig.

Right. There's a long tradition of anarchist benefit gigs. Like it's a thing that we do. Do a zine. Yeah. Like do a punk concert, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Many, many such cases. Like within doing that, there's the intangible benefit of showing people that people care about them, like all around the world. I remember, you know, just recently, I saw people from the Korean nationalities defense force, right? So one of the revolutionary organizations in Myanmar making a statement about solidarity to people of Palestine and to their children. And that, you know, that they too have experienced their children being killed. They too have experienced these bombing runs and state oppression.

And that like they see them and they care about them. And even in their own time of war, like the front in Kareni state is hot right now. That they are still thinking of the people of Palestine. I saw Palestinian people were very touched by this, right? Like it does, obviously you can't eat someone's good thoughts, but like there are things you can do like, because yeah, you can't be down there right now giving people a sandwich as much as you'd like to. And for some people that's either not possible or maybe just not the best use of their time. And like, I think it's a really good message that everyone's good at

something. You like find the thing that you're good at and use that to help people. I think it's really valuable. Is there anything else you'd like to share with people before we finish up here? Yeah, I just think I would. This was a dark conversation because I don't really see a way out of this humanitarian situation. But I think there's a degree to which that's been the case from the start, right? The real trick of the Imperial Thought Machine is that the pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it. To quote Theory Twink, Charis Nimic. But don't lose hope, right? Because the world does care about Palestine more than it ever has.

And they feel that. The people there feel our love, they feel our solidarity. And that is not valueless, right? The people there feel our love, they feel our solidarity. And that is not valueless, right? No human is useless who lightens the burden of another. I was depressed as hell coming back from this recent trip to Palestine. And I went to the mountains and met with a bunch of people who were just really energetic about Palestinian solidarity. And really cared about it. It was so nice to go from that and just be able to tell my Palestinian friends like, hey, by the way, we just spent an entire week talking about

what we can do to alleviate to some small degree the suffering that your people are going through. That matters. Every small act, every little thing, right? The small deeds of ordinary folk, that's what keeps the darknesses bay. Yeah. And that's really prescient. Often like refugees will say to me, assigned to me in the last six months now, I guess, that I think Americans don't care about them anymore. And that really fucking breaks my heart. Like more than I can express with words, because I care about those people so much. And like, it does make a difference when they see people doing things and they can be small things. But like, I know how much that lifts up somebody in dark times, like, because I've been with them in pretty dark times. So yeah, it does

make a difference. And like, if that's what you can do, then people shouldn't think it's valueless. Yeah. And also, I'm like pressure people, you know, continue to make people embarrassed for believing in genocide. Call your congressmen and remind them that they are their shills and cowards. I think a lot about, you know, you mentioned like 19, you mentioned World War II earlier. Yeah. I mean, if we had had TikTok in the age of Dachau and Treblinka and Auschwitz, I think about like, the American government knew about the final solution. We knew that the boxcars were going to these extermination

camps and we refused to bomb them. We focused on military targets. If we've been able to live stream, you know, some from inside Auschwitz and we were also able because of ProPublica or whatever to find out that FDR was choosing not to bomb the concentration camps. There would have been outrage. There would have been a huge amount of outrage I think in the American population as there is in Gaza and that's an important thing. It's something we have access to now. We can put that external pressure onto people and make them uncomfortable. That's what brought down South African apartheid. Like it's the, it's the BCG is pulling out of the Gaza humanitarian fund.

Yeah. Basically British companies just got so embarrassed to work with South Africa that they just eventually stopped. And that's what brought down. Right. Yeah. And cause people would shut the fuck up about it, right? And they wouldn't let them do other stuff and be like we're not talking about that today And like people in the case of South Africa wouldn't play sports with South Africa until it fucking stop doing its apartheid, right? Like I was gonna say there was global economic boycott. It wasn't quite global. Israel was not boycotting apartheid South Africa But yeah, that stuff does make a difference. Charles, when's your documentary coming out? Where can people find it? What can they view it on?

I'm still in the editing phase. So I think give me two months and I will have a better idea of when it's coming out. I'm hoping like before autumn 2025. It is a timely piece, right? It has some relevance that's time sensitive. But you can follow it on Instagram. It's just at the war on UNRWA. Yeah. And my personal account also posts a lot about it. That's Charles McBride with a Y. Yeah.

And it's the same on Substack TikTok YouTube. Yeah. Like Charles said, you don't have to be there getting an M4 pointed at you to make a difference. And so like, yeah, I would encourage people to do the little things too. They're not that small, actually, but just, yeah, the things that aren't going to Palestine necessarily. Absolutely. Yeah. And like, take heart, you know, don't despair.

Yeah, yeah, find some joy. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father?

Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us, he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up, they could lose their family and millions of dollars?

Yep, find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project, reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground, you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life and much more.

All real, completely uncensored. Listen to the Away Days podcast, reporting from the underbelly, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there.

Each week I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be, an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry, where we're breaking down why OpenAI along with other AI companies are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you happen to get your podcasts.