Tag: Palestine

Producer/Host: Carolyn Coe

Topic:
Israeli industrial settlements

Factories, even those forced to stop operating inside Israel because of their poor environmental records, have relocated to the occupied Palestinian Territory (oPT). These illegal factories’ industrial wastewater has polluted Palestinian streams and farmland, and their smokestacks have created dark clouds of dust particles over Palestinian towns. Public health problems associated with this industrial pollution include higher than average cancer rates, skin diseases, and respiratory ailments. Palestinians work in these factories as many other employment options are denied them.
It is through the struggles of a local union that the exploitive and dangerous working conditions in the settlement factories in Tulkarm, but not broadly throughout the oPT, have improved somewhat.

Guests:

Murad Samara, municipal employee and activist in Bruqin
Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Stop the Wall campaign
Shatha Zayda, health worker in mobile clinic, Palestinian Medical Relief Society, Salfit
Abdelkarim Dalbah, journalist and part of UN team assessing the damages because of the Wall
Fayez Tayeeb, organic farmer and activist, Tulkarm
Salman Sulieman, organizer for Stop the Wall, Tulkarm
Mohammed Blady, president of the New Palestine Federation of Trade Unions, Tulkarm

Information on the Nitzanei Shalom and Barqan industrial zones in the occupied Palestinian Territory as well as specific factories such as Geshuri Industries and the Solor Group can be found at whoprofits.org.

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

With the situation in Palestine being covered by various media outlets on a daily basis in recent weeks, we may feel like we’re saturated with information about the on-going crisis. But most of us have not traveled to the region, and don’t know the people who are reporting or what pressures their media outlets might be putting on them. So to put things in a different context, we’ve invited two of our community members who *have* traveled to Palestine recently to tell us about what they witnessed. Robert Shetterly is the artist behind the “Americans Who Tell the Truth” portrait series, and Carolyn Coe is a local teacher. You’ve heard them both on the WERU airwaves in the past, and a lot of you know them as community members. I invited them to be my guests on this week’s WERU News Report to give us their first hand accounts