Dana AlKurd (Dana Al-Kurd) — episode contributor on Palestine
speaker
187 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 11 Jul
Dana AlKurd (Dana Al-Kurd) — episode contributor on Palestine’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Now, I'm not saying the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain needed encouragement to repress their own citizens, but it's just another added layer, another way that the red lines shift and new ways that these governments can attack their own citizens and their own activists.
For example, Emirati activists involved in anti-normalization activities after the accords became targets of surveillance operations, and people who spoke out about the deals faced travel bans.
In Bahrain, civil society organizations were newly restricted.
The quote-unquote peace came with a repressive apparatus baked in.
Which is exactly why when thousands of Arabs gathered in Doha's public squares to watch the World Cup, the energy around Palestine wasn't some just like emotional sentiment.
And it wasn't a relic.
It was fresh.
It was the anger of people who had just watched their governments make deals they never asked for.
And deals that were used to oppress them and not solve the Palestinian issue.
There is a concept that academics and activists have used called sports normalization.
The idea is that sports, because they're presented as apolitical or maybe as entertainment, as a space above politics, they can be used as a soft avenue for normalizing relationships that would be otherwise politically controversial.
Israel has long pursued this strategy.
The logic is if Israel and Arab athletes compete together, then this image of coexistence replaces the political reality of occupation.
You don't need any kind of solution or diplomatic agreement.
You just need enough footage of an Israeli and Moroccan shaking hands on the pitch to make people feel like things are moving in a good direction.
Qatar youth were very explicit about targeting this.
They hosted panels on sports normalization.
They released a statement pointing out that Western political boycotts of Russia extended to sporting events after the invasion of Ukraine.
And nobody then complained that sports were being mixed up with politics.
And to them, the inconsistency was glaring, that mixing sports with politics was apparently fine when it was about sanctioning Russia, you know, admittedly, very appropriately, but somehow inappropriate when it came to Palestinian rights.
Showing 101–120 of 187 · page 6 of 10
← Previous
Next →