The far right in Israel has long dreamed of settling all of the West Bank, and Gaza, too—annexing the territories to create the land they refer to as Greater Israel. The Trump Administration might not object: Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for Ambassador to the United Nations, has agreed that Israel has a “biblical right” to the West Bank. “I think Israel is just more emboldened with Trump in office,” says Hisham Awartani, who lives in Ramallah and is now attending Brown University. The reporter Suzanne Gaber has been covering Awartani and his family since he was left paralyzed by a shooting in Burlington, Vermont. (Two other Palestinian students, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, were also shot and injured.) Gaber visited the Awartanis recently in Ramallah to find out how people in the West Bank are thinking about annexation. But, rather than a future event that might happen, the Awartanis describe annexation as a process already well underway. “I’m twenty-one years old,” Hisham tells Gaber. “ In the period of time that I’ve been alive, it’s been a slow push. It’s, like, I’m the frog in the boiling pot.”
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From the online spectacle around Leo XIV's election to our favorite on-screen cardinals. This week on Critics at Large, we're talking all things Pope.
The Catholic Church was made for this moment. I think 2,000 years ago, the Catholic Church basically anticipated TikTok, Instagram, X. You don't have those little Swiss guard outfits and think they're not being photographed. Oil painting is not enough.
I'm Vincent Cunningham. Join me and my co-hosts for an episode on what can only be described as Pope Week. New episodes of Critics at Large drop every Thursday. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Claire Malone. You might remember a story from a little more than a year ago, when three college students were shot while walking down the street in Burlington, Vermont. Burlington is generally known as a safe, very liberal college town. The young men were Palestinians from the West Bank, attending schools in the Northeast.
Two of them were wearing keffiyahs, the Palestinian headscarf. And so the shooting was assumed by many people to be a hate crime, though the suspect hasn't been charged with that by prosecutors. The victims all survived. A reporter named Suzanne Gabber has been talking with one of them since shortly after the attack. His name is Hesham Awarteni.
Suzanne went to the West Bank recently to visit the Awarteni family and talk about what's on everyone's minds there. The possibility that Israel will annex their home and the entire West Bank. Here's Suzanne Gabber.
How often do you go back to the school since you graduated?
A few times. Like, every time I'm back, I come once.
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