Today, we’re speaking with Matt Bowles, a longtime Palestinian human rights activist.
With a Master’s Degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, Matt has over two decades of human rights and activism experience. He led activist delegations to monitor human rights abuses in the north of Ireland, co-founded an organization to stop U.S. aid to Israel, organized solidarity delegations to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and did solidarity work with the indigenous Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico.
In the past few years, many more people around the world have tuned in to the injustice that has been happening in Palestine for the past 75 years. If you want to understand the origins of this injustice AND what you can do to help stop it, this episode is for you.
I first became immersed in the struggle for Palestinian liberation in 2017, when I visited the West Bank and saw the Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, the humiliation of people, the treatment of Arabs like second-class citizens, and the Israeli system of apartheid with my own eyes. Matt has been working on Palestinian solidarity since 1998. It has been so helpful to hear the perspective of someone with this much longer view on the struggle.
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Thanks to our Founding Member: RISE Travel Institute, a nonprofit with a mission to create a more just and equitable world through travel education.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- Current moment in the Palestinian human rights advocacy
- Travel media's sanitized version of seeing the world
- How Matt's Palestinian advocacy started with the Black liberation struggle in the US
- Britain's first and last colony (is the same?)
- The gap in awareness between what Palestine is and what the media shows
- The power asymmetry and the longest military occupation in modern history
- Confronting antisemitism and misrepresentation
- What the Rwandan, Guatemalan, and Cambodian genocides can teach us
- Matt dismantles "It's too complicated"
- Why do we give states more rights than people?
- The origins of this settler colonial project
- Why the US shifted its Palestine stance in 1967
- The history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance
- Why is there zero accountability for the State of Israel's actions?
- US law enforcement training with IOF
- What can an individual do? A lot!
- What gives Matt hope today
- Why Yulia believes that Gaza will change the world
Featured on the show:
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Going Places with Yulia Denisyuk is a show that sparks a better understanding of people and places near and far by fostering a space for real conversations to occur. Each week, we sit down with travelers, journalists, creators, and people living and working in destinations around the world. Hosted by Yulia Denisyuk, an award-winning travel journalist, photographer, and writer who's worked with National Geographic, The New York Times, BBC Travel, and more.
Learn more about our show at goingplacesmedia.com.
