Spiritual Misfits Podcast · Meeting Ground

Sara M. Saleh on Palestine, liberation and poetry [Replay]

·46 min·3 clips

Sarah calls Palestine an “indigenous struggle for justice” against “settler colonialism and apartheid.”

1. Spiritual Misfits Podcast replays Sara M. Saleh on Palestine, liberation, and poetry as Gaza enters its second year of siege. 2. Will Small hosts Sarah M. Saleh, a Palestinian-Australian human rights lawyer, poet, and activist, because her perspective connects law, faith, and political memory. 3. The episode asks how to understand Gaza through the longer history of Palestinian dispossession, anti-Zionism, and disciplined solidarity. 4. Sarah says she grew up in a politically active Palestinian family and a faith-shaped ethical framework. 5. She describes living with racialization as an Arab and Muslim person in Australia and with patriarchy in wider society and within her own communities. 6. She points to Mohammed al-Durra, killed in Gaza in 2000, as a watershed image that shaped her political consciousness. 7. Sarah says she did not want to be “well adjusted” to an “unhealthy society” built on extraction, exploitation, capitalism, and patriarchy. 8. She argues that the present violence in Gaza did not begin on October 7 and should be read in a longer colonial history. 9. She names the Nakba of 1948 and says “750,000 plus” Palestinians were dispossessed when Israel was established. 10. She describes ongoing dispossession through land theft, bulldozed homes, checkpoints, and control over electricity and water. 11. Sarah says people do not need to be historians to recognize that what they are seeing is wrong and called “genocide.” 12. She compares people’s moral intuition about Gaza to early reactions to Bosnia, Kosovo, and apartheid South Africa. 13. Sarah says anti-Semitism is serious, but conflating it with anti-Zionism is a tactic to shut down critique of Israeli policy. 14. She says Zionism is rooted in European imperialism and colonialism rather than identical with Jewish identity. 15. Sarah argues that liberation politics should not rely on supremacist states for any group, including Jews. 16. She says Israel and its affiliates weaponize anti-Semitism and Islamophobia while also accepting neo-Nazis or arms deals when it suits their interests. 17. Sarah says poetry is a “hopeful argument” and a practice of discipline that demands showing up even when hope is thin. 18. She says poets can name what is shapeless, move people out of complacency, and articulate what they are for as well as what they oppose. 19. The conversation is direct, reflective, and grounded in moral clarity, with Will Small asking open questions and Sarah answering in long, sustained arguments. 20. People interested in Palestine, decolonial politics, and faith-based justice will get the most from it; listeners wanting a light conversation should skip it.

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