Today we talk to feminist Palestinian Israeli Knesset Member Aida Touma-Sliman about the new right wing government coalition in Israel that is even getting zionist liberals in Israel and the U.S. concerned whether Israel can even maintain its façade of Democracy. much like the Trump election shook people here the new Netanyahu right wing govermnent coalition is bringing a wide range of people out into the streets in Israel/Palestine shocked by the latest elections in Israel and its former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coalition with the extreme right . To find out more about what is going on on the ground in Israel/Palestine my co-host Dov Baum and I talked to Israeli Knesset member Aida Touma-Sliman. She was the co-founder and general director of “Women Against Violence” – a Palestinian women’s organization that was responsible, among other things, for the creation of the first battered women’s shelters in the Palestinian community in Israel.
Touma-Sliman was the first woman to serve in the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel and is Co-founder of the International Women Commission for Just Palestinian-Israeli Peace.
Touma-Sliman has been one of the strongest voices representing the Palestinian community in Israel and a strong opponent of the Israeli occupation. She has been an outspoken critical voice against the Israeli settlements and the violent attacks on Gaza. MK Touma-Sliman has also played a prominent role in the development of the feminist movement in the Palestinian community in Israel and is regarded as one of the leaders of the Israeli feminist movement as a whole. And to help me in this interview I am joined by Dov Baum, who is an Israeli feminist activist and scholar who has taught about militarism and the global economy from a feminist perspective in Israeli and U.S. universities, and is currently the director of American friends service committee’s Economic Activism Program here in the Bay Area.