Episode 38 - What I’ve learnt by organising 20 months of anti-genocide protests| Ben Jamal | UNAPOLOGETIC

Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, joins UNAPOLOGETIC for a wide-ranging conversation about who has been complicit for the genocide in Gaza, the global shift in rhetoric, and what it takes to organise 20 months of continous mass protest across the UK.

He unpacks the gap between what Western governments say and what they do - from condemning Israeli actions as “indefensible” while continuing to arm them, to criminalising peaceful protesters demanding justice. Jamal also reflects on his arrest and upcoming trial, the police’s systematic efforts to repress the movement, and why those tactics have failed to break the solidarity movement.

In deeply personal moments, Jamal shares the story of his Palestinian father, his own political awakening, and what it has meant to sustain this movement through exhaustion, grief and hope.

We ask: What does the future look like for Gaza? For Palestinian liberation? And for a world that has tolerated so much horror in real time?

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

03:12 Shifts in media and government

10:01 Words mean nothing without action

15:30 Divestment wins and public pressure

21:12 The arrest: what happened

27:03 How police target protests

32:47 BBC march and police trap

38:55 Criminalised for peaceful protest

44:11 Holding a movement together

49:35 Building a resistance community

54:20 Ben’s Palestinian family story

1:00:07 Organising through trauma and grief

1:05:05 Family, kids and solidarity

1:10:10 What happens to Gaza now

1:14:58 Will Palestinians be erased?

1:20:10 Movement grows through genocide

1:26:30 What keeps Ben going

1:32:10 Final reflections