In this episode I interviewed Roy Arpan, the author of Relative Strangers, a great book shedding light on a neglected community of Jerusalem and Palestine: the Dom Romani. Examining how memory, intergenerational transmission, and kinship work together, Relative Strangers sheds light on Romani life in Palestine. Arpan Roy presents an ethnographic portrait of Dom Romani communities living between Palestine and Jordan, zooming in on everyday life in working-class neighborhoods, and under conditions of perpetual war and instability.

The book focuses on how Doms are able to sustain ethnic difference through kinship, even when public performances of difference are no longer emphasized – a kind of alterity that is neither visible by obvious markers like race or religious difference, nor detected by the antennas of the state. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Amman, Roy makes a case for such alterity for Romani people and other groups in the region.

Welcome to Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast. This is the new link and home of Jerusalem Unplugged, all old and new interviews will be published through the new link.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today I am recasting a talk I gave at the University of Parma in May 2026 discussing Christian Zionism. Thanks to the Universita' di Parma.

Today we're diving into a topic that remains stubbornly relevant to understanding the modern Middle East: Christian Zionism. And I want to start by challenging a common assumption—that support for Israel among Western nations, particularly Britain historically and America today, is purely about geopolitics, oil, or strategic interests. That's only part of the story.

The reality is that religious conviction—specifically Christian religious conviction—has been woven into Western policy toward Palestine for centuries, and its influence is far from over.

When we think about the pivotal moments that shaped modern Palestine, the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 and the British capture of Jerusalem just weeks later immediately come to mind. But here's what often gets overlooked: these weren't just strategic military decisions. They emerged from deeply embedded religious imaginations—transnational evangelical networks spanning Britain and America, crusading rhetoric portraying the Palestine campaign as fulfilling medieval Christian ambitions, and movements like British Israelism that mystically connected Britain to biblical Israel.

These networks created fundamental contradictions. Christian Zionists supported Jewish restoration to the Holy Land while simultaneously deploying crusading imagery that emphasized Christian dominance. They provided theological justification for Jewish return while seeing themselves as the true inheritors of biblical promises.

And here's why this matters today: these religious networks didn't disappear with the British Empire. They transformed, they migrated across the Atlantic, and they continue to shape American evangelical support for Israel in ways that directly influence contemporary Middle Eastern politics.

In this episode, I'll trace how these religious currents developed from seventeenth-century Puritan theology through to the First World War, examining how what we might call "Biblical Palestine"—an imaginary landscape conjured in European minds during the Middle Ages—was superimposed onto the actual landscape and people of Palestine, with consequences we're still grappling with today.

Youtube Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYxwpJ_fJjE

Welcome to Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast. This is the new link and home of Jerusalem Unplugged, all old and new interviews will be published through the new link.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode my guest is Adrian Ciani author of Contesting Zion: the Vatican, American Catholics and the Partition of Palestine.

The modern relationship between the Vatican and the State of Israel is rooted in a long history of hostility between Judaism and Roman Catholicism. Through the centuries, popes and theologians marginalized the Jewish people, assigning them collective guilt for the death of Jesus Christ and claiming that the sacred territory of Palestine was the true patrimony of the Roman Catholic Church. With the advent of political Zionism in the nineteenth century, Catholic fears of a Jewish-dominated Palestine were renewed.

Contesting Zion examines the relationship between the Vatican and the Zionist movement from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the first decade of Israeli statehood. Adrian Ciani considers the transnational nature of Catholic responses to Zionism and the creation of Israel, with a focus on the Catholic Church in the United States. From the 1920s through the 1950s, American Catholic leaders became crucial intermediaries between Washington and the Vatican. Speaking as both loyal American citizens and devout Catholics, they were uniquely positioned to articulate the Vatican’s policy objectives to the American government, including on the future of Palestine. American Catholics were also instrumental in advocating the church’s Palestine policy at the United Nations, playing a central role in the Holy See’s attempts to shape the twentieth-century international order.

Welcome to Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast. This is the new link and home of Jerusalem Unplugged, all old and new interviews will be published through the new link.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.