Background Briefing: November 5, 2023

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A Palestinian Mother and Daughter Who Just Lost 36 Members of Their Family in Gaza

We begin with the humanitarian tragedy underway in Gaza with 9,425 killed and 24,000 wounded according to Palestinian officials in the West Bank. Joining us is a mother and daughter who have lost 36 members of their family, Ghada Ageel, a third-generation Palestinian refugee who worked as a translator for The Guardian in Gaza from 2000 to 2006. She is currently a visiting professor at the department of political science at the University of Alberta, Canada. And also joining us is her daughter Ghaida Ageel, who spent the last two years volunteering and living in Gaza. Ghada has an article at The Guardian which we discuss, “From my hometown in Gaza, the unthinkable news: 36 of my family members are dead”.

An Analysis of the Speech by the Leader of Hezbollah Which Is Poised to Open a Second Front

Then with Hezbollah poised to open a second front in the Israel/Hamas war, we get an analysis of the much-anticipated speech by the leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah and speak with a long-time Lebanese-based journalist Thanassis Cambanis, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and Director of the Center for International Research and Policy. Until recently, he was working as a journalist based in Lebanon and his books include A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story, and most recently, Shia Power Comes of Age: The Transformation of Islamist Politics in Iraq, 2003-2023.

US/China Relations Ahead of Next Saturday’s APEC Summit Where Biden and Xi Will Meet

Then finally, with the US again drawn into the Middle East while needing to pivot to Asia, we get an assessment of US/China relations ahead of next Saturday’s APEC summit in San Francisco where Biden and Xi will meet. Joining us is Chenggang Xu, a Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions at Stanford University as well as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Finance at Imperial College London. The former President of the Asian Law and Economics Association, he previously taught at the University of Hong Kong, at Seoul National University and at the London School of Economics