Crossing the Line focuses on impunity for Israeli soldiers

This week on Crossing The Line: From the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000 through 2007, on 76 of the nearly 1,300 Israeli military police investigations into suspected crimes against Palestinians committed by the Israeli army ended in indictments. In our first segment, Lior Yavne, research director of the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, will join host Naji Ali to discuss these disturbing statistics.

Also this week, he once claimed to be a staunch Christian Zionist and a true friend to Israel. He exhorted his congregation to pray for God’s blessings upon the state, but in 1990 the Rev. Thomas Are had a reawakening and became an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and a fierce critic of Israeli occupation. Are joins Ali about his profound conversion and his new mission in life.

And as always, Crossing the Line begins with “This week in Palestine,” a service provided by The International Middle East Media Center.

Crossing the Line is a weekly podcast dedicated to giving voice to the voiceless in occupied Palestine. Through investigative news, arts, eyewitness accounts, and music, Crossing the Line does its best to present the lives of people on the ground.

Crossing the Line’s host, Naji Ali, is an independent journalist currently living in San Francisco. Ali’s South African roots and desire for social change are the reason for his strong solidarity with the Palestinian people. In 1990 Ali was arrested in South Africa where he was detained and tortured for nearly two years by the South African secret police. Ali also lived and worked in the Old City of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.