From Palestine: Suffering, Dignity, & Resistance
Rev Left Radio
Breht O'Shea
4.8 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2026
⏱️ 118 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Breht speaks with Mohanad Alsayed about his memoir Scars and Medals (Iskra Books), a powerful and deeply human account of growing up Palestinian under occupation, carrying exile across continents, and trying to make sense of memory, loss, family, and resistance. Through the story of his grandmother Jamila, his missing uncle Ghazi, and his own journey from Palestine to the United States, Alsayed offers an intimate portrait of how dispossession enters not only history and politics, but childhood, identity, and the inner life.
The conversation explores occupation as a lived and psychological reality, the tension between assimilation and memory, the many meanings of resistance, and the current situation across West Asia - including how Palestinians view Iran. At once personal and collective, Scars and Medals opens onto the wider Palestinian experience with honesty, dignity, and emotional force.
Buy or get a FREE pdf of Scars and Medals here: https://www.iskrabooks.org/books/p/scars-and-medals
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody, welcome back to Rev Left Radio. |
| 0:08.2 | On today's episode, we have on the show, Palestinian author Mohanad al-Sayed, to talk about his book from Iskra, entitled Scars and Metals. |
| 0:19.3 | This is a historical memoir about his childhood growing up in Palestine, the relationship |
| 0:26.1 | with his grandmother who was alive during the Nakba, his uncle who chose the path of armed |
| 0:31.9 | resistance, him working illegally under a pseudonym in Israel and getting a sort of first person perspective |
| 0:38.2 | on Israeli society and their sort of propaganda regime, their ideological conditioning, |
| 0:45.4 | their widespread disdain and dehumanization of the Palestinian people. And then he eventually |
| 0:51.5 | was able to come over to the United States and chart out his own |
| 0:56.3 | path here so coming over to the United States particularly in the American South and trying to |
| 1:01.5 | be an advocate for his people also gave rise to a bunch of fascinating experiences so throughout |
| 1:06.6 | this episode we used the lens of his personal life to elaborate on Palestinian history, |
| 1:12.6 | Palestinian humanity, Palestinian resistance, the current situation in historic Palestine, |
| 1:18.5 | the Greater Israel Project, the Epstein class, the Iran War, the compromised nature of the |
| 1:25.5 | American ruling class with regards to this issue, the increasing divergence of the American populations of the of the american ruling class with regards to this issue the increasing |
| 1:29.0 | divergence of the american populations a perspective of israel with the ruling class in both |
| 1:34.0 | parties um what that contradiction might ultimately lead to the compradore regimes throughout west |
| 1:39.7 | asia um and so much more i mean this this is a outside of an intellectual sort of history, this is a deeply emotional book and interview, |
| 1:49.2 | an interview where both of us at various times can't help but get emotional. |
| 1:53.6 | And we're talking about, you know, the tragedy and violence and injustice imposed on the beautiful, courageous, |
| 2:03.6 | and persistent Palestinian people. the implication of what happens if Israel and the United States succeeds. |
| 2:08.5 | And the realization that the Palestinian liberation fight is on the forefront of the fight for humanity, |
| 2:15.0 | the fight for a more human future. |
... |
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