Hey friend, before you hit fast forward through this ad, let me just bend your ear a tick

and tell you all about Slate Plus, Slate's membership program. Do you know that what next is

going to be here for you, whether there's big breaking news or whether you just want to hear

about a story you might have missed? Basically, we've got you totally covered. And we're here,

thanks to Slate. If you want to support us, and I know you do, the best way to do that is to

join Slate Plus. It'll get you all connected with Slate's award-winning journalism,

you'll get ad-free podcasts, you'll get plus exclusive content on shows like Slow Burn

and Political Gav Fast, and you'll never hit a paywall on the Slate site. Every new membership

helps ensure we can continue bringing you the biggest stories each week. So go on, hit the Pause

button and go to Slate.com slash what next plus? Again, that's Slate.com slash what next plus?

All right, on with a show.

When Dalia Hattuka was a little girl, she thought she knew who Shireen Abu Akla was.

Mostly because Shireen was on TV all the time, reporting for Al Jazeera. Dalia grew up in the

Palestinian city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Night after night, Dalia would click

on the news, and their Shireen would be. Like I think every, maybe almost every single like Arab

person or person from the Middle East like grew up watching her for decades.

It just felt like every girl wanted to be her. For most Arabs, Palestine is not some place that's

accessible, you know, like Jerusalem and the dome of the rock and al-Upsam mosque. These places

aren't accessible, but people love these places. They're important to them, like whether they're

Muslim or Christian or or anything. And so Shireen kind of brought Palestine to everybody's home.

She kind of filled their living rooms with all these stories and helped them be in Palestine,

so to speak. Dalia says, the Shireen she grew up with, the on-camera Shireen, was empathetic,

...