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Hello and welcome to a very special bonus edition of Empire with my old friend Roger Shahada.

Roger, welcome to Empire. Thank you. I'm very glad to be here. You're speaking, I believe, from Ramallah under a reign of Iranian missiles and

debris heading overhead. Yeah, four already this morning. Landing in Ramallah or just passing

overhead? No, landing close to Ramallah, but we can hear the bombs and the reverberations.

And this on top of the most violent period of settler activity that I've certainly read about in my lifetime.

That's true, that's true.

Almost daily settler attacks that are very violent in the Amala villages.

But you are in the middle of the town, so at the moment, shielded in a sense from the worst

of the, it's more the outlying villages and so on than farmsteads that are getting the

worst violence at the moment?

I keep thinking so far.

So far we are shielded, yes.

Roger, perhaps before we go any further, I should first of all say it's just me today,

as Anita has another project today. So I'm afraid you're stuck with me, Roger, and listeners.

And we should perhaps explain for those who don't know who Rajah Shahade is.

Raja is, well, certainly one of my favorite Palestinian authors, a man who's written

an extraordinary rare book.

I've found three just sitting in my shelf next to my desk.

There are more scattered around the house.

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