
The Take: Inside Project Esther's plan to silence pro-Palestinian activism
In this episode:
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Tamara Khandaker, Sonia Bhagat, Haleema Shah and Chloe Li with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Marcos Bartolome, Mariana Navarrete and our host, Natasha del Toro. It was edited by Kylene Kiang.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editor is Hisham Abu Salah. Alexandra Locke is the Take's executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
The Take production team is Marcos Bartolome, Sonia Bhagat, Sarí el-Khalili, Tamara Khandaker, Phillip Lanos, Chloe K Li, Ashish Malhotra, Haleema Shah, Khaled Soltan, Amy Walters, and Noor Wazwaz. Our editorial interns are Remas Alhawari, Kingwell Ma, Mariana Navarrete, and Kisaa Zehra. Our guest host is Natasha Del Toro. Our engagement producers are Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Aya Elmileik is lead of audience engagement.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
Israeli settler seen shooting OWB activist freed from house arrest
NewsFeed Israeli settler seen shooting OWB activist freed from house arrest Israeli settler Yinon Levi, who shot and killed Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in the occupied West Bank, was released just days after the attack. Meanwhile, Israel continues to hold Awdah's body, prompting 60 women from his village to go on hunger strike.


Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
Dmitry Medvedev: From failed Kremlin reformer to Trump's boogeyman
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president and prime minister, is back in the limelight. Last week, United States President Donald Trump warned him to 'watch his words' and ordered a repositioning of two US nuclear submarines in response to Medvedev's online threats. The repositioning closer to Russia followed 'highly provocative statements' from Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of Russia's Security Council, Trump wrote on his Truth Social network on August 1. 'I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,' Trump wrote, without specifying the regions or the submarines' class. Medvedev, who, despite his title, has no power to order nuclear strikes, retorted with a gloating remark. 'If some words of Russia's former president cause such a nervous response from the oh-so-scary US president, it means that Russia is right about everything and will keep going its own way,' Medvedev wrote on Telegram. 'Let [Trump] remember his favourite movies about the Walking Dead [zombie apocalypse series] and about how dangerous can be the 'dead hand' that doesn't exist naturally,' Medvedev wrote. The online feud began in mid-July, when Trump gave Russian President Vladimir Putin, Medvedev's boss and mentor for three decades, 50 days to make a peace deal with Ukraine. Medvedev called the ultimatum 'theatrical' and said that 'Russia didn't care'. 'Nuclear weapons are not Moscow's monopoly' According to a former Russian diplomat, while Trump's warnings send a signal to the Kremlin, the 'noise' around the submarines has no military significance. 'What matters far more is that Trump's words served as a reminder – nuclear weapons are not Moscow's monopoly,' Boris Bondarev, who focused on nuclear non-proliferation and arms control, told Al Jazeera. Medvedev's comments reflect Putin's views – and Trump's response could return both down to the earth of realpolitik, he added. 'Had such an approach been part of a general strategy to make Putin's view on the world and his own place in it more adequate, it would have been the beginning of a real end of the war' in Ukraine, said Bondarev, who quit his foreign ministry job to protest against Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 'But it seems to me that Donald just uttered [his threat] and doesn't mean anything serious,' he said. A pawn in the US-China game To a Ukrainian military analyst, the Trump-Medvedev feud is part of Moscow's and Washington's bigger political games. 'Putin uses Medvedev as a tool to express statements related to nuclear weapons, he doesn't want to discredit his own good peacekeeper's name,' Lieutenant-General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said ironically. In Moscow's 'media spectacle' with Washington, Medvedev plays the 'bad cop', Romanenko told Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, Trump's order to reposition the subs is a step to score a diplomatic victory ahead of his summit with China's Xi Jinping. The summit may take place on September 3, when Beijing will lavishly celebrate the 80th anniversary of Japan's surrender that ended World War II. Putin has already been invited to oversee a military parade in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, but Trump is still mulling his response. The online feud may be presented to Xi as a victory of sorts, Romanenko said – along with Moscow's possible agreement to an air and sea ceasefire. The agreement will be forced by the heavy damage Ukrainian drones inflicted on Russia's military depots, transport infrastructure and oil refineries, Romanenko said. 'Playing the fool' Trump may not realise that some Russians see Medvedev as a political has-been whose online rants are reportedly fuelled by his worsening alcoholism. He was elected Russia's president in 2008, after Putin had completed two consecutive presidential terms and could not run for a third time. The move and the ensuing propaganda campaign to promote Medvedev's candidacy were nicknamed a 'castling' after the chess term. It immediately spawned political jokes that ridiculed the real power dynamic between Medvedev and Putin. In one of them, Putin arrives at a restaurant with Medvedev and orders a steak. The waiter asks, 'And what about the vegetable?' referring to the choice of a side dish. After a long look at Medvedev, Putin answers, 'The vegetable will have steak, too.' However, Medvedev cultivated a personal and political image that contrasted with Putin's. He started using social networks, met with the rock bands U2 and Deep Purple, and began cautious reforms that made analysts talk about a political thaw and a reset of Russia's ties with the West. However, Medvedev's failed perestroika ended with giant rallies against Putin's 2012 return to the presidency and massive vote rigging. The resulting tightening of political screws ended with Putin's turn to belligerent nationalism and the war in Ukraine. Five years later, another wave of popular protests throughout Russia followed the release of a documentary about Medvedev's luxurious, Monaco-sized palatial complex. The documentary was made by the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny's team and got tens of millions of views on YouTube. At the time, as Medvedev served as prime minister, his approval ratings kept waning. In 2022, Putin unceremoniously sacked him – and gave him the Security Council job, a sinecure for demoted allies. The fall from Putin's grace prompted Medvedev's transformation into an online troll who posts threats to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations and sabre-rattles Moscow's nuclear might. Many posts appeared online long after midnight. 'Degraded' There are three viewpoints on why Medvedev changed his tune to become the Kremlin's attack dog, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany's Bremen University. One is that after not being allowed to run for president for the second time in 2012, Medvedev started drinking and 'degraded to the current state', Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera. The second one is that by 'playing fool', he repeats what Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had done to survive under his ruthless predecessor Joseph Stalin to survive and compete for the Kremlin throne after his boss's death, Mitrokhin said. And the third explanation Mitrokhin agrees with is that Medvedev 'as a character, has always been very vile and warlike'. But his aggression was only limited to what Putin allowed him to do – such as nominally order Russia's 2008 war with ex-Soviet Georgia or be in charge of supplying weaponry to pro-Moscow rebels in southeastern Ukraine in 2014. Mitrokhin described him as 'a very aggressive small man with plenty of psychological complexes – a Napoleon's syndrome – who has a chance to reveal his 'inner self'. And he does – with his master's approval'.


Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
‘A graveyard': Average 28 children being killed daily in Gaza
Approximately 28 children are being killed daily in Gaza due to the ongoing Israeli bombardment and its restrictions on the delivery of direly needed humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations. 'Death by bombardments. Death by malnutrition and starvation. Death by lack of aid and vital services,' the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a post on X on Tuesday. 'In Gaza, an average of 28 children a day – the size of a classroom – have been killed.' The agency stressed that children in Gaza are in urgent need of food, clean water, medicine and protection, adding: 'More than anything, they need a ceasefire, NOW.' Death by by malnutrition and by lack of aid and vital Gaza, an average of 28 children a day – the size of a classroom – have been killed. Gaza's children need food, water, medicine and protection. More than anything, they need a… — UNICEF (@UNICEF) August 4, 2025 Israel has killed more than 18,000 children – one child every hour – since the start of its genocidal war on Gaza. At least 60,933 Palestinians have been killed and 150,027 others wounded since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel. In the last 24 hours, at least eight Palestinians, including one child, have starved to death in Gaza. A total of 188 people, including 94 starving children, have died as Israel continues to block aid and kill aid seekers. 'For those who survive, childhood has been replaced by a daily struggle for the basics of life,' said Al Jazeera's Aksel Zaimovic. Kadim Khufu Basim, a displaced Palestinian child, said he is forced to support a family of six people because his father is injured and receiving treatment in Egypt. 'I love playing football. But now I sell cookies. My childhood is gone. Since the war began, we have no childhood left,' Basim told Al Jazeera. Under international law, children like Basim are supposed to be spared the effects of war. 'But in Gaza, these children have suffered the most under Israel's military campaign. Schools deliberately targeted, water facilities destroyed, food supplies systematically blocked. And the fundamental rights of childhood … education, play, proper nutrition … have been weaponised against an entire generation,' said Zaimovic. 'A graveyard for children' Israel's war on Gaza is also leaving its psychological scars on children. The hair and skin of Lana, a 10-year-old displaced child, turned white almost overnight after a bombing near her shelter triggered what doctors call trauma-induced depigmentation. Lana has become withdrawn, often only talking to her doll, as other children bully her for her appearance. 'She talks to her doll and says, 'Do you want to play with me, or will you be like the other kids?' Her mental health is severely damaged,' Mai Jalal al-Sharif, Lana's mother, told Al Jazeera. 'Gaza is a graveyard for children today and for their dreams,' Ahmad Alhendawi, regional director of the NGO Save the Children, told Al Jazeera. 'This is an inescapable living nightmare for every child in Gaza … This is a generation that is growing up thinking that the world has abandoned them, that the world has turned its back on them.' Israel has closed Gaza's crossings since March 2, only allowing 86 trucks of aid into the besieged enclave daily, a figure equal to just 14 percent of the minimum 600 trucks needed each day to meet the basic needs of the population, according to data from Gaza's Government Media Office. The lack of aid has led to an unprecedented famine in Gaza. At least eight Palestinians, including a child, have died due to Israeli-induced starvation over the past 24-hour reporting period, Gaza's Ministry of Health said on Tuesday. This brings the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition in the Gaza Strip since Israel's war began to 188, including 94 children. UN experts and more than 150 humanitarian organisations have called for a permanent ceasefire, to allow for aid deliveries and the psychological recovery of what they've dubbed a 'lost generation'.