Behind The Lens: Palestinian villages and New Orleans ties (audio)

A vigil on Bayou St. John in New Orleans for Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17, marking the one-year anniversary of his death in the occupied West Bank of Palestine on January 19, 2024. (Photo by Kathleen Flynn)

This week on Behind The Lens, a cluster of small villages in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have strong ties to the West Bank of New Orleans. Many Palestinian-Americans have their roots in the occupied area and often spend summers there to get out of the oppressive heat and humidity of southern Louisiana, and to expose their children to what was once a peaceful area, bordered with olive groves planted by their ancestors. But now Palestinians fear harvesting olives from their ancestral trees, as settler violence has ramped up in the region, leaving at least four New Orleanians have been beaten or killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers. No one has been held accountable for those attacks. Reporter Delaney Nolan traveled to the area in the summer of 2025 and tells us the story.

An image of Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, a Palestinian-American teenager from Gretna, Louisiana, stenciled on a schoolyard wall in the village of al-Mazra’a ash-sharqiyat, where he was fatally shot by Israeli gunmen in 2024. More than two years after his death, no one has been charged. (Photo by Delaney Nolan / The Lens)

Guest: Delaney Nolan

Host: Carolyne Heldman

Theme music by Podington Bear.  Additional music: “Trailways

Carolyne Heldman

Carolyne Heldman Rovira has been in media for 35 years, and is currently the podcast host and producer for Behind The Lens. Heldman served as executive director at Aspen Public Radio, an NPR affiliate, where she launched four weekly news, public affairs, and cultural affairs programs. She has been a guest lecturer at Tulane University, is a frequent guest and moderator for the Aspen Institute, Rocky Mountain Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute.