Radio Alhara (راديو الحارة in Arabic) is a

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

online radio station broadcasting from

Bethlehem Bethlehem is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, located about south of Jerusalem, and the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate. It had a population of people, as of . The city's economy is strongly linked to Tourism in the State of Palesti ...

since its launch in March 2020. The station grew in public notoriety when it launched a

solidarity Solidarity or solidarism is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. True solidarity means moving beyond individual identities and single issue politics ...

campaign with protests surrounding the

Sheikh Jarrah controversy The Sheikh Jarrah controversy, which has been described as a "property/real estate dispute" by the Israeli government and its supporters,Lucy Garbett'I live in Sheikh Jarrah. For Palestinians, this is not a ‘real estate dispute’ ''The Gua ...

, which it termed the "Sonic Liberation Front." In addition to radio shows broadcast in solidarity with international movements for

self-determination Self-determination refers to a people's right to form its own political entity, and internal self-determination is the right to representative government with full suffrage. Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international la ...

, the station raises awareness around the civil and human rights issues facing Palestinians living under

Israeli occupation Israel has occupied the Golan Heights of Syria and the Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967. It has previously occupied the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt and southern Lebanon as well. Prior to 1967, control of the Palestinian terr ...

. Radio Alhara has received support from a global coalition of musicians and its shows have been syndicated on stations internationally. The station has also organized a fundraising campaign for relief following the

2020 Beirut explosion On 4 August 2020, a major explosion occurred in Beirut, Lebanon, triggered by the ignition of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate. The chemical, confiscated in 2014 from the cargo ship and stored at the Port of Beirut without adequate safety me ...

and broadcast shows in solidarity with

Mahsa Amini protests Civil unrest and protests against the Government of Iran, government of the Islamic Republic of Iran associated with the Death in custody, death in police custody of Death of Mahsa Amini#Victim, Mahsa Amini () began on 16 September 2022 and ca ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

Early History

Radio AlHara was founded by group of friends Yazan Khalili, Yousef Anastas, Elias Anastas, Said Abu Jaber and Mothanna Hussein in March 2020. They were located in

Ramallah Ramallah ( , ; ) is a Palestinians, Palestinian city in the central West Bank, that serves as the administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, north of Jerusalem, at an average elevation of abov ...

, and

Amman Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...

. The show started as an online music broadcasting space between these cities, open to the public sending contributions via a

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropbox w ...

link and multi-language presentation. They received contributions as not only music, but also sound content, visual, and art and was a communal project from its beginnings. Yousef and Elias Anastas were influenced by their background in architecture in their approach to this project - "For us, architecture is very much linked to music at its core. It is about fluidity and how objects and spaces interpenetrate each other. This relates very powerfully with music".

Marathon Radio Broadcasts

Radio AlHara has started marathon shows to raise awareness around civil and human rights issues facing Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation, as well as struggles in surrounding countries like Iran. The first one was in Summer 2020, where in response to mass annexation plans by Israel prime minister

Benjamin Netanyahu Benjamin Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician who has served as the prime minister of Israel since 2022, having previously held the office from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021. Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime min ...

and support from then-US President

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...

, they broadcast a 72-hour anti-colonial, anti-racist musical event under the name Fil Mishmish, which also set up the stage for their later broadcasts. In May 2021, the radio went silent for 24 hours in solidarity with forced evictions of the occupied district of

Sheikh Jarrah Sheikh Jarrah (, ) is a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, north of the Old City, on the road to Mount Scopus. It received its name from the 13th-century tomb of Hussam al-Din al-Jarrahi, a physician of Saladin, located ...

, which was met with several messages in solidarity from around the world, leading to the creation of "Sonic Liberation Front". Sonic Liberation Front was a daily program that started out by broadcasting recorded sounds of the protests of the forced evictions, and grew to include submissions of similar sounds from struggles and injustices across the world. Under this same banner, they have partnered with other radio stations across the globe, including Soho Radio in London in May 2021 for a show titled "DJs Against Arm Sales". In September 2022, Sonic Liberation Front broadcast two 12-hour shows in solidarity with

in Iran after the murder of 22 year-old

Mahsa Amini On 16 September 2022, 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina Amini, died in a hospital in Tehran, Iran, under suspicious circumstances. The Guidance Patrol, the religious morality police of Iran's government, had a ...

at the hands of the country's police, which included a lineup of women and non-binary musicians.

References

{{Internet-bcast-stub Internet radio stations Radio stations established in 2020