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October the 7th changed the world

Two years after October 7, 2023, Omar Al-Khatib, a Jerusalem-born researcher and released Palestinian detainee, reflects on his sixteen months in Israeli prisons. Through a five-episode series produced by Inkyfada, he documents life behind bars and the changes experienced by Palestinian prisoners since the start of the war on Gaza.
07 October 2025
series [{"user_id":"3676","role":"Editorial support"},{"user_id":"1473","role":"Sound design"},{"user_id":"1408","role":"Graphic arts"}] https://inkyfada.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Podcast-Omar-Ep00.mp3 Podcast : Assir - Episode 00 : October the 7th changed the world | بودكاست: "أسير" - الحلقة 00 : 7 أكتوبر غير العالم Episode 00 : October the 7th changed the world | الحلقة 00 : 7 أكتوبر غير العالم
بعد عامين على السابع من أكتوبر 2023، يعود عمر الخطيب، الباحث المقدسي الذي أمضى 16 شهرًا في السجون الإسرائيلية بعد اندلاع الحرب على غزّة، ليسجّل شهادته. من القدس إلى تونس، يوثّق في سلسلة من خمس حلقات تفاصيل الحياة خلف القضبان، والتحوّلات التي عاشها الأسرى الفلسطينيون منذ بداية الإبادة.

Two years after October 7, 2023, Omar Al-Khatib, a Jerusalem-born researcher and released Palestinian detainee, reflects on his sixteen months in Israeli prisons. Through a five-episode series produced by Inkyfada, he documents life behind bars and the changes experienced by Palestinian prisoners since the start of the war on Gaza.

Deux ans après le 7 octobre 2023, Omar Al-Khatib, chercheur originaire de Jérusalem et détenu palestinien liberé, revient sur son expérience de seize mois dans les prisons israéliennes. À travers une série en cinq épisodes produite par Inkyfada, il documente la vie derrière les barreaux et les transformations vécues par les prisonniers palestiniens depuis le début de la guerre contre Gaza.
93108
Created by
Omar al Khatib
Editorial support
Manel Lassoued
Sound design
Oussema Gaidi
Graphic arts
Hathemi Smedhi

On the morning of October 7, 2023, in Ramallah, Omar Al-Khatib woke up to messages from his friend in Gaza, unaware that he was witnessing a historic turning point. A few hours later, news confirmed the launch of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation and the beginning of an unprecedented war. Between euphoria, pride, and fear, the first days quickly gave way to shock, as an offensive began that would leave a lasting mark on the region.

Behind the prison walls, detention conditions deteriorated sharply after October 7. The prison administration stripped Palestinian prisoners of their acquired rights one by one, turning cells into spaces of collective punishment. In this context, new tensions and questions arose: what does it mean to resist? Where does heroism end and survival begin?

In this documentary series produced by Inkyfada, Omar Al-Khatib—a researcher specializing in gender and sexuality in colonial contexts—shares his experience of detention and how the war redefined Palestinian prison life. Between introspection and analysis, he seeks to understand what this ordeal reveals about identity, resistance, and memory.

Assir

Two years after October 7, 2023, Omar Al-Khatib, the Jerusalemite researcher and freed Palestinian detainee, returns to recount his sixteen-month experience in Israeli prisons.Through a five-episode documentary series, Omar documents the details of life behind bars, in conditions marked by hunger, illness, and isolation, with a profound sense of being cut off from the outside world.Between individual memory and collective experience, he traces the transformations experienced by Palestinian prisoners since the outbreak of the war on Gaza, in a time when the body and resistance have become two sides of the same struggle.

Latest episodes

| EPISODE 5

In Parentheses

In early November 2024, Omar recalls his transfer after eight months in prison to a new cell, where he began to experience the hardest period of his life due to a scabies outbreak, and his meeting with new cellmates, including Osama and Saif, who played an important role in supporting him emotionally, amid his fears of having his identity exposed and his connection to stigmatized human rights causes.

| EPISODE 4

My body became a battlefield for torture

How does a prisoner’s body become a battlefield? In this episode, Omar recounts months of constant itching, lice, scabies, painful boils, and fragmented sleep, a condition easily treatable outside prison, yet turned inside into a daily method of torture.

| EPISODE 3

Eating in my dreams, starving in prison

This episode presents a direct testimony about the experience of hunger inside prisons after October 7, and about how food became the central element of daily life in the cells. Omar recounts the impact of the starvation policy imposed on the prisoners, and how it shaped their dreams, their behavior, and their internal organization. From dreaming about food, to storing bread, to a rudimentary barter system, and finally to the tensions and solidarity among prisoners, a documentation of a life governed by severe scarcity, and of hunger turned into a tool of control and punishment.

ABOUT

Inkyfada Podcast is the first platform entirely dedicated to original Tunisian podcasts, and was conceived by Inkyfada media in collaboration with the in-house research and development laboratory, InkyLab.
Inkyfada joined the global podcast boom in 2017, when the team produced the first Tunisian audio documentary, diving deep into the belly of the El Kamour struggle taking place in the desert.
Since then, Inkyfada Podcast has produced a wide variety of documentaries, investigations, and podcast series, as well as articles accompanied by music; covering a multitude of contemporary issues in order to offer an immersive and alternative podcast experience.
Whilst exclusively offering audio content, the Inkyfada Podcast team upholds the same core values and principles of inkyfada.com, and is committed to producing high quality content though a dynamic and meticulous production process.
In addition to the permanent team, Inkyfada podcast works closely with various journalists, artists, illustrators, musicians and other content creators in order to diversify the platform and support artistic creativity.
These podcasts differ from traditional radiophonic content in that the applied production and editing process is more akin to cinematographic techniques, in addition to being web-based, downloadable and accessible on demand.
Additionally, Inkyfada Podcast uniquely offers subtitles in French, Arabic and English for all audio content, the majority of which is recorded in Tunisian or in the preferred language of the speaker in question.

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