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Radio Alhara

radioalhara.net

Radio alHara emerged in the early months of the pandemic as a translocal experiment in collective broadcasting. Founded by Elias Anastas, Yousef Anastas, Yazan Khalili, Mothanna Hussein and Saeed Abu Jaber between Bethlehem, Ramallah and Amman, the project began as an act of resistance to isolation and disconnection. Its name – Al Hara, meaning ‘the neighborhood’ in Arabic – evokes a sense of proximity and shared space, even under conditions where movement and gathering were suspended.

From the outset, Radio alHara positioned itself not simply as a radio station but as a social and political infrastructure. Built on open participation and collective authorship, it allows anyone to contribute sound, text or conversation; listeners become producers, and the neighborhood becomes global. Its programming, moving fluidly between soul, house, classical Arabic and experimental sound, refuses algorithmic logic or institutional framing. The form of its organization – horizontal, open-ended, decentralized – is itself the political gesture.

Over time, Radio alHara evolved into a platform for solidarity and resistance. During the 2021 Sheikh Jarrah evictions, for instance, the collective launched the Sonic Liberation Front, transforming the airwaves into a transnational field of protest and care. Through such acts, the station demonstrates that radio can be both medium and movement: a mode of connection that collapses borders while amplifying the experience of life under them.

As a tactical practice, Radio alHara reclaims radio as a commons, an infrastructure of listening that resists enclosure, nurtures collective agency, and reimagines what it means to inhabit space together. It is at once a neighborhood, an archive, and a living frequency of solidarity.