The Electronic Intifada Podcast 1 April 2025
She was talking about Israel’s 24 March murder of the young Palestinian journalist who was beloved by people in Gaza and became known to people all over the world since the start of the genocide.
Since 18 March, when it shattered the ceasefire, Israel has killed over 830 people, 40 percent of them children, Barrows-Friedman reported, a number that continues to rise by dozens each day.
Israel killed more than 50 Palestinians on Sunday alone, the day Palestinians marked the start of Eid al-Fitr, celebrating the end of Ramadan.
The Livestream included a discussion with British Palestinian author Ahmed Masoud, who grew up in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp. Analyst Helena Cobban also joined the program to talk about regional developments in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.We also looked at the reports of “anti-Hamas protests” in Gaza.
You can watch the whole program in the video above.
Executive director Ali Abunimah spoke about the challenge of seeing horrific images on our phones every day and “ the feeling of just not being able to do anything to stop it.”
It’s not easy to watch, “but you give it to us in a way that allows us to bear witness to it and to know the reality,” he told Barrows-Friedman after a report that covered Israel’s relentless massacres and tightening starvation siege – as well as a moving tribute to Shabat.
“ Hossam was younger than my daughter,” Barrows-Friedman, noted. The journalist was just 23.
“I personally relied on his reporting, I know we all did, every single day,” since 7 October, Barrows-Friedman added. “He deserved better and we failed him.”
Israel has killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists since 7 October 2023 – the largest number killed in any conflict.That includes the recent murders of Mohammed Mansour and Wafa Aludaini.
Abunimah emphasized that everyone killed in this genocide, “ was loved [and] had an impact on the world.”
“Each person is someone’s universe,” Barrows-Friedman observed.
“Learn more about us through our mouths”
Ahmed Masoud joined the livestream from London to talk about his book Vanished:The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda, which was re-released this month in the United States by Just World Books.
Told through the eyes of an 8-year old boy trying to solve the mystery of his father’s disappearance, it is set in Masoud’s native Jabaliya in the late 1970s through to the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza.
Masoud described it as a thriller with “twists and turns” that also addresses controversial topics in Palestinian society, including a central character who is blackmailed into collaborating with Israel.
The author highlighted the importance of art and believes that this genocide would not have happened if Palestinians had had an opportunity to share their stories.
He criticized outlets like, including the BBC, which he says have produced content about Palestinians that is not created by Palestinians and portrays them all as terrorists.
“ Please read our stories and learn more about us through our mouths – not through somebody else who’s writing about us,” Masoud urged.
Aerial massacres and starvation
For a month, Israel has blocked desperately needed food and fuel trucks from entering Gaza – violation of key terms of the ceasefire – amid relentless airstrikes and shelling from land and sea.
On 1 April the UN’s World Food Programme announced that all 25 of its bakeries in Gaza had shut down due to a lack of fuel and flour.
Last week the WFP said that hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are once again at risk of severe hunger and malnutrition – the logical and clearly intended effect of Israel’s policy.“A lot of people are asking what the resistance is doing right now,” contributing editor Jon Elmer noted.
He described Israel’s bombing as “ a war of massacres from the air,” meaning that there is little the resistance can do to stop it.
“The Israeli military wants you to hear that they are advancing but they’re not really,” said Elmer.
Israel has sent troops into Gaza but only into buffer zones, not populated areas.
These advances are “for show,” according to Elmer, intended to appease the far-right extremists who have been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for stopping the war at a time when he needs their support to pass a budget and keep his government in office.
Israel could still advance into built-up areas and then the resistance could engage them.
But Elmer said resistance leaders have made clear they want to go back to the ceasefire agreement violated by Israel and to the negotiations aimed ultimately at lifting the blockade on Gaza.
The Qassam Brigades and the al-Quds Brigades, the military wings respectively of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, fired rockets at Israel this past week in response to Israel’s ongoing massacres, sending millions of Israelis into bomb shelters.
Turkey and Israel collude in Syria
Israel and Turkey seem to be cooperating to divide up Syria “ to the complete detriment of the Syrian people,” according to author and publisher Helena Cobban, who joined the program for a wide-ranging discussion of regional and geopolitical developments.
Cobban added that with Turkey being a member of NATO, it is “not wholly surprising” to see Ankara working with Tel Aviv.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan often speaks about his strong support for Palestine but that is seldom backed up with action.Syria is now controlled by self-appointed president Ahmad al-Shara, also known as Abu Muhammad al-Julani, the former ISIS and al-Qaeda senior operative who heads the Turkish-backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militia.
In December, al-Shara’s militia toppled the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the culmination of more than a decade of covert US support for militias that Washington nominally considers hostile.
That policy was encapsulated in a 2012 email from Jake Sullivan exposed through WikiLeaks, in which the US policy advisor wrote plainly that “ AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”
Sullivan was writing to his then boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He would serve in the Biden administration as national security adviser.The US and much of the West continue to support al-Shara even after his subordinates carried out massacres in early March of Alawites, a minority group whose crime in the eyes of their killers is that they shared the same religion as Assad.
Yemen
Cobban shared her views on the Signal group chat in which senior Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, planned out their bombing attacks on Yemen in mid-March.
“ And honestly it turns my stomach as somebody who has covered wars on the ground, the cavalier way in which they talk,” Cobban said, adding that the officials sounded more like 7-year-old boys.
She emphasized that war is not just about killing people – which the officials seemed gleeful about – but accomplishing political goals.
What is the US accomplishing by killing dozens of people in an apartment building?
Cobban noted that the US-backed Saudi-led coalition that bombed Yemen for years starting in 2015, killed thousands of people, but the Ansarullah movement, which rules the country, is now stronger than ever.
Ansarullah has vowed that the American attacks will not stop it from continuing its support for Palestinians in Gaza in the form of a maritime blockade on Israel-bound shipping in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea, and missile attacks.
Protests in Gaza
Last week, US and Israeli media boosted reports of protests among Palestinians in northern Gaza against the gongoing genocide.
There were claims that these were “anti-Hamas protests,” and videos circulated showing groups of men shouting slogans against the resistance group.
But as Abunimah explained, this was a misrepresentation. The spontaneous protests that emerged in the town of Beit Lahiya were not directed against Hamas at all.
However, anti-Hamas elements aligned with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah attempted to hijack them to give the impression that this was a popular revolt against Hamas.They reportedly included loyalists of Muhammad Dahlan, an Emirates-based former Palestinian Authority strongman who took part in a 2007 US-sponsored coup attempt against Hamas after it won Palestinian legislative elections.
As Abunimah explained, there’s no evidence of widespread revolt against Hamas, which remains committed to ending the war and returning to the ceasefire agreement.
Students
The Trump administration has escalated its assault on free speech, targeting for deportation international students suspected of taking part in protests against Israel’s genocide.
Among the 300 students whose visas the government says it has revoked are Fulbright scholar Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts University in Boston.
The Turkish citizen was arrested on the sidewalk in front of her house in Somerville, Massachusetts, by masked government agents in civilian clothes on 25 March.
This was in apparent retaliation for an op-ed she co-wrote in March 2024 in The Tufts Daily urging the university to divest from Israel.She was reportedly transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana, the southern state where Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil is also being held.
Thousands of people protested in support of Ozturk on Wednesday outside of Boston.
You can watch the program on YouTube, Rumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program. Michael F. Brown contributed pre-production assistance and this writer contributed post-production assistance.
Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada Livestream can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
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Uncommon Sense
Permalink kronikdenny replied on
Dump, Trump a.k.a. Dondolf Twitler...and his entire administration. They've brought shame upon the notion of democracy, liberty, justice. Trump was bribed by Israel with payments from Zionist Miriam Adelson. He put their interests before those of his own country. That is High Treason. He has placed the citizens in jeoardy with his callous actions. We need to vote him and his administration out of office immediately, and replace him with the only member of Congress who will do the right thing.
Rashida Tlaib for POTUS!
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