The Electronic Intifada Podcast 20 May 2025
AI – artificial intelligence – and cloud technology have become, “as deadly as bombs and bullets,” she added.
We were joined by three people from the No Azure for Apartheid campaign. Microsoft Azure is the cloud computing platform that the Israeli military uses to develop kill lists and target banks.Agrawal and Hossam Nasr were fired from Microsoft for protesting it role in Israel’s genocide. We were also joined by a current Microsoft worker who went by the name “June.”
”I’m hiding my face and name now, not because I’m afraid to get fired, but because I am saving it for the right moment,” June said.
The workers emphasized there are many ways to play a role depending on strategy and how much privilege you have to take certain risks – but that everyone can get involved somehow. Nasr addressed those who have the privilege to speak out and take risks but have not done so.
“If not now, then when? If it’s not going to be this genocide. If it’s not going to be when Palestinians are being starved and babies are being decapitated,” Nasr said.
Microsoft workers from around the world have been joining the No Azure for Apartheid campaign. June shared a hopeful message: ”I believe that we are at a turning point where this mass awareness and mass conviction… will enable us to make some changes there.”They encouraged other workers to organize - especially at other tech companies complicit in the genocide such as Google and Amazon.
After the interview, associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman noted that we’re taught to believe we can’t make a difference through organizing and speaking up.
Executive director Ali Abunimah observed, “If our voices didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be trying to shut us up.” He noted the arrests, deportations, interrogations and intimidations that many have suffered after speaking up for Palestine, across North America and Europe, in particular.
Starvation happening now in Gaza
“We are talking about two million people who are really starving… I am calling everybody around the world to do something,” said Asem Alnabih, the spokesperson for Gaza City Municipality, when he joined the Livestream from Gaza.
A majority of Gazans who participated in research by Alnabih and his peers had lost an average of 40 lbs (18 kgs) during the genocide. Alnabih himself has lost 35 lbs (16 kgs).
Alnabih considers himself lucky because he has one meal every day. Many people eat less frequently. He also emphasized the uncertainty many face. “If I’m lucky enough to have a meal today, I’m not sure if I will have it tomorrow,” he said.Associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman asked Alnabih how he remains hopeful. In response, Alnabih quoted US President John F. Kennedy verbatim from his 1961 inaugural address.
”Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”
Alnabih explained that many people have tried using mass violence against civilians to achieve their goals - including Kennedy himself in Vietnam and Israel now. But history shows they will fail.
Alnabih said he has been telling his friends and family, ”They can kill 100,000 people, but they can’t kill everyone.”
“Things are going to be changed sooner or later. We will get our freedom. The world has to take some actions because everyone is calling for peace.”
In his latest article for The Electronic Intifada, Alnabih wrote about recently being able to obtain a single cucumber, banana, orange and pear.
“These are foods I wasted for the first time in months,” he said. “I never thought of eggs or apples as unattainable luxuries, yet here I am, and here we are.”
“While these days my stomach may hunger for bread, what I truly wish to taste is liberation,” Alnabih added.
Resistance Operations
Contributing editor Jon Elmer analyzed multiple operations in his resistance report this week – not an uptick in recent weeks as Israelis have tried to advance.
“When people said, why weren’t there operations? – the Israelis weren’t moving out of the buffer zone. Here we see a built up area and they’re immediately getting hit.”
Elmer took a close look at what the resistance has called the “Gates of Hell” ambushes by its Rafah Brigade against soldiers in Israel’s Golani Brigade – considered an elite platoon.Recently released US-Israeli dual citizen prisoner of war Edan Alexander was a Golani Brigade member when he was captured on 7 October 2023.
Hamas gambles on releasing Alexander
Alexander grew up in the US state of New Jersey, but went to Israel as an adult to join the military.
He was in a tank when he was captured. Hamas was told his release would move the ceasefire negotiations and the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza. But contrary to hopeful expectations among Palestinians, his 12 May release produced no immediate results.
During discussion towards the end of the Livestream, Elmer called this “duplicitous and criminal by Trump,” because it appears ceasefire negotiations had not moved forward and Israel was maintaining its starvation siege.
Israel kills 100 Palestinians on Nakba Day
Across Gaza, Israel has accelerated its attacks on Palestinians, massacring dozens of people each day in tent shelters, schools turned into housing for displaced families, residential buildings and inside two hospitals, as associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman highlighted in the news briefing at the top of the show.
At least 100 were killed on Nakba Day.
Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, said he is hopeful that a ceasefire deal can be reached after yet more talks in Doha with Qatari officials, but no further details have been revealed and there appears to be a striking lack of urgency.
The escalating horror is such that France, the United Kingdom and Canada, staunch allies of Tel Aviv, issued a joint statement on Monday to “strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza” and its refusal to allow in aid.
“We will not stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions,” they stated.
“If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.”
The reality, however, is that these governments have not just stood by during almost 20 months of genocide, they have continued to maintain, trade, diplomatic and military relations that have shielded Israel from accountability and facilitated its crimes.
The foreign ministers of some two dozen European and other aid-donor countries also urged Israel to “allow a full resumption of aid into Gaza immediately and enable the UN and humanitarian organisations to work independently and impartially to save lives, reduce suffering and maintain dignity.”
Beyond pleading, the statement did not even hint at any account to hold Israel accountable.
Trump “hitting the wall of the law”
Federal judges in two separate cases ruled that Rumeysa Ozturk and Badar Khan Suri should be released from custody.
Both judges ruled the detention of the non-US-citizen scholars, respectively based at Tufts University in Massachusetts and Georgetown University in Washington, DC, was a direct attack on the First Amendment’s constitutional guarantee of free speech.
Ozturk, whose only transgression appears to have been co-writing an article in a campus newspaper, was released on 9 May. Khan Suri was released on 14 May.US District Judge William Sessions “said the government offered no evidence for why Ozturk was arrested other than the op-ed,” according to PBS News.
“The Trump campaign of shock and awe - of cracking down on dissent - is now hitting the wall of the law,” said executive director Ali Abunimah.
Editors emphasized that Columbia University student leader Mahmoud Khalil and many others are still unjustly imprisoned and should be released.
Gulf state bow to Trump
Trump visited Gulf countries last week but in an apparent snub, didn’t visit Israel.
As has been reported by many, Trump, Qatar is offering Trump a $400-million jet as a gift to replace the US president’s aging official aircraft.
Abunimah criticized the Gulf states for cozying up to Trump while he is supporting Israel’s genocide. He encouraged them to say to Trump: “We will welcome you with red carpets and girls swinging their hair left and right in music – but stop the genocide.”
Further, Abunimah noted that, ”US protection and promises of protection have never been guarantees that your regime will survive. Where is the Shah of Iran?” He noted that Trump is especially unreliable, changing his stances from one day to the next.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 and Asa Winstanley contributed analysis. 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.
Ali Abunimah contributed reporting to this article.
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