The Electronic Intifada Podcast 7 July 2025
“But the US corporate media has said nothing about this,” she told The Electronic Intifada Livestream for 3 July.
”This does affect the regional balance of power – including the balance of power around the Gaza issue and the Gaza ceasefire issue,” said Cobban, director of Just World Educational and an analyst with decades of experience, in a wide-ranging discussion about the war and its consequences for Palestine and the world.As the program also covered, June was the deadliest month for Israeli soldiers in Gaza in a year. Amid fierce ongoing resistance, Israel escalated its massacres of civilians. And the British government has intensified its ban on solidarity work, by outlawing the activist collective Palestine Action as a “terrorist” group.
You can watch the entire show in the video at the top of this article.
Since the program, new satellite data has confirmed that Iranian missiles directly hit five Israeli military bases during the war of aggression that Israel launched on 13 June. Information about the damage has otherwise been concealed by strict Israeli military censorship.
While Israeli media are under strict control, Cobban noted that US corporate media also downplay the damage Iran inflicted on Israel, because editors do not want to portray Israel as “actually very fragile and very ill-protected and very vulnerable.”
Executive director Ali Abunimah shared his own regional analysis and his observations while he was recently in Jordan during the war, watching the sky as Iran’s missiles descended through Israel’s ever less effective air defenses.
Israel has been trying to normalize relations with Arab states in the region with the promise of the US and Israel protecting them from a supposed Iranian threat.
Abunimah acknowledged the horrific loss of life in Iran: Israel killed more than 600 people during the 12-day war. But Israel’s failure to achieve any of its goals against Iran demonstrated that “ they’re not this superman,” said Abunimah.
“ What benefit is there even to joining up to that sort of axis of genocide?,” Abunimah asked, noting that Arab states may be less inclined than ever to ally with Israel.
Deadly month for Israeli army
During the attack on Iran, some Israeli forces left Gaza and resistance fighters increased their operations.
June was the deadliest month for Israeli soldiers in over a year as reported by contributing editor Jon Elmer.
Israel has failed in all of its stated war goals, including destroying Hamas.
“ You’re going to see for about half an hour today that has very much not been accomplished,” Elmber said at the start of his resistance report.
Elmer counted 130 qualitative operations by the resistance in what he called the second battle of Khan Younis. The first lasted from December 2023 to April 2024. Israeli troops have moved back into the city in southern Gaza.But Israel’s “ goal of overrunning Khan Younis is not happening because the Israeli military is stuck fighting each of the six battalions of the Khan Younis brigade who have been waiting and preparing for 14 months for this second battle of Khan Younis,” according to Elmer.
Elmer also highlighted how a Qassam fighter on 23 June jumped onto an Israeli Puma combat engineering vehicle and threw a 35-kilogram shawaz explosively formed penetrator directly into the open hatch.
“ This was a devastating hit,” said Elmer. This attack killed seven Israeli soldiers aged 19 to 21. Israel took hours to tow the Puma away while the soldiers remained inside the burning vehicle.
“These are the kind of operations that can turn the war,” added Elmer. He noted that one mother of a slain soldier said her son was “tired” and did not express patriotic zeal for his sacrifice.
“From the moment he finished high school, he’s been fighting nonstop. He was tired. They’re all tired. This has to end,” said Alexandra Radia, mother of Staff Sergeant Niv Radia, who was killed at age 20 as reported in Haaretz.
Massacres at “aid” sites
Even with reduced troops in Gaza, Israel has not slowed down its campaign of terror and slaughter of Palestinian civilians.
During the week of 25 June to 2 July alone, Israel killed 630 Palestinians and wounded more than 2,300 in airstrikes, tank shellings and by snipers – in attacks on residential buildings, tent shelters, cafes and, at US-run so-called aid distribution sites, as reported by associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman at the start of the livestream.
Israeli and American forces are still using the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution sites as killing fields, massacring dozens of people per day desperately seeking food for themselves and their families.
Outlawing solidarity
Meanwhile, Britain’s home secretary Yvette Cooper told Parliament in late June that she planned to ban direct action protesters Palestine Action as a “terrorist” group.
”One Palestine Action source did tell me on Tuesday that they’d had at least a thousand new recruits since the ban idea was floated,” said associate editor Asa Winstanley during the livestream.
And he recently wrote an article on the government crackdown.
Palestine Action is well-known for damaging facilities belonging to UK subsidiaries of Elbit, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer. Founded in August 2020, Palestine Action has already shut down three Elbit sites in the UK.
In 2021, three people from Palestine Action were tried but “their lawyers successfully argued that while the three had indeed damaged the factory, it was not criminal damage, but rather proportionate action to prevent crimes in Palestine,” wrote Winstanley.
Juries have acquitted other Palestine Actionists on the same basis.
This newest effort to attack Palestine Action is also facing challenges.The Guardian reported that even staff in Cooper’s own office were “shocked” and found it “absurd” to criminalize support of an organization that works to “ disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes,” according to an anonymous senior official.
Guardian columnist George Monbiot released his own video, saying, “This, I believe, needs to be our ‘I’m Spartacus moment’ where one after another we stand up and say: I support Palestine Action.”
But despite opposition, the ban has now gone into effect, with British police quickly arresting activists supporting Palestine Action’s work to stop the genocide. 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.
Add new comment