The Electronic Intifada Podcast 7 October 2025
He was comparing the current genocide in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust which – being highly mechanized – he said, required, ”very small numbers of people to kill huge numbers of people.” That genocide was kept hidden from many people in Germany.
“ The genocide in Gaza is very different. It is very personal. It is actually done by hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers,” he said.
Bresheeth-Žabner is a filmmaker, academic and activist whose mother and father survived the Auschwitz death camp. His most recent book is An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces Made a Nation, published by Verso.“I was brought up on a belief that if only people knew what was happening in the death camps they would rise and stop it. Well, I was wrong,” he said.
“ This is even worse than the Holocaust caused by the Nazis,” he added, noting that this genocide continues in spite of the whole world knowing about it.Still, Bresheeth-Žabner sees a huge change among the public even if that still hasn’t pushed political leaders to take actions necessary to stop the genocide.
“I was once one of 10 anti-Zionists in Britain. Today we have millions of Britons who are anti-Zionists,” said Bresheeth-Žabner.
Israel massacres dozens daily, attacks flotilla
At the start of the Livestream, associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman reported on Israel’s relentless massacres: at least 429 Palestinians killed and more than 1,500 injured between 24 September and 1 October, as documented by health authorities.
And from Wednesday evening into Friday, in international waters where Israel has no jurisdiction, Israeli naval ships blocked, arrested and kidnapped hundreds of activists aboard the 44 boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla.
You can watch a video of the full news roundup or read it as an article.
Trump’s 20-point “colonial surrender” plan
Last week, US President Donald Trump presented a 20-point “peace plan.”
“It is a colonial surrender plan,” Bresheeth-Žabner stated.
“ After two years, Israel has to admit that they cannot defeat Hamas. That in itself is quite an incredible fact,” added Bresheeth-Žabner, noting how well-armed and supported Israel has been by the West.
With his plan, ”Trump is now stepping forward to help Israel where it failed,” he said.
Editors discussed the plan in depth later in the Livestream. Executive director Ali Abunimah noted a part of the plan that strongly resembles language in the agreements related to Northern Ireland that were concluded while Tony Blair was British prime minister more than two decades ago.
Trump’s plan says, “ There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors.”
“ But the difference here is that in the context of Ireland you had a reciprocal process,” explained Abunimah. The British government withdrew forces and dismantled bases while the Irish Republican Army and the loyalist gangs that backed the British both disarmed.
“ Where is the decommissioning of settler weapons in this agreement? Where is the decommissioning of the Israeli army and its death squads? It’s not there,” noted Abunimah.
That Trump’s plan seeks to impose Blair as the effective governor of Gaza has caused global outrage, not least due to the former British leader’s role in the US-led 2003 war of aggression against Iraq.“ Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic apolitical Palestinian committee,” the plan reads.
It would be overseen by a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump and Blair.
Tony Blair is “largely responsible for the invasion and destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan and many other crimes,” according to Abunimah.
“Just colonial arrogance,” was the reaction from Barrows-Friedman.
Hamas’ positive response to the plan, albeit with reservations, was welcomed by Trump and other Western backers of Israel. Trump publicly instructed Israel to immediately stop bombing Gaza – which it did not do.
Talks about implementing the prisoner-exchange provisions were ongoing in Cairo at the time of publication.
Battle in Gaza City
Meanwhile, Israel has pressed on with its invasion of Gaza City but its forces are advancing slowly and planning for the battle to last well into 2026.
There were over 55 qualitative operations and 26 more artillery and rocket operations by resistance fighters in Gaza City alone in the week before the 2 October Livestream, according to contributing editor Jon Elmer’s tally.
Elmer shared videos of operations but noted an apparent lack of cameras at this point among resistance fighters.
“ But it doesn’t seem that there are fewer weapons,” Elmer added.
Elmer also reported extensively on the tunnels in Gaza, calling them essential to the resistance and explaining why Israel has been unable to dismantle them – despite boasting about plans to destroy the underground network at the start of the genocide.“The Israelis believe that by destroying everything around these areas the resistance won’t be able to move. But we’re watching right now on camera the resistance move using tunnels,” explained Elmer, over a video from an operation in Khan Younis on 20 August.
The tunnel network is like a spider web not a system of straight thoroughfares. If Israel destroys or blocks one portion, resistance fighters can rebuild the tunnels and create new routes to move throughout Gaza.
Elmer discussed a video showing how Israel dug a massive hole into the tunnels – but a resistance fighter can be seen emerging from deep underground, unimpeded by Israel’s efforts to destroy the tunnels.
One reason the tunnels are resilient is the use of archways, according to Elmer.
“ That is why the tunnels are so well constructed. They rely upon that arch,” explained Elmer.
Editors also discussed the historical significance of the tunnels.
At the start of the genocide, Israel said it would flood the tunnels with seawater or gas.
In November 2023, Israel claimed there was a 500-kilometer tunnel network in Gaza that it would have to destroy in order to win the war.
The following month, Israel claimed to have destroyed 500 tunnel shafts in Gaza since the start of the genocidal war.
In August 2024, Israel claimed to have destroyed 80 percent of the tunnels in the Rafah area near the border with Egypt.
By mid-2025, Israeli military sources were claiming only to have destroyed about a quarter of Gaza’s tunnels – a claim that cannot be independently verified – and admitting that tunnels under the border with Egypt were intact.
Editors noted that we haven’t heard Israel make grand claims of tunnel destruction for over a year now.
The tunnels “will be seen as historic when it’s over,” said Abunimah.
“ The tourists to Palestine will go to visit the tunnels in Gaza – like they do to go to visit the tunnels in Vietnam,” added associate editor Asa Winstanley.
Sea change in US polling on Israel
“ The American public understands that Israel is a brutal, sadistic, murderous state that is deliberately targeting civilians,” was Abunimah’s conclusion after carefully examining a recent New York Times/Siena poll.
As a broad measure: 56 percent of US registered voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” – clear majority when looking at the broad electorate.
But Abunimah dug deep into the results: young people and registered Democrats hold even more negative view of Israel and US involvement in the genocide.
Abunimah highlighted that a narrow majority of Americans overall and 73 percent of Democrats surveyed now oppose sending additional economic and military aid to Israel – but Democratic leaders do not reflect this in their statements and actions.
“ They ought to change the name to the Undemocratic Party, because that’s what they are,” said Abunimah.
More than 60 percent of those polled agreed that “Israel is NOT taking enough precautions to avoid civilian casualties,” and of those, 40 percent said Israel is intentionally killing civilians.
”So the Israeli propaganda that claims, ‘No army does more than we do to protect civilians’ – nobody’s buying it,” concluded Abunimah.
Looking at the polling overall Abunimah described it as “an absolute sea change.”
And even if pro-Israel Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison were to move forward with plans to buy Tiktok – that still wouldn’t ”turn this around anytime soon.”
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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