The Electronic Intifada Podcast 15 April 2025
It killed three journalists last week and has blocked all aid from entering Gaza for more than six weeks – as reported by associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman during her news brief at the start of The Electronic Intifada Livestream for 10 April.
But Israel and the US are failing in many of their goals, including forcing Hamas to surrender, breaking Yemen’s blockade of the Red Sea, keeping Israeli society from falling apart and convincing Americans to support Israel.
And will US-Iran talks avoid war? Those are some of the topics we covered in the program, which you can watch in full in the video above.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s crackdown on free speech, particularly its arrests of students and scholars, is a frightening new escalation of American repression.But they are only the latest in a long line of US government crackdowns targeting the Palestinian community.
We spoke with author Miko Peled about Israel’s internal disintegration and about the Holy Land Foundation Five – Palestinian American community leaders unjustly convicted and sentenced to long prison terms as part of the so-called War on Terror in the early 2000s.
And executive director Ali Abunimah broke down the latest scandal around Israel’s 7 October 2023 “mass rapes” hoax – the exposure by Israeli media of the fraudulent claims of “witness” and “hero” Rami Davidian.
A majority US adults now views Israel negatively
In a historic shift, more than half of US adults now have a negative view of Israel. That is according to a Pew Research Center poll published this month.
Fifty-three percent of US adults now view Israel unfavorably, a sharp increase from the 42 percent who held that view three years ago, according to the survey.
“The Israel lobby has thrown billions of dollars at trying to turn [this] around and have utterly failed,” executive director Ali Abunimah noted during a discussion on the Livestream.
Indeed, the remarkable turn in sentiment against Israel – despite overwhelmingly pro-Israel media coverage before and after 7 October – is apparent across all demographic groups.Almost four in 10 Republican or Republican-leaning voters (37 percent) now view Israel negatively. That number rises to 50 percent among Republicans under age 50.
Around 70 percent of Democrats view Israel negatively, a number that remains roughly consistent among all age groups.
Abunimah urged people to continue talking to people about Palestine and sharing reporting from The Electronic Intifada and other independent outlets. ”We’re changing hearts and minds,” he said. “And Palestinians in Gaza are changing hearts and minds.”
Israel falling apart?
The steady erosion of support for Israel in the United States – its greatest financial and military benefactor – may explain why authorities from the Trump administration to universities have turned to ever more violent and repressive forms of censorship of criticism of Israel.
But as Abunimah noted, attempts to deport students for defending Palestinian rights are not new.
In the late 1980s, the Reagan administration attempted to deport a group of Palestinian and other students – the Los Angeles 8 – leading to a 20-year legal battle that vindicated the students.
As Miko Peled told us there was another major crackdown targeting Palestinians in the United States, following the 9/11 attacks – when the George W. Bush administration sought convictions of “terrorists” at almost any cost.
He is the author of Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five, an account of how the Bush administration targeted the leaders of what was once America’s largest Muslim charity, effectively making them pay the price for the 9/11 attacks, to which they had no connection.Ghassan Elashi, Shukri Abu-Baker, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh, and Mohammad El-Mezain were convicted in 2008 and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 15 to 65 years
Zionists have “always been terrified,” and “ every little thing is a threat,” because they worry Zionism will be exposed for the racist and genocidal ideology that it is, Peled said.
That means even aid organizations like the Holy Land Foundation and student activists are seen as a serious threat.
Peled said the recent abductions of college students form “perhaps the worst iteration of this of this reality.”
The son of famous Israeli general Matti Peled, Miko shared his insight into Israeli society.
It has always been a “ combination of different groups that have nothing to do with each other – that have been kind of tied together with scotch tape,” he said. After 7 October, “ the scotch tape was completely ripped off.”
The long-simmering animosity among groups within Israeli Jewish society has only intensified, and at present, “The vitriol, the racism, the hatred” are unprecedented, Peled said.
According to Peled, many aspects of Israeli society are falling apart, including the judiciary, the police, the military, health care and education.
But Peled warned that this internal disintegration will not happen quickly enough to halt the genocide in Gaza. He argued that “severe sanctions” are needed to stop the slaughter.
Israeli 7 October hoaxer exposed
An Israeli man who claimed to have heroically rescued hundreds of people from Hamas fighters on 7 October 2023 has been exposed by Israeli media as an outright liar who made up stories “from beginning to end,” as The Electronic Intifada reported earlier this month.
This came a year after The Electronic Intifada examined the claims of Rami Davidian and concluded they were false – ahead of any other media organization.
Davidian was featured in Screams Before Silence, the fraudulent documentary narrated by billionaire Sheryl Sandberg, in which Davidian claimed to have seen dozens of dead victims of alleged rapes on that day.
On the Livestream, Abunimah talked about the latest developments, and the fallout in Israel from Davidian’s exposure as a liar and grifter, to whom huge donations were made on the basis of his false tales of heroism.
US-Iran talks surprise Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump at the White House last week.
Trump dropped a bombshell on his guest – the news that the United States and Iran are engaging in direct negotiations over a new deal on Iran’s nuclear energy program.
As Abunimah noted, this would have displeased Netanyahu, who has been goading Washington to attack Iran for years. Trump has said he would consider using military force, but preferred to avoid it.
Both Washington and Tehran have a major interest in avoiding a costly and devastating war in which neither is guaranteed to prevail, but given the gaps between them, there’s no guarantee one can be avoided given the level of Trump’s rhetoric and the constant push for war from Israel and its lobby.
During their press conference Trump talked about “looking at another ceasefire” in Gaza.
Netanyahu said, ”We’re committed to getting all the hostages out.”
Abunimah said this is a significant change in rhetoric and an admission “that Netanyahu’s so-called military pressure to force Hamas to surrender has failed.”
Still, Netanyahu talked cynically about, “enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice to go wherever they want” – framing Israel’s Trump-endorsed goal of expelling them as voluntary.
Associate editor Asa Winstanley explained that this is the same rhetoric for ethnic cleansing championed by the ultra-rightist followers of Meir Kahane, which has infiltrated Israel’s mainstream.
And while Netanyahu had hoped for Trump to exempt Israel from US tariffs, the US president did not immediately jump at the opportunity to do so.When a journalist asked about reducing those tariffs Trump said, “ Maybe not. Don’t forget we help Israel a lot. You know, we give Israel $4 billion a year.”
Trump appeared to be mocking Netanyahu when he turned to him and said, “That’s a lot. My congratulations, by the way.”
The next day, Trump announced he was suspending all his so-called reciprocal tariffs for 90 days, except for China.
Israel got its tariffs reduced but not due to special treatment from Trump.
Israel’s failure to eliminate Rafah Brigade
Israeli military chief of staff Eyal Zamir visited southern Gaza last week and told soldiers there, “I expect you to defeat the Rafah Brigade.”
During his resistance report, contributing editor Jon Elmer noted that Israel announced the defeat or near-defeat of the Rafah Brigades, part of the Hamas’ military wing the Qassam Brigades, in June 2024 and again in September 2024.
But Israeli media reported last week that there are still two functioning Qassam battalions left in Rafah and three in Khan Younis.
US failure against Yemen
The United States is still mounting massive attacks on Yemen, causing death and destruction to civilians, but it has failed in its stated goal of ending the maritime blockade of the Red Sea imposed by Yemen’s ruling Ansarullah movement.
Ansarullah says it won’t lift the blockade until Israel ends its genocide and lifts its siege on Gaza.
The US has already spent nearly $1 billion in attacks on Yemen, according to CNN.
”Transits are down 70 percent through the Bab al-Mandab [Strait] into the Red Sea” for container ships Elmer reported.Other types of marine traffic have also seen sharp declines.
That means most ships are having to travel all the way around Africa, avoiding the Suez Canal, and taking a much longer and more expensive route between Asia and Europe.
Meanwhile, Yemeni forces downed two more Reaper drones, large pilotless aircraft costing millions of dollars that the US needs to try to identify targets in Yemen.
Israel fails to break Palestinian will to live
In the south, the Gaza government media office said that Rafah is “the city that the Israeli occupation wiped off the map and turned into a complete humanitarian disaster.”
Israel has destroyed approximately 90 percent of the homes in the Rafah governorate in southern Gaza, as Barrows-Friedman reported.
”We affirm that these crimes will not pass without accountability and that the steadfastness of the people of Rafah governorate, and the rest of our people, will remain a living witness that the will to live is stronger than the machine of death,” the Gaza government media office said.Ali Abunimah contributed reporting for this article.
*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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