The Electronic Intifada Podcast 3 November 2025
Alhaj Ali is a journalist and translator who writes for The Electronic Intifada and other outlets.
She survived 17 months of genocide in Gaza before being evacuated to Ireland to take up a university scholarship. She continues to stay in regular contact with her family and friends in Gaza.
Alhaj Ali is also the author of a zine – The Mirror of Memory – recounting some of her experiences.
Executive director Ali Abunimah described Israel’s back and forth with the ceasefire as a form of psychological warfare.
”Yes. And it doesn’t bring peace anymore,” Alhaj Ali confirmed. “It’s just draining for the people.”
She said people in Gaza are dealing with two years of trauma. And if she doesn’t regularly hear from her family in Gaza she worries and loses sleep.
“ It’s really tiring and draining for my mental health as well because I’m really also suffering from post trauma,” Alhaj Ali explained.
She emphasized that Israel is not only breaking the ceasefire by dropping bombs but also by blocking aid trucks. According to her friends and family, there is still very little food, especially healthy options, in Gaza’s markets. And fresh food is very expensive.
“Not everyone there can afford that,” Alhaj Ali explained.
Associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman also reported on the ways that Israel has been breaking the ceasefire.On 28 October, Israel claimed that Palestinian resistance forces killed an Israeli soldier in Rafah, and alleged that the body of an Israeli captive transferred from Gaza by Hamas did not match one of the 13 to be handed over as part of the agreement.
Israel said it would resume wide-scale attacks and that night airstrikes killed at least 104 Palestinians, including 46 children, and injured more than 250.
In addition to blocking aid, Israel maintains a total blockade on heavy machinery and recovery equipment. But it did allow several heavy vehicles in from Egypt to help retrieve the bodies of remaining Israeli captives.
Meanwhile, there is little attention being paid to helping thousands of Palestinian families find the remains of their loved ones still under the rubble.
Watch Barrows-Friedman’s full report on YouTube and read it here.In his resistance report, contributing editor Jon Elmer shared maps of the yellow line in Gaza from an investigation by BBC Verify. The maps show that Israel is marking the line up to 500 meters from where the ceasefire agreement says it should be – taking control of more territory.
Elmer emphasized that the Israeli military is continuing operations on the eastern side of the yellow line: destroying resistance tunnels and homes.
“They’re attempting to achieve through ceasefire what they failed to achieve during the war,” said Elmer.
Later, Elmer noted that Israel is violating the ceasefire while resistance factions abide by it.“The ceasefire lines are elastic. The targeting reasons are elastic… It portends a trajectory of an ongoing war where one side attacks the other, and the other – at risk of their families being genocided – can’t respond,” said Elmer.
At the end of his report Elmer shared new footage of Yahya Sinwar in battle – the resistance leader killed by Israel just over a year ago.
At the end of the Livestream editors discussed how the US and Israel are making no progress in putting together a so-called International Stabilization Force, leaving Gaza in a very uncertain situation.
You can watch the entire show in the video at the top of this article.
“We want to be treated with dignity,”
Eman Alhaj Ali said some people approach her with pity.
”I feel humiliated,” she said of these types of encounters.
Instead, Alhaj Ali called on people to treat Palestinians as human beings who deserve rights as the indigenous people of the land – not just as numbers, objects of pity or “ people who have to be steadfast all the time.”
Some people seem to think Palestinians “are created or we are born just to suffer,” she explains.
”We are individuals with stories of laughter …of tears,” she said.
Alhaj Ali emphasized the need to tell real stories of and by Palestinians – a central mission at The Electronic Intifada.
In December 2023, Alhaj Ali wrote “Surviving your period amid a genocide.”
As she explained on the Livestream, the article was prompted by the difficulties women have had during the genocide in finding sanitary pads and privacy, often having to share makeshift latrines with thousands of people.
And as she has in other interviews, Alhaj Ali highlighted the need for people to speak up about Palestine.To be “neutral or to be silent” at a time like this “ means that you are complicit with the Israeli actions that are committed against the Palestinians,” she said.
Resistance report
“The principal guarantor of this deal is onside with Israel attacking inside the yellow line and still calling it a ceasefire,” said Elmer during his resistance report.
On 29 October, US President Donald Trump expressed support for Israel attacking Palestinians within the yellow line.
“They killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back. And they should hit back,” Trump said, justifying the massacre of more than 100 people including dozens of children in a single night.
Hamas denied that its fighters killed the soldier who Israel identified as a West Bank settler.
Will an international force fight Hamas for Israel?
A recent headline from Axios seemed to indicate that the US and Israel are almost ready to deploy the so-called International Stabilization Force (ISF) in Gaza: “ Scoop: US pushing to finalize plan for international Gaza Security Force.”
But as Abunimah noted, the details indicate it may be a long way off or impossible. Israel explicitly wants forces to go in and fight Hamas – finishing the job of disarming and defeating the organization that Israel proved incapable of doing.
One country that has offered troops is Turkey, but Israel is resisting any Turkish role.
“It just seems to be a lot of talk, a lot more wishcasting,” said associate editor Asa Winstanley. “I don’t see Turkey fighting against Hamas underground on behalf of Israel.”
”Nobody who is capable of doing it will do it and nobody who would be willing to do it is capable of doing it,” agreed Abunimah.
The US wants “Palestinian traitors and Arab traitors to go in and finish the job of destroying the resistance that the vaunted Israeli army was unable to do,” said Abunimah.The Axios article quotes a source indicating that the fighting force would be difficult to deploy if Hamas views them as an occupying army.
“But if Hamas consents, it’s a different situation,” the source said.
And the Israelis stressed that what’s important is “ legitimacy with the local population and willingness to fight and kill if needed.”
So the architects of the scheme are trying to square an impossible circle: The ISF will need to be both willing to kill Hamas and also on good terms with the organization.
The genocide in Gaza continues even after the ceasefire agreement, editors observed. Israel continues to bomb and starve Palestinians, but at a lower intensity.“ It is up to us to fight against the normalization of these lower intensity phases of it,” said Barrows-Friedman.
Israel is trying to establish a “politically sustainable genocide,” said Abunimah, noting that Israel’s success would depend on people turning away from Gaza.
”If we don’t do that, then they will not succeed,” he said.
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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