The Electronic Intifada Podcast 28 April 2025
Alnaouq is the co-editor of the new book We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth, just published by Penguin in Europe.
It will be published in the US in September and is available in many countries now from online retailers as an ebook or hardcopy.
During the show, contributing editor Jon Elmer shared the latest on the resistance in Gaza and the US assault on Yemen.
And the editors discussed the lack of media coverage of Pope Francis’ support for Palestine, censorship of the venerable CBS News program 60 Minutes for its coverage of Palestine, the latest on talks between the US and Iran and the state of the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
You can watch the show in full in the video above.
Two months of starvation
Israel has killed nearly 1,900 Palestinians since 18 March, including 600 children, while keeping Gaza under a total starvation siege for almost two months.
The Israeli military accelerated the forced displacement of Palestinians, pushing them into smaller and smaller areas, as reported by associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman during her news roundup.
The human rights group Euro-Med warned that Israel is “threatening the very future of Palestinians as a national group by creating a generation at risk of long-term, physical, psychological and cognitive disabilities.”
Last week, major labor unions and civil society in Morocco engaged in massive protests against the flow of US military cargo to Israel through their country.The Mask Off Maersk campaign, which highlights the role of Denmark-based logistics giant Maersk in shipping these weapons, was featured recently on the Livestream and on the Electronic Intifada Podcast.
We Are Not Numbers
Ahmed Alnaouq shared two videos featuring young Gaza writers reading their own work that is included in the new book We Are Not Numbers – “I Want the World to Know” by Anas Mohammed Jnena and “I Am a Girl,” by Yara Jouda.
“I want the world to know that some teens in Gaza skip out on their fifth class at school so they can see the girls they love.”
That’s a line from Jnena’s touching piece that he reads in the video, which features scenes of him and Alnaouq together on Gaza’s seafront in happier days.
Alnaouq noted that most of the places shown in the video, which was shot in 2017, are now destroyed.“ Anas is now married and he lives in Kuwait. But his heart lives in Gaza,” Alnaouq said.
We Are Not Numbers is an anthology of personal writing, reportage and poetry spanning 10 years up to the present genocide. Each of the pieces is accompanied by a short update on the writer.
Four of the writers whose work is featured in the book have been killed during the genocide: Yousef Dawas, Mahmoud Alnaouq, Huda Al Sousi and Mohammed Hamo.
All the writing is the fruit of a project also called We Are Not Numbers, founded in 2014 by Ahmed Alnaouq and Refaat Alareer, the beloved professor who personally taught and mentored many of the writers, until he was murdered in the genocide in December 2023.
Mentors from around the world work with young writers in Gaza who share their experiences in English for the world to understand them as human beings.
For a decade they have been publishing their stories on the We Are Not Numbers website and social media and many of the writers have gone on to contribute to major international publications.
“We’ve only been mentioned in the news when there is bloodshed. We’ve only been talked about as numbers, as statistics. We need people to read our stories and put themselves in our shoes,” Alnaouq told the Livestream.
Alnaouq said that by his count, The Electronic Intifada has published over 170 articles by We Are Not Numbers contributors since October 2023.”That makes me very proud, ” executive director Ali Abunimah replied.
Resistance confronts Israeli troops in Gaza
Israeli forces are moving back into built-up areas in Gaza and resistance fighters have engaged with them in several operations, as contributing editor Jon Elmer predicted on previous programs and reported in this episode.
Elmer also analyzed an operation where Palestinian fighters went into a so-called buffer zone which Israel “ believes is essentially their own territory,” just 300 meters from the fence marking the boundary of Gaza near Beit Hanoun.
Fighters used tunnels, military intelligence, tall thistles and a rocket-propelled grenade, flipping over an Israeli jeep, resulting in several Israeli casualties.
Yemen and Iran
Meanwhile, Ansarullah, the ruling movement in Yemen, has shot down seven more US Reaper drones in recent weeks, each one costing about $30 million.
Ansarullah claims to have shot down more than 20 of the pilotless warplanes in recent years, at least 15 of those since October 2023, a significant portion of the US inventory.
Elmer reported on massive demonstrations where Yemenis rallied in the capital Sanaa to express their approval for Ansarullah’s continued military support for Palestine, until a ceasefire is reached again.
”We can see the reality in Yemen,” said Abunimah later in the show during a discussion on talks between the US and Iran.He noted that the US has failed to defeat Ansarullah: “freedom of navigation” hasn’t been restored in the Red Sea, US drones are still being shot down and Yemeni missiles are still being fired at Israel.
“Then what will be the outcome of a much more difficult and challenging attempt to attack Iran?” wondered Abunimah.
On a similar note, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned in a new interview that a potential war with Iran would be “much messier” and “more complex” than military engagements the American people have seen in recent years.
Rubio made clear that the US still asserts the right to attack Iran and, as Abunimah noted, nothing is certain with the Trump administration.
But there are positive signs that Trump wants to avoid further war. Abunimah hoped that might even incentivize Trump to tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he no longer wants to support the war on Gaza. “I hope that’s the case,” said Abunimah.
Pope Francis stood by Gaza
Pope Francis passed away early on 21 April. Across social media people shared clips and quotes of the pontiff showing support for Palestinians, perhaps more than any other major Western political or spiritual leader.
But the mainstream media almost completely ignored this part of the pope’s biography. The Washington Post said he had “empathy for the disenfranchised” and The New York Times noted he would “care for the marginalized.”
But neither article mentioned Francis saying last December of Israel’s killing of Palestinian children that “This is cruelty, this is not war.”These were just examples of how much of the coverage omitted the pope’s concern for Palestinians throughout his pontificate, especially during the last 18 months of what Francis himself indicated was a genocide in Gaza.
The pope had also characterized Israel’s killings of Palestinians as “terrorism.” Abunimah noted many people remain concerned about accountability for historic abuses by the Catholic Church, but the discussion on the Livestream was about the pope’s deep concern for Palestinians, including calling Christians in Gaza nearly every day during the genocide.That type of support was something “certainly Palestinians felt a great deal of appreciation for,” said Abunimah.
*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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