The Electronic Intifada Podcast 12 November 2025
“This was a resounding yes to somebody who was expressing, in very human terms, the horror that so many people feel at this genocide,” said Abunimah.
“His rise is their worst nightmare,” Abunimah added, speaking of the mayor-elect’s political opponents – including the Israel lobby – given his involvement with a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter while in college. He is also the first Muslim elected to that office, as well as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. “ What happened in New York could happen next across the entire United States, including in Congress and the White House,” veteran Israeli politician Gilad Erdan wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, the day after Mamdani’s win.“This is a huge warning sign.”
Abunimah gave an introduction to Mamdani’s support for Palestinian rights, recalled key promises Mamdani had made on the campaign trail, discussed the backlash aimed at him and the significant challenges he is likely to confront as mayor.At the top of the show, associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman reported on Israel’s continued violations of the ceasefire, including opening fire at a wedding in Gaza City.
Watch Barrows-Friedman’s full report on YouTube and read it here.
Contributing editor Jon Elmer spoke about how resistance factions in Yemen, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq have all played significant roles in supporting the Palestinian resistance.
“They just stand in stark contrast to the rest of the world who did nothing and was too cowardly to even speak out… let alone launched ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv Airport,” noted Elmer.
He also highlighted the way these groups have communicate with each other.
“I think it’s been an important part of the battle that will go down in history,” said Elmer.
And he shared a video from the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to the axis of resistance. It featured various operations by different groups and included joint operations with the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.
Mamdani’s victory
In a discussion on Zohran Mamdani’s victory, editors expressed skepticism and caution, as well as some optimism.
They noted concerns that the mayor-elect might succumb to pressure from Israel lobby groups or renege on support for Palestinian rights, as some progressive politicians have in the past – such as Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party.
Abunimah also noted a significant concession Mamdani has already made in agreeing to retain Jennifer Tisch as the police commissioner of the New York Police Department.
Tisch was commissioner while the NYPD cracked down on anti-genocide protests at universities, especially Columbia University in Manhattan. At the time, NYPD training classified kuffiyehs (the traditional Palestinian checkered scarf) and watermelons as anti-Semitic symbols.
Barrows-Friedman sees the support Mamdani has gotten from Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders, as well as praise from US President Barack Obama, as cause for concern.
“We have to double down on our caution,” Barrows-Friedman said, adding that there also may be a case for cautious optimism.
Abunimah noted that many share this perspective but highlighted one key difference between Mamdani and those other politicians.
“Zohran Mamdani has a very long and very explicit and very detailed commitment to supporting Palestinian rights that none of them had,” said Abunimah.
Associate editor Asa Winstanley shared some advice drawing upon his expertise on the attacks leveled at UK politician Jeremy Corbyn, which he had extensively investigated and written a book about. “Jeremy Corbyn did similar things to what Zohran is doing now in embracing this police commissioner,” Winstanley said.Corbyn embraced his rivals in the Labour Party and in response those politicians conspired against Corbyn and backstabbed him with the help of the pro-Israel lobby, Winstanley explained.
Abunimah similarly noted that Mamdani’s efforts at conciliatory language towards his critics did nothing to appease them, citing a Washington Post editorial stating that Mamdani “no longer defends eliminationist rhetoric about Jews, he remains fixated with Israel.”An analysis piece in The Times of Israel also frames Mamdani as a “threat” but contradicts the Post.
“His condemnations are solely aimed at Israel and Zionism – not at Jews or Judaism – but the distinction is not reassuring for many Jews.”
Abunimah first met Mamdani in 2013 when Mamdani was co-chair of the SJP chapter at Bowdoin College in Maine and invited Abunimah to speak.Mamdani had also shared an article by Max Blumenthal for The Electronic Intifada in 2014, and was interviewed in another in 2023 about a bill that “would prevent New York state-based registered charities from funding illegal Israeli settlement activities in the occupied West Bank,” Barrows-Friedman reported at the time.
Mamdani introduced the bill in May 2023 as a member of the New York State Assembly.
Public opinion on Israel and the general political climate has shifted dramatically in the nearly two and a half years since. Israel’s genocide in Gaza sparked global outrage and mobilized more people for Palestine than ever before.
Mamdani’s electoral win can be seen, at least in part, as a product of that shift. More changes may also be ahead, Abunimah speculated.
“People are skeptical because they say things are the same because they’ve always been the same. But then eventually they change. Is this that moment? I don’t know. Probably not. Could be. Might be the start of it. I’m saying keep an open mind.”
British complicity in Israel’s genocide
Also on the livestream, Peter Oborne spoke about the UK’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including UK media and politicians. He is the author of the new book Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza.
“ You can’t vote against genocide in the UK … Is that a fair proposition?” Abunimah asked Peter Oborne.
Abunimah was referring to how the Labour and Conservative parties have both supported Israel throughout the genocide.
“It’s not just that you can’t vote against genocide. You can’t actually mention it. It’s banned as a term on the mainstream media but also in the Labour party,” replied Oborne.
Oborne drew attention to the lack of coverage in the UK of the more than 274 journalists killed in Gaza. He also cited a study by the Centre for Media Monitoring in the UK, which found that the BBC covered 6 percent of the deaths of journalists in Gaza but 62 percent of the deaths of journalists in Ukraine.“I’ve drawn on the selfless heroism of the journalists inside Gaza,” Oborne said of his inspiration.
“These people sitting in these studios in London are comfortable, I dare say they’re on six-figure salaries, they really know nothing,” according to Oborne.
“ I compare these people with the journalists in Gaza,” he added. “It makes me feel ashamed.”
UN resolution
Representatives from the Palestinian Authority met on 4 November with US representative to the UN, Mike Waltz, to discuss a draft UN resolution, Axios reported. The resolution would authorize an international security force in Gaza and call for the resistance to disarm.
“What this security council resolution threatens is giving the veneer of UN legitimacy and the force of international law to this idea that the Palestinian resistance is illegal and criminal and has to be disarmed. And that’s a very dangerous idea,” Abunimah said on the livestream.
The Palestinian Authority reportedly supports the resolution, reflecting its long-standing goal of disarming resistance factions in Gaza and the West Bank under the so-called one-gun rule – ensuring that only one party would have weapons.
In effect, Palestinian Authority forces are Israel’s foot soldiers, and their weapons and resources are used to suppress Palestinian opposition to Israel’s military occupation.
Abunimah explained how a monopoly on violence is a fundamental characteristic of a state. In this case, when a state has lost its sovereignty, it is up to the people to take up arms against the occupying force.
So it is farcical for countries like the UK and France to recognize the state of Palestine when referring to the PA.
“They should say: we recognize the state of Palestine. However, the state of Palestine is under occupation. The authorities in the state of Palestine, which we recognize, have no capacity to exercise their sovereignty and defend their borders against this foreign occupation. Therefore, we support the resistance and we’re going to send weapons and support to the resistance in Palestine,” offered Abunimah.
Instead, these Western countries continue to arm and train the collaborators of the occupying power.Efforts to install an international security force still ignore the reality that Israel failed to defeat the resistance in Gaza, despite extensive support from major Western powers.
Meanwhile, Israel is still carrying out a genocide under the banner of a ceasefire.
“What they don’t want is the images of shredded babies on everyone’s phones. It’s much harder to illustrate a genocide when it’s being done by starvation, by freezing people to death, by depriving them of medicine when people are dying of heart attacks and strokes and fatigue and weak immune systems and all the other things that don’t even get counted in the casualty statistics,” 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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