The Electronic Intifada Podcast 7 April 2025
Conditions in Gaza may be worse now than ever before. Israel has killed over 1,000 people since 18 March and has blocked all aid from entering the territory for more than a month.
On The Electronic Intifada Livestream this week we focused on children in Gaza. Even after more than 70 weeks of livestreams, hosts and guests struggled to hold back tears.Josh Rushing, an Emmy award-winning filmmaker, joined the show to talk about “Kids Under Fire”.
Focusing on Israel’s deliberate targeting of children, it is the latest film from Fault Lines, the flagship documentary series from Al Jazeera English.
American nurse Zahed Rahman spoke live from Gaza and described the deterioration in conditions since he was last there a year ago.
We also discussed new details about how Israel has sabotaged the latest efforts to restore the Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal.
During her news brief, associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman reported on horrifying incidents in Gaza, including a mother seeing her children burning to death, babies beheaded in Israeli attacks and children arriving injured and dead at hospitals in festive clothes worn for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.On 30 March, Palestinians located a mass grave containing the bodies of eight Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedics and six civil defense first responders and an employee of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees.
“Kids Under Fire”
Al Jazeera spoke to 20 American doctors and medics who had volunteered in Gaza, for the documentary “Kids Under Fire.” Every one of them reported treating children with gunshot wounds, which filmmaker Josh Rushing said was an “undeniable pattern.”
Rushing said doctors regularly compartmentalize their job – separating their emotions from their professional work. And yet, “What they saw in Gaza absolutely tears down the walls of that compartmentalization. It’s haunting them.” Rushing, who has been at Al Jazeera for two decades, says, “ I think this is the most important work I’ve done.”“I’m sorry there was just another bomb”
While describing the horrifying conditions in Gaza, American nurse Zahed Rahman paused, looked to his left and said, “ I’m sorry, there was just another bomb.”
In addition to the physical wounds Rahman emphasized that he is seeing more signs of psychological trauma than the last time he was in Gaza.When asked what message he wants to send to the world, an emotional Rahman said, “Gazans are humans just like we are.”
Noting that his hospital had seen three more fatalities that day, he wondered, “How is that not going to breed more resistance fighters?” He said the aid trucks need to be let in and there needs to be a diplomatic solution where “ everyone gets to live freely.”
Rahman is in Gaza as part of a medical mission organized by Glia, a humanitarian organization that has worked for years to support medical care in Gaza.
Resistance Report
With daily massacres of civilians by Israel from the air and occasional retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza, but very little engagement on the ground, conditions in Gaza are once again similar to October 2023, contributing editor Jon Elmer reported.
The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, has fired rockets towards Israel.
According to Elmer, the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, had been holding back from firing rockets into Israel or attacking Israeli troops that have entered so-called before zones around Gaza.
Hamas is committed to the ceasefire agreement according to multiple statements from its leaders, Elmer noted.But on Sunday, Hamas fired its largest volley of rockets in several months towards Ashdod, a coastal city about 30 kilometers north of Israel’s boundary with Gaza.
Israel is trying to establish another military corridor to separate Khan Younis from Rafah in southern Gaza, an occupation zone Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanytahu dubbed the Morag corridor, naming it after a former Israeli settlement in that part of Gaza.
The military corridors can be used to to “break up the contiguity of the Palestinian population” and as a precursor to Israeli civilian colonization or as Elmer described it, “Zionism in a nutshell.”
Yemen shoots down another US warplane
Yemen’s armed forces last week shot down another MQ-9 Reaper Drone, the third of this type of unmanned US warplane to be brought down since early March.
In his update on the continued operations between the US military and Yemen’s ruling Ansarullah movement, Elmer noted that US insignia could clearly be seen on the debris of the downed warplane.
Despite ongoing American bombing attacks on Yemen, Ansurallah, often called the Houthi movement, has made clear that it will end the blockade of Israeli ships in the Red Sea only when Israel adheres to the ceasefire and ends its blockade of Gaza.
On Friday, President Donald Trump posted footage on social media that he claimed showed a US attack on “Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack.”
Many commentators pointed out that the gathering appeared to show a traditional Yemeni tribal gathering, one likely marking the occasion of Eid al-Fitr.
Meanwhile, despite the president’s bluster about the alleged achievements of his bombing campaign in Yemen, US officials are telling a different story in private.“In closed briefings in recent days, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that there has been only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers, according to congressional aides and allies,” The New York Times reported on 4 April.
This is despite the strikes being heavier than previous American attacks on Yemen by the Biden administration, and the US expending such a large amount of munitions that military officials are concerned that stocks are running perilously low.
Can the ceasefire be restored?
New details have emerged about efforts to restore the ceasefire agreement which Israel shattered by cutting off food, fuel and humanitarian supplies to Gaza and resuming its massacres by air last month.
As executive director Ali Abunimah reported, mediators presented Hamas with a proposal for a new 50-day interim phase that would see the group release one Israeli soldier every 10 days, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, a resumption of humanitarian aid and starting talks towards phase two of the original ceasefire deal.
Hamas accepted the proposal, but Israel blew up the chances of an agreement by introducing demands that fundamentally depart from all previous agreements and proposals.
According to exclusive reporting by Al Jazeera Arabic’s Tamer Almisshal, Israel is now demanding that Gaza be disarmed and that Israeli forces remain there indefinitely – demands that the resistance will not accept.
Crackdown on free speech escalates
Last week, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that Mahmoud Khalil’s challenge to his detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could continue in New Jersey, a major win against the Trump administration for the Columbia University student leader who has been detained for a month.
Abunimah said this was “an encouraging sign,” among others, that the Trump administration is meeting resistance from the courts to its crackdown on speech in support of Palestinian rights.Last week Columbia students were forcibly removed after chaining themselves to a fence while demanding transparency about whether any university trustees gave information to ICE to assist with Khalil’s arrest.
Meanwhile, on 2 April, Harvard University sanctioned the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, barring the student group from holding any events for the rest of the year.
And Harvard Divinity School suspended its “Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative” because it “presents a one-sided view of the Israel-Palestine conflict,” according to The Harvard Crimson.
But while Columbia and Harvard continued their pre-emptive surrenders to the Trump administration’s threats to cancel federal funding, at least one other prestigious institution has signaled that it will stand up for academic freedom.
After news that the Trump administration had suspended dozens of federal grants to Princeton University, its president, Christopher Eisgruber, said the university would not make concessions in order to restore the funds.
“If government funding were to go down, we and others would look for other sources that we could use to support the funding to the research that has to take place on our campuses,” Eisgruber said, signalling that this could include tapping the university’s vast endowment.
“We have to stand steadfastly against anti-Semitism and other forms of hate, but we do that at Princeton through anti-discrimination principles that are broad and that do not incorporate specific definitions of particular kinds of discrimination,” Eisgruber also said.
The Trump administration has been pressuring universities to adopt an Israel lobby-approved definition of anti-Semitism that equates criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish bigotry.
Who Will Arrest Benjamin Netanyahu?
Last week, Netanyahu visited Hungary in spite of that country’s obligation to arrest him on the warrant from the International Criminal Court.
But Budapest flouted its obligation and announced it would pull out of the ICC altogether.
Larger, more influential countries in Europe remained silent, tacit acquiescence with Hungary’s move.
But it is unclear that Netanyahu would be welcome anywhere else in Europe.
Flying from Tel Aviv to Washington on Sunday, the Israeli leader’s official aircraft took an unusual route aimed at avoiding European countries he fears might arrest him if the plane had to make an emergency landing.
France, Italy and Greece, staunch allies of Tel Aviv as it continues to perpetrate genocide, appear to be the main European states willing to allow the war crimes fugitive to pass through their airspace.
In addition to avoiding the airspace of Iceland, the Netherlands and Ireland, Netanyahu’s plane also avoided Canadian airspace.
Barrows-Friedman said if Netanyahu is able to visit other countries and not be arrested that would be the “ nail in the coffin for international courts and international law itself.”You can watch the program on YouTube, Rumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.
Ali Abunimah contributed reporting for this article.
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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