The Electronic Intifada Podcast 18 April 2025
Israel’s renewed total blockade of the territory has lasted nearly seven weeks.
The Gaza government media office describes what Israel is doing as an “organized crime of starvation,” even “ turning water into a tool of genocide,” as reported by associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman at the start of the The Electronic Intifada Livestream on 17 April.
The show coincided with Palestinian Prisoners Day. More than 60 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons and detention camps since 7 October 2023, according to the Palestinian prisoners rights group, Adameer. We also spoke with Christopher Godshall-Bennett, legal director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) about the Trump administration’s attack on immigrants and basic rights for everyone in the US. What’s happening now is the “ worst case scenario” and requires an “all hands on deck” response, he said. Contributing editor Jon Elmer updated us on the resistance in Gaza and Yemen.The Electronic Intifada team discussed the latest developments in the ceasefire talks, Trump blocking an Israeli strike on Iran and concerns that Lebanon’s army is being turned into Israel’s border guard.
You can watch the show in full in the video above.
Attacks on human rights in the US
The Trump administration is rapidly escalating its ferocious crackdown on free speech and the rule of law.
The Supreme Court ordered US officials to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen illegally deported to El Salvador, where he’s being detained in a notorious prison. So far, Trump has not complied.
Trump continues to attack immigrants under the pretense of stopping anti-Semitism. Hundreds of students have had their visas revoked and Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and most recently Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident arrested during his citizenship interview on 14 April, remain in custody.
Mahdawi is a Columbia University student well-known for taking a conciliatory attitude towards Israelis and vocally denouncing anti-Semitism, none of which protected him.Godshall-Bennett said Trump’s aim is to attack immigrants but “the other goal is certainly to eradicate dissent under the guise of supposed anti-Semitism.”
These are attempts to scare everyone away from protest of any kind is a sign that Zionists have ”lost the ideological fight here,” Godshall-Bennett said, noting that he is Jewish and has been involved in Palestine activism for years.
He has noticed the shift even in the Jewish community toward supporting Palestine, especially among young people.
What are our rights at the border?
A journalist who goes by the name Musa was detained and interrogated after flying into Tampa, Florida from Cuba, the Center for Constitutional Rights revealed on 16 April.
“I was told that ‘most of your rights are suspended’ because ‘this airport is a border crossing,’ including my right to a lawyer,” Musa said.
Customs and Border Protection agents confiscated Musa’s laptop and phone after the journalist refused to turn over passwords to access them. Musa is now suing the US government for the return of the devices.
It is “completely false statement” to say your rights at the border are suspended, Godshall-Bennett affirmed. But he clarified ”The particulars at the border are different than if you’re walking down the street.”For example, Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” do not apply “with the same force at the border.” Customs are allowed to search you and your belongings.
Executive director Ali Abunimah expressed concern that many people are under the impression that authorities are allowed to search your phone or computer at the border.
”You absolutely have the right to say no” when authorities ask to search your phone, said Godshall-Bennett. But he added, “ people have to do their own risk assessments and make determinations.”
When it comes to people visiting the US or nonimmigrants with visas returning to the US, refusal to let authorities search your phone or answer questions could result in denial of entry, visa revocation and a ban on entering the US for five years.
Lawful permanent residents – immigrants often called green card holders – enjoy many of the legal protections afforded to citizens: Border agents cannot summarily revoke their green card. But in the current situation, they too are more vulnerable than citizens in reality as the Trump administration is showing a readiness to violate the law and court orders.
Godshall-Bennett said of nonimmigrant visa holders and immigrants, ”When they reenter the country they’re at the highest risk and their rights are the most curtailed.”
Speaking especially of US citizens, he said, “sometimes the strategic thing to do to get out of that situation is to fight back” and refuse to allow them to search your phone. Sometimes the authorities will then give up. But other times “they’ll take your phone and force you to file a lawsuit” to get it back – as Musa is doing.
Godshall-Bennett said ADC advises people to avoid having any sensitive information on their phones or laptops when traveling into the US.
Gaza resistance report
The Israeli military bragged this week that it has carried out 1,200 airstrikes against Gaza since 18 March, killing some 2,000 people in a month of relentless and indiscriminate massacres.
Israel has control of much of the Gaza strip. And many areas are “shoot to kill” zones but it is often unclear what their boundaries are until someone is shot there.
But as contributing editor Jon Elmer emphasized during his resistance report, much of the land that Israel has control over, including the so-called Morag corridor in southern Gaza, is desolate and uninhabited. He said claiming that kind of territory is “not a military achievement.”
Elmer also analyzed the first video of a confrontation between resistance fighters in Gaza and Israeli soldiers since the ceasefire in January: A sniper appears to have killed an Israeli soldier on top of a hill east of Shujaiya, a neighborhood in Gaza City.
Additionally, both Israelis and Palestinians reported a number of other clashes on the edges of these buffer zones this past week.
US spends more than $1 billion attacking Yemen
The US has by now spent around $1 billion on recent airstrikes and other operations against Yemen, according to US officials.
But this has failed to stop Yemen firing dozens of ballistic missiles and Yafa drones against Israel since Israel ended the Gaza ceasefire in March.
The ruling Ansarullah movement said, “ The Yemeni armed forces assure the Palestinian people that we are committed to supporting them and will not stop or retreat… until the aggression against them stops and the siege is lifted.”
Elmer reported that Yemen’s weapons are “constantly being upgraded for their distance and they’re also constantly being manufactured.”
Ceasefire update
Mediators continue to pass ceasefire proposals between Hamas and Israel but ”there seems to be little reason to have hope because the positions seem to be so wide apart,” said Abunimah during a discussion.
Elmer pointed out that Hamas’ position has been consistent: It demands an end to the aggression, total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, an end to the blockade and a prisoner exchange.
He said that Egypt, the US and Israel have violated and reneged on agreements and made new proposals, including nonstarters such as demanding total disarmament by resistance factions.
It also includes asking for Hamas to release captive dual US-Israeli citizen Edan Alexander as a “goodwill gesture” in exchange for nothing.
Associate editor Asa Winstanley pointed out that the Biden administration tried for 14 months to get a deal with Hamas that didn’t include Israel ceasing fire – a “fake ceasefire.” Winstanley said, ”Donald Trump is not going to be any more successful.”
Elmer indicated things might be different now: “ There’s pressure on Hamas to come up with some sort of interim situation that breaks this brutal blockade because it is a catastrophic situation. And it cannot go on indefinitely.”
Trump blocked Israeli attack on Iran
“ This article is an admission that Israel by itself is incapable of mounting a significant attack on Iran,” said Abunimah regarding a report published by The New York Times on 16 April, headlined “Trump Waved Off Israeli Strike After Divisions Emerged in His Administration”.
It reveals that President Donalt Trump has vetoed – at least for now – an Israeli attack on Iran in which the United States would have to play a major military role.
The article says administration officials were split over the attack, and that when Trump summoned Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington early this month, it was to tell the Israeli prime minister that the US would not greenlight such an operation.
Instead, Trump announced renewed negotiations between the US and Iran, aimed at achieving an agreement over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.
In comments from the Oval Office last week, Trump said a military attack against Iran was not off the table if negotiations failed. But as Abunimah noted, Trump said “the only thing they can’t have is a nuclear weapon.”
If Trump was being precise in his words – always hard to judge – that sets a significantly lower bar for success than Netanyahu’s demand that Iran’s entire nuclear research and energy program be completely dismantled – what the Israeli leader has described as the “Libya model.”
What Trump hinted at, according to Abunimah, is something more akin to the JCPOA – the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement signed under the Obama administration, which Trump tore up during his first term. That agreement allowed Iran to keep its nuclear program but put in place monitoring measures so that it would not develop a weapon.
Abunimah said, “I will not be surprised if it happens, but from what we know, it doesn’t look like the US is eager to follow Israel’s lead into a war with Iran.”But it is hard to know where Trump is coming from and negotiate with him. Abunimah emphasized it’s not because that’s Trump strategy, instead it’s because, “ There is genuine chaos in this administration.”
Is Lebanon’s army being turned into Israel’s border guard?
“This is a really quite a sophisticated piece of propaganda,” said Abunimah at the end of the Livestream regarding a 17 April Washington Post article headlined “Lebanese army making progress in displacing Hezbollah near Israeli border.”
Under the guise of reporting on the Lebanese government’s efforts to restore the country’s “sovereignty,” Abunimah said the article is actually a thinly veiled pitch for a civil war in Lebanon between a Lebanese government supported by the US and Israel, versus Hizballah, the resistance movement formed to defend the country against Israel.
The Washington Post article asserts that Israel provides “coordinates of arms, depots and missile launchers” and that these are passed on to the Lebanese army via mediators, which then goes and dismantle them.
If that is how things are actually working, Abunimah said, then it would mean that far from exercising sovereignty, Lebanon was being turned into a security subcontractor for Israel, similar to the model of the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas.
The article implies that Hizballah was defeated and claims that people in Lebanon are calling for Hizballah to be disarmed – without substantiating that claim.
Abunimah highlights that, in fact, Israel was unsuccessful in taking over any significant part of Lebanon during its attempted invasion last year. And perhaps Israel’s hope is to instead control the country and incapacitate an undefeated resistance by “fomenting civil war within Lebanon.”
As part of the ceasefire in November 2024, Hizballah agreed to step back and let the Lebanese state take the lead. Abunimah says that the unrelenting demands show that “ there’s no concession you can make that gets Israel and the United States off your back.”
*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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