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On Friday morning, Israel resumed its bombing campaign against Gaza, and the civilian death toll is once again rising. Both Hamas and Israel accused the other of violating the temporary truce. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has promised, “We will fight in the entire [Gaza] Strip.” Despite meekly worded suggestions from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel make an effort to reduce civilian deaths, the U.S. position remains one of full-throttled support for a military campaign that has killed more than 15,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them children and other civilians.
In this special episode of Intercepted, political analyst Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of the Arab Studies Institute’s ezine Jadaliyya, offers a provocative analysis of the current situation. In a discussion with Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain, Rabbani suggests that behind the belligerent rhetoric and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proclamations he will eradicate Hamas, Israel may already be heading for a bloody quagmire it is unlikely to transform into an accomplishment of its stated goals. “We’re now well into the second month of this war, and the most Israel has been able to achieve is to raise the Israeli flag on a hospital. It’s not exactly Iwo Jima,” Rabbani says. The “Israeli military is a very effective killing machine when it’s dropping 2,000-pound bombs from the air, but a rather mediocre fighting force when it comes to ground operations.” Rabbani describes the evolution of Hamas’s strategy and tactics over the past decades and maps out several scenarios that might emerge in the coming period. “The idea that you can wipe [Hamas] out, even if you fully succeed in conquering every last square inch of the Gaza Strip, is an illusion,” he says. “It is effectively impossible to resume this war without regional escalation.”
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Despite a temporary pause in Israel’s massive bombardment and ground operations in Gaza, the humanitarian catastrophe continues to worsen. With more than 15,000 dead Palestinians and whole neighborhoods and towns left in ruin, Israel’s defense minister has defiantly vowed to dramatically escalate the attacks inside Gaza the moment the truce ends. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss the state of the war as well as the propaganda campaigns being waged by each side. Then Roy Yellin, head of public outreach at Israel’s leading human rights organization B’Tselem, discusses recent developments on the hostage and prisoner exchanges, how the crisis has impacted Israeli society, and describes the conditions faced by Palestinians when they are thrown into Israel’s military justice system. Yellin also explains the state sponsorship of violent Israeli settlers, the mass detentions underway of Palestinians in the West Bank, and the dangerous nature of Israel’s far-right Interior Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
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The civilian death toll wrought by Israel’s siege of Gaza is staggering. More than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed, nearly half of them children. More than 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced from their homes. And President Joe Biden has presided over an open spigot of U.S. weapons and support for the war of annihilation being waged by the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
This week on Intercepted, the esteemed historian Rashid Khalidi joins Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain for a wide-ranging conversation about the long arc of the history of Israel’s political, economic, and military campaigns against the Palestinian people. Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University, is the author of several books, including “The Hundred Years' War on Palestine.” Khalidi also discusses how the war on Gaza will impact Biden’s legacy and the role of the United States in facilitating the current war and those of the past 75 years. "Biden has done permanent harm to the standing of the United States in the world, in the Muslim world, and in the Arab world. Permanent harm," says Khalidi. "He has alienated young generations that will think of the United States in terms of Gaza for a very long time."
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently on CNN, “It’s not only our war, it’s your war too.” He was right: The Biden administration has armed, funded, and supported Netanyahu every step of the way as Israel wages a campaign of terror bombings against Gaza. In five weeks of sustained Israeli airstrikes and ground operations, one in 200 residents of Gaza has been killed. Of the more than 11,000 deaths, 4,600 of them are children. President Joe Biden remains entrenched in his support for the scorched-earth campaign of his “great, great friend” Netanyahu.
This week on Intercepted, independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Jeremy Scahill discuss the horrors facing the people of Gaza and the history of Biden’s support for some of the most extreme actions of Israel. They discuss the unprecedented killing of journalists in Gaza and the violent campaign being waged by Netanyahu-backed Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. Kouddous also discusses Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera correspondent and U.S. citizen Shireen Abu Akleh and decries the lack of solidarity from U.S. and other Western journalists. We also hear recent public remarks from author Ta-Nehisi Coates as he describes his trip to Palestine last summer as part of the Palestine Festival of Literature and offers his analysis of the siege of Gaza.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to reject international calls for a ceasefire and says Israel will oversee security in Gaza indefinitely. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain discuss Israel's monthlong scorched-earth campaign in Gaza and the U.S. government's complicity. Then Mairav Zonszein, an Israeli American journalist and a senior analyst on Israel–Palestine at the International Crisis Group, joins to discuss developments in Israel and Gaza. Zonszein, who is based in Israel, discusses the political developments in the country, the failures of Netanyahu during the crisis, and the tragic implications for Palestinians in Gaza.
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More than 3,000 children have been killed in Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave three weeks ago. The number of children reportedly killed in the conflict has surpassed the annual number of children killed in conflicts around the world since 2019, according to Save the Children. 
This week on Intercepted, Murtaza Hussain is joined by Khaled Elgindy, the director of the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute and author of “Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, From Balfour to Trump.” Hussain and Elgindy discuss the latest developments in the war on Gaza, the U.S. government’s role in this crisis, and what the future may look like as the violence continues.
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