Category: Trump

Trump Foreign Policy

Interview: Recognition of Palestine. Symbolic Breakthrough or Empty Gesture?

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Wyoming Star, By Joe Yans, Published October 1, 2025:
“… Given that both the Israeli government and the leading opposition have categorically ruled out Palestinian statehood and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, categorically rule out pressuring Israel to compromise, they essentially oppose Palestinian statehood as well. Trump has threatened various forms of retaliation against US allies that have recognized Palestine…”

Putin’s Illegal Conquests Wouldn’t Be the First the White House Has Endorsed

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New Lines, September 8, 2025: Zunes provides an extensive analysis of how the U.S. position citing the illegality of Russia’s annexation of conquered Ukrainian territory has been compromised by U.S. recognition of illegal Israeli and Moroccan annexations of conquered territories, and thus Trump’s apparent willingness to acquiesce to Russian aggression would not constitute a major break in U.S. policy: Putin’s Wouldn’t Be the First Illegal Conquests the White House Has Endorsed…

Ongoing genocide in Israel/Palestine and U.S. culpability now

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Project Save the World Forum, Substack, August 30. 2025 (1 hour).
Zunes’s conversation with longtime peace activist Jennifer Bing of the American Friends Service Committee and Canadian Peace Studies scholar, Metta Spencer… in a candid, unfiltered exchange [that] captures the tremor of a moment when the usual defenses crumble under the weight of new evidence, new voices, and a new generation whose sightlines had previously been blocked from public view… Zunes lays out the “international legal definition of genocide” as it applies to the Gaza crisis. He points to the targeting of journalists, healthcare workers, and first responders; to scenes of people dying in line for food; to the denial of basic sustenance and medical supplies. [source]

Interview: Rabbis protest of ongoing genocide in Gaza and growing Jewish resistance

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KSQD Community Radio, August 18, 2025 [1-hour]:
Zunes and Rabbi Chaim Schneider discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the growing Jewish resistance to what is being done in their name.
On Monday, August 11, roughly 18 San Francisco Bay Area rabbis and cantors sat down in the street, after speaking in front of the barricaded Israeli Consulate building, in opposition to Netanyahu’s plan to re-occupy the Gaza Strip and to express dismay at the unrelieved starvation and suffering of the people of Gaza and all hostages–on both sides–enforced by the Israeli and U.S. governments. The civil disobedience action yielded no arrests, although the group escalated from blocking Montgomery Street to sitting in the intersection of Montgomery and Sacramento for approximately half an hour of singing and prayer.

Interview: Israel prepares takeover of Gaza City

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KTVU, Bay Area television network affiliate, news show
August 23, 2025: Zunes’s analysis of the worsening situation in Gaza. In the Middle East as negotiators try to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel’s military is preparing to invade and occupy Gaza City. The Israeli defense minister on Wednesday said there are plans to call up 60,000 more reservists and extend the service of another 20,000. The military is urging Palestinians to head south…

Analysis: How will the US respond to Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera crew?

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DAWN Newspaper, August 11, 2025: Stephen Zunes, the chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, says he believes Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera’s crew will increase public pressure on the US government. “The American people are waking up,” Zunes told Al Jazeera from San Francisco.
“I’ve dealt with issues around Palestine, US policy, for more than 40 years. It really strikes me the way that the attitude is shifting. And I think this killing is really going to, at least on the civil society level, going to only increase pressure on the United States to stop giving this blank check to Israel in the face of atrocities, including genocide. “But unfortunately, I don’t see a shift in terms of Washington’s policy,” he said. Zunes also described the killing of the Al Jazeera correspondents as a warning to other journalists, noting that it came hours after Netanyahu said he would allow foreign reporters into Gaza for the first time since the war. “It’ll be interesting to see who he allows in and what restrictions they have, and perhaps these murders are a sign that you better not report anything critical,” he said.