Category: Gaza

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…”

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]

Hamas’ control of Gaza brought on by US policy

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Zunes’s letter to the editor in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Sept. 4, 2025
Hamas’ control of Gaza brought on by US policy
Many thanks to Tim McGirk (Guest Commentary, Aug. 21) for his open letter to Rep. Jimmy Panetta, who continues to support Trump’s policy of facilitating Israel’s war and famine on the civilian population of Gaza. The former Time magazine Jerusalem bureau chief correctly noted a number of Panetta’s dishonest appraisals of the situation.
     Unfortunately, McGirk’s review of Gaza’s history may have led some readers to believe the people of that territory elected Hamas to rule them. While this extremist Islamist party did win a plurality in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, they shared governance with the moderate Fatah party until 2007, when the Bush administration pushed Fatah to forcibly remove Hamas from government.
     In a brief civil war, Hamas was defeated in the West Bank, but was able to violently seize power in Gaza, where they have tragically remained in power ever since. If the Bush administration hadn’t kept supporting Israel’s occupation and settlements (thereby weakening the moderates) and hadn’t meddled in internal Palestinian politics, Hamas’s control of Gaza and the subsequent horrors would never have occurred.
—Stephen Zunes, Santa Cruz

Democratic Leadership Still Hasn’t Caught Up to the Party’s Base on Gaza

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In These Times, September 4, 2025, by Stephen Zunes
Nearly two years in to the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, there are clear signals the Democratic Party’s
base is moving far away from supporting the Israeli government and its war machine. And while party leadership is beginning to show some hopeful signs it might be starting to listen to constituents’ changing attitudes on the issue of Israel and Palestine…

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.

A Two-Year Road to Genocide. Israel-Palestine Conflict. Its Past, Present, and Future.

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Wyoming Star, August 13, 2025, ByJoe Yans, quoting Stephen Zunes
Stephen Zunes: … This is not a religious conflict, first and foremost, and that hasn’t stopped extremists, both Jewish and Muslim, from trying to turn it into one. Not to mention some Christian fundamentalists in the West. But in these two competing nationalisms, Israel ultimately won. And while Zionism for Jews was a national liberation movement for historically oppressed people, like many of the nationalist movements arising during the late 19th Century, it felt more like a colonial settler enterprise, like the French in Algeria or the British in Rhodesia… And because of the support from the West and their own technological prowess, the Israelis have had the upper hand, not only claiming 78% of historic Palestine in the First War, which led to the fleeing and expulsion of the majority of the indigenous Palestinian population, but, since 1967, they’ve had effective control of the rest of Palestine, giving the Palestinian Authority these tiny urban enclaves, surrounded by Israeli settlements…

Webinar: Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as a Partner in the Crime of Genocide

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Arab Organization for Human Rights, UK, August 8, 2025, sponsored this panel on the misnamed “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” the ongoing massacres, and the political implications, featuring: Zunes, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, former GHF contractor Anthony Aguilar, and three physicians who have worked in Gaza. See Zunes’s ten-minute segment here (or below, starting at 1:09:00)

Iran Vows Stronger Response If U.S., Israel Attack Again

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FO° Talks July 30, 2025 [25 mins.]
Fair Observer’s Rohan Khattar Singh speaks to Professor Stephen Zunes about Iran, Israel and the United States… Trump has brought back the “Maximum Pressure” policy back on Iran with new sanctions, and for the first time, direct military strikes on Iranian soil. Zunes doesn’t believe Iran was building nuclear weapons, but after the recent strikes by Israel and the US, Tehran would now like to build some as a deterrent and is now closer to Russia and China. Also Israel’s military operations and Apartheid conditions in Gaza…