Palestinian scholars, activists, and advocates named Israel’s campaign in Gaza as genocide within a week of its start when 6,000 bombs had already been dropped on the coastal enclave’s besieged population. Within a month, three Palestinian legal organizations—Al Haq, Al Mezan, and the Palestine Center for Human Rights—submitted a petition to the International Criminal Court charging Israel with apartheid and genocide. Most Palestinians recognized the large-scale assault as a continuation of the ongoing Nakba—Not only because of the previous large-scale attacks on Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021, but also because of the sustained Zionist campaign to remove, dispossess, and contain Palestinians in order to take their place.Footnote 1 This basic understanding that the campaign in Gaza was an escalation of the ongoing Nakba, which Israeli leaders themselves proclaimed as “Nakba 2023,” emphasized that history did not begin on October 7 and that Gaza was not a floating island but part of a Palestinian geography.Footnote 2 It was precisely because of the Nakba that Palestinians could name the campaign as genocidal, and it was precisely because of the Nakba’s elision that Zionists and their allies could deny it for 19 months of unyielding atrocities.Footnote 3
In the first months of the annihilatory campaign, Palestinian experts and journalists joined legacy media outlets to amplify the charge of genocide and, invariably, to defend themselves. Not a single Palestinian guest appeared without being interrogated—“Do you condemn Hamas?”—a ritual that Palestinian author and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan aptly described as an “audition for humanity.”Footnote 4 Palestinians who appeared on media not only spoke to audiences watching, but directly challenged the journalists interviewing them. On October 15, 2023, Sky News correspondent Mark Austin scrutinized Mariam Barghouti’s claim that “Gaza was breaking of out of prison” by asking, “Did you not mean Hamas? This was a Hamas attack on Israeli civilians.” Barghouti then laid into Austin and legacy media for failing to contend with Palestinian suffering and survival when she replied:
First of all, this was carried out by the Qassam Brigade. Second, if you want to speak about breaking out to only frame it as an effort of Hamas, to legitimize it because of the propaganda machine that has pushed Hamas to be placed within this vilified perception within the international community, then you are doing a disservice to the millions of Palestinians that have had zero representation, zero protection as settlers called them “death to Arabs” in Gaza, in the West Bank, and again, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship that have been sitting ducks. Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the past year and a half in the West Bank alone and also claimed terrorism.Footnote 5
Barghouti’s experience and bold push back was emblematic among Palestinians who spoke to legacy media to frame the genocide within the context of over seven decades of settler colonial dispossession and removal—like Yara Eid who challenged Sky News’ use of the passive voice to describe the killing of Palestinians, Mustafa Barghouti who called TalkTV host’s line of questioning as racist, and Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, who grills a BBC correspondent on their double standards for Israeli and Palestinian guests.Footnote 6
The treatment of Palestinian interlocutors stood in glaring contrast to the Israeli guests who began making the same charge in summer 2025. In mid-July 2025, Israeli Holocaust Studies scholar Omer Bartov published an op-ed in The New York Times titled, “I am a Genocide Scholar. I Know it When I See It.”Footnote 7 Bartov’s proclamation signaled a 180 from his previous insistence in the same paper of record in early November 2023 that “as a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is now taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening.”Footnote 8 Bartov’s Israeli identity together with his initial hesitation made him a trustworthy interlocutor to legacy media outlets. CNN’s Fareed Zacharia, who, in mid-January 2024 proclaimed that Israel was not committing a genocide but may be using “disproportionate force,” invited Bartov to discuss his turn about.Footnote 9 The conversation emphasized that despite not being exactly like the Nazi Holocaust, Israel’s campaign was genocidal, reinforcing the paradigmatic character of Europe’s experience.
The tide of public opinion had begun shifting in July 2025 as Israel’s starvation campaign of Palestinians crossed a deleterious threshold that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) described as Phase 5, also known as “catastrophe.”Footnote 10 Indeed, two leading Israeli human rights organizations, B’tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, both of which had denied the charge and even amplified unsubstantiated claims of a Hamas mass rape campaign, announced their shift on July 28, 2025.Footnote 11 Several days later, in early August 2025, Israeli author David Grossman announced that with a “broken heart” he must say that the Israeli campaign in Gaza is a genocide.Footnote 12 CNN’s Cristiane Amanpour proclaimed that Grossman’s finding was “huge” as opposed to belated or inadequate or, most obviously, redundant.
Bartov, Grossman, and others were provided platforms, treated as experts, and even celebrated as courageous. Notably, during this momentous shift, none of the Palestinians who had battled in racist media arenas were invited back. In fact, most of them had disappeared from mainstream news outlets—a result of outright censorship and blacklisting by executive producers who deemed their presence too dangerous.Footnote 13 Unlike the Palestinian experts, the Israeli ones cabined their analysis of Israel’s genocide to Gaza and, sometimes, the West Bank. For them, the roots of structural violence reflected the ascendance of a far-right government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and, at maximum, reached back only to the 1967 occupation.Footnote 14 As harsh as their accusations were, they preserved Israel’s innocence and framed the genocide as a rupture rather than a continuation of the Nakba that was on par with, and possibly exceeds, the state’s foundational violence.
But it has not just been their valorization of Israeli guests; legacy media has been complicit in the genocide in other ways too. I remember vividly on October 17, 2023 seeing the BBC run a headline about weapons beneath the Al Ahli hospital. Aware of the stale and racist human shield talking point, I immediately wondered whether the BBC was priming us for an Israeli attack. Within hours, an Israeli missile struck the hospital, killing 471 Palestinians and injuring 342 others.Footnote 15 The British media giant soon joined dozens of other outlets questioning who was responsible for the strike to curb outrage at Israel and to prime audiences for the systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure in the months to follow.Footnote 16
The BBC has been particularly notorious for its media bias. In early November 2024, 100 BBC staff together with 200 other media professionals penned an anonymous letter accusing the outlet of inadequate coverage and a failure to challenge Israeli claims, which “has systematically dehumanised Palestinians.” The letter continued that the BBC’s “erosion of its own editorial standards has put its impartiality and independence at serious risk,” thus highlighting a harm not only to Palestinians but also to the journalistic profession.Footnote 17 In early June 2025, the Center for Media Monitoring published a damning report on the BBC’s Gaza coverage.Footnote 18 After analyzing 35,000+ pieces of BBC content, the report found that the BBC “gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage per fatality,” that they “applied ‘massacre’ 18x more to Israeli casualties, and used ‘murder’ 220 times for Israelis” as opposed to once for Palestinians, that “BBC presenters shut down genocide claims in over 100 documented instances,” and that not only did the network interview significantly fewer Palestinians than Israelis, but its presenters “shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian perspective.”
I experienced this bias multiple times as a guest on the BBC. Beyond what happened on air were telling exchanges with BBC producers—mostly of being invited and disinvited. In one such instance, a sympathetic producer wanted me to explain to audiences that not all Palestinians were members of Hamas, and I could not bite my tongue long enough to denigrate the question on air. “This question is incredibly racist,” I snapped. Such political affiliation did not alter a civilian’s status. I raged that no one asks whether Israelis voted for Netanyahu and that despite the false claims of WMDs in Iraq, Americans were never considered culpable for the destruction of an entire country and its subsequent occupation. Asking about Palestinian affiliation suggests that their political sympathies made them legitimate targets when laws of war are unequivocal that only militants engaged in combat can be killed. Caught off guard, the producer thanked me and said she would get back to me about the segment. Knowing she would not call back, I texted her to recommend other Palestinians to invite: “Please allow Palestinians to speak for themselves.”
In the three transcripts that follow—from BBC interviews dated November 2023, February 2024, and January 2025—the BBC’s complicity is on full display. They constitute an archive not only of the genocide, but also of how genocides happen and why media corporations are criminally liable under the Genocide Convention. The January 2025 interview was my first invitation into a BBC studio since the genocide had begun and being in studio meant more direct access to audiences. Although I was on antibiotics for a bacterial infection and had to drive four hours to get to the studio in Washington, DC, I accepted the invitation to discuss the second (fake) ceasefire.Footnote 19 What happened off screen was as significant as the exchange itself.
The booking producer had explained that the BBC really wanted a Palestinian expert and promised me that I would not be tokenized. He explained I would be given 5–6 minutes of airtime, which is a lifetime on news television. Although I refused to get make up done and waited several minutes to be allowed into studio, my live segment was cut in 2.5 minutes because “time had run out.” I was outraged and refused to leave the studio. A senior producer rushed into the room to placate me, insisting that the abrupt ending had nothing to do with my content. I was immovable. It was unacceptable to treat me like this. Unable to find the booking producer whose promises I believed, I began to call his name, and others gathered. As a result of my stubborn resolve—forged by fatigue, frustration, and incalculable heartbreak—I stood my ground until they agreed to re-record the interview for the five to six minutes they promised and to play it on their live broadcast set to run later that night. As you will read next, despite 468 days of genocide intent on eliminating the possibility of a Palestinian future, five of the seven questions the BBC journalist asked me, after I demanded my time, were about Hamas, evidencing an intransigent refusal to contend with the colonial violence shaping Palestinian life.
The silencing of Palestinians has been endemic. In no place has it been more cruel than in Gaza, where Israel imposed a communications blackout preventing foreign media outlets from covering the operation and limiting the coverage conducted by Palestinian journalists themselves.Footnote 20 The role of these Palestinian journalists, who have reported on their own genocide even while starving, enduring displacement, mourning their loved ones, and being hunted, cannot be overstated. Their remarkable efficacy in broadcasting the realities of genocide marked them as targets for the Israeli war machine, which established a practice of accusing journalists of Hamas affiliation and then assassinating them, as they did with 23-year-old Hossam Shabat and 28-year-old Anas Al Sharif.Footnote 21 As of this writing, Israel has assassinated 270 Palestinian journalists.Footnote 22 Each assassination has felt like losing a family member whose voice had boomed in our homes and whose face had become familiar and comforting.
Genocides could not be perpetrated without manufacturing consent for them by both blaming the victims for their suffering and dehumanizing a people so thoroughly that questions of culpability do not even matter. The battle terrain in media is as, if not more, significant than legal and political terrains because narratives have the power to describe untold cruelty in detail then call it civilized and necessary.
Notwithstanding the tremendous bias aimed at preserving Israel’s innocence among legacy media executive boards and individuals, the tide of public opinion shifted drastically between October 2023 and spring 2025. A Gallup poll conducted in February 2025 demonstrated that only “46 percent of Americans now say their sympathies lie with Israelis––the lowest in 25 years.” The poll also showed that, among Democrats, that figure was starker as 59 percent sympathized with Palestinians versus 21 percent who sympathized with Israelis.Footnote 23 Other polls including the PEW Research Center, the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll, the Times/Siena Survey, all evidenced this unprecedented shift.Footnote 24 Those findings shocked the ruling political and economic elite on both sides of the aisle who attributed it to social media and free speech in general rather than reckon with Israel’s genocide.Footnote 25 In response, there has been a steady takeover of TikTok as well as legacy media to rehabilitate Israel’s debilitated image and further censor Palestinian voices.Footnote 26 Palestine has exposed so much—the fallacy of universalism, the enduring chasm between the Global North and South, the relationship between law and power, the limits of academic freedom, the authoritarian nature of so-called democracies, as well as the outright racist and colonial complicity of media. Although beyond daunting, this clarity also empowers us to fight better and more effectively—and more than anything, to rely on ourselves and to resolve to build the world we want rather than contort ourselves to fit in worlds built and sustained upon our destruction.
1. Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat Discusses Israeli Assault on Al Shifa Hospital with the BBC
November 13, 2023
BBC Anchor: Let us return now to what is happening in Gaza and join Noura Erakat, who is an associate professor at the Rutgers University and an expert on the Israel–Palestine conflict. Very good to see you, Noura. Can I start by just getting your response and your reaction to an interview I just did with the IDF around what is happening in Al Shifa Hospital at the moment. You will know the IDF says they do not fire directly at medical facilities, and medical facilities are protected under international law. When I asked him about the fact that it is under siege there—that there is no water, there is no electricity, fuel, or supplies—he said that people have been given ample chance to leave over the past few weeks. They have chosen not to do so, that Hamas is using people in the hospital itself as human shields. He said this is a cynical ploy from Hamas. I wonder what you make of those comments.
Noura Erakat: I think what we are hearing from the Israeli army is what we would hear from any army that is trying to protect itself from being exposed in committing its war crimes. This is propaganda. We have to understand that the patients who are being asked to leave are patients who are in the intensive care units. Are premature babies who are in need of being in incubation in order to survive. Are elderly with disabilities who cannot be mobilized. [Are] in a situation where their evacuation is ordered to be completed on foot because of a deprivation of fuel, thereby further increasing their chances of not being able to be mobilized.Footnote 27 Consider also that we were told—I heard just the end of it, of him saying that Hamas gave orders not to use fuel. If we were paying attention to the news, Hamas was willing to exchange 50 of the hostages within the first two weeks of October 7, in exchange for unlimited fuel to those hospitals.Footnote 28 Consider also that we are told that somehow if these patients do not leave, then they are legitimate targets. And that is absolutely not true. Additional Protocol One, article 57 makes it incumbent upon a belligerent state to balance the military advantage against the harm caused.Footnote 29 And here, the harm caused is disproportionate and severe. These are medical infrastructure that need to be protected under all circumstances. Israel is not abiding…
BBC Anchor: So Noura, I put it to him that many legal experts around the world believe that a war crime is being committed there. Do you believe that is the case? He denied it, of course.
Noura Erakat: Of course he did. But on October 19, a UN panel of experts already said that this campaign is tantamount to a genocidal campaign.Footnote 30 On October 15, 790 scholars published an open letter explaining why this is a genocidal campaign that both met the threshold of a specific intent to commit genocide as well as the specific underlying acts in order to enact it.Footnote 31 Here, genocide is not just tantamount to the killings that are enacted, but even the incitement to genocide is prosecuted and is criminal. And that is undeniable. Israel’s own top military and political brass have said explicitly that there are no Palestinian civilians. They have transformed 2.2 million Palestinians into legitimate targets using their discourse, their dehumanizing discourse. This is a genocidal intent. They have erected banners across Israel that say, “Flatten, Gaza.” There have been proposals to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza. They have now sanctioned Israelis.Footnote 32 Palestinian Israelis, in particular, are being attacked for any demands for a ceasefire. What we are witnessing in this time is blatant war crimes. It is disproportionate. It is indiscriminate. We have 1.1 million Palestinians who have been ethnically cleansed from the north, ordered to move south. This is forced population transfer.
BBC Anchor: Noura, you will know that most of what you were saying and the accusations of genocide are robustly denied by Israel. But I know that, with lawsuits—international lawsuits being filed—what is the purpose of some of these lawsuits, when Israel has not, in the past, you know, taken any note of them? In terms of setting the stage for the future, what legally would you like to see happen?
Noura Erakat: I just want to highlight that Israel has not necessarily denied genocide. It is actually saying it is committing genocide. Avi Dichter was just on an Israeli program saying that this is the Nakba, the Nakba of 1948 where 80 percent of Palestinians were forcibly removed from their home and replaced with Israeli settlers.Footnote 33 They are admitting that it is the Nakba, but they are saying that it is okay for them to do it. They are insisting that this is an exception, and the world should accept it. So it is not denial of what they are doing. They are actually saying we can do this. What our petition to the International Criminal Court filed on behalf of Al Mizan al Haq, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, is insisting upon is that there should be no exception in this case, that this is one of the most well-documented cases of genocide.Footnote 34 And if the International Criminal Court and international legal institutions cannot prevent and punish genocide in this instance, then what is their utility? This is a case as much against the International Criminal Court and its utility for the world which since its inception has only indicted African and Arab heads of state, as much as it is a case against Netanyahu, Hertzog, Gallant, Aliyan, and others.
BBC Anchor: Professor Noura Erakat, very good to talk to you. Thank you so much.
2. Noura Erakat Discusses Israel’s Planned Ground Invasion of Rafah on BBC
February 10, 2024
BBC Anchor: I also spoke to Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and a Palestinian American professor. What would you think an evacuation of Rafah would mean for those who have set up there? We know that, as we were just discussing, there are tens of thousands of civilians who are there at the moment.
Noura Erakat: A very devastating day, as much as it is not surprising, because Israel has made its intent clear. Its War Cabinet has made its intent clear. From the very beginning, in the first week of October 7, [it] has told us that its goal is to depopulate Gaza.Footnote 35 They have equated the decimation of Hamas, which they cannot achieve militarily, with the depopulation of the entire Gaza Strip. We have seen a pattern and practice of that. They moved them below the Wadi Ghaza line from the north to below the Wadi Gaza line. They moved them to Khan Younis. They did not provide them safe quarter. They have now removed them to Mawasi.Footnote 36 They were not provided safe quarter. They are now 1.5 million of the 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip, in Rafa, who are now told that they do not have safe quarter.Footnote 37 There is a pattern and practice indicating that Israel is aiming to depopulate the Gaza strip in the name of decimating Hamas, which all international law prohibits, including the crime of all crimes, which is tantamount to genocide. This is a genocidal campaign.
BBC Anchor: I want to jump in there just to ask you about this. Because, of course, the Israeli government and the military spokesman we just heard from, say, [that] obviously the goal they have is, indeed, as you said, to eliminate Hamas. They have also said that it is Hamas itself that is putting Palestinians under threat by having, over years, built their infrastructure in and embedded among civilian populations. What is your response to that?
Noura Erakat: Let us be clear. First and foremost, there is no military solution. Israel cannot decimate Hamas. It has not had red lines for nearly four months. It has destroyed all of the hospitals, all of the universities. [It has] killed 27,000 Palestinians, created a situation of starvation and a humanitarian crisis. And intelligence tells us that they have only destroyed 20 percent of Hamas fighters—who still have the capacity to shoot rockets from the middle of the city.Footnote 38 Obviously, they are either an awful army, or their goal is not decimating Hamas, which they cannot achieve militarily. [But] they want to depopulate the Gaza Strip. Avi Dichter told us as much on November 12, 2023, when he said that this is the Gaza Nakba, 2023.Footnote 39 As to the talking points, those are talking points. I do not understand why we would trust any spokesperson of a belligerent state to tell us what they are doing or not doing. I would get the UN observers, I would get the agencies who can tell us more impartially. They have not demonstrated that they have been used as human shields, though they have used this talking point since 2006, and in the case, I heard the spokesperson say that Hamas was harboring the UNRWA aid and selling it back. Just this week, Israel targeted a UN convoy with food.Footnote 40 Just on [Feb] seventh, Israel targeted a group of Palestinians waiting for water.Footnote 41 So we have to push back against what is …
BBC Anchor: Right, and I want to jump in there to ask you a question about this, because we are seeing, as we mentioned just earlier, this national security memorandum in the United States about certain conditions [for] aid to countries, for military aid to countries, and there have been negotiations. They did not lead to a ceasefire this week. But are you confident that we might see, with this growing international pressure, both sides come to the table and reach some sort of ceasefire agreement that would get that aid in and stop the fighting in the meantime.
Noura Erakat: Let us be clear, this is not a both sides issue. Hamas has already said that it is willing—from the first week—to release all the hostages. Israel has imposed a 17-year siege on the Gaza Strip, which has condemned them to slow death. It has condemned them to 56 years of prolonged military occupation that the ICJ will also be reviewing in the middle of this month of February. It has condemned them to 75 years of settler colonial removal and apartheid. In this situation, Hamas has made clear that it will release all the hostages, and has released them through negotiations. It was Israel that rejected the ceasefire proposal this week.Footnote 42 And it was the United States which vetoed the ceasefire resolutions in the Security Council. And so here, the impediments to international rule of law, to the will of the international community, even to U.S. domestic support for a ceasefire has been the United States, particularly the [Biden] administration and Israel.Footnote 43
BBC Anchor: And just a quick last question. We just have about 30 seconds left. What do you want to see happen next from the international community. If you are not confident that the players at the table right now are able to achieve that.
Noura Erakat: They need to do everything in their power to end the genocide that is happening on a live stream. There are children that are sleeping in chicken farms and chicken coops in Rafa in farms. We have left children who are babies that are suckling on dates and solid foods, because they cannot have formula. And all of these countries have the capacity to end their weapons transfers to Israel—as has Belgium, as has Japan in cutting off military contracts. There are countries that can end diplomatic ties, as has South Africa, as has Ireland. There is an arsenal of diplomatic means in order to end a genocide, and yet what we are hearing instead is a number of condemnations, thoughts, and prayers. Leave that to the pious who are praying. And for states, we ask you to act. And for state actors, if you are in a situation where your government is part of the problem, we ask you to resign.
BBC Anchor: Noura, we have unfortunately run out of time, but thank you so much for joining us today on BBC News.
3. Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat Discusses Gaza Ceasefire on the BBC
January 17, 2025
BBC Anchor: Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, and she joined me earlier, Noura, you will, of course, have seen the news that the Israeli cabinet has okayed the first phase of this deal. What is your response to that?
Noura Erakat: My response is the response of most Palestinians, which is incredible, relief, rage, [and] hope that it stays intact. Palestinians have endured too much for the past 468 days in a besieged territory where half--more than half the population has children and been subject to some now 85,000 tons of bombs.Footnote 44 And so there is relief, rage, and anxiety of whether it is going to hold, and then there is concern that the ceasefire, even if the sky stops falling, is not enough, because the conditions have already been set in motion that would limit the possibility of future and life.
BBC Anchor: You use the word hope, though. In order to build on that hope, which you say you and other Palestinians are feeling on this news, what needs to happen? What do you want from Israel, from America, from the international community, [in order] to build on the hope that comes from the cessation of hostilities?
Noura Erakat: I would like the international community to mobilize to meet its obligations. I would like them to live up to the spirit that they established in the aftermath of the Second World War, the international legal institutions that were established to prevent the very atrocities that we are witnessing in this moment. Israel has told the world that it needs to destroy a people in order to ensure its safety for the past 15 months. And yet that is not a legitimate cause of war.
BBC Anchor: But that is not how Israel would frame its aspirations.
Noura Erakat: BUT, if anybody scratches the surface, they say that they want to destroy Hamas, but then they say that any child who has the possibility to grow up and become a member of Hamas is also a threat. And so what we see Israel doing is deliberately targeting children, sniping them twice in the head, [he interrupts] and preventing them from actually developing that future.Footnote 45
BBC Anchor: As you will be aware, Israel denies that it targets civilians.
Noura Erakat: “Of course it does!”
BBC Anchor: But talk to me about Hamas. Do you think the group—which has not been destroyed, do you think the group has a role to play in Gaza?
Noura Erakat: Hamas has not been destroyed, and it would be impossible to destroy what Hamas represents which all Palestinians embody, which is an insatiable thirst for freedom. You cannot militarily destroy a freedom struggle. And so that is why there has been.
BBC Anchor: But that freedom can manifest itself in a number of different ways. Hamas is just one way of manifesting.
Noura Erakat: [mums in agreement]. And even before Hamas was established in 1987, Israel has been continuously aiming to remove the Palestinian population in order to ensure its settlers sovereignty for 76 years now.
BBC Anchor: But does that particular group, in your view, have a role to play in the future of Gaza?
Noura Erakat: I think that Hamas is part of the national political body of Palestinians, and it is up to Palestinians whether or not they continue to play that role, and if they want them to continue, [or] they believe that they are responsible enough to continue to be in that leadership. That is a decision for Palestinians.
BBC Anchor: I am asking whether you think they are responsible enough to be part of Gaza’s future.
Noura Erakat: What was the question?
BBC Anchor: Well, you are saying, if Palestinians choose to support Hamas, then it should have a role. But I am asking you, when you look at the way that group has conducted itself, do you believe it is helpful to the Palestinian cause for Hamas in whatever form…
Noura Erakat: I think that the way we have talked about this for 15 months by focusing on Hamas is actually trying to lose the forest in the trees. Hamas is part of the national body politic. Israel has attacked Palestinians regardless [of] who has been in leadership. Even before Hamas was established, Israel said that it had no partner for peace.Footnote 46 Even in the West Bank, where the most compliant Palestinian leader has been attacking Palestinians in this moment, Israel has been removing Palestinians and settlers have been on a rampage.Footnote 47 You asking me about Hamas is taking the emphasis off a structure of domination that has been targeting Palestinians. It is an existential crisis. Hamas can disappear, and we still have a condition of apartheid. We still have a condition of settler colonial removal.
BBC Anchor: Well you are talking about Palestinian politics. Let us also talk about American politics, because we are just a couple of days away from President Trump assuming office. What are your expectations of what impact he may have on the situation in Gaza?
Noura Erakat: Well, I cannot tell the future, but based on his historical record, I think it is going to be pretty dismal. Trump oversaw…
BBC Anchor: You do not think he deserves some credit for the fact that this ceasefire has happened.
Noura Erakat: I think that Trump did this in order to achieve something for himself politically, but has not set in motion anything that [indicates] Israel is going to be held to account, that they will actually be tried at the ICC, that they will actually be tried fairly at the ICJ without any kind of harassment. We saw Trump attack the former ICC prosecutor.Footnote 48 We saw him move the US embassy to Jerusalem. We saw him cut UNRWA aid.Footnote 49 I do not place much hope in this incoming administration based on what they have done in the past. I think that the US has been a partner in genocide and is part of the problem. And honestly, I hope that if our international legal institutions become and meet their full potential, we will see Americans held to account as well.
Supplementary material
The supplementary material for this article can be found at http://doi.org/10.1017/pub.2026.10168.
Author contribution
Conceptualization: N.E.; Writing - original draft: N.E.
Conflict of interests
The author declares no competing interests.
Open access
