News Brief: Israel Kills Over 400 in 12 Hours, Media Unsure if This Counts as Violating the ‘Ceasefire’
Citations Needed | March 18, 2025 | Transcript
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Nima Shirazi: Welcome to a Citations Needed News Brief. I am Nima Shirazi.
Adam Johnson: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: You can follow Citations Needed on Twitter and Bluesky @citationspod, Facebook Citations Needed, and become a supporter of the show through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast. All your support through Patreon is so incredibly appreciated, as we are 100% listener-funded. We do these News Briefs in between our regularly scheduled full-length episodes of Citations Needed when we want to talk about some breaking news. And today, namely, Tuesday, March 18, 2025, marks a renewed assault by the Israeli military in their ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. And we really wanted to talk about the media coverage that we are seeing, because mainstream media is bending over backwards, as they often do, to not say what is really happening, which is that Israel has broken a ceasefire.
Adam: Which they clearly had never any intention on taking to phase two, which is to say they wanted to get as many hostages, quote-unquote, “Israeli hostages” back, not to be confused with Palestinian hostages, who apparently are just prisoners, as possible, and then they wanted to go back to the status quo, because again, they have genocidal intent with respect to Gaza. You know, this is a term that gets used a lot, ‘genocide.’ And I think sometimes it can becomes dull on the ear, because it sort of seems like, I think, to some people, like this hyperbole or whatever. You can even know Amnesty International, the ICJ, to some extent, Human Rights Watch and others have found grounds for genocide. These are pretty conservative groups who don’t throw that word around loosely, but the reason why the word is important in this context, especially with the renewed bombing of Gaza, killing 420 people in just 12 hours, that’s as of Tuesday morning, is that it’s the logical outcome of everyone who’s resisting must surrender, and Israel gets to occupy and take over Gaza, which is not going to happen. It’s never going to happen. People aren’t going to just willingly roll over and let themselves be genocided. And until that happens, we’re going to keep bombing and trying to break the will of the people by killing women, children, hospital workers, and men, and then sort of vaguely, maybe kill some Hamas commander or civil leader every now and then, to sort of give it the appearance that they’re ostensibly targeting military targets as part of a broader doctrine of terror, to get them to surrender and to allow Israel to occupy and eventually clean out Gaza.
And when we talk about how once one forecloses on having a ceasefire that permits Hamas and other political entities that are fighting Israel, PFLP, Islamic Jihad, what have you, if you say all those people have to disarm and leave, or we’re going to keep bombing tent cities in hospitals, that is genocidal by definition, because it only ends one way, and that’s with the cleansing and the cleaning out of everyone in Gaza. There’s no other way this ends. And so there was a tentative ceasefire in the hopes that maybe the Saudis intervened on behalf of, I can’t believe I’m saying the Saudis are some agent of peace, but in this particular instance, they are, because this whole thing’s deeply embarrassing for them, their sort of alleged claim to be the, you know, protectors of Islam, that Israel had its own fatigue. It was losing too many people. You know, it wanted to save face, and they could come up with some face-saving narrative about how, you know, Hamas was effectively destroyed. And by the way, Hamas has agreed to be politically out of power, but they’re not going to, you know, disarm, because again, they would view that as being collective suicide, along with, again, other militants, not just Hamas.
So this is all a long way of saying that the genocidal logic has never gone away. It remains the steadfast position of the Trump administration, just as it remained the steadfast position of the Biden administration. And this was always temporary. It was always precarious. Because until that logic changed, or at least, kind of just faded into the background, you know, people kind of played it off so everyone could save face, which was the hope, it was never going to stop. Because obviously, the Israeli hostages are simply pretextual. Anyone who still believes this has anything to do with hostages, in some minor domestic propaganda way it does within Israel, but in no meaningful sense does that have anything to do with anything.
Nima: And the Israeli government says as much.
Adam: They pretty much say that. Yeah, they say as much. And of course, Israel broke the ceasefire. By the way, they killed 140 people before their direct assault on Gaza yesterday, or rather, Monday.
Nima: Right. So the word ‘ceasefire’ is even ridiculous on its face when it comes to Israeli violence against Palestinians.
Adam: Right. But Palestinian militants have ceased firing. They haven’t fired rockets. They still haven’t, actually, in response to this. And so that logic, that fundamental, We cannot allow Hamas to remain, which is to say, We can’t allow anyone with a gun to remain.
Nima: Which means we do not allow resistance, exactly.
Adam: At all, because at this point, you know, it’s mostly a sort of, it’s a franchise model. It’s not as if, like, you get your official Hamas dog tags and serial number. And, I mean, this is obviously, it’s an insurgent, guerrilla military force that is fighting what it views as a genocidal army. And so if that’s never going to be conceded, if that’s kind of baked into the logic of the so-called military campaign, then the end result is the clearing out of Gaza. There’s no third option. Unless Israel feels like it’s losing and then again, we get this kind of face-saving outcome, which, again, I think everyone was hoping for, and it had been two months, which is a pretty long time for a ceasefire. And obviously two months is preferable to no months.
Nima: But again, as you just said, Adam, Israel was still killing people during those two months, but somehow, that’s not the same as breaking a ceasefire. But still, our media refuses to run headlines, by and large, saying Israel has broken the ceasefire. So we get things like this from CNN, quote, “Israel says it is conducting ‘extensive strikes’ against Hamas and Gaza, throwing doubt on the fragile ceasefire.” We get this from the Associated Press late on Monday, March 17, quote, “Israel launches new strikes against Hamas and promises ‘increasing military force’ after talks stall.” And then you have the New York Times in their developing coverage that they are consistently updating, where they say things like, quote, “It was unclear whether the strikes effectively ended the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that took effect in mid-January.” End quote. The New York Times also will do kind of anything to keep painting Israel as the victim here and Palestinians as the kind of forever aggressors in their coverage.
Adam: This via Nathan Thrall, author and journalist, he pointed out that Israeli Major General Nimrod Sheffer told Israeli media, quote,
The first stage was implemented, and Israel violated the second stage. We violated. It wasn’t that Hamas wasn’t prepared [to proceed]. We didn’t enter into talks about the second stage.
And this is how the New York Times phrases–so that’s an Israeli Major General speaking to the media, saying we violated the ceasefire. Israelis themselves are largely claiming they violated the ceasefire because they don’t agree with a ceasefire as such, which they haven’t for some time, obviously. And this is how the New York Times phrased it. Quote, “Israel’s strikes followed weeks of fruitless negotiations to agree to an extension to its truce with Hamas.” So this idea that the talks broke down, this is the narrative they’re giving.
Nima: Which is why the AP says talks “stalled.”
Adam: “Stalled.” Right. But this is not at all what happened, because the second phase was supposed to begin on November 6, as laid out by the United States, Egypt, and other negotiating partners, and Hamas was trying to negotiate. The second phase of the negotiation was set to begin on February 6, and everyone involved, the United States even, supposedly, Egypt, others and other negotiating partners, were ready to negotiate phase two, and Israel didn’t even come to the table again. They made up some pretextual story about not treating the hostages fairly or some vagary but nobody really buys it. And more importantly, no one within Israel really buys it. It’s a total cliche at this point, but it is generally true. You get more honest coverage in Israel than you do in the United States about Israel, because they like to sort of champion their own far-right radicalism, whereas not everything needs to get laundered through the liberal Zionist rose-tinted lens, to mix metaphors, like it does in the United States.
But also there needs to be some tethering to reality with respect to the nature of these negotiations, because simply saying Hamas did everything doesn’t really have any bearing on reality. And so again, Israel killed 140 people. No Israelis died during the ceasefire, you’ll be shocked to learn. And then they killed, you know, over 400 people. The number’s probably much higher by the time you’re listening to this in less than a day. That would seem to me to be violating the ceasefire terms. I think killing entire, wiping out entire families would constitute that. But still, this reminds me so much of the, you know, ‘Violence erupts after police shooting.’ The police shooting itself, right, is not the violence. It is seen as value neutral and or apolitical, or aviolent, but the protest afterwards that, you know, results in looting or buildings being burned, that’s violent. So when Israel kills over 400 people in less than 12 hours, this is not a ceasefire violation to a lot of people. It sort of casts, it puts the ceasefire in doubt. Is it going to hold now that they’ve wiped out entire generations and entire city blocks?
Nima: And then if Hamas were to respond, then it would be, ‘Violence has broken out again.’ Now it’s a return to quote-unquote, “war,” but you get this also from the New York Times. Quote, “At least 400 Palestinians, including children, were killed in the strikes according to the Gaza health ministry. The ministry’s figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.” End quote. So think about what that turn of phrase is doing here, with the work that it’s doing on behalf of Israel. Saying, Hey, you know, Palestinians don’t even differentiate between civilians and combatants. So I guess those kids could also be, you know, Hamas fighters. And of course, what this is masking is the fact that Israel is the one that does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. That when you carpet-bomb refugee camps and tent cities and the ruins of apartment blocks, you are not differentiating between anyone. You are just murdering human beings.
And the New York Times then continues with this to your point, Adam. Quote, “Hamas has yet to respond militarily to the attacks, leaving both Israelis and Palestinians waiting to see whether the Palestinian group chooses to escalate or head to the negotiating table.” End quote. So it is now in Hamas’ hands about whether to quote-unquote, “escalate.” The killing of over 400 people is not seen as an escalation. That is not what kind of elicits that term from the New York Times. It’s only whether there’s going to be a response from whoever is opposing the might of the Israeli military.
Adam: Well, yeah. And then, of course, people on social media were flooded with pictures of dead children, per usual, too many to count. Again, these are people who were born, many of them born after this began, who have known nothing but suffering and starvation and freezing temperatures and dead relatives, dead loved ones, lost limbs, who live in tent cities, who have no electricity, rely on a modicum of aid, if and when it comes in, of course, Israel cut off aid three weeks ago, cut off water and electricity in anticipation and buildup for this assault. Another way we have some evidence they had no interest in entering phase two was that they were starving and cutting off aid to make sure that the population they were bombing was weak and before they bombed and subsequently, in all likelihood, reinvaded.
And you look at this and you say, I can’t believe we’re on month 17, and this is still going on. I mean, you can believe it, but you can’t believe it in the sort of rhetorical sense. That this could be permitted, this could be allowed to just continue. And that there’s this insta-sophistry, ready-heated on the McDonald’s, you know, oven lamp, ready to grab these kind of McTalkingPoints, right? Terrorism, hostages, negotiation. Look at these poor kids who are hostages. You know, forget the 20,000 dead Palestinian children. Focus on these two children. All this kind of, this very kind of obscene, vulgar exploitation. Emotional pornography, manipulation to sort of prevent, to foreclose on an actual peaceful settlement that ends the genocide and brings people to the negotiating table to deal with the larger issues at hand, again, none of which can happen without a ceasefire, unless sustained, lasting ceasefire. Everybody knows this.
It’s just an unimaginable horror that seemingly has no end, because the end is to remove Palestinians from Gaza, either through death, starvation, disease or displacement, or shipping them off to other countries, as, now, is a totally explicit plan. Before they were cheeky about it. Now they’re kind of just open about it. I don’t know how else this ends. And the mechanisms supposedly to hold the US and Israel accountable, the international mechanisms, basically don’t exist. Protest was ineffectual before. Now it’s ineffectual and illegal. Again, it was illegal during Biden in key ways, but now it’s sort of more illegal. Now there’s outright deporting people, cutting off university funding if they don’t arrest their own students, things of that nature. But of course, it doesn’t mean you stop resisting it. One ought to, to the best of one’s capacity and ability, but I don’t know. I wish I had something more insightful to offer, other than this kind of handwringing. But it only ends one way. And the compromised position, the supposed liberal position, is to basically make sure that the genocide happens in slow motion. And the rightwing position, because again, on the Israeli-US side, the only honest people are the Republican Party and the so-called right wing in Israel.
Nima: Right. Who are saying, we are unleashing hell on Palestinians, that we’re doing a genocide.
Adam: ‘We’re doing a genocide’ is more or less what they say. We’re doing a Nakba.
Nima: Exactly.
Adam: And I don’t know what the point of liberal Zionist sort of compromise is, other than to provide cover for that. Because once you establish the premise that you cannot negotiate with anyone in Palestine fighting back or with a gun, whoever they may be. Once you establish that as kind of axiomatically impossible, then the only conclusion is the rightwing genocidal, overtly genocidal conclusion. That’s the thing that’s always, you know, we found so enraging and so dispiriting among even so-called progressives like, you know, Bernie Sanders, who says, You can’t negotiate with Hamas. Like, how damaging that is. Because if you saying you can’t enter a ceasefire with the people with the guns, which is the only people you can enter a ceasefire with, by definition, that that’s kind of axiomatically an impossibility, then there’s nowhere else to go but wiping them off the face of the earth. Because people aren’t going to, it’s not an elective thing. They’re not going to just say, Okay, great. Occupy us. Go ahead. That has no historical precedent whatsoever at all. So once you foreclose on a negotiated ceasefire because of this idea that, I guess, if you negotiate with an entity, you somehow are endorsing it. I guess it’s the logic, or you’re somehow morally endorsing it.
Nima: Right, which actually undermines the entire premise of what diplomacy is.
Adam: Exactly. And so for months, you know that was what, and to be fair, Bernie Sanders changed his position. I want to be clear. He eventually did after, you know, nine months of dragging his feet and reinforcing this premise to even some progressives, that, Oh, Hamas is sort of ontologically evil, it must be destroyed. It’s like, Well, that’s a very pat thing to say, that kind of sounds easy, that sounds very sanitary and anodyne, right? But the implications of that are actually what we’re seeing, which is that you will just keep slaughtering people in an attempt to break the will of the Palestinians to surrender. And you know, they guess it worked with Hezbollah. But Lebanon is not Palestine. Lebanon is a different country. And you know, their solidarity with Palestinians is not something that is, you know, it is elective in certain ways. And obviously Lebanese society is much more diverse, much more much different. But they’re using the same playbook, thinking they can just basically bomb women and children until they break the political will and backs and just get a surrender. Which is again to say a surrender, not of Hamas, per se, but of anyone with a gun. Anyone shooting back at Israelis who want to reenter, presumably reenter their country in the coming weeks or days. So this, you know, this is why this so-called ceasefire was always going to be precarious, unless that dynamic changed. And of course, the Trump White House had no interest in changing that dynamic, just as the Biden White House didn’t. And so again, even Tony Blinken says you can’t defeat Hamas. You can’t defeat an insurgent guerrilla group, their ranks have only grown. That’s the nature of insurgencies, especially in the shadow of what Amnesty International calls a genocide.
Nima: Well, right. And so in the face of that stark reality, the fact that Israel has no intention of ending its ongoing assault against Palestinian lives, we’re left with this endless kind of handwringing, this endless covering for a genocidal army on behalf of an apartheid state. And so it is rare, before we go, Adam, I think credit where credit is due, and this time, surprisingly, to the Washington Post.
Adam: Yeah. The Washington Post is always meaningfully better than the New York Times. They’re still dogshit, but for whatever reason, their Gaza coverage is, like, a five on the shit scale, versus a 9.9.
Nima: [Laughs] Right. And so we have this, still live on Tuesday morning, March 18. It may change in the coming hours, but Washington Post has this headline, which is refreshingly clear. May not be perfect, but much clearer and more honest than almost every other headline you can see. And it says, quote, “More than 400 killed as Israel strikes Gaza, breaking ceasefire with Hamas.” End quote.
Adam: But then the subheadline does all the bad tropes, but we’ll ignore that for now. Yeah, I think it’s not hard to say Israel broke the ceasefire, because, again, Israel is always supposed to be a smol bean victim who acts defensively. That is key to liberal Zionist mythologizing, that Israel is always just kind of sitting around wanting peace and these sort of cartoonishly foaming, evil terrorists just want nothing but, they’re just boiling, their blood boils with antisemitic hate. And all they want to do is kill because for the lols, they want to kill for the sadistic glee, whereas Israelis kill reluctantly and with a heavy heart, and because they, you know, they have to loosen their rules. I guess they have rules of engagement, and they shoot and they cry because they do it reluctantly, and you force them to kill your kids. And again, that’s just not reality. But it’s important that everything get sort of jammed into that narrative.
Nima: Yeah, exactly. It just gets laundered through that, and so you see this time and time again. So that will do it for this Citations Needed News Brief. Thank you for joining us. Of course, we will be back very soon with more full-length episodes of Citations Needed and more News Briefs as coverage on Gaza continues to unfold. You can follow the show on Twitter and Bluesky @citationspod, Facebook Citations Needed, and become a supporter of the show through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast. We are 100% listener-funded, so all your support is incredibly appreciated and keeps the show free for all. Thanks again. I am Nima Shirazi.
Adam: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: Citations Needed’s senior producer is Florence Barrau-Adams. Producer is Julianne Tveten. Production assistant is Trendel Lightburn. Newsletter is by Marco Cartolano, and the music is by Grandaddy. Thanks again, everyone. We’ll catch you next time.
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This Citations Needed News Brief was released on Tuesday, March 18, 2025.
