News Brief: NPR Asks Starving Palestinian Living on Rubble to Denounce Hamas, Co-Sign his Own Ethnic Cleansing
Citations Needed | May 22, 2025 | Transcript
[Music]
Nima Shirazi: Welcome to a Citations Needed News Brief. I am Nima Shirazi.
Adam Johnson: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: 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. We do these News Briefs in between our regularly scheduled full-length episodes of Citations Needed, and today, Adam, we want to actually start by commenting on a recent NPR piece, an interview conducted by Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. It was an interview with Palestinian writer Yousri Alghoul about what NPR describes as “life in north Gaza.”
Adam: Yeah, there’s a lot of really shitty coverage as Israel, out in the open, explicitly, commits ethnic cleansing. They’re trying to depopulate Gaza. That is their plan. Netanyahu says it’s their plan. Of course, it’s been their plan from the beginning, but now they can say it out loud, because they don’t have to appease liberal Zionists in the United States to keep their United States to keep their gravy train going. So now we’ve dropped the pretense, and we’re just talking about ethnic-cleansing Gaza, which, again, they’ve been doing for months and months and months, but they are now just being open about it.
And what does it take for the media to call it ethnic cleansing? Even though, again, Israelis are very, very open about their desire to depopulate Gaza and occupy it and basically empty it of Palestinians. What does it take for people to call that ethnic cleansing? Because it’s textbook ethnic cleansing. Every human rights group says it’s ethnic cleansing. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Israeli human rights groups, even liberals and Haaretz within Israel call it ethnic cleansing. I mean, it’s sort of known to be an ethnic-cleansing plan. That’s what it is. But of course, no one in the media can say this.
And then NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed someone in Gaza and did what I would consider one of the most disgusting, vulgar, offensive, glib, amoral, useless, fatuous fucking interviews I’ve ever heard. So I’m obviously priming you here before you listen to it. But this is someone starving, whose family is starving and living in a tent in north Gaza. He condescends him. He asked him twice, more or less, if he condemns Hamas.
Nima: The only question that the media ever asks Palestinians.
Adam: Naturally, naturally. Do you condemn Hamas? Basically, are you worthy of life or not? And then he proceeds to ask him if he was happy with Trump’s ethnic-cleansing plan. Of course, he doesn’t call it that. And basically says, Do you think it’s a good thing? So it’s not, not an inquiry into, like, what he thinks, what his struggle is, beyond, you know, some obligatory question. It’s a) Do you condemn Hamas? and b) Ethnic cleansing is fun, right? Isn’t that good? Don’t you want it?
Nima: And by way of orientation for the interview that Steve Inskeep gives, everything is kind of couched in, you know, Israelis dispute what international aid organizations are saying, right? So everything is kind of up for debate. It just depends on what kind of framework you have. Palestinians say, Israelis say, right? It’s just sort of this false equivalency, false parity here. So just to give you a little heads-up on this. But we’re going to play the interview that aired on May 19, 2025, on NPR’s Morning Edition with Steve Inskeep. Here is how it begins.
[Begin clip]
Steve Inskeep: Israel’s military has begun extensive ground operations throughout Gaza. At the same time, Israelis say they will allow in some food, just as a United Nations-backed group raised the odds of famine. The many perspectives we’re hearing include Yousri Alghoul. We called him late last week and reached him on a scratchy phone line. He was in north Gaza, where he lives with his wife and four children.
[End clip]
Nima: Now, before we continue, let me just note, Inskeep says, quote, “Israelis say they will allow in some food, just as a United Nations-backed group raised the odds of famine,” end quote. “Raised the odds of famine” is a really, really clever way to dispute what every single group is saying is already happening. For example, Kate Phillips-Barrasso, the vice president of the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps, released a statement on May 12 of this year that said,
This catastrophe did not unfold in the dark; it happened in plain sight. After more than two months of total blockade, Gaza’s food system has collapsed, humanitarian operations are paralyzed, and people are starving.
End quote. She adds, quote,
…the entire population of Gaza is now facing emergency levels of hunger with over 244,000 people in catastrophic conditions and 925,000 people on the brink of starvation.
End quote.
Adam: And to be clear, the Israelis are open that the token amount, again, this is less than one half of 1% of the bare minimum. So really it’s one half of 1% of 1%, which is really what they really need. And again, the food is not even getting to people. The Israeli finance minister Smotrich has very, very clearly, he held a press conference two days ago where he said they were allowing in aid because, quote, “so the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes,” unquote. He went on to say that their goal was to, quote, “conquer, clear, and stay,” unquote. He said the purpose of the token amount of aid was, quote, “It allows the world to continue providing us with international protection,” unquote.
So the Israelis are very clear that this is a PR gambit, but NPR just handwaves it away and says, quote, “Israelis say they will allow in some food,” unquote. Some? How much some? That’s called a weasel word in journalism. So again, this NPR segment is everything wrong with the media. There’s no fucking context. And to the extent to which we get any context, it’s racist claptrap. So let’s, now that we’ve sort of said Israel, we prime the audience to say Israel is letting in food. Okay, well, good. Let’s talk to someone who’s starving and can’t feed his family.
[Begin clip]
Steve Inskeep: Yousri, it’s Steve Inskeep. Can you…
Yousri Alghoul: Yeah, yeah. Hi, Steve. How are you?
Steve Inskeep: Hi, doing okay. Thank you for taking the time to talk today. I really appreciate it.
Yousri Alghoul: I’m just closing the windows of my tent, so just to be available to talk to you.
Steve Inskeep: Did you say closing the windows of your tent?
Yousri Alghoul: Yes, I did.
Steve Inskeep: He says he’s a writer. Years ago, he worked for the Gaza Ministry of Culture. He says he doesn’t support Hamas today and favors releasing hostages while also repeatedly accusing Israel of genocide — a charge Israelis deny. We asked him to describe daily life, and as you will hear, the conversation took a turn.
[End clip]
Adam: Notice what Inskeep says. “He says he’s a writer.” They don’t call him a writer, right? Guests you interview get to decide what their identity is, right? Unless they say they’re the president of Yugoslavia. He’s a writer, right? Oh, he says he’s a writer. Get the sort of condescension, he says he’s a writer, and then he kind of vaguely casts aspersions, but he worked for the, long ago, years ago, he worked for the Gaza Ministry of Culture, so he’s sort of suspect, and then immediately we interrogate his ideological proclivities. He says he doesn’t support Hamas. Again, did when Israel interviewed the dozens and dozens of people who were were attacked on October 7, did they ask them their political affiliations when giving their story? Obviously not. It’s just assumed that they’re just pure and innocent. But in Palestine, you have to, sort of, you have to affirm your innocence by saying you’re not an evile terrorist. Complete double standard, despite the fact that, again, many of the people attacked on October 7 are part of psycho rightwing movements. Whatever. Set that aside, doesn’t matter. They don’t get interrogated. They don’t get to put, they’re not indexed in the goodie and baddie category. They’re just seen as, per se innocent. So let’s continue with the interview.
[Begin clip]
Yousri Alghoul: Yeah. I’m in the north of Gaza. I didn’t leave it. I have two houses. They were severely demolished. So I put my tent in the rubble of my house.
Steve Inskeep: So you are on the location of your former home, surrounded by rubble?
Yousri Alghoul: Yes.
Steve Inskeep: How are you feeding yourself and your family at this time?
Yousri Alghoul: My friend, we are in a famine. We just have some bread, and that’s it. And even the bread, I’m always telling my children, please, don’t eat all of this bread. This is for the morning, and that is for the evening. And that’s it. We don’t find water. We don’t find electricity. We don’t find internet. They’re saying that they want to evacuate us. Please, come and take us out of Gaza. We want to leave it. We want to leave Gaza because you destroyed everything.
Steve Inskeep: Did you just say if you had an offer to go live somewhere else, you would take it?
Yousri Alghoul: Sure. Not only me, 90 percentage of the recipients. We don’t have anything here in the Gaza Strip to stay. We don’t have water. We don’t have food. We just have bloodshed. Then you ask me, would you stay here? No, I want to leave it.
Steve Inskeep: What is your feeling right now about Hamas?
[End clip]
Adam: So this is completely insane. What this man just laid out, this person he’s talking to in north Gaza, and what Inskeep is framing here, is textbook genocide and ethnic cleansing. You are making life unlivable. You are removing the conditions of sustainable life, deliberately and intentionally for the purposes of removing a population from a land that you are trying to take and occupy, and stay, clear, that’s what they just said, right? So instead of saying, What are your thoughts on this textbook ethnic-cleansing plan, or What are your thoughts on this sort of genocidal logic of making it unlivable? so people sort of say, I want to leave, Inskeep reinforces this premise. He says, Oh, you’re saying you want to live somewhere else? Oh, so there’s actually not ethnic cleansing. You actually want to. But no, the very basis of ethnic cleansing and genocide is that you make it unlivable. And so what does he pivot to, in that, this guy’s describing a textbook war crime. He asked him to condemn the nominal, totally pretextual, long-discredited excuse for this genocide, which is supposedly they’re going after Hamas. So he needs to morally sanctify the person who’s subject to ethnic cleansing and genocide and say, Well, wait a second, are you a worthy or unworthy victim? I mean, it’s completely sinister and evil.
Nima: Yeah, the idea that a father would want to leave a catastrophic situation, a place where your home has been flattened. You are trying to survive on bread in the midst of the rubble that used to be your house, trying to keep your four children alive, telling them they have to ration what little bread you have. And then for Inskeep to turn that around and say, Wait. You mean you would willingly leave? And for Alghoul to say, Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, of course. You’ve destroyed everything! What? What do you mean? That is then framed up in this Morning Edition piece as, Oh, well, you know, Palestinians are willing to leave, so maybe they should just leave. They should just evacuate. Which is exactly the ethnic cleansing plan.
Adam: Right. But rather than addressing that and interrogating that and empathizing with the subject, he scolds him, and continues to scold him, as we’ll hear.
[Begin clip]
Steve Inskeep: What is your feeling right now about Hamas?
Yousri Alghoul: Just listen to me, my friend. If you ask me about what happened on the 7 of October and blah, blah, blah, blah, what happened before 6 of October? What happened in the West Bank, which is the Hamas, not a part of the government in the West Bank. The Israelis always killing the Palestinians, even in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank.
Steve Inskeep: I want to assure you that I’ve covered that region for years, that I’ve been to the West Bank and Gaza. I understand the argument that you’re making, your side of the story about the history. I’m just interested now, in this moment, what your attitude is toward Hamas, which would seem to be the strongest Palestinian force in Gaza.
[End clip]
Nima: Okay, so before we continue, Inskeep totally handwaves away the idea that there is context and actual history, and calls it, quote, “your side of the story about the history,” end quote, because Alghoul doesn’t take the immediate bait of condemning Hamas. He’s like, you know, You always want to start it at October 7. There are, you know, decades and decades and decades of history before then, Israel is occupying Palestine, imposing apartheid, imposing occupation, imposing a siege and blockade. Even in the West Bank, Israel is constantly attacking Palestinians, stealing their land, arresting and detaining people for years on end without any charge, and there’s, you know, no Hamas in the West Bank, is what Alghoul says. So it’s really not about that, that’s a leading question that Alghou sees through, and Inskeep’s response to that is to continue to condescend and do this, like, you know, white-man reporter voice, I want to assure you, I’ve covered that region for years.
Adam: I parachuted into Gaza, and I did a tour with the IDF. I know what I’m talking about.
Nima: Exactly. And then he just says, quote, “I’m just interested now, in this moment, what your attitude is toward Hamas.”
Adam: Which is NPR speak for Do you condemn Hamas? I mean, that’s really what that is, right, like, let’s be very clear about what he’s doing. He’s asking him repeatedly if he condemns Hamas, which is, again, I cannot stress this enough, completely fucking insane. Again, if this is a man who is living in a fucking tent, in rubble, with his family starving to death, under constant siege, bombardment. Has no electricity, no water, no fresh water, right? He is starving to death and dying of thirst, okay? And NPR is asking him to fucking condemn Hamas. I cannot begin to explain to you how insane that is, how morally depraved it is. This actually completely perfectly sums up the false victimization of Israelis and the total warped fucking perspective here, which is that you’re interviewing someone who has been bombed and starved and dying of thirst for 19 months. He’s lived in an unmitigated hell. His children are malnourished. I’m sure he has several family members who’ve died. And instead of asking him a story or empathizing with him or asking him how, you know, what can people in the United States do to help get aid to his country? What does he do? He repeats every fucking dumb, braindead Zionist talking point about how he needs to condemn Hamas. By the way, this is, for people watching this, right here is how you get a job at NPR and in US corporate media, you just ask the most sycophantic, most power-serving questions to the least powerful people on Earth. And that’ll guarantee you success in this industry. For those who are young and in journalism school, I’m trying to give you some pointers for success. So let’s keep listening to this.
Nima: This is Alghoul’s response.
[Begin clip]
Yousri Alghoul: There were no Hamas here, my friend. Just to let you know, the Israelis killed all of them. They destroyed the whole buildings of Hamas. They destroyed even the buildings of the civilians. So my viewpoint about Hamas is like my viewpoint about the radical government — Israeli government. They both are terrorists. I do believe that we need to integrate in a diverse world. We need to be in touch. We need to build a two-state solution, which is refused by the Israeli government.
Steve Inskeep: You mentioned that the only thing you’ve had to eat lately is bread. Where do you get it? Where does it come from?
Yousri Alghoul: In the time of truce before two months, they opened the borders for just 50 days, I think. When they brought the food and the aid in this time, I tried to bring it and to buy and to hide it because I believe the Israeli also will come again and to make this a starvation and to fight us in a famine in the Gaza Strip. You know that I — we have a dream. I’m always telling my wife that I wish I could have a plate of salad. I wish I could see tomato with cucumber and with other kind. And even the melon, we don’t have it. Just imagine you can cut these things.
Steve Inskeep: And because you said you would be willing to leave Gaza if someone would just let you leave, you, I presume, have heard that President Trump talked about removing the Gaza population and rebuilding Gaza as a seaside resort and finding someplace else for Palestinians to live. What do you think about that idea?
Yousri Alghoul: Listen to me, my friend. I think — I’m sorry to that. I know that I’m talking to American people, but this is a lunatic idea. I’m not going to talk about the man. I’m talking about — I do respect the power of Mr. Trump. I don’t mind to leave Gaza, but not to Egypt or to Jordan. I wish I could have the opportunity to go to Canada and to go to the United States. We are just 2 million. We are not the very crowded number of Palestinians.
Steve Inskeep: If you could come to the United States, you would give up Gaza? Is that what you’re saying?
Yousri Alghoul: Yeah. I wish I could come to United States with my family. I wish I could have.
Steve Inskeep: Yousri Alghoul, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Yousri Alghoul: Thank you.
Steve Inskeep: We spoke last week in Gaza before Israeli forces escalated operations.
[End clip]
Adam: Here is Inskeep basically making the pro-genocide, pro-ethnic cleansing argument, saying, Look, we found this guy who personally wants to go to the United States because he lives in hell, right? Because he doesn’t want to go to a death camp in Egypt and be shot at by Egyptian military soldiers. He wants to come to Canada or the United States, and says, Oh, look, boom. He never interrogates the basic premise of ethnic cleansing and genocide, which is to make life unlivable, deliberately, for the people who live in this area. So then they say, Well, obviously we need to go because I’m starving to death. He never interrogates that, never asks a question about that, never has a follow-up on that.
Nima: He’s basically justifying the ethnic cleansing plan, the genocidal plan.
Adam: He’s 100% justifying the ethnic-cleansing plan because he’s, again, to him, it’s not deliberate, right? It’s a war. They’re fighting a war on Hamas, you know that? Again, they’re still holding on to this, to this total liberal fantasy that really died in, like, spring of 2024. People in Israel don’t even make this argument anymore. This is a fucking vestige. This is an artifact from, like, liberal Zionism’s last breath in spring and summer of 2024. People in Israel don’t talk about this shit as if it’s like, Oh, we’re fighting a war on Hamas, to the extent to which they’re blowing away Hamas fighters, they’re doing only insofar as it makes it easier to ethnically cleanse the population. And that’s the key element here.
That’s why when people say, Why doesn’t Hamas surrender? Or you see CBS News talking about, Oh, people want Hamas to surrender. If you believe what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide, again, as almost every single human-rights group does, now there’s a virtual consensus among genocide scholars, it’s a genocide. What Hamas does and doesn’t do is a non sequitur. It’s irrelevant. Explain to me why someone would be committing genocide, of genocidal intent, then the sort of pretext for the genocide, the official bad guy surrenders and hands over their weapons, and what, they just go home? Is that how genocides work? Oh, never mind. We don’t have our pretense anymore, so we’re just going to wrap it up and call it. No. They’ll just invent some other bogeyman, or some kid with a rock, or some other guy with a gun. I mean, there’s always going to be a reason why they need to cleanse out Gaza, because that is their goal.
So this idea of like Hamas this, Hamas that, and he basically says this in the interview, it doesn’t matter what Hamas does, there is no, what does that mean, Hamas? Anyone with a gun to them is Hamas. Anyone who fights back is Hamas. Anyone who resists the ethnic cleansing is going to be labeled Hamas. And genocidal entities, genocidal plans, which, again, this explicitly is, this is not a thing they’re even hiding anymore, since Biden left, and they don’t have they can sort of remove the theater and rigamarole, is ethnic cleansing. What makes you think they’re going to stop doing it the second the people shooting back at them lay down their guns? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s completely nonsensical. But Steve Inskeep just regurgitates the Zionist fucking talking points and moves on. And this poor guy in a tent is, you know, he’s excited. He says, I can talk to an American audience. Maybe if I plead my case, they’ll listen. No, buddy. Sorry. You’re being filtered through American media. So that’s not gonna happen. You’re gonna get the, Will you condemn Hamas? Will you condemn Hamas? Your ethnic cleansing, isn’t that actually good? Can you comment on this ethnic-cleansing plan? Isn’t this viable? We’re not gonna call it that, though.
Nima: Inskeep literally says, quote, “If you could come to the United States, you would give up Gaza? Is that what you’re saying?” End quote.
Adam: He’s doing a gotcha with people, like, submitting to their inevitable genocide. I mean, it’s fucking insane.
Nima: With this man who is trying to have his kids not be blown apart by Israeli bombs and die of starvation in the meantime in the rubble of his home. And it’s like, You would give up, oh, okay, we got it, folks. We got it, folks. Let’s just get a signature on a piece of paper. They’re giving up Gaza. They’re giving up Gaza, folks. It all worked out. Israel was right. Trump was right. Like, this is so ridiculous. Alghoul describes what it’s like to not have food. Literally, he describes his dream as wanting a fucking plate of salad. He says, quote, “I wish I could see a tomato with cucumber.” That is where we’re at here. And Steve Inskeep of NPR seizes on this and says, Oh, so, you’re willing to leave Gaza if someone would just let you leave? And then does this sort of, like, tongue-in-cheek Trump is silly because he talks about building a seaside resort, but he actually poses the question as a real question, and then when he hears the answer, of like, Yeah, I want to get the fuck out of this hellhole to save myself and my family, that is then seen as like–
Adam: It’s a gotcha.
Nima: Well, well, I guess you know, Palestine is no more.
Adam: On about four different instances in this interview, he tries to gotcha this man, again, living in rubble, starving to death in Gaza under US bombs, as a terror campaign. And he interrogates the man’s ideology. Again, this is not something afforded to any other victim. They would never do this to someone in the United States, in Israel, Ukraine, any allied state. Arabs, but in particular, Palestinians, are constantly having to validate their own story. Again, he says he’s a writer, right? So he’s sort of inherently shifty. We’re not really sure if he’s a real writer. Does that count? But anyway, we thought this was a good kind of object lesson. You know, we do a lot of big analysis, a lot of sort of studies. Sometimes it’s good to just look at a single instance of media coverage, and it really just distills everything wrong with how this has been covered.
Nima: Yeah. In five minutes and 10 seconds, it tells you everything you need to know about American media’s approach to covering Palestine, to covering the humanity of people who are on the muzzle end of Israeli machine guns, this really is a perfect case study in just about five minutes of US media airtime. But that will do it for this Citations Needed News Brief. Thanks so much for listening. Of course, you can follow us on Twitter and Bluesky @citationspod, Facebook Citations Needed, and become a supporter of the show through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast. All your support is so appreciated, as we are 100% listener funded. We will be back very shortly with more full-length episodes of Citations Needed. So stay tuned for that, but until then, thanks again for listening. I’m Nima Shirazi.
Adam: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: Citations Needed’s senior producer is Florence Barrau-Adams. Our producer is Julianne Tveten. Production assistant is Trendel Lightburn. The newsletter is by Marco Cartolano. 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 Thursday, May 22, 2025.
