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,” he 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.