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  • After Gaza ceasefire, ‘massive political pressure’ needed to prevent Israel from restarting war

    Democracy Now!

    AMY GOODMAN: Israel’s government has approved the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, that includes a pause in Israeli attacks and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons — 20 living hostages were freed today coinciding with President Trump’s visit to Israel and Egypt.

    According to the deal, 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and another 1700 people from Gaza detained in the last two years — and described as “forcibly disappeared” by the UN — would be released.

    Hamas has demanded the release of prominent Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti, but his name was reportedly secretly removed from the prisoner exchange list by Israel.

    Meanwhile, the US is sending about 200 troops to Israel to monitor the ceasefire deal.

    The Israeli military on Friday confirmed the ceasefire had come into effect as soldiers retreated from parts of Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including families that had been forced to the south, began their trek back to northern Gaza after news that Israeli forces were withdrawing.

    Returning Gaza City residents made their way through mounds of rubble and destroyed neighborhoods, searching for any sign of their homes and belongings. Among them, Fidaa Haraz.

    FIDAA HARAZ: [translated] I came since the morning, when they said there was a withdrawal, to find my home. I’m walking in the street, but I do not know where to go, due to the extent of the destruction.

    I swear I don’t know where the crossroads is or where my home is. I know that my home was leveled, but where is it? Where is it? I cannot find it.

    What is this? What do we do with our lives? Where should we live? Where should we stay? A house of multiple floors, but nothing was left?

    AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera reports Israel’s army said it would allow 600 humanitarian aid trucks carrying food, medical supplies, fuel and other necessities daily into Gaza, through coordination with the United Nations and other international groups.

    On Thursday, the exiled Hamas Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya declared an end to the war.

    KHALIL AL-HAYYA: [translated] Today, we announced that we have reached an agreement to end the war and aggression against our people and to begin implementing a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of the occupation forces, the entry of aid, the opening of the Rafah crossing in both directions and the exchange of prisoners.

    AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke today in Israel.

    PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Today, we mark one of the greatest achievements in the war of revival: the return of all of our hostages, the living and the dead as one. …

    This way, we grapple Hamas. We grapple it all around, ahead of the next stages of the plan, in which Hamas is disarmed and Gaza is demilitarised.

    If this can be achieved the easy way, very well. If not, it will be achieved the hard way.

    AMY GOODMAN: In the United States, President Trump hailed his administration’s ceasefire plan during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday as concerns mount regarding potential US and foreign intervention in the rebuilding of Gaza.

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Gaza is going to be slowly redone. You have tremendous wealth in that part of the world by certain countries, and just a small part of that, what they — what they make, will do wonders for — for Gaza.

    AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney and a former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). She has just recently written a piece for The Guardian. It is headlined “A ‘magic pill’ made Israeli violence invisible. We need to stop swallowing it.” And Amjad Iraqi is a senior Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, joining us from London.

    We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Diana Buttu, let’s begin with you. First, your response to the ceasefire-hostage deal that’s just been approved by the Israeli government and Hamas?

    DIANA BUTTU: Well, first, Amy, it’s really quite repulsive that Palestinians have had to negotiate an end to their genocide. It should have been that the world put sanctions on Israel to stop the genocide, rather than forcing Palestinians to negotiate an end to it. At the same time, we’re also negotiating an end to the famine, a famine that Israel, again, created.

    Who are we negotiating with? The very people who created that famine. And so, it’s really repugnant that this is the position that Palestinians have been forced to be in.

    And so, while people here are elated, happy that the bombs have stopped, we’re also at the same time worried, because we’ve seen that the international community, time and again, has abandoned us.

    Everybody is happy that the Israelis are going home, but nobody’s talking about the more than 11,000 Palestinians who are currently languishing in Israeli prisons, being starved, being tortured, being raped. Many of them are hostages picked up after October 2023, being held without charge, without trial, and nobody at all is talking about them.

    So, while people are happy that the bombs have stopped, we know that Israel’s control has not at all stopped. And Israel has made it clear that it’s going to continue to control every morsel of food that comes into Gaza. It’s going to control every single construction item that comes into Gaza.

    And it’s going to continue to maintain a military occupation over Gaza.

    This is not a peace agreement. This is not an end to the occupation. And I think it’s so important for us that we keep our eyes on Gaza and start demanding that Israel be held to account, not only for the genocide, but for all of these decades of occupation that led to this in the first place.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the exchange of hostages, Israeli hostages, dead and alive, and Palestinian prisoners? According to the Hamas Gaza chief, I believe they’re saying all women and children, Palestinian women and children, picked up over these last two years — or is it beyond? — are going to be released. And then, of course, there are the well over 1000 prisoners who are going to be released.

    DIANA BUTTU: No, not quite. So, there are 250 who are political prisoners who are going to be released, and that list just came out about a little over an hour ago.

    But there are also 1700 Palestinians, solely from Gaza, who are going to be released. And these were people — these are doctors, these are nurses, these are journalists and so on, who were — who Israel picked up after 7 October, 2023, and has been holding as hostages.

    These are the people that are going to be released. There are still thousands more, Amy, that are from the West Bank, that we do not know what is going to happen to them.

    And so, while the focus is just on the people in Gaza — and again, there is no path for freeing all of those thousands of Palestinians who are languishing in Israeli prisons, being starved, being tortured, being raped.

    What’s going to happen to them? Who’s going to be focusing on them? I don’t think that it’s going to be this US administration.

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about the West Bank in a minute. More than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank just over the last two years. But I first want to get Amjad Iraqi’s response to this deal that has now been signed off on.

    I mean, watching the images of tens of thousands, this sea of humanity, of Palestinians going south to north, to see what they can find of their homes in places like Gaza City, not to mention who’s trapped in the rubble. We say something — well over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, but we don’t know the real number. It could be hundreds of thousands?

    AMJAD IRAQI: Indeed, Amy. And to kind of continue off of Diana’s points, this is a deal that really should have been made long, long time ago. We’ve known that the parameters of this truce have been on the table for well over a year, if not since the very beginning of the war, what they used to define as an all-for-all deal, the idea that Hamas would release all hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire.

    And the reasons for the constant foiling of it are quite evident. And it’s important to recognise this not for the sake of just lamenting the lives, the many lives, that have been lost and the massive destruction that could have been averted, but it needs to really inform the next steps going forward.

    The biggest takeaway of what’s happening right now is that in order for a ceasefire to be sustained, in order for Gaza to be saved from further military assault, you need massive political pressure.

    And we’ve seen this really build up in the past weeks and months. You saw this, for example, from European governments, which, even through the symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood, was very much venting their frustration with the Israeli conduct in the war, the fact that the EU was actually starting to contemplate more punitive measures against Israel, such as partial trade suspensions, potential sanctions against Israel.

    We saw this building up over the past few weeks. Arab states have started to use much of their leverage, especially after Israel’s strike on Doha or on Hamas’s offices in Doha. We started seeing Gulf and other Arab and Muslim states come forward to President Trump at the UN saying that Israel aggression cannot continue like this.

    And most crucially is, of course, President Trump himself and Washington finally saying that it needs to put its foot down to stop this war, which we’ve heard repeatedly from Trump himself.

    But this is really the first time since the January ceasefire agreement where Trump has really insisted that this come to an end.

    Now, this — now there’s much to be sort of debated about the Trump plan itself, but this aspect of the truce cannot continue, and certainly cannot save Palestinian lives, unless that pressure is maintained.

    The concern now is that that pressure will recede or alleviate, because there’s now a deal that’s signed. But, actually, in order to enforce it, that pressure really needs to be maintained.

    AMY GOODMAN: What do you think was the turning point, Amjad? The bombing of Qatar?

    Now, I mean, The New York Times had an exposé that Trump knew before, not just in the midst of the bombing, that Israel was bombing their ally to try to kill the Hamas leadership. But do you think that was the turning point?

    AMJAD IRAQI: It certainly might have expedited, I think, a lot of factors that were already building up. As I said, pressure had been mounting against Israel for quite a while.

    There was really outrage, not just at the continuance of the military assaults, but the policy of starvation, which was very evident on the ground, and Israel’s complete refusal to let in aid, its failed project with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

    So, this had all been building, but I do think the strike on Doha really pushed Arab states to say that enough is enough. To see them really meet all together with President Trump and create a bit more of a united position to insist that this really couldn’t go on, I think, has really signalled that Israel really crossed a certain line geopolitically.

    Now, of course, that line should have been recognised as being crossed well before because of the facts on the ground in Gaza, but I do think that this has helped to kind of push things over the edge a bit more assertively.

    There are also speculations about Trump, of course, trying to have his name in for the Nobel Peace Prize, and potentially other factors. But I do think that the timing of this, again, regardless of what ended up pushing it over the line, it is unfortunate that it has really taken this long.

    And it’s really up to global powers and foreign governments to recognise that in order to make sure that this stays, that they really need to keep that pressure up.

    AMY GOODMAN: And, Amjad Iraqi, the core demand of the ceasefire is that Hamas disarm and end its rule. What security guarantees is Hamas seeking for its own members to lay down their arms and not face a wave of arrests or assassinations?

    How is this going to work? And talk about who you see running Gaza.

    AMJAD IRAQI: So, these things are still a bit unclear. So, throughout the ceasefire talks, Hamas has kept insisting about the idea of US guarantees that Israel will not end the war.

    But there’s never really any clear, concrete way to prove this. And as we’ve seen before, like in the January ceasefire deal and in much of the ceasefire talks, even if President Trump expresses his desire to see an end to the war, oftentimes he would still hand the steering wheel to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

    And if Netanyahu decided that he wanted to thwart the ceasefire talks, if he wanted to relaunch military assaults, and the Israeli military and the government would back it, then Trump and Washington would fall into line and amplify those calls, and even President Trump himself would sort of cheer on the military assaults.

    And so, this factor has certainly weighed a lot on Hamas, but I do think there’s a culmination of pressure, the fact that Arab states have insisted on Hamas to try to show, at least signal, certain flexibility, even though many of its demands have been quite consistent throughout the war.

    But the fact that I think Hamas is now feeling that there’s also a bit more pressure on Israel to actually ensure that they at least try to take the gamble that they will not return to war.

    And in regards to decommissioning and disarmament, publicly Hamas has placed a red line around this right to bear arms. But historically, and even recently, they do say that they are willing to have conversations about decommissioning, as long as it’s tied to a political framework, especially one that’s tied to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

    Now, one can really debate how much this process is actually quite feasible, and obviously the Israeli government and much of the Israeli public is quite adamant in its opposition against Palestinian statehood, but Hamas may at least offer some space for those conversations to be had.

    There are discussions about it potentially giving up what it might describe as its larger or more offensive weaponry, like rockets or anti-tank missiles. And there’s bigger questions around firearms.

    But I think it’s important to put this question not as a black-and-white issue, as something that has to come first in the political process, as Israel is demanding, but one that requires trust building and confidence building in the rubric of a process of Palestinian self-determination.

    This is important not just in the case of Palestine, but across many conflicts around the world where the question of decommissioning, about establishing one rule, one gun, one government for a society, requires that kind of process. So, it shouldn’t just be a policy of destroying and military assaults and so on. You do need to engage in these questions in good faith.

    AMY GOODMAN: There are so many questions, Diana Buttu, in this first stage of the ceasefire-hostage deal, is really the only one that Netanyahu addressed in his speech.

    You’re usually in Ramallah. You spend a lot of time in the West Bank. Where does this leave the Palestinian Authority? I don’t think the West Bank is talked about in this deal.

    And what about the fact that we’re looking at pictures of Netanyahu surrounded by Steve Witkoff on one side and Jared Kushner, who has talked about — as we know — famously referred to Gaza as “very valuable” waterfront property?

    DIANA BUTTU: Well, I think that this plan was really an Israeli plan, and it was repackaged and branded as a Trump plan. And you can see just in the text of it and the way that all of the guarantees were given to the Israelis, and none given to the Palestinians, it’s really an Israeli plan.

    But beyond that, it’s important to keep in mind that when Trump was going around and talking about this plan, that he consulted with everybody but Palestinians. He didn’t talk to Mahmoud Abbas. He didn’t even let Mahmoud Abbas go to the UN to deliver his speech before the UN.

    I’m pretty certain he didn’t speak to the UN representative, Palestine’s representative to the UN. And so, this is — once again, we’ve got a plan in which people are talking about Palestinians, but never talking to Palestinians. So, again, this is very much an Israeli plan repackaged as a Trump plan and branded as a Trump plan.

    In terms of them looking at Gaza as being prime real estate, this is not at all different from the way that they’ve done it in the past, and this is not at all the way that Israel has looked at Palestine.

    And this is because this is the way that colonisers look at land that isn’t theirs. They ignore the history of the place.

    Gaza has an old history. It has some of the oldest churches, I think the second-oldest church in the world. It has some of the oldest mosques. It has an old civilization.

    We want Gaza to be Gaza. We don’t want it to be Dubai or any other place. We want it to be Gaza. And so, the idea of somehow turning it into prime real estate, this is the mentality of somebody who’s coming from outside.

    This is the way that colonisers think. This isn’t the way that the Indigenous think. And so, you can see in this plan that it’s not only the idea of the outside coming in, but they certainly didn’t consult Palestinians at all.

    As for what’s going to happen to the Palestinian Authority, it’s clear that they don’t want the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, and it’s clear that they do want to have a foreign authority in the Gaza Strip.

    But once again, Amy, when is it that Palestinians get to decide our own future? Are we really going back to the era of colonialism, when other people get to decide our future? And that’s what this plan is really all about.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to be continuing to cover this story. President Trump is going to be there for the signing of the ceasefire in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt on Monday, and the hostages and prisoners are expected to be released on Monday or Tuesday.

    Diana Buttu, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and Amjad Iraqi, Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group.

    Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Eugene Doyle: The Nobel Peace laureate who calls for US bombing of her own country

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    Within hours of being named the Nobel Peace laureate for 2025, María Corina Machado called on President Trump to step up his military and economic campaign against her own country — Venezuela.

    The curriculum vitae of the opposition leader hardly lines up with what one would typically associate with a Peace Maker.  Nor would those who nominated her, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and recent US national security advisor Mike Waltz, both drivers of violent policies towards Venezuela.

    “The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness,”  said the Nobel Committee statement.

    Let’s see if María Corina Machado passes that litmus test and is worthy to stand alongside last year’s winners, Nihon Hidankyo, representing the Japanese hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “honoured for their decades-long commitment to nuclear disarmament and their tireless witness against the horrors of nuclear war”.

    Machado supports Israel, would move embassy
    Machado is a passionate Zionist and supporter of both the State of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu personally.  She has not been silent on the genocide; indeed she has actively called for Israel to press ahead, saying Hamas  “must be defeated at all costs, whatever form it takes”.

    >If Machado achieves power in Venezuela, among her first long-promised acts will be the ending of Venezuela’s support for Palestine and the transfer of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

    Machado is a signatory of a cooperation agreement with Israel’s Likud Party.

    The smiling face of Washington regime change
    The Council on American-Islamic Relations, US’s largest Muslim civil rights organisation, called Machado a supporter of anti-Muslim fascism and decried the award as “insulting and unacceptable”.

    2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado
    2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado . . . “It is really a disaster. It’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation,” warns a history professor. Image: Cristian Hernandez/ Anadolu Agency

    Venezuelan activist Michelle Ellner wrote in the US progressive outlet Code Pink:

    “She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatisation, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.

    “Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help ‘liberate’ Venezuela with bombs under the banner of ‘freedom.’

    She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.”

    Legitimising US escalation against Venezuela
    Ellner said she almost laughed at the absurdity of the choice, which I must admit was my own reaction.  Yale professor of history Greg Grandin was similarly shocked.

    “It is really a disaster. It’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation.”

    What Grandin is referring to is the prize being used by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration to legitimise escalating violence against Venezuela — an odd outcome for a peace prize.

    Grandin, author of America, América: A New History of the New World says Machado “has consistently  represented a more hardline in terms of economics, in terms of US relations. That intransigence has led her to rely on outside powers, notably the United States.

    “They didn’t give it to Donald Trump, but they have given it to the next best thing as far as Marco Rubio is concerned — if he needs justification to escalate military operations against Venezuela.”

    The Iron Lady wins a peace prize?
    Rubio has repeatedly referred to Machado as the “Venezuelan Iron Lady” — fair enough, as she bears greater resemblance to Margaret Thatcher than she does to Mother Teresa.

    This illogicality brought back graffiti I read on a wall in the 1970s: “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity”.  Yet someone at the Nobel Committee had a brain explosion (fitting as Alfred Nobel invented dynamite) when they settled on Machado as the embodiment of Alfred Nobel’s ideal recipient — “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

    Machado, a recipient of generous US State Department funding and grants, including from the National Endowment for Democracy (the US’s prime soft power instrument of regime change) is praised for her courage in opposing the Maduro government, and in calling out a slide towards authoritarianism.

    Conservatives could run a sound argument in terms of Machado as an anti-regime figure but it is ludicrous to suggest her hard-ball politics and close alliances with Trump would in any way qualify her for the peace prize. Others see her as an agent of the CIA, an agent of the Monroe Doctrine, and as a mouthpiece for a corrupt elite that wants to drive a violent antidemocratic regime change.

    She has promised the US that she would privatise the country’s oil industry and open the door to US business.

    “We’re grateful for what Trump is doing for peace,” the Nobel winner told the BBC. Trump’s recent actions include bombing boatloads of Venezuelans and Colombians — a violation of international law — as part of a pressure campaign on the Maduro government.

    Machado says she told Trump “how grateful the Venezuelan people are for what he’s doing, not only in the Americas, but around the world for peace, for freedom, for democracy”.  The dead and starving of Gaza bear witness to a counter narrative.

    Rigged elections or rigged narratives?
    Peacemakers aren’t normally associated with coup d’etats but Machado most certainly was in 2002 when democratically elected President Hugo Chavez was briefly overthrown.  Machado was banned from running for President in 2024 because of her calls for US intervention in overthrowing the government.

    Central to both Machado’s prize and the US government’s regime change operation is the argument that the Maduro government won a “rigged election” in 2024 and is running a narco-trafficking government; charges accepted as virtually gospel in the mainstream media and dismissed as rubbish by some scholars and experts on the country.

    Alfred de Zayas, a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy who served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order, cautions against the standard Western narrative that the Venezuelan elections “were rigged”.

    The reality is that the Maduro government, like the Chavez government before it, enjoys popularity with the poor majority of the country.  Delegitimising any elected government opposed to Washington is standard operating procedure by the great power.

    Professor Zayas led a UN mission to Venezuela in 2017 and has visited the country a number of times since. He has spoken with NGOs, such as Fundalatin, Grupo Sures, Red Nacional de Derechos Humanos, as well as people from all walks of life, including professors, church leaders and election officials.

    “I gradually understood that the media mood in the West was only aiming for regime change and was deliberately distorting the situation in the country,” he said in an article in 2024.

    I provide those thoughts not as proof definitive of the legitimacy of the elections but as  stimulant to look beyond our tightly curated mainstream media. María Machado is Washington’s “guy” and that alone should set off alarm bells.

    Michelle Ellner: “Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.”

    “Beati pacifici quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God”. Matthew 5:9.

    Amen to that.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • IFJ condemns Australian lobby censorship bids to ‘silence’ reporting on Gaza

    Pacific Media Watch

    The global peak journalism body has condemned the targeting, harassment, and censorship by lobby groups of Australian journalists for reporting critically on Israel’s war on Gaza.

    The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Australian affiliate, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), said in a statement they were attempts to silence journalists and called on media outlets and regulatory bodies to ensure the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and access to information were upheld.

    In a high-profile case, Australia’s Federal Court found on June 25 that Lebanese-Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf was unlawfully dismissed by the national public broadcaster, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), for sharing a social media post by Human Rights Watch relating to violations by Israel in Gaza, reports IFJ.

    Lattouf was removed from a five-day radio presenting contract in Sydney in December 2023, with the judgment confirming her dismissal was made to appease pro-Israel lobbyists.

    On Seotember 24, the ABC was ordered to pay an additional $A150,000 in compensation on top of A$70,000 already awarded.

    In a separate incident, Australian cricket reporter Peter Lalor was dropped from radio coverage of Australia’s Sri Lanka tour by broadcaster SEN in February after he reposted several posts on X regarding Israeli attacks in Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

    “I was told in one call there were serious organisations making complaints; in another I was told that this was not the case,” said Lalor in a statement.

    Kostakidis faces harassment
    Prominent journalist and former SBS World News Australia presenter Mary Kostakidis has also faced ongoing harassment by the Zionist Federation of Australia, with a legal action filed in the Federal Court under Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act for sharing two allegedly “antisemitic” posts on X.

     

    Kostakidis said the case failed to identify which race, ethnicity or nationality was offended by her posts, with a verdict currently awaited on a strikeout order filed by Kostakidis in July.

    The MEAA said: “MEAA journalists are subject to the code of ethics, who in their professional capacity, often provide critical commentary on political warfare.

    “These are the tenets of democracy. We stand with our colleagues in their workplaces, in the courtrooms, and in their deaths to raise our voices against the silence.”

    The IFJ said: “Critical and independent journalism in the public interest is more crucial than ever in the face of incessant pressure from partisan lobby groups.

    “IFJ stands in firm solidarity with journalists globally facing harassment and censorship for their reporting.”

    Journalist killed in Gaza City

    Killed Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi
    Killed Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi . . . gained prominence for his videos covering Israel’s two-year war on Gaza Image: Abdelhakim Abu Riash/AJ file

    Meanwhile, gunmen believed to be part of Israeli-linked militia, have killed Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, south of Gaza City, after the ceasefire, reports Al Jazeera.

    Social media posts showed people bidding farewell to the 28-year-old who had been bringing news about the war over the last two years through his widely watched videos, the channel said.

    Several people accused of attacking returnees to Gaza City by colluding with Israeli forces were killed during clashes in the area where Aljafarawi was shot dead, sources told Al Jazeera.

    Al Jazeera said that more than 270 Palestinian journalists had been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The fake Gaza ‘peace agreement’ versus real peace with justice

    COMMENTARY: By Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh

    A temporary ceasefire and release of some Palestinians in a prisoner exchange is not a “peace agreement” and it is far from what is needed — ending colonisation; freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in Israeli gulags (also tortured, nearly 100 have died under torture in the last two years); return of the millions of refugees; and accountability for genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

    That is why this global uprising (intifada) will not stop until freedom, justice, and equality are attained.

    Here are brief answers I gave to questions about the agreement for Gaza:

    Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh
    Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh during his visit to Aotearoa New Zealand last year . . . “what is needed — ending colonisation, freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in Israeli gulags , return of the millions of refugees, and accountability for genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Image: David Robie/APR

    1. How has life in the West Bank changed for you and your community during the past two years of conflict?
    The West Bank has been illegally occupied since 1967 (ICJ ruling) but it was not merely an occupation but intensive colonisation and ethnic cleansing. The attacks on our people accelerated in the last two years with over 60,000 made homeless in the West Bank and denial of freedom of movement (including hundreds of new gates installed in these two years separating the remaining concentration camps/ghettos of the West Bank ).

    2. What is your assessment of the new peace deal that brought an end to the fighting in Gaza?
    It is not a peace deal. It is an agreement to pause the genocide which will not work because the belligerent occupier — “Israel” — has not respected a single agreement it signed since its founding. Even the agreement to join the United Nations was conditional on respecting the UN Charter and UN resolutions issued before and after 1949.

    This continued to even breaking the signed ceasefire agreement of last year. I have 0 percent confidence that this latest agreement would be respected even on the simple aspect of “pausing” the genocide and ethnic cleansing going on since 1948.

    3. In your view, why did war drag on for two years despite multiple ceasefire attempts?
    Simply put because colonisation can only be done with violence. And the war on our people has gone on not for two years but for 77 years without ending (sustained by Western government support). Israel as a colonisation entity is the active face of colonisation. The USA for example broke similar agreements for “pauses” in colonisation with natives in North America and broke every single one of them.


    Israeli military occupation on the environment.        Video: Greenpeace

    4. What kind of humanitarian and environmental toll has the conflict taken on Palestinian society?
    It is now well documented from UN agencies, human rights groups (like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, even the Israeli group B’Tselem). In brief it is genocide, ecocide, scholasticide, medicide,
    and veriticide. (More at: ongaza.org )

    5. Why do you think it took the IDF so long to rescue all the hostages?
    The terrorist organisation that deceptively calls itself “IDF” (Israeli Defence Forces) was not interested in rescuing their captives (not “hostages”) and they only got people back via exchange of prisoners (not rescue).

    The IGF (Israeli Genocide Forces) actually killed many of their own soldiers and civilians
    on 7 October 2023 by activating the Hannibal directive to prevent their capture. The resistance was aiming to capture colonisers (living on stolen Palestinian lands) to exchange for some of the more than 11,000 political prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails. (Again see ongaza.org )

    6. How significant was international involvement — particularly from the US — in reaching the final agreement?
    This is the first genocide in human history that is not executed by one government. It is executed by a number of governments directly supporting and aiding (participating). This includes the USA, UK, France, Egypt, Germany, Australia etc. Many of these countries have governments dominated or highly influenced by the Zionist agenda.

    Under the influence of a growing popular protest against the genocide around the world, some of those countries are trying to wiggle out from pressure in an effort to save
    “Israel” from growing global isolation. Trump was blackmailed via videos/files collected by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghiseline Maxwell (Mossad agents). He is simply a narcissistic collaborator with genocide!

    7. What concrete steps do you think are necessary now to turn this peace deal into a sustainable, lasting solution?
    Again not a “peace deal”. What needs to be done is apply boycotts, divestments, sanctions (BDS) on this rogue state that violates the international conventions (Geneva Convention, Conventions against Apartheid and Genocide). BDS was used against apartheid South Africa and needs to be applied here also. (For more: bdsmovement.net )

    8. How do you see the Palestine Museum of Natural History contributing to rebuilding and healing efforts in the aftermath of war?
    Our institute (PIBS, palestinenature.org) which includes museums, a botanic garden, and many other sections is focused on “sustainable human and natural communities” Our motto is respect: for ourselves (empowerment), for others (regardless of religious or other background), and for nature.

    Conflict, colonisations, oppression are obviously areas we challenge and work on in JOINT struggle with all people of various background.

    9. Looking ahead, what gives you optimism—or concern—about the future relationship between Palestinians and Israelis?
    What gives me optimism first and foremost is the heroic resilience and resistance (together making sumud) of our Palestinian people everywhere and the millions of other people mobilising for human rights and for justice (including the right of refugees to return and also environmental justice).

    What gives me concern is the depth of depravity that greedy individuals in power go to destroying our planet and our people and profiting from colonisation and genocide.

    About 8.5 million Palestinians are refugees and displaced people thanks to Zionism and Western collusion with it. A collusion intent on transforming Palestine from multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multireligious, and multilingual society to a racist Jewish state (monolithic).

    Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Bedouin in cyberspace; a villager at home; professor, founder and (volunteer) director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University, Occupied Palestine.

    Notes:
    World Court Findings on Israeli Apartheid a Wake-Up Call: International Court of Justice Makes Clear Call for Reparations

    The 7 October 2023 reminded us of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

    7 October 1944! Prisoner Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau

    The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize as before was not given to the any of the hundreds of deserving nominees but given instead to rightwing pro-genocide María Corina Machado. She dedicated her prize to Donald Trump and had previously aligned with the worst rightwing parties throughout Latin America as well as the genocidal regime of Netanyahu (and even asked them for help to topple her own elected government).

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Sara Awad: Why Gaza still looks to the freedom flotillas for true peace

    COMMENTARY: By Sara Awad

    On October 10, a ceasefire in Gaza was officially announced. International news media were quick to focus on what they now call “the peace plan”.

    US President Donald Trump, they announced, would go to Cairo to oversee the agreement signing and then to Israel to speak at the Knesset.

    The air strikes over Gaza, they reported, have stopped.

    KIA ORA GAZA
    KIA ORA GAZA

    The bombs have indeed stopped, but our suffering continues. Our reality has not changed. We are still under siege.

    Israel still has full control over our air, land and sea; it is still blocking sick and injured Palestinians from leaving and journalists, war crimes investigators and activists from going in.

    It is still controlling what food, what medicine, and essential supplies enter.

    The siege has lasted more than 18 years, shaping every moment of our lives. I have lived under this blockade since I was just three years old. What kind of peace is this, if it will continue to deny us the freedoms that everyone else has?

    ‘Deal’ overshadowed flotilla kidnap
    The news of the ceasefire deal and “the peace plan” overshadowed another, much more important development.

    Israel raided another freedom flotilla in international waters loaded with humanitarian aid for Gaza, kidnapping 145 people on board — a crime under international law. This came just days after Israel attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla, detaining more than 450 people who were trying to reach Gaza.

    These flotillas carried more than just humanitarian aid. They carried the hope of freedom for the Palestinian people. They carried a vision of true peace — one where Palestinians are no longer besieged, occupied and dispossessed.

    Many have criticised the freedom flotillas, arguing that they cannot make a difference since they are doomed to be intercepted.

    I myself did not pay much attention to the movement. I was deeply disappointed, having lost hope in seeing an end to this war.

    But that changed when Brazilian journalist Giovanna Vial interviewed me. Giovanna wrote an article about my story before setting sail with the Sumud Flotilla. She then made a post on social media saying: “for Sara, we sail”. Her words and her courage stirred something in me.

    Afterwards, I kept my eyes on the flotilla news, following every update with hope. I told my relatives about it, shared it with my friends, and reminded anyone who would listen how extraordinary this movement was.

    ‘Treated like animals’ – NZer activists detained by Israeli forces arrive home

    ‘She became the light’
    I kept wondering — how is it possible that, in a world so heavy with injustice, there are still people willing to abandon everything and put their lives in danger for people they had never met, for a place, most of them had never visited.

    I stayed in touch with Giovanna.

    “Until my last breath, I will never leave you alone,” she wrote to me while sailing towards Gaza. In the midst of so much darkness, she became the light.

    This was the first time in two years I felt like we were heard. We were seen.

    The Sumud Flotilla was by far the biggest in the movement’s history, but it was not about how many boats there were or how many people were on board or how much humanitarian aid they carried. It was about putting a spotlight on Gaza — about making sure the world could no longer look away.

    “All Eyes on Gaza,” read one post on the official Instagram account of the flotilla. It stayed with me, I read it on a very heavy night when the deafening sound of bombs in Gaza City was relentless. It was just before I had to flee my home due to the brutal Israeli onslaught.

    Israel stopped flotillas, aid
    Israel stopped the flotillas. They abused and deported the participants. They seized the aid. They may have prevented them from reaching our shores, but they failed to erase the message they carried.

    A message of peace. A message of freedom. A message we had been waiting to hear for two long, brutal years. The boats were captured, but the solidarity reached us.

    I carry so much gratitude in my heart for every single human being who took part in the freedom flotillas. I wish I could reach each of them personally — to tell them how much their courage, their presence, and their solidarity meant to me, and to all of us in Gaza.

    We will never forget them. We will carry their names, their faces, their voices in our hearts forever.

    To those who sailed toward us: thank you. You reminded us that we are not alone.

    And to the world: we are clinging to hope. We are still waiting — still needing — more flotillas to come. Come to us. Help us break free from this prison.

    The bombing has stopped now, and I can only hope that this time it does not resume in a few weeks. But we still do not have peace.

    Governments have failed us. But the people have not.

    One day, I know, the freedom flotilla boats will reach the shore of Gaza and we will be free.

    Sara Awad is an English literature student, writer, and storyteller based in Gaza. Passionate about capturing human experiences and social issues, Sara uses her words to shed light on stories often unheard. Her work explores themes of resilience, identity, and hope amid war. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Think, click, share – making media literacy fun for Filipinos

    By Anthea Grape in Manila

    Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is vital to nation-building. It empowers Filipinos to make informed decisions by fostering critical thinking, strengthening media awareness and encouraging responsible digital use.

    This call was echoed last week when United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and MediaQuest’s THINKaMuna campaign representatives came together for a small but meaningful gathering.

    The event underscored their shared commitment, with discussions centering on projects to push MIL forward in the Philippines.

    “Most young people today turn to social media as their first source of news,” said UNESCO Jakarta director Maki Katsuno-Hayashikawa.

    “With AI making it harder to tell what’s fake from what’s true, it’s even more important for all generations to think critically and share information responsibly.”

    They are making this happen in several ways.

    Explainer videos
    The UNESCO-THINKaMuna partnership has rolled out three of six digital episodes so far —  Cognitive Biases in July, Critical Thinking in August and Tech Addiction in September.

    Each is short, visually appealing and easy to understand, perfect for audiences with short attention spans.

    “Most MIL materials are very academic because they were made for schools,” shared MediaQuest corporate communications consultant Ramon Isberto.

    “We want ours to be different — playful and something people can casually talk about in their neighbourhoods.”

    This approach has brought the digital episodes closer to audiences, helping them reach nearly five million views.

    “In the Philippines, MediaQuest is our first media partner piloting media literacy in different ways and integrating it,” added UNESCO Jakarta program specialist Ana Lomtadze.

    “Our mission is really about reaching out in new, innovative ways and showing audiences how and why they should discern information and check their sources.”

    Taking MIL to classrooms
    While UNESCO provides guidance, Katsuno-Hayashikawa noted that implementation depends on local, on-the-ground initiatives.

    THINKaMuna recognises this, which is why they are distributing 1000 MIL journals to schools across the country.

    “A substantial percentage of grade school and high school students are not functional readers – they can read, but don’t fully understand what they’re reading,” explained Isberto.

    To address this, the journals are filled with visuals to ensure the message comes across. Workshops for senior journalists and the MILCON 2025 are also in the works to complete the offline component of the collaboration.

    “Society exists because we communicate and learn from each other,” Isberto said.

    “Today, media and information literacy is our way of continuing that conversation.”

    Anthea Grape is a Philippine Star reporter.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Genocide two years on: It is the West, not Gaza, that must be deradicalised

    This brutal war on Palestinians has not just unleashed Israel’s demons. It has unmasked our own regimes, as they crack down on humanitarian activism. Jonathan Cook reflects on Israel’s war on Gaza as the fragile ceasefire takes hold.

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

    Anniversaries are often a cause for celebration. But who could have imagined back in October 2023 that we would now be marking the two-year anniversary of a genocide, documented in the minutest detail on our phones every day for 24 months? A genocide that could have been stopped at any point, had the US and its allies made the call.

    This is an anniversary so shameful that no one in power wants it remembered. Rather, they are actively encouraging us to forget the genocide is happening, even at its very height.

    Israel’s relentless crimes against the people of Gaza barely register in our news any longer.

    There is a horrifying lesson here, one that applies equally to Israel and its Western patrons. A genocide takes place — and is permitted to take place — only when a profound sickness has entered the collective soul of the perpetrators.

    For the past 80 years, Western societies have grappled with — or, at least, thought they did — the roots of that sickness.

    They wondered how a Holocaust could have taken place in their midst, in a Germany that was central to the modern, supposedly “civilised”, Western world.

    They imagined — or pretended to — that their wickedness had been extirpated, their guilt cleansed, through the sponsorship of a “Jewish state”. That state, violently established in 1948 in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, served as a European protectorate on the ruins of the Palestinian people’s homeland.

    Desperate to control
    The Middle East, let us note, just happened to be a region that the West was desperate to keep controlling, despite growing Arab demands to end more than a century of brutal Western colonialism.

    Why? Because the region had recently emerged as the world’s oil spigot.

    Israel’s very purpose — enshrined in the ideology of Zionism, or Jewish supremacism in the Middle East — was to act as a proxy for Western colonialism. It was a client state planted there to keep order on the West’s behalf, while the West pretended to withdraw from the region.

    This big picture — the one Western politicians and media refuse to acknowledge — has been the context for events there ever since, including Israel’s current, genocidal endgame in Gaza.

    Two years in, what should have been obvious from the start is becoming ever-harder to ignore: the genocide had nothing to do with Hamas’s one-day attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The genocide was never about “self-defence”. It was preordained by the ideological imperatives of Zionism.

    Hamas’s break-out from Gaza — a prison camp into which Palestinians had been herded decades earlier, after their expulsion from their homeland — provided the pretext. It all too readily unleashed demons long lurking in the soul of the Israeli body politic.

    And more importantly, it released similar demons — though better concealed — in the Western ruling class, as well as parts of their societies heavily conditioned to believe that the interests of the ruling class coincide with their own.

    Bubble of denial
    Two years into the genocide, and in spite of this week’s fragile ceasefire negotiated by US President Donald Trump and the three mediators, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, the West is still deep in its self-generated bubble of denial about what has been going on in Gaza – and its role in it.

    “History repeats itself,” as the saying goes, “first as tragedy, then as farce.”

    The same could be said of “peace processes”. Thirty years ago, the West force-fed Palestinians the Oslo Accords with the promise of eventual statehood.

    Oslo was the tragedy. It led to an ideological rupture in the Palestinian national movement; to a deepening geographic split between an imprisoned population in the occupied West Bank and an even more harshly imprisoned population in Gaza; to Israel’s increasing use of new technologies to confine, surveil and oppress both sets of Palestinians; and finally, to Hamas’s brief break-out from the Gaza prison camp, and Israel’s genocidal “response”.

    Now, President Trump’s 20-point “peace plan” offers the farce: unapologetic gangsterism masquerading as a “solution” to the Gaza genocide. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair — a war criminal who, alongside his US counterpart George W Bush, destroyed Iraq more than two decades ago — will issue diktats to the people of Gaza on Israel’s behalf.

    Gaza, not just Hamas, faced an ultimatum: “Take the deal, or we will put you in concrete boots and sink you in the Mediterranean.”

    Surrender document
    Barely veiled by the threat was the likelihood that, even if Hamas felt compelled to sign up to this surrender document, Gaza’s people would end up in concrete boots all the same.

    Gaza’s population has been so desperate for a respite from the slaughter that it would accept almost anything. But it is pure delusion for the rest of us to believe a state that has spent two years carrying out a genocide can be trusted either to respect a ceasefire or to honour the terms of a peace plan, even one so heavily skewed in its favour.

    The farce of Trump’s peace plan — his “deal of the millennium” — was evident from the first of its 20 points: “Gaza will be a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours.”

    The document’s authors no more wonder what might have “radicalised” Gaza than Western capitals did when Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK and other countries, broke out of the prison enclave with great violence on 7 October 2023.

    Were the people of Gaza simply born radical, or did events turn them radical? Were they “radicalised” when Israel ethnically cleansed them from their original lands, in what is now the self-declared “Jewish state” of Israel, and dumped them in the tiny holding pen of Gaza?

    Were they “radicalised” by being surveilled and oppressed in a dystopian, open-air prison, decade upon decade? Was it the experience of living for 17 years under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade that denied them the right to travel or trade, and forced their children on to a diet that left them malnourished?

    Or maybe they were radicalised by the silence from Israel’s Western patrons, who supplied the weaponry and lapped up the rewards: the latest confinement technologies, field-tested by Israel on the people of Gaza.

    Gaza most extreme
    The truth ignored in the opening point of Trump’s “peace plan” is that it is entirely normal to be “radicalised” when you live in an extreme situation. And there are no places on the planet more extreme than Gaza.

    It is not Gaza that needs “deradicalising”. It is the West and its Israeli client state.

    The case for deradicalising Israel should hardly need stating. Poll after poll has shown Israelis are not just in favour of the annihilation their state is carrying out in Gaza; they believe their government needs to be even more aggressive, even more genocidal.

    This past May, as Palestinian babies were shrivelling into dry husks from Israel’s blockade on food and aid, 64 percent of Israelis said they believed “there are no innocents” in Gaza, a place where around half of the population of two million people are children.

    The figure would be even higher were it reporting only the views of Israeli Jews. The survey included the fifth of the Israeli population who are Palestinians — survivors of mass expulsions in 1948 during Israel’s Western-sponsored creation. This much-oppressed minority has been utterly ignored throughout these past two years.

    Another survey conducted earlier this year found that 82 percent of Israeli Jews favoured the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. More than half, 56 percent, also supported the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel — even though that minority has kept its head bowed throughout the genocide, for fear of reaping a whirlwind should it speak up.

    In addition, 47 percent of Israeli Jews approved of killing all the inhabitants of Gaza, even its children.

    Netanyahu’s crimes
    The crimes overseen by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is so often held up by outsiders as some kind of aberration, are entirely representative of wider public sentiment in Israel.

    The genocidal fervour in Israeli society is an open secret. Soldiers flood social media platforms with videos celebrating their war crimes. Teenage Israelis make funny videos on TikTok endorsing the starvation of babies in Gaza. Israeli state TV broadcasts a child choir evangelising for Gaza’s annihilation.

    Such views are not simply a response to the horrors that unfolded inside Israel on 7 October 2023. As polls have consistently shown, deep-seated racism towards Palestinians is decades old.

    It is not former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant who started the trend of calling Palestinians “human animals”. Politicians and religious leaders have been depicting them as “cockroaches”, “dogs”, “snakes” and “donkeys” since Israel’s creation. It is this long process of dehumanisation that made the genocide possible.

    In response to the outpouring of support in Israel for the extermination in Gaza, Orly Noy, a veteran Israeli journalist and activist, reached a painful conclusion last month on the +972 website: “What we are witnessing is the final stage in the nazification of Israeli society.”

    And she noted that this problem derives from an ideology with a reach far beyond Israel itself: “The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.”

    As the genocide has unfolded week after week, month after month — ever-more divorced from any link to 7 October 2023 — and Western leaders have carried on justifying their inaction, a much deeper realisation is dawning.

    Demon in the West
    This is not just about a demon unleashed among Israelis. It is about a demon in the soul of the West. It is us — the power bloc that established Israel, arms Israel, funds Israel, indulges Israel, excuses Israel — that really needs deradicalising.

    Germany underwent a process of “denazification” following the end of the Second World War — a process, it is now clear from the German state’s feverish repression of any public opposition to the genocide in Gaza, that was never completed.

    A far deeper campaign of deradicalisation than the one Nazi Germany was subjected to, is now required in the West — one where normalising the murder of tens of thousands of children, live-streamed to our phones, can never be allowed to happen again.

    A deradicalisation that would make it impossible to conceive of our own citizens travelling to Israel to help take part in the Gaza genocide, and then be welcomed back to their home countries with open arms.

    A deradicalisation that would mean our governments could not contemplate silently abandoning their own citizens — citizens who joined an aid flotilla to try to break Israel’s illegal starvation-siege of Gaza — to the goons of Israel’s fascist police minister.

    A deradicalisation that would make it inconceivable for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, or other Western leaders, to host Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, who at the outset of the slaughter in Gaza offered the central rationale for the genocide, arguing that no one there — not even its one million children — were innocent.

    A deradicalisation that would make it self-evident to Western governments that they must uphold the World Court’s ruling last year, not ignore it: that Israel must be forced to immediately end its decades-long illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, and that they must carry out the arrest of Netanyahu on suspicion of crimes against humanity, as specified by the International Criminal Court.

    A deradicalisation that would make it preposterous for Shabana Mahmood, Britain’s Home Secretary, to call demonstrations against a two-year genocide “fundamentally un-British” — or to propose ending the long-held right to protest, but only when the injustice is so glaring, the crime so unconscionable, that it leads people to repeatedly protest.

    Eroding right to protest
    Mahmood justifies this near-death-knell erosion of the right to protest on the grounds that regular protests have a “cumulative impact”. She is right. They do: by exposing as a sham our government’s claim to stand for human rights, and to represent anything more than naked, might-is-right politics.

    A deradicalisation is long overdue — and not just to halt the West’s crimes against the people of Gaza and the wider Middle East region.

    Already, as our leaders normalise their crimes abroad, they are normalising related crimes at home. The first signs are in the designation of opposition to genocide as “hate”, and of practical efforts to stop the genocide as “terrorism”.

    The intensifying campaign of demonisation will grow, as will the crackdown on fundamental and long-cherished rights.

    Israel has declared war on the Palestinian people. And our leaders are slowly declaring war on us, whether it be those protesting the Gaza genocide, or those opposed to a consumption-driven West’s genocide of the planet.

    We are being isolated, smeared and threatened. Now is the time to stand together before it is too late. Now is the time to find your voice.

    Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Treated like animals’ – NZer activists detained by Israeli forces arrive home

    RNZ News

    Three New Zealanders, who were detained in Israel, after taking part in an international flotilla heading to Gaza, claim they were treated like animals.

    Rana Hamida, Youssef Sammour and Samuel Leason arrived at Auckland International Airport this afternoon, and were greeted by a crowd of supporters and loved ones.

    Among the supporters were Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson and MP Ricardo Menéndez March.

    Members of the Global Sumud Flotilla, who were detained and deported from Israel last week, reported allegations of physical and psychological abuse by Israeli forces.


    Video: RNZ News

    Israel’s foreign ministry said the claims were “complete lies”, and the detainees rights were upheld, but Hamida and Sammour claimed conditions were harsh.

    “We were there for almost a week, more or less, and we were treated like crap, to be honest,” Sammour said. “We were treated like animals.”

    Hamida said: “It was a violation of what humanitarian law is.”

    Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson and Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March at Auckland Airport.
    Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson and Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March at Auckland Airport today. Image: RNZ/Marika Khabazi

    Guards refused medicine
    Sammour said one of their fellow prisoners was diabetic, but the guards refused to give him his insulin, but Hamida admitted the hardship they faced was just a fraction of that experienced by the occupants of Gaza.

    People gathered at Auckland Airport to welcome home the New Zealanders who were on the flotilla to Gaza.
    People gathered at Auckland Airport to welcome home the New Zealanders who were on the flotilla to Gaza. Image: RNZ/Marika Khabazi

    The flotilla, a group of dozens of boats carrying 500 people — including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg — had been trying to break Israel’s blockade.

    Leason’s father, Adi Leason, earlier told RNZ’s Midday Report he was “immensely proud” of his 18-year-old son.

    Samuel Leason hugging his father Adi Leason.
    Samuel Leason hugging his father Adi Leason. Image: Marika Khabazi/RNZ

    “We’ve been going to mass every Sunday for 18 years with Samuel, and he must have been listening and taking something of that formation on board. It’s lovely to see a young man with a deep conscience caring so deeply about people who he will never meet and to put himself in harm’s way for them.”

    Samuel Leason felt a mix of relief and anger upon returning to New Zealand. He said it was amazing to see his family again, but he felt frustrated that the New Zealand government did not do more to intervene.

    The trio said they had not been discouraged and planned to mobilise more than ever.

    More than 67,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — have been killed since Israel launched its retaliation for Hamas’ 2023 attack, which killed about 1200 Israelis.

    The first stage of a Gaza ceasefire came into force today.

    Rana Hamida greeting loved ones and supporters.
    Rana Hamida greeting loved ones and supporters. Image: Marika Khabazi/RNZ
    Samuel Leason with his family.
    Samuel Leason with his family. Image: Marika Khabazi/RNZ
    Youssef Sammour, is one of the three New Zealanders who returned on Friday.
    Youssef Sammour, one of the three New Zealanders who returned to Auckland today. Image: Marika Khabazi/RNZ

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Misleading ‘justification’ column on Peters and Palestine panned

    COMMENTARY: By Gerard Otto of G News

    This morning New Zealand Herald columnist and political commentator Matthew Hooton was paid to write an article justifying Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ position on denying Palestinian Statehood on the eve of the first phase of Donald Trump’s 20 point plan while in tandem Peters was interviewed by Ryan Bridge as the justifications continued and propaganda glazed the land.

    Hooton wrongly suggested an out of date way of viewing international law justified Peters as he emphasised the horror endured by Israel and did not recount the genocide with at least 67,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, unfolding as the mind conditioning of New Zealanders continued along the same path we’ve been sleeping under.

    Hooton neglected to mention the failure of NZ First to include official advice in their cabinet paper, the secrecy and delay over the decision, and the words of the Israeli Finance Minister just this morning.

    Bezalel Smotrich said the liberation movement Hamas must be destroyed after the return of Israeli hostages and recently he said this was a real estate bonanza opportunity for Israel.

    He also said in August 2025 that plans to build more than 3000 homes in a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank will “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.

    The so-called E1 project between Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement has been frozen for decades amid fierce opposition internationally. Building there would effectively cut off the West Bank from occupied East Jerusalem, the planned capital for the state of Palestine.

    Smotrich is not welcome in New Zealand — but travel bans is all Christopher Luxon’s coalition government will do as they bow low before the US and Israel — calling that “Sucking up” . . .  “Independence”.

    We suck up independently and clap ourselves – or at least Act do.

    Japan threatens sanctions
    As reported yesterday, Japan has threatened to sanction Israel if they mess with the possibility of Palestinian Statehood, but back in New Zealand we are busy festering over whether it is okay to protest outside a house — be it — an apartment block which houses a political party office and residential apartments in the same building or not.

    Sticking points include a hefty 3 month prison sentence and $2000 fine but some say that this is all a distraction from our obligations to act against an unfolding genocide and from the dire state of the economy for those who are not wealthy and sorted.

    Khalil al-Hayya, the head of Hamas’s negotiating team, has said the group has received guarantees from the US and mediators that an agreement on a first phase of a ceasefire agreement means the war in Gaza “has ended completely”.

    We will see how Israel plays this — but levels of scepticism are sky high and many have no faith in Netanyahu because he had been offered the return of hostages a year ago and chose to ignore it.

    Perhaps Israel will “behave while International Eyes” are on it but time will tell . . . whether spots have changed on the leopard.

    In the meantime vote in your local elections — you only have one day to go — and when it comes to the next General Election – you know what to do.

    This article is extracted from Gerard Otto’s Friday Morning Coffee column with permission. Matthew Hooton visited Israel and Palestine in 2017 as a guest of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. The Australian news site Crikey publishes a list of politicians and journalists who have travelled to Israel on junkets.

    In the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan, Israel is required to withdraw to the agreed "yellow line"
    In the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan, Israel is required to withdraw to the agreed “yellow line” within 24 hours, after which a 72-hour period will begin for the handover of Israeli 48 captives (20 believed to be still alive) in exchange for 2000 Palestinian prisoners. Image: CC Al Jazeera

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Netanyahu claims ceasefire ‘success’ but Israeli public sees him as obstacle

    By Hamdah Salhut of Al Jazeera

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has released a flurry of statements in the last couple of hours, claiming that the announced agreement over the first phase of the ceasefire in the war on Gaza is because of Israel’s military pressure.

    It’s because of Israel’s continuous military activity. It’s because of the objectives that Netanyahu had outlined at the beginning of the war — that’s why they reached this point.

    But the reality on the ground shows a much different story.

    Most of the captives who were released from the Gaza Strip were done through diplomatic means, through these ceasefire deals or through direct negotiations with the Americans.

    It wasn’t really due to these advanced military operations that the army and the government alike were touting.

    Netanyahu is not just under pressure internationally but domestically from the family members of those captives who have been held for two years and a day, and who have been advocating for their release every week – protesting, taking to the streets, saying they have no faith in their own leadership.

    If you look on social media and if you see the statements from their family members, if you see anything relating to the captives and their families from the last week or so, it has all been thanks to President Trump. It’s all thanks to the US envoy, Steve Witkoff.

    There has been no praise or thanks to the prime minister because this is a population that believes Netanyahu got in the way of many deals — such as back in July 2024, when mediators said they were at the finish line.

    But at the 11th hour, Netanyahu decided to insert new conditions and essentially reneged on the entire ceasefire agreement.

    Jubilation in Gaza over the ceasefire deal is announced
    Jubilation in Gaza over the ceasefire deal is announced. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    Salhut reported later:

    “In a few hours time, the Israeli government is going to convene and they are going to vote on this ceasefire agreement.

    “After they vote, the Israeli military will then withdraw to one of those lines that were presented in the map that President Trump posted on his social media.

    “Then, 72 hours after that, the captives are going to be released by Hamas. We are hearing from the Americans that it could take place on Monday.

    “President Trump has been talking about Israel’s international isolation, about how they’ve become a pariah state. But they are not just isolated on a political level; it is also economic. It is also through cultural forums. It’s also a lot of different spaces in the world.”

    Al Jazeera is reporting from Amman, Jordan, because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • PSNA cautiously welcomes Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal

    Asia Pacific Report

    New Zealand advocacy and protest group Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has “cautiously welcomed” the Gaza ceasefire and proposed exchange of hostages between Israel and the liberation movement Hamas.

    At least 7000 Palestinians are being held in detention without trial by Israel while about 20 Israeli soldiers are held by Hamas.

    PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal said the deal was a reprieve from Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.

    “It’s been two years of mass bombing and starvation. It’s the worst atrocity of the 21st century,” he said in a statement.

    “The real tragedy is that the main elements of this ceasefire deal were already agreed to nine months ago in January. Israel was forced to let Palestinians return to Gaza City, and lower the intensity of its attacks.

    “Within a few weeks, the Israelis scuttled the agreement, shut off all food and intensified their attacks and are now ethnically re-cleansing Gaza City.

    “Expulsion is still the Israeli government’s aim. Netanyahu must be disappointed that Trump is no longer advocating for removal of Palestinians from Gaza, but Netanyahu usually gets his way with Trump in the end.”

    Called on support
    Nazal said PSNA especially noted that the Hamas acceptance statement called on countries supporting the deal — New Zealand included — to make sure Israel abided by the few specific conditions imposed on the Zionist state in the agreement.

    “Israel has broken every peace deal it has ever signed on Palestine, right from occupying more than half of what was allocated by the United Nations as a Palestinian state in 1948,” Nazzal said.

    “In the 1993 Oslo peace deal, which the US also brokered, there was meant to be a Palestinian state within five years. Israel made sure this never happened.

    “This time, there is no mention of the Occupied West Bank. Nothing about return of refugees. There is no commitment in the Trump deal for a Palestinian state, for Winston Peters to eventually recognise.

    “There’s just a vague pathway with no timelines and it’s all conditional on Israeli approval,” Nazzal said.

    “So we have a message for Winston Peters, who is demanding PSNA and other protesters applaud the Trump deal as ‘case solved’.

    “Ceasefire or not, our campaign to isolate the apartheid state of Israel will continue to grow until all Palestinians are liberated.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Two years after October 7: Israel’s war, Gaza’s ashes, and the collapse of moral authority

    ANALYSIS: By Elijah J Magnier

    Two years ago, Israel suffered what was perhaps the most jarring day in its modern history. The events of October 7, 2023, weren’t just a military failure or an intelligence lapse — they were a national humiliation. Police stations were stormed and overrun. Military posts were taken. Soldiers and officers, including from elite units, were killed or captured. The Gaza Division of the Israeli army, a symbol of Israel’s long-standing dominance over the Strip, fell into chaos.

    Israel invoked the Hannibal Doctrine — a policy that allows military forces to prevent the capture of soldiers even at the cost of their lives, by opening fire on both Hamas and the kidnapped Israelis. That day, it wasn’t theory — it was execution.

    In the fog of panic, Israeli fire turned on its own, and the thin line between protecting society and sacrificing civilians for strategic ends evaporated.

    But October 7 was just the opening act. What followed was a war unlike anything Israel had fought in fifty years — brutal, relentless, and devastating in scale and ambition. Gaza was not merely targeted; it was systematically dismantled. What began as retaliation became something else entirely: an erasure.

    The illusion of military supremacy
    Two years into the war, one fact is undeniable: Israel, backed by some of the most powerful military alliances in the world, has failed to conquer a territory smaller than half of New York City. 365 square kilometers — that’s all Gaza is. Yet despite overwhelming force, technological advantage, and political cover, the Israeli army has been unable to fully occupy it.

    This failure is especially glaring given the scale of destruction. Over 200,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza — the equivalent of 20 nuclear bombs without radiation. That’s not metaphor. That’s the measure of how far Israel was willing to go and is not willing to stop yet: flattening entire towns, turning hospitals, schools, mosques, residential towers, universities, even cemeteries into rubble.

    Gaza has endured more concentrated bombing than any territory since the Second World War.

    Indeed, what Gaza has endured over the past two years dwarfs even some of the most infamous wartime bombardments of the twentieth century. In February 1945, Allied forces dropped roughly 3,900 tons of explosives on Dresden in a three-day firestorm that killed an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 people and obliterated much of the city. Where Dresden became a symbol of wartime excess, Gaza is witnessing destruction on a scale so vast it makes Dresden look like a prelude.

    And unlike Dresden, Gaza’s devastation has been broadcast live, in real time, to a world that cannot claim it did not know.

    But Israel was never alone and had every advantage and complicity: real-time intelligence from the United States and Britain, precision munitions from Germany, satellite targeting, drone supremacy, complete air dominance. And still, two years on, it cannot claim control over this tiny strip of land.

    The problem was never firepower. It was urban warfare — a terrain where bombs are blunt tools and conquest requires something far more difficult: boots on the ground, close-quarters control, and the ability to hold territory without hemorrhaging soldiers or sparking endless insurgency.

    The Israeli army, trained for dominance but not for urban occupation, found itself caught in a repetitive, grinding cycle: enter, level, retreat, repeat.

    Neighborhoods were captured and declared “secured,” only to be abandoned and recontested days later. Troops rotated in and out of ruined zones, unable to maintain sustained presence. For every area leveled, resistance either moved underground or regrouped elsewhere. The war turned into a grim spectacle of destruction without achievement.

    This revealed a contradiction at the heart of Israel’s military doctrine: it can destroy almost anything, but it cannot hold what it destroys. Air supremacy means nothing when the battlefield is a bombed-out maze. Gaza’s density, devastation, and defiance turned every advantage into a liability.

    So while the Strip lies in ruins, it is not conquered. And that truth — buried under declarations of “strategic success” — is the defeat Israel cannot admit.

    The real objective: Not security—territory
    Israel’s war was not, as officially claimed, about eliminating Hamas or rescuing hostages. That narrative collapsed quickly under the weight of Israel’s own actions. From the beginning, hostage negotiations were treated as peripheral. Every time progress was made on potential ceasefires, it was Netanyahu’s office that pulled the plug — because every hostage released made the war harder to justify. Every ceasefire threatened to slow the campaign just enough for the world to ask uncomfortable questions.

    This was never about hostages. It was about Gaza. More specifically: it was about removing Gaza as an obstacle to territorial ambition.

    Netanyahu, cornered by political instability, corruption trials, and a fragile coalition held together by the far-right, saw in October 7 a chance to do what had always been unspoken: clear Gaza. Not of Hamas, but of Palestinians. Permanently. Not by announcement, but by attrition — bombing, starvation, siege, trauma.

    Gaza’s civilian population wasn’t collateral damage. It was the target.

    Destroying Gaza wasn’t a means to defeat an enemy. It was a means to reshape a demographic reality. This wasn’t defense. It was a conquest dressed up as security.

    When the mask falls
    In war, the first casualty is truth. But in this war, truth didn’t die quietly — it was dragged into the open, exposed by the very actors trying to hide it. Israeli soldiers live streamed brutality. Government officials made genocidal statements on public platforms. Civilian infrastructure was not accidentally struck — it was deliberately annihilated.

    At first, the world made excuses. Israel had been attacked and was “entitled to defend itself”. But over time, the scale, duration, and clarity of its actions stripped away any remaining ambiguity. When every hospital (38 in total) becomes a target, when entire neighborhoods are turned to rubble, when starvation is used as a weapon — it becomes impossible to speak of “defence” without insulting reason.

    And so the global tide turned. Governments hesitated, but people didn’t. From Berlin to Boston, from Sydney to Cape Town, millions marched — not for Hamas, but for the principle that no state, however victimised, has the right to massacre an entire population in response.

    Israel didn’t just lose global support. It lost the moral framing that had shielded, or it had hid behind, it for decades.

    It had positioned itself as a democracy surrounded by enemies. But democracies don’t bomb refugee camps, don’t livestream the deaths of children, don’t cut off water to two million people and don’t hold hostages’ lives hostage to political calculus.

    Israel’s loss over the last two years hasn’t been military — it’s been existential. The myth of invincibility is broken. The image of moral exceptionalism, cultivated so carefully for decades, has shattered. Netanyahu, once a master manipulator of global opinion, now finds himself isolated, distrusted, even among allies.

    What October 7 exposed was the weakness of Israel in the one arena it believed itself untouchable: control. It wasn’t just a border breach. It was a rupture of the entire apparatus that had kept Gaza contained for years. Fences, drones, AI, intelligence, surveillance — all of it failed.

    And when the mask of control slipped, the response wasn’t strategic — it was criminally vengeful. It was rage mixed with blood thirst. But rage isn’t a strategy, rage destroys. And over two years, rage has destroyed Gaza — and with it, Israel’s future.

    Netanyahu’s calculus: Eternal war
    The war served Netanyahu well—at least at first. It silenced his critics. It unified a fractured public. It postponed trials. It gave him relevance again. But the deeper logic was more disturbing: war is the only environment where his political survival is guaranteed.

    Peace, by contrast, is a threat. Peace requires compromise. Peace requires vision. Netanyahu offers neither.

    Each time a ceasefire neared, his government collapsed it. Each time hostages were close to freedom, the process was torpedoed. To free the hostages would be to end the war. To end the war would be to lose power. This is the twisted loop that has defined Israel’s leadership for two years. Hostages weren’t bargaining chips — they were leverage. They were the excuse for ongoing brutality.

    And the world saw it. Every broken deal, every last-minute sabotage, made it harder to pretend this was about security. By the end of the second year, no serious government believed Netanyahu was acting in good faith. Even allies began to distance themselves, not out of principle — but out of shame. What’s remarkable isn’t that Israel committed war crimes — it’s that it did so while assuming the world would look away.

    For decades, that assumption held. But this time was different.

    Technology turned every phone into a witness. Every child pulled from rubble was broadcast in real time. Every lie was challenged within seconds. The world saw the crimes as they happened — and watched as Israel confirmed them with its own footage.

    No state can withstand that level of exposure and retain legitimacy.

    Even in the US, the last bastion of unconditional support, the consensus cracked. Young people rejected the old narratives. Jewish voices joined Palestinian ones. The streets filled with dissent, not just from the fringe but from the center. Israel’s status as a protected partner is no longer guaranteed.

    In Europe, traditional guilt-driven loyalty gave way to disgust. Governments clung to old alliances, but the public broke ranks. Supporting Israel was no longer an expression of Western solidarity — it became a political liability.

    Ceasefire, but not peace
    Now, with pressure mounting, ceasefire talks are back — this time in Egypt, under the bizarre influence of Donald Trump, whose re-entry into international politics has added a surreal dimension to an already surreal conflict. But few believe the talks will produce anything lasting. Netanyahu has built his power on conflict. He has no incentive to end it.

    Even if a deal is signed, it’s unlikely to hold. The machinery of occupation, the logic of dispossession, the appetite for dominance — it remains intact. This war may pause. But the ideology that fueled it still governs Israel.

    And that’s the real crisis: not the bombs, not the destruction, not even the deaths — but the belief that this can go on forever.

    Israel may declare victory over Hamas. It may claim strategic success in degrading enemy capabilities. But that’s not what the world sees.

    What the world sees is a nation that responded to horror with horror. A nation that lost its soul in pursuit of a war it could never truly win. A nation that allowed vengeance to become policy, and policy to become annihilation.

    Two years later, Gaza lies in ruins. But so does Israel’s credibility. So does the illusion of a “moral army.” So does the narrative of self-defence that once made its case persuasive to the world.

    Hamas lit the match. But Israel poured the fuel, struck the steel, and claimed the fire was purification.

    In the end, what remains isn’t security. It’s ash.

    Elijah J Magnier is a veteran war zone correspondent and political analyst with over 35 years of experience covering the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). He specialises in real-time reporting of politics, strategic and military planning, terrorism and counter-terrorism; his strong analytical skills complement his reporting. His in-depth experience, extensive contacts and thorough political knowledge of complex political situations in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Syria provide his writings with insights balancing the routine misreporting and propaganda in the Western press. He also comments on Al Jazeera.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Pukpuk Treaty and the future of Papua New Guinea-Australia relations

    ANALYSIS: By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent

    The signing of the Papua New Guinea-Australia Mutual Defence Treaty — officially known as the Pukpuk Treaty — marks a defining moment in the modern Pacific order.

    Framed as a “historic milestone”, the pact re-casts security cooperation between Port Moresby and Canberra while stirring deeper debates about sovereignty, dependency, and the shifting balance of power in the region.

    At a joint press conference in Canberra, PNG Prime Minister James Marape called the treaty “a product of geography, not geopolitics”, emphasising the shared neighbourhood and history binding both nations.

    “This Treaty was not conceived out of geopolitics or any other reason, but out of geography, history, and the enduring reality of our shared neighbourhood,” Marape said.

    Described as “two houses with one fence,” the Pukpuk Treaty cements Australia as PNG’s “security partner of choice.” It encompasses training, intelligence, disaster relief, and maritime cooperation while pledging full respect for sovereignty.

    “Papua New Guinea made a strategic and conscious choice – Australia is our security partner of choice. This choice was made not out of pressure or convenience, but from the heart and soul of our coexistence as neighbours,” Marape said.

    For Canberra, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cast the accord as an extension of “family ties” – a reaffirmation that Australia “will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with PNG to ensure a peaceful and secure Pacific family.”

    Intensifying competition
    It comes amid intensifying competition for influence across the Pacific, where security and sport now intersect in Canberra’s broader regional strategy.

    The Treaty promises to bolster the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) through joint training, infrastructure upgrades, and enhanced maritime surveillance. Marape conceded that the country’s forces have long struggled with under-resourcing.

    “The reality is that our Defence Force needs enhanced capacity to defend our sovereign territorial integrity. This Treaty will help us build that capacity – through shared resources, intelligence, technology, and training,” he said.

    Yet, retired Major-General Jerry Singirok, former PNGDF commander, has urged caution.

    “Signing a Defence Pact with Australia for the purposes of strengthening our military capacity and capabilities is most welcomed, but an Act of Parliament must give legal effect to whatever military activities a foreign country intends,” Singirok said in a statement.

    He warned that Sections 202 and 206 of PNG’s Constitution already define the Defence Force’s role and foreign cooperation limits, stressing that any new arrangement must pass parliamentary scrutiny to avoid infringing sovereignty.

    The sovereignty debate
    Singirok’s warning reflects a broader unease in Port Moresby — that the Pukpuk Treaty could re-entrench post-colonial dependency. He described the PNGDF as “retarded and stagnated”, spending just 0.38 percent of GDP on defence, with limited capacity to patrol its vast land and maritime borders.

    “In essence, PNG is in the process of offloading its sovereign responsibilities to protect its national interest and sovereign protection to Australia to fill the gaps and carry,” he wrote.

    “This move, while from face value appeals, has serious consequences from dependency to strategic synergy and blatant disregard to sovereignty at the expense of Australia.”

    Former leaders, including Sir Warren Dutton, have been even more blunt: “If our Defence Force is trained, funded, and deployed under Australian priorities, then whose sovereignty are we defending? Ours — or theirs?”

    Cooperation between the two forces have increased dramatically over the last few years.

    Canberra’s broader strategy: Defence to rugby league
    The Pukpuk Treaty coincides with Australia’s “Pacific Step-up,” a network of economic, security, and cultural initiatives aimed at deepening ties with its neighbours. Central to this is sport diplomacy — most notably the proposed NRL Pacific team, which Albanese and Marape both support.

    Canberra views the NRL deal not simply as a sporting venture but as “soft power in action” — embedding Australian culture and visibility across the Pacific through a sport already seen as a regional passion.

    Marape called it “another platform of shared identity” between PNG and Australia, aligning with the spirit of the Pukpuk Treaty: partnership through shared interests.

    However, critics argue the twin announcements — a defence pact and an NRL team — reveal a coordinated Australian effort to strengthen influence at multiple levels: security, economy, and society.

    The US factor and overall strategy
    The Pukpuk Treaty follows last year’s Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) signed between Papua New Guinea and the United States, which grants US forces access to key PNG military facilities, including Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island.

    That deal drew domestic protests over transparency and the perception of external control.

    The Marape government insisted the arrangement respected PNG’s sovereignty, but combined with the new Australian treaty, it positions the country at the centre of a US-led security network stretching from Hawai’i to Canberra.

    Analysts say the two pacts complement each other — with the US providing strategic hardware and global deterrence, and Australia delivering regional training and operational partnership.

    Together, they represent a deepening of what one defence analyst called “the Pacific’s most consequential alignment since independence”.

    PNG’s deepening security ties with the United States also appear to have shaped its diplomatic posture in the Middle East.

    As part of its broader alignment with Washington, PNG in September 2023 opened an embassy in Jerusalem — becoming one of only a handful of states to do so, and signalling strong support for Israel.

    In recent UN votes on Gaza, PNG has repeatedly voted against ceasefire resolutions, siding with Israel and the US. Some analysts link this to evangelical Christian influence in PNG’s politics and to the strategic expectation of favour with major powers.

    China’s measured response
    Beijing has responded cautiously. China’s Embassy in Port Moresby reiterated that it “respects the independent choices of Pacific nations” but warned that “regional security frameworks should not become exclusive blocs.”

    China has been one of PNG’s longest and most consistent diplomatic partners since formal relations began in 1976.

    China’s role in Papua New Guinea is not limited to diplomatic signalling — it remains a major provider of loans, grants and infrastructure projects across the country, even as the strategic winds shift. Chinese state-owned enterprises and development funds have backed highways, power plants, courts, telecoms and port facilities in PNG.

    In recent years, PNG has signed onto China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and observers count at least 40 Chinese SOEs currently operating in Papua New Guinea, many tied to mining, construction, and trade projects.

    While Marape has repeatedly said PNG “welcomes all partners,” the growing web of Western defence agreements has clearly shifted regional dynamics. China views the Pukpuk Treaty as another signal of Canberra and Washington’s determination to counter its influence in the Pacific — even as Port Moresby maintains that its foreign policy is one of “friends to all, enemies to none”.

    A balancing act
    For Marape, the Treaty is not about choosing sides but strengthening capacity through trust.

    “Our cooperation is built on mutual respect, not dominance; on trust, not imposition. Australia never imposed this on us – this was our proposal, and we thank them for walking with us as equal partners,” he said.

    He stressed that parliamentary ratification under Section 117 of the Constitution will ensure accountability.

    “This is a fireplace conversation between neighbours – Papua New Guinea and Australia. We share this part of the earth forever, and together we will safeguard it for the generations to come,” he added.

    The road ahead
    Named after the Tok Pisin word for crocodile — pukpuk, a symbol of endurance and guardianship — the Treaty embodies both trust and caution. Its success will depend on transparency, parliamentary oversight, and a shared understanding of what “mutual defence” means in practice.

    As PNG moves to ratify the agreement, it stands at a delicate crossroads — between empowerment and dependency, regional cooperation and strategic competition.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NZ flotilla members arrive in Jordan, state news agency says

    RNZ News

    More than 100 people who were part of the intercepted flotilla to Gaza — including those from New Zealand — have entered Jordan.

    The country’s state news agency said the 131 people entered through the King Hussein Bridge after arrangements to ensure their safe passage.

    They reportedly included people from several countries including New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

    The father of Samuel Leason — one of the three from New Zealand held by Israel — told RNZ his son, Rana Hamida and Youssef Sammour had been released.

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has confirmed the three New Zealanders detained by Israel have been released.

    An MFAT spokesperson said on Wednesday morning that the trio were on board buses containing other deportees which have now crossed into Jordan.

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) said on Tuesday night it did not respond to non-urgent queries after hours, and would respond on Wednesday morning.

    Initially in disbelief
    Adi Leason said he was initially in disbelief when his son Samuel called him late on Tuesday night. He said it was a quick call and it was fantastic to hear the teenager’s voice.

    “It was little taste, just a little moment where the connection’s made and you don’t know … someone’s okay until they tell you themselves. And Samuel’s told us in no uncertain terms — he’s back.”

    Leason said his son sounded surprisingly good.

    “He sounded really buoyant and hopeful and he just kept saying, ‘I’ve got so many stories dad, I’ve got so many stories.’

    “He said he’d been incarcerated in a cage with Nelson Mandela’s grandson, and they’d become buddies.”

    Leason said he understood the flotilla participants had spent time in a big hall, “kinda being paraded and berated by the authorities”.

    “Then the other times when they were crammed in … Samuel mentioned 11 crammed into a cell at one time.”

    Fellow New Zealanders
    He said Samuel confirmed that he was with fellow New Zealanders, Rana Hamida and Youssef Sammour, “that they were together, that they were free”.

    Leason said his son was hoping to be back in the county by the end of the week.

    Earlier, Leason said he thought the New Zealanders and Australians were being kept together.

    “And they are being put up in a hotel at their — just to stress this — at their own expense … so, no cost to the taxpayer.”

    He understood the New Zealanders’ passports had been returned to them, but their other personal belongings had not.

    “We don’t know the exact details on that. Their passports are in their possession which is going to speed up the ability to book flights and get home as soon as possible.”

    A welcome home celebration was being planned for Saturday, Leason said.

    Relieved ordeal is over
    Meanwhile, the partner of a New Zealand doctor detained by Israel is relieved the ordeal is over after confirmation of her release.

    New Zealand-born Bianca Webb-Pullman was part of the aid flotilla to Gaza and was counted officially as Australian because she was using an Australian passport.

    She and other participants are now in Jordan.

    Stephen Rowe said it had been a sleepless week.

    “It was terrible, there was no way we could really contact her, we were left completely in the dark.

    “And of course we were aware of reports coming out of conditions in the prison and how bad they were, so yeah, it was incredibly worrying.”

    He said he was “extremely relieved” last night to learn of her release and said Webb-Pullman had since managed to call her mother.

    ‘Obviously shaken’
    “She’s obviously shaken . . .  But as far as I know, she’s okay.”

    Rowe said he planned to fly to Melbourne to meet Webb-Pullman at the end of the week.

    “It’s been just a horrible experience but that part of it is over and I know that she and the rest of the people on the flotilla don’t really want this to be about them.

    “They really want this to be much more about the people of Gaza and ending their suffering.

    “I know that the reason Bianca was on the flotilla was that she’d just finally had enough.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • John Hobbs: Why New Zealand’s repugnant stance over Palestine damages our global standing

    New Zealanders deserve to know how the country’s foreign policy is made, writes John Hobbs.

    ANALYSIS: By John Hobbs

    The New Zealand government remains unwilling to support Palestinian statehood recognition at the United Nations General Assembly.

    This is a disgraceful position which gives support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and seriously undermines our standing. Of the 193 states of the UN, 157 have now provided statehood recognition. New Zealand is not one of them.

    The purpose of this opinion piece is to highlight the troubling lack of transparency in how the government deliberates on its foreign policy choices.

    Government decisions and calculations on foreign policy are being made behind closed doors with limited public scrutiny, unlike other areas of policy, where at least a modicum of transparency occurs.

    The government has, over the past two years, exceeded itself in obscuring the process it goes through, without explaining its approach to the question of Palestine.

    New Zealand still inconceivably lauds the impossible goal of a two-state solution, the hallmark of successive governments’ foreign policy positions on the question of Palestine, but does everything to not bring about its realisation.

    To try to understand the basis for New Zealand’s approach to Gaza and the risks generated by the government’s lack of direct action against Israel, I placed an Official Information Request (OIA) with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Winston Peters. I requested copies of advice that had been received on New Zealand’s obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948.

    Plausible case against Israel
    My initial OIA request was placed in January 2024, after the International Court of Justice had determined there was a plausible case that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. At that point, about 27,000 people in Gaza had been killed, mainly women and children. My request was denied.

    I put the same OIA request to the minister in June 2025. By this time, nearly 63,000 people had been killed by Israel. At the time of my second request there was abundant evidence reported by UN agencies of Israel’s tactics. Again, my request for information was denied.

    I appealed the refusal by the minister of foreign affairs to the Office of the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman reviewed the case and accepted that the minister of foreign affairs was within his right to refuse to provide the material.

    The basis for the decision was that the advice given to the minister was subject to legal professional privilege, and that the right to protect legally privileged advice was not outweighed by the public interest in gaining access to that advice.

    The refusal by the minister and the Ombudsman to make the advice available is deeply worrying. Although I am not questioning the importance of protecting legal professional privilege, I cannot imagine an example that could be more pressing in terms of “public interest” than the complicity of nation states in genocide.

    Indeed, the threshold of legal professional privilege was never meant to be absolute. Parliament, in designing the OIA regime, had this in mind when it deemed that legal professional privilege could, under exceptional circumstances, be outweighed by the public interest.

    The Office of the Ombudsman has ruled in the past that legal professional privilege is not an absolute; it accepted that legal advice received by the Ministry of Health on embryo research had to be released, for example, as it was in the public interest to do so, even though it was legally privileged.

    Puzzling statement
    The Ombudsman concludes his response to my request with the puzzling statement that the “general public interest in accountability and transparency in government decision-making on this issue is best reflected in the decisions made after considering the legal advice, rather than what is contained in the legal advice.”

    The point I was trying to clarify is whether the government is acting in a manner that reflects the advice it has received. If it has received advice that New Zealand must take particular steps to fulfil its obligations under the Genocide Convention, and the government has chosen to ignore that advice, then surely New Zealanders have a right to know.

    The content of the advice is extremely relevant: it would identify any contradictions between the advice the government received and its actions. Through public access to such information, governments can be held to account for the decisions they make.

    The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, concluded on September 16 that Israeli authorities and security forces committed four out of the five underlying acts of genocide. Illegal settlers have been let loose in the West Bank under the protection of the Israeli army to harass and kill local Palestinians and occupy further areas of Palestinian land.

    At the UN General Assembly, the New Zealand government took a stance that is squarely in support of the Israeli genocide, also supported by the United States. International law clearly forbids the act of genocide, in Gaza as much as anywhere else, including the attacks on Palestinian civilians living under occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

    In 2015-16, New Zealand co-sponsored a UN Security Council resolution that condemned the illegality of Israel’s actions in the Occupied West Bank, with the intention of supporting a Palestinian state. New Zealand’s recent posture at the General Assembly undermines this principled precedent.

    That New Zealand could not bring itself to offer the olive branch of statehood recognition is morally repugnant and severely damages our standing in the international community. The New Zealand public has the right to demand transparency in its government’s decision-making.

    The advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the minister cannot be hidden behind the veil of legal professional privilege.

    John Hobbs is a doctoral student at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Australia’s National Press Club blocks Hedges’ Gaza media talk, lines up former Israeli officer

    One Path Network

    The National Press Club of Australia has abruptly cancelled a scheduled address by renowned journalist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Chris Hedges, who was set to deliver a talk titled “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists”.

    The event, planned for October 20, was to expose how Western media amplify Israeli propaganda while silencing voices documenting Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

    Instead, the Press Club is reportedly considering Israel’s ambassador, retired IDF lieutenant-colonel Amir Maimon, as a replacement speaker, a move critics say perfectly illustrates the very censorship and bias Hedges intended to discuss.

    Amid an ongoing genocide in Gaza, where more than 278 Palestinian journalists have been killed, many deliberately targeted, the Press Club’s decision to silence a veteran war correspondent while platforming a representative of the Israeli occupation underscores a disturbing alignment with state propaganda.

    It signals a betrayal of journalistic ethics and Australia’s public right to hear unfiltered truths about Israel’s war crimes.

    Rather than promoting balance, the National Press Club has chosen complicity, showing that press freedom ends where Israeli interests begin.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Local journalists and fixers are dying at unprecedented rates in Gaza. Can anyone protect them?

    ANALYSIS: By Simon Levett, University of Technology Sydney

    Journalist Mariam Dagga was just 33 when she was brutally killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on August 25.

    As a freelance photographer and videographer, she had captured the suffering in Gaza through indelible images of malnourished children and grief-stricken families. In her will, she told her colleagues not to cry and her 13-year-old son to make her proud.

    Dagga was killed alongside four other journalists — and 16 others — in an attack on a hospital that has drawn widespread condemnation and outrage.

    This attack followed the killings of six Al Jazeera journalists by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in a tent housing journalists in Gaza City earlier on August 10. The dead included Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anas al-Sharif.

    A montage of killed Palestinian journalists
    A montage of killed Palestinian journalists . . . Shireen Abu Akleh (from left), Mariam Dagga, Hossam Shabat, Anas Al-Sharif and Yasser Murtaja. Image: Montage/The Conversation

    Israel’s nearly two-year war in Gaza is among the deadliest in modern times. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which has tracked journalist deaths globally since 1992, has counted a staggering 189 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since the war began. Two other counts more widely cited have ranged between 248 and 272

    Many of the journalists worked as freelancers for major news organisations since Israel has banned foreign correspondents from entering Gaza.

    In addition, the organisation has confirmed the killings of two Israeli journalists, along with six journalists killed in Israel’s strikes on Lebanon.

     

    ‘It was very traumatising for me’
    I went to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in Israel and Ramallah in the West Bank in 2019 to conduct part of my PhD research on the available protections for journalists in conflict zones.

    During that time, I interviewed journalists from major international outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CNN, BBC and others, in addition to local Palestinian freelance journalists and fixers. I also interviewed a Palestinian journalist working for Al Jazeera English, with whom I remained in contact until recently.

    I did not visit Gaza due to safety concerns. However, many of the journalists had reported from there and were familiar with the conditions, which were dangerous even before the war.

    Osama Hassan, a local journalist, told me about working in the West Bank:

    “There are no rules, there’s no safety. Sometimes, when settlers attack a village, for example, we go to cover, but Israeli soldiers don’t respect you, they don’t respect anything called Palestinian […] even if you are a journalist.”

    Nuha Musleh, a fixer in Jerusalem, described an incident that occurred after a stone was thrown towards IDF soldiers:

    “[…] they started shooting right and left – sound bombs, rubber bullets, one of which landed in my leg. I was taken to hospital. The correspondent also got injured. The Israeli cameraman also got injured. So all of us got injured, four of us.

    “It was very traumatising for me. I never thought that a sound bomb could be that harmful. I was in hospital for a good week. Lots of stitches.”

    Better protections for local journalists and fixers
    My research found there is very little support for local journalists and fixers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in terms of physical protection, and no support in terms of their mental health.

    International law mandates that journalists are protected as civilians in conflict zones under the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols. However, these laws have not historically extended protections specific to the needs of journalists.

    Media organisations, media rights groups and governments have been unequivocal in their demands that Israel take greater precautions to protect journalists in Gaza and investigate strikes like the one that killed Mariam Dagga.

    London-based artist Nishita Jha (@NishSwish) illustrated this tribute to the slain Gaza journalist Mariam Dagga
    London-based artist Nishita Jha (@NishSwish) illustrated this tribute to the slain Gaza journalist Mariam Dagga. Image: The Fuller Project

    Sadly, there is seemingly little media organisations can do to help their freelance contributors in Gaza beyond issuing statements noting concern for their safety, lobbying Israel to allow evacuations, and demanding access for foreign reporters to enter the strip.

    International correspondents typically have training on reporting from war zones, in addition to safety equipment, insurance and risk assessment procedures. However, local journalists and fixers in Gaza do not generally have access to the same protections, despite bearing the brunt of the effects of war, which includes mass starvation.

    Despite the enormous difficulties, I believe media organisations must strive to meet their employment law obligations, to the best of their ability, when it comes to local journalists and fixers. This is part of their duty of care.

    For example, research shows fixers have long been the “most exploited and persecuted people” contributing to the production of international news. They are often thrust into precarious situations without hazardous environment training or medical insurance. And many times, they are paid very little for their work.

    Local journalists and fixers in Gaza must be paid properly by the media organisations hiring them. This should take into consideration not just the woeful conditions they are forced to work and live in, but the immense impact of their jobs on their mental health.

    As the global news director for Agence France-Presse said recently, paying local contributors is very difficult — they often bear huge transaction costs to access their money.

    “We try to compensate by paying more to cover that,” he said.

    But he did not address whether the agency would change its security protocols and training for conflict zones, given journalists themselves are being targeted in Gaza in their work.

    These local journalists are literally putting their lives on the line to show the world what’s happening in Gaza. They need greater protections.

    As Ammar Awad, a local photographer in the West Bank, told me:

    “The photographer does not care about himself. He cares about the pictures, how he can shoot good pictures, to film something good.

    “But he needs to be in a good place that is safe for him.”The Conversation

    Simon Levett is a PhD candidate in public international law, University of Technology Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Chris Hedges: The betrayal of Palestinian journalists

    Western reporters are full partners in the genocide. They amplify Israeli lies, which they know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel.

    ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

    There are two types of war correspondents. The first type does not attend press conferences. They do not beg generals and politicians for interviews. They take risks to report from combat zones.

    They send back to their viewers or readers what they see, which is almost always diametrically opposed to official narratives. This first type, in every war, is a tiny minority.

    Then there is the second type, the inchoate blob of self-identified war correspondents who play at war. Despite what they tell editors and the public, they have no intention of putting themselves in danger.

    They are pleased with the Israeli ban on foreign reporters into Gaza. They plead with officials for background briefings and press conferences. They collaborate with their government minders who impose restrictions and rules that keep them out of combat.

    They slavishly disseminate whatever they are fed by officials, much of which is a lie, and pretend it is news. They join little jaunts arranged by the military — dog and pony shows — where they get to dress up and play soldier and visit outposts where everything is controlled and choreographed.

    The mortal enemy of these poseurs are the real war reporters, in this case, Palestinian journalists in Gaza. These reporters expose them as toadies and sycophants, discrediting nearly everything they disseminate. For this reason, the poseurs never pass up a chance to question the veracity and motives of those in the field.

    I watched these snakes do this repeatedly to my colleague Robert Fisk.

    Took huge hit
    When war reporter Ben Anderson arrived at the hotel where journalists covering the war in Liberia were encamped — in his words getting “drunk” at bars “on expenses,” having affairs and exchanging “information rather than actually going out and getting information” — his image of war reporters took a huge hit.

    “I thought, finally, I’m amongst my heroes,” Anderson recalls. “This is where I’ve wanted to be for years. And then me and the cameraman I was with — who knew the rebels very well — he took us out for about three weeks with the rebels.

    “We came back to Monrovia. The guys in the hotel bar said, ‘Where have you been? We thought you’d gone home.’ We said, ‘We went out to cover the war. Isn’t that our job? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?’

    “The romantic view I had of foreign correspondents was suddenly destroyed in Liberia,” he went on. “I thought, actually, a lot of these guys are full of shit. They’re not even willing to leave the hotel, let alone leave the safety of the capital and actually do some reporting.”

    You can see an interview I did with Anderson here.

    This dividing line, which occurred in every war I covered, defines the reporting on the genocide in Gaza. It is not a divide of professionalism or culture. Palestinian reporters expose Israeli atrocities and implode Israeli lies. The rest of the press does not.

    Palestinian journalists, targeted and assassinated by Israel, pay — as many great war correspondents do — with their lives, although in far greater numbers.

    Israel has murdered 245 journalists in Gaza by one count and more than 273 by another. The goal is to shroud the genocide in darkness.

    No other war close
    No war I covered comes close to these numbers of dead. Since October 7, Israel has killed more journalists “than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.” Journalists in Palestine leave wills and recorded videos to be read or played at their death.

    A funeral for Palestine TV correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab
    A funeral for Palestine TV correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab. Hatab was killed, along with his family members, in an airstrike on his home in Khan Yunis, Gaza. Image: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images

    The colleagues of these Palestinian journalists in the Western press broadcast from the border fence with Gaza decked out in flak jackets and helmets, where they have as much chance of being hit by shrapnel or a bullet as being struck by an asteroid. They scurry like lemmings to briefings by Israeli officials. They are not only the enemies of truth, but also the enemies of journalists doing the real work of war reporting.

    When Iraqi troops attacked the Saudi border town of Khafji during the first Gulf War, Saudi soldiers fled in panic. Two French photographers and I watched frantic soldiers commandeering fire trucks and racing south. US Marines pushed the Iraqis back.

    But in Riyadh, the press was told of our gallant Saudi allies defending their homeland. Once fighting ended, the press bus stopped a few miles down the road from Khafji. The pool reporters clambered out, escorted by military minders. They did stand-ups with the distant sound of artillery and smoke as a backdrop and repeated the lies the Pentagon wanted to tell.

    Meanwhile, the two photographers and I were detained and beaten by enraged Saudi military police, furious that we had documented the panicked flight of Saudi forces, as we tried to leave Khafji.

    My refusal to abide by press restrictions in the first Gulf War saw the other New York Times reporters in Saudi Arabia write a letter to the foreign editor saying I was ruining the paper’s relationship with the military. If not for the intervention of R.W. “Johnny” Apple, who had covered Vietnam, I would have been sent back to New York.

    I do not fault anyone for not wanting to go into a war zone. This is a sign of normality. It is rational. It is understandable. Those of us who volunteer to go into combat — my colleague Clyde Haberman at The New York Times once quipped “Hedges will parachute into a war with or without a parachute” — have obvious personality defects.

    Pretend war correspondents
    But I fault those who pretend to be war correspondents. They do tremendous damage. They peddle false narratives. They mask reality. They serve as witting — or unwitting — propagandists. They discredit the voices of the victims and exonerate the killers.

    When I covered the war in El Salvador, before I worked for The New York Times, the paper’s correspondent dutifully regurgitated whatever the embassy fed her. This had the effect of making my editors — as well as editors of the other correspondents who did report the war– question our veracity and “impartiality.”

    It made it harder for readers to understand what was happening. The false narrative neutered and often overpowered the real one.

    The slander used to discredit my Palestinian colleagues — claiming they are members of Hamas — is sadly familiar. Many Palestinian reporters I know in Gaza are, in fact, quite critical of Hamas. But even if they have ties with Hamas, so what?

    Israel’s attempt to justify targeting journalists from the Hamas-run al-Aqsa media network is also a violation of Article 79 of the Geneva Convention.

    I worked with reporters and photographers who had a wide variety of beliefs, including Marxist-Leninists in Central America. This did not prevent them from being honest. I was in Bosnia and Kosovo with a Spanish cameraman, Miguel Gil Moreno, who was later killed with my friend Kurt Schork.

    Miguel was a member of the right-wing Catholic group Opus Dei. He was also a journalist of tremendous courage, great compassion and moral probity, despite his opinions about Spain’s fascist ruler Francisco Franco. He did not lie.

    Seeking to crush
    In every war I covered, I was attacked as supporting or belonging to whatever group the government, including the US government, was seeking to crush. I was accused of being a tool of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, Hamas, the Muslim-led government in Bosnia and the Kosovo Liberation Army.

    John Simpson of the BBC, like many Western reporters, argues that the “world needs honest, unbiased eyewitness reporting to help people make up their minds about the major issues of our time. This has so far been impossible in Gaza.”

    The assumption that if Western reporters were in Gaza the coverage would improve is risible. Trust me. It would not.

    Israel bans the foreign press because there is a bias in Europe and the United States in favour of reporting by Western reporters. Israel is aware that the scale of the genocide is too vast for Western outlets to hide or obscure, despite all the ink and airtime they give to Israeli and US apologists.

    Israel also cannot continue its systematic campaign of annihilation of journalists in Gaza if it has to contend with foreign media in its midst.

    Israeli lies amplified by Western media outlets, including my former employer The New York Times, are worthy of Pravda. Beheaded babies. Babies cooked in ovens. Mass rape by Hamas. Errant Palestinian rockets that cause explosions at hospitals and massacre civilians. Secret command tunnels and command centers in schools and hospitals. Journalists who direct Hamas rocket units. Protesters of the genocide on college campuses who are antisemites and supporters of Hamas.

    Israel ‘lies like it breathes’
    I covered the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis, much of that time in Gaza, for seven years. If there is one indisputable fact, it is that Israel lies like it breathes. The decision by Western reporters to give credibility to these lies, to give them the same weight as documented Israeli atrocities, is a cynical game.

    The reporters know these lies are lies. But they, and the news outlets that employ them, prize access — in this case access to Israeli and US officials — above truth. The reporters, as well as their editors and publishers, fear becoming targets of Israel and the powerful Israel lobby.

    There is no cost for betraying the Palestinians. They are powerless.

    Call those lies out and you will swiftly find your requests for briefings and interviews with officials rebuffed. You won’t be invited by press officers to participate in staged visits to Israeli military units. You and your news organisation will be viciously attacked.

    You will be left out in the cold. Your editors will terminate your assignment or your employment. This is not good for careers. And so, the lies are dutifully repeated, no matter how absurd.

    It is pathetic watching these reporters and their news outlets, as Fisk writes, fight “like tigers to join these ‘pools’ in which they would be censored, restrained and deprived of all freedom of movement on the battlefield”.

    When Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, along with Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri, and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha, and Mariam Dagga — who had worked with several media outlets, including the Associated Press — were killed in a “double tap” strike — designed to kill first responders arriving to treat casualties from initial strikes — at Nasser Medical Complex, how did Western news agencies respond?

    ‘Hamas camera’
    “Israeli military says strikes on Gaza hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera,” the Associated Press reported.

    “IDF claims hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera,” announced CNN.

    “Israel army says six ‘terrorists’ killed in Monday strikes on Gaza hospital,” the AFP headline read.

    “Initial inquiry says Hamas camera was target of Israeli strike that killed journalists,” Reuters said.

    “Israel claims troops saw Hamas camera before deadly hospital attack,” Sky News explained.

    Just for the record, the camera belonged to Reuters, which said Israel was “fully aware” the news agency was filming from the hospital.

    When Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and three other journalists were killed on August 10 in their media tent near al-Shifa Hospital, how was it reported in the Western press?

    Pulitzer prize-winner
    “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” Reuters titled its story, despite the fact al-Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.

    The German newspaper Bild, published a front page story headlined: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.”

    The barrage of Israeli lies amplified and given credibility by the Western press violates a fundamental tenet of journalism, the duty to transmit the truth to the viewer or reader.

    It legitimizes mass slaughter. It refuses to hold Israel to account. It betrays Palestinian journalists, those reporting and being killed in Gaza. And it exposes the bankruptcy of Western journalists, whose primary attributes are careerism and cowardice.

    Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Walden Bello on Gaza and the media silence: ‘It isn’t fear of the Zionists. It is far worse’

    Israel is boosting its Zionist influence in the Pacific. Australia has exposed such media influence. The media in the Philippines is now under scrutiny. And Aotearoa New Zealand?

    COMMENTARY: By Walden Bello

    When the Flores and Velasco articles and posts whitewashing Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza first came out a few days ago, I was waiting for people in the Philippine media to criticise and denounce them since they were so obviously hack pieces that did not meet the minimal standards of decent journalism.

    I waited and waited, until I realised that there were no media people or organisations that were going to speak up.

    Where were the progressive and liberal voices, apart from those of Richard Heydarian and Inday Espina Varona?

    Walden Bello's earlier article in Asia Pacific Report on August 31
    Walden Bello’s earlier article in Asia Pacific Report on August 31 exposing “hack propaganda”. Image: APR screenshot

    This was the reason I felt compelled to issue the statement condemning the sordid reporting of Flores and Velasco.

    I was not out to do an expose, but that’s what it effectively became. In my subsequent posts, I raised the question of what was the reason just two journalists were willing to challenge the stories.

    Was it a case of circling the wagons to protect errant colleagues? Was it fear of ties with the Israeli state being exposed by the Israelis in retaliation? Was it fear of physical or political reprisals by the Israelis?

    These may have played a part, but the deafening silence meant there was something bigger at work.

    This morning I received a long text from a prominent media practitioner that provided the answer. It’s not fear. It’s actually worse: agreement with Zionist ideology and policies, including genocide.

    That the person asked me not to divulge his name for fear of suffering retribution from his colleagues stunned me. OMG, is this how deep the rot is with our media? ? Here is his disconcerting revelation to me:

    ‘Most are prejudiced’
    “Yes some are scared, but honestly most of them actually are prejudiced against Muslims and side with the Zionists anytime.

    “Most believe in the US religious fascist Zionist narrative, and also cannot accept that the world has changed — that the US is no longer the unipower it was decades ago, and that Russia, China, India and BRICS are on the rise.

    “And also, you should hear them talk about how Filipino Muslims should be wiped off the face of the earth.

    “These are college graduates from UP [University of the Philippines], UST [University of Santo Tomas], Ateneo who studied media.

    “Whenever I would voice empathy for the Muslim minority here, or Palestinians, I’d be called stupid. Same also because I refused to join in the corruption.

    “Oh, and also they have the same prejudice against China and the Chinese and mistake the Japanese imperial army atrocities as something China did to us!

    “Also this is not limited to media. I have batchmates from UP Diliman, medical doctors, lawyers, engineers who also have the same prejudices.”

    He added: “Some of these journalists have won awards abroad.”

    Walden Bello is a Filipino academic and analyst of Global South issues who was awarded Amnesty International Philippines’ Most Distinguished Defender of Human Rights Award in 2023. He has also served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • 250+ media ‘black out’ front pages and broadcasts to protest Israeli killing of journalists in Gaza

    Reporters Without Borders

    In an unprecedented international operation organised by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the global campaigning movement Avaaz, more than 250 news outlets from over 70 countries simultaneously blacked out their front pages and website homepages, and interrupt their broadcasting to condemn the murder of journalists by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.

    Together, these newsrooms — including Asia Pacific Report, Evening Report and Pacific Media Watch — have demanded an end to impunity for Israeli crimes against Gaza’s reporters, the emergency evacuation of reporters seeking to leave the Strip and that foreign press be granted independent access to the territory.

    For the first time in recent history, newsrooms across the world have coordinated a large-scale editorial protest in solidarity with journalists in Gaza.

    The front pages of print newspapers were published in black with a strong written message.

    The Reporters Without Borders "blacked out" website home page
    The Reporters Without Borders “blacked out” website home page today. Image: RSF screenshot APR

    Television and radio stations interrupted their programmes to broadcast a joint statement.

    Online media outlets blacked out their homepages or published a banner as a sign of solidarity.

    Individual journalists have also joined the campaign and posted messages on their social media accounts.

    About 220 journalists have been killed during Israel’s current war on Gaza since it began on 7 October 2023, according to RSF data.

    However, independent analysis by Al Jazeera reveals that at least 278 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel over the past 22 months, including 10 from the network.

    On the night of August 10 alone, the Israeli army killed six journalists in a targeted strike against Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif.

    Al Jazeera's "blacked out" for Gaza journalists website home page
    Al Jazeera’s “blacked out” for Gaza journalists website home page today. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    Fifteen days later, on August 25, the Israeli army killed five journalists in two consecutive strikes.

    Parallel to these killings, the Israeli army has barred foreign journalists from entering the Strip for nearly two years, leaving Palestinian journalists to cover the war while under fire.

    “At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed.,” said Thibaut Bruttin, director-general of RSF.

    “This isn’t just a war against Gaza, it’s a war against journalism. Journalists are being targeted, killed and defamed. Without them, who will alert us to the famine?

    Who will expose war crimes? Who will show us the genocides?


    “Shame on our profession for silence.”     Video: Al Jazeera

    “Ten years after the unanimous adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2222, the whole world is witnessing the erosion of guarantees of international law for the protection of journalists.

    “Solidarity from newsrooms and journalists around the world is essential. They should be thanked — this fraternity between reporters is what will save press freedom.

    “Solidarity will save all freedoms.”

    The "blacked out" home page of Asia Pacific Report
    The “blacked out” home page of Asia Pacific Report today.

    In line with the call launched by RSF and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in June, the media outlets involved in this campaign are making four demands.

    • We demand the protection of Palestinian journalists and an end to the impunity for crimes perpetrated by the Israeli army against them in the Gaza Strip;
    • We demand the foreign press be granted independent access to the Gaza Strip;
    • We demand that governments across the world host Palestinian journalists seeking evacuation from Gaza; and
    • With the opening of the 80th UN General Assembly taking place in eight days, we demand strong action from the international community and call on the UN Security Council to stop the Israeli army’s crimes against Palestinian journalists

    More than 250 media outlets in over 70 countries around the world prepared to join the operation on Monday, 1 September.

    They include numerous daily newspapers and news websites: Mediapart (France), Al Jazeera (Qatar), The Independent (United Kingdom), +972 Magazine (Israel/Palestine), Local Call (Israel/Palestine), InfoLibre (Spain), Forbidden Stories (France), Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany), Der Freitag (Germany), RTVE (Spain), L’Humanité (France), The New Arab (United Kingdom), Daraj (Lebanon), New Bloom (Taiwan), Photon Media (Hong Kong), La Voix du Centre (Cameroon), Guinée Matin (Guinea), The Point (Gambia), L’Orient Le Jour (Lebanon), Media Today (South Korea), N1 (Serbia), KOHA (Kosovo), Public Interest Journalism Lab (Ukraine), Il Dubbio (Italy), Intercept Brasil (Brazil), Agência Pública (Brazil), Le Soir (Belgium), La Libre (Belgium), Le Desk (Morocco), Semanario Brecha (Uruguay), Asia Pacific Report, Evening Report and Stuff (New Zealand) and many others.

    International media have been denied free access to the Gaza Strip since the war broke out.

    A few selected outlets have embedded reporters with Israeli army units operating in Gaza under the condition of strict military censorship.

    Israel has killed at least 63,459 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

    Pacific Media Watch cooperates with Reporters Without Borders.

    One of Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie's "blacked out" social media pages
    One of Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie’s “blacked out” social media pages today. APR screenshot

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Police plan for march which will shut Auckland Harbour Bridge this month

    RNZ News

    New Zealand police say planning is well underway ahead of a pro-Palestinian march that will shut the Auckland Harbour bridge later this month.

    The organisers are expecting thousands to turn out for the “March for Humanity” which is due to be held on September 13.

    Police told RNZ they were working with partner agencies, and expected to inform the public on how the march would impact on them.

    A protester holds up a "March The Bridge" flyer for Gaza
    A protester holds up a “March The Bridge” flyer for Gaza at last Saturday’s rally in Auckland’s Queen Street. Image: APR

    They said they remained in contact with the march organisers.

    The organisers say it will be a follow-on from recent protest marches that walked over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Brisbane’s Victoria Bridge.

    The organisers say it will be a follow-on from recent protest marches that walked over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Brisbane’s Victoria Bridge.

    Those events attracted 50,000 to 300,000 protesters.

    The Auckland march is being organised by Aotearoa for Palestine, a coalition of Palestinians and tangata whenua. They want the government to sanction Israel for what they say is a genocide being carried out in Gaza.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    Auckland harbour bridge at sunset
    Auckland Harbour Bridge . . . following on from recent protest marches that walked over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Brisbane’s Victoria Bridge in Australia. Image: RNZ/Tom Kitchin

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • West Papuan civil society groups protest over brutal security forces crackdown – 17 arrests

    Asia Pacific Report

    West Papuan civil society and solidarity networks are calling for urgent action over a brutal Indonesian security forces crackdown that has led to a wave of arrests and political repression.

    Protests erupted in Sorong, in the western part of the Melanesian territory, on Wednesday over the transfer of 4 political prisoners out of the territory.

    One man, Michael Walerubun, 28, was seriously injured when police shot him in the abdomen, said activists.

    The transferred prisoners, Abraham Goram Gaman, Nikson May, Piter Robaha, and Maxi Sangkek, are facing “treason” charges, which are commonly used by Indonesian authorities against independence supporters in West Papua.

    The four men were arrested on April 28 after they requested “peace talks” in the city of Sorong.

    Transferring political prisoners to other islands in the Indonesian archipelago separates them from families and support networks, and is a common tactic used by Indonesian authorities.

    The umbrella group Pro-Democracy Papuan People’s Solidarity called for the community to protest against the four prisoners’ removal on Monday, August 25, that continued for three days.

    Enforced relocation
    Heavy-handed police attempts to disperse the protest, and the enforced relocation of all the prisoners despite community opposition, led to an escalation.

    Several spontaneous protest actions followed, with tyres set ablaze and government buildings attacked, including the governor’s private residence.

    Police have arbitrarily arrested 17 people, alleging involvement with property damage during the protests. Footage shows police discharging firearms, and armoured vehicles on patrol, through the afternoon and into the night in Sorong city and was continuing this weekend.

    Women leader and former political prisoner Sayang Mandabayan has also been targeted.

    She was accused by authorities as the so-called “organiser” of protests that followed the  August 25 action.

    Sayang Mandabayan’s home was attacked at around 4pm by heavily armed police officers who surrounded the building and shouted her name, demanding she present herself for arrest.

    Police broke down door
    Police then broke down the front door and attempted to force their way into the family’s home.

    Sayang’s mother and pregnant niece refused them entry, blocking in the doorway and demanding they leave, said a statement from the Merdeka West Papua Support Network.

    After a standoff of almost an hour, police arrested Sayang’s husband, Yan Manggaprouw, who remained in custody with 16 other members of the pro-democracy solidarity.

    The attack on Sayang Mandabayan’s home, and the arrest of her husband, marks a further escalation in the range of repressive tactics commonly used against West Papuan human rights defenders.

    “This is a deliberate campaign to criminalise political leadership, intimidate women defenders, and silence West Papua’s democratic voices,” Australia-based West Papuan rights advocate Ronny Kareni said.

    “In West Papua talking about peace is seen as treason. These raids, transfers, and arrests are not isolated. They are part of a long-standing pattern of state systemic violence designed to crush West Papua’s movement for justice.

    “Leaders like Sayang Mandabayan are not criminals — they are voices of democracy that the Pacific must defend.”

    The timing of the crackdown comes just before the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders’ Meeting in the Solomon Islands on September 8-12.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • How two Filipino ‘journalists’ took part in Israeli whitewashing of genocide

    COMMENTARY: By Walden Bello

    I am alarmed by reports that Filipino journalists were flown in by the Israeli government to participate in what is essentially a whitewashing campaign for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

    At least two articles, atrocious excuses for journalism, have come out of this trip.One is a piece by Wilson Lee Flores for The Philippine Star, entitled “Israel beyond the headlines: Where ancient stones speak.”

    By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to “the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,” Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes, akin to writing a travel blog about Nazi Germany.

    In a Facebook post, Flores further parrots Israel’s propaganda by highlighting how the brutal IDF employs both men and women to carry out atrocities, a cynical weaponisation of “feminism.”

    Even more repulsive is the piece from the Daily Tribune about “Gaza’s Fake Famine” from Vernon Velasco. It is a parody of a story, overly simplifying the famine of Gaza to a matter of food truck logistics, and uncritically quoting an IDF Officer.

    Fittingly, the article contains three photos of shipping containers but not a single photo of a human being.

    This runs counter to facts laid out by UN officials, including Joyce Msuya, the UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, who points out how half a million people face “starvation, destitution, and death”.

    ‘Moral failure’ over Gaza
    A study published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet points to the “moral failure” as 1-2 million people live in the most extreme food insecurity level (phase 5 or catastrophe famine) according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

    "By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to 'the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,' Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes"
    “By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to ‘the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,’ Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes, akin to writing a travel blog about Nazi Germany.” Image: TPS “Life” screenshot APR

    This famine unfolds as shameless journalists make food vlogs kilometres away.

    The facts are clear. At least 63,000 people have been killed and 150,000 injured, with women and children making up a significant portion of the casualties. The UN has also reported that nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s population (around 1.9 million people) has been displaced.

    Widespread destruction has left over 70 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, including more than 94 percent of hospitals either damaged or destroyed. No amount of narrative spin or “complexity” can sanitise this genocide.

    As we celebrate National Press Freedom Day, I implore friends in the press to not fall for the lies of the murderous Zionist regime.

    It would be tragic for journalists to provide cover for a regime that has murdered at least 240 of their peers.

    Filipino journalists must shed the unhealthy culture of silence and non-intervention, and not hesitate to criticise errant colleagues.

    They must make it clear that these recipients of Zionist gold are a disgrace to Philippine journalism. The Philippine government must look into the activities of the Israeli Embassy and their manipulation of local media narratives to sanitise their genocide.

    Filipino journalists must stand in solidarity with their slain colleagues abroad, not with their killers.

    Walden Bello is a Filipino academic and analyst of Global South issues who was awarded Amnesty International Philippines’ Most Distinguished Defender of Human Rights Award in 2023. He has also served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Two state, deluded state – shuffling of the deck isn’t stopping Gaza genocide

    COMMENTARY: By Gordon Campbell

    Chances are, anyone whose family is dying of starvation would not be looking for New Zealand to have a prolonged debate over how they deserve to be defined.

    Yet a delay in making even the symbolic gestures seems to be all that we have to offer, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to be systematically starved to death by Israel.

    Could be wrong, but I doubt whether anyone in Gaza is waiting anxiously for news that New Zealand government has finally, finally come to the conclusion that Palestine deserves to be recognised as state.

    READ MORE:

    So far, 147 out of 193 UN member states reached that conclusion ahead of us. Some of the last holdouts — Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Australia — have already said they will do so next month.

    So far, none of that diplomatic shuffling of the deck has stopped the Gaza genocide. Only significant economic and diplomatic sanctions and an extensive arms embargo (one that includes military-related software) can force Israel to cease and desist.

    You don’t need to recognise statehood before taking those kind of steps. Last week, Germany — which does not recognise the state of Palestine — imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel that forbids sales of any weaponry that might be used to kill Palestinians in Gaza. Not much, but a start — given that (after the US) Germany has been the main foreign arms supplier to the IDF.

    Meanwhile, the Luxon government has yet to make up its mind on Palestinian statehood. Our government repeatedly insists that this recognition is “complex.” Really? By saying so, we are embarrassing ourselves on the world stage.

    Trying to appease Americans
    While we still furrow our brows about Palestinian statehood, 76 percent of the UN’s member nations have already figured it out. Surely, our hesitation can’t be because we are as mentally challenged as we are claiming to be.

    The more likely explanation is that we are trying to appease the Americans, in the hope of winning a trade concession. Our government must be gambling that an angry Donald Trump will punish Australia for its decision on Palestine, by lifting its tariff rate, thereby erasing the 5 percent advantage over us that Australian exporters currently enjoy.

    By keeping our heads down on Palestine, we seem to be hoping we will win brownie points with Trump, at the expense of our ANZAC mates.

    This isn’t mere conspiracy talk. Already, the Trump administration is putting pressure on France over its imminent decision to recognise Palestine statehood. A few days ago, Le Monde reported that the US ambassador to France, Charles Kushner — yes, Ivana Trump’s father-in-law — blundered into France’s domestic politics by writing a letter of complaint to French president Emmanuel Marcon.

    In it, Kushner claimed that France wasn’t doing enough to combat anti-Semitism:

    “Public statements haranguing Israel and gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France,” [Kushner] wrote.

    “In today’s world, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism – plain and simple.”

    Breaking every civilised rule
    Simple-minded is more like it. People who oppose the criminal atrocities being committed in Gaza (and on the West Bank) by the Zionist government of Israel are not doing so on the basis of racial prejudice. They’re doing so because Israel is breaking every rule of a civilised society.

    Any number of UN conventions and international laws forbid the targeting of civilian populations, homes, schools, ambulances and hospitals . . . not to mention the deliberate killing of hundreds of medical staff, journalists, aid workers etc.

    Not to mention imposing a famine on a captive population. Day after day, the genocide continues.

    For Kushner to claim the global revulsion at Israel’s actions in Gaza is motivated by racism is revealing. To Israel’s apologists within Israel, and in the US (and New Zealand) only Israeli lives really matter.

    Footnote: New Zealand continues to bang on about our support for the “two state” solution. Exactly where is the land on which Christopher Luxon thinks a viable Palestinian state can be built, and what makes him think Israel would ever allow it to happen?

    Thirty years ago, Israeli settlement expansion fatally undermined the Oslo framework for a Palestinian state situated alongside Israel.

    Since then, the fabled “two state solution” has become the tooth fairy of international politics. It gives politicians something to say when they have nothing to say.

    Republished with permission from Gordon Campbell’s Werewolf column in partnership with Scoop.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • There is a plot Mr Luxon: It’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians based on biblical justification

    COMMENTARY: By Ian Powell

    “Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘lost the plot’ and has condemned attacks on Gaza.

    “It is among the strongest language the New Zealand leader has used against Netanyahu and comes amid reports of intense aerial attacks on Gaza after Israel’s decision to launch a fresh military operation.”

    These are the opening two paragraphs of The New Zealand Herald coverage by political reporter Jamie Ensor of Prime Minister Luxon’s public declaration that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lost the plot.

    His comment was in the context of the Israeli government’ genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and their increasing persecution on the Israeli occupied West Bank (August 13): Netanyahu lost the plot says Luxon.

    Spectrum of NZ government’s response to genocide
    The New Zealand government’s response to this ethnic cleansing by genocide strategy in Gaza has ranged on a spectrum between pathetically weak to callous disregard.

    Previously I’ve described this spectrum as between limp and deplorable; both have their own validity.

    Consequently, the many New Zealanders who were appalled by this response might have been somewhat relieved by Luxon’s frankness.

    Perhaps a long overdue change of direction towards humanitarianism? In the interests of confusion avoidance this is a rhetorical question.

    However, there is a big problem with Luxon’s conclusion. Quite simply, he is wrong; there is a plot and it is based on a perverse biblical origin.

    Why NZ Prime Minister Luxon got it wrong.        Video: RNZ

    Just over three weeks from the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack across the border in the Israeli occupied former Palestinian land, Netanyahu made the following broadcast,  including on You Tube (October 30): Netanyahu’s biblical justification.

    The ‘”war criminal” is explicit that there is a plot behind the ethnic cleansing through genocide strategy in Gaza. It is a dogmatically blood thirsty and historically inaccurate biblical centred plot.

    In his own words:

    “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible — and we do remember. And we are fighting — our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza, or around Gaza, and in all other regions in Israel, are joining this chain of Jewish heroes — a chain that started 3000 years ago, from Joshua until the heroes of the Six-Day War in 1948 [sic], the 1973 October War, and all other wars in this country.

    “Our heroic troops — they have only one supreme goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country.”

    Netanyahu was referring to the Book of 1 Samuel (Chapter 15, Verse 3) which states:

    “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

    Samuel was a prophet through who the Jewish God Yahweh commanded one Saul to conduct a total war of annihilation against the Amalekites.

    The Amalekites were a biblical nation who, so biblical history goes, had attacked the Israelites during their “Exodus” from Egypt.

    From apartheid to ethnic cleansing to recognition of Palestine
    Previously I have published four posts on the Gaza genocide. The first (March 15) discussed it in the context of the apartheid in the South Africa of the past and apartheid as continuing defining feature in Israel since its creation in 1948: When apartheid met Zionism.

    The second (May 28) discussed what underpins the Zionist support for ethnic cleansing through genocide: Reasons for supporting ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

    This theme was followed through in the third (June 4) in the context of recognising the state of Palestine: Ethnic cleansing, genocide and Palestine recognition.

    From Netanyahu to Zelda
    In the context of the truer number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, my fourth previous post (July 2) was more directly closer to the theme of this post: How to biblically justify 400,000 Palestinian deaths.

    I quoted a genocide supporter going by the name of “Zelda” justifying Israel’s war in similar vein to Bejamin Netanyahu:

    “Gaza belongs to Israel! This is not just a political claim; it is a sacred, unbreakable decree from Almighty God Himself. If any government from around the world recognises Palestine, the United States needs to declare it part of the Axis of Evil

    “The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness. No enemy, no terrorist, no foreign power can wrest it away. Those who reject this truth stand against God’s will and will face His judgment.

    “If Palestinians want aid and peace, they must recognise Israel’s God-given right and leave Gaza forever. Only under God’s blessing can this land flourish, and all who defy His plan will be cast down.”

    From Zelda to Alfred
    On July 4, I received the following email from a reader called Alfred. In his words (be warned, at the very least this is a mind-boggling read):

    “Accidentally I came across your blog on ‘How To Justify 400,000 Palestinian Deaths In Gaza: Ask ‘Zelda’ (Thursday, 3 July 2025). It was an interesting read.
    With all due respect, I would like to place before you my ‘two cents’
    Consider this history Mr Ian:
    1) Before the modern state of Israel there was the British mandate, Not a Palestinian state.
    2) Before the British mandate there was the Ottoman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    3) Before the Ottoman empire there was the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt, Not a Palestinian state.
    4)Before the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt there was the Ayyubid dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. Godfrey of Bouillon conquered it in 1099.
    5) Before the Ayyubid dynasty there was the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, Not a Palestinian state.
    6) Before the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem there was the Fatimid caliphate, Not a Palestinian state.
    7) Before the Fatimid caliphate there was the byzantine empire, Not a Palestinian state. 8. Before the Byzantine empire there was the Roman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    9) Before the Roman empire there was the Hasmonaean dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. 10) Before the Hasmonean dynasty there was the Seleucid empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    11) Before the Seleucid empire there was the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon, Not a Palestinian state.
    12) Before the empire of Alexander, the 3rd of Macedon there was the Persian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    13) Before the Persian empire there was the Babylonian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    14) Before the Babylonian empire there was the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, Not a Palestinian state.
    15) Before the kingdoms of Israel and Judea there was the kingdom of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
    16) Before the kingdom of Israel there was the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
    17) Before the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel there was the individual state of Canaan, Not a Palestinian state.
    In fact, in that corner of the earth there was everything but a Palestinian state!
    Interesting history isn’t it?
    Yes, I agree with Zelda’s statement that …
    ‘The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness.’
    Mr Ian, if you go back to the Bible to read the Old Testament history, we see that God declares time and again that they (Israelites) are His chosen people, and He will bring them back to land of Israel. (Which has started to happen, as you observe world events). He also condemns His own chosen that if they turn away from Him, he will turn away His face. And that was what He did to the 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. They were wiped out. And the sort of genocide that we see today in Gaza, was prevalent in that time, when Gentile nations were even wiped out if they stood between the Israelites and the ‘promised land’ (Israel). Even the lives of His own chosen people were not valuable to Him, and was at stake (holocaust recently) when they turned away from Him, as those many of their enemies (or opponents)!

    8000-year-old history is repeating itself now in Gaza, I believe.
    Alfred

    Mapping the success of Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

    The views of both Zelda and Alfred are not off the planet in terms of supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through genocide.

    They are thoroughly consistent with Netanyahu’s well-thought out plot. Both are part of his “echo chamber”.

    Who has really lost the plot?
    The genocide towards Palestinians will not end in Gaza. All the evidence is that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are next.

    Gaza the precursor to West Bank Palestinians.

    There the ethnic cleansing is continuing in the form of persecution and repression, including imprisonment (hostage-taking by another name).

    But it is escalating and, unless there is a change in direction, it is only a matter of time before persecution and repression morph into genocide.

    Benjamin Netanyahu has not lost the plot. However, Christopher Luxon has. His criticism of Netanyahu is a flimsy attempt to avoid doing what a humanitarian government with a “plot” should do. This includes:

    1. Recognising the Palestinian Territories as an official independent state;
    2. Sanctioning Israeli Defence Force (IDF) visitors;
    3. Close the Israel Embassy;
    4. Impose trade and bilateral sanctions; and
    5. Suspend Israel from the United Nations.

    Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Wenda accuses Indonesia of killing West Papuans for ‘independence’ day

    Asia Pacific Report

    A West Papuan independence advocate has accused Indonesia of “continuing to murder children” while escalating its military operations across the Melanesian region.

    United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda says West Papua faces two connected crimes — ecocide and genocide.

    Two schoolchildren were killed by the occupying military in the build up to Indonesian Independence Day this month on August 17, Wenda said in a statement yesterday.

    He said security forces had killed a 14-year-old girl in Puncak Jaya, while 13-year-old Martinus Tebai was slain in Dogiyai a week earlier on August 10 after soldiers opened fire on a group of youngsters.

    “These killings are the inevitable result of the intensified militarisation that has taken place in West Papua since the election of the war criminal Prabowo [Subianto, as President, last year], Wenda said.

    Thousands of additional troops have been deployed to “terrorise West Papua”, while the new administration had also created an independent military command for all five newly created West Papuan provinces, “reinforcing the military infrastucture across our land”, he said.

    More than 100,000 civilians were still displaced, and there had been no justice for the forced disappearance of 12 villagers in Intan Jaya in May.

    Violence linked to forest destruction
    Increased violence and displacement in the cities and villages was inseparable from increased destruction in the forest, Wenda said.

    Soldiers were being sent to Merauke, Dogiyai, and Intan Jaya in order to protect Indonesia’s investment in these regions, he said.

    “We are crying out to the world, over and over again, screaming that Indonesia is ripping apart our ancestral forest, endangering the entire planet in the process,” Wenda said.

    The Merauke sugarcane and rice plantation was the “most destructive deforestation project in history — it will more than double Indonesia’s CO2 emissions”.

    A mother farewells her son in West Papua
    A mother farewells her son in West Papua, alleged to have been slain by Indonesian troops. Image: ULMWP

    Wenda asked what it would take for the global environmental movement to take a stand?

    Indonesia has shown just how fragile its grip on West Papua really is,” he said.

    Forced flag raising
    “After the ULMWP declared that no West Papuan should celebrate Indonesian Independence Day, soldiers went across the country forcing civilians to raise the Indonesian flag.

    “Indonesia is desperate. Even as they increase their violence, they know their occupation will eventually end.

    “We remember what happened in East Timor, where the worst violence took place in the dying days of the occupation.

    “West Papuans have always spoken with one voice in demanding independence. We never accepted Indonesia, we never raised the Red and White flag – we had our own flag, our own anthem, our own Independence Day.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NZ media workers call for ‘decisive action’ by Luxon over Gaza journalists

    Asia Pacific Report

    About 120 journalists, film makers, actors, media workers and academics have today called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and two senior cabinet ministers in an open letter to “act decisively” to protect Gaza journalists and a free press.

    “These are principles to which New Zealand has always laid claim and which are now under grave threat in Gaza and the West Bank,” the signatories said in the letter about Israel’s war on Gaza.

    The plea was addressed to Luxon, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith.

    Among the signatories are many well known media personalities such as filmmaker Gemma Gracewood, actor Lucy Lawless, film director Kim Webby, broadcaster Alison Mau, and comedian and documentarian Te Radar, and journalist Mereana Hond.

    The letter also calls on the government to urgently condemn the killing of 13 Palestinian journalists and media workers this month as the death toll in the 22-month war has reached almost 63,000 — more than 18,000 of them children.

    Global protests against the war and the forced starvation in the besieged enclave have been growing steadily over the past few weeks with more than 500,000 people taking part in Israel last week.

    Commitment to safety
    The letter urged Luxon and the government to:

    1. Publicly reaffirm New Zealand’s commitment to the safety of journalists worldwide and make clear this protection applies in every conflict zone, including Gaza.

    2. Reiterate the Media Freedom Coalition call for access for international press, ensuring safety, aid and crucial reporting are guaranteed; paired with New Zealand’s existing call for a ceasefire and safe humanitarian access corridors.

    3. Back international action already underway, by publicly affirming support for ICC investigations into attacks on journalists anywhere in the world, and by advocating that the United Nations adopt an international convention for the safety of journalists and media workers so that states parties meet their obligations under international law.

    4. Formally confirm that New Zealand’s free press and human rights principles apply to Palestinian journalists and media workers, as they do to all others.

    The letter said these measures were “consistent with New Zealand’s values, our history of independent foreign policy, and the rules-based international order we have always claimed to champion, and for which our very future as a country is reliant upon”.

    It added: “They do not require us to choose sides and they uphold the principle that a free press and those who embody it must never be targeted for doing their jobs.”

    Condemn the killings
    The recent deaths brought the number of Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to at least 219 at the time of writing, said the letter.

    “Many more are injured and missing. Many of those killed were clearly identified as members of the press. Some were killed alongside their families,” it said.

    The letter called on the government to urgently condemn the killings of:

    ● Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, along with freelance journalist Mohammad Al-Khalidi and freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa, who were targeted and killed in, or as a result of, an August 10 airstrike on their tent in Gaza City.

    ● Correspondents Hussam al-Masri, Hatem Khaled, Mariam Abu Daqqa, Mohammad Salama, Ahmed Abu Azi and Moaz Abu Taha, all killed in a strike on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis on August 25.

    ● Journalist and academic Hassan Douhan, killed in Khan Younis on August 25.

    “From Malcolm Ross to Margaret Moth, Peter Arnett to Mike McRoberts, New Zealand has a proud history of war correspondents. The same international laws that have protected them are meant to protect all journalists, wherever they work,” said the letter.

    “Today, those protections are being violated with impunity.

    “Our media colleagues are being murdered, and we have a duty to speak up.”

    As journalists, editors, producers, writers, documentary-makers, media workers and storytellers, said the letter, “we believe in the essential role of a free press.

    “These killings are in violation of international rules-based order, including humanitarian law, and are intended to erase witnesses to the truth itself. These media professionals are doing their jobs under extremely challenging conditions, and are civilians worthy of protection under human rights laws.

    “This is not only a matter of professional solidarity, this is a matter of principle. Journalists are civilians. They are witnesses to history. They deserve the same protection anywhere in the world.”

    “We urge you to lead, knowing you have the voices of Aotearoa’s storytellers and history-keepers standing with you.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Antony Lowenstein: Israel’s murderous killing spree against Palestinian journalists

    By Antony Loewenstein in Sydney

    The grim facts should speak for themselves. Since 7 October 2023, Israel has deliberately killed an unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

    Those brave individuals are smeared as Hamas operatives and terrorists by Israel and its supporters.

    But the real story behind this, beyond just Western racism and dehumanisation towards Arab reporters who don’t work for the corporate media in London or New York, is an Israeli military strategy to deliberately (and falsely) link Gazan journalists to Hamas.

    The outlet +972 Magazine explains the plan:

    “The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the ‘Legitimization Cell,’ tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel’s image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit’s existence.

    “Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas’ use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave.

    “It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters — the latest of whom was Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli airstrike this past week [august 10].

    According to the sources, the Legitimisation Cell’s motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world,” its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said.

    As a journalist who’s visited and reported in Gaza since 2009, here’s a short film I made after my first trip, Palestinian journalists are some of the most heroic individuals on the planet. They have to navigate both Israeli attacks and threats and Western contempt for their craft.

    I stand in solidarity with them. And so should you.

    After the Israeli murder of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif on August 10, I spoke to Al Jazeera English about him and Israel’s deadly campaign:


    Antony Loewenstein speaking on Al Jazeera English on 11 August 2025.   Video: AJ


    Antony Loewenstein interviewed by Al Jazeera on 11 August 2025.  Video: AJ

    News graveyards - how dangers to journalists endanger the world
    News graveyards – how dangers to journalists endanger the world. Image: Antony Loewenstein Substack

    Republished from the Substack of Antony Lowenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory,  with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • New Zealand challenged to vote for Israel’s suspension at UN

    Asia Pacific Report

    The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has challenged the New Zealand government to support a move by Türkiye to vote to suspend Israeli membership of the United Nations.

    Türkiye Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has told the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Riyadh that Israel should be suspended from the crucial meeting of the UN General Assembly next month, for its “genocidal aggression”.

    PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement that New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters would have to take a stand on this issue.

    “Cabinet should give him clear instructions to vote against Israeli war crimes and support Palestinian rights,” he said.

    “Suspension of Israel will have a lot of backing from many countries horrified with the starvation and carnage in Gaza, and they want to do something effective, instead of just recognising Palestine as a state.

    “Even if the US vetoes such a move in the Security Council, there is a precedent going back to 1974 when South Africa was suspended from the General Assembly because it practised apartheid.

    “The General Assembly suspended a member then, and New Zealand should back such a move now.”

    Original condition
    Minto said Israel’s original condition in 1948 for joining the UN was that it allowed the 750,000 Palestinians it had expelled from Palestine to create Israel to return home.

    “Israel won’t even talk about its obligations to let Palestinians return, and certainly never had any intention of allowing them to go home. Israel should pay a price for that, along with punishment for its genocide,” he said.

    Minto said the escalation of the Israeli assault on Gaza called for immediate international action without waiting wait until the General Assembly debate next month.

    “The Israeli ambassador in Wellington should be told to leave right now, because his government is openly committing war crimes.”

    “We’ve just seen a famine declared in Gaza City. Aid is totally insufficient and deliberately so,” Minto said.

    “Israel has called up its military reservists for the major assault it’s conducting on Gaza City to drive nearly a million of its inhabitants out.

    “Israel’s latest dumping ground of choice is South Sudan, even though its government says it doesn’t want to have expelled Palestinians turn up there.”

    “And we’ve had the news that Israel has once again killed journalists, who work for international news agencies, such as Reuters, Al Jazeera and NBC.”

    “Netanyahu says it was a mistake. Who believes that?”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Palestinian journalists treated like ‘robots’ by Western media, says Gaza reporter in wake of latest Israeli killings

    Pacific Media Watch

    An Al Jazeera journalist who has documented Israel’s trail of atrocities for almost the past two years has condemned Western news agencies covering the war on Gaza as treating Palestinian reporters like “robots”.

    “You see how Palestinian journalists are treated. There’s no protection when they are alive,” Hind Khoudary told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

    “And after they are killed, no one even mentions them.”

    She said today was a “very, very angry morning” after five journalists were killed yesterday among at least 21 people, including medical workers, at al-Nasser Medical Centre in Khan Younis in a “double tap” strike by the Israeli military.

    The slain news professionals have been named as Hossam al-Masri, a freelance photographer for the Reuters news agency; Mariam Abu Daqqa, freelance journalist for The Independent and the Associated Press (AP); Moaz Abu Taha, correspondent for the American broadcasting network NBC; Mohamad Salama, press photographer for Al Jazeera; and Ahmed Abu Aziz, freelance journalist working for Middle East Eye and the Tunisian radio station Diwan FM, who died later from his injuries.

    “Palestinian journalists do not know how to mourn their five colleagues and there’s a wave of anger at the international news agencies.

    “Many news outlets [that the killed journalists worked for] did not even mention their contributors. The Reuters news agency did not mention in their headline their cameraman who had been working for them for months.

    “In their article, they simply described him as a Reuters ‘contractor’.

    ‘Not mentioned’
    As for Moaz Abu Taha [another journalist killed in the Nasser medical centre attack], not a single news organisation that he was working for said he was working for them,” she said.

    A moment just after the second strike hit the journalists at the al-Nasser Medical Centre in southern Gaza
    A moment just after the second strike hit the journalists at the al-Nasser Medical Centre in southern Gaza yesterday. Image: Reporters Without Borders

    “Palestinian journalists have been risking their lives for 23 months now, and after they are killed, they are not even mentioned in headlines.

    “In the end, they are mentioned as ‘contractors’, as ‘freelancers’ – while, when they were alive, they were working 24/7 to produce, fix and document for these news outlets.

    “This is how most Palestinian journalists feel — that we’re just being used as robots to report on what’s going on because there are no foreign journalists.

    “We get killed and then everyone forgets about us.”


    Gaza’s silenced voices.     Video: Al Jazeera

    RSF ‘fiercely condemns’ killings
    The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) “fiercely condemned” the latest killings, saying they came after the murder of Khaled al-Madhoun on Saturday, 23 August 23.

    This was a toll of six journalists killed in two days. It follows the killing of six other journalists two weeks ago on August 10.

    According to RSF information, all were deliberately targeted. RSF again called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to “end this massacre of journalists”.

    Thibaut Bruttin, director-general of RSF, said: How far will the Israeli armed forces go in their gradual effort to eliminate information coming from Gaza? How long will they continue to defy international humanitarian law?

    “The protection of journalists is guaranteed by international law, yet more than 200 of them have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the past two years.

    “Ten years after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2222, which protects journalists in times of conflict, the Israeli army is flouting its application.

    “RSF calls for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to ensure this resolution is finally respected, and that concrete measures are taken to end impunity for crimes against journalists, protect Palestinian journalists, and open access to the Gaza Strip to all reporters.”

    Al Jazeera's Hind Khoudary
    Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary . . . reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    ‘Suicide drone’
    According to Al Jazeera, the first strike on the live broadcast post that killed Hossam al-Masri was carried out using a loitering munition — also known as a “suicide drone” — typically equipped with a camera and an explosive charge.

    A Reuters article also confirmed the death of its contractor, Hussam al-Masri.

    The second strike 8 minutes later targeted the hospital yet again after rescue teams and journalists had arrived.

    The Al-Nasser complex is a well-known gathering place for displaced journalists in Gaza who, since October 2023, have been living in tents around the hospital to access information on injured and deceased patients, as well as available facilities.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.