Vinzons is a quiet coastal town in the eastern Philippines province of Camarines Norte in Bicol. With a spread out population of about 45,000. it is known for its rice production, crabs and surfing beaches in the Calaguas Islands.
But the town is really famous for one of its sons — Wenceslao “Bintao” Vinzons, the youngest lawmaker in the Philippines before the Japanese invasion during the Second World War who then took up armed resistance.
He was captured and executed along with his family in 1942.
One of the most interesting assets of the municipality of Vinzons — named after the hero in 1946, the town previously being known as Indan — is his traditional family home, which has recently been refurbished as a local museum to tell his story of courage and inspiration.
“He is something of a forgotten hero, student leader, resistance fighter, former journalist — a true hero,” says acting curator Roniel Espina.
As well as a war hero, Vinzons is revered for his progressive politics and was known as the “father of student activism” in the Philippines. His political career began at the University of Philippines in the capital Manila where he co-founded the Young Philippines Party.
The Vinzons Hall at UP-Diliman was named after him to honour his student leadership exploits.
Student newspaper editor
He was the editor-in-chief of the Philippine Collegian, the student newspaper founded in 1922.
At 24, Vinzons became the youngest delegate to the 1935 Constitutional Convention and six years later at the age of 30 he was elected Governor of Camarine Norte in 1941 — the same year that Japan invaded.
In fact, the invasion of the Philippines began on 8 December 1941 just 10 hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in Hawai’i.
The invading forces tried to pressure Governor Vinzons in his provincial capital of Daet to collaborate. He absolutely refused. Instead, he took to the countryside and led one of the first Filipino guerilla resistance forces to rise up against the Japanese.
His initial resistance was successful with the guerrilla forces carrying out sudden raids before liberating Daet. He was eventually captured and executed by the Japanese.
The bust of “Bintao” outside the Vinzons Town Hall. Image: Asia Pacific Report
The exact circumstances are still uncertain as his body was never recovered, but the museum does an incredible job in piecing together his life along with his family and their tragic sacrifice for the country.
One plaque shows an image of Vinzons along with his father Gabino, wife Liwayway, sister Milagros, daughter Aurora and son Alexander (no photo of him was actually recovered).
A family of Second World War martyrs . . . their bodies were never recovered. Image: Asia Pacific Report
According to the legend on the plaque:
“Wenceslao Vinzons with his father disappeared mysteriously – and were never see again. The Japanese sent out posters in Camarines Norte expressing regret that on the way to Siain, Quezon, Vinzons was shot while attempting to escape. ‘So sorry please.’
“The remains of the body of Vinzons, his father, wife, two chidren and sister have never been found.”
The Japanese Empire as portrayed in the Vinzons Museum. Video: APR
Imperial Japan showcase
One room of the museum is dedicated as a showcase to Imperial Japan and its brutal invasion across a great swathe of Southeast Asia and the brave Filipino resistance in response.
A special feature of the museum is how well it portrays typical Filipino lifestyle and social mores in a home of the political class in the 1930s.
The tourist author, Dr David Robie (red t-shirt) with acting curator Roniel Espina (left), Tourism Officer Florence G Mago (second from right) and two museum guides. Image: Asia Pacific Report
When I visited the museum and talked to staff and watched documentaries about “Bintao” Vinzons’ life, one question in particular intrigued me: “Why was he thought of as a ‘forgotten hero’?”
According to acting curator Espina, “It’s partly because Camarines Norte is not as popular and well known as some other provinces. So some of the notable achievements of Vinzons do not have a high profile around in other parts of the country.”
Based at the museum is the town’s principal Tourism Officer Florence G Mago. She is optimistic about how the Vinzons Museum can attract more visitors to the town.
“We have put a lot of effort into developing this museum and we are proud of it. It is a jewel in the town.”
The Vinzons family home . . . now refurbished as the town museum under the National Historical Institute umbrella. Image: Asia Pacific Report
As activist groups around the world observe December 1 — flag-raising “independence” day for West Papua today marking when the Morning Star flag was flown in 1961 for the first time — Kristo Langker reports from the Highlands about how the Indonesian military is raising the stakes.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Kristo Langker in Kiwirok, West Papua
While DropSite News usually reports on, and from, parts of the world where the US war machine operates, in this story, the weaponry in question is made by a multinational French weapons manufacturer and Chinese manufacturer.
However, you will see the structure is the same — the Indonesian government using drones and helicopters to terrorise and displace the people of West Papua, while the historical reason imperial interests loom over the region stems from a US mining project in the 1960s.
The videos in this story are well worth watching — exclusive interviews with the guerilla group fighting off the drones and airplanes with bows and arrows.
A still from a video of Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano bombing and strafing the mountains of Kiwirok on October 6, 2025. Video: Lamek Taplo and Ngalum Kupel, TPNPB
On 25 September 2025, Lamek Taplo, the guerilla leader of a wing of the West Papua National Liberation Army (Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat, or TPNPB), left the jungle with his command to launch a series of raids on Indonesian military posts.
Indonesia had established three new military posts in the Star Mountains region in the past year, according to NGO Human Rights Monitor, with sources on the ground telling Drop Site News that nearby civilian houses and facilities — including a church, schools, and a health clinic — had been forcibly occupied in support of the military build-up.
5 Indonesian soldiers shot
Despite being severely outgunned, the command shot five Indonesian soldiers, killing one, while suffering no casualties themselves, according to Taplo and other members of his group.
The raids continued for three more days. The command shot the fuselage of a helicopter and burned five buildings that Taplo’s group claimed were occupied by Indonesian security forces.
Taplo was killed less than three weeks later by an apparent drone strike. During an October 13 interview a week before his death, Taplo, a former teacher himself, told Drop Site why TPNPB targeted a school:
“It’s because they (Indonesian military) used it as their base. There’s no teacher — only Indonesians. I know, because I was the teacher there, too . . . Indonesia sent ‘teachers’. However, they’re actually military intelligence.”
School building set on fire by the TPNPB on September 27, 2025. Image: Ngalum Kupel/TPNPB
Indonesia has laid claim to the western half of New Guinea island since the 1960s with the backing of the US. For the past year, the Indonesian military has ramped up its indiscriminate attacks on subsistence farming villages, especially those that deny Indonesian rule.
The military presence has been growing exponentially after the October 2024 inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto, who is implicated in historic massacres in Papua from his time as commander of Indonesia’s special forces — called Komando Pasukan Khusus or “Kopassus”.
According to witnesses interviewed in Kiwirok and its surrounding hamlets, and documented in videos, there are now snipers stationed along walking tracks, and civilians have been shot and killed attempting to retrieve their pigs.
Indonesian retaliated
Indonesia immediately retaliated against TPNPB’s September attacks by sending two consumer-grade DJI Mavic drones, rigged with servo motors, to drop Pindad-manufactured hand grenades.
One drone targeted a hut that Taplo claimed did not house TPNPB but belonged to civilians.
No one was killed as the grenade bounced off the sheet metal roof and exploded a few meters away. The other drone flew over a group of TPNPB raising the Morning Star flag of West Papua but was taken down by the guerrillas before a grenade could be dropped.
Ngalum Kupel TPNPB celebrating the capture of a drone. September 28, 2025.
Holding the downed drone and grenade, Taplo likened the ordeal to Moses parting the Red Sea for the escaping Israelites: “It’s like Firaun and Moses . . . It was a miracle.”
Then joking: “The bomb (grenade) was caught since it’s like the cucumber we eat.”
Lamek Taplo holding a downed DJI Mavic drone and Pindad grenade on 28 September 2025. Image: Ngalum Kupel/TPNPB
Over the next few weeks, a series of heavier aerial bombardments followed.
Video evidence
Videos taken by Taplo show two Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano turboprop aircraft darting through the air, followed by the thunderous sound of ordnance hitting the mountains.
Despite the fact that thousands of West Papuans have been killed in bombings like these since the 1970s, Taplo’s videos are the first to ever capture an aerial bombardment from the ground in West Papua, owing to the extreme isolation of the interior.
In fact, many highland West Papuans’ first contact with the outside world was with Indonesian military campaigns.
Ostensibly a counter-insurgency operation against a guerrilla independence movement, these bombings are primarily hitting civilians — tribal communities of subsistence farmers.
The few fighters Indonesia is targeting are poorly armed lacking bullets, let alone bombs — and live on ancestral land with their families. The most ubiquitous weapon among these groups remains the bow and arrow.
Taplo told Drop Site the bombings began on Monday, October 6.
“Firstly they (Indonesia) did an unorganised attack: they dropped the bomb randomly . . . they just dropped it everywhere. You can see where the smoke was coming from.
“Even though it was an Indonesian military house, they just dropped it on there anyway. That was the first one; then they came back. The first place bombed after was a civilian house; the second was our base.”
Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano bombing and strafing the mountains. October 6, 2025
Former Dutch colony
West Papua was a Dutch colony until 1962, when Indonesia, after a bitter dispute with the Netherlands, secured Washington’s backing to take over the territory.
Just three years after Washington tipped the scales in favour of Indonesia in their dispute with the Netherlands, the nationalist Indonesian President Sukarno was ousted in a US-backed military coup in 1965.
Hundreds of thousands of Indonesian leftists (or suspected leftists) were killed in just a few months by the new regime led by General Suharto.
Indonesia’s acquisition of West Papua is often treated as an event peripheral to this coup, yet both events held a symbiotic relationship that would become the impetus for many of the mass killings perpetrated by Indonesia in West Papua.
Forbes Wilson, the former vice-president of US mining giant Freeport, visited Indonesia in June 1966, and in his book, The Conquest of Copper Mountain, he boasts that he and several other Freeport executives were among the first foreigners to visit Indonesia after the events of 1965.
Wilson was there to negotiate with the new business friendly Suharto regime, particularly regarding the terms of Freeport’s Ertsberg mine, which was set to be located under Puncak Jaya — the tallest mountain in Oceania.
This mine eventually became the world’s largest gold and copper mine and Indonesia’s largest single taxpayer. The mine’s existence was one of the primary reasons Indonesia gained international backing to launch a vicious Malanesian frontier war against the native and then-largely uncontacted Papuan highlanders.
The “war” continues to this day, though it is largely unlike other modern conflicts.
Like frontier ‘wars’
Instead, the concerted Indonesian attacks are most comparable to the US and Australian frontier wars. Indonesia, one of the world’s largest and most well-armed militaries, is steadily wiping out some of the world’s last pre-industrial indigenous cultures and people.
West Papuans have fought back, forming the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, or OPM) and its various splinter armed wings, whose most prominent one is the TPNPB.
Due to the impenetrable terrain of the mountain highlands, the Indonesian military has difficulty fighting the TPNPB on the ground, often instead resorting to indiscriminate aerial bombardments.
The TPNPB’s fight is as much about West Papuan independence as it is an effort by localised tribal communities and landowners using whatever means to prevent Indonesian massacres and land theft.
“No army has ever come to protect the people. I live with the people, because there’s no military to protect my people,” Taplo said in a video sent just before his death.
“From 2021 until this year 2025, I have not left my land; I have not left the land of my birth.”
In October 2021, the Indonesian military launched one of these bombing campaigns in the remote Kiwirok district and its surrounding hamlets in the Star Mountains — deep in the heart of the island of New Guinea.
Little information
Because of this isolation, very little information about these bombings trickled out of the mountains — save for a few images of unexploded mortars and burning huts.
Only a handful journalists, including the author of this article, have been able to visit the area, and it took years and multiple visits to the Star Mountains for the full scale of the 2021 attacks to be reported.
It was eventually revealed that the Indonesian assaults included the use of most likely Airbus helicopters that shoot FZ-68 2.75-inch rockets, designed by French multinational defence contractor Thales, and reinforced by Blowfish A3 drones manufactured by the Chinese company Ziyan.
These drones boast an artificial intelligence driven swarm function by which they litter villagers’ subsistence farms and huts with mortars improvised with proximity fuzes manufactured by the Serbian company Krušik.
A largely remote, open-source investigation by German NGO Human Rights Monitor revealed that hundreds of huts and buildings were destroyed in this attack. More than 2000 villagers were displaced, and they still hide in makeshift jungle camps.
“The systematic nature of these attacks prompts questions of crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute,” the report noted. Additionally, witnesses interviewed by this author gave the names of hundreds who died of starvation and illness after the bombings.
With little food, shelter, weapons, or even internet to connect them to the outside world, many of the thousands of Ngalum-Kupel people displaced since 2021 are displaced again — likely to die without anyone knowing — mirroring countless Indonesian campaigns to depopulate the mountains to make way for resource projects.
Long-term effects
The impact of the latest wave of attacks in October 2025 is likely to be felt for years, as the bombs destroyed food gardens and shelters and displaced people who were already living in nothing more than crowded tarpaulins held up by branches, while having already been forced to hide in the jungle after the 2021 bombings.
“It is the same situation with Palestine and Israel — people are now living without their home,” said Taplo.
Lamek Taplo (standing) in jungle camp on 15 October 2025. Image: Ngalum Kupel/TPNPB
On 6 October 2025, Indonesia retaliated further, deploying two aircraft that aviation sources confirmed to be Brazilian-made Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano turboprops. These planes were filmed bombing and strafing the mountains.
Drop Site confirmed that some of the shrapnel collected after these attacks is from Thales’s FZ 2.75-inch rockets — the same rockets used in the 2021 attacks.
Shrapnel from Thales FZ rockets on 6 October 2025. Image: Ngalum Kupel/TPNPB
In January this year, Thales’s Belgium and state-owned defence company, Indonesian Aerospace, put out a press release titled: “Indonesian Aerospace and Thales Belgium Reactivate Rocket Production Partnership,” which boasted the integration of Thales designed FZ 2.75-inch rockets with the Embraer Supertucano aircraft.
Though these were not the only ordnance deployed, some of the impact zones measured over 20m, and the shrapnel found in these craters was far heavier and larger than that from the Thales rockets.
Shrapnel ‘no joke’
“It’s no joke. It was long and big. It could destroy a village . . . ” said Taplo before picking up a piece of shrapnel around 20cm long.
“This is five kilograms,” he said, weighing the remnants.
Inspecting Impact zone from bombings on 6 October 2025.
A former Australian Defence Force air-to-ground specialist told Drop Site that the large size of the shrapnel and nature of the scarring and cratering indicate that the bomb was not a modern style munition. It was most likely an MK-81 RI Live, a variant of the 110kg MK-81 developed and manufactured by Indonesian state-owned defence contractor Pindad.
“This weapon system is unguided, and given the steep terrain, it is unlikely that a dive attack could easily be used, providing the enhanced risk of collateral damage or indiscriminate targeting given the weapons envelope,” the specialist said. Pindad did not respond to Drop Site’s request for comment.
Shrapnel from MK-81 bombs on 12 October 2025. Image: Ngalum Kupel/TPNPB
Photos from a February Pindad press release about the development of the MK-81 RI Live show these bombs loaded on an Indonesian Embraer Supertucano.
An Indonesian Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano loaded with the Pindad MK-81 RI Live in February, 2025. Image: PT Pindad Public Relations Doc
A week later, Indonesia hit again. At around 3am, on October 12, a reconnaissance aircraft flew over the camp where Taplo’s command and their families were sleeping, waking them just in time to evacuate before another round of bombs were dropped == again, most likely the MK-81 RI Live.
Bomb strike on video
Taplo captured the bomb’s strike and aftermath on video. Clearly shaken, he makes an appeal for help, saying “UN peacekeeping forces quickly come to Kiwirok to give us freedom, because our life is traumatic . . .
“Even the kids are traumatised; they live in the forest, and seek help from their parents, ‘Dad help me. Indonesia dropped the bomb on the place I lived in.’”
On the morning of October 19, a drone dropped a bomb on a hut near where Taplo was staying. Initially, the bomb didn’t detonate, leaving enough time for civilians to evacuate the area.
After the evacuation, Taplo and three men returned to remove the ordnance, which then detonated and instantly killed Lamek Taplo and three others — Nalson Uopmabin, 17; Benim Kalakmabin, 20; and Ike Taplo, 22.
The bodies of slain TPNPB members on October 19, 2025. Image: Ngalum Kupel/TPNPB
Speaking to Drop Site just hours after Taplo was killed, eyewitnesses say the drone was larger than the DJI Mavics deployed earlier and were similar in size to the Ziyan drones from 2021.
Photos taken of the remnants of the bomb show the tail of what was most likely an 81mm mortar.
“The presence of drones — similar to that of DJI quadcopters and [with] improvised fins for aerial guidance — have been employed [just as] ISIS used those weapons systems in Syria,” the former Australian Defence Force air-to-ground specialist told Drop Site.
The mortar piece that killed Commander Lamek Taplo and three others. October 20, 2025. Image: Ngalum Kupel/TPNPB
Plea to Pacific nations
On October 26, civilians in Kiwirok sent an appeal to the government of Papua New Guinea and other Pacific Island nations. So far, there has been no response, despite these bombings occurring on Papua New Guinea’s border.
The last communication Drop Site received from Kiwirok indicated that the bombings were continuing and the mountains still swarmed with drones — limiting any chance of escape.
Pictures posted on social media in November by members of Indonesian security forces, those stationed in Kiwirok, give some insight into the level of zeal with which Indonesia is fighting this campaign.
An Indonesian soldier can be seen wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a skull wearing night vision goggles, a gun, and a lightning bolt forming a cross behind it. The caption reads “Black Zone Kiwirok.”
A “Black Zone Kiwirok” T-shirt on 19 November 2025. Souurce: Instagram post by Indonesian soldier
Another photo shows soldiers sitting in front of a banner which reads “Kompi Tempur Rajawali 431 Pemburu” — a reference to the elite “Eagle Hunter” units set up in the mid 1990s by then-General Prabowo Subianto to hunt down Falantil guerillas in Timor Leste.
As there has been no record of these units being deployed in Papua — nor of an “Eagle Hunter” unit made up of soldiers from the 431st Infantry Battalion — it is unclear whether these banners are just Suharto-era nationalism on display, or if they signify that these units have been revived.
A “Kompi Tempur Rajawali 431 Pemburu” regimental banner on 19 November 2025. Source: An Instagram post by Indonesian soldier
On his final phone call with the outside world, just before the signal cut out, Taplo vowed to continue the TPNPB’s fight: “We will fight for hundreds of days . . .
“We will fight . . . This war is by God. We have asked for power; we have prayed for nature’s power. This is our culture.”
Four Papuan political prisoners have been sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment on treason charges.
But a West Papua independence advocate says Indonesia is using its law to silence opposition.
In April this year, letters were delivered to government institutions in Sorong West Papua, asking for peaceful dialogue between Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto and a group seeking to make West Papua independent of Indonesia, the Federal Republic of West Papua.
Four people were arrested for delivering the letters, and this triggered protests, which became violent.
West Papua Action Aotearoa’s Catherine Delahunty said Indonesia claims the four, known as the Sorong Four, caused instability.
“What actually caused instability was arresting people for delivering letters, and the Indonesians refused to acknowledge that actually people have a right to deliver letters,” she said.
“They have a right to have opinions, and they will continue to protest when those rights are systematically denied.”
Category of ‘treason’
Indonesia’s Embassy based in Wellington said the central government had been involved in the legal process, but the letters fell into the category of “treason” under the national crime code.
Delahunty said the arrests were in line with previous action the Indonesian government had taken in response to West Papua independence protests.
“This is the kind of use of an abuse of law that happens all the time in order to shut down any form of dissent and leadership. In the 1930s we would call this fascism. It is a military occupation using all the law to actually suppress the people.”
Delahunty said the situation was an abuse of human rights and it was happening less than an hour away from Darwin in northern Australia.
The spokesperson for Indonesia’s embassy said the government had been closely monitoring the case at arm’s length to avoid accusations of overreach.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Protesters in Fiji and Aotearoa New Zealand kicked off the UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People today as Israel faced global condemnation over more “war crimes” against Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
At least 13 people, including two children, were killed and 25 were wounded as Israel launched another incursion into Syrian territory in the Damascus countryside, according to state media.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned “the criminal attack carried out by an Israeli occupation army patrol in Beit Jinn”.
At Albert Park in Fiji’s capital Suva today, members of Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (F4PSN) defied police repression and gathered to celebrate Solidarity Day.
They issued a statement declaring:
“On the 48th anniversary of this day, we must be clear: Fiji cannot claim to stand for human rights while aligning itself with GENOCIDE, APARTHEID and OCCUPATION.
“We refuse to let our government speak in our name while supporting systems of colonial oppression.”
Fiji ‘not on side of Palestine justice’
The statement went on to state that in 1977, the UN General Assembly had called for the annual observance of November 29 as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
But now, Palestinians faced dispossession, military occupation, forced displacement, and the systematic destruction of their homes and lives.
“The world is watching genocide unfold in Gaza — entire families wiped out, children buried under rubble, hospitals bombed, and civilians starved — while governments continue to fund Israel’s genocidal campaign and shield it from accountability,” the network said.
Fiji was not on the side of justice and humanity, added the network. These were some of the reasons why:
Fiji has repeatedly abstained or voted against resolutions protecting Palestinian rights at the United Nations, including resolutions calling for humanitarian ceasefires;
Fiji voted against renewing support for Palestinian refugees under UNRWA;
Fiji abstained on a resolution supporting a two-state solution;
Fiji was the only country to publicly support Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and land annexation at the International Court of Justice; and
Fiji has opened an embassy in Jerusalem, in Occupied Palestine.
“This is not foreign policy — this is complicity,” said the network.
Fiji pro-Palestinian protesters in Albert Park, Suva, today marking UN Solidarity Day. Image: Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network
“And we say loudly from Fiji: End occupation. End apartheid. End genocide. Free Palestine — from the River to the Sea.”
Powerful speeches in NZ
In New Zealand’s Te Komititanga Square beside Auckland city’s main transport hub, protesters heard several powerful speakers before marching up the Queen Street shopping precinct to Aotea Square and raised the Palestinian flag.
Journalist and videographer Cole Martin, of Aotearoa Christians for Peace in Palestine who recently returned from six months bearing witness in the occupied West Bank, gave a harrowing account of the brutality and cruelty of daily life under Israeli military control.
Describing the illegal destruction of Palestinian homes by Israeli military bulldozers in one village, Martin said: “They [villagers] put up tents. And they Israeli military returned because the tents, they say, didn’t have the correct permits, just like their homes.
“And so they demolished them.
“But when Palestinians apply for permits, they are pretty much never granted them. It is an impossible system.”
Journalist Cole Martin speaking at the UN Solidarity Day rally in Auckland today about his recent experiences bearing witness in the occupied West Bank. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Speaking for Amnesty International Aotearoa, people power manager Margaret Taylor described the US President Trump-brokered “ceasefire” in Gaza as “dangerous” because it gave the illusion that life in Gaza was returning to normal.
“We here today are aware that the ‘normal’ for the people of Gaza is the ongoing genocide perpetrated against them by Israel.
“Earlier this week Amnesty international again came out saying, ‘yes, it is still genocide’.
“‘It is still genocide. It is still genocide.” It continues unabated.
“We had to do that because world leaders have denied that it is genocide and are using this alleged ceasefire.”
“Boycott Israel” declares a banner at today’s UN Solidarity Day rally in Auckland. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Gaza flotilla plans
Gaza Sumud Flotilla activist Youssef Sammour, who was also rally MC, brought the crow up-to-date with plans for another flotilla to attempt to break the Israeli siege around the Gaza enclave.
About 30 other protests are happening across New Zealand this weekend over the Gaza genocide.
Global news media reports described Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, although little was reported in New Zealand media.
Several Israeli soldiers were also reported wounded in clashes at the town of Beit Jinn.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned “the criminal attack carried out by an Israeli occupation army patrol in Beit Jinn”.
Al Jazeera reports that Israeli military incursions have become more brazen, more frequent and more violent since Israel expanded its occupation of southern Syria.
Several Israeli soldiers were also reported wounded in clashes at the town of Beit Jinn when local people fought back against the Israeli incursion.
Meanwhile, the UN has condemned an incident in Jenin in the occupied West Bank as another “apparent summary execution” and warned that killings in the Occupied West Bank were surging “without accountability”.
Footage from Jenin showed Israeli forces shooting two Palestinian men in the back after they had raised their hands to surrender. They were unarmed.
“The beast must be stopped” says a placard held aloft by protest artist Craig Tynan among the Christmas decorations in downtown Auckland today. Image: Asia Pacific Report
As New Zealand pro-Palestinian protesters prepared for demonstrations across the country today to mark the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, they awoke to news of Israel attacking three countries in the Middle East — Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
This is the 112th consecutive week that the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has held protests over the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network has also held frequent rallies in defiance of Fiji police restrictions.
At least 13 Syrians have been killed and others wounded during an Israeli ground incursion and air strikes on the town of Beit Jinn, southwest of Syria’s capital Damascus.
Palestine’s Foreign Ministry is demanding action from the international community to halt Israel’s “war crime” as it continues its large-scale military assault on the occupied West Bank.
Ibrahim Olabi, Syria’s representative to the UN, has condemned Israel’s latest attack on the southern town of Beit Jinn, saying it further exposes Israel’s disregard for international law and reflects its fear of a strengthening Syria.
The incident is “yet another indication to the world of which country in the region is the one abiding by international law and which isn’t,” Olabi told Al Jazeera.
It highlights “who really wants a peace deal, a security agreement — who wants to be able to get the region into stability — and who doesn’t,” he said.
Israel is acting out of anxiety over Syria’s trajectory and its growing “regional and international prominence” he said.
‘Israel is terrified’
“Israel is terrified by a strong and prosperous and stable Syria. We are heading in that direction no matter what.”
Olabi described Israel’s latest assault as a signal aimed not only at Syria, but also at its allies.
The attack indicated Israel was “running out of options”.
Since the declaration of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on October 10, Israel has violated the agreement many times with near-daily attacks, killing hundreds of people.
Stop complicity with Israel war crimes – a PSNA poster for today’s rally. Image: PSNA
The Government Media Office in Gaza said Israel shot at civilians 142 times, raided residential areas beyond the “yellow line” 21 times, bombed and shelled Gaza 228 times, and demolished people’s property on 100 occasions.
Israeli forces have also detained 35 Palestinians in Gaza over the past month, and continue to block vital humanitarian aid and destroy homes and infrastructure across the Strip.
Last night, New Zealand photojournalist Cole Martin spoke of daily life in the occupied Palestine Territories as he experienced Israeli brutality during six months based in Bethlehem in an inspiring public kōrero at Saint Matthew-in-the-City Cathedral, Auckland, and offered a “what now?” prescription of hope for the future.
He is also speaking at today’s UN solidarity rally in Te Komititanga Square at 2pm and will give another kōrero at 7pm tonight at Cityside Baptist Church, 8 Mt Eden Road.
“Israel appears set on destroying the framework created to ensure compliance with international law . . . ”, the International Court of Justice heard in April 2025.
To a similar effect, Norway’s Development Minister said in May that Israel was setting a dangerous precedent for international human rights law violations in Gaza.
Both accounts stem from the belief that Israel’s crimes in Gaza are so extreme that they have broadened the scope of impunity under international law. That would make future conflicts more fluid and the world more dangerous, possibly precipitating the emergence of a New World Order.
The First World Order emerged in 1920 with the creation of the League of Nations, the first intergovernmental organisation. The goal was to prevent conflicts and wars from ever happening again. But because of, inter alia, structural weaknesses and the unresolved injustice of the defeated parties, the Second World War erupted in 1939 and the world order crumbled.
The horrors of the Second World War thus paved the way to the emergence of the Second World Order. It rallied universalism with the establishment of the United Nations and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was reinforced by numerous bodies and treaties to maximise compliance with international law.
While International law was never perfect, let alone fully implementable, it has had an indirect, normative influence on shaping domestic politics, academia, civil society, and journalism. It set in motion the emergence of a global rights-based consciousness, setting a frame of reference against which states are morally and legally judged, even if lacked enforcement.
‘Self-defence’ claim Israel is the product of the Second World Order. It was initially legitimised by the UN Partition Plan of Palestine in November 1947, and was admitted as a full UN member state in May 1949.
It is today a signatory of multiple UN treaties and engages with international law in various domains. Yet for years it has employed quasi-legal concepts hoping to inject dangerous exceptions in the law tailored to its own image.
It dealt with international law based more on self-perceived legitimacy (via historical victimhood or Biblical ties to the land of Palestine) than objective legality. That resulted in the production of Israeli societal beliefs regarding the country’s boundless right to, say, “self-defence”, that only few in the international community shared.
This exclusive outlook was helped, ironically, by international law’s own lingua franca, its rhetorical nature. It equipped Tel Aviv, like several other states, with the linguistic tools to justify themselves.
Think of how Israelis defend their military occupation of Palestinians by quoting legal arguments regarding self-defence. Or by re-interpreting the UN Resolution 242, which calls for the “withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967”, to mean not “all” territories.
They also argue that the Gaza Strip was not occupied since 2005. But ignore Israel’s continued “effective control” over it, which makes it an occupation as per the Fourth Hague Convention.
And while Israel isn’t a party to the Convention, it is customary international law, and therefore binding.
Dahiya Doctrine In the same vein, Tel Aviv’s ratification in 1995 of the convention on certain conventional weapons, did not stop it deploying cluster bombs against civilians in Beirut’s southern Dahiya’s district in 2006.
The Israeli army readily denied it was in violation of international law, because “they warned the area’s population”.
It is in Dahiya that a new legal threshold was crossed, or rather twisted. One that would define Israel’s next military campaigns, namely “The Dahiya Doctrine”. It permits the unleashing of extraordinary force against the civilian population and infrastructure.
While a clear violation of international law’s “principle of proportionality”, Israeli officials often justified the attacks as lawful for they target the civilian bedding of “terrorists”.
Needless to say, the Israeli definition of terrorism encapsulates almost every act of dissidence directed at the state, or Jews. Regardless of the legitimacy of that act, and irrespective of its form — violent or passive.
Israel would upscale the Dahiya Doctrine in its consecutive onslaughts on Gaza since 2008, while continuing to pay lip service to international law.
After 7 October 2023, even the words of justification had been abandoned. Calls by Israeli officials and some journalists to commit war crimes in Gaza, including genocide, were mostly unapologetic.
Save for the gas chambers, the Israeli army committed every atrocity imaginable against Gaza’s civilians. Gaza became the world’s largest graveyard of children. Most hospitals, schools, and universities were destroyed, alongside nearly 80 percent of the Strip’s infrastructure and homes.
More journalists were targeted and killed in Gaza than both world wars, the Vietnam War, wars in Yugoslavia, and the war in Afghanistan combined. And unknown to modern conflict, Israel systematically went after aid workers, including UN-associated ones.
Enemies and allies The gun barrels were then turned against the very representative of international law, the UN. In October 2024, the Knesset banned the UNRWA — going even further by labelling it a “terrorist organisation”.
Sure, Israel has long looked at the UN as biased, and saw the UNRWA as detrimental to Tel Aviv’s wishes to erase the Palestinian refugee problem from existence. But after October 7, not only did Israel unleash a genocidal war against Palestinians, it used quasi-legal instrument and military prowess to neutralise the legal bodies that may limit its scope.
This is unprecedented in the United Nation’s history.
Yet, despite its unbridled brutality, Israel could have been kept at bay had it not been for the US support.
Indeed, the White House helped Israel normalise its violations of international law in two ways. Firstly, by emphasising the “reason of the state” doctrine over international law. The White House under Biden and Trump, almost fully embraced the Israeli narrative of self-defence after October 7, even when it was evident that the Israelis went too far in Gaza.
Secondly, the US was already waging its own lateral war on international law. In February 2025, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order authorising sanctions on the ICC and its Chief Prosecutor.
It expanded the sanctions on four ICC officials in August, saying they had been pivotal in efforts to prosecute Americans and Israelis.
Trump had withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council in 2018, allegedly over anti-Israel bias. The Biden administration re-joined in 2021 despite being critical of the council’s “disproportionate attention on Israel”. But in 2025 Trump re-withdrew from the organisation.
Ultimately, whether Israel is being driven by a sense of doom post-October 7, one that has overshadowed rationality, or it is rationally using whatever necessary militarily capacity it has to achieve its war objectives, matters little.
Whatever the explanation, what stands is that Israel’s unprecedented crimes set a trajectory in the international system. There is now a possibility that under the increasing normalisation of such crimes, the system will ultimately break.
But if the trajectory follows the same pattern as in the past 100 years, then the crisis may usher in a third world order. A rectifying phase. But that remains speculative, for the path of history is not linear.
Dr Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specialising in the political psychology of intergroup and conflict dynamics, focusing on MENA with a special interest in Israel/Palestine. He has a background in human rights and journalism. Follow him on Twitter: @emadmoussa
Indonesia is preparing one of the largest peacekeeping deployments in its history — a 20,000-strong force of soldiers, engineers, medics and logistics personnel — to enter the shattered and starving Gaza Strip.
Three brigades, three hospital ships, Hercules aircraft, a three-star general, a reconnaissance team, battalions for health services, construction and logistics — Jakarta is moving with remarkable speed and confidence.
But the moral clarity that Indonesia prides itself on in its support for Palestine is now in danger of being muddied by geopolitical calculation.
And that calculation, in this case, is deeply entangled with a plan conceived and promoted by US President Donald Trump — a plan that critics argue would freeze, not resolve, the structures of domination and blockade that have long suffocated Gaza.
Indonesia must ask itself a hard question: Is it stepping into Gaza to help Palestinians — or to help enforce a fragile order designed to protect the status quo?
For years, Indonesian leaders have proudly stated that their support for Palestine is grounded not in expediency but in principle.
President Prabowo Subianto has reiterated that Jakarta stands “ready at any moment” to help end the suffering in Gaza. But readiness is not the same as reflection. And reflection is urgently needed.
Tilted towards Israel
Trump’s so-called stabilisation plan envisions an International Stabilisation Force tasked with training select Palestinian police officers and preventing weapons smuggling — a mission framed as neutral but structurally tilted toward Israel’s long-standing security demands.
The plan does little to address the root political causes of Gaza’s devastation. It does not confront Israel’s decades-long military occupation.
It does not propose a just political horizon. And it does not establish meaningful accountability for continued violations, even as reports persist that ceasefire terms are repeatedly breached.
A peacekeeping force that does not address the underlying conditions of injustice is not peacekeeping. It is de facto enforcement of a deeply unequal arrangement.
Indonesia’s deployment risks becoming just that.
Former deputy foreign minister Dino Patti Djalal has urged caution, warning that Indonesian troops could easily be drawn into clashes simply because the territory remains saturated with weaponry, competing authorities and unresolved political tensions.
He argues that Indonesia must insist on crystal-clear rules of engagement. With volatility always a possibility, a mission built on ambiguity is a mission built on quicksand.
Impossible peacekeeper position
His warning deserves attention. A peacekeeper who does not know whether they are expected to intervene, withdraw or hold ground in moments of confrontation is placed in an impossible position.
And should Indonesian forces — admired worldwide for their professionalism — be forced to navigate chaos without a political framework, Jakarta will face unpredictable political and humanitarian consequences at home and abroad.
More troubling is the lack of political strategy behind Indonesia’s enthusiasm. Prabowo’s government frames this mission as a humanitarian and stabilising operation, but it has not clarified how it fits within the long-term political resolution that Indonesia claims to champion.
For decades, Jakarta has stood consistently behind a two-state solution. Yet today, after the destruction of Gaza and the collapse of any credible peace process, many Palestinians and international observers argue that the two-state paradigm has become a diplomatic mirage — repeatedly invoked, never realised, and often used to justify inaction.
If Indonesia truly wants to stand for justice rather than merely stability, it must be willing to articulate alternatives. One of those alternatives — controversial but increasingly discussed in academic, political and human rights circles — is a rights-based one-state solution that guarantees equal citizenship and security for all who live between the river and the sea.
Such a political horizon would require courage from Jakarta. Supporting a single state would mean breaking sharply from US policy preferences and acknowledging that decades of partition proposals have failed to deliver anything resembling peace.
But Indonesia has taken courageous positions before. It has spoken against apartheid in South Africa and, most recently, called out the global community’s double standards in the treatment of Ukraine and Palestine.
Jakarta must be moral voice
If Jakarta wants to be a moral voice, it cannot outsource its vision to a proposal drafted by an American administration whose approach to the conflict was widely criticised as one-sided.
Indonesia’s soldiers are being told they are going to Gaza to help. That is noble. But noble intentions do not excuse political naivety.
Before Jakarta sends even a single battalion forward — before the hospital ships are launched, before the Hercules engines warm, before the three-star commander takes his post — Indonesia must ask whether this mission will move Palestinians closer to genuine freedom or merely enforce a temporary calm that leaves the underlying injustices untouched.
A peacekeeping force that sustains the structures of oppression is not peacekeeping at all. It is maintenance.
Indonesia can — and must — do better.
Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the director of the Indonesia-MENA Desk at the Centre for Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) in Jakarta and a research affiliate at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. He spent more than a decade living and traveling across the Middle East, earning a BA in international affairs from Qatar University. He later completed his MA in International Politics and PhD in politics at the University of Manchester. This article was first published by Middle East Monitor.
Indonesia is preparing one of the largest peacekeeping deployments in its history — a 20,000-strong force of soldiers, engineers, medics and logistics personnel — to enter the shattered and starving Gaza Strip.
Three brigades, three hospital ships, Hercules aircraft, a three-star general, a reconnaissance team, battalions for health services, construction and logistics — Jakarta is moving with remarkable speed and confidence.
But the moral clarity that Indonesia prides itself on in its support for Palestine is now in danger of being muddied by geopolitical calculation.
And that calculation, in this case, is deeply entangled with a plan conceived and promoted by US President Donald Trump — a plan that critics argue would freeze, not resolve, the structures of domination and blockade that have long suffocated Gaza.
Indonesia must ask itself a hard question: Is it stepping into Gaza to help Palestinians — or to help enforce a fragile order designed to protect the status quo?
For years, Indonesian leaders have proudly stated that their support for Palestine is grounded not in expediency but in principle.
President Prabowo Subianto has reiterated that Jakarta stands “ready at any moment” to help end the suffering in Gaza. But readiness is not the same as reflection. And reflection is urgently needed.
Tilted towards Israel
Trump’s so-called stabilisation plan envisions an International Stabilisation Force tasked with training select Palestinian police officers and preventing weapons smuggling — a mission framed as neutral but structurally tilted toward Israel’s long-standing security demands.
The plan does little to address the root political causes of Gaza’s devastation. It does not confront Israel’s decades-long military occupation.
It does not propose a just political horizon. And it does not establish meaningful accountability for continued violations, even as reports persist that ceasefire terms are repeatedly breached.
A peacekeeping force that does not address the underlying conditions of injustice is not peacekeeping. It is de facto enforcement of a deeply unequal arrangement.
Indonesia’s deployment risks becoming just that.
Former deputy foreign minister Dino Patti Djalal has urged caution, warning that Indonesian troops could easily be drawn into clashes simply because the territory remains saturated with weaponry, competing authorities and unresolved political tensions.
He argues that Indonesia must insist on crystal-clear rules of engagement. With volatility always a possibility, a mission built on ambiguity is a mission built on quicksand.
Impossible peacekeeper position
His warning deserves attention. A peacekeeper who does not know whether they are expected to intervene, withdraw or hold ground in moments of confrontation is placed in an impossible position.
And should Indonesian forces — admired worldwide for their professionalism — be forced to navigate chaos without a political framework, Jakarta will face unpredictable political and humanitarian consequences at home and abroad.
More troubling is the lack of political strategy behind Indonesia’s enthusiasm. Prabowo’s government frames this mission as a humanitarian and stabilising operation, but it has not clarified how it fits within the long-term political resolution that Indonesia claims to champion.
For decades, Jakarta has stood consistently behind a two-state solution. Yet today, after the destruction of Gaza and the collapse of any credible peace process, many Palestinians and international observers argue that the two-state paradigm has become a diplomatic mirage — repeatedly invoked, never realised, and often used to justify inaction.
If Indonesia truly wants to stand for justice rather than merely stability, it must be willing to articulate alternatives. One of those alternatives — controversial but increasingly discussed in academic, political and human rights circles — is a rights-based one-state solution that guarantees equal citizenship and security for all who live between the river and the sea.
Such a political horizon would require courage from Jakarta. Supporting a single state would mean breaking sharply from US policy preferences and acknowledging that decades of partition proposals have failed to deliver anything resembling peace.
But Indonesia has taken courageous positions before. It has spoken against apartheid in South Africa and, most recently, called out the global community’s double standards in the treatment of Ukraine and Palestine.
Jakarta must be moral voice
If Jakarta wants to be a moral voice, it cannot outsource its vision to a proposal drafted by an American administration whose approach to the conflict was widely criticised as one-sided.
Indonesia’s soldiers are being told they are going to Gaza to help. That is noble. But noble intentions do not excuse political naivety.
Before Jakarta sends even a single battalion forward — before the hospital ships are launched, before the Hercules engines warm, before the three-star commander takes his post — Indonesia must ask whether this mission will move Palestinians closer to genuine freedom or merely enforce a temporary calm that leaves the underlying injustices untouched.
A peacekeeping force that sustains the structures of oppression is not peacekeeping at all. It is maintenance.
Indonesia can — and must — do better.
Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the director of the Indonesia-MENA Desk at the Centre for Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) in Jakarta and a research affiliate at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. He spent more than a decade living and traveling across the Middle East, earning a BA in international affairs from Qatar University. He later completed his MA in International Politics and PhD in politics at the University of Manchester. This article was first published by Middle East Monitor.
Last week, the UN Security Council endorsed President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, effectively installing American supervision over the Palestinian territory’s postwar future.
The resolution, which mandated a transitional administration and an international stabilisation force, faced sharp rejection from several Palestinian factions, who warned that it would undermine the national will.
The US roadmap sets out a future path to a Palestinian state, although its opaque wording and lack of concrete details on what it would look like cast doubt on any real commitment towards Palestinian self-determination.
While the UNSC contemplates a “possible” pathway to an independent Palestinian state, the Israeli government firmly rejected Palestinian statehood, calling it an “existential threat”.
The vote came amid American plans to split the Gaza Strip into two zones. The arrangement envisions a potentially indefinite division of the war-ravaged enclave along the Israeli-established Yellow Line, creating a “green zone” under Israeli military control — where reconstruction would begin — and a “red zone,” which would remain under de facto Hamas control.
Under the US-brokered ceasefire agreement reached in October, which Tel Aviv is repeatedly violating, Palestinians have been pushed into a small zone on the coastline that makes up less than half of Gaza, with Israeli forces controlling 53 to 58 percent of the Strip.
The Israeli army maintains roughly 40 active military positions in the area that falls beyond the Yellow Line, the invisible military demarcation boundary set during the first phase of the truce, where Israeli troops had to withdraw to.
Armed militias and clans
A mix of armed militias and clans, some supported by Israel, has emerged across the areas of Gaza now under Israeli command, challenging Hamas’s authority. Many Gazans, including those disillusioned with the group, are uneasy about the rise of these small, fragmented groups.
The majority of Gaza’s two million people are squeezed into a confined, suffocating land mass, living amidst rubble and makeshift tents, with only limited life-saving aid and no operational medical care.
“The first stage of the US plan has further fragmented Gaza and forced its surviving population into an even smaller territory, turning less than half of it into a concentration camp with no means of survival whatsoever,” US-Palestinian journalist and writer Ramzy Baroud told The New Arab.
Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, made similar comments to TNA, describing Gaza as split between an indefinitely Israeli-ruled sector and a massive concentration camp.
“This is the reality that the Security Council has normalised,” he said, criticising the latest UN resolution.
For the Middle East expert, the so-called peace plan for Gaza has created new facts on the ground that are likely to become “permanent realities”, with the risk of a West Bank–style arrangement marked by extensive Israeli control.
The Trump administration is reportedly working to build “alternative safe communities” inside the part of Gaza under Israeli control. These communities are intended to provide temporary housing, schools, and hospitals until long-term reconstruction becomes possible.
The new residential sites are said to be part of a project aimed at resettling Gazans from areas under Hamas rule.
Gaza’s fragmentation entrenched
Critics caution that the initiative could entrench Gaza’s fragmentation, undermine Palestinian sovereignty, and amount to forced displacement.
Rami Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian researcher on Israeli affairs, however, told the Palestinian Information Center that the American blueprint was unrealistic, since Gaza’s dense urban and familial fabric “is not land that can be partitioned”.
In fact, he added, Israel had not been able to fully control the enclave, either before its withdrawal or throughout the two years of conflict.
Baroud, born and raised in Gaza, explained that the project was a “far uglier” version of any previous Israeli policy toward Palestinians, in that people are now told that their political stance could determine whether the Strip returns to full-scale genocide or not.
“Israel’s new tactic is to divide Gaza and let those Palestinians who are not linked to the resistance trickle into the rebuilt zone,” hoping to set up an alternative governing structure there, he argued.
The analyst believes that Israel’s attempt to form “two Gazas” is unlikely to gain enough traction among people, affirming that their strong sense of unity has long made it almost impossible to manufacture divisions within Gaza’s society.
“I don’t think Israel can do this kind of social engineering in Gaza, no matter how desperate the situation”, he said.
Segmentation an old idea
Baroud stressed that Gaza’s segmentation is an old idea, pointing to former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon’s 1971 “five fingers” plan, which divided the Strip into separate areas through military zones and settlements.
But he also noted that Gazans resisted it for many years, which later pushed Sharon to withdraw Israeli settlers and troops from the coastal enclave in 2005.
Besides the emerging territorial divisions, Tel Aviv previously established the Netzarim Corridor, an east‑west military route through central Gaza that splits the Strip in two and gives Israel grip over major highways.
It also fortified the Philadelphi Corridor, a buffer zone along the Gaza‑Egypt border.
The Yellow Line, originally intended as a temporary military arrangement marking Israel’s first withdrawal under the ceasefire, is now being cemented despite plans to deploy an international stabilisation force and reduce the Israeli army’s direct presence in the territory after phase one.
Trump’s 20-point plan has essentially created a geographical division in Gaza that risks becoming permanent.
Many Palestinians fear the outcome will be a de facto partition between the Israeli-occupied east, with some reconstruction concentrated there, and the Hamas-controlled west, where most of the population remains crowded in devastated areas with little rebuilding.
Gradual Israeli pull back
According to the proposal, Israel would gradually pull back to a “security perimeter” but retain military control over this buffer zone, overseen by an international administrative body.
Critics warn this would perpetuate Israel’s effective control over much of the territory and confine Palestinians to a smaller, more restricted Gaza than before the war.
Meanwhile, negotiations for the second phase of the truce remain stalled as Hamas still holds the remains of three hostages. An extended standstill would only prolong Palestinian suffering and expose civilians to further violence.
Israeli forces have continued to carry out near-daily airstrikes, artillery shelling, and demolitions since the truce began on 10 October. In just the first month, Israel violated the ceasefire nearly 500 times, killing more than 340 Palestinians and injuring hundreds more, with some of the worst violence occurring near or past the Yellow Line.
“Each passing day makes the ceasefire look more like a farce,” Elgindy said, slamming the Security Council’s silence in the face of Israel’s daily ceasefire violations.
Aid flows restricted
Israeli authorities have also continued to restrict aid flows to Gaza more than a month into the ceasefire, leaving nearly 1.5 million people without emergency shelter and hundreds of thousands living in tents without basic services.
UN data shows that just over 100 trucks of humanitarian assistance are entering the besieged enclave each day, far below the 600 trucks per day agreed under the October ceasefire deal.
Elgindy added that if the world keeps pretending the war is over while bombing continues, aid is still blocked, and reconstruction is stalled, the truce will become untenable, and the situation will erupt again.
“It’s only a matter of time before we see a Palestinian response, giving Israel a pretext to resume a full-scale assault,” he said.
Alessandra Bajec is a freelance journalist currently based in Tunis. This article was first published by The New Arab.
A news report highlighting Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown yelling “free beer” at pro-Palestine protesters at an Auckland Council governing body meeting on Tuesday has stirred an angry response over the failure to face up to a serious human rights issue.
Mayor Brown was called a ”shameful man” by protesters after they were refused an opportunity to speak at the meeting over ethical procurement policies in response to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
At the start of the meeting, the mayor said a request from the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) to speak had been declined, saying the governing body did not have responsibility for Palestine.
A point of order was then raised by Councillor Mike Lee, who questioned the decision and asked for an explanation, said a Stuff news report.
Two other councillors also challenged the mayor, but Brown doubled down on his refusal to allow the PSNA deputation to speak.
When protesters started chanting “free Palestine”, Brown shouted “free beer”.
Brown again reiterated that the governing body did not have responsibility for Palestine, said the Stuff report.
‘Depraved comment’
“It’s hard to know who is more to blame for this story in Stuff,” said PSNA co-chair John Minto to supporters in a social media post.
“Is it Wayne Brown’s depraved comment ‘free beer’ in response to genocide in Gaza or is it the mainstream media which presents such a half-arsed account of our request to speak at the council meeting?”
Minto pointed out that so far the Christchurch, Nelson, Wellington and Palmerston North city councils — as well as Environment Canterbury and Environment Southland — had passed motions to exclude from their procurement policies any company on the United Nations Human Rights Council list of companies building and maintaining illegal Israeli settlements on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
“Brown is happy for Auckland ratepayer money to be spent on companies involved in flagrant violations of international law and is refusing to allow the council to discuss this,” Minto said.
“We will be back.”
Other pro-Palestinian protesters added comments in support.
West Coast environmental activist Pete Lusk wrote: “That’s like the age-old comment ‘get a job’. Such an ignorant man is Wayne Brown.”
Brown lacked ‘compassion’
In a lengthy response, Nancy McShane wrote in part: “I find Mr Brown’s cavalier response of ‘free beer’ entirely inappropriate. It’s a pity he was unable to demonstrate an appropriate level of concern, insight and compassion towards the Palestinian people, and engage constructively with this group of PSNA members who were advocating on their behalf.
“PSNA has worked extremely hard to ensure our local bodies are vigilant in ensuring they are not supporting genocide through poor purchasing choices.
“Aucklanders should be concerned that, unlike many other councils around New Zealand, their own council has refused to even have a discussion on this issue, let alone adopt an ethical, genocide-free procurement policy.
“Once upon a time, our country had a proud reputation as a progressor and defender of human rights. That is rapidly disappearing.
“New Zealanders should think carefully about how this shift away from our foundational values of peace, justice and equality will shape the future of Aotearoa.”
The global civil society alliance Civicus has called on eight Pacific governments to do more to respect civic freedoms and strengthen institutions to protect these rights.
It is especially concerned over the threats to press freedom, the use of laws to criminalise online expression, and failure to establish national human rights institutions or ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
But it also says that the Pacific status is generally positive.
Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Solomon Islands have been singled out for criticism over press freedom concerns, but the brief published by the Civicus Monitor also examines the civic spce in Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga and Vanuatu.
“There have been incidents of harassment, intimidation and dismissal of journalists in retaliation for their work,” the report said.
“Cases of censorship have also been reported, along with denial of access, exclusion of journalists from government events and refusal of visas to foreign journalists.”
The Civicus report focuses on respect for and limitations to the freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly, which are fundamental to the exercise of civic rights.
Freedoms guaranteed
“These freedoms are guaranteed in the national constitutions of all eight countries as well as in the ICCPR.
“In several countries — including Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, PNG and Samoa — the absence of freedom of information laws makes it extremely difficult for journalists and the public to access official information,” the report said.
Countries such as Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu, continued to enforce criminal defamation laws, creating a “chilling environment for the media, human rights defenders and anyone seeking to express themselves or criticise governments”.
In recent years, Fiji, PNG and Samoa had also used cybercrime laws to criminalise online expression.
“Governments in the Pacific must do more to protect press freedom and ensure that journalists can work freely and without fear of retribution for expressing critical opinions or covering topics the government may find sensitive,” said Josef Benedict, Civicus Asia Pacific researcher.
“They must also pass freedom of information legislation and remove criminal defamation provisions in law so that they are not used to criminalise expression both off and online.”
Civicus is concerned that at least four countries – Kiribati, Nauru, Solomon Islands and Tonga – have yet to ratify the ICCPR, which imposes obligations on states to respect and protect civic freedoms.
Lacking human rights bodies
Also, four countries — Kiribati, Nauru, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu — lack national human rights institutions (NHRI).
Fiji was criticised over restricting the right to peaceful assembly over protests about genocide and human rights violations in Palestine and West Papua.
In May 2024, “a truckload of police officers, including two patrol cars, turned up at a protest at the premises of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre against human rights violations in Gaza and West Papua, in an apparent effort to intimidate protesters”.
Gatherings and vigils had been organised regularly each Thursday.
In PNG and Tonga, the Office of the Ombudsman plays monitor and responds to human rights issues, but calls remain for establishing an independent body in line with the Paris Principles, which set international standards for national human rights institutions.
“It is time all Pacific countries ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and ensure its laws are consistent with it,” said Benedict.
“Governments must also to establish national human rights institutions to ensure effective monitoring and reporting on human rights issues. This will also allow for better accountability for violations of civic freedoms.”
Philippines police unlawfully targeted protesters with unnecessary and excessive force during anti-corruption marches in September, according to harrowing new testimony gathered by the human rights watchdog Amnesty International ahead of fresh protests planned across the country this weekend.
Ten people interviewed by Amnesty International detailed physical abuse — including violations that may amount to torture and other ill-treatment — by state forces following demonstrations in the capital Manila on 21 September 2025.
The research comes as thousands prepare to return to the streets on November 30 in renewed protests against government corruption, said the Amnesty International report.
“The disturbing evidence we have gathered of unlawful force unleashed by the police against protesters and others on September 21 makes a mockery of the Philippine government’s repeated claim that it exercises ‘maximum tolerance’ during protests,” said Jerrie Abella, Amnesty International regional campaigner.
“Victims have described how police punched, kicked and hit people — including children — with batons as they were arrested, with appalling ill-treatment continuing in detention. The police must change course and respect people’s right to protest on November 30 and beyond.”
Police only stopped beatings “when they saw the media coming”.
The Philippines’ biggest demonstrations in years took place on September 21, as tens of thousands in Manila and elsewhere protested against corruption by government officials, high-level politicians and contractors in flood-control and infrastructure projects.
Isolated incidents
Isolated incidents of violence from some protesters, including setting vehicles on fire and throwing stones at the police, were reported in Manila.
Manila police said they arrested and detained 216 people who were allegedly involved in the violence, including 91 children. Many are facing criminal charges.
However, Amnesty’s research indicates that peaceful protesters and bystanders were also violently targeted by the police.
Rey*, 20, recounted how three men in plain clothes — who he believes were police as they later handed him to uniformed officers — grabbed and punched him in the face as he tried to run away while holding a sign calling on people to take to the streets.
The assault on Rey was captured in a video, by an unknown individual, which he found online and showed to Amnesty International.
“Police in uniform joined in to punch, kick and hit me with their batons. I briefly lost consciousness but woke up to pain as they dragged me by my hair,” Rey told Amnesty International.
He said police accused him of taking part in violence that killed two officers, despite the fact that no police were killed in the protests.
Beating stopped when media came
Rey said the beating only stopped when one officer warned the others that members of the media were approaching. He also described how he and his friend were taken by uniformed police into an ambulance, where they were beaten further.
Omar*, 25, said he was watching the protests with relatives in Mendiola Street, Manila, when he was arrested.
Police accused him of being among those who caused violence, including attacking the police.
While walking with the police who arrested him, Omar said they passed other officers who punched and hit him with batons.
He said he was then held in a tent with about 14 other people, one of whom “had blood dripping from a head wound” which he said was from being hit with a gun by a police officer.
Ahmed*, 17, was arrested alongside his relatives Yusuf*, 18, and Ali*, 19, who all live and do construction work near the protest site.
They said they went out to buy rice and were waiting for police to allow them to pass through a protest area on their way back to the construction site when they were arrested.
‘Hit with batons, kicked’
“The police took us to a tent where they hit us with their batons. They punched us in the face and kicked our torsos,” Ali told Amnesty International. He said they were accused of attacking the police and subsequently detained.
‘I saw people coming out of the tent bloodied and bruised’
Greg*, 18, and Ryan*, 22, were arrested in separate incidents in Mendiola and Ayala Bridge in Manila for their alleged involvement in attacks against the police. Like all those interviewed, they were brought by the police to a blue tent in Mendiola, where police beat them further.
Lawyer Maria Sol Taule, from a legal aid group representing those interviewed, said the “notorious blue tent” served as a temporary holding area for those arrested. While it showed no outward sign of police affiliation, it appeared to be supervised by the police, according to the group’s investigation.
“I was so scared. I saw people coming out of the tent bloodied and bruised. Inside, they made me spread my hands and repeatedly hit both sides with their batons,” said Greg, who showed Amnesty International welts on his back where he said he was struck.
Ryan said police hit him on his head and neck. “They saw me lift my head up and accused me of ‘verifying’ or looking at the faces of police to identify them,” he said. Others interviewed reported being similarly hit following the same accusation by police.
“I told myself, I was done for. I’d never make it out of this tent alive,” said Michael*, 23, who described being punched, kicked and hit with batons by police. He was arrested with his girlfriend Sam*, 21, and their friend Lena*, 22, before all three were detained at a police station. They said they went to the protest just to watch and take videos but were arrested for allegedly committing violence.
Sam and Lena were not hurt but could hear people being beaten nearby. “Even now, I can still hear the cries coming from the tent. I have problems sleeping, imagining how they beat up Michael,” Sam said.
Needed medical treatment
The beatings were so severe that some victims needed medical treatment, according to Taule. She said one individual sustained injuries including a dislocated jaw when he was hit by the police with a baton in the face. Others – including Michael, Sam and Lena – lost their jobs after failing to report to work as they were detained.
All those interviewed maintained they were not involved in the violence of which they were accused by the police.
On November 4, police said 97 individuals had been charged with conspiracy, sedition and other crimes over the protests.
*Names were changed in the Amnesty International report upon request for safety reasons
Civil society forces in Chile are preparing to launch an international campaign to demand the expulsion of Israel from the United Nations.
This is based on Article 6 of the United Nations Charter against the backdrop of what the campaign describes as “continuous and systematic violations” of international law and resolutions of the UN General Assembly and Security Council.
The official launch of the campaign is due to take place tomorrow during a public event in the capital Santiago while a collection of signatures by electronic petition has already begun.
Campaign data indicated that the petition addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had already exceeded 57,000 signatures, with a goal of quickly reaching 100,000 signatures.
The organisers of the civil society initiative say the rapid response reflects a “broad popular response” to the dire humanitarian situation in Palestine, and embodies “international civil pressure” to get the international system moving after decades of inaction.
At the media event introducing the initiative, lawyer and former Chilean ambassador Nelson Haddad presented the legal framework for the campaign, explaining that Israel had become a “pariah state according to the definitions of international law,” and that it “does not abide by UN resolutions, nor by the basic rules of international humanitarian law, and practises systematic violations that have been ongoing for more than seven decades”.
Campaign organisers say this mechanism has been used in historical moments, such as the Korean War and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that activating it now could constitute an “institutional pressure tool” capable of overcoming obstruction within the UN Security Council.
‘Reforming the UN’
The organisers also believe that the goal is not limited to imposing measures against Israel, but extends to “reopening the file of reforming the structure of the United Nations”, restricting the power of the veto, and restoring the principle of legal equality between states in order to limit the ability of one state to “disrupt international justice.”
The petition read as follows:
“We, the undersigned, respectfully but firmly appeal to you to initiate formal procedures to expel the State of Israel from the Organisation, in accordance with Article 6 of the Charter of the United Nations, because of its repeated violations of the principles contained therein.”
The letter continues:
“Emphasising that Israel, through official statements, declares its intention to eliminate the State of Palestine with all its inhabitants, infrastructure, and memory, and accuses every party that criticises its policies of ‘anti-Semitism,’ and practices repression even against Jewish citizens who oppose genocide, thus making its violations extensive, deep, and directed against everyone who disagrees with its orientations.”
The letter describes what is happening in the Gaza Strip as a “complex war crime,” noting that the occupying state is killing “Palestinians with bombs and missiles, destroying medical infrastructure, and exterminating nearly two million people through hunger and thirst”.
‘Starving population, poisoning the land’
Israel is also depriving the population of water, food, and medicine, and destroying and poisoning the land, representing “one of the most serious documented crimes in the modern era”.
The letter adds that the continued dealings of international and academic institutions with Israel are “unjustified and unacceptable”, and that “Israel must be immediately expelled from all international activities, all institutional relations with it must be severed, and a comprehensive arms embargo imposed that contributes to the continuation of the genocide.”
The message concluded by saying: “With Gaza, humanity dies too. We want Palestine to live, for it is the heart of the world.”
The world has lost a giant with the passing of Australian media legend Bob Howarth. He was 81.
He was a passionate advocate for journalism who changed many lives with his extraordinary kindness and generosity coupled with wisdom, experience and an uncanny ability to make things happen.
Howarth worked for major daily newspapers in his native Australia and around the world, having a particularly powerful impact on the Asia Pacific region.
I first met Bob Howarth in 2001 in Timor-Leste during the nation’s first election campaign after the hard-won independence vote.
We met in the newsroom of the Timor Post, a daily newspaper he had been instrumental in setting up.
I was doing my journalism training there when Howarth was asked to tell the trainees about his considerable experience. It was only a short conversation, but his words and body language captivated me.
He was a born storyteller.
Role in the Timor-Post
I later found out about his role in the birth of the Timor Post, the newly independent nation’s first daily newspaper.
In early 2000, after hearing Timorese journalists lacked even the most basic equipment needed to do their jobs, he hatched a plan to get non-Y2K-compliant PCs, laptops and laser printers from Queensland Newspapers over to Dili.
And, despite considerable hurdles, he got it done. Then his bosses sent Howarth himself over to help a team of 14 Timorese journalists set up the Post.
The first publication of the Timor Post occurred during the historic visit of Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid to Timor-Leste in February 2000.
A media mass for Bob Howarth in Timor-Leste Video: Timor Post
In that first edition, Bob Howarth wrote an editorial in English, entitled “Welcome Mr Wahid”, accompanied by photos of President Wahid and Timorese national hero Xanana Gusmão. That article was framed and proudly hangs on the wall at the Timor Post offices to this day.
After Bob Howarth left Timor-Leste, he delivered some life-changing news to the Timor Post — he wanted to sponsor a journalist from the newspaper to study in Papua New Guinea. The owners chose me.
In 2002, I went with another Timorese student sponsored by Howarth to study journalism at Divine Word University in Madang on PNG’s north coast.
Work experience at the Post-Courier
During our time in PNG, we began to see the true extent of Howarth’s kindness. During every university holiday we would fly to Port Moresby to stay with him and get work experience at the Post-Courier, where Bob was managing director and publisher.
Bob Howarth with Mouzy Lopes de Araujo in Dili in 2012 . . . training and support for many Timorese and Pacific journalists. Image: Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo
Our relationship became stronger and stronger. Sometimes we would sit down, have some drinks and I’d ask him questions about journalism and he would generously answer them in his wise and entertaining way.
In 2005, I went back to Timor-Leste and I went back to the Timor Post as political reporter.
When the owners of the Post appointed me editor-in chief in the middle of 2007, at the age of 28, I contacted Bob for advice and training support, with the backing of the Post’s new director, Jose Ximenes. That year I went to Melbourne to attend journalism training organised by the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre.
I then flew to the Gold Coast and stayed for two days with Bob Howarth and Di at their beautiful Miami home.
“Congratulations, Mouzy, for becoming the new editor-in-chief of the Post,” said Bob Howarth as he shook my hand, looking so proud. But I replied: “Bob, I need your help.”
He said, “Beer first, mate” — one of his favourite sayings — and then we discussed how he could help. He said he would try his best to bring some used laptops for Timor Post when he came to Dili to provide some training.
Arrival of laptops
True to his word, in early 2008 he and one of his long-time friends, veteran journalist Gary Evans, arrived in Dili with said laptops, delivered the training and helped set up business plans.
After I left the Post in 2010, I planned with some friends to set up a new daily newspaper called the Independente. Of course, I went to Bob for ideas and advice.
On a personal note, without Bob Howarth I may never have met my wife Jen, an Aussie Queensland University of Technology student who travelled to Madang in 2004 on a research trip. Bob and Di represented my family in Timor-Leste at our engagement party on the Gold Coast in 2010.
Without Bob Howarth, Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo may never have met his Australian wife Jen . . . pictured with their first son Enzo Lopes on Christmas Day 2019. Image: Jennifer Scott
Jen moved to Dili at the end of that year and was part of the launch of Independente in 2011.
In the paper’s early days Howarth and Evans came back to Dili to train our journalists. He then also worked with the Timor-Leste Press Council and UNDP to provide training to many journalists in Dili.
Before he got sick, the owners and founders of the Timor Post paid tribute to Bob Howarth as “the father of the Timor Post” at the paper’s 20th anniversary celebrations in 2020 because of his contributions.
He and the Timor Post’s former director had a special friendship. Howarth was the godfather for Da Costa’s daughter, Stefania Howarth Da Costa.
Bob Howarth at the launch of the Independente in Dili in 2011. Image:
30 visits to Timor-Leste
During his lifetime Bob Howarth visited Timor-Leste more than 30 times. He said many times that Timor-Leste was his second home after Australia.
After the news of his passing after a three-and-a-half-year battle with cancer was received by his friends at the Independente and the Timor Post on November 13, the Facebook walls of many in the Timorese media were adorned with words of sadness.
Both the Timor Post and the Independente organised a special mass in Bob Howarth’s honour.
He has left us forever but his legacy will be always with us.
May your soul rest in peace, Bob Howarth.
Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo is former editor-in-chief of the Timor Post and editorial director of the Independente in Timor-Leste, and is currently living in Brisbane with his wife Jen and their two boys, Enzo and Rafael.
Bob Howarth (third from right) in Paris in 2018 for the Asia Pacific summit of Reporters Without Borders correspondents along with colleagues, including Asia Pacific Report publisher David Robie (centre). Image: RSF/APR
Former Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari says Israel has “lost the war on social media,” describing the online space as the most dangerous and complex arena shaping global public opinion, especially among younger generations.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington, DC, Hagari urged the creation of a powerful new propaganda apparatus modelled on the capabilities and structure of Unit 8200, Israel’s elite cyber intelligence division, reports Middle East Monitor.
He argued that Israel must now fight “a battle of images, videos, and statistics—not lengthy texts.”
Hagari proposed establishing a unit capable of monitoring anti-Israel content across platforms, in real time and in multiple languages, supplying rapid-response messaging and data to government and media outlets.
His plan also calls for the systematic creation of fake online identities, automated bot networks, and the use of unofficial bloggers — “preferably mostly young women” — to shape global perceptions.
He warned that the decisive phase of this battle would unfold a decade from now, when students using artificial intelligence tools searched for information on the events of October 7 and encountered “two completely contradictory narratives.”
Hagari, a former navy officer who served in sensitive military roles, became Israel’s top military spokesperson in 2023 before being dismissed from the position earlier this year.
New Zealand pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched peacefully on The Warehouse in downtown Auckland today to protest over the sale of products by the genocidal state of Israel.
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal and fellow protesters delivered a giant letter calling on the management to stop selling SodaStream products.
SodaStream — an Israel-based company since 1978 — is at the centre of the global BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions) campaign.
The letter was reluctantly accepted by The Warehouse city branch duty manager Alyce, who needed to take a management phone call before agreeing to take the letter mounted on a board.
“The Warehouse’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes must stop,” said Nazzal in the letter. “I know you will be appalled as we are at Israel’s cruel and depraved war crimes against Palestinians.”
The letter was handed over by a small deputation on behalf of about 200 protesters who stood peacefully by the shop entrance escalator in Elliott Street as they chanted “Blood on your hands” and other condemnation of Israel over the genocide in Gaza that has killed at least 69,000 people, mostly women and children.
The letter addressed to The Warehouse management said that “trading in SodaStream products . . . supports Israel to continue its war crimes against Palestinian people. It encourages Israel to expand its illegal occupation and its genocidal oppression of Palestinians.”
One third of aid trucks
In spite of the so-called “ceasefire” brokered by US President Donald Trump commencing on October 10, only one third of the promised 600 aid trucks a day had been allowed into Gaza.
PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal explains the purpose of the giant protest letter to The Warehouse city branch duty manager Alyce in Auckland today. Image: Asia Pacific Report
“On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice, in a landmark ruling, declared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories — the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza strip — is illegal and no one should give ‘aid or assistance’ to Israel in maintaining its illegal occupation.
“However, The Warehouse is giving direct ‘aid and assistance’ to Israel’s racist policies through selling SodaStream. This must stop.
“Since 2005, Palestinian civil society organisations have called for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel, to build international, non-violent pressure on Israel to end its brutal oppression of Palestinians.
“Sanction Israel Now” declares a banner at today’s Palestine rally and march in downtown Auckland. Image: Asia Pacific Report
“BDS aims to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, end its apartheid policies towards Palestinians and allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land in Palestine.
The PSNA letter said the protesters supported BDS against Israel — “just as we supported the international boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s”.
‘New Zealanders support sanctions’
“New Zealanders support sanctions against Israel by the ratio of two to one amongst those who give an opinion. New Zealanders expect The Warehouse to end its collaboration with Israeli apartheid and genocide and swap out of SodaStream for alternative brands,” the letter said.
Auckland’s central city branch of The Warehouse in Elliott Street . . . plea to drop SodaStream products. Image: Asia Pacific Report
The Warehouse Group’s says “ethical sourcing” policy was cited in the letter, quoting in part: “Like our customers, we care about doing the right thing — not only here in New Zealand but everywhere we operate.
“Our aim is to ensure our customers have confidence that our products have been ethically sourced.”
The letter continued: “Selling SodaStream directly violates this policy. So why do The Warehouse and it’s subsidiary, Noel Leeming, continue to sell these products linked to ethnic cleansing and genocide?”
Nasser said PSNA wanted the opportunity to speak with The Warehouse management directly about the stocking of SodaStream and looked forward to hearing from the business.
Earlier, at a rally in Te Komititanga Square several speakers about BDS policies included PSNA secretary Neil Scott and South African-born activist Achmat Esau, who explained how global sanctions had forced the brutal racist minority white regime in his homeland to abandon apartheid and bow to genuine democracy.
Esau recalled how in 1968 white South African Prime Minister John Vorster banned a tour by the England cricket team because it included a mixed-race player, Cape Town-born Basil D’Oliveira.
Boycott of apartheid South Africa
“After this incident, South Africa was excluded from international cricket until the release of political prisoner Nelson Mandela 22 years later.
“The anti-apartheid boycott of the South African regime from the 1960s until the 1980s was instrumental in bringing the racist apartheid regime to its knees,’ Esau said.
He said the success of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa was an indicator of how it could also succeed through the BDS movement against apartheid Israel.
“We must draw in the politicians and political parries to isolate, expose and oppose this evil Zionist regime that is guilty of state terrorism.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters outside the Elliott Street entrance to The Warehouse in Auckland. Image: Asia Pacific Report
UNSC Resolution 2803 is unequivocally rejected. It is a direct contravention of international law itself, imposed by the United States with the full knowledge and collaboration of Arab and Muslim states.
These regimes brutally turned their backs on the Palestinians throughout the genocide, with some actively helping Israel cope with the economic fallout of its multi-frontal wars.
The resolution is a pathetic attempt to achieve through political decree what the US and Israel decisively failed to achieve through brute force and war.
It is doomed to fail, but not before it further exposes the bizarre, corrupted nature of international law under US political hegemony. The very country that has bankrolled and sustained the genocide of the Palestinians is the same country now taking ownership of Gaza’s fate.
It is a sad testimony of current affairs that China and Russia maintained a far stronger, more principled position in support of Palestine than the so-called Arab and Muslim “brothers.”
The time for expecting salvation from Arab and Muslim states is over; enough is enough.
Even more tragic is Russia’s explanation for its abstention as a defence of the Palestinian Authority, while the PA itself welcomed the vote. The word treason is far too kind for this despicable, self-serving leadership.
Recipe for disaster
If implemented and enforced against the will of the Palestinians in Gaza, this resolution is a recipe for disaster: expect mass protests in Gaza, which will inevitably be suppressed by US-led lackeys, working hand-in-glove with Israel, all in the cynical name of enforcing “international law”.
UNSC Resolution 2803 is unequivocally rejected. It is a direct contravention of international law itself, imposed by the United States with the full knowledge and collaboration of Arab and Muslim states. These regimes brutally turned their backs on the Palestinians throughout the…
Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about the history of Palestine knows that Res 2803 has hurled us decades back, resurrecting the dark days of the British Mandate over Palestine.
Another historical lesson is due: those who believe they are writing the final, conclusive chapter of Palestine will be shocked and surprised, for they have merely infuriated history.
The story is far from over. The lasting shame is that Arab states are now fully and openly involved in the suppression of the Palestinians.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page.
While Indonesians worry about President Prabowo Subianto’s undemocratic moves, the failures of his flagship “breakfast” policy, and a faltering economy, Australia enters into another “treaty” of little import. Duncan Graham reports.
COMMENTARY:By Duncan Graham
Under-reported in the Australian and New Zealand media, Indonesia has been gripped by protests this year, some of them violent.
The protests have been over grievances ranging from cuts to the national budget and a proposed new law expanding the role of the military in political affairs, President Prabowo Subianto’s disastrous free school meals programme, and politicians receiving a $3000 housing allowance.
More recently, further anger against the President has been fuelled by his moves to make corrupt former dictator Soeharto (also Prabowo’s former father-in-law) a “national hero“.
Ignoring both his present travails, as well as his history of historical human rights abuses (that saw him exiled from Indonesia for years), Prabowo has been walking the 27,500-tonne HMAS Canberra, the fleet flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, along with PM Anthony Albanese.
The location was multipurpose: It showed off Australia’s naval hardware and reinforced the signing of a thin “upgraded security treaty” between unequals. Australia’s land mass is four times larger, but there are 11 Indonesians to every one Aussie.
Ignoring the past Although Canberra’s flight deck was designed for helicopters, the crew found a desk for the leaders to lean on as they scribbled their names. The location also served to keep away disrespectful Australian journalists asking about Prabowo’s past, an issue their Jakarta colleagues rarely raise for fear of being banned.
Contrast this one-day dash with the relaxed three-day 2018 visit by Jokowi and his wife Iriana when Malcolm Turnbull was PM. The two men strolled through the Botanical Gardens and seemed to enjoy the ambience. The President was mobbed by Indonesian admirers.
This month, Prabowo and Albanese smiled for the few allowed cameras, but there was no feeling that this was “fair dinkum”. Indonesia said the trip was “also a form of reciprocation for Prime Minister Albanese’s trip to Jakarta last May,” another one-day come n’go chore.
Analysing the treaty needs some mental athleticism and linguistic skills because the Republic likes to call itself part of a “non-aligned movement”, meaning it doesn’t couple itself to any other world power.
The policy was developed in the 1940s after the new nation had freed itself from the colonial Netherlands and rejected US and Russian suitors.
It’s now a cliché — “sailing between two reefs” and “a friend of all and enemy of none”. Two years ago, former Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi explained:
“Indonesia refuses to see the Indo-Pacific fall victim to geopolitical confrontation. …This is where Indonesia’s independent and active foreign policy becomes relevant. For almost eight decades, these principles have been a compass for Indonesia in interacting with other nations.
“…(it’s) independent and active foreign policy is not a neutral policy; it is one that does not align with the superpowers nor does it bind the country to any military pact.”
Pact or treaty?
Is a “pact” a “treaty”? For most of us, the terms are synonyms; to the word-twisting pollies, they’re whatever the user wants them to mean.
We do not know the new “security treaty” details although the ABC speculated it meant there will be “leader and ministerial consultations on matters of common security, to develop cooperation, and to consult each other in the case of threats and consider individual or joint measures” and “share information on matters that would be important for Australia’s security, and vice-versa.”
Much of the “analysis” came from Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s media statement, so no revelations here.
What does it really mean? Not much from a close read of Albanese’s interpretation: ”If either or both countries’ security is threatened,
to consult and consider what measures may be taken either individually or jointly to deal with those threats.”
Careful readers will spot the elastic “consult and consider”. If this were on a highway sign warning of hazards ahead, few would ease up on the pedal.
Whence commeth the threat? In the minds of the rigid right, that would be China — the nation that both Indonesia and Australia rely on for trade.
Indonesia’s militaristic president Prabowo Subianto is seizing books which undermine his political agenda. Duncan Graham #indonesiahttps://t.co/akvGdOqC9d
Keating and Soeharto
The last “security treaty” to be signed was between PM Paul Keating and Soeharto in 1995. Penny Wong said the new document is “modelled closely” on the old deal.
The Keating document went into the shredder when paramilitary militia and Indonesian troops ravaged East Timor in 1999, and Australia took the side of the wee state and its independence fighters.
Would Australia do the same for the guerrillas in West Papua if we knew what was happening in the mountains and jungles next door? We do not because the province is closed to journos, and it seems both governments are at ease with the secrecy. The main protests come from NGOs, particularly those in New Zealand.
Foreign Minister Wong added that “the Treaty will reflect the close friendship, partnership and deep trust between Australia and Indonesia”.
Sorry, Senator, that’s fiction. Another awkward fact: Indonesians and Australians distrust each other, according to polls run by the Lowy Institute. “Over the course of 19 years . . . attitudes towards Indonesia have been — at best — lukewarm.
And at worst, they betray a lurking suspicion.
These feelings will remain until we get serious about telling our stories and listening to theirs, with both parties consistently striving to understand and respect the other. “Security treaties” involving weapons, destruction and killings are not the best foundations for friendship between neighbours.
Future documents should be signed in Sydney’s The Domain.
Duncan Graham has a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He now lives in Indonesia. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.
The UN Security Council passed a regime change resolution against Gaza on Monday, effectively issuing a mandate for an invasion force to enter the besieged coastal enclave and install a US-led ruling authority by force.
Passing with 13 votes in favour and none in defiance, the new UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution has given the United States a mandate to create what it calls an “International Stabilisation Force” (ISF) and “Board of Peace” committee to seize power in Gaza.
US President Donald Trump has hailed the resolution as historic, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has stood in opposition to an element of the resolution that mentions “Palestinian Statehood”.
In order to understand what has just occurred, it requires a breakdown of the resolution itself and the broader context surrounding the ceasefire deal.
When these elements are combined, it becomes clear that this resolution is perhaps one of the most shameful to have passed in the history of the United Nations, casting shame on it and undermining the very basis on which it was formed to begin with.
An illegal regime change resolution In September 2025, a United Nations commission of inquiry found Israel to have committed the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip.
For further context, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the most powerful international legal entity and organ of the UN, ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide and thus issued orders for Tel Aviv to end specific violations of international law in Gaza, which were subsequently ignored.
Taking this into consideration, the UN itself cannot claim ignorance of the conditions suffered by the people of Gaza, nor could it credibly posit that the United States is a neutral actor capable of enforcing a balanced resolution of what its own experts have found to be a genocide.
This resolution itself is not a peace plan and robs Palestinians of their autonomy entirely; thus, it is anti-democratic in its nature.
It was also passed due in large part to threats from the United States against both Russia and China, that if they vetoed it, the ceasefire would end and the genocide would resume. Therefore, both Beijing and Moscow abstained from the vote, despite the Russian counterproposal and initial opposition to the resolution.
It also gives a green light to what the US calls a “Board of Peace”, which will work to preside over governing Gaza during the ceasefire period. The head of this board is none other than US President Trump himself, who says he will be joined by other world leaders.
Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who launched the illegal invasion of Iraq, has been floated as a potential “Board of Peace” leader also.
Vowed a ‘Gaza Riviera’
On February 4 of this year, President Trump vowed to “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip. The American President later sought to impose a plan for a new Gaza, which he even called the “Gaza Riviera”, which was drawn up by Zionist economist Joseph Pelzman.
Part of Pelzman’s recommendations to Trump was that “you have to destroy the whole place, restart from scratch”.
As it became clear that the US alone could not justify an invasion force and simply take over Gaza by force, on behalf of Israel, in order to build “Trump Gaza”, a casino beach land for fellow Jeffrey Epstein-connected billionaires, a new answer was desperately sought.
Then came a range of meetings between Trump administration officials and regional leaderships, aimed at working out a strategy to achieve their desired goals in Gaza.
After the ceasefire was violated in March by the Israelis, leading to the mass murder of around 17,000 more Palestinians, a number of schemes were being hatched and proposals set forth.
The US backed and helped to create the now-defunct so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) programme, which was used to privatise the distribution of aid in the territory amidst a total blockade of all food for three months.
Starving Palestinians, who were rapidly falling into famine, flocked to these GHF sites, where they were fired upon by US private military contractors and Israeli occupation forces, murdering more than 1000 civilians.
The ‘New York Declaration’
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and France were busy putting together what would become the “New York Declaration” proposal for ending the war and bringing Western nations to recognise the State of Palestine at the UN.
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, here came Trump’s so-called “peace plan” that was announced at the White House in October. This plan appeared at first to be calling for a total end to the war, a mutual prisoner exchange and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in a phased approach.
From the outset, Trump’s “20-point plan” was vague and impractical. Israel immediately violated the ceasefire from the very first day and has murdered nearly 300 Palestinians since then. The first phase of the ceasefire deal was supposed to end quickly, ideally within five days, but the deal has stalled for over a month.
Throughout this time, it has become increasingly clear that the Israelis are not going to respect the “Yellow Line” separation zone and have violated the agreement through operating deeper into Gaza than they had originally agreed to.
The Israeli-occupied zone was supposed to be 53 percent of Gaza; it has turned out to be closer to 58 percent. Aid is also not entering at a sufficient rate, despite US and Israeli denials; this has been confirmed by leading rights groups and humanitarian organisations.
In the background, the US team dealing with the ceasefire deal that is headed by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff has been juggling countless insidious proposals for the future of Gaza.
Even publicly stating that reconstruction will only take place in the Israeli-controlled portion of the territory, also floating the idea that aid points will be set up there in order to force the population out of the territory under de facto Hamas control. This has often been referred to as the “new Gaza plan”.
The disastrous GHF
As this has all been in the works, including discussions about bringing back the disastrous GHF, the Israelis have been working alongside four ISIS-linked collaborator death squads that it controls and who operate behind the Yellow Line in Gaza.
No mechanisms have been put in place to punish the Israelis for their daily violations of the ceasefire, including the continuation of demolition operations against Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure. This appears to be directly in line with Joseph Pelzman’s plan earlier this year to “destroy the whole place”.
The UNSC resolution not only makes Donald Trump the effective leader of the new administrative force that will be imposed upon the Gaza Strip, but also greenlights what it calls its International Stabilisation Force. This ISF is explicitly stated to be a multinational military force that will be tasked with disarming Hamas and all Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip.
The US claims it will not be directly involved in the fighting with “boots on the ground”; it has already deployed hundreds of soldiers and has been reportedly building a military facility, which they deny is a base, but for all intents and purposes will be one.
Although it may not be American soldiers killing and dying while battling Palestinian resistance groups, they will be in charge of this force.
This is not a “UN peacekeeping force” and is not an equivalent to UNIFIL in southern Lebanon; it is there to carry out the task of completing Israel’s war goal of defeating the Palestinian resistance through force.
In other words, foreign soldiers will be sent from around the world to die for Israel and taxpayers from those nations will be footing the bill.
‘Self-determination’ reservation
The only reason why Israel has reservations about this plan is because it included a statement claiming that if the Palestinian Authority (PA) — that does not control Gaza and is opposed by the majority of the Palestinian people — undergoes reforms that the West and Israel demand, then conditions “may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
A keyword here is “may”, in other words, it is not binding and was simply added in to give corrupted Arab leaderships the excuse to vote yes.
Hamas and every other Palestinian political party, with the exception of the mainstream branch of Fatah that answers to Israel and the US, have opposed this UNSC resolution.
Hamas even called upon Algeria to vote against it; instead, the Algerian leadership praised Donald Trump and voted in favour. Typical of Arab and Muslim-majority regimes that don’t represent the will of their people, they all fell in line and bent over backwards to please Washington.
It won’t likely work As has been the story with every conspiracy hatched against the people of Gaza, this is again destined to fail. Not only will it fail, but it will likely backfire enormously and lead to desperate moves.
To begin with, the invasion force, or ISF, will be a military endeavour that will have to bring together tens of thousands of soldiers who speak different languages and have nothing in common, in order to somehow achieve victory where Israel failed.
It is a logistical nightmare to even think about.
How long would it take to deploy these soldiers? At the very least, it’s going to take months. Then, how long would this process take? Nobody has any clear answers here.
Also, what happens if Israel begins bombing again at any point, for example, if there is a clash that kills Israeli soldiers? What would these nations do if Israeli airstrikes killed their soldiers or put them in harm’s way?
Also, tens of thousands of soldiers may not cut it; if the goal is to destroy all the territory’s military infrastructure, they may need hundreds of thousands. Or if that isn’t an option, will they work alongside the Israeli military?
It is additionally clear that nobody knows where all the tunnels and fighters are; if Israel couldn’t find them, then how can anyone else?
After all, the US, UK, and various others have helped the Israelis with intelligence sharing and reconnaissance for more than two years to get these answers.
How do regimes justify this?
Finally, when Arab, European, or Southeast Asian soldiers return to their nations in body bags, how do their regimes justify this? Will the president or prime minister of these nations have to stand up and tell their people . . . “sorry guys, your sons and daughters are now in coffins because Israel needed a military force capable of doing what they failed to do, so we had to help them complete their genocidal project”.
Also, how many Palestinian civilians are going to be slaughtered by these foreign invaders?
As for the plan to overthrow Hamas rule in Gaza, the people of the territory will not accept foreign invaders as their occupiers any more than they will accept Israelis. They are not going to accept ISIS-linked collaborators as any kind of security force either.
Already, the situation is chaotic inside Gaza, and that is while its own people, who are experienced and understand their conditions, are in control of managing security and some administrative issues; this includes both Hamas and others who are operating independently of it, but inside the territory under its de facto control.
Just as the Israeli military claimed it was going to occupy Gaza City, laying out countless plans to do this, to ethnically cleanse the territory and “crush Hamas”, the US has been coordinating alongside it throughout the entirety of the last two years. Every scheme has collapsed and ended in failure.
It has been nearly a month and a half, yet there are still no clear answers as to how this Trump “peace plan” is supposed to work and it is clear that the Israelis are coming up with new proposals on a daily basis.
There is no permanent mechanism for aid transfers, which the Israelis are blocking. There is no clear vision for governance.
How a US plan envisages Gaza being permanently split into two sections – a green zone and a red zone. Image: Guardian/IDF/X
‘Two Gazas’ plan incoherent
The “two Gazas” plan is not even part of the ceasefire or Trump plan, yet it is being pursued in an incoherent way. The ISF makes no sense and appears as poorly planned as the GHF.
Hamas and the other Palestinian factions will not give up their weapons. There is no real plan for reconstruction. The Israelis are adamant that there will be no Palestinian State and won’t allow any independent Palestinian rule of Gaza, and the list of problems goes on and on.
What it really looks like here is that this entire ceasefire scheme is a stab in the dark attempt to achieve Israel’s goals while also giving its forces a break and redirecting their focus on other fronts, understanding that there is no clear solution to the Gaza question for now.
The United Nations has shown itself over the past two years to be nothing more than a platform for political theatre. It is incapable of punishing, preventing, or even stopping the crime of all crimes.
Now that international law has suffocated to death under the rubble of Gaza, next to the thousands of children who still lie underneath it, the future of this conflict will transform.
This UNSC vote demonstrates that there is no international law, no international community, and that the UN is simply a bunch of fancy offices, which are only allowed to work under the confines of gangster rule.
If the Palestinian resistance groups feel as if their backs are against the wall and an opportunity, such as another Israeli war on Lebanon, presents them the opportunity, then there is a high likelihood that a major military decision will be made.
In the event that this occurs, it will be this UNSC resolution that is in large part responsible.
When the suffering in Gaza finally ends, whether that is because Israel obliterates all of its regional opposition and exterminates countless other civilians in its way, or Israel is militarily shattered, the UN should be disbanded as was the League of Nations. It is a failed project just as that which preceded it.
Something new must take over from it.
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specialising in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle and it is republished with permission.
Israel and the US are now dictating their terms over Palestine, and Hamas and various Arab partners are at the receiving end of this diktat, says Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.
The UN Security Council gained 13-0 votes, opening the way for the crucial next steps for the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
However, both China and Russia were highly critical and abstained, citing the vague details of the resolution.
Russia had also circulated a rival resolution stressing that the occupied West Bank and Gaza must be joined as a contiguous state under the Palestinian Authority and underlining the importance of a Security Council role to provide security in Gaza and for implementing the ceasefire.
Bishara said that the stabilisation force would be from countries friendly to Israel and the US.
‘Complicated job’
“And that means their job is not just going to be to keep the peace on the borders but to also find a way to disarm Hamas,” he said.
“I think that’s going to be a complicated job because that also involves Israel acting on its own commitments, which means withdrawing to a narrow corridor on the eastern part of Gaza and so on.
“All of this will be very difficult to implement.”
Bishara said the US would be involved but only from the outside.
“The US doesn’t want to get involved in terms of troops or money. But those countries who are going to contribute soldiers and money, they are going to need guarantees – in terms of a safe passage forward in relation to Hamas.
“This is really important.”
The breakdown of the UN Security Council vote on the US-sponsored Gaza resolution. Image: UN
Bishara said no Arab or Muslim-majority country wanted to be put in a position — even under pressure — of doing Israel’s bidding in Gaza or “doing Israel’s dirty work because Israel failed”.
“After two years of genocide, of killing tens of thousands of people, it failed to disarm Hamas directly on the battlefield.”
‘Important step’
A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the Gaza resolution as “an important step in the consolidation of the ceasefire” and called for the diplomatic momentum to be translated into “concrete and urgently needed steps on the ground”.
Stephane Dujarric said the UN was committed to its role in implementing the US resolution, including “scaling up humanitarian assistance” in Gaza and “supporting all efforts to move the parties toward the next phase of the ceasefire”.
He also said Guterres “commends the continued diplomatic efforts of Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye, the United States and regional states”.
The secretary-general also “underlines the importance of moving to the next phase of the US plan, leading to a political process for the achievement of the two-state solution in line with previous United Nations resolutions,” he added.
However, the Russian ambassador said this was no day of celebration for the Security Council, and he added thatthe integrity of the council was now in question.
The Chinese ambassador said the resolution that was adopted was vague and unclear.
‘Day of shame for UN’
Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN human rights official, described the vote as a “day of shame for the United Nations”.
“Not a single member of the Council had the courage, principle, or respect for international law to vote against this US-Israel colonial outrage,” Mokhiber said in a post on X.
“This proposal has been rejected by Palestinian civil society and factions, and defenders of human rights and international law everywhere,” he said, adding that the “struggle for Palestinian freedom will continue”.
Mokhiber was the former director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and left his post in 2023 in protest over the UN’s failure to prevent Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The UN Security Council has just adopted the horrific US resolution with 13 yes votes and 2 abstentions. Not a single member of the Council had the courage, principle, or respect for international law to vote against this US-Israel colonial outrage. This proposal has been…
The Algerian ambassador, who voted for the resolution, warned that it was explicit against Israeli annexation, and forced displacement.
Ambassador Amar Bendjama said his country was particularly grateful to Trump “whose personal engagement has been instrumental in establishing and maintaining the ceasefire in Gaza”, which ended almost two years of “unbearable suffering” for the Palestinians.
“But we underline that genuine peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved without justice, justice for the Palestinians who have waited for decades for the establishment of their independent state,” he said.
Bendjama also said the resolution needed to be read in its entirety.
“It clearly affirms no annexation, no occupation, no forced displacement,” he said.
He went on to say that humanitarian aid must be distributed in Gaza “without interference” from Israel.
Israel and the US are now dictating their terms over Palestine, and Hamas and various Arab partners are at the receiving end of this diktat, says Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.
The UN Security Council gained 13-0 votes, opening the way for the crucial next steps for the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
However, both China and Russia were highly critical and abstained, citing the vague details of the resolution.
Russia had also circulated a rival resolution stressing that the occupied West Bank and Gaza must be joined as a contiguous state under the Palestinian Authority and underlining the importance of a Security Council role to provide security in Gaza and for implementing the ceasefire.
Bishara said that the stabilisation force would be from countries friendly to Israel and the US.
‘Complicated job’
“And that means their job is not just going to be to keep the peace on the borders but to also find a way to disarm Hamas,” he said.
“I think that’s going to be a complicated job because that also involves Israel acting on its own commitments, which means withdrawing to a narrow corridor on the eastern part of Gaza and so on.
“All of this will be very difficult to implement.”
Bishara said the US would be involved but only from the outside.
“The US doesn’t want to get involved in terms of troops or money. But those countries who are going to contribute soldiers and money, they are going to need guarantees – in terms of a safe passage forward in relation to Hamas.
“This is really important.”
The breakdown of the UN Security Council vote on the US-sponsored Gaza resolution. Image: UN
Bishara said no Arab or Muslim-majority country wanted to be put in a position — even under pressure — of doing Israel’s bidding in Gaza or “doing Israel’s dirty work because Israel failed”.
“After two years of genocide, of killing tens of thousands of people, it failed to disarm Hamas directly on the battlefield.”
‘Important step’
A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the Gaza resolution as “an important step in the consolidation of the ceasefire” and called for the diplomatic momentum to be translated into “concrete and urgently needed steps on the ground”.
Stephane Dujarric said the UN was committed to its role in implementing the US resolution, including “scaling up humanitarian assistance” in Gaza and “supporting all efforts to move the parties toward the next phase of the ceasefire”.
He also said Guterres “commends the continued diplomatic efforts of Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye, the United States and regional states”.
The secretary-general also “underlines the importance of moving to the next phase of the US plan, leading to a political process for the achievement of the two-state solution in line with previous United Nations resolutions,” he added.
However, the Russian ambassador said this was no day of celebration for the Security Council, and he added thatthe integrity of the council was now in question.
The Chinese ambassador said the resolution that was adopted was vague and unclear.
‘Day of shame for UN’
Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN human rights official, described the vote as a “day of shame for the United Nations”.
“Not a single member of the Council had the courage, principle, or respect for international law to vote against this US-Israel colonial outrage,” Mokhiber said in a post on X.
“This proposal has been rejected by Palestinian civil society and factions, and defenders of human rights and international law everywhere,” he said, adding that the “struggle for Palestinian freedom will continue”.
Mokhiber was the former director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and left his post in 2023 in protest over the UN’s failure to prevent Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The UN Security Council has just adopted the horrific US resolution with 13 yes votes and 2 abstentions. Not a single member of the Council had the courage, principle, or respect for international law to vote against this US-Israel colonial outrage. This proposal has been…
The Algerian ambassador, who voted for the resolution, warned that it was explicit against Israeli annexation, and forced displacement.
Ambassador Amar Bendjama said his country was particularly grateful to Trump “whose personal engagement has been instrumental in establishing and maintaining the ceasefire in Gaza”, which ended almost two years of “unbearable suffering” for the Palestinians.
“But we underline that genuine peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved without justice, justice for the Palestinians who have waited for decades for the establishment of their independent state,” he said.
Bendjama also said the resolution needed to be read in its entirety.
“It clearly affirms no annexation, no occupation, no forced displacement,” he said.
He went on to say that humanitarian aid must be distributed in Gaza “without interference” from Israel.
For six years, Alternative Jewish Voices has spoken in an aspirational voice. This is intentional. Research shows, the voice that mobilises new political engagement is a voice of moral clarity which invites others to join the work of making a better world.
We ground our voice in facts, and today’s facts are shattering. We share the outrage that we hear. However, outrage alone does not make change. It has to be channeled forward into principled action.
Hope is resistance. AJV met last week to ask where we find that hope now, while grief and anger feel overwhelming.
With unprecedented Western permission and complicity, Israel’s genocide is ongoing. The IDF has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and decimated the built environment of Gaza.
Bombed half a dozen countries
Along the way, Israel has bombed half a dozen countries which are not at war with it.
The silence of governments like ours imagines this dystopia as a new baseline. They will settle for negotiating the speed of Israel’s new crimes against the survivors of Palestine.
We utterly reject their selective amnesia — but each time we call out our complicit government, we need to call them forward and judge them against something better.
We do that by placing the value of human life at the centre of our understanding. People have laboured for a century and a half to embed a rights-based vision of human dignity and equality.
Rights are not an opinion; rights are the basis of international law and institutions. That today’s governments spit on Palestinians’ rights does not invalidate Palestinians’ rights. It raises the stakes.
Now we must fight for the vision even as we wield it.
Our baseline is a world in which people flourish with their basic needs and dignity ensured. We protest the deficits from that standard. We judge Israel and its powerful accomplices against the standard of an accountable, just peace for all who live between the river and the sea.
Daily erosion of our democracy
Even as our allies have taken the step of recognising Palestine, Luxon, Seymour and Peters cosy up to Donald Trump. We are reeling from their daily erosion of our democracy.
Our government’s position on Palestine and the value it places on our own lives follow from a single agenda. This government is harming far more people than it is benefiting. We find hope in the work that brings together a majority for change.
While Palestine has become the cement of a broad global movement, Zionism is shifting. Israel used its years of Zionist-Jewish permission to consolidate new sources of support. It is no longer dependent upon Jewish social licence.
Christian Zionism, long the majority of Zionism, is now an insider shaping American policy. Israel dedicates new budgets to influencing American Christians.
In Aotearoa, Israel’s deputy foreign minister has met with Christian nationalist Brian Tamaki and Alfred Ngaio. There are five rabbis in this country, while 130 Christian Zionist clergy wrote together of their representatives’ time with Winston Peters before Peters declined to recognise Palestine.
In order to lend effective support to the liberation of Palestine, our protest needs to target the evolving structures and financial flows of Aotearoa’s Zionism.
This does not relieve the Zionist-Jewish community of responsibility. Globally, Zionist-Jewish institutions have eagerly wrapped Israel’s violence in the guise of Jewish identity, in order to place Israel’s genocidal actions beyond challenge.
Peace of the graveyard
Aotearoa’s Zionist-Jewish spokespeople still imagine only the peace of the graveyard, after which there might be a nicer Zionism.
A significant segment of Liberal-Zionist Jews seems to have turned against the war — although not against Zionism. That speaks to some capacity for change despite the institutions.
We welcome every effort to end this genocide. However, as principled anti-Zionists our goal is greater than the cessation of firing. In our own community and in Palestine, we must change the conditions that give rise to genocide. We need to decolonise the Jewishness that taught us to stake our future on the oppression and slaughter of others. There is no nicer Zionism.
To realise a liberatory Jewishness, we need new institutions with genuinely new communal leadership. We work for a future without Jewish supremacy or exceptionalism. Two-thirds of Jewish New Yorkers aged 18-44 just voted for Mayor Mamdani in one such act of qualitative, visionary change.
We will not displace this toxic new Right power by emulating their perpetual outrage. That would only turn us into the thing we oppose.
Outrage alone leaves one numb with grief and alienation. It stokes the identity politics which deny that we can live together. It leads to the despair which hardens the status quo.
We will only displace this power with an aspirational, broadly based vision of something better. We learn from the long, great works of our time: the works of peace, Indigenous rights, the common cause of dignified life in the hardest places.
Tangled roots of colonisation
That quality of holistic movement has coalesced around Palestine. We have never heard so many people acknowledge that the change must reach to the tangled roots of colonisation, racism, capitalism and fascism.
AJV brings to this our Jewish inheritance which recognises that social, ecological and material justice are inextricable. Together we will place life and justice at the centre of the work that needs doing, here and there.
In this dark time, hope is resistance and these are our ways forward.
In outrage and in aroha, we are Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa.
Marilyn Garson writes about Palestinian and Jewish dissent. This article was first published by Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices and is republished with permission. The original article can be read here.
Israeli prison guards punish the prisoners “by breaking their thumbs” said a released detainee as lawyers speak out about torture, abuse, rape, starving and killings in a notorious underground Israeli prison facility where detainees are held without sunlight, brutalised.
And nobody in New Zealand says a word.
Scores of detainees from Gaza have also been held in a notorious Israeli military detention camp known as Sde Teiman, where reports of killings, torture and sexual violence, including rape, have been rife since the Gaza war began in October 2023.
And Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has not said anything about a new law that Israel just voted for that would impose the death penalty for so-called “terrorism” offences based on “racist” motives against Israelis.
That’s a law exclusively aimed at Palestinians while Israeli settlers are exempt.
Go ahead, terrorise the people living there.
Winston Peters is silent on behalf of you and me. He’s representing us on the world stage.
We not only do not condemn this, we don’t even mention it. New Zealand doesn’t care.
They are not us, they are not “we”.
Gerard Otto is a digital creator, satirist and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. This article is an excerpt from a G News commentary and republished with permission.
An Australian author whose award-winning book about Israel’s military and surveillance industry has swept the world is scathing about a controversial Gaza transit company.
Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book about how Israel tests arms and surveillance technologies in the illegal occupation of Palestine, says the shadowy scheme carrying Palestinians to South Africa or other countries was waging “disaster capitalism”.
He said the Al-Majd Europe outfit that reportedly flew 153 people from Gaza to South Aftica could have been operating for weeks or months before being noticed.
The Palestine Laboratory author Antony Loewenstein in a previous Al Jazeera interview . . . “This is the concept of people making money out of other people’s misery.” Image: AJ screenshot APR
Commenting on this mysterious flight carrying people from Gaza that transited through Kenya’s capital Nairobi and ended up in South Africa, Loewenstein told Al Jazeera from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta that there had been rumours about companies making such flights.
He said such flights apparently “requires Israeli permission as well as other countries’ permissions”.
“South Africa was apparently the final destination, considering it is one of the most pro-Palestine countries on the planet,” he said.
Lowenstein said there were “no names or associations” on the “incredibly strange” company website, which “almost looks like it was created by AI”, calling what it does “disaster capitalism” – a theme of one of his earlier books.
‘Making money out of misery’
“This is the concept of people making money out of other people’s misery,” Loewenstein said.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Ministry has warned against groups exploiting Gaza’s humanitarian crisis for human trafficking in the wake of the mysterious arrival of 153 people from Gaza in South Africa this week.
The ministry warned that “companies and entities that mislead our people, incite them to deportation or displacement or engage in human trafficking and exploit their tragic and catastrophic humanitarian conditions will bear the legal consequences of their unlawful actions and will be subject to prosecution and accountability.”
In a statement, the ministry also urged Palestinian families in Gaza “to exercise caution and avoid falling prey to human trafficking networks, blood merchants, and displacement agents”.
The departure of people from Gaza to South Africa was closely coordinated with Israeli authorities.
Everything started with an advertised post from the Al-Majd Europe organisation promising to safely evacuate Palestinian families outside the Gaza Strip, so many Palestinians filled in their applications and were waiting for a call from the organisation.
The situation in Gaza has pushed Palestinians to pay whatever they could to leave the Strip.
‘They lost everything’
“They have lost everything. They lost their houses, and they believe that they do not have any future here,” an Al Jazeera reporter said.
The television channel also said Gazans who used the transit company were forced to pay up to US$5000 to enable them to cross the so-called “yellow line” and be driven from Karem Abu Salem crossing to Ramon airport in southern Israel.
This is a risky move because at least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the October ceasefire for crossing the yellow line. So the operation would have required Israeli military cooperation.
The Gazans were then flown to Nairobi in Kenyan on a Romanian aircraft and transferred to a flight to Johannesburg where border officials held them for 12 hours because they reportedly did not have Israeli exit stamps in their passports.
While Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian children in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the news broke in Aotearoa New Zealand that our government had been advised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) in September to recognise a Palestinian State now — before it was too late forever.
“The tide of international thinking on Palestinian statehood has shifted markedly . . . Israel’s actions are rapidly extinguishing any prospect of realising a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict,” the draft paper read.
“This leaves recognition of Palestine as the only viable option to maintain New Zealand’s long-standard support for a two-state solution.”
This is what Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour were told by MFAT, but these politicians had predetermined they were going to suck up hard to US President Donald Trump and Israel.
Seymour had to be served and so did Peters, as Luxon did their bidding again.
The way to do it with as little local public backlash and media attention was to say it was “complicated” to the press and the public, to be very secretive and let NZ First staff write a cabinet paper of their own — with a couple of options in it, and then bury the Cabinet outcomes until Peters announced it at the UN General Assembly.
The horror of a nation’s collective groan as Winston Peters read that speech still echoes over this naked complicity with genocide and colonisation, making most people feel wild and revolted, laced with the way they were being ignored and trampled on back here at home.
Disgusting business
The horror of Aotearoa aligning itself with this disgusting business sickens many but it was only The Post which published the news last night because as per usual this sort of thing is never really news in our newsrooms.
How many New Zealanders know how many Palestinians Israel have killed since the ceasefire thanks to our media?
The way New Zealand backed Israel over the two-state solution for Palestine has weak leadership stamped all over it — and that is galling but it’s gaslighting the nation to then boast of a win over a photo op with Trump.
New Zealand companies complicit with Israel’s genocide in Gaza were highlighted in today’s pro-Palestinian rally in Auckland. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Gerard Otto is a digital creator, satirist and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. This article is an excerpt from a G News commentary and republished with permission.
OBITUARY:By Robert Luke Iroga, editor and publisher of Solomon Business Magazine
In June 2000, I travelled to Port Moresby for a journalism training course that changed my life in ways I did not expect. The workshop was about new technology—how to send large photo files by email, something that felt revolutionary at the time.
But the real lesson I gained was not about technology. It was about people. It was about meeting Bob Howarth.
Bob, our trainer from News Corp Australia, was a man whose presence filled the room. He was old school in his craft, yet he embraced the future with such excitement that it was impossible not to be inspired.
He was full of energy, full of stories, full of life. And above all, he was kind. Deeply kind. The sort of kindness that stays with you long after the conversation ends.
He had just returned from East Timor and knew what life was like in the developing world.
In just one week with him, we learned more than we could have imagined. It felt like every day stretched into a month because Bob poured so much of himself into teaching us. It was clear that he cared—not just about journalism, but about us, the young Pacific reporters standing at the start of our careers.
That week was the beginning of his love affair with the Pacific, and I feel proud to have been a small part of that story.
Before we closed the training, Bob called me aside. He gave me his email and said quietly,
“If anything dramatic happens in the Solomons, send me some photos.”
The Timor Post mourns journalist and media mentor Bob Howarth who died on Thursday aged 81. Image: Timor Post
I didn’t know then how soon that moment would come.
I returned home on Sunday, 4 June 2000. The very next morning, June 5th, as I was heading to work at The Solomon Star, Honiara fell into chaos.
The coup was unfolding. The city was under siege. I rushed to the office, helping colleagues capture the moment in words and images. And just as Bob had asked, I sent photos to him. Within hours, those images appeared on front pages across News Corp newspapers.
Bob wrote to me soon after, saying, “You’re truly the star of our course.”
That was Bob—always lifting others up, always encouraging, always giving more credit than he took.
From that week in PNG, we became more than just colleagues. We became friends—real friends. Over the years, whenever I travelled through Port Moresby, I would always reach out to him.
Sometimes we shared a drink, sometimes a long talk, sometimes just a warm hello from his home overlooking the harbour. But every time, it felt like reconnecting with someone who genuinely understood my journey.
Asia Pacific Report publisher David Robie’s tribute to Bob Howarth on Bob’s FB page.
Bob was the person I turned to for advice, for guidance, for perspective. He believed in me at a time when belief was the greatest gift anyone could offer. And he never stopped being that voice in my corner—whether I was working here in the Solomons or abroad.
This morning, I learned of his passing. And my heart sank.
It feels like losing a pillar. Like losing a chapter of my own story. Like losing someone whose kindness shaped the path I walked.
To his wife, his children, and all who loved him, I send my deepest condolences. Your husband, your father, your friend—he touched the Pacific in ways words can barely capture.
And he touched my life in a way I will never forget.
RIEP Bob. Thank you for seeing me when I was still finding my footing.
Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for being my friend.
Robert Luke Iroga is editor and publisher of Solomon Business Magazine and chair of the Pacific Freedom Forum. He wrote this tribute on his FB page and it is republished with permission.
UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese talks to journalist Chris Hedges about her new report that examines how 60+ countries are complicit in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity demonstrated to the world in a “livestreamed atrocity”.
INTERVIEW:The Chris Hedges Report
After two years of genocide, it is no longer possible to hide complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Entire countries and corporations are — according to multiple reports by UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese — either directly or indirectly involved in Israel’s economic proliferation.
In her latest report, Gaza Genocide: a collective crime, Albanese details the role 63 nations played in supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. She chronicles how countries like the United States, which directly funds and arms Israel, are a part of a vast global economic web.
This network includes dozens of other countries that contribute with seemingly minor components, such as warplane wheels.
Rejection of this system is imperative, Albanese says. These same technologies used to destroy the lives of Palestinians will inevitably be turned against the citizens of Israel’s funders.
“Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go,” Albanese warns.
“Every worker today should draw a lesson from what’s happening to the Palestinians, because the large injustice system is connected and makes all of us connected to what’s happening there.”
The transcript: Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, in her latest report, Gaza Genocide: a collective crime, calls out the role 63 nations have in sustaining the Israeli genocide. Albanese, who because of sanctions imposed on her by the Trump administration, had to address the UN General Assembly from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, slams what she calls “decades of moral and political failure.”
“Through unlawful actions and deliberate omissions, too many states have harmed, founded and shielded Israel’s militarized apartheid, allowing its settler colonial enterprise to metastasize into genocide, the ultimate crime against the indigenous people of Palestine,” she told the UN.
The genocide, she notes, has diplomatic protection in international “fora meant to preserve peace,” military ties ranging from weapons sales to joint trainings that “fed the genocidal machinery,” the unchallenged weaponization of aid, and trade with entities like the European Union, which had sanctioned Russia over Ukraine yet continued doing business with Israel.
The 24-page report details how the “live-streamed atrocity” is facilitated by third states. She excoriates the United States for providing “diplomatic cover” for Israel, using its veto power at the UN Security Council seven times and controlling ceasefire negotiations. Other Western nations, the report noted, collaborate with abstentions, delays and watered-down draft resolutions, providing Israel with weapons, “even as the evidence of genocide … mounted.”
The report chastised the US Congress for passing a $26.4 billion arms package for Israel, although Israel was at the time threatening to invade Rafah in defiance of the Biden administration’s demand that Rafah be spared.
The report also condemns Germany, the second-largest arms exporter to Israel during the genocide, for weapons shipments that include everything from “frigates to torpedoes,” as well as the United Kingdom, which has allegedly flown more than 600 surveillance missions over Gaza since war broke out in October 2023.
At the same time, Arab states have not severed ties with Israel. Egypt, for example, maintained “significant security and economic relations with Israel, including energy cooperation and the closing of the Rafah crossing” during the war.
Francesca Albanese talks to Chris Hedges Video: The Chris Hedges Report
The Gaza genocide, the report states, “exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest.” Her report coincides with the ceasefire that isn’t. More than 300 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israel since the ceasefire was announced two weeks ago.
The first major ceasefire breach on October 19 led to Israeli air strikes that killed 100 Palestinians and wounded 150 others. Palestinians in Gaza continue to endure daily bombings that obliterate buildings and homes. Shelling and gunfire continue to kill and wound civilians, while drones continue to hover overhead broadcasting ominous threats.
Essential food items, humanitarian aid and medical supplies remain scarce because of the ongoing Israeli siege. And the Israeli army controls more than half of the Gaza Strip, shooting anyone, including families, who come too close to its invisible border known as the “yellow line”.
Joining me to discuss her report, the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the complicity of numerous states in sustaining the genocide in Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine.
Before we get into the report, let’s talk a little bit about what’s happening in Gaza. It’s just a complete disconnect between what is described by the international community, i.e. “a ceasefire”, the pace may have slowed down, but nothing’s changed.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, thank you for having me, Chris. I do agree that it seems that there is a complete disconnect between reality and political discourse. Because after the ceasefire, the attention has been forced to shift from Gaza elsewhere.
I do believe, for example, that the increased attention to the catastrophic situation in Sudan, which has been such for years now, all of a sudden is due to the fact that there is a need for, especially from Western countries and the US, Israel and their acolytes to focus on a new emergency.
‘There is the pretence that there is peace, there is no need to protest anymore because finally, there is peace. There is no peace.’
There is the pretence that there is peace, there is no need to protest anymore because finally, there is peace. There is no peace. I mean, the Palestinians have not seen a day of peace because Israel has continued to fire, to use violence against the Palestinians in Gaza. Over 230 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire, 100 of them in one day in 24 hours, including 50 children.
And starvation continues. Yes, there has been an increase in the number of trucks, but far, far below what is needed with much confusion because it’s very hard to deliver aid. All the more, Israel maintains a control over 50 percent of the Gaza Strip while the entire Gaza population is amassed in small portions, guarded portions of the territory.
So there is no peace. Meanwhile, while the Security Council seems to be ready to approve a Security Council resolution that will create a non-acronistic form of tutelage, of trusteeship over Palestine, over Gaza, the West Bank is abandoned to the violence and the ethnic cleansing pushed by armed settlers and soldiers while Israel jails continue to fill up with bodies to torture of adults and children alike. This is the reality in the occupied Palestinian territory today and so it makes absolutely no sense where the political discourse is.
CHRIS HEDGES: Two issues about Gaza. One, of course, Israel has seized over 50% or occupies over 50 percent of Gaza. And as I understand it, they’re not allowing any reconstruction supplies, including cement, in.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: This is also my understanding. They have allowed in food, water and some essential materials needed for hospitals, mainly camp hospitals, tents. But anything related to sustainability is prohibited.
There are many food items that are also prohibited because they are considered luxurious. And the question, Chris, is, and this is why I harbor so much frustration these days toward member states because in the case of genocide, you have heard yourself the argument, well, the recalcitrance of certain states to use the genocide framework saying — and it’s pure nonsense from a legal point of view — but saying, well, the International Court of Justice has not concluded that it’s genocide.
Well, it has concluded already that there is a risk of genocide two years ago, in January, 2024. But however, even when the court does conclude on something relevant like in July, 2024, that the occupation is illegal and must be dismantled totally and unconditionally, this should be the starting point of any peace related or forward-looking discussions.
Instead of deliberating how to force Israel to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territory, member states continue to maintain dialogue with Israel as Israel has sovereignty over the territory. See, so it’s completely dystopic, the future they are leading Palestinians out of despair into.
But they are also forcing the popular movement, the global movement that has formed made of young people and workers to stop. Because look at what’s happening in France, in Italy, in Germany, in the UK — any kind of attempt at maintaining the light turned on Palestine from Gaza to the West Bank is assaulted. Protests, conferences, there is a very active assault on anything that concerns Palestine.
So this is why I’m saying we are far, far beyond the mismanagement of the lack of understanding, I mean the negligence in approaching the question of Palestine, it’s active complicity to sustain Israel in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
CHRIS HEDGES: Which, as you point out in your report, has been true from the beginning despite a slight change in rhetoric recognising the two-state solution. The UK did this while only cutting back on shipments by 10 percent.
But I want to ask before we get into the report, what do you think Israel’s goal is? Is it just to slow-walk the genocide until it can resume it? Is it to create this appalling, uninhabitable, unlivable ghetto? What do you think Israel’s goal is?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I think that now more than ever it is impossible to separate and distinguish the goals of Israel from the goals of the United States. We tend to have a fragmented view of what happens, analysing for example the relationship between Lebanon and Israel, between Iran and Israel, or between Israel and the Palestinians.
‘One of the things that Palestine has made me realise is the meaning of “Greater Israel” because I do believe that what the current leadership in Israel has in mind and it’s supported by many willing or not in the Israeli society, many who are fine with the erasure of the Palestinians.’
In fact, do, I mean, one of the things that Palestine has made me realise is the meaning of “Greater Israel” because I do believe that what the current leadership in Israel has in mind and it’s supported by many willing or not in the Israeli society, many who are fine with the erasure of the Palestinians.
But there is this idea of Greater Israel and for a long time I have been among those who thought, who were wondering what it is, this “Greater Israel” because of course you look at the map by Israeli leaders in several occasions with this Greater Israel going from the Nile to the Euphrates and you say come on they cannot do that, they cannot occupy Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq.
But then everything changes when you look at it from a non-territorial border expansion perspective. And if you think that in fact domination can be exerted, established, other than by expanding the physical borders and through military occupation, but through domination and financial control, control from outside, power domination, you see that the Greater Israel project has already started and it’s very advanced.
Look at the annihilation of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon. So all those who were historically considered not friends of Israel have been annihilated. And the other Arab countries that remain either do not have the capacity to confront Israel and perish the thought they explored the idea of unity among them or with others. And the others are fine with it.
Ultimately, I think that Greater Israel is the quintessential explanation of the US imperialistic design in that part of the world for which the Palestinians remain a thorn in the side not just for Israel but for the imperialistic project itself because the Palestinians are still there resisting.
They don’t want to go, they don’t want to be tamed, they don’t want to be dominated so they are the last line, the last frontier of resistance, both physically and in the imagination. And therefore, you see, the fierceness against them has scaled up, with the US now getting ready with boots on the ground to get rid of them. This is my interpretation of the general design behind Israel-United States, where Israelis are going to pay a heavy price like many in the region, not just the Palestinians.
CHRIS HEDGES:So you see the imposition of American troops in Gaza as another step forward to the depopulation of Gaza.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, yes, yes, I don’t trust any promise made to the Palestinians either by Israel or by the United States because what I’ve seen over the past two years shows me, demonstrates to all of us in fact, that they don’t care at all about the Palestinians. Otherwise, they would have seen their suffering.
‘The beginning of genocide has changed my perception of the world in a way, for me personally, it’s the end of an era of innocence when I really believed that the United Nations were a place where things could still be advanced in the pursuit of peace.’
It’s just not like people like us who can really divide their life. Is it pre-genocide? Does it happen to you as well? Are you talking of pre-genocide or after genocide? Because in fact, the beginning of genocide has changed my perception of the world in a way, for me personally, it’s the end of an era of innocence when I really believed that the United Nations were a place where things could still be advanced in the pursuit of peace.
Now I don’t think so, which doesn’t mean that I think that the UN is over, but in order not to be over, in order to make sense to the people, it is to be led by dignity, principles like dignity, equality and freedom for all. And we are absolutely far from that today.
CHRIS HEDGES: And what is it that brought you to this decision? Is it the acceptance of this faux ceasefire on the part of the UN, or was it before this moment?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: No, it’s before. It’s before. It’s the fact that for two years most states, primarily in the West, but with the acquiescence of other states in the region have supported the Israeli mantra of “self-defence”.
Sorry, it was a mantra because again, self-defence has a very, I’m not saying that Israel had no right to protect itself. Of course Israel had suffered a ferocious attack on October 7. Some say similar to the attacks it had inflicted on the Palestinians. Others say more brutal, say less brutal. It doesn’t matter.
Israel suffered a horrible, violent attack. Israeli civilians suffered a horrible attack on October 7th. But hey, this didn’t give the possibility to Israel to invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter, meaning the right to wage a war.
This is not legal. And on this I can say I’m surprised by how conservative are member states when it comes to the interpretation of international law, except on this, in the sense that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has already set the limits of the right of invoking self-defence for member states.
And it can only be done against states where there is a concrete threat that the state will attack which is not the case here. So yes, Israel could defend itself, but not wage a war. And while the war was clearly identifiable more for its crimes than not its tendency to avoid crimes, member states have continued to say nothing and it was very extreme violence against the Palestinians in Gaza but also against the Palestinians in the West Bank. And for two years they’ve not used their power to stop it.
So I’m convinced that in order to have a political shift vis-à-vis Israel, there must be a political shift at the country level, because governments are completely subdued to the dictates of the US. Of course, if the US wanted, this would stop, but the US with this constellation of figures in the government is not going to stop.
And plus look at how the West in particular has contributed to dehumanise the Palestinians. Even today you hear people saying yes, Palestinians have been killed in these numbers because they’ve been used as human shields when the only evidence that they’ve been used as human shields is against Israel because Israel has used Palestinians as human shields in the West Bank and in Gaza alike.
You see Palestinians have returned to be wrapped into this colonial tropism of them being the savages, the barbarians, in a way, they have brought havoc upon themselves. This is the narrative that the West has used toward the Palestinians. And by doing that, it has created, they have created the fertile ground for Israel’s impunity.
CHRIS HEDGES: Let’s talk about the nations that you single out in your report that have continued to sustain the genocide, either through weapons shipments, but also the commercial interests. I think your previous report talked about the money that was being made off of the genocide. Just lay out the extent of that collaboration and to the extent that you can, the sums of money involved.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, yeah, let me start with introducing generally two components, the military component and the trade and investment ones, which are quite interrelated. And states have, in general, I name 62 states, primarily Western states, but with substantive collaboration of states from the Global South, global majority, including some Arab states.
So they have altogether ignored, obscured and somewhat even profited from Israel’s violations of international law through military and economic channels. So military cooperation through arms trades or intelligence sharing has fueled Israel’s war machine during the occupation, the illegal occupation, and especially during the genocide while the United States and Germany alone have provided about 90 percent of Israel’s arms export.
At least 26 states have supplied or facilitated the transfer of arms or components, while many others have continued to buy weapons tested on the Palestinians. And this is why in my previous report, the ones looking at the private sector, I was shocked to see how much the Israeli stock exchange had gone up during the genocide.
And this is particularly because of a growth in the military industry. On the other hand, there is the trade and investment sector. Both have sustained and profited from Israel’s economy. Think that between 2023, 2024, actually the end of 2022 and 2024, exports of electronics, pharmaceuticals, energy minerals and what is called the dual-use have totaled almost US$500 billion, helping Israel finance its military occupation.
Now one third of this trade is with the European Union while the rest is complemented by North American countries, the US and Canada, who have free trade agreements with Israel and several Arab states that have continued to deepen economic ties.
Only a few states have marginally reduced trade during the genocide, but in general the indirect commercial flows, including with states that have supposedly no diplomatic relations with Israel, have continued undisturbed.
It’s a very grim picture of the reality. But let me add just one extra element. I do believe that in many respects, the problem is ideological. As I said, there is a tendency to treat Ukraine, for example, vis-a-vis Russia, in a very different fashion than Palestine versus Israel. And this is why I think there is an element of Orientalism that accompanies also the tragedy of the Palestinian people.
CHRIS HEDGES:Talk a little bit about the kinds of weapons that have been shipped to Israel. These are, and we should be clear that, of course, the Palestinians do not have a conventional army, don’t have a navy, they don’t have an air force, they don’t have mechanized units, including tanks, they don’t have artillery, and yet the weapons shipments that are coming in are some of the most sophisticated armaments that are used in a conventional war.
And as a leaked Israeli report, I think it was +972, provided, 83 percent of the people killed in Gaza are civilians.
FRANCISCA ALBANESE: Yes, yes. First of all, there are two things that are weapons, what is considered conventional weapons and dual-use. And both should have been suspended according to the decision of the International Court of Justice concerning Israel in the Nicaragua v. Germany case.
Meanwhile, there are two things: there is the transfer of weapons directly to Israel, and this includes aircraft, materials to compose the drones, because Israel doesn’t produce anything on its own, it requires components — artillery shells, for example, cannon ammunition, rifles, anti-tank missiles, bombs.
So these are all things that have been provided primarily by the United States. Germany, which is the second largest arms exporter to Israel has supplied a range of weapons from frigates to torpedoes.
And also, and then there is Italy, which has also provided spare parts for bombs and airplanes and the United Kingdom, who has played a key role in providing intelligence. And there is also the question of the UN. Not everything is easy to track because the United States have traveled … the United States are the prime provider of weapons, also because they are the assembler of the F-35 programme.
So there are 17 or 19 countries which cooperate and all of them say, well, you know, I mean, yes, I know that the F-35 is used in Israel, by Israel, but I only contribute to a small part. I only contribute to the wheels. I only contribute to the wings. I only provide these hooks or this engine.
Well, everything is assembled in the US and then sold or transferred or gifted to Israel. And it’s extremely problematic because this is why I say it’s a collective crime, because no one can assume the responsibility on their own but eventually all together they contribute to make this genocide implicating so many countries.
CHRIS HEDGES: So Francesca, Israel is the ninth largest arms exporter in the world. To what extent do those relationships have? I mean, I think one of the largest purchasers of Israeli drones is India. We’ve seen India shift its position vis-a-vis Palestine.
Historically, it’s always stood with the Palestinian people. That’s no longer true under [Narendra] Modi. To what extent do those ties affect the response by the 63 some states that you write about for collaborating with the genocide.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: So let me first expand on this. Weapon and military technology sale is a core component of Israel’s economy. And since 2024, it has constituted one third of Israeli exports. And of course, there are two elements connected to this, is that these exports enhances Israel’s manufacturing capacity, but also horribly worsens the life of the Palestinians because Israeli military technology is tested on the Palestinians under occupation or other people under other Israeli related military activities.
Now, the fact that the arms export has increased of nearly 20 percent during the genocide, doubling toward Europe. And only the trade with Europe accounts for over 50 percent of Israeli military sales, selling to so many other countries, including in the Global South, the Asia and Pacific states in the Asia-Pacific region account for 23 percent of the purchase, with India being probably the major. But also 12 percent of the weapons tested on the Palestinians are purchased by Arab countries under the Abraham Accords. So what does it tell us?
It explains what you were hinting at in the question, the fact that this is also reflected in the political shift toward Israel that has been recorded at the General Assembly level. If you see how some African countries and Asian countries, including India, are behaving vis-a-vis Israel, it’s 180 degrees turn compared to where they were in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
This is because on the one hand, Israel is embedded in the global economy, but also it’s a global economy that is veering toward ultra liberal, I mean, it’s following ultra-liberalist ideologies and therefore capital and wealth and accumulation of resources, including military power, comes first.
‘It’s very sad, but this is the reality . . . since the end of the Cold War that there has been an increasing globalisation of the system where the common denominator is force.’
It’s very sad, but this is the reality. And it’s important to know because this is a long, as I was hinting before, my sense is that this is a long term trajectory that didn’t start on October 7, 2023. I mean, probably since the end of the Cold War that there has been an increasing globalisation of the system where the common denominator is force.
I mean, there is this, not a common denominator, but the unifying factor for many is force, how the monopoly of force that comes with weapons, capital and algorithms. And yeah, this is where the world is going.
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, we’ve seen these weapons systems which of course are tested. They’re sold as bad. say the term is battle tested without naming the Palestinians, but they are sold to Greece to hold back migrants coming from North Africa. They are used along the border in the United States with Mexico.
And it’s not just that these weapons are “battle tested” on the Palestinians and we haven’t even spoken about these huge surveillance systems, but the very methods of control, the way they’re used are exported through military advisors.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Of course, because in fact, the Israeli population is made almost entirely of soldiers. Of course, there are those who do not enlist in the army for religious reasons or because they are contentious objectors, they’re a tiny minority. But the majority of the people of Israelis go through the army.
And then many of them transfer their know-how or what they have been doing into their next career steps. So the fact that Israel, as I was documenting in my previous report, Israel’s startup economy has a huge dark side to the fact that it’s connected to the military industry and to the surveillance industry.
There is a significant body of Israeli citizens who are going around providing advice, intelligence and training in the Global South both to mercenaries and states proper like Morocco. So there is an Israelisation and Palestinianisation of the international relations or rather of the relations between individuals and states.
And I think the interesting thing, this is why I’m saying Palestine is such a revealer, it’s because, as you say, eventually these tools of control and securitisation have concentrated in the hands of those who are fortifying borders at the expense of refugees and migrants.
So it’s really clear what’s happening here. There are oligarchs who are getting richer and richer and more and more protected in their fortresses where the state is providing the fertile ground to have it, but it’s not states that are benefiting from this inequality, because the majority of the people within states, look at the US, but also in Europe, are not benefiting from anything, in fact.
They’re victims. This is why you equally exploit it. This is why I’m saying it’s another degree of suffering, of course, than the Palestinians. But every worker today should draw a lesson from what’s happening to the Palestinians, because the large injustice system is connected and makes all of us connected to what’s happening there.
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, internally as well. I mean, with Sikh farmers who were protesting Modi were out on the roads, suddenly, over their heads were Israeli-made drones dropping tear gas canisters.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, exactly. Drones are one of the most exported devices from Israel’s technology and they are in use by Frontex to surveil the Mediterranean Sea, as you were saying, the US-Mexican border. But more and more, they’re getting into people’s lives.
Also look at the way certain technologies have been perfected across borders. I remember earlier this summer, this is very anecdotal, I’ve not done research on it, but I knew that we were seeing something quite and horribly revolutionary.
This year, this summer during the protests in Serbia, where students and ordinary citizens were taken to the streets against the government and have been protesting for one year now, people in Serbia. I saw the use of these sound weapons, oxygen-fed weapons.
So there are bombs that produce such a pain in the body who finds itself in the wave that it’s excruciating. And then of course people try to flee, but they also lose senses, et cetera. And I’ve seen this in Serbia.
And now I understand that it’s being used in Gaza as well, where the bomb doesn’t produce fire, it produces a movement of air that causes pain to the body and even to internal organs. It’s incredible. And these are weapons that have been perfected through testing here and there, and Serbia keeps on selling and buying military technology to and from Israel.
CHRIS HEDGES: I just want to close with, I mean, I think your reports, the last two reports in particular, show the complete failure on the part of governments as well as corporations to respond legally in terms of their legal obligations to the genocide. What do we do now? What must be done to quote Lenin?
How, because this, as you have pointed out repeatedly, really presages the complete breakdown of the rule of law. What as citizens must we do?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I think that we have passed the alarm area. I mean, we are really in a critical place and I sense it because instead of correcting itself, the system led by governments is accentuating its authoritarian traits. Think of the repressive measures that the UK government is taking against protesters, against civil society, against journalists standing in solidarity with Palestine, for justice in Palestine.
In France and in Italy at the same time, conferences academic freedom is shrinking and in the same days, conferences of reputable historians and military and legal experts have been cancelled owing to the pressure of the pro-genocide groups, pro-Israel groups in their respective countries. People, including in Germany, are being persecuted, including academics, for their own exercise of free speech.
This tells me that there is very little pretense that Western states, so-called liberal democracies, the most attached to this idea of democracy are ready to defend for real. So in this sense, it’s up to us citizens to be vigilant and to make sure that we do not buy products connected or services connected to the legality of the occupation, the apartheid and the genocide.
And there are various organisations that collect lists of companies and entities, including universities that are connected to this unlawful endeavor. BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] is one, don’t buy into the occupation who profits profundo, but also students associations.
‘There is a need to speak about Palestine, to make choices about Palestine and not because everything needs to revolve around Palestine, but because Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go is clearly evident in this.’
And this is something that has taught me, it’s very touching because it’s really the work of students, faculty members and staff that has mapped what each university does. And I think it gives the possibility to act, everyone in our own domain. Then of course there is a need to speak about Palestine, to make choices about Palestine and not because everything needs to revolve around Palestine, but because Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go is clearly evident in this.
But also we need to make sure that businesses divest. Either through our purchase power, people have to step away and stop using platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com. I know that Amazon is very convenient, but guys, we might also return to buy books in libraries, ordering books through libraries.
Of course, not all of us can, but many do, many can. On the way to work, buy a book in a library, order a book in a bookstore. We need to reduce our reliance on the tools that have been used, that have been perfected through the slaughter of the Palestinians. And of course, make government accountable. There are lawyers, associations, and jurists who are taking government officials to court, businesses to court. But again, I do not think that there is one strategy that is going to be the winning one.
It’s the plurality of actions from a plurality of actors that is going to produce results and slow down the genocide and then help dismantle the occupation and the apartheid. It’s a long trajectory and the fight has just started.
CHRIS HEDGES: Thank you, Francesca, and I want to thank Thomas [Hedges], Diego [Ramos], Max [Jones] and Sofia [Menemenlis], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times. This interview is republished from The Chris Hedges Report.
Timor-Leste Prime Minister Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão has paid tribute to the “courageous and determined” contribution of Australian journalist Robert Domm to the struggle of the Timorese people in gaining independence from Indonesia. He died last Friday.
Domm was remembered for meeting in secret with the then Timorese resistance leader Gusmão in an exclusive interview.
“The government and people of East Timor are deeply saddened by the passing of Robert Domm, whose courage and determination helped bring to the world the truth of our fight for self-determination,” Gusmão’s statement said.
“In September 1990, when few in the world were aware of the devastation in occupied East Timor, or that our campaign of resistance continued despite the terrible losses, Robert Domm made the perilous journey to our country and climbed Mount Bunaria to meet with me and the leadership from FALINTIL.
“He was the first foreign journalist in 15 years to have direct contact with the Resistance.
“Your interview with me, broadcast by the ABC Background Briefing programme, broke the silence involving Timor-Leste since 1975.
“He conveyed to the world the message that the Timorese struggle for self-determination and resistance against foreign military occupation was very much alive.
Merchant seaman
“Robert Domm visited East Timor in the 1970s, then under Portuguese colonial control, as a merchant seaman on a boat crossing between Darwin and Dili, transporting general cargo and fuel.
“He returned in 1989, when Indonesia allowed tourist entry for the first time since 1975.
“He returned in 1990, allegedly as a “tourist”, but was on a secret mission to interview me for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
“Robert Domm’s journey to find me took extraordinary courage. His visit was organised by the Timorese resistance with, as he later recalled, “military precision”. He involved more than two hundred people from Timore who guided him through villages and checkpoints, running great risk for himself and the Timore people who helped him.
“He was a humble and gentle Australian who slept next to us on the grounds of Mount Bunaria, ate with us under the protection of the jungle and walked with our resistance soldiers as a comrade and a friend. I am deeply moved by your concern for the people of Timore.
He risked his own life to share our story. His report has given international recognition to the humanity and the resolve of our people.
“Following the broadcast, the Indonesian military carried out large-scale operations in our mountains and many of those who helped them lost their lives for our freedom.
Exposed complicity
“Robert continued to support East Timor after 1990. He spoke out against the occupation and exposed the complicity of governments that have remained mute. He was a co-author, with Mark Aarons, of East Timor: A Tragedy Created by the West, a work that deepened the international understanding of our suffering and our right to self-determination.
“He remained a friend and defender of East Timor long after the restoration of independence.
“In 2015, twenty-five years after his maiden voyage, Robert returned to East Timor to commemorate our historic encounter. Together, we walked to Mount Bunaria, in the municipality of Ainaro, to celebrate the occasion and remember the lives lost during our fight.
“The place of our meeting has been recognised as a place of historical importance.
“In recognition of his contribution, Robert Domm was awarded the Order of Timor-Leste in August 2014. This honour reflected our nation’s gratitude for its role in taking our struggle to the world. Robert’s contribution is part of our nation’s history.
“Robert’s soul now rests on Mount Matebian, next to his Timorese brothers and sisters.
“On behalf of the government and people of East Timor, we express our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Robert Domm. His courage, decency and sense of justice will forever remain in the memory of our nation.”
Journalist Robert Domm with Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmão, now Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, in a jungle hideout in 1990. Image: via Joana Ruas
Timor-Leste Prime Minister Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão has paid tribute to the “courageous and determined” contribution of Australian journalist Robert Domm to the struggle of the Timorese people in gaining independence from Indonesia. He died last Friday.
Domm was remembered for meeting in secret with the then Timorese resistance leader Gusmão in an exclusive interview.
“The government and people of East Timor are deeply saddened by the passing of Robert Domm, whose courage and determination helped bring to the world the truth of our fight for self-determination,” Gusmão’s statement said.
“In September 1990, when few in the world were aware of the devastation in occupied East Timor, or that our campaign of resistance continued despite the terrible losses, Robert Domm made the perilous journey to our country and climbed Mount Bunaria to meet with me and the leadership from FALINTIL.
“He was the first foreign journalist in 15 years to have direct contact with the Resistance.
“Your interview with me, broadcast by the ABC Background Briefing programme, broke the silence involving Timor-Leste since 1975.
“He conveyed to the world the message that the Timorese struggle for self-determination and resistance against foreign military occupation was very much alive.
Merchant seaman
“Robert Domm visited East Timor in the 1970s, then under Portuguese colonial control, as a merchant seaman on a boat crossing between Darwin and Dili, transporting general cargo and fuel.
“He returned in 1989, when Indonesia allowed tourist entry for the first time since 1975.
“He returned in 1990, allegedly as a “tourist”, but was on a secret mission to interview me for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
“Robert Domm’s journey to find me took extraordinary courage. His visit was organised by the Timorese resistance with, as he later recalled, “military precision”. He involved more than two hundred people from Timore who guided him through villages and checkpoints, running great risk for himself and the Timore people who helped him.
“He was a humble and gentle Australian who slept next to us on the grounds of Mount Bunaria, ate with us under the protection of the jungle and walked with our resistance soldiers as a comrade and a friend. I am deeply moved by your concern for the people of Timore.
He risked his own life to share our story. His report has given international recognition to the humanity and the resolve of our people.
“Following the broadcast, the Indonesian military carried out large-scale operations in our mountains and many of those who helped them lost their lives for our freedom.
Exposed complicity
“Robert continued to support East Timor after 1990. He spoke out against the occupation and exposed the complicity of governments that have remained mute. He was a co-author, with Mark Aarons, of East Timor: A Tragedy Created by the West, a work that deepened the international understanding of our suffering and our right to self-determination.
“He remained a friend and defender of East Timor long after the restoration of independence.
“In 2015, twenty-five years after his maiden voyage, Robert returned to East Timor to commemorate our historic encounter. Together, we walked to Mount Bunaria, in the municipality of Ainaro, to celebrate the occasion and remember the lives lost during our fight.
“The place of our meeting has been recognised as a place of historical importance.
“In recognition of his contribution, Robert Domm was awarded the Order of Timor-Leste in August 2014. This honour reflected our nation’s gratitude for its role in taking our struggle to the world. Robert’s contribution is part of our nation’s history.
“Robert’s soul now rests on Mount Matebian, next to his Timorese brothers and sisters.
“On behalf of the government and people of East Timor, we express our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Robert Domm. His courage, decency and sense of justice will forever remain in the memory of our nation.”
Journalist Robert Domm with Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmão, now Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, in a jungle hideout in 1990. Image: via Joana Ruas
Israeli soldiers have revealed that Palestinian civilians were killed inside Gaza in a free-for-all at the wish of army officers amid a collapse of legal and military norms during Tel Aviv’s two-year brutal war on the besieged enclave, reports Anadolu Ajensi.
“If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” Daniel, the commander of an Israeli tank unit, said in a documentary, Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, set to be aired in the UK on ITV on Monday.
The Israeli army has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded over 170,000 in Gaza and left the enclave uninhabitable since October 2023.
Israeli soldiers, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said Palestinian civilians were used as human shields during the conflict, The Guardianreported.
Captain Yotam Vilk, an armored corps officer, said soldiers did not apply the long-standing army standard of firing only when a target had the “means, intent and ability” to cause harm.
“There’s no such thing as ‘means, intent and ability’ in Gaza,” he said. “It’s just suspicion – someone walking where it’s not allowed.”
Another soldier, identified only as Eli, said: “Life and death isn’t determined by procedures or opening fire regulations. It’s the conscience of the commander on the ground that decides.”
‘Hanging laundry’
Eli recounted an officer ordering a tank to demolish a building where a man was just “hanging laundry,” resulting in multiple deaths and injuries.
The documentary also presents detailed accounts of Israeli soldiers opening fire unprovoked on civilians running toward food handouts at militarized aid distribution points operated by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Film maker talks about Israeli ‘shoot to kill’ policies in Gaza Video: LBC
A contractor identified only as Sam, who worked at GHF sites, said he saw Israeli soldiers shooting two unarmed men running to get aid.
“You could just see two soldiers run after them,” he recalled. “They drop onto their knees and they just take two shots, and you could just see . . . two heads snap backwards and just drop.”
Sam also described a tank destroying “a normal car . . . just four normal people sat inside it.”
According to UN figures, at least 944 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli fire near such aid points.
Extremist rhetoric
The film also highlights the spread of extremist rhetoric inside Israel, including statements from rabbis and politicians depicting all Palestinians as legitimate targets after the October 7 events.
“You hear that all the time, so you start to believe it,” Daniel said.
Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, who served more than 500 days in Gaza, defended large-scale home demolitions by the Israeli army in Gaza.
“Everything there is one big terrorist infrastructure . . . We changed the conduct of an entire army.”
In September, a UN commission concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, where a ceasefire came into force on October 10 after two years of Israeli bombardment.
“I feel like they’ve destroyed all my pride in being an Israeli — in being an IDF (army) officer,” Daniel says in the programme. “All that’s left is shame.”
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