Fiji’s coalition government has come under scrutiny over allegations of human rights violations.
Speaking at the commemoration of International Human Rights Day in Suva on Tuesday, the chair of the Coalition of NGOs, Shamima Ali, claimed that — like the previous FijiFirst administration — the coalition government has demonstrated a “lack of commitment to human rights”.
Addressing more than 400 activists at the event, the Minister for Women, Children, and Social Protection Lynda Tabuya acknowledged the concerns raised by civil society organisations, assuring them that Sitiveni Rabuka’s government was committed to listening and addressing these issues.
Ali criticises Fiji government over human rights Video: FBC News
The “Human rights for all” theme at Fiji’s World Human Rights Day march in downtown Suva. Image: FBC News
Shamima Ali claimed that freedom of expression was still being suppressed and the coalition had failed to address this.
“We are also concerned that there continue to be government restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly through the arbitrary application of the Public Order Amendment Act, which should have been changed by now — two years into the new government that we all looked forward to,” she said.
A “Girls wanna have fundamental human rights” placard at the World Human Rights Day march in Suva. Image: FBC News
Ali alleged that serious decisions in government were made unfairly, and women in leadership continued to be “undermined”.
“Nepotism and cronyism remain rife with each successive government, with party supporters being given positions with no regard for merit, diversity, and representation,” she said.
“Misogyny against certain women leaders is rampant, with wild sexism and online bullying.”
An “Our rights, our future now” placard at Fiji’s Human Rights Day rally. Image: FBC News
Responding, Minister Tabuya acknowledged the concerns raised and called for dialogue to bring about the change needed.
“I can sit here and be told everything that we are doing wrong in government,” Tabuya said.
“I can take it, but I cannot assure that others in government will take it the same way as well. So I encourage you, with the kind of partnerships, to begin with dialogue and to build together because government cannot do it alone.”
A “Stop fossil fuel production, consumption and distribution” placard at Fiji’s World Human Rights Day march . . . climate crisis is a major human rights issue in the Pacific. Image: FBC News
The minister stressed that to address the many human rights violation concerns that had been raised, the government needed support from civil society organisations, traditional leaders, faith-based leaders, and a cross-sector approach to face these issues.
Pacific police chiefs have formally opened the headquarters and training center for a new stand-by, mutual assistance force in Australia to support countries during civil unrest, natural disasters and major events.
The Pacific Policing Initiative was declared operational just 17 months after chiefs agreed in 2023 on the need to create a multinational unit, with US$270 million (A$400 million) in funding from Australia.
The PPI comes as Australia and its allies are locked in a geostrategic contest for influence in the region with China, including over security and policing.
Riots in Solomon Islands and violence in Papua New Guinea, the region’s increased exposure to climate change impacts, escalating transnational crime and securing a higher standing internationally for the Pacific’s forces were key drivers.
PNG Police Commissioner David Manning (centre) flanked by Vanuatu Police Commissioner Robson Iavro (left), Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw (second right) and Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus at the PPI launch on Tuesday. Image: BenarNews/Stefan Armbruster
At a flag-raising ceremony in Brisbane on Tuesday, Papua New Guinea’s Police Commissioner David Manning hailed the PPI’s funding as an “unprecedented investment” in the region.
“The PPI provides a clear, effective, and agile mechanism to which we can support our Pacific family in times of need to uphold the law and maintain order in security,” said Manning, who chairs the PPI design steering committee.
He said issues in deploying foreign police throughout the region still needed to be resolved but the 22 member nations and territories were “close to completing the guiding legal framework around Pacific Island countries to be able to tap into this.”
The constitutional difficulties of deploying foreign police are well known to Manning after PNG’s highest court ruled two decades ago that a deployment of Australian Federal Police there was illegal.
“That incident alone has taught us many lessons,” he said, adding changes had been made to the Constitution and relevant legislation to receive assistance and also to deploy to other countries lawfully.
Manning said no deployments of the Pacific Support Group had currently been requested by Pacific nations.
Impetus for the PPI was a secretive policing and security deal Beijing signed with Solomon Islands in 2022 that caused alarm in Washington and Canberra.
Several other Pacific nations — including Tonga, Samoa and Kiribati — also have policing arrangements with China to provide training and equipment. On Monday, Vanuatu received police boats and vehicles valued at US$4 million from Beijing.
“I wouldn’t say it locks China out, all I’m saying is that we now have an opportunity to determine what is best for the Pacific,” Manning said.
“Our countries in the Pacific have different approaches in terms of their relationship with China. I’m not brave enough to speak on their behalf, but as for us, it is purely policing.”
Samoan Police Minister Lefau Harry Schuster on Tuesday also announced his country would be hosting the PPI’s third “center of excellence”, specialising in forensics, alongside ones in PNG and Fiji.
He said the PPI will use the Samoan Police Academy built by China and opened in June.
“We wanted it to be used not just for Samoa, but to open up for use by the region,” Schuster said in Brisbane.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the PPI “symbolises our commitment as part of the Pacific region” and enhances the Pacific’s standing internationally.
“Asia represents Australia and the Pacific at the moment at Interpol,” he said. “We want to show leadership in the region and we want a bit more status and recognition from Interpol.”
Kershaw said “crime in our region is becoming more complex”, including large seizures of drug shipments.
“The fact is that we’re able to work together in a seamless way and combat, say, transnational, serious and organized crime as a serious threat in our region.”
“At the same time, we’ve all got domestic issues and I think we’re learning faster and better about how to deal with domestic issues and international issues at the same time.”
Police ministers and chiefs from across the Pacific attended the launch of the PPI’s Pinkenba Hub on Tuesday. Image: BenarNews/Stefan Armbruster
Asked about tackling community policing of issues like gender-based violence, he said it was all part of the “complex” mix.
The Australian and Samoan facilities complete the three arms of the PPI consisting of the Pacific Support Group, three regional training centers and the co-ordination hub in Brisbane.
The Pinkenba centre in Brisbane will provide training — including public order management, investigations, close personal protection — and has accommodation for 140 people.
Training began in July, with 30 officers from 11 nations who were deployed to Samoa to help with security during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in October, the largest event the country has ever hosted.
Schuster expressed surprise about how quickly the PPI was established and thanked Australia and the region for their support.
“This is one initiative I’m very happy that we didn’t quite do it the Pacific way. [The] Pacific way takes time, a long time, we talk and talk and talk,” he joked.
“So I look forward to an approach like this in the future, so that we do things first and then open it later.”
This article is republished from BenarNewswith permission.
A New Zealand advocacy group for Palestine has condemned the government for refusing to provide humanitarian visas for Palestinians with family in the country while welcoming a growing number of Israeli “visitors”.
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) claims the visitors are likely to be “complicit” in Israel’s genocidal war crimes in the 14-month war on Gaza.
The protest group said in a statement that “many if not most of these ‘tourists’ are actively serving in the Israeli Defence Force’s genocidal attacks on Gaza and Lebanon”.
“The United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and most recently Amnesty International, have variously described the Israeli attack on Gaza as genocide,” said PSNA national chair John Minto.
The New Zealand government had no idea how many Israeli “tourists” were doing military service, because they were not required to provide that information as they arrived, he added.
“Genocide duty in the Israeli armed forces is compulsory for nearly all Israelis, so there will be a high proportion of active or reservist soldiers coming to Aotearoa with blood on their hands.”
Urgent to deny entry
Service in the IDF for 32 months is compulsory for nearly all Israeli men when they reach 18 and women are required to serve 24 months.
Members of Israel’s ultra-orthodox community were included in the conscription from June after previously being exempt.
After the initial period, Israelis must be available as reservists until age 40.
PSNA’s John Minto said the New Zealand government must urgently deny entry to any Israelis who were serving or had served in the IDF.
“Combat reservists are now on average serving four months in the IDF. So it’s not just a narrow younger age group.”
According to Minto, the New Zealand government had a list of extremist Israeli settlers who it banned from entering Aotearoa — but he viewed this list as “hopelessly inadequate”.
Obligation to prevent genocide
“The International Court of Justice has obligated countries to prevent Israeli genocide and work to end Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory,” Minto said.
“When our border immigration officials are not required to even ask if an Israeli is serving in the military, or is an illegal settler, then our government is ignoring both of its obligations.
“The soldiers perpetrating this genocide might pretend to be innocent thrill-seeking tourists when they visit here, but they are directly responsible for operating occupation, apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
Fijian peacekeepers in the Middle East “are secure and accounted for,” the country’s Defence and Veteran Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua confirmed today.
Tikoduadua said Fiji had troops deployed in the Golan Heights under the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) and the UN Truce Supervision Organisation (UNSTO).
The minister said he had been briefed on the situation by the commander of the Joint Task Force Command and the country’s representatives in the Golan Heights.
He said robust contingency plans were in place to safeguard troops should the security situation change.
The security situation remained calm but tense, and there was no immediate threat to Fijian peacekeepers.
“I wish to commend the bravery and professionalism of our troops serving in these challenging conditions,” he said.
“Their dedication demonstrates Fiji’s long-standing commitment to international peacekeeping and security.”
He further assured the families of Fijian peacekeepers that the government was committed to the safety and wellbeing of its personnel.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has condemned the assassination of Cambodian investigative environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng who has died from his wounds.
He was shot by an illegal logger last week while investigating unlawful deforestation in the country’s northwest.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has urged the Cambodian government make sure this crime does not go unpunished, and to take concrete measures to protect journalists.
On 7 December 2024, journalist Chhoeung Chheng died in a hospital in Siem Reap, a city in northeastern Cambodia, from wounds suffered during an attack two days prior, RSF said in a statement.
The 63-year-old reporter, who worked for the online media Kampuchea Aphivath, had been shot in the abdomen while reporting on illegal logging in the Boeung Per nature reserve.
Local media report that the suspect admitted to shooting the journalist after being photographed twice while transporting illegally logged timber.
“This murder is appalling and demands a strong response. We call on Cambodian authorities to ensure that all parties responsible for the attack are severely punished,” Cédric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director in Taipei.
“We also urge the Cambodian government to take concrete actions to end violence against journalists.”
Journalists face violence
Journalists covering illegal deforestation in Cambodia face frequent violence. In 2014, reporter Taing Try was shot dead while investigating links between security forces and the timber trade in the country’s south, reports RSF.
Press freedom in Cambodia has been steadily deteriorating since 2017, when former Prime Minister Hun Sen cracked down on independent media, forcing prominent outlets such as Voice of Democracy to shut down. The government revoked the outlet’s licence in February 2023.
One year into his rule, Prime Minister Hun Manet appears to be perpetuating the media crackdown started by his father, Hun Sen, reports RSF.
Having fallen nine places in two years, Cambodia is now ranked 151st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index, placing it in the category of nations where threats to press freedom are deemed “very serious”.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
American officials have discussed the merits of removing a $10m bounty on Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, whose rebel group swept into Damascus and toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, a senior Arab official briefed by the Americans told Middle East Eye.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, commonly known as Jolani, has been designated as a terrorist by the United States since 2013, while his organisation, HTS, was proscribed by the Trump administration in 2018 when a $10 million bounty was placed on his head.
For years, HTS lobbied to be delisted, but its pleas largely fell on deaf years with the group relegated to governing just a sliver of northwest Syria.
But the lightning blitz by the rebels, which saw Assad’s iron-grip rule end in spectacular fashion on Sunday, has since forced Washington to rethink how it engages with the former al-Qaeda affiliate.
The senior Arab official, who requested anonymity due to sensitivities surrounding the talks, told MEE that the discussions had divided officials in the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, when asked about the discussions, one Trump transition official disparaged the Biden administration.
Jolani, 42, gave a rousing victory speech in Damascus’ iconic Umayyad Mosque on Sunday and is widely expected to play a key role in Syria’s transition after 54 years of Assad family rule.
“Today, Syria is being purified,” Jolani told a crowd of supporters in Damascus, adding that “this victory is born from the people who have languished in prison, and the mujahideen (fighters) broke their chains”.
He said that under Assad, Syria had become a place for “Iranian ambitions, where sectarianism was rife,” in reference to Assad’s allies Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah.
The fact that the CNN journalist here had to wear a hijab to conduct this interview is everything you need to know about the new Islamist group taking over Syria. pic.twitter.com/05jH4GBzet
‘Saying the right things now’ Speaking several hours after the fall of Damascus, US President Joe Biden called the rebel takeover a “fundamental act of justice,” but cautioned it was “a moment of risk and uncertainty” for the Middle East.
“We will remain vigilant,” Biden said. “Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses,” adding that the groups are “saying the right things now.”
“But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions,” Biden said.
Later, a senior Biden administration official, when asked about contact with HTS leaders, said Washington was in contact with Syrian groups of all kinds.
The official, who was not authorised to publicly discuss the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity, also said the US was focused on ensuring chemical weapons in Assad’s military arsenal were secured.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that US intelligence agencies were in the process of evaluating Jolani, who it said had launched a “charm offensive” aimed at allaying concerns over his past affiliations.
Jolani was born to a family originally from the occupied Golan Heights and fought in the Iraq insurgency and served five years in an American-run prison in Iraq, before returning to Syria as the emissary of Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
‘Charm offensive can be misleading’
“A charm offensive might mean that people are turning over a new leaf and they think differently than they used to so you should hear them out. On the other hand, you should be cautious because charm offensives can sometimes be misleading,” the US official said.
“We have to think about it. We have to watch their behaviour and we need to do some indirect messaging and see what comes of that,” the official added.
But, US President-elect Donald Trump, who will be entering office in just five weeks, has left few doubts where he stood on the conflict, saying Washington “should have nothing to do with it [Syria].”
In a social media post on Saturday, Trump wrote that Assad “lost” because “Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success”.
Trump used Assad’s fall as an opportunity to call for an end to the war in Ukraine, without mentioning the Syrian opposition or the Syrian allies of the US.
Israel has “seized” territory in Syrian-controlled areas of the Golan Heights, as its military warned Syrians living in five villages close to the Israeli-occupied portion of the strategic area to “stay home” https://t.co/NSkn6tTxIc
Jordan lobbies for Syrian Free Army Assad’s ousting has seen Nato-ally Turkey cement its status as the main outside power in Syria at the expense of a bruised and battered Iran and Russia.
But the US holds vast amounts of territory in Syria via its allies, who joined a race to replace the Assad regime as its soldiers abandoned villages and cities en masse.
The US backs rebels operating out of the al-Tanf desert outpost on the tri-border area of Jordan, Iraq and Syria.
The Syrian Free Army (SFA) went on the offensive as Assad’s regime collapsed taking control of the city of Palmyra.
The SFA works closely with the US and its financing is mainly run out of Jordan. The SFA also enjoys close ties to Jordanian intelligence.
A former Arab security official told MEE that Jordan’s King Abdullah II met with senior US officials in Washington DC last week and lobbied for continued support for the Syrian Free Army.
However, maintaining stability in post-Assad Syria will be key for Jordan as it looks to send back hundreds of thousands of refugees and ensure a power vacuum does not lead to more captagon crossing its border, the former official said.
900 US troops embedded with Kurds
In northeastern Syria, the US has roughly 900 troops embedded with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Arab tribes linked to the SDF swept across the Euphrates River on Friday to take a wide swath of strategic towns, including Deir Ezzor and al-Bukamal. The latter is Syria’s strategic border crossing with Iraq.
The US support for the SDF is a sore point in its ties to Turkey, which views the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK has waged a decades-long guerrilla war in southern Turkey and is labelled a terrorist organisation by the US and the European Union.
Turkey’s concerns about the PKK led it to launch an invasion of Syria in 2016, with the aim of depriving Kurdish fighters of a quasi-state along its border. Two more military forays followed in 2018 and 2019.
The SDF is already being squeezed in the north with Turkish-backed rebels called the Syrian National Army entering the strategic city of Manbij.
During Syria’s more than decade long war, the US slapped sanctions on Assad’s government, enabled Israel to launch strikes on Iran inside Syria, and backed opposition groups that hold sway over around one-third of the country.
Republished from Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.
Governor Powes Parkop of Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby has appealed to West Papuans living in his country to carry on the self-determination struggle for future generations and to not lose hope.
Parkop, a staunch supporter of the West Papua cause, reminded Papuans at their Independence Day last Sunday of the struggles of their ancestors, reports Inside PNG.
“PNG will celebrate 50 years of Independence next year but this is only so for half of the island — the other half is still missing, we are losing our land, we are losing our resources.
“If we are not careful, we are going to lose our future too.”
The National Capital District governor was guest speaker for the celebration among Port Moresby residents of West Papuan descent with the theme “Celebrating and preserving our culture through food and the arts”.
About 12,000 West Papuan refugees and exiles live in PNG and Parkop has West Papuan ancestry through his grandparents.
The Independence Day celebration began with everyone participating in the national anthem — “Hai Tanaku Papua” (“My Land, Papua”).
Song and dance
Other activities included song and dance, and a dialogue with the young and older generations to share ideas on a way forward.
Some stalls were also set up selling West Papuan cuisine, arts and crafts.
West Papuan children ready to dance with the Morning Star flag of West Papuan independence – banned in Indonesia. Image: Inside PNG
Governor Parkop said: “We must be proud of our identity, our culture, our land, our heritage and most importantly we have to challenge ourselves, redefine our journey and our future.
“That’s the most important responsibility we have.”’
West Papua was a Dutch colony in the 9th century and by the 1950s the Netherlands began to prepare for withdrawal.
On 1 December 1961, West Papuans held a congress to discuss independence.
The national flag, the Morning Star, was raised for the first time on that day.
Encouraged to keep culture
Governor Parkop described the West Papua cause as “a tragedy”.
This is due to the fact that following the declaration of Independence in 1961, Indonesia laid claim over the island a year later in 1962.
This led to the United Nations-sponsored treaty known as the New York Agreement.
Indonesia was appointed temporary administrator without consultation or the consent of West Papuans.
In 1969 the so-called Act of Free Choice enabled West Papuans to decide their destiny but again only 1026 West Papuans had to make that choice under the barrel of the gun.
To this day, Melanesian West Papua remains under Indonesian rule.
Governor Parkop encouraged the West Papuan people to preserve their culture and heritage and to breakaway from the colonial mindset, colonial laws and ideas that hindered progress to freedom for West Papua.
Republished with permission from Inside PNG.
West Papuans in Port Moresby proudly display their Morning Star flag of independence — banned by Indonesia. Image: Inside PNG
Amnesty International officials at a rally in Auckland today doubled down on their global report this week accusing Israel of genocide and called on Aotearoa New Zealand to take more action over the atrocities in the besieged enclave of Gaza.
The global human rights movement’s 296-page fully documented report says Israel has “unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity”.
Speaking at the weekly rally in Te Komititanga Square in the heart of Auckland today, Amnesty International Aotearoa’s people power manager Margaret Taylor said the report was “irrefutable”.
“Israel has committed and is — this very minute — committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip,” she said and was supported with loud shouts of “shame, shame!”
Al Jazeera reports that 50 people were killed in the latest Israeli attacks on central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp — in which the death toll included six children and five women — and the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya district.
The report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024.
‘Firsthand accounts, satellite photography’
“Amnesty International interviewed hundreds of people with firsthand accounts. We analysed photos and video footage of the devastation, the remains of weaponry, corroborated with satellite photography, and we reviewed a huge range of data sets, repirts and statements by UN agencies, humanitarian organisations, human rights groups, and senior Israeli government officials and military leaders,” said Taylor.
“As I said before, this is irrefutable.”
The Amnesty International delegation at today’s justice and ceasefire rally for Palestine in downtown Auckland. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Noting that the “atrocity crimes” against Israelis by Hamas on 7 October 2023, which triggered the current war — although brutal repression against the Palestinians has been extensively reported since the Nakba in 1948 — “do not justify genocide”.
The publication of the report has been welcomed around the world by many humanitarian and human rights groups but condemned by Israel and criticised by its main backer, the United States.
In a statement, the Israeli Foreign Minister claimed: “The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies.”
A “thousands of children are dying” placard at today’s Palestine rally in Auckland. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Israel’s actions had brought Gaza’s population to the “brink of collapse”, said the Amnesty International report.
“Its brutal military offensive had killed more than 42,000 Palestinians [now more than 44,000], including over 13,300 children, and injured over 97,000 more, by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families.
“It has caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites.
“It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.”
A “flag-masked” child at today’s Palestine rally in Auckland. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
NZ needs to take action
Taylor told the rally that New Zealand needed to take more action over the genocide, such as:
Publicly recognise that Israeli authorities are committing the crime of genocide and commit to strong and sustained international action;
Ban imports from illegal settlements as well as investment in companies connected to maintaining the occupation; and
Do everything possible to facilitate Palestinian people seeking refuge to come to Aotearoa New Zealand and receive support.
In RNZ’s Checkpoint programme on Thursday, Amnesty International Aotearoa’s advocacy and movement building director Lisa Woods said the organisation had worked to establish the intent behind Israel’s acts in Gaza, adding that they meet the definition of genocide.
The series of air strikes analysed in the report had hit civilian homes in densely populated urban areas.
“No evidence was found that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective,” she said.
“The report found that the way these attacks were conducted is that they were conducted in ways that were designed to cause a very high number of fatalities and injuries among the civilian population.”
Today’s Palestine rally also devoted part of its activities to preparing a series of on-the-spot submissions to the Treaty Principles Bill amid many “Kill the bill” tee-shirts, banners and placards.
A “Kill the Bill” tee-shirt referring to the controversial Treaty Principles Bill widely regarded as a fundamental attack on Aotearoa New Zealand’s foundational 1840 Treaty of Waitangi at today’s Palestine rally in Auckland. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
The incoming Trump administration will bring a dangerous brew of Christian nationalism and anti-Palestinian racism
Things can always get worse. Much worse.
The Biden/Harris administration has bank-rolled and funded Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza, the sight of the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.
Israeli soldiers wilfully post their crimes online for all the globe to see. Palestinian journalists are being deliberately targeted by Israel in an unprecedented way.
Every day brings new horrors in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond. And that’s not ignoring the catastrophes in Syria, Sudan and Myanmar.
But we can’t despair or disengage. It can be hard with an incoming Trump White House stuffed with radicals, evangelicals and bigots but now is not the time to do so.
We must keep on reporting, investigating, sharing, talking and raising public awareness of the real threats that surround us every day (from the climate crisis to nuclear war) and finding ways to solve them.
Always find hope.
New global project
Here’s some breaking news. I’ve said nothing about this publicly. Until now.
I’ve spent much of the year working on a documentary film series inspired by my best-selling book, The Palestine Laboratory. I’ve travelled to seven countries over many months, filming under the radar due to the sensitivity of the material.
I can’t say much more at this stage except that it’s nearly completed and will be released soon on a major global broadcaster.
The photo at the top of the page is me in a clip from the series in an undisclosed location (after I’d completed a voice-over recording session.)
Stay tuned for more. This work will be ground-breaking.
My recent work has largely focused on the worsening disaster in the Middle East and I’ve spoken to media outlets including CNN, Al Jazeera English, Sky News and others.
You can see these on my website and YouTube channel.
I’m an independent journalist without any institutional backing. If you’re able to support me financially, by donating money to continue this work, I’d hugely appreciate it.
Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organisation has revealed in a landmark new investigative report.
The 294-page report documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has “unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity”.
An Amnesty International statement made along with releasing the investigation says that the Aotearoa New Zealand government “can and should take action”, for example:
Publicly recognise that Israeli authorities are committing the crime of genocide and commit to strong and sustained international action;
Ban imports from illegal settlements as well as investment in companies connected to maintaining the occupation; and
Do everything possible to facilitate Palestinian people seeking refuge to come to Aotearoa New Zealand and receive support.
Lisa Woods, advocacy and movement building director at Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, said: “This research and report demonstrate that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.
“It’s not enough to say ‘never again’. The New Zealand government has to publicly call this what it is — genocide.
“We’re asking the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to show leadership. New Zealand has a responsibility to act.”
Ban illegal settlement products
Woods said that in addition to acknowledging that this was genocide, the New Zealand government must ban products from the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory — “and open the doors to Palestinians who are desperately seeking refuge.”
Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said about the new report:
“These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.
“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.”
Callamard said that states that continued to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are “violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide”.
She said that all states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the US and Germany — but also other EU member states, the UK and others — must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.
Population facing starvation
Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid, Callamard said.
“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza,” she said.
“It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.
“Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”
Amnesty International said in its statement that it had examined Israel’s acts in Gaza closely and in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences.
The organisation considered the scale and severity of the casualties and destruction over time. It also analysed public statements by officials, finding that prohibited acts were often announced or called for in the first place by high-level officials in charge of the war efforts.
“Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas,” Callamard said.
Atrocities ‘can never justify Israel’s genocide’
“The atrocity crimes committed on 7 October 2023 by Hamas and other armed groups against Israelis and victims of other nationalities, including deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking, can never justify Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
According to the statement, international jurisprudence recognises that the perpetrator does not need to succeed in their attempts to destroy the protected group, either in whole or in part, for genocide to have been committed.
The commission of prohibited acts with the intent to destroy the group, as such, was sufficient.
The report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024.
Amnesty International interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analysed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery.
It also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies.
On multiple occasions, the organisation shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.
Unprecedented scale and magnitude The organisation said Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 had brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse.
Its brutal military offensive had killed more than [44,000] Palestinians, including more than 13,300 children, and wounded or injured more than 97,000 others by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families.
Israel had caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites, Amnesty International said.
It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.
New Zealand’s Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has congratulated the Nelson City Council on its vote today to boycott companies which trade with illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories.
The city council (pop. 58,000) — New Zealand’s 15th-largest city — became the latest local body to change its procurement policy to exclude companies identified by the UN Human Rights Council as being complicit in the building and maintenance of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
“It is [Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon who should be ending all New Zealand dealings with companies involved in the illegal Israeli settlements.
“Instead, our government is cowardly complicit with Israeli war crimes.”
It is a war crime to move citizens onto land illegally occupied as Israel is doing.
Nelson City Council joins Environment Canterbury and the Christchurch City Council — New Zealand’s second largest city — which both adopted this policy earlier this year. Other local bodies are believed to be following.
“We also congratulate local Palestine solidarity activists in Nelson who have organised and battled so well for this historic win today. They are the heroes behind this decision,”minto said.
Minto said following the move by Nelson city representatives, “we are renewing our call for the government to act”.
He again called for the government to:
Ban all imports from the illegal Israeli settlements;
Direct the Superfund, Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and Kiwisaver providers to end their investments in all Israeli companies and other companies supporting the illegal Israeli settlements; and
Direct New Zealand government agencies to end procurement of goods or services from all Israeli companies and other companies supporting the illegal Israeli settlements.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Northern Marianas Governor Arnold Palacios and Senator Celina Babauta have travelled to Guam to attend a luncheon with Taiwan President Lai Ching-te.
Taiwan is officially known as the Republic of China (Taiwan). China claims Taiwan as its own territory, with no right to state-to-state ties, a position Taiwan strongly disputes.
Palacios welcomed the opportunity to meet Lai and said this could pave the way for improved relations with the East Asian country.
“This meeting is an opportunity for the CNMI to foster relations with allies in the region.”
When asked if meeting the President would upset the People’s Republic of China, which considers Taiwan a rogue state and part of its territory, Palacios said: “As far as being in the crosshairs of China, we already are in many ways.”
Worldwide, a dozen countries maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taipei.
In January, Nauru cut ties with Taiwan and shifted its diplomatic allegiance to Beijing.
Reconnecting bonds
Babauta, meanwhile, said she was deeply humbled and honoured to be invited to have lunch with Lai and Chia-Ching Hsu, Lai’s Minister of the Overseas Community Affairs Council.
“I am looking forward to connecting and discussing opportunities to strengthen the bond between our two regions and explore how we can create new avenues for our mutual benefit and prosperity, particularly by leveraging our Jones Act waiver,” she said.
“We must turn our economy around. This is an opportunity I could not pass up on.”
Babauta said she asked Lai if she could also make a stopover to the CNMI, but his busy schedule precluded that.
“I am assured that he will plan a visit to the CNMI in the near future.”
The luncheon, which is part of Taiwan’s “Smart and Sustainable Development for a Prosperous Austronesian Region” program, will be held at the Grand Ballroom, Hyatt Regency Guam at noon Thursday and is expected to also have Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero and other island leaders.
Lai has previously visited Hawai’i as part of his US tour, one that has elicited the ire of the government of the People’s Republic of China.
Summit ends dramatically
Earlier this year, the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ summit ended dramatically when China demanded the conference communiqué be changed to eliminate a reference to Taiwan.
The document had made a reference to the Forum reaffirming its relations to Taiwan, which has been a development partner since 1992.
But the Chinese Ambassador to the Pacific Qian Bo was furious and the document was rewritten.
Reports say China’s Foreign Ministry has “strongly condemned” US support for Lai’s visit to the US, and had lodged a complaint with the United States.
It earlier also denounced a newly announced US weapons sale to Taiwan.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
One of the major political developments in the United States that has got little attention in the wake of the Democrats’ astounding loss in the November 5 elections is the success of Arab American political organising.
A new generation of political activists has emerged that has earned representation in unprecedented numbers and impact for the 3.5-million-strong Arab-American community in elected and appointed political offices.
It also put Arab Americans on the electoral map for the first time by launching the Uncommitted movement during the Democratic primaries and making a foreign policy issue — Israel’s genocide in Gaza — a national moral issue.
The Democratic Party underestimated the power of this new generation and the intensity of citizen anger, which cost it dearly in the election.
What happened in the Arab American community is a vintage all-American tale. They, like other communities, started their pursuit of political impact as a low-profile immigrant group who became dynamic citizens after political developments threatened their wellbeing and motivated them to take action.
Arab American mobilisation traces its beginnings to small-scale participation in Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns for the Democratic Party. Jackson was the first serious presidential candidate to include Arab Americans as Democratic Party convention delegates, part of his Rainbow Coalition of:
“the white, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled [who] make up the American quilt”.
His campaign gave momentum to voter registration drives within the Arab American community, which continued in the following three decades.
Impact on outcomes
By 2020, nearly 90 percent of Arab Americans were registered to vote. By 2024, the Arab American voter block — in its expansive coalition with other groups — had grown large enough to impact on outcomes in critical swing states, especially Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent backlash motivated Arab Americans even more to engage in meaningful politics. Many members of the community refused to live in fear, trying to avoid the intimidation and smears that had long kept their parents and grandparents subdued and quiescent politically.
As Omar Kurdi, founder of Arab Americans of Cleveland, told me, “We were no longer silent because we saw the dangers to us of being quiet and politically inactive. We refused to live in fear of politics.
“Since then, we have been proud, confident, and active in public. We no longer accept crumbs, but want our share of the pie, and we understand now how we can work for that.”
As a result, over the past two decades, Arab Americans have entered the public sphere and politics at all levels: from local, city, and county positions to state and federal ones.
Elected officials say they succeeded because their constituents knew and trusted them. Candidates who won state and national congressional seats — like Rashida Tlaib in Michigan — inspired hundreds of younger Arab Americans to enter the political fray.
Successful experiences in city politics educated newcomers on how they could impact decision-making, improve their own lives, and serve the entire community. They mastered locally the basics of politics, one Ohio activist told me, “like lobbying, bringing pressure, protesting, educating the public, achieving consensus, and creating coalitions based on shared values, problems, and goals”.
Coalesced into Uncommitted movement
All of this momentum, built up over the years, coalesced into the Uncommitted movement in 2024. As the Biden administration unconditionally supported Israel to carry out genocidal violence in Palestine and Lebanon, Arab-American activists moved to use their newfound leverage as voters in electoral politics.
They joined like-minded social justice activists from other groups that mainstream political parties had long taken for granted — including Muslim Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, youth, progressive Jews, churches, and unions — and sent a strong message during the primaries that they would not support Biden’s re-election bid unless he changed his position on Gaza.
The campaign hoped that tens of thousands of voters in the primaries would send the Democrats a big message by voting “uncommitted”, but in fact, hundreds of thousands of Democrats did so across half a dozen critical states.
These numbers were enough to send 30 Uncommitted delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August, where they could lobby their colleagues to shape the party’s national platform.
One activist involved in the process told me they convinced 320 of the other 5,000 delegates to support their demand for a party commitment to a Gaza ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel — not enough to change the party position, but enough to prove that working from inside the political system over time could move things in a better direction.
Intergenerational support and motivation were big factors in the success of the Uncommitted movement. Arab American Institute Executive Director Maya Berry, who has been involved in such activities for three decades, told me that Arab Americans were always in political positions, but in small numbers, so they had little impact.
However, they learned how the system works and provided valuable insights when the time came this year to act. She mentioned Abbas Alawiyeh as an example, who co-chairs the Uncommitted National Movement and worked as a congressional staffer for many years.
Defeat hotly debated
The Uncommitted movement’s precise contribution to the Democratic Party’s defeat is hotly debated right now. One activist told me the movement “placed Arab Americans at the centre of Democratic Party politics, led the progressives, helped Harris lose in swing states, and nationally brought attention to Gaza, divestment, and moral issues in ways we had never been able to do previously.”
All this occurs in uncharted territory, with no clarity if Arab Americans can influence both the Democratic and Republican parties who might now compete for their vote.
One Arab-American activist in his 30s added, “We are liberated from the Democrats who took us for granted, and we Arab Americans are now a swing vote officially.”
Other activists I spoke to thought the election experience could set the stage for a larger movement to counter the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, though that would require conquering the next hurdle of establishing Political Action Committees (PACs) and raising substantial funds.
That is a future possibility.
For now, it is important to recognise that a national-level Arab-American political effort has been born from the fires and devastation of the US-Israeli genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. Whether it can improve the wellbeing of Arab Americans and all Americans will be revealed in the years ahead.
Dr Rami G Khouri is a distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut and a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington. He is a journalist and book author with 50 years of experience covering the Middle East. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
The NZ prime minister’s comments followed the ICC announcing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 13-month war on the besieged Gaza Strip that has killed more than 44,000 people — mostly women and children.
Netanyahu and Gallant are now fugitives from global justice after the ICC issued the arrest warrants against them.
Although Israel — and the US — does not recognise the authority of the ICC, the highest international criminal court, and Netanyahu and Gallant will not turn themselves in, the pair’s world has got a lot smaller.
The Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, includes 124 state parties across six continents.
“The law operates on the basis of a presumption that people will obey it. That’s how all laws are created,” Kuttab told Al Jazeera.
“You expect everybody to respect the law. Those who don’t respect the law are themselves violating the law.”
He added that there were early signs that countries would not ignore the court’s decision.
Many of Israel’s allies — including several European Union countries — have committed to enforcing the arrest warrants.
The ICC was set up in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression when member states are unwilling or unable to do so themselves. It is based in The Hague in the Netherlands.
The case at the ICC is separate from another legal battle Israel is waging at the top UN court, the International Court of Justice, in which South Africa accuses Israel of genocide, an allegation Israeli leaders deny.
A total of 124 countries are state parties to the Rome Statute, which founded the International Criminal Court. They include 29 nations from the Americas: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Map: CC AJ Lab
An exiled West Papuan leader has called for unity among his people in the face of a renewed “colonial grip” of Indonesia’s new president.
President Prabowo Subianto, who took office last month, “is a deep concern for all West Papuans”, said Benny Wenda of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).
Speaking at the Oxford Green Fair yesterday — Morning Star flag-raising day — ULMWP’s interim president said Prabowo had already “sent thousands of additional troops to West Papua” and restarted the illegal settlement programme that had marginalised Papuans and made them a minority in their own land.
“He is continuing to destroy our land to create the biggest deforestation project in the history of the world. This network of sugarcane and rice plantations is as big as Wales.
“But we cannot panic. The threat from [President] Prabowo shows that unity and direction is more important than ever.
Indonesia doesn’t fear a divided movement. They do fear the ULMWP, because they know we are the most serious and direct challenge to their colonial grip.”
Here is the text of the speech that Wenda gave while opening the Oxford Green Fair at Oxford Town Hall:
Wenda’s speech
December 1st is the day the West Papuan nation was born.
On this day 63 years ago, the New Guinea Council raised the Morning Star across West Papua for the first time.
We sang our national anthem and announced our Parliament, in a ceremony recognised by Australia, the UK, France, and the Netherlands, our former coloniser. But our new state was quickly stolen from us by Indonesian colonialism.
ULMWP’s Benny Wenda speaking on West Papua while opening the Oxford Green Fair on flag-raising day in the United Kingdom. Image: ULMWP
This day is important to all West Papuans. While we remember all those we have lost in the struggle, we also celebrate our continued resistance to Indonesian colonialism.
On this day in 2020, we announced the formation of the Provisional Government of West Papua. Since then, we have built up our strength on the ground. We now have a constitution, a cabinet, a Green State Vision, and seven executives representing the seven customary regions of West Papua.
Most importantly, we have a people’s mandate. The 2023 ULMWP Congress was first ever democratic election in the history. Over 5000 West Papuans gathered in Jayapura to choose their leaders and take ownership of their movement. This was a huge sacrifice for those on the ground. But it was necessary to show that we are implementing democracy before we have achieved independence.
The outcome of this historic event was the clarification and confirmation of our roadmap by the people. Our three agendas have been endorsed by Congress: full membership of the MSG [Melanesian Spearhead Group], a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, and a resolution at the UN General Assembly. Through our Congress, we place the West Papuan struggle directly in the hands of the people. Whenever our moment comes, the ULMWP will be ready to seize it.
Differing views
I want to remind the world that internal division is an inevitable part of any revolution. No national struggle has avoided it. In any democratic country or movement, there will be differing views and approaches.
But the ULMWP and our constitution is the only way to achieve our goal of liberation. We are demonstrating to Indonesia that we are not separatists, bending this way and that way: we are a government-in-waiting representing the unified will of our people. Through the provisional government we are reclaiming our sovereignty. And as a government, we are ready to engage with the world. We are ready to engage with Indonesia as full members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, and we believe we will achieve this crucial goal in 2024.
The importance of unity is also reflected in the ULMWP’s approach to West Papuan history. As enshrined in our constitution, the ULMWP recognises all previous declarations as legitimate and historic moments in our struggle. This does not just include 1961, but also the OPM Independence Declaration 1971, the 14-star declaration of West Melanesia in 1988, the Papuan People’s Congress in 2000, and the Third West Papuan Congress in 2011.
All these announcements represent an absolute rejection of Indonesian colonialism. The spirit of Merdeka is in all of them.
The new Indonesian President, Prabowo Subianto, is a deep concern for all West Papuans. He has already sent thousands of additional troops to West Papua and restarted the illegal settlement programme that has marginalised us and made us a minority in our own land. He is continuing to destroy our land to create the biggest deforestation project in the history of the world. This network of sugarcane and rice plantations is as big as Wales.
But we cannot panic. The threat from Prabowo shows that unity and direction is more important than ever. Indonesia doesn’t fear a divided movement. They do fear the ULMWP, because they know we are the most serious and direct challenge to their colonial grip.
I therefore call on all West Papuans, whether in the cities, the bush, the refugee camps or in exile, to unite behind the ULMWP Provisional Government. We work towards this agenda at every opportunity. We continue to pressure on United Nations and the international community to review the fraudulent ‘Act of No Choice’, and to uphold my people’s legal and moral right to choose our own destiny.
I also call on all our solidarity groups to respect our Congress and our people’s mandate. The democratic right of the people of West Papua needs to be acknowledged.
What does amnesty mean?
Prabowo has also mentioned an amnesty for West Papuan political prisoners. What does this amnesty mean? Does amnesty mean I can return to West Papua and lead the struggle from inside? All West Papuans support independence; all West Papuans want to raise the Morning Star; all West Papuans want to be free from colonial rule.
But pro-independence actions of any kind are illegal in West Papua. If we raise our flag or talk about self-determination, we are beaten, arrested or jailed. The whole world saw what happened to Defianus Kogoya in April. He was tortured, stabbed, and kicked in a barrel full of bloody water. If the offer of amnesty is real, it must involve releasing all West Papuan political prisoners. It must involve allowing us to peacefully struggle for our freedom without the threat of imprisonment.
Despite Prabowo’s election, this has been a year of progress for our struggle. The Pacific Islands Forum reaffirmed their call for a UN Human Rights Visit to West Papua. This is not just our demand – more than 100 nations have now insisted on this important visit. We have built vital new links across the world, including through our ULMWP delegation at the UN General Assembly.
Through the creation of the West Papua People’s Liberation Front (GR-PWP), our struggle on the ground has reached new heights. Thank you and congratulations to the GR-PWP Administration for your work.
Thank you also to the KNPB and the Alliance of Papuan Students, you are vital elements in our fight for self-determination and are acknowledged in our Congress resolutions. You carry the spirit of Merdeka with you.
I invite all solidarity organisations, including Indonesian solidarity, around the world to preserve our unity by respecting our constitution and Congress. To Indonesian settlers living in our ancestral land, please respect our struggle for self-determination. I also ask that all our military wings unite under the constitution and respect the democratic Congress resolutions.
I invite all West Papuans – living in the bush, in exile, in refugee camps, in the cities or villages – to unite behind your constitution. We are stronger together.
Thank you to Vanuatu
A special thank you to Vanuatu government and people, who are our most consistent and strongest supporters. Thank you to Fiji, Kanaky, PNG, Solomon Islands, and to Pacific Islands Forum and MSG for reaffirming your support for a UN visit. Thank you to the International Lawyers for West Papua and the International Parliamentarians for West Papua.
I hope you will continue to support the West Papuan struggle for self-determination. This is a moral obligation for all Pacific people. Thank you to all religious leaders, and particularly the Pacific Council of Churches and the West Papua Council of Churches, for your consistent support and prayers.
Thank you to all the solidarity groups in the Pacific who are tirelessly supporting the campaign, and in Europe, Australia, Africa, and the Caribbean.
I also give thanks to the West Papua Legislative Council, Buchtar Tabuni and Bazoka Logo, to the Judicative Council and to Prime Minister Edison Waromi. Your work to build our capacity on the ground is incredible and essential to all our achievements. You have pushed forwards all our recent milestones, our Congress, our constitution, government, cabinet, and vision.
Together, we are proving to the world and to Indonesia that we are ready to govern our own affairs.
To the people of West Papua, stay strong and determined. Independence is coming. One day soon we will walk our mountains and rivers without fear of Indonesian soldiers. The Morning Star will fly freely alongside other independent countries of the Pacific.
Until then, stay focused and have courage. The struggle is long but we will win. Your ancestors are with you.
Despite it being illegal in Australia to recruit soldiers for foreign armies, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) recruiters are hard at work enticing young Australians to join Israel’s army. Michael West Media investigates.
INVESTIGATION:By Yaakov Aharon
The Israeli war machine is in hyperdrive, and it needs new bodies to throw into the fire. In July, The Department of Home Affairs stated that there were only four Australians who had booked flights to Israel and whom it suspected of intending to join the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
The Australian Border Force intervened with three of the four but clarified that they did not “necessarily prevent them from leaving”.
MWM understands a batch of Australian recruits is due to arrive in Israel in January, and this is not the first batch of recruits to receive assistance as IDF soldiers through this Australian programme.
Many countries encourage certain categories of immigrants and discourage others. However, Israel doesn’t just want Palestinians out and Jews in — they want Jews of fighting age, who will be conscripted shortly after arrival.
The IDF’s “Lone Soldiers” are soldiers who do not have parents living in Israel. Usually, this means 18-year-old immigrants with basic Hebrew who may never have spent longer than a school camp away from home.
There are a range of Israeli government programmes, charities, and community centres that support the Lone Soldiers’ integration into society prior to basic training.
The most robust of these programs is Garin Tzabar, where there are only 90 days between hugging mum and dad goodbye at Sydney Airport and the drill sergeant belting orders in a foreign language.
The Garin Tzabar website. Image: MWM
Garin Tzabar
In 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked Minister for Aliyah [Immigration] and Integration, Tzipi Livni, to significantly increase the number of people in the Garin Tzabar programme.
The IDF website states that Garin Tzabar “is a unique project, a collaborative venture of the Meitav Unit in the IDF, the Scout movement, the security-social wing of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, which began in 1991”. (Translated from Hebrew via Google Translate.)
The Meitav Unit is divided into many different branches, most of which are responsible for overseeing new recruits.
Powerful and unique journalism by @yaakov_aharon on a story that receives shamefully little coverage in Australia; the recruitment of Australians to serve in the Israeli military: https://t.co/OdNVzzMEbx
However, the pride of the Meitav Unit is the branch dedicated to recruiting all the unique population groups that are not subject to the draft (eg. Ultra-Orthodox Jews). This branch is then divided into three further Departments.
In a 2020 interview, the Head of Meitav’s Tzabar Department, Lieutenant Noam Delgo, referred to herself as someone who “recruits olim chadishim (new immigrants).” She stated:
“Our main job in the army is to help Garin Tzabar members to recruit . . . The best thing about Garin Tzabar is the mashakyot (commanders). Every time you wake up in the morning you have two amazing soldiers — really intelligent — with pretty high skills, just managing your whole life, teaching you Hebrew, helping you with all the bureaucratic systems in Israel, getting profiles, seeing doctors and getting those documents, and finishing the whole process.”
The contact point for Australian recruits is Shoval Magal, the executive director of Garin Tzabar Australia. The registered address is a building shared by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the Zionist Council of NSW, the community’s peak bodies in the state.
“Until three months ago, Tali [REDACTED], from Sydney, Australia, and Moises [REDACTED], from Mexico City, were ordinary teenagers. But on December 25, they arrived at their new family here in Israel — the “Garin Tzabar” family, and in a moment, they will become soldiers. In a special project, we accompanied them from the day of admission (to the program) until just before the recruitment.“ (Translated from Hebrew via Google Translate).
Michael Manhaim was the executive director of Garin Tzabar Australia from 2018 to 2023. He wrote an article, “Becoming a Lone Soldier”,’ for the 2021 annual newsletter of Betar Australia, a Zionist youth group for children. In the article, Manhaim writes:
“The programme starts with the unique preparation process in Australia.
. . . It only takes one step; you just need to choose which foot will lead the way. We will be there for the rest.”
A criminal activity MWM is not alleging that any of the parties mentioned in this article have broken the law. It is not a crime if a person chooses to join a foreign army.
A person commits an offence if the person recruits, in Australia, another person to serve in any capacity in or with an armed force in a foreign country.
It is a further offence to facilitate or promote recruitment for a foreign army and to publish recruitment materials. This includes advertising information relating to how a person may serve in a foreign army.
The maximum penalty for each offence is 10 years.
Rawan Arraf, executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, said:
“Unless there has been a specific declaration stating it is not an offence to recruit for the Israel Defence Force, recruitment to a foreign armed force is a criminal offence under Australian law, and the Australian Federal Police should be investigating anyone allegedly involved in recruitment for a foreign armed force.”
Army needing ‘new flesh’ If the IDF are to keep the war on Gaza going, they need to fill old suits of body armour with new grunts.
Reports indicate the death toll within IDF’s ranks is unprecedented — a suicide epidemic is claiming further lives on the home front, and reservists are refusing in droves to return to active duty.
In October, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid accused Bibi Netanyahu of obscuring the facts of Israel’s casualty rate. Any national security story published in Israel must first be approved by the intelligence unit at the Military Censor.
“11,000 soldiers were injured and 890 others killed,” Lapid said, without warning and live on air. There are limits to how much we accept the alternative facts”.
In November 2023, Shoval Magal shared a photo in which she is posing alongside six young Australians, saying, “The participants are eager to have Aliya (immigrate) to Israel, start the programme and join the army”.
These six recruits are the attendees of just one of several seminars that Magal has organised in Melbourne for the summer 2023 cycle, having also organised separate events across cities in Australia.
Magal’s June 2024 newsletter said she was “in the advanced stages of the preparation phase in Australia for the August 2024 Garin”. Most recently, in October 2024, she was “getting ready for Garin Tzabar’s 2024 December cycle.”
Magal’s newsletter for Israeli Scouts in Australia ‘Aliyah Events – November 2024’. Image: MWM
There are five “Aliyah (Immigration) Events” in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The sponsoring organisations are Garin Tzabar, the Israeli Ministry for Aliyah (Immigration) and Integration, and a who’s who of the Jewish-Australian community.
The star speaker at each event is Alon Katz, an Australian who joined Garin Tzabar in 2018 and is today a reserve IDF soldier. The second speaker, Colonel Golan Vach, was the subject of two Electronic Intifadainvestigations alleging that he had invented the 40 burned babies lie on October 7 to create a motive for Israel’s onslaught in Gaza.
If any Australian signed the papers to become an IDF recruit at these events, is someone liable for the offence of recruiting them to a foreign army?
MWM reached out for comment to Garin Tzabar Australia and the Zionist Federation of Australia to clarify whether the IDF is recruiting in Australia but did not receive a reply.
Yaakov Aharon is a Jewish-Australian journalist living in Wollongong. He enjoys long walks on Wollongong Beach, unimpeded by Port Kembla smoke fumes and AUKUS submarines. First published by Michael West Media and republished with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Twenty five Pacific civil society organisations and solidarity movements have called on Pacific leaders of their “longstanding responsibility” to West Papua, and to urgently address the “ongoing gross human rights abuses” by Indonesia.
The organisations — including the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), Fiji Council of Social Services (FCOSS). Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG), Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) and Vanuatu Human Rights Coalition — issued a statement marking 1 December 2024.
This date commemorates 63 years since the Morning Star flag was first
raised in West Papua to signify the territory’s sovereignty.
The organisations condemned the “false narrative Indonesia has peddled of itself as a morally upright, peace-loving, and benevolent friend of the Melanesian people and of the Pacific”.
Jakarta had “infiltrated our governments and institutional perceptions”.
The statement also said:
Yet Indonesia’s annexation of the territory, military occupation, and violent oppression, gross human rights violations on West Papuans continue to be ignored internationally and unfortunately by most Pacific leaders.
The deepening relations between Pacific states and Jakarta reflect how far the false narrative Indonesia has peddled of itself as a morally upright, peace-loving, and benevolent friend of the Melanesian people and of the Pacific, has infiltrated our governments and institutional perceptions.
The corresponding dilution of our leaders’ voice, individually and collectively, is indicative of political and economic complicity, staining the Pacific’s anti-colonial legacy, and is an attack on the core values of our regional solidarity.
The Pacific has a legacy of holding colonial powers in our region to account. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders communiques in 2015, 2017, and 2019 are reflective of this, deploring the violence and human rights violations in West Papua, calling on Indonesia to allow independent human rights assessment in the territory, and to address the root causes of conflict through peaceful means.
In 2023, PIF Leaders appointed Fiji and Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Ministers, [Sitiveni] Rabuka and [James] Marape respectively to facilitate such constructive engagement with Indonesia.
As PIF envoys, both Prime Ministers visited Indonesia in 2023 on separate occasions, yet they have failed to address these concerns. Is this to be interpreted as regional political expediency or economic self-interest?
Today, torture, discrimination, extrajudicial killings, unlawful arrests, and detention of West Papuans continue to be rife. Approximately 70,000 Papuans remain displaced due to military operations.
Between January and September this year, human rights violations resulted in a total of over 1300 victims across various categories. The most significant violations were arbitrary detention, with 331 victims in 20 cases, and freedom of assembly, which affected at least 388 victims in 21 cases. Other violations included ill-treatment (98 victims), torture (23 victims), and killings (15 victims), along with freedom of expression violations impacting 31 victims.
Additionally, cultural rights violations affected dozens of individuals, while intimidation cases resulted in 15 victims. Disappearances accounted for 2 victims, and right to health violations impacted dozens.
This surge in human rights abuses highlights a concerning trend, with arbitrary detention and freedom of assembly violations standing out as the most widespread and devastating.
The commemoration of the Morning Star flag-raising this 1st of December is a solemn reminder of the region’s unfinished duty of care to the West Papuan people and their struggle for human rights, including the right to self-determination.
Clearly, Pacific leaders, including the Special Envoys, must fulfill their responsibility to a region of genuine peace and solidarity, and thereby rectify their unconscionable response thus far.
They must do justice to the 63 years of resilient resistance by the West Papuan people under violent, even deadly repression.
We call on leaders, especially the Prime Ministers of Fiji and PNG, not to succumb to Indonesia’s chequebook diplomacy and other soft-power overtures now evident in education, the arts, culture, food and agriculture, security, and even health sectors.
We remind our Pacific leaders of their responsibility to 63 years of injustice by Indonesia, and the resilience of the West Papuan people against this oppression to this day.
In solidarity with the people of West Papua, we demand that our leaders:
Honour the resolutions of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and PIF, which call for a peaceful resolution to the West Papua conflict and the recognition of the rights of West Papuans;
Take immediate and concrete action to review, and if necessary, sanction Indonesia’s status as a dialogue partner in the PIF, associate member of the MSG, and as a party to other privileged bilateral and multilateral arrangements in our Pacific region on the basis of its human rights record in West Papua;
Stand firm against Indonesia’s colonial intrusion into the Pacific through its cheque-book and other diplomatic overtures, ensuring that the sovereignty and rights of the people of West Papua are not sacrificed for political or economic gain; and
PIF must take immediate action to establish a Regional Human Rights Commission or task force, support independent investigations into human rights violations in West Papua, and ensure accountability for all abuses.
On Papuan Independence Day, the focus is on discussing protests against Indonesia’s transmigration programme, environmental destruction, militarisation, and the struggle for self-determination. Te Aniwaniwa Paterson reports.
By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson of Te Ao Māori News
On 1 December 1961, West Papua’s national flag, known as the Morning Star, was raised for the first time as a declaration of West Papua’s independence from the Netherlands.
Region-wide protests Protests have been building in West Papua since the new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced the revival of the Transmigration Programme to West Papua.
This was declared a day after he came to power on October 21 and confirmed fears from West Papuans about Prabowo’s rise to power.
This is because Prabowo is a former general known for a trail of allegations of war crimes and human rights abuses in West Papua and East Timor to his name.
Transmigration’s role The transmigration programme began before Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch colonial government, intended to reduce “overcrowding” in Java and to provide a workforce for plantations in Sumatra.
After independence ended and under Indonesian rule, the programme expanded and in 1969 transmigration to West Papua was started.
This was also the year of the controversial “Act of Free Choice” where a small group of Papuans were coerced by Indonesia into a unanimous vote against their independence.
Indonesia has also said transmigration helps with cultural exchange to unite the West Papuans so they are one nation — “Indonesian”.
West Papuan human rights activist Rosa Moiwend said in the 1980s that Indonesians used the language of “humanising West Papuans” through erasing their indigenous identity.
“It’s a racist kind of thing because they think West Papuans were not fully human,” Moiwend said.
Pathway to environmental destruction Papuans believe this was to dilute the Indigenous Melanesian population, and to secure the control of their natural resources, to conduct mining, oil and gas extraction and deforestation.
This is because in the past the transmigration programme was tied to agricultural settlements where, following the deforestation of conservation forests, Indonesian migrants worked on agricultural projects such as rice fields and palm oil plantations.
The ecology in West Papua was being damaged by mining, deforestation, and oil and gas extraction, he said. Mote said Indonesia wanted to “wipe them from the land and control their natural resources”.
He emphasised that defending West Papua meant defending the world, because New Guinea had the third-largest rainforest after the Amazon and Congo and was crucial for climate change mitigation as they sequester and store carbon.
Concerns grow over militarisation Moiwend said the other concern right now was the National Strategic Project which developed projects to focus on Indonesian self-sufficiency in food and energy.
Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) started in 2011, so isn’t a new project, but it has failed to deliver many times and was described by Global Atlas of Environmental Justice as a “textbook land grab”.
The mega-project includes the deforestation of a million hectares for rice fields and an additional 600,000 hectares for sugar cane plantations that will be used to make bioethanol.
The project is managed by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Agriculture, and the private company, Jhonlin Group, owned by Haji Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad. Ironically, given the project has been promoted to address climate issues, Arsyad is a coal magnate, a primary industry responsible for man-made climate change.
Conservation news website Mongabay reported that the villages in the project site had a population of 3000 people whereas a battalion consisted of usually 1000 soldiers, which meant there would be more soldiers than locals and the villagers said it felt as if their home would be turned into a “war zone”.
Merauke is where Moiwend’s village is and many of her cousins and family are protesting and, although there haven’t been any incidents yet, with increased militarisation she feared for the lives of her family as the Indonesian military had killed civilians in the past.
Destruction of spiritual ancestors The destruction of the environment was also the killing of their dema (spiritual ancestors), she said.
The dema represented and protected different components of nature, with a dema for fish, the sago palm, and the coconut tree.
Traditionally when planting taro, kumara or yam, they chanted and sang for the dema of those plants to ensure an abundant harvest.
Moiwend said they connected to their identity through calling on the name of the dema that was their totem.
She said her totem was the coconut and when she needed healing she would find a coconut tree, drink coconut water, and call to the dema for help.
There were places where the dema lived that humans were not meant to enter but many sacred forests had been deforested.
She said the Indonesians had destroyed their food sources, their connection to their spirituality as well destroying their humanity.
“Anim Ha means the great human being,” she said, “to become a great human being you have to have a certain quality of life, and one quality of life is the connection to your dema, your spiritual realm.”
Te Aniwaniwa Paterson is a digital producer for Te Ao Māori News. Republished with permission.
Raising the West Papuan Morning Star flag in Tāmaki Makaurau in 2023. Image: Te Ao Māori News
A Fiji solidarity group for the Palestinians has accused the Rabuka-led coalition government of “complicity” in Israel’s genocide and relentless war in Gaza that has killed more than 44,000 people — mostly women and children — over the past year.
The Fijians4Palestine have called on the Fiji government to “uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes”.
“We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians,” the movement said in a statement marking the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
The group said it was “ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians”.
It said that it expected the Fiji government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
The Fijians4Palestine group’s statement said:
It has been over one year since Israel began its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Over the past year, Israeli attacks have killed more than 44,000 Palestinians living in Gaza, equal to 1 out of every 55 people living there.
At least 16,756 children have been killed, the highest number of children recorded in a single year of conflict over the past two decades. More than 17,000 children have lost one or both parents.
At least 97,303 people are injured in Gaza — equal to one in 23 people.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, every day 10 children lose one or both legs, with operations and amputations conducted with little or no anaesthesia due to Israel’s ongoing siege.
In addition to the killed and injured, more than 10,000 people are feared buried under the rubble.
A Fiji protester with a “Your silence kills” placard rebuking the Fiji government for its stance on Israeli’s war on Gaza. Image: FWCC
With few tools to remove rubble and rescue those trapped beneath concrete, volunteers and civil defence workers rely on their bare hands.
We, the #Fijians4Palestine Solidarity Network join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.
Families torn apart
The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.
As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.
Today, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.
We unequivocally condemn the State of Israel for its actions that amount to war crimes, genocide, and apartheid against the Palestinian people. The deliberate targeting of civilians, the disproportionate use of force, and the destruction of essential infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, are in clear violation of international humanitarian law.
The intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group is evident. The continuous displacement of Palestinians, the destruction of their homes, and the systematic erasure of their history and culture are indicative of genocidal intent.
The State of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, characterised by racial segregation, discrimination, and domination, amount to apartheid as defined under international law.
Oppressive regime
The construction of settlements, the separation wall, and the system of checkpoints are manifestations of this oppressive regime. Palestinians are subjected to different laws, regulations, and treatments based on their ethnicity, clearly violating the principle of equality.
We call upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes. We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians.
We are ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians. We expect our government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
The silence of the Fiji government is complicity, and history will not forgive their inaction.
Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect. We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.
There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation.
The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.
Palestinian diaspora poets, singers and musicians gathered today with solidarity partners from Aotearoa New Zealand, African nations — including South Africa — in a vibrant celebration.
A community broadcaster in Aotearoa New Zealand has appealed for an end to the “sadistic cruelty” and the “out in the open genocide” by Israel in Gaza and the occupied Palestine territories.
K Gurunathan’s article “Sparks fly as political tinder of Māori anger builds” (The Press and The Post, November 25) argues that the injustices imposed by colonialism, including the “systematic confiscation of Māori land”, leading to poverty and cultural alienation are factors behind the anger expressed by the recent Hīkoi.
We need to learn Aotearoa New Zealand history.
One needs to learn history in order to understand the present.
An aid agency is warning that a lack of aid reaching Gaza is forcing Palestinians to search through destroyed buildings for basic necessities, putting them at risk of death or injury from unexploded bombs.
“Decades of occupation, blockade, and siege have been compounded by the catastrophic use of explosive weapons in one of the world’s most densely populated areas.
“The human cost is staggering with more than 44,000 people killed, 90 percent of the population displaced, and essential infrastructure obliterated.”
The report said that civilians were left grappling with “unimaginable risks” from widespread destruction to the deadly legacy of explosive ordinance (EO) contamination.
“Nearly everyone in Gaza has felt the devastating impact. Homes reduced to rubble, schools and hospitals targeted, and basic services like water and healthcare brought to a standstill,” the report said.
“Families face a grim reality, uprooted an average of six times, often returning to areas that have seen active fighting which are likely riddled with explosive ordnance.
War remnants ‘mistaken for toys’
“Children, tragically, are among the most vulnerable, mistaking deadly remnants of war for toys.”
This report has exposed the far-reaching consequences of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas in Gaza, “revealing a dire reality for a population trapped in danger”.
It underscores the devastating toll of impunity and disregard for international humanitarian law, which continues to result in immense suffering of civilians.
A new carbon credit trading deal reached in the final hours of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, has been criticised as a free pass for countries to slack off on efforts to reduce emissions at home.
The deal, sealed at the annual UN climate talks nearly a decade after it was first put forward, will allow countries to buy carbon credits from others to bring down their own balance sheet.
New Zealand had set its targets under the Paris Agreement on the assumption that it would be able to meet some of it through international cooperation — “so getting this up and running is really important”, Compass Climate head Christina Hood said.
“It’s a tool, it’s neither good nor bad, but there’s going to have to be a lot of scrutiny on whether the government is taking a high-ambition, high-integrity path, or just trying to do the minimum possible.”
The plan had taken nine years to go through because countries determined to do it right had been holding out for a process with the right checks and balances in place, she said.
As it stood, countries would have to report yearly to the UN on their trading activities, but it was up to society and other countries to scrutinise behaviour.
Cindy Baxter, a COP veteran who has been at all but seven of the conferences, said it was in-line with the way Aotearoa New Zealand wanted to go about reducing its emissions.
‘We’re not alone, but . . .’
“We’re not alone, Switzerland is similar and Japan as well, but certainly New Zealand is aiming to meet by far the largest proportion of our climate target, [out of] anywhere in the OECD, through carbon trading.”
The new scheme fell under Article six of the Paris Agreement, and a statement from COP29 said it was expected to reduce the cost of implementing countries’ national climate plans by up to US$250 billion (NZ$428.5b) per year.
COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev said “climate change is a transnational challenge and Article six will enable transnational solutions. Because the atmosphere does not care where emissions savings are made.”
But Baxter said there was not enough transparency in the scheme, and plenty of loopholes. One of the issues was ensuring projects resulting in carbon credits continued to reduce emissions after the credits were traded.
“For example, if you’re trying to save some mangroves in Fiji, you give Fiji a whole bunch of money and say this is going to offset this amount of carbon, but what if those mangroves are destroyed by a drought, or a great big cyclone?”
Countries should be cutting emissions at home, she said.
“And that is something New Zealand is not very good at doing, has a really bad reputation for doing. We’ve either planted trees, or now we’re trying to throw money at offset.”
Greenpeace spokesperson Amanda Larsson said she, too, was concerned it would take the onus off big polluters to make reductions at home, calling it a “get out of jail free card”.
‘Lot of junk credits’
“Ultimately, we really need to see significant cuts in climate pollution,” she said. “And there’s no such thing as high-integrity voluntary carbon markets, and a history of a lot of junk credits being sold.”
Countries with the means to make meaningful change at home should not be relying on other countries stepping up, she said
The Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Teanau Tuiono said there was strong potential in the proposal, but it was “imperative to ensure the framework is robust, and protects the rights of indigenous peoples at the same time as incentivising carbon sequestration”.
It should be a wake-up call to change New Zealand’s over-reliance on risky pine plantations and instead support permanent native afforestation, he said.
“This proposal emphasises how solving the climate crisis requires global collaboration on the most difficult issues. That requires building trust and confidence, by meeting commitments countries make to each other.
Conference overall ‘disappointing and frustrating’ Baxter said it had been “very difficult being forced to have another COP in a petro-state”, where the host state did not have much to gain by making big progress.
“What that means is that there is not that impetus to bang heads together and get really strong agreement,” she said.
But the blame could not be placed entirely on the leadership.
“The COP process is set up to work if governments bring their A-games, and they don’t,” she said.
“People should be bringing their really strong new climate targets [and] very few are doing that.”
Another deal was clinched in overtime of the two-week conference, promising US$300 billion (NZ$514 billion) each year by 2035 for developing nations to tackle climate emissions.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
At least six Israeli soldiers have taken their own lives in recent months, the major Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth has revealed, citing severe psychological distress caused by prolonged wars in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon as the primary cause, Anadolu Agency reports.
The investigation suggests that the actual number of suicides may be higher, as the Israeli military has yet to release official figures, despite a promise to disclose them by the end of the year.
The report highlights a broader mental health crisis within the Israeli army.
Regional tension has escalated due to Israel’s brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 44,000 people, mostly women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.
Thousands of soldiers have sought help from military mental health clinics or field psychologists, with approximately a third of those affected showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
According to the investigation, the number of soldiers suffering psychological trauma may exceed those with physical injuries from the war.
The daily cites experts as saying the full extent of this mental health crisis will become clear once military operations are completed and troops return to normal life.
About 1700 soldiers treated
In March, Lucian Tatsa-Laur, head of the Israeli military’s Mental Health Department, told another Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, that approximately 1700 soldiers had received psychological treatment.
Since October 7 last year, reports Anadolu, Israeli military is alleged to have wiped out families in Gaza, pulverised neighbourhoods, dug up mass graves, destroyed cemeteries, bombed shops and businesses, flattened hospitals and morgues, ran tanks and bulldozers on dead bodies, tortured jailed Palestinians with dogs and electricity, subjected detainees to mock executions, and even raped many Palestinians.
Exhibiting sadistic behaviour during the genocide, Israeli soldiers have taunted Palestinian prisoners by claiming they were playing football with their children’s heads in Gaza.
Israeli troops have live streamed hundreds of videos of soldiers looting Palestinian homes, destroying children’s beds, setting homes on fire and laughing, wearing undergarments of displaced Palestinians and stealing children’s toys.
In their mission to “erase” Palestine, Israeli troops have killed a record number of babies, medics, athletes, and journalists — unprecedented in any war in this century.
But, said the news agency, now it’s coming with a cost.
Australia bars former minister
Meanwhile, former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked has been banned from entering Australia over fears of “incitement”.
Shaked, a former MP for the far-right Yamina party, was scheduled to appear at a conference hosted by the pro-Israel Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
However, the Australian Department of Home Affairs told the former minister on Thursday that she had been denied a visa to travel to the country under the Migration Act.
The act allows the government to deny entry to individuals likely to “vilify Australians” or “incite discord” within the local community.
Speaking to Israeli media, Shaked claimed that her ban was due to her vocal opposition to a Palestinian state, reports Middle East Eye.
She has also previously called for the removal of “all two million” Palestinians from Gaza.
A national New Zealand solidarity movement for Palestine has welcomed the International Criminal Court’s move to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, saying it is a “wake up call” for the coalition government.
“The warrants mean for the first time Israeli leaders face accountability for war crimes which have been live-streamed on social media for the past 13 months” said national chair John Minto of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
“We are waiting for our government to announce it will arrest Netanyahu and Gallant immediately if they set foot in Aotearoa New Zealand.”
Many countries among the 124 members of the ICC have been quick to declare that they would honour the arrest obligations, among them Canada, France and Italy. Also the European Union’s foreign policy chief said all EU countries should abide by the ruling.
“These decisions are binding on all states party to the Rome Statute, which includes all EU member states,” said Joseph Borrell.
On the ICC’s arrest warrants for Israel’s PM Netanyahu and ex-minister Gallant, and Hamas leader Deif, the EU’s foreign policy chief Borrell said: “These decisions are binding on all states party to the Rome Statute, which includes all EU member states.” pic.twitter.com/dK5tyjyKtv
Both Israel and its key backer, United States, refuse to recognise the ICC jurisdiction.
PSNA’s Minto said in a statement today: “It’s a breath of fresh air from the stultifying refusal of New Zealand and other Western governments to act against the perpetrators of industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinian civilians.
“This ICC decision is a wake-up call for our government which can no longer stay silent.
“New Zealand has been a staunch ally of the US/Israel throughout the past 13 months when it should have been a staunch defender of international law.
“Unbelievably, our government still refuses to call for an immediate, permanent ceasefire and while it has condemned every act of Palestinian resistance, it has refused to condemn any of the egregious Israeli war crimes which are the subject of the arrest warrants.”
The ICC warrants are a turning point. The world is uniting behind the rule of international law. pic.twitter.com/dqky1SprqO
In response to the ICC decision, New Zealand should immediately end support for Israel to continue its war crimes such as:
Suspend all satellite launches by Rocket lab for BlackSky Technology, Capella Space, and HawkEye 360. These companies provide imaging data used by Israeli for its targeting of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon.
Suspend and independently investigate the export of crystal oscillators from Rakon Industries which end up in bombs used for war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon, and
Impose sanctions against Israel — they are also essential and the ICC decision can be the trigger.
“New Zealand needs to act as we did when the ICC issued arrest warrants against Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine” said Minto.
“New Zealand imposed immediate and wide-ranging sanctions against Russia and must follow through with Israel.”
Independent US Senator Bernie Sanders says he supports the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, saying “all launched indiscriminate attacks against civilians and caused unimaginable human suffering”.
“If the world does not uphold international law, we will descend into further barbarism,” he said in a post on X, alongside a longer statement.
His statement mirrored global reaction in favour of the ICC indictments in contrast to most US and Israeli politicians who condemned the global legal move to see accountability for the repeated and continuous Israeli atrocities in the besieged enclave Gaza.
Netanyahu, Gallant, and Deif have all launched indiscriminate attacks against civilians and caused unimaginable human suffering.
If the world does not uphold international law, we will descend into further barbarism.
The defendants are now internationally wanted suspects and ICC member states are under legal obligation to arrest them. Neither the US nor Israel recognise ICC jurisdiction.
The court said it had issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October until at least 20 May, 2024” and which related to the use of starvation and the deliberate targeting of medical facilities.
‘Important precedent’
Dr Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, called the ICC’s latest move a “very important precedent”.
“In my opinion, if the ICC had prosecuted Israeli leaders after Operation Cast Lead . . . maybe all of this could have been avoided, if prosecutions were initiated 15 years ago,” Boyle told Al Jazeera.
Boyle said the Biden administration is guilty of “aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and outright genocide against the Palestinians”.
He said this was a “far more serious genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza than was inflicted on the Bosnians,” referring to the timeframes of each genocide in comparison with the number of people killed.
Israel is now “extending this to Lebanon, and it does appear the [occupied] West Bank is next in its sights,” Boyle said.
“It’s a very serious situation.
Israel ‘never respected rule of law’
An international human rights lawyer, Michael Mansfield, described Israel is an “unjust state that has never respected the rule of law”.
Israel was trying to “deflect responsibility” and its objective had been to destroy Gaza and make it “uninhabitable”, he said.
Netanyahu would not end the war in Gaza, he said, until this objective was met.
“If he ends the war, he is in trouble. He’s in trouble if he leaves the country … and if he stays in Israel . . . he’s awaiting prosecution there,” Mansfield said.
The issuing of the ICC warrants “makes a difference to world opinion, because I don’t think that the regime in Israel have recognised the extent in which they are being isolated — morally isolated”, he said.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: In The Hague, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during Israel’s assault on Gaza.
In a statement, the ICC said the Israeli leaders had, “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity.”
The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, although Israel’s military claims it killed Deif in a July airstrike.
AMY GOODMAN: In related news, on Wednesday, the United States vetoed a Gaza ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council for the fourth time, and the US Senate rejected a resolution brought by Senator Bernie Sanders that sought to block the sale of US tank rounds, bomb kits and other lethal weapons to Israel. Nineteen senators supported blocking the arms.
For more on all of this, we’re joined by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. His latest piece is “Exclusive: White House Says Democrats Who Oppose Weapons to Israel Are Aiding Hamas.”
Ahmed, thank you so much for being with us. As you write your book on the Biden administration in Gaza called Crossing the Red Line, clearly the ICC has ruled that today by issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Can you talk about the significance of this move?
“A Great Day for Justice”: Palestinian Lawyer Raji Sourani on ICC Warrants for Netanyahu & Gallant https://t.co/TEb1VwShfn
AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Yeah, Amy. This is just an absolutely huge development, and it’s significant for a number of reasons. It’s significant because the ICC has come out and amplified and affirmed the allegations of crimes against humanity, of war crimes. This is one more international body.
These are . . . international charges with a great deal of respect. This is a court that most of the world is a member of. And they’re coming out and saying, “Look, we think there are reasonable grounds to believe that these major international red lines have been crossed by the Israelis.”
What’s really important to remember is that this isn’t just a decision about Israel. By extension, it fundamentally is a decision about the United States, which has been the ultimate enabler of Israel’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon, which are under consideration by the ICC.
And even in this ICC statement today, they point out that in the situations where Israel has addressed concerns over what it describes as starvation as a method of warfare — right? — depriving civilians, Palestinians, of food, water and medical equipment, Israel has really only done so in an extremely arbitrary and, what the ICC judges call, conditional way in response to the US. So, fundamentally, Amy, what we’re seeing is the ICC is saying yet again that Israel and the US, as its major enabler and backer, are in the dark and will continue to be in the dark for years to come.
This kind of adds to a broader picture in which there are now ICC warrants for the sitting Israeli prime minister and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who remains a significant politician in Israel. Simultaneously, there’s the genocide case at the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, which is ongoing and will be ongoing for years to come.
And there’s the Geneva Conventions conference underway next year regarding kind of similar issues — right? — violations of international law, laws of war and the Israeli grave abuses that are alleged. So, the US and Israel will be kind of on trial on the international stage for years to come.
‘Wanted for war crimes in Gaza.’ Video: Democracy Now!
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Akbar, would you say that this move is mostly a symbolic one? Because, as you pointed out, of course, most countries are members of the International Criminal Court, but in this instance, perhaps most importantly, neither Israel nor the US are.
AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Right, Nermeen. And that’s something that the ICC judges did get into today — right? — because Israel said, “Look, the International Criminal Court doesn’t have jurisdiction over us.” That said, the state of Palestine is a member of the court, and that’s why this becomes a relevant and interesting thing, because you’ve seen European nations recognise Palestine as a state. You’ve seen Palestine join the United Nations General Assembly over just last year.
So, yes, while the US and Israel continue to reject international scrutiny by the ICC, by the ICJ, of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, there’s a growing international push to kind of challenge that, right?
And I think you will see the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration assertively push back against the ICC. The Trump administration did actually target the ICC directly when President Trump was last in office, threatening to put sanctions on ICC officials. And we also know from reporting that the Israelis have spied on and threatened the ICC themselves, according to reporting by The Guardian. So, yes, there will be increased pressure.
But I think we’re really in a place that no one thought we would be even a few months ago, right? I think even the prospect of the ICC prosecutor successfully getting these warrants issued, it was initially thought that would be quite quick. It’s taken a long time. The fact that judges were able to issue those warrants suggests that even though it’s an uphill battle to get this international scrutiny, there’s a real determination and clear will.
And we’ve seen a lot of states turn around and say over 13 months, right? Since the October 7 attack by Hamas within Israel that did spark this current round of fighting, there have been calls to say, “We don’t want this to escalate,” right?
The US’s allies, Western countries have said, “We want to resolve this. We don’t want you on trial. Can the US and Israel please change course?” And what you’ve seen is a defiance from Tel Aviv and from Washington to say, “Actually, no, we’re continuing these wars.”
So, that does take it to a different forum to kind of change the policy.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Akbar, could you also — while we’re looking at the way in which international organisations, multilateral ones, are responding to this, what about the latest vote at the Security Council and the fact that the US blocked it for the fourth time, a ceasefire vote?
AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: It’s really striking at this point — right? — to see the Biden administration totally alone. And you see how this develops over the course of the war. Initially, the US was able to get Britain, even France, kind of abstaining, standing with them.
And now, 13 months in, where conduct hasn’t changed, and you still have daily strikes that are killing dozens, sometimes over a hundred civilians, you have a mounting death toll of mostly women and children, the US is totally alone, where it’s shielding Israel on the world stage diplomatically.
And this is really important to see in the context of the Biden administration as an outlier even among American presidents and administrations. When President Barack Obama was in office, after he was in the lame-duck period that Biden is in now, he actually did abstain at the UN Security Council and said, “You know what? Go ahead and pass a resolution that Israel doesn’t like,” because tacitly the US acknowledged there was a basis, there were credible grounds for that resolution, which in that instance was about Israeli settlement activity.
Here, what you’re seeing from the Biden administration, even in their dying days — right? — two months to go, there’s an obstinacy, a defiance, and a real commitment to shielding Israel, even if they are totally alone against now their closest allies — Britain, France and everyone else on the Security Council.
So, I think the context of that veto kind of presages whatever may come in the next two months in terms of the Biden administration allowing any UN scrutiny of the wars.
AMY GOODMAN: Akbar, I want to play Palestine’s envoy to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, speaking yesterday.
MAJED BAMYA: There is no right to mass killing of civilians. There is no right to starve an entire civilian population. There is no right to forcibly displace a people. And there is no right to annexation. This is what Israel is doing in Gaza. …
Maybe for some, we have the wrong nationality, the wrong faith, the wrong skin color. But we are humans! And we should be treated as such. Is there a UN Charter for Israel that is different from the charter we all have? Tell us. Is there an international law for them, an international law for us? Do they have the right to kill, and the only right we have is to die?
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution — for the fourth time — in Israel’s war on Gaza, while Hezbollah demands a complete ceasefire and “protection of Lebanon’s sovereignty” in any deal with Israel. Amid the death and devastation, Joe Hendren reflects on his time in Lebanon and examines what the crisis means for a small country with a population size similar to Aotearoa New Zealand.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Joe Hendren
Since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon I can’t help but think of a friend I met in Beirut.
He worked at the Regis Hotel, where I stayed in February 2015.
At one point, he offered to make me a Syrian dish popular in his hometown of Aleppo. I have long remembered his kindness; I only wish I remembered his name.
At the time, his home city was being destroyed. A flashpoint of the Syrian Civil War, the Battle of Aleppo lasted four long years. He didn’t mention this of course.
I was lucky to visit Lebanon when I did. So much has happened since then.
Economic crisis and a tragic port explosion Mass protests took over Lebanese streets in October 2019 in response to government plans to tax WhatsApp calls. The scope of the protests soon widened, as Lebanese people voiced their frustrations with ongoing economic turmoil and corruption.
A few months later, the covid-19 pandemic arrived, deepening the economic crisis and claiming 10,000 lives.
On 4 August 2020, the centre of Beirut was rocked by one of the largest non nuclear explosions in history when a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut detonated. The explosion killed 218 people and left an estimated 300,000 homeless. The government of Hassin Diab resigned but continued in a “caretaker” capacity.
Tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets demanding accountability and the downfall of Lebanon’s political ruling class. While some protesters threw stones and other projectiles, an Al Jazeera investigation found that security forces violated international standards on the use of force. The political elite were protected.
“The Lebanon financial and economic crisis is likely to rank in the top 10, possibly top three, most severe crises episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century. This is a conclusion of the Spring 2021 Lebanon Economic Monitor (LEM) in which the Lebanon crisis is contrasted with the most severe global crises episodes as observed by Reinhart and Rogoff (2014) over the 1857–2013 period.
“In fact, Lebanon’s GDP plummeted from close to US$ 55 billion in 2018 to an estimated US$ 33 billion in 2020, with US$ GDP/capita falling by around 40 percent. Such a brutal and rapid contraction is usually associated with conflicts or wars.”
The Lebanon Poverty and Equity Assessment, produced by the World Bank in 2024, found the share of individuals in Lebanon living under the poverty line more than tripled, rising from 12 percent to 44 percent. The depth and severity of poverty also increased over the decade between 2012 and 2022.
To make matters worse, the port explosion destroyed Lebanon’s strategic wheat reserves at a time when the war in Ukraine drove significant increases in global food prices. Annual food inflation in Lebanon skyrocketed from 7.67 percent in January 2019 to a whopping 483.15 percent for the year ending in January 2022. While food inflation has since declined, it remains high, sitting just below 20 percent for the year ending September 2024. The World Bank said:
“The sharp deterioration of the Lebanese pound, which lost 98 percent of its pre-crisis value by December 2023, propelled inflation to new heights. With imports constituting about 60 percent of the consumption basket (World Bank, 2022), the plunging currency led to triple-digit inflation which rose steeply from an annual average of 3 percent between 2011 and 2018, to 85 percent in 2019, 155 percent in 2020, and 221 percent in 2023 . . .
“Faced with falling foreign exchange reserves, the government withdrew subsidies on medication, fuel, and wheat further fuelling rising costs of healthcare and transport (Figure 1.2). Rapid inflation acted effectively as a highly regressive tax, striking hardest at the poor and those with fixed, lira-denominated incomes.”
The ongoing crisis of the Lebanese economy has amplified the power of Hezbollah, a paramilitary group formed in 1982 in response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon.
“Hezbollah is famous for entrenching its power in an elaborate social infrastructure of Islamic welfare. The social grip of those structures and services is increased by the ongoing crisis of the Lebanese economy. When the medical service fails, desperate families turn to the Hezbollah-run health service,” says Adam Tooze
As banks imposed capital controls, many Lebanese lost confidence in the financial system. The financial arm of Hezbollah, the al-Quad al-Hassan Association (AQAH), experienced a significant increase in clients, despite being subject to US Treasury sanctions since 2007.
The US accuses Hezbollah of using AQAH as a front to manage its financial activities. When a 28-year-old engineer, Hassan Shoumar, was locked out of his dollar accounts in late 2019, he redirected his money into his account at AQAH: “What I care about is that when I want my money, I can get it.”
While Hezbollah portrays itself as “the resistance”, as a member of the governing coalition in Lebanon, it also forms an influential part of the political elite. Adam Tooze gives an example of how the political elite is still looking after itself:
“[T]he Lebanese Parliament in a grotesque act of self-dealing in January 2024 passed a budget that promised to close the budget deficit of 12.8 of GDP by raising regressive value-added tax while decreasing the progressive taxes levied on capital gains, real estate and investments.
“For lack of reforms, the IMF [International Monetary Fund] is refusing to disburse any of the $3bn package that are allocated to Lebanon.”
While the protest movement called for a “technocratic” government in Lebanon, the experiences of Greece and other countries facing financial difficulties suggest such governments can pose their own risks, especially when they involve unelected “experts” in prominent positions.
One example is the political reaction to the counterproductive austerity programme imposed on Greece by the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This demonstrates how the demands of international investors can conflict with the needs of the local population.
Lebanon carries more than its fair share of refugees Lebanon currently hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world, despite its scarce resources. This began as an overflow from the Syrian conflict in 2011, with nearly 1.2 million ‘displaced’ Syrians in Lebanon registered with UNHCR by May 2015.
When I visited Lebanon in 2015, I tried to grasp the scale of the refugee issue. In terms of population, Lebanon is comparable to New Zealand, with both countries having just over 5 million people.
I imagined what New Zealand would be like if it attempted to host a million refugees in addition to its general population. Yet in terms of land area Lebanon is only 10,400 square kilometres — about the size of New Zealand’s Marlborough region at the top of the South Island.
Now, imagine accommodating a population of over 5 million in such a small space, with more than a fifth of them being refugees.
While it was encouraging to see New Zealand increase its refugee quota to 1500 places in July 2020, we could afford to do much more in the current situation. This includes creating additional visa pathways for those fleeing Gaza and Lebanon.
#BREAKING
United States VETOES Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and the release of all hostages
On top of all that – Israeli attacks and illegal booby traps Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire across Lebanon’s southern border.
Israel makes much of the threat of rocket attacks on Israel from Hezbollah. However, data from US based non-profit organisation Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) shows Israel carried out 81 percent of the 10,214 attacks between between the two parties from October 7, 2023, and September 20, 2024.
These attacks resulted in 752 deaths in Lebanon, including 50 children. In contrast, Hezbollah’s attacks, largely centred on military targets, killed at least 33 Israelis.
Hezbollah continues to offer an immediate ceasefire, so long as a ceasefire also applies to Gaza, but Israel has refused these terms.
While the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) disputed these figures as an “oversimplification”, the IDF do not appear to dispute the reported number of Lebanese casualties. Hezbollah continues to offer an immediate ceasefire, so long as a ceasefire also applies to Gaza, but Israel has refused these terms.
In a further escalation, thousands of handheld pagers and walkie-talkies used in both civilian and military contexts in Lebanon and Syria suddenly exploded on September 17 and 18.
Israel attempted to deny responsibility, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog claiming he “rejects out of hand any connection” to the attack. However, 12 defence and intelligence officials, briefed on the attack, anonymously confirmed to The New York Times that Israel was behind the operation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later boasted during a cabinet meeting that he had personally approved the pager attack. The New York Times described the aftermath:
“Powered by just a few ounces of an explosive compound concealed within the devices, the blasts sent grown men flying off motorcycles and slamming into walls, according to witnesses and video footage. People out shopping fell to the ground, writhing in agony, smoke snaking from their pockets.”
The exploding devices killed 42 people and injured more than 3500, with many victims losing one or both of their hands or eyes. At least four of the dead were children.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikatri called the explosions “a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards”.
While around eight Hezbollah fighters were among the dead, most of those killed worked in administration roles and did not take partin hostilities. Under international humanitarian law targeting non-combatants is illegal.
Additionally, the UN Protocol on Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices also prohibits the use of “booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Israel is a signatory to this UN Protocol.
Israel’s decision to turn ordinary consumer devices into illegal booby traps could backfire. While Israel frequently stresses the importance of its technology sector to its economy, who is going to buy technology associated with Israel now that the IDF have demonstrated its ability to indiscriminately weaponise consumer devices at any time?
International industry buyers will source elsewhere. Such a “silent boycott” could give greater momentum to the call from Palestinian civil society for boycotts, divestments and economic sanctions against Israel.
The booby trap pagers are also likely to affect the decisions of foreign airlines to service Israel on the grounds of safety. Since the war began in October 2023, the number of foreign airlines calling on Ben Gurion Airport in Israel has fallen significantly. Consequently, the cost of a round-trip ticket from the United States to Tel Aviv has risen sharply, from approximately $900 to $2500.
Israel targets civilian infrastructure in Lebanon Israel has also targeted civilian organisations linked to Hezbollah, such emergency services, hospitals and medical centres operated by the Islamic Health Society (IHS). Israel claims Hezbollah is “using the IHS as a cover for terrorist activities”. This apparently includes digging people out of buildings, as search and rescue teams have also been targeted and killed.
Israel accuses the microloan charity AQAH of funding “Hezbollah’s terror activities”, including purchasing weapons and making payments to Hezbollah fighters. On October 20, Israel attacked 30 branches of AQAH across Lebanon, drawing condemnation from both Amnesty International and the United Nations.
Ben Saul, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism maintains AQAH is not a lawful military target: “International humanitarian law does not permit attacks on the economic or financial infrastructure of an adversary, even if they indirectly sustain its military activities.”
Where the author ate his Za’atar man’ousheh – Pigeon’s Rock, Corniche, Beiruit. Image: Joe Hendren
On top of all that — an Israeli invasion In 1982, Israel attempted to use war to alter the political situation in Lebanon, with counterproductive results, including the creation of Hezbollah. In 2006, Hezbollah used the hilly terrain of southern Lebanon to beat Israel to a stalemate. Israel risks similar counterproductive outcomes again, at the cost of many more lives.
Yet on 1 October 2024, Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, alongside strikes on Beirut, Sidon and border villages. The IDF confirmed the action on Twitter/X, promising a “limited, localised and targeted” operation against “Hezbollah terrorist targets” in southern Lebanon. One US official noted that Israel had framed its 1982 invasion as a limited incursion, which eventually turned into an 18-year occupation.
Israeli strikes have since expanded all over the country. According to figures provided by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Heath on November 13, Israel is responsible for the deaths of at least 3365 people in Lebanon, including 216 children and 192 health workers. More than 14,000 people have been wounded, and more than one million have been displaced from their homes.
Since September 30, 47 Israeli troops have been killed in combat in Southern Lebanon. Around 45 civilians in northern Israel have died due to rocket fire from Lebanon.
So, on top of an economic crisis, runaway inflation, unaffordable food, increasing poverty, the port explosion and covid-19, the Lebanese people now face a war that shows little signs of stopping.
Analysts suggest there is little chance of a ceasefire while Israel retains its “maximalist” demands, which include a full surrender of Hezbollah and allowing Israel to continue to attack targets in southern Lebanon.
A senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Mohanad Hage Ali, believes Israel is feigning diplomacy to push the blame on Hezbollah. The best chance may come alongside a ceasefire in Gaza, but Israel shows little signs of negotiating meaningfully on that front either.
On September 26, the Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah BouHabib summarised the mood of the country in the wake of the pager attack:
“[N]obody expected the war to be taken in that direction. We Lebanese—we’ve had enough war. We’ve had fifteen years of war. . . .We’d like to live without war—happily, as a tourist country, a beautiful country, good food—and we are not able to do it. And so there is a lot of depression, especially with the latest escalation.”
In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Māori phrase “Kia kaha” means “stand strong”. If I could send a message from halfway across the world, it would be: “Kia kaha Lebanon. I look forward to the day I can visit you again, and munch on a yummy Za’atar man’ousheh while admiring the view from the beautiful Corniche Beirut.”
Joe Hendren holds a PhD in international business from the University of Auckland. He has more than 20 years of experience as a researcher, including work in the New Zealand Parliament, for trade unions and on various research projects. This is his first article for Asia Pacific Report. His blog can be found at http://joehendren.substack.com
Where I ate my Za’atar man’ousheh – Pigeon’s Rock, Corniche Beiruit
An alleged plot involving firearms and threatening the life of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens when held hostage in Papua this year is being investigated by the Australian Federal Police.
The case involves “advancing a political cause by the separation of West Papua from Indonesia . . . with the intention of coercing by intimidation the governments of New Zealand and Indonesia”.
Named in the AFP search warrant seen by MWM is research scholar Julian King, 63, who has studied and written extensively about West Papuan affairs.
He has told others his home in Coffs Harbour, Queensland, was raided violently earlier this month by police using a stun grenade and smashing a door.
During the search, the police seized phones, computers and documents about alleged contacts with the West Papua rebel group Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM (Free Papua Organisation) and a bid to seek weapons and ammunition.
However, no arrests are understood to have been made or charges laid.
King, a former geologist and now a PhD student at Wollongong University, has been studying Papuan reaction to the Indonesian takeover since 1963. He has written in a research paper titled “A soul divided: The UN’s misconduct over West Papua” that West Papuans:
‘live under a military dictatorship described by legal scholars and human rights advocates as systemic terror and alleged genocide.’
Also named in the warrant alongside King is Amatus Dounemee Douw, confirmed by MWM contacts to be Australian citizen Akouboo Amatus Douw, who chairs the West Papua Diplomatic and Foreign Affairs Council, an NGO that states it seeks to settle disputes peacefully.
Risk to Australia-Indonesia relations The allegations threaten to fragment relations between Indonesia and Australia.
It is widely believed that human rights activists and church organisations are helping Papuan dissidents despite Canberra’s regular insistence that it officially backs Jakarta.
Earlier this year, Deputy PM Richard Marles publicly stressed: “We, Australia, fully recognise Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty. We do not endorse any independence movement.”
When seized by armed OPM pro-independence fighters in February last year, Mehrtens was flying a light plane for an Indonesian transport company.
He was released unharmed in September after being held for 593 days by the West Papua National Liberation Army (Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat – TPNPB), the military wing of the OPM.
AFP is investigating alleged firearms plot which threatened the life of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens when held hostage in West Papua this year #auspolhttps://t.co/8ZXFIB1fre
Designated ‘terrorist’ group, journalists banned OPM is designated as a terrorist organisation in Indonesia but isn’t on the Australian list of proscribed groups. Jakarta bans foreign journalists from Papua, so little impartial information is reported.
After Mehrtens was freed, TPNPB spokesman Sebby Sambom alleged that a local politician had paid a bribe, a charge denied by the NZ government.
However, West Papua Action Aotearoa spokesperson Catherine Delahunty told Radio NZ the bribe was “an internal political situation that has nothing to do with our government’s negotiations.”
Sambom, who has spent time in Indonesian jails for taking part in demonstrations, now operates out of adjacent Papua New Guinea — a separate independent country.
Australia was largely absent from the talks to free Mehrtens that were handled by NZ diplomats and the Indonesian military. The AFP’s current involvement raises the worry that information garnered under the search warrants will show the Indonesian government where the Kiwi was hidden so that locations can be attacked from the air.
At one stage during his captivity, Mehrtens appealed to the Indonesian military not to bomb villages.
It is believed Mehrtens was held in Nduga, a district with the lowest development index in the Republic, a measure of how citizens can access education, health, and income. Yet Papua is the richest province in the archipelago — the Grasberg mine is the world’s biggest deposit of gold and copper.
OPM was founded in December 1963 as a spiritual movement rejecting development while blending traditional and Christian beliefs. It then started working with international human rights agencies for support.
Indigenous Papuans are mainly Christian, while almost 90 percent of Indonesians follow Islam.
Chief independence lobbyist Benny Wenda lives in exile in Oxford. In 2003 he was given political asylum by the UK government after fleeing from an Indonesian jail. He has addressed the UN and European and British Parliaments, but Jakarta has so far resisted international pressure to allow any form of self-determination.
Questions for new President Prabowo Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto is in the UK this week, where Papuans have been drumming up opposition to the official visit. In a statement, Wenda said:
‘Prabowo has also restarted the transmigration settlement programme that has made us a minority in our own land.’
“For West Papuans, the ghost of (second president) Suharto has returned — (his) New Order regime still exists, it has just changed its clothes.”
Pleas for recognition of Papuan’s concerns get minimal backing in Indonesia; fears of balkanisation and Western nations taking over a splintered country are well entrenched in the 17,000-island archipelago of 1300 ethnic groups where “unity” is considered the Republic’s foundation stone.
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. He has been an occasional contributor to Asia Pacific Report and this article was first published by Michael West Media.
We go now to Deir al-Balah in Gaza, where we’re joined by Arwa Damon, founder of INARA, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children in Gaza. She previously spent 18 years at CNN, including time as a senior international correspondent.
Thanks so much for being with us, Arwa. This is your fourth trip back to Gaza since October 7, 2023. Tell us what you see there:
ARWA DAMON: You know, Amy, you think you can’t get worse, and then it does. You think people, quite simply, could never cope with these deteriorating conditions, and yet somehow they do. It’s a situation that they have been forced into.
Arguably, the conditions when it comes to access of humanitarian organisations and our ability to distribute aid, aid actually getting into the strip, we’re talking about the lowest levels yet. And this is exactly during the timeframe that the US had given to Israel to actually improve the situation. We’ve seen it getting significantly worse.
We’re not just talking about a shortage in things like flour, food, water, fresh vegetables, you know, hygiene kits. We’re also talking about shortages in what’s available on the commercial market. So, even if you somehow had money to be able to go buy what you need, it quite simply isn’t here.
These hospitals that we keep talking about as being partially functioning, what does that actually mean? It means that if you show up bleeding, someone inside is going to try to stop the bleed, but do they actually have what they need to save your life? No. I was inside visiting some kids here at Al-Aqsa earlier today and over the weekend.
There’s a little 2-year-old boy here whose brain you can see pulsing through his skin. His skull bone was removed. This little boy was not stabilising properly because the ICU was missing a pediatric-sized tracheostomy tube. Now, luckily, we were able to, you know, source some of them, and he has now stabilised, and he is off the ventilator.
Palestinians feel they are being ‘slowly exterminated’. Video: Democracy Now!
But this really gives you an idea of just how serious the situation here is.
People are gathering to demonstrate for things like flour, for bread, for whatever it is that you can imagine. Winter is coming. The rains are coming. This means flooding is coming.
And on top of just, you know, water flooding, we’re also anticipating that the sewage sites are going to be flooding, as well. Aid organizations need to be able to have the capacity and the ability to, you know, shift those sites to areas where they’re not going to pose even more of a health hazard to the community.
So, I mean, it’s a complete and total nightmare. It’s beyond being a nightmare.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about this latest report? The special UN committee says Israel’s actions in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide,” coming at the same time as a Human Rights Watch report, and UNRWA talks about famine being imminent in northern Gaza.
ARWA DAMON: So, if we’re talking specifically about the north, the northern province of Gaza, this is an area where Israel launched its military operation there nearly four weeks ago. We have seen people repeatedly being forcibly displaced from their homes. There is very little access to medical assistance there.
There has been absolutely no humanitarian assistance delivered there for about the last month. People are starving. They are dying. And it’s not just bombs that are killing people, it’s also disease.
‘Bombs kill quickly, but disease and starvation, they are slow killers. And that is what a lot of people are facing here.’
— Arwa Damon, founder of INARA,
So, when we look at the nature of what is happening in Gaza, you can’t spend a day here, Amy, and not come away with the notion that you are witnessing a population that is being slowly exterminated. And I say “slowly” because, yes, bombs kill quickly, but disease and starvation, they are slow killers. And that is what a lot of people are facing here.
And talk to anybody in Gaza, and there’s absolutely no doubt in their mind that, one, they are living through their own annihilation, and, two, what Israel is doing in the northern part is going to be repeated elsewhere.
And this is also part of why you see a reluctance among the population to want to evacuate, because Gazans know, Palestinians know that when they leave, they’re not going to be able to go back home. This is what history has taught them.
And there is this very real, ingrained fear among the population here right now that what they’re going through at this moment is not the end. There is actually a real sense that the worst is yet to come.
And they feel completely and totally abandoned by the international community, by global leaders, not to mention the United States. And everyone is convinced that right now Israel is going to have even more free rein to do whatever it is that it wants here.
When you talk to people about what it is that they’re going through, they do feel as if every single aspect of trying to survive here has been carefully orchestrated by Israel so that it is able to sort of meet America’s bare minimum of standards, to allow America sufficient cover to say, “Oh, no, there’s improvement that’s happening.”
And yet, actually, at the core of it is just another way to continue to kill the population.
AMY GOODMAN: And as you talk about the United States, which has given tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, they did recently set a 30-day deadline to increase the flow of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza, but the US has decided to keep arming Israel despite this and despite the number of officials in the State Department and other parts of the US government who have quit over this.
ARWA DAMON: Yeah, and let’s just look at the numbers. Let’s just look at what happened when the US started the clock for that 30-day deadline to improve humanitarian assistance. We saw, very shortly afterwards, the number of trucks accessing Gaza dip significantly, down to 30 a day, keeping in mind that one of the key demands that the US had was that aid be increased to at least 350 trucks.
So we saw this, you know, decrease consistent of roughly 30 trucks a day for most of the month of October. Now, in November, that number did go up to around 60-70, but we’re still talking about, you know, falling extraordinarily short, providing barely 20% of what it is that the population here needs.
We saw less access to these besieged areas in the north, where people are effectively trapped or having to basically risk their lives. We’ve had numerous instances where aid has been delivered to the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north, for example, where, shortly after medical evacuation teams have arrived there, there have been strikes.
You have this very ingrained fear that exists among people right now, especially in the north, where some of them are saying, “Don’t deliver anything, because right after you’re delivering, strikes are happening.”
And just to illustrate how it is that we try to move, so if we’re moving from south to north, for example, or even if we’re moving within the northern areas, those movement requests have to be approved by Israel. And aid organisations are increasingly wary of moving around with what we call soft-skin cars, which is basically your normal vehicle that we use to move around in, because of the increasing frequency of instances at Israeli checkpoints where aid convoys have been shot at by IDF troops after receiving the green light.
The OK to cross through, which means that for a lot of aid organizations, movement is limited to those who have access to armoured vehicles, vehicles that are more secure. And those don’t really exist in Gaza in high numbers at all. And we’re not allowed to bring in more to sort of beef up our capacity to be able to move around safely.
I mean, no matter which way you look at it, Amy, you’re constantly faced by numerous obstacles that don’t need to be there. It feels very deliberate, not to mention the complete and total breakdown of security. Now we have numerous looting instances of aid trucks.
We’ve repeatedly asked the Israeli side to be able to use alternative routes, to be able to use secured routes. Those requests are not being met.
I mean, it’s just — it’s such an impossible situation to operate in. I feel like I keep saying the same thing over and over and over again each time I come in. And the words to demonstrate how much worse it’s getting, quite simply, lack in our vocabulary.
AMY GOODMAN: You also wrote a piece recently, “The Devastation of Lebanon,” for New Lines. And we had this headline, The Washington Post reporting a close aide to Netanyahu told Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner that Israel is rushing to advance a ceasefire deal in Lebanon as a gift to Trump ahead of his January inauguration. Your response to the significance of Trump’s election and what it means to the people of Lebanon and Gaza?
ARWA DAMON: You know, first of all, anyone who lives in the Middle East and anyone who’s kind of been focusing on the Middle East knows very well that it really doesn’t matter who’s in the White House. Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, that really is not going to change significantly US policy towards this region.
But the thing that we’ve been hearing, specifically when it comes to the re-election of Donald Trump, is at least he’s not lying to us. At least whatever America is going to let Israel do, it’s going to be done faster. So, if our end is coming, at least it’s going to come faster.
Whereas when it comes to, you know, specifically the Biden administration, the sense is that the Democrats are far more willing to allow this slower, more painful death. But the end result, no matter who it is, people are fully convinced, is exactly the same.
And all people really want right now is for this to end. People are suffocated. They’re crushed. They cannot keep going like this. And they very much feel as if, you know, no matter what it is, no matter who it is, Arabs are viewed by the United States and by the Western world as somehow being less than . . . their lives are not that valuable.
You constantly hear people in Gaza — and we were hearing the same thing in Lebanon — making comments like, “Well, you know, America, it doesn’t care if we live or die. It doesn’t care how much we suffer. Our lives don’t matter to them.” And that is not really a perspective that changes all that much, no matter who is sitting in Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, Arwa. Why did you give up journalism for humanitarian work? What do you think you can accomplish at INARA that you couldn’t do as a journalist?
ARWA DAMON: There’s a certain sort of privilege of being able to spend extensive periods of time with people and really get to know who they are. And I feel as if, you know, moving around in the humanitarian sphere, I’m getting a different understanding of sort of people’s emotional journeys, what it actually takes to be able to provide them with assistance.
And it’s provided me a different way of being able to continue to sort of share people’s stories and experiences, but also be able to immediately at least try to provide assistance. You know, the challenge that we have when we’re out in the field as journalists is that you don’t always see the impact.
But when you’re in the humanitarian space, there’s a certain kind of magic when you’re able to just bring a smile to a child’s face. And I needed that.
AMY GOODMAN: Arwa Damon, we thank you so much for being with us. Stay safe. An award-winning journalist, she was with CNN for 18 years but now has founded INARA, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children in Gaza, speaking to us from Deir al-Balah in Gaza outside Al-Aqsa Hospital.
This article is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.
![PNG police commissioner David Manning (center) flanked by Vanuatu Police Commissioner Robson Iavro (left), Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw (2nd right) and Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus at the PPI launch, pictured on Dec. 10, 2024. [Stefan Armbruster/BenarNews]](https://media.rnztools.nz/rnz/image/upload/s--VKcmxE_e--/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050/v1733947676/4KFAQQU_papacific_policing_initiative_2_jpeg?_a=BACCd2AD)
![Police ministers and chiefs from across the Pacific attended the launch of the PPI’s Pinkenba Hub, pictured on Dec. 10, 2024. [Stefan Armbruster/BenarNews]](https://media.rnztools.nz/rnz/image/upload/s--Zzq6dq4l--/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050/v1733947676/4KFAQQU_papacific_policing_initiative_1_jpeg?_a=BACCd2AD)
Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz)