A stoush between the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and a Jewish community leader has flared up following a showdown at Parliament.
Appearing before a parliamentary select committee today, Dr Stephen Rainbow was asked about his recent apology for incorrect comments he made about Muslims earlier this year.
“If my language has been injudicious . . . then I have apologised for that,” he told MPs.
“I’ve apologised publicly. I’ve apologised privately. I’ve met with FIANZ [The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand] to hear their concerns and to apologise to them, both in person and publicly, and I hold to that apology.”
The apology relates to a meeting he had with Jewish community leader Philippa Yasbek, from the anti-Zionist Jewish groups Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu, in February.
Yasbek said Rainbow claimed during the meeting that the Security Intelligence Services (SIS) threat assessment found Muslims posed a greater threat to the Jewish community in New Zealand than white supremacists.
In fact, the report states “white identity-motivated violent extremism [W-IMVE] remains the dominant identity-motivated violent extremism ideology in New Zealand”.
Rainbow changed his position
Rainbow told the committee he had since changed his position after receiving new information.
He said was disappointed he had “allowed [his] words to create a perception there was a prejudice there” and he would do everything in his power to repair his relationship with the Muslim community.
“Please be assured that I take this as a learning, and I will be far more measured with my comments in future.”
But Rainbow disputed another of Yasbek’s assertions that he had also raised the supposed antisemitism of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.
“It’s going to be really unhelpful if I get into a he-said-she-said, but I did not say the comments that were attributed to me about that. I do not believe that,” Rainbow said.
“I emphatically deny that I said that.”
‘It definitely stuck in my mind’ – Jewish community leader Yasbek, who called for Rainbow’s resignation yesterday, was watching the select committee hearing from the back of the room.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Yasbek said she was certain Rainbow had made the comments about Afghan refugees.
“It was particularly memorable because it was so specific and he said that he was concerned about the risk of anti-semitism in the community of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.
“It’s very specific. It’s not a sort of detail that one is likely to make up, and it definitely stuck in my mind.”
Yasbek said the race relations commissioner and two Human Rights Commission staff members were also in the room and should be interviewed to corroborate what happened.
“There were multiple witnesses. I am concerned that he has impugned my integrity in that way which is why there should be an independent investigation of this matter.”
Alternative Jewish Voices’ Philippa Yasbek . . . “there should be an independent investigation of this matter.” Image: RNZ
Raised reported comments
Speaking to RNZ later, FIANZ chairman Abdur Razzaq said he raised the commissioner’s reported comments about Afghan refugees when he met with Rainbow several weeks ago.
“I raised it at the meeting with him and he did not correct me. At my meeting there were other members of the Human Rights Commission. He did not say he didn’t [say that].”
Razzaq said it was up to the justice minister as to whether or not Rainbow was fit for the role.
“When you hear statements like this, like ‘greatest threat’, he has forgotten it was precisely this kind of Islamophobic sentiment which gave rise to the terrorist of March 15, rise to the right-wing extremist terrorists to take action and they justify it with these kinds of statements.”
“[The commissioner] calls himself an academic, a student of history. Where is his lessons learned on this aspect? To pick a Muslim community by name… he has to really genuinely look at himself as to what he is doing and what he is saying.”
Minister backs Rainbow: ‘Doing his best’ Speaking at Parliament following the hearing, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said he backed Rainbow and believed the commissioner would learn from the experience.
“The new commissioner is doing his best. By his own admission he didn’t express himself well. He has apologised and he will be learning from that experience, and it is my expectation that he will be very careful in the way that he communicates in the future.”
Goldsmith said he stood by his appointment of Rainbow, despite the independent panel tasked with leading the process taking a different view.
“There’s a range of opinions on that. The advice that I had originally from the group was a real focus on legal skills, and I thought actually equally important was the ability to communicate ideas effectively.”
Speaking in Christchurch on Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Rainbow had got it “totally wrong” and it was appropriate he had apologised.
“He completely and quite wrongfully mischaracterised a New Zealand SIS report talking about threats to the Jewish community and he was wrong about that.
“He has subsequently apologised about that but equally Minister Goldsmith has or is talking to him about those comments as well.”
‘Not elabiorating further’
RNZ approached the Human Rights Commission on Thursday afternoon for a response to Yasbek doubling down on her recollection Rainbow had talked about the supposed antisemitism of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.
“The Chief Commissioner will not be elaborating further about what was said in the meeting,” a spokesperson said.
“He’s happy to discuss the matter privately with the people involved,” a spokesperson said.
“Dr Rainbow acknowledges that what was said caused harm and offence and what matters most is the impact on communities. That is why he has apologised unreservedly and stands by his apology.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now, the US does not even bother with that.
Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no one will stop them.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.
Israeli anti-Zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi posted on X this week:
“As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action.
“Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs.
“Not a word from the ICJ. Zionism and American imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”
As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned…
Under the US Joe Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians with weapons they had supplied. (They would never use a word as clear as “killing”, always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).
Today, under the Donald Trump regime, even the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside.
This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what it believes is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.
Brutally targeted Last week, a group of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), civil defence and UN staff rushed to the site of Israeli air strikes to rescue wounded Palestinians in southern Gaza.
PRCS is the local branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which, like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), provides essential health services to Palestinians in a devastated, besieged war zone.
Alongside other international aid groups, they have been repeatedly and brutally targeted by Israel.
That pattern continued on March 23, when Israeli forces committed a heinous, deliberate massacre that left eight PRCS members, six members of Gaza’s civil defence, and one UN agency employee dead.
The bodies of 14 first responders were found in Rafah, southern Gaza, a week after they were killed. The vehicles were mangled, and the bodies dumped in a mass grave. Some were mutilated, one decapitated.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said some of the bodies were found with their hands tied and with wounds to their heads and chests.
“This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said, describing it as “one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history”.
Under fire: Israel’s war on medics. Video: Middle East Eye
‘Killed on way to save lives’
The head of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said: “Today, on the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of eight PRCS, six civil defence and one UN staff.
“They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”
Nothing happened following previous lethal attacks, such as the killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff on 1 April 2024, exactly one year ago, when the victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen.
Despite a certain uproar that was absent when dozens or hundreds of Palestinians were massacred, Israel was not sanctioned by Western powers or the UN. And so, it continued killing aid workers.
Israel declared Unrwa a “terror” group last October and has killed more than 280 of its staff — accounting for the majority of the 408 aid workers killed in Gaza since October 2023.
The international response to this latest massacre? Zilch.
#GAZA – New images emerge from the execution and burial site of 15 Red Crescent and Civil Defense members in Tal al-Sultan, Rafah, southern Gaza Strip
On March 24, the #IDF surrounded the five ambulances and their crew members, handcuffed them, executed them, buried them in a… pic.twitter.com/KM5DLWpfyH
Official silence On Sunday, Save the Children, Medical Aid for Palestinians and Christian Aid took out ads in the UK Observer calling for the UK government to stop supplying arms to Israel in the wake of renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza: “David Lammy, Keir Starmer, your failure to act is costing lives.”
The British prime minister is too busy touting his mass deportation of “illegal” migrants from the UK to comment on the atrocities of his close ally, Israel. He has said nothing in public.
Lammy, UK Foreign Secretary, has found time to put out statements on the Myanmar earthquake, Nato, Russian attacks on Ukraine, and the need for de-escalation of renewed tensions in South Sudan.
His last public comment on Israel and Gaza was on March 22, several days after Israel’s horrific massacre of more than 400 Palestinians at dawn on 18 March: “The resumption of Israeli strikes in Gaza marks a dramatic step backward. Alongside France and Germany, the UK urgently calls for a return to the ceasefire.”
No condemnation of the slaughter of nearly 200 children.
In response to a request for comment from Middle East Eye, a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are outraged by these deaths and we expect the incident to be investigated transparently and for those responsible held to account. Humanitarian workers must be protected, and medical and aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely.
“We continue to call for a lift on the aid blockade in Gaza, and for all parties to re-engage in ceasefire negotiations to get the hostages out and to secure a permanent end to the conflict, leading to a two-state solution and a lasting peace.”
As this article was being written, Lammy put out a statement on X that, as usual, avoided any direct mention of who was committing war crimes. “Gaza remains the deadliest place for humanitarians — with over 400 killed. Recent aid worker deaths are a stark reminder. Those responsible must be held accountable.”
Age of lawlessness The new world order of 2025 is a lawless one.
The big powers and their allies are committed to the violent reordering of the map: Palestine is to be forcibly absorbed into Israel, with US backing. Ukraine will lose its eastern regions to Vladimir Putin’s Russia with US support.
Smaller nations can be attacked with impunity, from Yemen to Lebanon to Greenland (no US invasion plan as yet, but the mood music is growing louder with every statement from Trump and Vice-President JD Vance).
This has always been the way to some extent. Still, previously in the post-war world, adherence to international law was the official position of great powers, including the US and the Soviet Union.
Israel, however, never had time for international law. It was the pioneer of the force-is-right doctrine. That doctrine is now the dominant one.
International law and international aid are out.
In the UK last Thursday, a group of youth activists were meeting at the Quaker Friends House in central London to discuss peaceful resistance to the genocide in Gaza.
Such a police action would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but new laws introduced under the last government have made such raids against peaceful gatherings increasingly common.
This is the age of lawlessness. And anyone standing up for human rights and peace is now the enemy of the state, whether in Palestine, London, or at Columbia University.
Joe Gill has worked as a journalist in London, Oman, Venezuela and the US, for newspapers including Financial Times, Morning Star and Middle East Eye. His Masters was in Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics. Republished from Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.
“I started filming when we started to end.” With these haunting words, Basel Adra begins No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary that depicts life in Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank that are under complete occupation – military and civil – by Israel.
For Basel and his community, this land isn’t merely territory — it’s identity, livelihood, their past and future.
No Other Land vividly captures the intensity of life in rural Palestinian villages and the everyday destruction perpetrated by both Israeli authorities and the nearby settler population: the repeated demolition of Palestinian homes and schools; destruction of water sources such as wells; uprooting of olive trees; and the constant threat of extreme violence.
While this 95-minute slice of Palestinian life opened the world’s eyes, most are unaware that No Other Land takes place in an area of the West Bank that is ground zero for any viable future Palestinian state.
Designated as “Area C” under the Oslo Peace Accords, it constitutes 60% of the occupied West Bank and is where the bulk of Israeli settlements and outposts are located. It is a beautiful and resource-rich area upon which a Palestinian state would need to rely for self-sufficiency.
For decades now, Israel has been using military rule as well as its planning regime to take over huge swathes of Area C, land that is Palestinian — lived and worked on for generations.
This has been achieved through Israel’s High Planning Council, an institution constituted solely of Israelis who oversee the use of the land through permits — a system that invariably benefits Israelis and subjugates Palestinians, so much so that Israel denies access to Palestinians of 99 percent of the land in Area C including their own agricultural lands and private property.
‘This is apartheid’
Michael Lynk, when he was serving as UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, referred to Israel’s planning system as “de-development” and stated explicitly: “This is apartheid”.
The International Court of Justice recently affirmed what Palestinians have long known: Israel’s planning policies in the West Bank are not only discriminatory but form part of a broader annexation agenda — a violation of international humanitarian law.
To these ends, Israel deploys a variety of strategies: Israeli officials will deem certain areas as “state lands”, necessary for military use, or designate them as archaeologically significant, or will grant permission for the expansion of an existing settlement or the establishment of a new one.
Meanwhile, less than 1 percent of Palestinian permit applications were granted at the best of times, a percentage which has dropped to zero since October 2023.
As part of the annexation strategy, one of Israel’s goals with respect to Area C is demographic: to move Israelis in and drive Palestinians out — all in violation of international law which prohibits the forced relocation of occupied peoples and the transfer of the occupant’s population to occupied land.
Regardless, Israel is achieving its goal with impunity: between 2023 and 2025 more than 7,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in Area C due to Israeli settler violence and access restrictions.
At least 16 Palestinian communities have been completely emptied, their residents scattered, and their ties to ancestral lands severed.
The government has increased funding for settlements by nearly 150 percent; more than 25,000 new Israeli housing units in settlements have been advanced or approved; and Israel has been carving out new roads through Palestinian lands in the West Bank, severing Palestinians from each other, their lands and other vital resources.
Israeli authorities have also encouraged the establishment of new Israeli outposts in Area C, housing some of the most radical settlers who have been intensifying serious violence against Palestinians in the area, often with the support of Israeli soldiers.
None of this is accidental. In December 2022, Israel appointed Bezalel Smotrich, founder of a settler organisation and a settler himself, to oversee civilian affairs in the West Bank.
Since then, administrative changes have accelerated settlement expansion while tightening restrictions on Palestinians. New checkpoints and barriers throughout Area C have further isolated Palestinian communities, making daily life increasingly impossible.
Humanitarian organisations and the international community provide much-needed emergency assistance to help Palestinians maintain a foothold, but Palestinians are quickly losing ground.
As No Other Land hit screens in movie houses across the world, settlers were storming homes in Area C and since the Oscar win there has been a notable uptick in violence. Just this week reports emerged that co-director Hamdan Ballal was himself badly beaten by Israeli settlers and incarcerated overnight by the Israeli army.
Israel’s annexation of Area C is imminent. To retain it as Palestinian will require both the Palestinian Authority and the international community to shift the paradigm, assert that Area C is Palestinian and take more robust actions to breathe life into this legal fact.
The road map for doing so was laid by the International Court of Justice who found unequivocally that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is unlawful and must come to an end.
They specified that the international community has obligations in this regard: they must not directly or indirectly aid Israel in maintaining the occupation and they must cooperate to end it.
With respect to Area C, this includes tackling Israel’s settlement policy to cease, prevent and reverse settlement construction and expansion; preventing any further settler violence; and ending any engagement with Israel’s discriminatory High Planning Council, which must be dismantled.
With no time to waste, and despite all the other urgencies in Gaza and the West Bank, if there is to be a Palestinian state, Palestinians in Area C must be provided with full support – political, financial, and legal — by local authorities and the international community, to rebuild their lives and livelihoods.
Leilani Farha is a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and author of the report Area C is Everything. Republished under Creative Commons.
Global press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza this week, who died in separate targeted airstrikes by the Israeli armed forces.
And protesters in Aotearoa New Zealand dedicated their week 77 rally and march in the heart of Auckland to their memory, declaring “Journalism is not a crime”.
Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his car in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya, media reports said.
Video, reportedly from minutes after the airstrike, shows people gathering around the shattered and smoking car and pulling a body out of the wreckage.
Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today television was killed earlier on Monday, reportedly along with his wife and son, in an Israeli airstrike on his home in south Khan Younis.
One Palestinian woman read out a message from Shabat’s family: “He dreamed of becoming a journalist and to tell the world the truth.
“But war doesn’t wait for dreams. He was only 23, and when the war began he left classes to give a voice to those who had none.”
Global media condemnation
In the hours after the deaths, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Palestinian press freedom organisations released statements condemning the attacks.
“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s programme director.
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour.
“Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone.”
Honouring the life of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat – killed by Israeli forces at 23 and shattering his dreams. Image: Del Abcede/APR
In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted and killed Shabat and Mansour and labelled them as “terrorists” — without any evidence to back their claim.
The IDF also said that it had struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance fighters in Khan Younis, where Mohammed Mansour was killed.
In October 2024, the IDF had accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists working for Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant arm of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Al Jazeera and Shabat denied Israel’s claims, with Shabat stating in an interview with the CPJ that “we are civilians … Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth.”
In its statement condemning the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, the CPJ again called on Israel to “stop making unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of members of the press”.
The CPJ estimates that more than 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the organisation began gathering data in 1992.
However, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate says it believes the number is higher and, with the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, 208 journalists and other members of the press have been killed over the course of the conflict.
Under international law, journalists are protected civilians who must not be targeted by warring parties.
Israel has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in its genocide in the blockaded enclave since October 7, 2023.
The Israeli carnage has reduced most of the Gaza to ruins and displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population, while causing a massive shortage of basic necessities.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.
New Zealand protesters wearing mock “Press” vests in solidarity with Gazan journalists documenting the Israeli genocide. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Dozens of Filipinos and supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand came together in a Black Friday vigil and Rally for Justice in the heart of two cities tonight — Auckland and Christchurch.
They celebrated the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this month to face trial for alleged crimes against humanity over a wave of extrajudicial killings during his six-year presidency in a so-called “war on drugs”.
Estimates of the killings have ranged between 6250 (official police figure) and up to 30,000 (human rights groups) — including 32 in a single day — during his 2016-2022 term and critics have described the bloodbath as a war against the poor.
But speakers warned tonight this was only the first step to end the culture of impunity in the Philippines.
Current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator, and his adminstration were also condemned by the protesters.
Introducing the rally with the theme “Convict Duterte! End Impunity!” in Freyberg Square in the heart of downtown Auckland, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan’s Eugene Velasco said: “We demand justice for the thousands killed in the bloody and fraudulent war on drugs under the US-Duterte regime.”
She said they sought to:
expose the human rights violations against the Filipino people;
call for Duterte’s accountability; and
to hold Marcos responsible for continuing this reign of terror against the masses.
Flown to The Hague
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Duterte on March 11. He was immediately arrested on an aircraft at Manila International Airport and flown by charter aircraft to The Hague where he is now detained awaiting trial.
“We welcome this development because his arrest is the result of tireless resistance — not only from human rights defenders but, most importantly, from the families of those who fell victim to Duterte’s extrajudicial killings,” Velasco said.
Filipina activist Eugene Velasco . . . families of victims fought for justice “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”. Image: APR
“These families fought for justice despite the complete lack of support from the Marcos administration.”
Velasco said their their courage and resilience had pushed this case forward — “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”.
“‘Shoot them dead!’—this was Duterte’s direct order to the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). His death squads carried out these brutal killings with impunity,” Velasco said.
Mock corpses in the Philippines rally in Freyberg Square tonight. Image: APR
But Duterte was not the only one who must be held accountable, she added.
“We demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of all those who orchestrated and enabled the state-sponsored executions, led by figures like Senator Bato Dela Rosa and Lieutenant-Colonel Jovie Espenido, that led to over 30,000 deaths, the militarisation of 47,587 schools, churches, and public institutions — especially in rural areas — the abductions and killings of human rights defenders, and the continued existence of National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC.”
A masked young speaker tells of many victims of extrajudicial killings at tonight’s Duterte rally in Freyberg Square. Image: APR
Fake news, red-tagging
Velasco accused this agency of having “used the Filipino people’s taxes to fuel human rights abuses” through the spread of fake news and red-tagging against activists, peasants, trade unionists, and people’s lawyers.
“The fight does not end here,” she said.
“The Filipino people, together with all justice and peace-loving people of Aotearoa New Zealand, will not stop until justice is fully served — not just for the victims, but for all who continue to suffer under the Duterte-Marcos regime, which remains under the grip of US imperialist interests.
“As Filipinos overseas, we must unite in demanding justice, stand in solidarity with the victims of extrajudicial killings, and continue the struggle for accountability.”
Several speakers gave harrowing testimony about the fate of named victims as their photographs and histories were remembered.
Speakers from local political groups, including Green Party MP Francisco Hernandez, and retired prominent trade unionist and activist Robert Reid, also participated.
Reid referenced the ICC arrest issued last November against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Gaza genocide, saying he hoped that he too would end up in The Hague.
Mock corpses surrounded by candles displayed signs — which had been a hallmark of the drug war killings — declaring “Jail Duterte”, “Justice for all victims of human rights” and “Convict Sara Duterte now!” Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte is currently Vice-President and is facing impeachment proceedings.
The “convict Duterte” rally and vigil in Freyberg Square tonight. Image: APR
A West Papuan doctoral candidate has warned that indigenous noken-weaving practices back in her homeland are under threat with the world’s biggest deforestation project.
About 60 people turned up for the opening of her “Noken/Men: String Bags of the Muyu Tribe of Southern West Papua” exhibition by Veronika T Kanem at Auckland University today and were treated to traditional songs and dances by a group of West Papuan students from Auckland and Hamilton.
The three-month exhibition focuses on the noken — known as “men” — of the Muyu tribe from southern West Papua and their weaving cultural practices.
It is based on Kanem’s research, which explores the socio-cultural significance of the noken/men among the Muyu people, her father’s tribe.
“Indigenous communities in southern Papua are facing the world’s biggest deforestation project underway in West Papua as Indonesia looks to establish 2 million hectares of sugarcane and palm oil plantations in the Papua region,” she said.
West Papua has the third-largest intact rainforest on earth and indigenous communities are being forced off their land by this project and by military.
The ancient traditions of noken-weaving are under threat.
Natural fibres, tree bark
Noken — called bilum in neighbouring Papua New Guinea — are finely woven or knotted string bags made from various natural fibres of plants and tree bark.
“Noken contains social and cultural significance for West Papuans because this string bag is often used in cultural ceremonies, bride wealth payments, child initiation into adulthood, and gifts,” Kanem said.
West Papua student dancers performed traditional songs and dances at the noken exhibition. Image: APR
“This string bag has different names depending on the region, language and dialect of local tribes. For the Muyu — my father’s tribe — in Southern West Papua, they call it ‘men’.
In West Papua, noken symbolises a woman’s womb or a source of life because this string bag is often used to load tubers, garden harvests, piglets, and babies.
Noken string bag as a fashion item. Image: APR
“My research examines the Muyu people’s connection to their land, forest, and noken weaving,” said Kanem.
“Muyu women harvest the genemo (Gnetum gnemon) tree’s inner fibres to make noken, and gift-giving noken is a way to establish and maintain relationships from the Muyu to their family members, relatives and outsiders.
“Drawing on the Melanesian and Indigenous research approaches, this research formed noken weaving as a methodology, a research method, and a metaphor based on the Muyu tribe’s knowledge and ways of doing things.”
Hosting pride
Welcoming the guests, Associate Professor Gordon Nanau, head of Pacific Studies, congratulated Kanem on the exhibition and said the university was proud to be hosting such excellent Melanesian research.
Part of the scores of noken on display at the exhibition. Image: APR
Professor Yvonne Underhill-Sem, Kanem’s primary supervisor, was also among the many speakers, including Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai of Lagi Maama, and Daren Kamali of Creative New
The exhibition provides insights into the refined artistry, craft and making of noken/men string bags, personal stories, and their functions.
An 11 minute documentary on the weaving process and examples of noken from Waropko, Upkim, Merauke, Asmat, Wamena, Nabire and Paniai was also screened, and a booklet is expected to be launched soon.
Global media freedom groups have condemned the Israeli occupation forces for assassinating two more Palestinian journalists covering the Gaza genocide, taking the media death toll in the besieged enclave to at least 208 since the war started.
Journalist and contributor to the Qatari-based Al Jazeera Mubasher, Hossam Shabat, is the latest to have been killed.
Witnesses said Hossam’s vehicle was hit in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya. Several pedestrians were also wounded, reports Al Jazeera.
in a statement, Al Jazeera condemned the killings, saying Hossam had joined the network’s journalists and correspondents killed during the ongoing war on Gaza, including Samer Abudaqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Ismail Al-Ghoul, and Ahmed Al-Louh.
Al Jazeera affirmed its commitment to pursue all legal measures to “prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes against journalists”.
The network also said it stood in “unwavering solidarity with all journalists in Gaza and reaffirms its commitment to achieving justice” by prosecuting the killers of more than 200 journalists in Gaza since October 2023.
The network extended its condolences to Hossam’s family, and called on all human rights and media organisations to condemn the Israeli occupation’s systematic killing of journalists.
Hossam was the second journalist killed in Gaza yesterday.
House targeted
Earlier, the Israeli military killed Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for the Beirut-based Palestine Today television, in an attack targeting a house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
Al Jazeera condemns Israel’s killing of journalist Hossam Shabat in Gaza https://t.co/iJ6lscVahm
“Stand up and speak, tell the world, you are the one who tells the truth, for the image alone is not enough,” the father said through tears.
Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), condemned the killings, describing them as war crimes.
The CPJ called for an independent international investigation into whether they were deliberately targeted.
“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said CPJ’s programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.
The two latest journalists killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza . . . Al Jazeera’s Hossam Shabat (left) and Mohammad Mansour of Palestine Today. Image: AJ screenshot APR
‘Nightmare has to end’
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour, whose killings may have been targeted.”
Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza on March 18, ending a ceasefire that began on January 19.
Al Jazeera reports that the world ignores calls “to stop this madness” as Israel kills dozens in Gaza. Image: AJ screenshot APR
A UN official, Olga Cherevko, said Israel’s unhindered attacks on Gaza were a “bloody stain on our collective consciousness”, noting “our calls for this madness to stop have gone unheeded” by the world.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said 792 people had been killed and 1663 injured in the week since Israel resumed its war on the Strip.
The total death toll since the war started on October 7, 2023, has risen to 50,144, while 113,704 people have been injured, it said.
West Bank ‘news desert’
Meanwhile, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the repression of reporters in the West Bank and East Jerusalem had intensified in recent months despite the recent ceasefire in Gaza before it collapsed.
In the eastern Palestinian territories, Israeli armed forces have shot at journalists, arrested them and restricted their movement.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has detained Al Jazeera journalists.
RSF warned of a growing crackdown, which was transforming the region into a “news desert”.
He was in an ambulance receiving treatment when the doors were opened and he was abducted by the Israeli military. Colleagues say he has “disappeared”.
A number of American activists were also attacked, and video on social media showed them fleeing the settler violence.
Israel has begun the final stage of its genocide. The Palestinians will be forced to choose between death or deportation. There are no other options, writes Chris Hedges
ANALYSIS:By Chris Hedges
This is the last chapter of the genocide. It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza. No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity.
Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return.
The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies. The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas.
The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties.
The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.”
The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.
Israel’s naked genocidal visage is exposed. It has ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza where desperate Palestinians are camped out amid the rubble of their homes. What comes now is massstarvation — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on March 21 it has six days of flour supplies left — deaths from diseases caused by contaminated water and food, scores of killed and wounded each day under the relentless assault of bombs, missiles, shells and bullets.
Nothing will function, bakeries, water treatment and sewage plants, hospitals — Israel blew up the damaged Turkish-Palestinian hospital on March 21 — schools, aid distribution centers or clinics. Less than half of the 53 emergency vehicles operated by the Palestine Red Crescent Society are functional due to fuel shortages. Soon there will be none.
Israel’s message is unequivocal: Gaza will be uninhabitable. Leave or die.
Since last Tuesday, when Israel broke the ceasefire with heavy bombing, over 700 Palestinians have been killed, including 200 children. In one 24 hour period 400 Palestinians were killed.
This is only the start. No Western power, including the United States, which provides the weapons for the genocide, intends to stop it. The images from Gaza during the nearly 16 months of incessant attacks were awful.
But what is coming now will be worse. It will rival the most atrocious war crimes of the 20th century, including the mass starvation, wholesale slaughter and leveling of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 by the Nazis.
October 7 marked the dividing line between an Israeli policy that advocated the brutalisation and subjugation of the Palestinians and a policy that calls for their extermination and removal from historic Palestine. What we are witnessing is the historical equivalent of the moment triggered by the annihilation of some 200 soldiers led by George Armstrong Custer in June 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
After that humiliating defeat, Native Americans were slated to be killed with the remnants forced into prisoner of war camps, later named reservations, where thousands died of disease, lived under the merciless gaze of their armed occupiers and fell into a life of immiseration and despair.
Expect the same for the Palestinians in Gaza, dumped, I suspect, in one of the world’s hellholes and forgotten.
“Gaza residents, this is your final warning,” Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz threatened:
“The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza and the second Sinwar will completely destroy it. The Air Force strikes against Hamas terrorists were just the first step. It will become much more difficult and you will pay the full price. The evacuation of the population from the combat zones will soon begin again…Return the hostages and remove Hamas and other options will open for you, including leaving for other places in the world for those who want to. The alternative is absolute destruction.”
The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was designed to be implemented in three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, would see an end to hostilities. Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023 — including women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses — in exchange for upwards of 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children imprisoned by Israel (around 1,900 Palestinian captives have been released by Israel as of March 18).
Hamas has released a total of 147 hostages, of whom eight were dead. Israel says there are 59 Israelis still being held by Hamas, 35 of whom Israel believes are deceased.
The Israeli army would pull back from populated areas of Gaza on the first day of the ceasefire. On the seventh day, displaced Palestinians would be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel would allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.
The second phase, which was expected to be negotiated on the 16th day of the ceasefire, would see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel would complete its withdrawal from Gaza maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the 13 km border between Gaza and Egypt.
It would surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
The third phase would see negotiations for a permanent end of the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.
Israel habitually signs agreements, including the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Peace Agreement, with timetables and phases. It gets what it wants — in this case the release of the hostages — in the first phase and then violates subsequent phases. This pattern has never been broken.
Israel refused to honour the second phase of the deal. It blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza two weeks ago, violating the agreement. It also killed at least 137 Palestinians during the first phase of the ceasefire, including nine people, — three of them journalists — when Israeli drones attacked a relief team on March 15 in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza
Israel’s heavy bombing and shelling of Gaza resumed March 18 while most Palestinians were asleep or preparing their suhoor, the meal eaten before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan. Israel will not stop its attacks now, even if the remaining hostages are freed — Israel’s supposed reason for the resumption of the bombing and siege of Gaza.
The Trump White House is cheering on the slaughter. They attack critics of the genocide as “antisemites” who should be silenced, criminalised or deported while funneling billions of dollars in weapons to Israel.
Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is the inevitable denouement of its settler colonial project and apartheid state. The seizure of all of historic Palestine — with the West Bank soon, I expect, to be annexed by Israel — and displacement of all Palestinians has always been the Zionist goal.
Israel’s worst excesses occurred during the wars of 1948 and 1967 when huge parts of historic Palestine were seized, thousands of Palestinians killed and hundreds of thousands were ethnically cleansed. Between these wars, the slow-motion theft of land, murderous assaults and steady ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, continued.
That calibrated dance is over. This is the end. What we are witnessing dwarfs all the historical assaults on Palestinians. Israel’s demented genocidal dream — a Palestinian nightmare — is about to be achieved.
It will forever shatter the myth that we, or any Western nation, respect the rule of law or are the protectors of human rights, democracy and the so-called “virtues” of Western civilisation. Israel’s barbarity is our own. We may not understand this, but the rest of the globe does.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.
A Fiji-based Pacific solidarity group supporting the indigenous Palestine struggle for survival against the Israeli settler colonial state has today issued a statement condemning Fiji backing for Israel.
In an open letter to the “people of Fiji”, the Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (F4P) has warned “your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians”.
“It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”
The group said the struggle resonated with all who believed in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.
Fijians for Palestine has condemned Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government plans to open a Fijian embassy in Jerusalem with Israeli backing and has launched a “No embassy on occupied land” campaign.
The group likened the Palestine liberation struggle to Pacific self-determination campaigns in Bougainville, “French” Polynesia, Kanaky and West Papua.
“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.
“We 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.
“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.
“We call on you to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people this Thursday with us, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.
“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.
“To the Fijian people, please know that your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians. It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”
A human rights group in Aotearoa New Zealand has welcomed support from several Pacific island nations for West Papua, which has been under Indonesian military occupation since the 1960s.
West Papua is a region (with five provinces) in the far east of Indonesia, centred on the island of New Guinea. Half of the eastern side of New Guinea is Papua New Guinea.
West Papua Action Aotearoa claims the Indonesian occupation of West Papua has resulted in serious human rights violations, including a lack of press freedom.
Catherine Delahunty, the group’s spokesperson, says many West Papuans have been displaced as a result of Indonesia’s military activity.
In an interview with William Terite on PMN’s Pacific Mornings, the environmentalist and former Green Party MP said most people did not know much about West Papua “because there’s virtually a media blackout around this country”.
“It’s an hour away from Darwin [Australia], and yet, most people don’t know what has been going on there since the 1960s. It’s a very serious and tragic situation, which is the responsibility of all of us as neighbours,” she said.
“They [West Papuans] regard themselves fully as members of the Pacific community but are treated by Indonesia as an extension of their empire because they have all these natural resources, which Indonesia is rapidly extracting, using violence to maintain the state.”
Delahunty said the situation was “very disturbing”, adding there was a “need for support and change alongside the West Papuan people”.
UN support
In a recent joint statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the leaders of Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Sāmoa and Vanuatu called on the global community to support the displaced people of West Papua.
A Free West Papua rally. Image: Nichollas Harrison/PMN News
Delahunty said the Pacific island nations urged the UN Council to advocate for human rights in West Papua.
She also said West Papua Action Aotearoa wanted Indonesia to allow a visit from a UN human rights commissioner, a request that Indonesia has consistently denied.
She said Sāmoa was the latest country to support West Papua, contrasting this with the “lack of action from larger neighbours like New Zealand and Australia”.
Delahunty said that while smaller island nations and some African groups supported West Papua, more powerful states provide little assistance.
“It’s great that these island nations are keeping the issue alive at the United Nations, but we particularly want to shout out to Sāmoa because it’s a new thing,” she told Terite.
“They’ve never, as a government, made public statements. There are many Sāmoan people who support West Papua, and I work with them. But it’s great to see their government step up and make the statement.”
Benny Wenda (right), a West Papuan independence leader, with Eni Faleomavaega, the late American Sāmoan congressman, a supporter of the Free West Papua campaign. Image: Office of Benny Wenda/PMN News
Historically, the only public statements supporting West Papua have come from American Sāmoan congressman Eni Faleomavaega, who strongly advocated for it until he died in 2017.
Praise for Sāmoa
Delahunty praised Sāmoa’s support for the joint statement but voiced her disappointment at New Zealand and Australia.
“What’s not encouraging is the failure of Australia and New Zealand to actually support this kind of joint statement and to vigorously stand up for West Papua because they have a lot of power in the region,” she said.
“They’re the big states, and yet it’s the leadership of the smaller nations that we see today.”
In September 2024, Phillip Mehrtens, a pilot from New Zealand, was released by West Papua rebels after being held captive for 19 months.
Mehrtens, 39, was kidnapped by West Papua National Liberation Army fighters in February 2023 and was released after lengthy negotiations and “critical’ diplomatic efforts by authorities in Wellington and Jakarta.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Vaovasamanaia Winston Peters welcomed his release.
New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens was kidnapped by militants in West Papua on 7 March 2023. He was released 19 months later. Image: TPNPB/PMN News
Why is there conflict in West Papua? Once a Dutch colony, the region is divided into five provinces, the two largest being Papua and West Papua. It is separate from PNG, which gained independence from Australia in 1975.
Papuan rebels seeking independence from Indonesia have issued threats and attacked aircraft they believe are carrying personnel and delivering supplies for Jakarta.
The resource-rich region has sought independence since 1969, when it came under Indonesia’s control following a disputed UN-supervised vote.
Conflicts between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian authorities have been common with pro-independence fighters increasing their attacks since 2018.
The Free Papua Movement has conducted a low-intensity guerrilla war against Indonesia, targeting military and police personnel, along with ordinary Indonesian civilians.
Human rights groups estimate that Indonesian security forces have killed more than 300,000 West Papuans since the conflict started.
But the Indonesian government denies any wrongdoing, claiming that West Papua is part of Indonesia and was integrated after the controversial “Act of Free Choice” in 1969.
Manipulated process
The Act of Free Choice has been widely criticised as a manipulated process, with international observers and journalists raising concerns about the fairness and legitimacy of the plebiscite.
Despite the criticism, the United States and its allies in the region, New Zealand and Australia, have supported Indonesia’s efforts to gain acceptance in the UN for the pro-integration vote.
Human rights groups, such as Delahunty’s West Papua Action Aotearoa, have raised “serious concerns” about the deteriorating human rights situation in Papua and West Papua.
They cite alarming abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture, and mass displacement.
Delahunty believes the hope for change lies with the nations of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa. She said it also came from the younger people in Indonesia today.
“This is a colonisation issue, and it’s a bit like Aotearoa, in the sense that when the people who have been part of the colonising start addressing the issue, you get change. But it’s far too slow. So we are so disappointed.”
Like a relentless ocean, wave after wave of pro-Palestinian pro-human rights protesters disrupted New Zealand deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ state of the nation speech at the Christchurch Town Hall yesterday.
A clarion call to Trumpism and Australia’s One Nation Party, the speech was accompanied by the background music of about 250 protesters outside the Town Hall, chanting: “Complicity in genocide is a crime.”
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto described Peters’ attitude to Palestinians as “sickening”.
Inside the James Hay Theatre, protester after protester stood and spoke loudly and clearly against the deputy Prime Minister’s failure to support those still dying in Gaza, and his failure to denounce the ongoing genocide.
Ben Vorderegger was the first of nine protesters who appealed on behalf of people who have lost their voices in the dust of blood and bones, bombs and sniper guns.
Before he and others were hauled out, they spoke for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza — women, men, doctors, aid workers, journalists, and children.
Gazan health authorities have reported that the official death toll is now more than 50,000 — but that is the confirmed deaths with thousands more buried under the rubble.
Real death toll
The real death toll from the genocide in Gaza has been estimated by a reputed medical journal, The Lancet, at more than 63,000. A third of those are children. Each day more children are killed.
One by one the protesters who challenged Peters were manhandled by security guards to a frenzied crowd screaming “out, out”.
The deputy Prime Minister’s response was to deride and mock the conscientious objectors. He did not stop there. He lambasted the media.
At this point, several members of his audience turned on me as a journalist and demanded my removal.
Pro=Palestine protesters at the Christchurch Town Hall yesterday to picket Foreign Minister Winston Peters at his state of the nation speech.Image: Saige England/APR
This means that not only is the right to free speech at stake, the right or freedom to report is also being eroded. (I was later trespassed by security guards and police from the Town Hall although no reason was supplied for the ban).
Inside the Christchurch Town Hall the call by Peters, who is also Foreign Minister, to “Make New Zealand Great Again” continued in the vein of a speech written by a MAGA leader.
He whitewashed human rights, failed to address climate change, and demonstrated loathing for a media that has rarely challenged him.
Ben Vorderegger in keffiyeh was the first of nine protesters who appealed on behalf of Palestinans before being thrown out of the Christchurch Town Hall meeting. Image: Saige England/APR
Condemned movement
Slamming the PSNA as “Marxist fascists” for calling out genocide, he condemned the movement for failing to talk with those who have a record of kowtowing to violent colonisation.
This tactic is Colonial Invasion 101. It sees the invader rewarding and only dealing with those who sell out. This strategy demands that the colonised people should bow to the oppressor — an oppressor who threatens them with losing everything if they do not accept the scraps.
Peters showed no support for the Treaty of Waitangi but rather, endorsed the government’s challenge to the founding document of the nation – Te Tiriti o Waitangi. In his dismissal of the founding and legally binding partnership, he repeated the “One Nation” catch-cry. Ad nauseum.
Besides slamming Palestinians, the Scots (he managed to squeeze in a racist joke against Scottish people), and the woke, Peters’ speech promoted continued mining, showing some amnesia over the Pike River disaster. He did not reference the environment or climate change.
After the speech, outside the Town Hall police donned black gloves — a sign they were prepared to use pepper-spray.
PSNA co-chair John Minto described Peters’ failure to stand against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians as “bloody disgraceful”.
The police arrested one protester, claiming he put his hand on a car transporting NZ First officials. A witness said this was not the case.
PSNA co-chair John Minto (in hat behind fellow protester) . . . the failure of Foreign Minister Winston Peters to stand against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians is “bloody disgraceful”. Image; Saige England/APR
Protester released The protester was later released without any charges being laid.
A defiant New Zealand First MP Shane Jones marched out of the Town Hall after the event. He raised his arms defensively at protesters crying, “what if it was your grandchildren being slaughtered?”
I was trespassed from the Christchurch Town Hall for re-entering the Town Hall for Winston Peters’ media conference. No reason was supplied by police or the Town Hall security personnel for that trespass order..
“The words Winston is terrified to say . . . ” poster at the Christchurch pro-Palestinian protest. Image: Saige England/APR
It is well known that Peters loathes the media — he said so enough times during his state of the nation speech.
He referenced former US President Bill Clinton during his speech, an interesting reference given that Clinton did not receive the protection from the media that Peters has received.
From the over zealous security personnel who manhandled and dragged out hecklers, to the banning of a journalist, to the arrest of someone for “touching a car” when witnesses report otherwise, the state of the nation speech held some uncomfortable echoes — the actions of a fascist dictatorship.
Populist threats
The atmosphere was reminiscent of a Jorg Haider press conference I attended many years ago in Vienna. That “rechtspopulist” Austrian politician had threatened journalists with defamation suits if they called him out on his support for Nazis.
Yet he was on record for doing so.
I was reminded of this yesterday when the audience called ‘out out’ at hecklers, and demanded the removal of this journalist. These New Zealand First supporters demand adoration for their leader or a media black-out.
Perhaps they cannot be blamed given that the state of the nation speech could well have been written by US President Donald Trump or one of his minions.
The protesters were courageous and conscientious in contrast to Peters, said PSNA’s John Minto.
He likened Peters to Neville Chamberlain — Britain’s Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. His name is synonymous with the policy of “appeasement” because he conceded territorial concessions to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, fruitlessly hoping to avoid war.
“He has refused to condemn any of Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians, including the total humanitarian aid blockade of Gaza.”
Refusal ‘unprecedented’
“It’s unprecedented in New Zealand history that a government would refuse to condemn Israel breaking its ceasefire agreement and resuming industrial-scale slaughter of civilians,” Minto said.
“That is what Israel is doing today in Gaza, with full backing from the White House.
“Chamberlain went to meet Hitler in Munich in 1938 to whitewash Nazi Germany’s takeovers of its neighbours’ lands.
“Peters has been in Washington to agree to US approval of the occupation of southern Syria, more attacks on Lebanon, resumption of the land grab genocide in Gaza and get a heads-up on US plans to ‘give’ the Occupied West Bank to Israel later this year.
“If Peters disagrees with any of this, he’s had plenty of chances to say so.
“New Zealanders are calling for sanctions on Israel but Mr Peters and the National-led government are looking the other way.”
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones marched out of the Town Hall after the event, dismissing protesters crying, “what if it was your grandchildren being slaughtered?” Image: Saige England/APR
Only staged questions
The conscientious objectors who rise against the oppression of human rights are people Winston Peters regards as his enemies. He will only answer questions in a press conference staged for him.
He warms to journalists who warm to him.
The state of the nation speech in the Town Hall was familiar.
Seeking to erase conscientiousness will not make New Zealand great, it will render this country very small, almost miniscule, like the people who are being destroyed for daring to demand their right to their own land.
Saige England is a journalist and author, and a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
Part of the crowd at the state of the nation speech by Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters at the Christchurch Town Hall yesterday. Image: Saige England/APR
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick called on New Zealand government MPs today to support her Member’s Bill to sanction Israel over its “crazy slaughter” of Palestinians in Gaza.
Speaking at a large pro-Palestinian solidarity rally in the heart of New Zealand’s largest city Auckland, she said Aotearoa New Zealand could no longer “remain a bystander to the slaughter of innocent people in Gaza”.
In the fifth day since Israel broke the two-month-old ceasefire and refused to begin negotiations on phase two of the truce — which was supposed to lead to a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the besieged enclave and an exchange of hostages — health officials reported that the death toll had risen above 630, mostly children and women.
Five children were killed in a major overnight air attack on Gaza City and at least eight members of the family remained trapped under the rubble as Israeli attacks continued in the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
Confirmed casualty figures in Gaza since October 7, 2023, now stand at 49,747 with 113,213 wounded, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
For more than two weeks, Israel has sealed off border crossings and barred food, water and electricity and today it blew up the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the only medical institution in Gaza able to provide cancer treatment.
“The research has said it from libraries, libraries and libraries. And what is it doing in Gaza?” said Swarbrick.
‘Ethnic cleansing . . . on livestream’
“It is ethnic cleansing. It is apartheid. It is genocide. And we have that delivered to us by livestream to each one of us every single day on our cellphones,” she said.
“That is crazy. It is crazy to wake up every single day to that.”
Swarbrick said Aotearoa New Zealand must act now to sanction Israel for its crimes — “just like we did with Russia for its illegal action in Ukraine.”
She said that with the Green Party, Te Pāti Māori and Labour’s committed support, they now needed just six of the 68 government MPs to “pass my Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill into law”.
“There’s no more time for talk. If we stand for human rights and peace and justice, our Parliament must act,” she said.
“Action for Gaza Now” banner heads a march protesting against Israel’s resumed attacks on the besieged Strip in Auckland today. Image: APR
In September, Aotearoa had joined 123 UN member states to support a resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for Israel’s “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in relation to settler violence”.
“Our government has since done nothing to fulfil that commitment. Our Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill starts that very basic process.
“No party leader or whip can stop a Member of Parliament exercising their democratic right to vote how they know they need to on this Bill,” she said to resounding cheers.
‘No hiding behind party lines’
“There is no more hiding behind party lines. All 123 Members of Parliament are each individually, personally responsible.”
Several Palestinian women spoke of the terror with the new wave of Israeli bombings and of their families’ personal connections with the suffering in Gaza, saying it was vitally important to “hear our stories”. Some spoke of the New Zealand government’s “cowardice” for not speaking out in opposition like many other countries.
About 1000 people took part in the protest in a part of Britomart’s Te Komititanga Square in a section now popularly known as “Palestine Corner”.
Amid a sea of banners and Palestinian flags there were placards declaring “Stop the genocide”, “Jews for tangata whenua from Aotearoa to Palestine”, “Hands off West Bank End the occupation” , “The people united will never be defeated”, “Decolonise your mind, stand with Palestine,” “Genocide — made in USA”, and “Toitū Te Tiriti Free Palestine”.
“Genocide – Made in USA” poster at today’s Palestinian solidarity rally. Image: APR
The ceasefire-breaking Israeli attacks on Gaza have shocked the world and led to three UN General Assembly debates this week on the Middle East.
France, Germany and Britain are among the latest countries to condemn Israel for breaching the ceasefire — describing it as a “dramatic step backwards”, and France has told the UN that it is opposed to any form of annexation by Israel of any Palestinian territory.
Meanwhile, Sultan Barakat, a professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera in an interview that the more atrocities Israel committed in Gaza, the more young Palestinian men and women would join Hamas.
“So it’s not going to disappear any time soon,” he said.
With Israel killing more than 630 people in five days and cutting off all aid to the Strip for weeks, there was no trust on the part of Hamas to restart the ceasefire, Professor Barakat said.
“Jews for tangata whenua from Aotearoa to Palestine” . . . a decolonisation placard at today’s Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland. Image: APR
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Israel’s most revered jurist, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, says that he fears the Netanyahu government’s latest actions, including moves to fire the Shin Bet secret service chief and attorney-general, are steering the country toward civil war.
Speaking to the Ynet news site shortly before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the cabinet that voted unanimously to fire Bar, Barak said that “the main problem in Israeli society is . . . the severe rift between Israelis”.
“This rift is getting worse and in the end, I fear, it will be like a train that goes off the tracks and plunges into a chasm, causing a civil war,” he said.
In another interview, with Channel 12, when asked why he thought Israel was close to civil conflict, Barak said it was “because the rift in the people is immense, and no effort is being made to heal it.
“Everyone is trying to make it worse.
“Today there are demonstrations, then a car drives through them and runs over someone,” he said, referring to an incident at an anti-Netanyahu protest in Jerusalem on Wednesday when a driver rammed into a protester, injuring him.
“But tomorrow there will be shootings, and the day after that there will be bloodshed,” Barak continued.
Overturned sacking
Barak also told Channel 12 he would have overturned a government decision to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar if he were serving on the bench today.
The former chief justice explained he believed the ousting of Bar from the role in the middle of his term was illegitimate because the position of Shin Bet chief was not a “role of confidence” with the political echelon.
Instead, the person in the job was meant to carry out the role as it was explicitly written in legislation.
“There is authority to dismiss, but no grounds for dismissal,” he elaborated, saying he would also strike down the firing of Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, another top official whom the government is seeking to oust.
When asked about the prime minister’s tweet on Wednesday night alleging the existence of a “leftist deep state” in Israel that was working to thwart Netanyahu’s government, Barak replied: “I don’t know what a deep state is.”
“We’re not the United States, we don’t have a deep state here. We have loyal public servants here, and they do things according to the law,” he added.
Barak also appealed directly to Netanyahu, urging him to halt the process of firing Bar and Baharav-Miara, and other policies the former justice considers destructive, and said he thinks Netanyahu should be offered and should take a plea deal in his criminal trial.
‘Israel feels like it is on the brink of civil war.’ Video: France 24
‘Right for his legacy’
“I think that it is right for Netanyahu. It is right for his legacy. And it is right for the State of Israel. And I think it is possible,” he said.
“Otherwise, the trial will continue. The rift between [those] for Bibi and against Bibi will continue,” he added, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
Asked by the interviewer what he would say to Netanyahu if he could talk to him, Barak answered: “This is your policy, I am completely against it. I ask you, don’t implement it beyond what you have done today. Stop. Stop.”
“Don’t take the rift beyond where it already is,” he concluded.
Responding to Barak, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar issued a terse statement on X, simply posting: “There will be no civil war.”
Education Minister Yoav Kisch, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said in a post on X that Barak was “threatening a civil war” with his warning, and promised that “these threats will not deter” the government from implementing its policies.
MK Almog Cohen of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party said that Barak is “a reckless and irresponsible man,” who was “sent to issue a Sicilian mafia-style threat of blood in the streets and civil war.”
Retired Israeli Supreme Court president Aharon Barak . . . “We’re not the United States, we don’t have a deep state here.” Image: ICJ
Well-respected internationally
Barak served as a Supreme Court justice from 1978 to 1995. He was then elected as the court’s president. He retired from the bench in 2006.
Despite Barak being a vocal critic of Netanyahu and his policies, the premier chose him to represent Israel as an ad-hoc judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the genocide case that was brought against Israel by South Africa amid the war in Gaza.
Barak removed himself from the court last June for personal reasons.
Barak, a Holocaust survivor, is well-respected internationally and is seen as Israel’s preeminent jurist.
Within Israel, he long has been seen by Netanyahu and other right-wing leaders as a leftist “activist,” who is to blame for many of the issues with Israel’s judicial system that the government’s controversial judicial overhaul plans aim to rectify.
The Trump administration might let hundreds of millions of dollars in aid pledged to Pacific island nations during former President Joe Biden’s time in office stand, says New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters.
The Biden administration pledged about $1 billion in aid to the Pacific to help counter China’s influence in the strategic region.
However, Trump last month froze all disbursements of aid by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), for 90 days pending a “review” of all aid spending under his “America First” policy.
Peters told reporters on Monday after meetings with Trump’s USAID acting head, Peter Marocco, and his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, “more confident” about the prospects of the aid being left alone than he was before.
Peters said he had a “very frank and open discussion” with American officials about how important the aid was for the Pacific, and insisted that they “get our point of view in terms of how essential it is”.
NZ Foreign Minister Winson Peters . . . . “We are looking ahead with more confidence than when we arrived.” Image: TVNZ 1News screenshot RNZ
“In our business, it’s wise to find out the results before you open your mouth, but we are looking ahead with more confidence than when we arrived,” Peters said, pushing back against claims that the Trump administration would be “pulling back” from the Pacific region.
“We don’t know that yet. Let’s find out in April, when that full review is done on USAID,” he said. “But we came away more confident than some of the alarmists might have been before we arrived.”
Frenzied diplomatic battle The Biden administration sought to rapidly expand US engagement with the small island nations of the Pacific after the Solomon Islands signed a controversial security pact with China three years ago.
The deal by the Solomon Islands sparked a frenzied diplomatic battle between Washington and Beijing for influence in the strategic region.
Biden subsequently hosted Pacific island leaders at back-to-back summits in Washington in September 2022 and 2023, the first two of their kind. He pledged hundreds of millions of dollars at both meets, appearing to tilt the region back toward Washington.
The first summit included announcements of some $800 billion in aid for the Pacific, while the second added about $200 billion.
But the region has since been rocked by the Trump administration’s decision to freeze all aid pending its ongoing review. The concerns have not been helped by a claim from Elon Musk, who Trump tasked with cutting government waste, that USAID would be shut down.
“You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair. We’re shutting it down,” Musk said in a February 3 livestreamed video.
However, the New Zealand foreign minister, who also met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday, said he held out hope that Washington would not turn back on its fight for influence in the Pacific.
“The first Trump administration turned more powerfully towards the Pacific . . . than any previous administration,” he said, “and now they’ve got Trump back again, and we hope for the same into the future.”
Radio Free Asia is an online news service affiliated with BenarNews. Republished from BenarNews with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick says the need for Aotearoa New Zealand to impose sanctions against Israel has grown more urgent after airstrikes on Gaza resumed, killing more than 400 people.
Swarbrick lodged a member’s bill in December and said that with all opposition parties backing it, the support of just six backbench government MPs would mean it could skip the “biscuit tin” and be brought to Parliament for a first reading.
“I feel as though every other day there is something else which adds urgency, but yes — I think as a result of the most recent round of atrocities and particularly the public focus, attention, energy and effort that is being that has been put on them, that, yes, parliamentarians desperately need to act.
Swarbrick claimed there were government MPs who were keen to support her bill, saying it was why her party was publicly pushing the numbers needed to get it across the line.
“We have the most whipped Parliament in the Western world,” she said. “We would hope that parliamentarians would live up to all of those statements that they make about their values and principles when they do their bright-eyed and bushy-tailed maiden speeches.
“The time is now, people cannot hide behind party lines anymore.
“I know for a fact that there are government MPs that are keen to support this kaupapa.”
Standing order allowance
Standing Order 288 allows MPs who are not ministers or undersecretaries to indicate their support for a member’s bill.
If at least 61 MPs get behind it, the legislation skips the “biscuit tin” ballot.
If answered, Swarbrick’s call would be the first time this process is followed.
Labour confirmed its support for the bill last week.
A coalition spokesperson said the government’s policy position on the matter remained unchanged, including in response to Swarbrick’s bill.
New Zealand has consistently advocated for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
Swarbrick pointed to New Zealand’s support — alongside 123 other countries — of a UN resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories, including in relation to settler violence.
Conditional support
The government’s support for the resolution was conditional and included several caveats — including that the 12-month timeframe for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories was “unrealistic”, and noted the resolution went beyond what was initially proposed.
None of the other 123 countries which supported the resolution have yet brought sanctions against Israel.
“Unfortunately, in the several months following that resolution in September of last year, our government has done nothing to fulfil that commitment,” Swarbrick said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ permanent representative to the UN Carolyn Schwalger in September noted that the Resolution imposed no obligations on New Zealand beyond what already existed under international law, but “New Zealand stands ready to implement any measures adopted by the UN Security Council”.
NZ ambassador to the UN Carolyn Schwalger speaking at the UN General Assembly . . . “New Zealand stands ready to implement any measures adopted by the UN Security Council.” Image: Screenshot/UN General Assembly livestream/RNZ
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in December said the government had a long-standing position of travel bans on extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, and wanted to see a two-state solution developed.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said its military pressure against Hamas was to secure the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7 attack, and “this is just the beginning”.
Israel continues to deny accusations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
South African genocide case against Israel
However, South Africa has taken a case of genocide against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the trial remains ongoing with 14 countries having confirmed that they are intervening in support of South Africa.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said in a tweet he was “outraged” by the Israeli airstrikes.
“I strongly appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be re-established and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally,” he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
I am outraged by the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
I strongly appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be reestablished and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally.
In 2023, the City made me an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian for service across a number of fronts (water infrastructure, conservation, coastal resilience, community organising) but nothing I have done compares with the importance of standing up for the victims of US-Israeli violence.
What more can we do? And then it crossed my mind: “Declare Wellington Genocide Free”. And if Wellington could, why not other cities?
Wellington started nuclear-free drive The nuclear-free campaign, led by Wellington back in the 1980s, is a template worth reviving.
Wellington became the first city in New Zealand — and the first capital in the world — to declare itself nuclear free in 1982. It followed the excellent example of Missoula, Montana, USA, the first city in the world to do so, in 1978.
These were tumultuous times. I vividly remember heading into Wellington harbour on a small yacht, part of a peace flotilla made up of kayakers, yachties and wind surfers that tried to stop the USS Texas from berthing. It won that battle that day but we won the war.
This was the decade which saw the French government’s terrorist bomb attack on a Greenpeace ship in Auckland harbour to intimidate the anti-nuclear movement.
Also, 2025 is the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and the death of Fernando Pereira. Little Island Press will be reissuing a new edition of my friend David Robie’s book Eyes of Firelater this year. It tells the incredible story of the final voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.
Standing up to bullies Labour under David Lange successfully campaigned and won the 1984 elections on a nuclear-free platform which promised to ban nuclear ships from our waters.
This was a time when we had a government that had the backbone to act independently of the US. Yes, we had a grumpy relationship with the Yanks for a while and we were booted out of ANZUS — surely a cause for celebration in contrast to today when our government is little more than a finger puppet for Team Genocide.
In response to bullying from Australia and the US, David Lange said at the time: “It is the price we are prepared to pay.”
With Wellington in the lead, nuclear-free had moved over the course of a decade from a fringe peace movement to the mainstream and eventually to become government policy.
The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987 was passed and remains a cornerstone of our foreign policy.
New Zealand took a stand that showed strong opposition to out-of-control militarism, the risks of nuclear war, and strong support for the international movement to step back from nuclear weapons.
It was a powerful statement of our independence as a nation and a rejection of foreign dominance. It also reduced the risk of contamination in case of a nuclear accident aboard a vessel (remember this was the same decade as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine).
The nuclear-free campaign and Palestine Each of those points have similarities with the Palestinian cause today and should act as inspiration for cities to mobilise and build national solidarity with the Palestinians.
To my knowledge, no city has ever successfully expelled an Israeli Embassy but Wellington could take a powerful first step by doing this, and declare the capital genocide-free. We need to wake our country — and the Western world — out of the moral torpor it finds itself in; yawning its way through the monstrous crimes being perpetrated by our “friends and allies”.
Shun Israel until it stops genocide No city should suffer the moral stain of hosting an embassy representing the racist, genocidal state of Israel.
Wellington should lead the country to support South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), end all trade with Israel, and end all intelligence and military cooperation with Israel for the duration of its genocidal onslaught. Other cities should follow suit.
Declare your city Nuclear and Genocide Free.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz and is a frequent contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
The Israeli government vows to continue escalating these military attacks, claiming it is in response to Hamas’ refusal to extend the ceasefire, which has been in place since January 19.
But is this the real reason for pre-dawn attack? Or is there a much more cynical explanation — one tied to the political fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
This week, New Zealand journalist Mohamed Hassan, host of the Middle East Eye’s weekly Big Picture podcast, speaks to Daniel Levy, the president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator.
Ceasefire broken: Netanyahu is exposed. Video: Middle East Eye
Israel says President Donald Trump green lit a scorched-earth bombing of Gaza that wiped out entire families and killed dozens of infants and other children.
The US-backed Israeli government resumed its intense genocidal attacks on Gaza early yesterday morning, unleashing a massive wave of indiscriminate military strikes across the Strip and killing more than 410 people, including scores of children and women, according to local health officials.
The massacre resulted in one of the largest single-day death tolls of the past 17 months, and also killed several members of Gaza’s government and a member of Hamas’s political bureau.
The Trump administration said it was briefed ahead of the strikes, which began at approximately 2 am local time, and that the US fully supported Israel’s attacks.
“The sky was filled with drones, quadcopters, helicopters, F-16 and F-35 warplanes. The firing from the tanks and vehicles didn’t stop,” said Abubaker Abed, a contributing journalist for Drop Site News who reports from Deir al-Balah, Gaza.
“I didn’t sleep last night. I had a pang in my heart that something awful would happen. At 2 am, I tried to close my eyes. Once it happened, four explosions shook my home. The sky turned red and became heavily shrouded with plumes of smoke.”
Abubaker said Israel’s attacks began with four strikes in Deir al-Balah.
“Mothers’ wails and children’s screams echoed painfully in my ears. They struck a house near us. I didn’t know who to call. I couldn’t feel my knees. I was shivering with fear, and my family were harshly awakened,” he said.
‘My mother couldn’t breathe’
“My mother couldn’t take a breath. My father searched around for me. We gathered in the middle of our home, knowing our end may be near. That’s the same feeling we have had for the 16 months of intense bombings and attacks.
“The nightmare has chased us again.”
The Israeli attacks pummeled cities across Gaza — from Rafah and Khan Younis in the south to Deir al-Balah in the center, and Gaza City in the north, where Israel carried out some of the heaviest bombing in areas already reduced to an apocalyptic landscape.
Since the “ceasefire” took effect in January, more than half a million Palestinians returned to the north and many of them have been living in makeshift shelters or on the rubble of their former homes.
Hospitals that already suffer from catastrophic damage from 16 months of relentless Israeli attacks and a dire lack of medical supplies struggled to handle the influx of wounded people, and local authorities issued an emergency call for blood donations.
Late Tuesday morning, Dr Abdul-Qader Weshah, a senior emergency doctor at Al-Awda Hospital in Al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, described the situation.
“We’ve just received another influx of injuries following a nearby strike. We’ve dealt with them. We are just preparing ourselves for more casualties as more bombings are expected to happen,” he told Drop Site News.
‘Horrified . . . awoke to screams’
“Since the morning, we were horrified and awoke to the screams and pain of people. We’ve been treating many people, children and women in particular.”
Weshah said they have had to transfer some of the wounded to other hospitals because of a lack of medical supplies.
“We don’t have the means. Gaza’s hospitals are devoid of everything. Here at the hospital, we lack everything, including basic necessities like disinfectants and gauze. We don’t have enough beds for the casualties.
We don’t have the capacity to treat the wounded. X-ray devices, magnetic resonance imaging, and simple things like stitches are not available. The hospital is in an unprecedented state of chaos.
“The number of medical crews is not enough. Overwhelmed with injuries, we’re horrified and we don’t know why we are speaking to the world.
“We’re working with less than the bare minimum in our hands. We need doctors, devices and supplies, and circumstances to do our job.”
Al-Shifa hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera Arabic: “Every minute, a wounded person dies due to a lack of resources.”
The Indonesia Hospital morgue in Beit Lahia, Gaza on March 18, 2025. Image: Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu
Rising death toll
Dr Zaher Al-Wahidi, the Director of the Information Unit at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, told Drop Site Tuesday afternoon that 174 children and 89 women were killed in the Israeli attacks. [Editors: Latest figures are 404 killed, including many children, and the toll is expected to rise as many are still buried beneath rubble.]
Local health officials and witnesses said that the death toll was expected to rise dramatically because dozens of people are believed to be buried under the rubble of the structures where they were sleeping when the bombing began.
“We can hear the voices of the victims under the rubble, but we can’t save them,” said a medical official at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Video posted on social media by Palestinians inside Gaza portrayed unspeakable scenes of the lifeless bodies of infants and small children killed in the bombings.
Zinh Dahdooh, a dental student from Gaza City, posted an audio recording she said was of her neighbours screaming as their shelter was bombed, trapping them in the destruction.
“Tonight, they bombed our neighbors,” she wrote on the social media site X. “They kept screaming until they died, and no ambulance came for them. How long are we supposed to live in this fear? How long!”
According to local health officials, many strikes hit buildings or homes housing multiple generations of families.
‘Wiped out six families’
“Israel in its strikes has wiped out at least six families. One in my hometown. The others are from Khan Younis, Rafah, and Gaza City. Some families have lost five or 10 members. Others have lost around 20,” Abubaker reported.
“We talk about families killed from the children to the old. The Gharghoon family was bombed today in Rafah. The strikes have killed the father and his two daughters. Their mom and grandparents along with their uncles and aunts were also murdered, erasing the entire family from the civil registry.
“We are talking about the erasure of entire families. Among Israel’s attacks in Deir al-Balah, Israel bombed the homes of the Mesmeh, Daher, and Sloot families.
“More than 10 people, including seven women, from the Sloot family were killed, wiping them out entirely. The same has happened to the Abu-Teer, Barhoom, and other families.
“This is extermination by design. This is genocide.”
On Tuesday, Palestinian Islamic Jihad confirmed that “Abu Hamza,” the spokesman of its military wing, Al Quds Brigades, had been killed along with his wife and other family members.
A hellish scene Israeli officials said they had been given a “green light” by President Donald Trump to resume heavy bombing of Gaza because of Hamas’s refusal to obey Trump’s directive to release all Israeli captives immediately.
“All those who seek to terrorise not just Israel but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News.
“All hell will break loose.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement asserting that “Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength”.
Israeli media reported that the decision to resume heavy strikes against Gaza was made a week ago and was not in response to any imminent threat posed by Hamas.
Israel, which has repeatedly violated the ceasefire that went into effect January 19, has sought to create new terms in a transparent effort to justify blowing up the deal entirely.
“This is unconscionable,” said Muhannad Hadi, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
“A cease-fire must be reinstated immediately. People in Gaza have endured unimaginable suffering.”
Compounding the crisis in Gaza’s hospitals, Israel recently began blocking the entry of international medical workers to the Strip at unprecedented rates as part of a sweeping new policy that severely limits the number of aid organisations Israel will permit to operate in Gaza.
Plumes of smoke from central Gaza just as Israel began its heavy bombing on Monday night. Image: Abubaker Abed/Drop Site News
Editor’s note: Due to the ongoing Israeli attacks, Abubaker Abed relayed his reporting and eyewitness account to Jeremy Scahill by phone and text messages. This article is republished from Drop Site News under Creative Commons.
A West Papuan liberation advocacy group has condemned the arrest of 12 activists by Indonesian police and demanded their immediate release.
The West Papuan activists from the West Papua People’s Liberation Movement (GR-PWP) were arrested for handing out pamphlets supporting the new “Boycott Indonesia” campaign.
The GR-PWP activists were arrested in Sentani and taken to Jayapura police station yesterday.
In a statement by the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), interim president Benny Wenda, said the activists were still “in the custody of the brutal Indonesian police”.
The arrested activists were named as:
Ones M. Kobak, GR-PWP leader, Sentani District
Elinatan Basini, deputy secretary, GR-PWP Central
Dasalves Suhun, GR-PWP member
Matikel Mirin, GR-PWP member
Apikus Lepitalen, GR-PWP member
Mane Kogoya, GR-PWP member
Obet Dogopia, GR-PWP member
Eloy Weya, GR-PWP member
Herry Mimin, GR-PWP member
Sem. R Kulka, GR-PWP member
Maikel Tabo, GR-PWP member
Koti Moses Uropmabin, GR-PWP member
“I demand that the Head of Police release the Sentani 12 from custody immediately,” Wenda said.
“This was an entirely peaceful action mobilising support for a peaceful campaign.
“The boycott campaign has won support from more than 90 tribes, political organisations, religious and customary groups — people from every part of West Papua are demanding a boycott of products complicit in the genocidal Indonesian occupation.”
Wenda said the arrest demonstrated the importance of the Boycott for West Papua campaign.
We express deep concern over the recent arrests of individuals in Sentani, West Papua for
distributing pamphlets advocating a boycott of Indonesian products from West Papua and
raising awareness of ongoing political issues in the region. The detention of these individuals
likely… pic.twitter.com/4e4hJ7FxUJ
A national Palestinian advocacy group has called on the Aotearoa New Zealand government to immediately condemn Israel for its resumption today of “genocidal attacks” on the almost 2 million Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza enclave.
Media reports said that more than 350 people had been killed — many of them children — in a wave of predawn attacks by Israel to break the fragile ceasefire that had been holding since mid-January.
The renewed war on Gaza comes amid a worsening humanitarian crisis that has persisted for 16 days since March 1.
This followed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to block the entry of all aid and goods, cut water and electricity, and shut down the Strip’s border crossings at the end of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.
“Immediate condemnation of Israel’s resumption of attacks on Gaza must come from the New Zealand government”, said co-national chair John Minto of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) in a statement.
“Israel has breached the January ceasefire agreement multiple times and is today relaunching its genocidal attacks against the Palestinian people of Gaza.”
Israeli violations
He said that in the last few weeks Israel had:
refused to negotiate the second stage of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas which would see a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza;
Issued a complete ban on food, water, fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza — “a war crime of epic proportions”; and
Cut off the electricity supply desperately needed to, for example, operate desalination plants for water supplies.
“The government is out of touch with New Zealanders but in touch with US/Israel.
“Foreign Minister Winston Peters seems to be explaining his silence as ‘keeping his nerve’.
Minto said that for the past 17 months, minister Peters had condemned every act of Palestinian resistance against 77 years of brutal colonisation and apartheid policies.
“But he has refused to condemn any of the countless war crimes committed by Israel during this time — including the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war.
“Speaking out to condemn Israel now is our opportunity to force it to reconsider and begin negotiations on stage two of the ceasefire agreement Israel is trying to walk away from.
“Palestinians and New Zealanders deserve no less.”
A Netanyahu “Wanted” sign at last Saturday’s pro-Palestinian rally in “Palestinian Corner”, Auckland . . . in reference to the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued last November against the Israeli Prime Minister and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. Image: APR
‘Devastating sounds’
Al Jazeera reporter Maram Humaid said from Gaza: “We woke up to the devastating sounds of multiple explosions as a series of air attacks targeted various areas across the Gaza Strip, from north to south, including Jabalia, Gaza City, Nuseirat, Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis.”
“The strikes hit homes, residential buildings, schools sheltering displaced people and tents, resulting in a significant number of casualties, including women and children, especially since the attacks occurred during sleeping hours.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said at least 232 people had been killed in today’s Israeli raids.
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas called on people of Arab and Islamic nations — and the “free people of the world” — to take to the streets in protest over the devastating attack.
Hamas urged people across the world to “raise their voice in rejection of the resumption of the Zionist war of extermination against our people in the Gaza Strip”.
New Zealand’s National-led coalition government’s policy on Gaza seems caught between a desire for a two-state diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and closer alignment with the US, which supports a Netanyahu government strongly opposed to a Palestinian state
In the last 17 months, Gaza has been the scene of what Thomas Merton once called the unspeakable — human wrongdoing on a scale and a depth that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to adequately describe.
The latest Gaza conflict began with a horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that prompted a relentless Israel ground and air offensive in Gaza with full financial, logistical and diplomatic backing from the Biden administration.
During this period, around 50,000 people – 48,903 Palestinians and 1706 Israelis – have been reported killed in the Gaza conflict, according to the official figures of the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as 166 journalists and media workers, 120 academics,and more than 224 humanitarian aid workers.
Moreover, a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, signed in mid-January, seems to be hanging by a thread.
Israel has resumed its blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and cut off electricity after Hamas rejected an Israeli proposal to extend phase 1 of the ceasefire deal (to release more Israeli hostages) without any commitment to implement phase 2 (that envisaged ending the conflict in Gaza and Israel withdrawing its troops from the territory).
Hamas insists on negotiating phase 2 as signed by both parties in the January ceasefire agreement
Over the weekend, Israel reportedly launched air-strikes in Gaza and the Trump administration unleashed a wave of attacks on Houthi rebel positions in Yemen after the Houthis warned Israel not to restart the war in Gaza.
New Zealand and the Gaza conflict Although distant in geographic terms, the Gaza crisis represents a major moral and legal challenge to New Zealand’s self-image and its worldview based on the strengthening of an international rules-based order.
New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation between indigenous Māori and European settlers in nation-building.
While the aspirations of the Treaty have yet to be fully realised, the credibility of its vision of reconciliation at home depends on New Zealand’s willingness to uphold respect for human rights and the rule of law in the international arena, particularly in states like Israel where tensions persist between the settler population and Palestinians in occupied territories like the West Bank.
New Zealand’s declaratory stance towards Gaza
In 2023 and 2024, New Zealand consistently backed calls in the UN General Assembly for humanitarian truces or ceasefires in Gaza. It also joined Australia and Canada in February and July last year to demand an end to hostilities.
The New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, told the General Assembly in April 2024 that the Security Council had failed in its responsibility “to maintain international peace and security”.
He was right. The Biden administration used its UN Security Council veto four times to perpetuate this brutal onslaught in Gaza for nearly 15 months.
In addition, Peters has repeatedly said there can be no military resolution of a political problem in Gaza that can only be resolved through affirming the Palestinian right to self-determination within the framework of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
The limitations of New Zealand’s Gaza approach Despite considerable disagreement with Netanyahu’s policy of “mighty vengeance” in Gaza, the National-led coalition government had few qualms about sending a small Defence Force deployment to the Red Sea in January 2024 as part of a US-led coalition effort to counter Houthi rebel attacks on commercial shipping there.
While such attacks are clearly illegal, they are basically part of the fallout from a prolonged international failure to stop the US-enabled carnage in Gaza.
In particular, the NZDF’s Red Sea deployment did not sit comfortably with New Zealand’s acceptance in September 2024 of the ICJ’s ruling that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) was “unlawful”.
At the same time, the National-led coalition government’s silence on US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to “own” Gaza, displace two million Palestinian residents and make the territory the “Riviera” of the Middle East was deafening.
Furthermore, while Wellington announced travel bans on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank in February 2024, it has had little to say publicly about the Netanyahu government’s plans to annex the West Bank in 2025. Such a development would gravely undermine the two-state solution, violate international law, and further fuel regional tensions.
New Zealand’s low-key policy On balance, the National-led coalition government’s policy towards Gaza appears to be ambivalent and lacking moral and legal clarity in a context in which war crimes have been regularly committed since October 7.
Peters was absolutely correct to condemn the UNSC for failing to deliver the ceasefire that New Zealand and the overwhelming majority of states in the UN General Assembly had wanted from the first month of this crisis.
But the New Zealand government has had no words of criticism for the US, which used its power of veto in the UNSC for more than a year to thwart the prospect of a ceasefire and provided blanket support for an Israeli military campaign that killed huge numbers of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
By cooperating with the Biden administration against Houthi rebels and adopting a quietly-quietly approach to Trump’s provocative comments on Gaza and his apparent willingness to do whatever it takes to help Israel “to get the job done’, New Zealand has revealed a selective approach to upholding international law and human rights in the desperate conditions facing Gaza
Professor Robert G. Patman is an Inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair and his research interests concern international relations, global security, US foreign policy, great powers, and the Horn of Africa. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Freedom of the press — a bedrock principle of American democracy — is under threat in the United States.
Here at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism we are witnessing and experiencing an alarming chill. We write to affirm our commitment to supporting and exercising First Amendment rights for students, faculty, and staff on our campus — and, indeed, for all.
After Homeland Security seized and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia’s School of Public and International Affairs, without charging him with any crime, many of our international students have felt afraid to come to classes and to events on campus.
They are right to be worried. Some of our faculty members and students who have covered the protests over the Gaza war have been the object of smear campaigns and targeted on the same sites that were used to bring Khalil to the attention of Homeland Security.
President Trump has warned that the effort to deport Khalil is just the first of many.
These actions represent threats against political speech and the ability of the American press to do its essential job and are part of a larger design to silence voices that are out of favour with the current administration.
We have also seen reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is trying to deport the Palestinian poet and journalist Mosab Abu Toha, who has written extensively in the New Yorker about the condition of the residents of Gaza and warned of the mortal danger to Palestinian journalists.
There are 13 million legal foreign residents (green card holders) in the United States. If the administration can deport Khalil, it means those 13 million people must live in fear if they dare speak up or publish something that runs afoul of government views.
There are more than one million international students in the United States. They, too, may worry that they are no longer free to speak their mind. Punishing even one person for their speech is meant to intimidate others into self-censorship.
One does not have to agree with the political opinions of any particular individual to understand that these threats cut to the core of what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy. The use of deportation to suppress foreign critics runs parallel to an aggressive campaign to use libel laws in novel — even outlandish ways — to silence or intimidate the independent press.
The President has sued CBS for an interview with Kamala Harris which Trump found too favourable. He has sued the Pulitzer Prize committee for awarding prizes to stories critical of him.
He has even sued the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of a pre-election poll that showed Kamala Harris ahead at that point in the state.
Large corporations like Disney and Meta settled lawsuits most lawyers thought they could win because they did not want to risk the wrath of the Trump administration and jeopardize business they have with the federal government.
Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decided that the paper’s editorial pages would limit themselves to pieces celebrating “free markets and individual liberties.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration insists on hand-picking the journalists who will be permitted to cover the White House and Pentagon, and it has banned the Associated Press from press briefings because the AP is following its own style book and refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
The Columbia Journalism School stands in defence of First Amendment principles of free speech and free press across the political spectrum. The actions we’ve outlined above jeopardise these principles and therefore the viability of our democracy. All who believe in these freedoms should steadfastly oppose the intimidation, harassment, and detention of individuals on the basis of their speech or their journalism.
Australia is caught in a jam, between an assertive American ally and a bold Chinese trading partner. America is accelerating its pivot to the Indo-Pacific, building up its fighting forces and expanding its military bases.
As Australia tries to navigate a pathway between America’s and Australia’s national interests, sometimes Australia’s national interest seems to submerge out of view.
Admiral David Johnston, the Chief of the Australia’s Defence Force, is steering this ship as China flexes its muscle sending a small warship flotilla south to circumnavigate the continent.
He has admitted that the first the Defence Force heard of a live-fire exercise by the three Chinese Navy ships sailing in the South Pacific east of Australia on February 21, was a phone call from the civilian Airservices Australia.
“The absence of any advance notice to Australian authorities was a concern, notably, that the limited notice provided by the PLA could have unnecessarily increased the risk to aircraft and vessels in the area,” Johnston told Senate Estimates .
Johnston was pressed to clarify how Defence first came to know of the live-fire drill: “Is it the case that Defence was only notified, via Virgin and Airservices Australia, 28 minutes [sic] after the firing window commenced?”
To this, Admiral Johnston replied: “Yes.”
If it happened as stated by the Admiral — that a live-fire exercise by the Chinese ships was undertaken and a warning notice was transmitted from the Chinese ships, all without being detected by Australian defence and surveillance assets — this is a defence failure of considerable significance.
Sources with knowledge of Defence spoken to by Declassified Australia say that this is either a failure of surveillance, or a failure of communication, or even more far-reaching, a failure of US alliance cooperation.
And from the very start the official facts became slippery.
Our latest investigation –
AUSTRALIA’S DEFENCE: NAVIGATING US-CHINA TENSIONS
We investigate a significant intelligence failure to detect live-firing by Chinese warships near Australia, has exposed Defence weaknesses, and the fact that when it counts, we are all alone.
— Declassified Australia (@DeclassifiedAus) March 7, 2025
What did they know and when did they know it The first information passed on to Defence by Airservices Australia came from the pilot of a Virgin passenger jet passing overhead the flotilla in the Tasman Sea that had picked up the Chinese Navy VHF radio notification of an impending live-fire exercise.
The radio transmission had advised the window for the live-fire drill commenced at 9.30am and would conclude at 3pm.
We know this from testimony given to Senate Estimates by the head of Airservices Australia. He said Airservices was notified at 9.58am by an aviation control tower informed by the Virgin pilot. Two minutes later Airservices issued a “hazard alert” to commercial airlines in the area.
The Headquarters of the Defence Force’s Joint Operations Command (HJOC), at Bungendore 30km east of Canberra, was then notified about the drill by Airservices at 10.08am, 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.
When questioned a few days later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared to try to cover for Defence’s apparent failure to detect the live-fire drill or the advisory transmission.
“At around the same time, there were two areas of notification. One was from the New Zealand vessels that were tailing . .. the [Chinese] vessels in the area by both sea and air,” Albanese stated. “So that occurred and at the same time through the channels that occur when something like this is occurring, Airservices got notified as well.”
But the New Zealand Defence Force had not notified Defence “at the same time”. In fact it was not until 11.01am that an alert was received by Defence from the New Zealand Defence Force — 53 minutes after Defence HQ was told by Airservices and an hour and a half after the drill window had begun.
The Chinese Navy’s stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, sailing south in the Coral Sea on February 15, 2025, in a photograph taken from a RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane. Image: Royal Australian Air Force/Declassified Australia
Defence Minister Richard Marles later in a round-about way admitted on ABC Radio that it wasn’t the New Zealanders who informed Australia first: “Well, to be clear, we weren’t notified by China. I mean, we became aware of this during the course of the day.
“What China did was put out a notification that it was intending to engage in live firing. By that I mean a broadcast that was picked up by airlines or literally planes that were commercial planes that were flying across the Tasman.”
Later the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, told ABC that two live-fire training drills were carried out at sea on February 21 and 22, in accordance with international law and “after repeatedly issuing safety notices in advance”.
Eyes and ears on ‘every move’ It was expected the Chinese-navy flotilla would end its three week voyage around Australia on March 7, after a circumnavigation of the continent. That is not before finally passing at some distance the newly acquired US-UK nuclear submarine base at HMAS Stirling near Perth and the powerful US communications and surveillance base at North West Cape.
Just as Australia spies on China to develop intelligence and targeting for a potential US war, China responds in kind, collecting data on US military and intelligence bases and facilities in Australia, as future targets should hostilities commence.
The presence of the Chinese Navy ships that headed into the northern and eastern seas around Australia attracted the attention of the Defence Department ever since they first set off south through the Mindoro Strait in the Philippines and through the Indonesian archipelago from the South China Sea on February 3.
“We are keeping a close watch on them and we will be making sure that we watch every move,” Marles stated in the week before the live-fire incident.
“Just as they have a right to be in international waters . . . we have a right to be prudent and to make sure that we are surveilling them, which is what we are doing.”
Around 3500 km to the north, a week into the Chinese ships’ voyage, a spy flight by an RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane on February 11, in a disputed area of the South China Sea south of China’s Hainan Island, was warned off by a Chinese J-16 fighter jet.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to Australian protests claiming the Australian aircraft “deliberately intruded” into China’s claimed territorial airspace around the Paracel Islands without China’s permission, thereby “infringing on China’s sovereignty and endangering China’s national security”.
Australia criticised the Chinese manoeuvre, defending the Australian flight saying it was “exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace”.
Two days after the incident, the three Chinese ships on their way to Australian waters were taking different routes in beginning their own “right to freedom of navigation” in international waters off the Australian coast. The three ships formed up their mini flotilla in the Coral Sea as they turned south paralleling the Australian eastern coastline outside of territorial waters, and sometimes within Australia’s 200-nautical-mile (370 km) Exclusive Economic Zone.
“Defence always monitors foreign military activity in proximity to Australia. This includes the Peoples Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) Task Group.” Admiral Johnston told Senate Estimates.
“We have been monitoring the movement of the Task Group through its transit through Southeast Asia and we have observed the Task Group as it has come south through that region.”
The Task Group was made up of a modern stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, the frigate Hengyang, and the Weishanhu, a 20,500 tonne supply ship carrying fuel, fresh water, cargo and ammunition. The Hengyang moved eastwards through the Torres Strait, while the Zunyi and Weishanhu passed south near Bougainville and Solomon Islands, meeting in the Coral Sea.
This map indicates the routes taken by the three Chinese Navy ships on their “right to freedom of navigation” voyage in international waters circumnavigating Australia, with dates of way points indicated — from 3 February till 6 March 2025. Distances and locations are approximate. Image: Weibo/Declassified Australia
As the Chinese ships moved near northern Australia and through the Coral Sea heading further south, the Defence Department deployed Navy and Air Force assets to watch over the ships. These included various RAN warships including the frigate HMAS Arunta and a RAAF P-8A Poseidon intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance plane.
With unconfirmed reports a Chinese nuclear submarine may also be accompanying the surface ships, the monitoring may have also included one of the RAN’s Collins-class submarines, with their active range of sonar, radar and radio monitoring – however it is uncertain whether one was able to be made available from the fleet.
“From the point of time the first of the vessels entered into our more immediate region, we have been conducting active surveillance of their activities,” the Defence chief confirmed.
As the Chinese ships moved into the southern Tasman Sea, New Zealand navy ships joined in the monitoring alongside Australia’s Navy and Air Force.
The range of signals intelligence (SIGINT) that theoretically can be intercepted emanating from a naval ship at sea includes encrypted data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, aerial drone data and communications, as well as data of radar, gunnery, and weapon launches.
There are a number of surveillance facilities in Australia that would have been able to be directed at the Chinese ships.
Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Shoal Bay Receiving Station outside of Darwin, picks up transmissions and data emanating from radio signals and satellite communications from Australia’s near north region. ASD’s Cocos Islands receiving station in the mid-Indian ocean would have been available too.
The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) over-the-horizon radar network, spread across northern Australia, is an early warning system that monitors aircraft and ship movements across Australia’s north-western, northern, and north-eastern ocean areas — but its range off the eastern coast is not thought to presently reach further south than the sea off Mackay on the Queensland coast.
Of land-based surveillance facilities, it is the American Pine Gap base that is believed to have the best capability of intercepting the ship’s radio communications in the Tasman Sea.
Enter, Pine Gap and the Americans The US satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap in Central Australia is a US and Australian jointly-run satellite ground station. It is regarded as the most important such American satellite base outside of the USA.
The spy base – Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG) – showing the north-eastern corner of the huge base with some 18 of the base’s now 45 satellite dishes and covered radomes visible. Image: Felicity Ruby/Declassified Australia
The role of ASD in supporting the extensive US surveillance mission against China is increasingly valued by Australia’s large Five Eyes alliance partner.
A Top Secret ‘Information Paper’, titled “NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia”, leaked from the National Security Agency (NSA) by Edward Snowden and published by ABC’s Background Briefing, spells out the “close collaboration” between the NSA and ASD, in particular on China:
“Increased emphasis on China will not only help ensure the security of Australia, but also synergize with the U.S. in its renewed emphasis on Asia and the Pacific . . . Australia’s overall intelligence effort on China, as a target, is already significant and will increase.”
The Pine Gap base, as further revealed in 2023 by Declassified Australia, is being used to collect signals intelligence and other data from the Israeli battlefield of Gaza, and also Ukraine and other global hotspots within view of the US spy satellites.
It’s recently had a significant expansion (reported by this author in The Saturday Paper) which has seen its total of satellite dishes and radomes rapidly increase in just a few years from 35 to 45 to accommodate new heightened-capability surveillance satellites.
Pine Gap base collects an enormous range and quantity of intelligence and data from thermal imaging satellites, photographic reconnaissance satellites, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites, as expert researchers Des Ball, Bill Robinson and Richard Tanter of the Nautilus Institute have detailed.
These SIGINT satellites intercept electronic communications and signals from ground-based sources, such as radio communications, telemetry, radar signals, satellite communications, microwave emissions, mobile phone signals, and geolocation data.
Alliance priorities The US’s SIGINT satellites have a capability to detect and receive signals from VHF radio transmissions on or near the earth’s surface, but they need to be tasked to do so and appropriately targeted on the source of the transmission.
For the Pine Gap base to intercept VHF radio signals from the Chinese Navy ships, the base would have needed to specifically realign one of those SIGINT satellites to provide coverage of the VHF signals in the Tasman Sea at the time of the Chinese ships’ passage. It is not known publicly if they did this, but they certainly have that capability.
However, it is not only the VHF radio transmission that would have carried information about the live-firing exercise.
Pine Gap would be able to monitor a range of other SIGINT transmissions from the Chinese ships. Details of the planning and preparations for the live-firing exercise would almost certainly have been transmitted over data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, and even in the data of radar and gunnery operations.
But it is here that there is another possibility for the failure.
The Pine Gap base was built and exists to serve the national interests of the United States. The tasking of the surveillance satellites in range of Pine Gap base is generally not set by Australia, but is directed by United States’ agencies, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) together with the US Defense Department, the National Security Agency (NSA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Australia has learnt over time that US priorities may not be the same as Australia’s.
Australian defence and intelligence services can request surveillance tasks to be added to the schedule, and would have been expected to have done so in order to target the southern leg of the Chinese Navy ships’ voyage, when the ships were out of the range of the JORN network.
The military demands for satellite time can be excessive in times of heightened global conflict, as is the case now.
Whether the Pine Gap base was devoting sufficient surveillance resources to monitoring the Chinese Navy ships, due to United States’ priorities in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, North Korea, and to our north in the South China Sea, is a relevant question.
It can only be answered now by a formal government inquiry into what went on — preferably held in public by a parliamentary committee or separately commissioned inquiry. The sovereign defence of Australia failed in this incident and lessons need to be learned.
Who knew and when did they know If the Pine Gap base had been monitoring the VHF radio band and heard the Chinese Navy live-fire alert, or had been monitoring other SIGINT transmissions to discover the live-fire drill, the normal procedure would be for the active surveillance team to inform a number of levels of senior officers, a former Defence official familiar with the process told Declassified Australia.
Inside an operations room at the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra. Image: ADF/Declassified Australia
Expected to be included in the information chain are the Australian Deputy-Chief of Facility at the US base, NSA liaison staff at the base, the Australian Signals Directorate head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra, the Defence Force’s Headquarters Joint Operations Command, in Bungendore, and the Chief of the Defence Force. From there the Defence Minister’s office would need to have been informed.
As has been reported in media interviews and in testimony to the Senate Estimates hearings, it has been stated that Defence was not informed of the Chinese ships’ live-firing alert until a full 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.
The former Defence official told Declassified Australia it is vital the reason for the failure to detect the live-firing in a timely fashion is ascertained.
Either the Australian Defence Force and US Pine Gap base were not effectively actively monitoring the Chinese flotilla at this time — and the reasons for that need to be examined — or they were, but the information gathered was somewhere stalled and not passed on to correct channels.
If the evidence so far tendered by the Defence chief and the Minister is true, and it was not informed of the drill by any of its intelligence or surveillance assets before that phone call from Airservices Australia, the implications need to be seriously addressed.
A final word In just a couple of weeks the whole Defence environment for Australia has changed, for the worse.
The US military announces a drawdown in Europe and a new pivot to the Indo-Pacific. China shows Australia it can do tit-for-tat “navigational freedom” voyages close to the Australian coast. US intelligence support is withdrawn from Ukraine during the war. Australia discovers the AUKUS submarines’ arrival looks even more remote. The prime minister confuses the limited cover provided by the ANZUS treaty.
Meanwhile, the US militarisation of Australia’s north continues at pace. At the same time a senior Pentagon official pressures Australia to massively increase defence spending. And now, the country’s defence intelligence system has experienced an unexplained major failure.
Australia, it seems, is adrift in a sea of unpredictable global events and changing alliance priorities.
Peter Cronau is an award-winning, investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentary, The Base: Pine Gap’s Role in US Warfighting, was broadcast on Australian ABC Radio National and featured on ABC News. He produced and directed the documentary film Drawing the Line, revealing details of Australian spying in East Timor, on ABC TV’s premier investigative programme Four Corners. He won the Gold Walkley Award in 2007 for a report he produced on an outbreak of political violence in East Timor. This article was first published by Declassified Australia and is republished here with the author’s permission.
A former US diplomat, Nabeel Khoury, says President Donald Trump’s decision to launch attacks against the Houthis is misguided, and this will not subdue them.
“For our president who came in wanting to avoid war and wanting to be a man of peace, he’s going about it the wrong way,” he said.
“There are many paths that can be used before you resort to war.” Khoury told Al Jazeera.
The danger to shipping in the Red Sea was “a justifiable reason for concern”, Khoury told Al Jazeera in an interview, but added that it was a problem that could be resolved through diplomacy.
Ansar Allah (Houthi) media sources said that at least four areas had been razed by the US warplanes that targeted, in particular, a residential area north of the capital, Sanaa, killing 31 people.
The Houthis, who had been “bombed severely all over their territory” in the past, were not likely to be subdued through “a few weeks of bombing”, Khoury said.
“If you think that Hamas, living and fighting on a very small piece of land, totally surrounded by land, air and sea, and yet, 17 months of bombardment by the Israelis did not get rid of them.
‘More rugged space’
“The Houthis live in a much more rugged space, mountainous regions — it would be virtually impossible to eradicate them,” Khoury said.
“So there is no military logic to what’s happening, and there is no political logic either.”
Providing background, Patty Culhane reported from Washington that there were several factual errors in the justification President Trump had given for his order.
“It’s important to point out that the Houthi attacks have stopped since the ceasefire in Gaza [on January 19], although the Houthis were threatening to strike again,” she said.
“His other justification is saying that no US-flagged vessel has transited the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden safely in more than a year.
“And then he says another reason is because Houthis attacked a US military warship.
“That happened when Trump was not president.”
Down to 10,000 ships
She said the White House was now putting out more of a communique, “saying that before the attacks, there were 25,000 ships that transited the Red Sea annually. Now it’s down to 10,000 so, obviously, sort of shooting down the president’s concept that nobody is actually transiting the region.
“And it did list the number of attacks. The US commercial ships have been attacked 145 times since 2023 in their list.”
Meanwhile, at least nine people, including three journalists, have been killed and several others wounded in an Israeli drone attack on relief aid workers at Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, according to Palestinian media.
The attack reportedly targeted a relief team that was accompanied by journalists and photographers. At least three local journalists were among the dead.
The Palestinian Journalists’ Protection Centre said in a statement that Israel had killed “three journalists in an airstrike on a media team documenting relief efforts in northern Gaza”, reports
“The journalists were documenting humanitarian relief efforts for those affected by Israel’s genocidal war,” the statement added, according to Anadolu.
In a statement, the Israeli military claimed it struck “two terrorists . . . operating a drone that posed a threat” to Israeli soldiers in the area of Beit Lahiya.
“Later, a number of additional terrorists collected the drone operating equipment and entered a vehicle. The [Israeli military] struck the terrorists,” it added, without providing any evidence about its claims.
‘Liberation’ poetry
In Auckland on Saturday, protesters at the Aotearoa New Zealand’s weekly “free Palestine” rallies gave a tribute to poet Mahmoud Darwish — the “liberation voice of Palestine” — by reciting peace and justice poetry and marked the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre when a lone white terrorist gunned down 51 people at Friday prayers.
Two of the pro-Palestine protesters hold West Papuan and Palestinian flags – symbolising indigenous liberation – at Saturday’s rally in Auckland. Image: APR
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified with its legislature due to vote on a non-binding resolution to become a US state amid mounting Pacific geostrategic tensions and expansionist declarations by the Trump administration.
Located closer to Beijing than Hawai’i, Guam serves as a key US strategic asset, known as the “tip of the spear,” with 10,000 military personnel, an air base for F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers and home port for Virginia-class nuclear submarines.
Local Senator William A. Parkinson introduced the resolution to the legislature last Wednesday and called for Guam to be fully integrated into the American union, possibly as the 51st state.
“We are standing in a moment of history where two great empires are standing face-to-face with each other, about to go to war,” Parkinson said at a press conference on Thursday.
“We have to be real about what’s going on in this part of the world. We are a tiny island but we are too strategically important to be left alone. Stay with America or do we let ourselves be absorbed by China?”
His resolution states the decision “must be built upon the informed consent of the people of Guam through a referendum”.
Trump’s expansionist policies
Parkinson’s resolution comes as US President Donald Trump advocates territorially expansionist policies, particularly towards the strategically located Danish-ruled autonomous territory of Greenland and America’s northern neighbour, Canada.
“This one moment in time, this one moment in history, the stars are aligning so that the geopolitics of the United States favour statehood for Guam,” Parkinson said. “This is an opportunity we cannot pass up.”
Guam Legislature Senator William A. Parkinson holds a press conference after introducing his resolution. BenarNews screenshot APR
As a territory, Guam residents are American citizens but they cannot vote for the US president and their lone delegate to the Congress has no voting power on the floor.
The US acquired Guam, along with Puerto Rico, in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and both remain unincorporated territories to this day.
Independence advocates and representatives from the Guam Commission on Decolonisation regularly testify at the UN’s Decolonisation Committee, where the island has been listed as a Non-Self-Governing Territory since 1946.
Commission on Decolonisation executive director Melvin Won Pat-Borja said he was not opposed to statehood but is concerned if any decision on Guam’s status was left to the US.
“Decolonisation is the right of the colonised,” he said while attending Parkinson’s press conference, the Pacific Daily News reported.
‘Hands of our coloniser’
“It’s counterintuitive to say that, ‘we’re seeking a path forward, a path out of this inequity,’ and then turn around and put it right back in the hands of our coloniser.
“No matter what status any of us prefer, ultimately that is not for any one of us to decide, but it is up to a collective decision that we have to come to, and the only way to do it is via referendum,” he said, reports Kuam News.
With the geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific, Guam has become increasingly significant in supporting American naval and air operations, especially in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
The two US bases have seen Guam’s economy become heavily reliant on military investments and tourism.
The Defence Department holds about 25 percent of Guam’s land and is preparing to spend billions to upgrade the island’s military infrastructure as another 5000 American marines relocate there from Japan’s Okinawa islands.
Governor Lou Leon Guerrero delivers her “State of the Island” address in Guam on Tuesday . . . “Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter . . .” Image: Office of the Governor of Guam/Benar News
Military presence leveraged
The island has in recent years leveraged the increased military presence to demand federal assistance and the territory’s treasury relies on at least US$0.5 billion in annual funding.
“Let us be clear about this: Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter, because housing aid to Guam is cut, or if 36,000 of our people lose access to Medicaid and Medicare coverage keeping them healthy, alive and out of poverty,” Guerrero said.
Parkinson’s proposed legislative resolution calls for an end to 125-plus years of US colonial uncertainty.
“The people of Guam, as the rightful stewards of their homeland, must assert their inalienable right to self-determination,” states the resolution, including that there be a “full examination of statehood or enhanced autonomous status for Guam.”
“Granting Guam equal political status would signal unequivocally that Guam is an integral part of the United States, deterring adversaries who might otherwise perceive Guam as a mere expendable outpost.”
If adopted by the Guam legislature, the non-binding resolution would be transmitted to the White House.
A local statute enacted in 2000 for a political status plebiscite on statehood, independence or free association has become bogged down in US courts.
‘Reject colonial status quo’
Neil Weare, a former Guam resident and co-director of Right to Democracy, said the self-determination process must be centred on what the people of Guam want, “not just what’s best for US national security”.
“Right to Democracy does not take a position on political status, other than to reject the undemocratic and colonial status quo,” Weare said on behalf of the nonprofit organisation that advocates for rights and self-determination in US territories.
“People can have different views on what is the best solution to this problem, but we should all be in agreement that the continued undemocratic rule of millions of people in US territories is wrong and needs to end.”
He said the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence next year can open a new venue for a conversation about key concepts — such as the “consent of the governed” — involving Guam and other US territories.
Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has recalled that 20 journalists were killed during the six-year Philippines presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, a regime marked by fierce repression of the press.
Former president Duterte was arrested earlier this week as part of an International Criminal Court investigation into crimes against humanity linked to his merciless war on drugs. He is now in The Hague awaiting trial.
The watchdog has called on the administration of current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom and combat impunity for the crimes against media committed by Duterte’s regime.
“Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Rodrigo Duterte said in his inauguration speech on 30 June 2016, which set the tone for the rest of his mandate — unrestrained violence against journalists and total disregard for press freedom, said RSF in a statement.
During the Duterte regime’s rule, RSF recorded 20 cases of journalists killed while working.
Among them was Jesus Yutrago Malabanan, shot dead after covering Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war for Reuters.
Online harassment surged, particularly targeting women journalists.
Maria Ressa troll target
The most prominent victim was Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the news site Rappler, who faced an orchestrated hate campaign led by troll armies allied with the government in response to her commitment to exposing the then-president’s bloody war.
“The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte is good news for the Filipino journalism community, who were the direct targets of his campaign of terror,” said RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani.
RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani . . . “the Filipino journalism community were the direct targets of [former president Rodrigo Duterte]’s campaign of terror.” Image: RSF“President Marcos and his administration must immediately investigate Duterte’s past crimes and take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom.”
The repression carried out during Duterte’s tenure continues to impact on Filipino journalism: investigative journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been languishing in prison since her arrest in 2020, still awaiting a verdict in her trial for “financing terrorism” and “illegal possession of firearms” — trumped-up charges that could see her sentenced to 40 years in prison.
With 147 journalists murdered since the restoration of democracy in 1986, the Philippines remains one of the deadliest countries for media workers.
Protesters at the Aotearoa New Zealand’s weekly “free Palestine” rallies today gave a tribute to poet Mahmoud Darwish — the “liberation voice of Palestine” — and marked the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre when a lone terrorist gunned down 51 people at Friday prayers.
Organisers thanked the crowd for attending the rally in what has become known as “Palestine Corner” in the downtown Komititanga Square in the heart of Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau in the 75th week of protests.
This was one of more than 20 Palestinian solidarity events happening across the motu this weekend.
Palestinian poet, writer and activist Mahmoud Darwish . . . forged a Palestinian consciousness. Image: The Palestine Project
The organisers, of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), said the rallies would continue until there was a “permanent ceasefire through Palestine” — Gaza, East Jerusalem and occupied West Bank and for a just political outcome for a sovereign Palestinian state.
The poet, writer and activist Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was born on 15 March 1941 in the small Palestinian Arab and Christian village of al-Birwa, east of Acre, in what is now western Galilee in the state of Israel after the attacks by Israeli militia during the Nakba.
He published his first book of poetry, Asafir Bila Ajniha (“Birds Without Wings”), at the age of 19. Over his writing career, he published more than 30 volumes of poetry and eight books of prose.
By 1981, at the age of 40, he was editor of Al-Jadid, Al Fajir, Shu’un Filisiniyya and Al-Karmel.
He won many awards and his work about the “loss of Palestine” has been translated and published in 20 languages.
Darwish is credited with helping forge a “Palestinian consciousness” and resistance to Israeli military rule after the 1967 Six-Day War.
Several speakers read poetry by Darwish or their own poems dedicated to Palestine, including Kaaka Tarau (“Identity Card”), Chris Sullivan (“To My Mother”), Jax Taylor (own poem), Besma (own poem), Audrey (“I am There”), Achmat Esau (“I Love You More”), and Veih Taylor (“Rita and the Rifle”).
MC Kerry Sorenson-Tyrer . . . thanked rally supporters for their mahi for a Free Palestine movement.
Journalist David Robie provided a short introduction to Darwish’s life and works, and he also spoke about the arrest of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte this week who is now in a cell in The Hague awaiting trial on International Criminal Court (ICC) charges of crimes against humanity over the extrajudicial killings of Filipinos during the so-called “war against drugs”.
A poster at the rally . . . a “wanted” sign for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant in reference to the ICC warrants for their arrest. Image: Asia Pacific Report
“This arrest is really significant as it gives us hope,” he said.
“Although the wheels of justice might seem to move slowly, the arrest of Duterte gives us hope that one day the ICC arrest warrants issued last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant will eventually be served, and they will be detained and face trials in The Hague.”
South African-born teacher and activist Achmat Esau reminded the crowd of the significance of the date — March 15, the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch massacre when a lone Australian terrorist shocked the nation by killing 51 people at Friday prayers in two mosques with scores injured, or wounded by gunfire.
Leann Wahanui-Peters and Achmat Esau . . . a poem dedicated to the memory of the 2019 Christchurch martyrs. Image: Asia Pacific Report
The gunman pleaded guilty at his trial and is serving a life sentence without parole — the first such sentence imposed in New Zealand.
Esau shared a poem that he had written to honour those killed and wounded:
Memory, by Achmat Esau 51 … the victims 49 … the injured 15 … the day 1 … the terror 2 … the masjids 5 million … the impact Hate … the reason Murder … the aim Love … the response Hope … the result Justice … the call 51 … the Martyrs!
The MC, Kerry Sorensen-Tyrer, praised the “creative people” and called on them to “keep creating and processing their feelings into something beautiful and external to honour the people of Palestine”.
Organisers were Kathy Ross and Del Abcede.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
When it comes to antisemitism, politicians in Australia are often quick to jump on the claim without waiting for evidence.
With notable and laudable exceptions like the Greens and independents such as Tasmanian federal MP Andrew Wilkie, it seems any allegation will do when it comes to the opportunity to imply Arab Australians, the Muslim community and Palestinian supporters are trying to destroy the lives of the Jewish community.
A case in point. The discovery in January this year of a caravan found in Dural, New South Wales, filled with explosives and a note that referenced the Great Synagogue in Sydney led to a frenzy of clearly uninformed and dangerous rhetoric from politicians and the media about an imminent terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community.
It was nothing of the sort as we now know with the revelation by police that this was a “fabricated terrorist plot”.
As the ABC reported on March 10: “Police have said an explosives-laden caravan discovered in January at Dural in Sydney’s north-west was a ‘fake terrorism plot’ with ties to organised crime”, and that “the Australian Federal Police said they were confident this was a ‘fabricated terrorist plot’,” adding the belief was held “very early on after the caravan was located”.
One would have thought the political and media class would know that it is critical in a society supposedly underpinned by the rule of law that police be allowed to get on with the job of investigating allegations without comment.
Particularly so in the hot-house atmosphere that exists in this nation today.
Opportunistic Dutton
But not the ever opportunistic and divisive federal opposition leader Peter Dutton.
After the Daily Telegraph reported the Dural caravan story on January 29, Dutton was quick to say that this “was potentially the biggest terrorist attack in our country’s history”. To his credit, Prime Anthony Albanese said in response he does not “talk about operational matters for an ongoing investigation”.
Dutton’s language was clearly designed to whip up fear and hysteria among the Jewish community and to demonise Palestinian supporters.
He was not Robinson Crusoe sadly. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told the media on January 29 that the Dural caravan discovery had the potential to have led to a “mass casualty event”.
The Zionist Federation of Australia, an organisation that is an unwavering supporter of Israel despite the horror that nation has inflicted on Gaza, was even more overblown in its claims.
It issued a statement that claimed: “This is undoubtedly the most severe threat to the Jewish community in Australia to date. The plot, if executed, would likely have resulted in the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil.”
Note the word “undoubtedly”.
Uncritical Israeli claims
Then there was another uncritical Israel barracker, Sky News’ Sharri Markson, who claimed; “To think perpetrators would have potentially targeted a museum commemorating the Holocaust — a time when six million Jews were killed — is truly horrifying.”
And naturally, Jilian Segal, the highly partisan so-called “Antisemitism Envoy” said the discovery of the caravan was a “chilling reminder that the same hatred that led to the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust still exists today”.
In short, the response to the Dural caravan incident was simply an exercise in jumping on the antisemitism issue without any regard to the consequences for our community, including the fear it spread among Jewish Australians and the further demonising of the Arab Australian community.
No circumspection. No leadership. No insistence that the matter had not been investigated fully.
As the only Jewish organisation that represents humanity, the Jewish Council of Australia, said in a statement from its director Sarah Schwartz on March 10 the “statement from the AFP [Australian Federal Police] should prompt reflection from every politician, journalist and community leader who has sought to manipulate and weaponise fears within the Jewish community.
‘Irresponsible and dangerous’
“The attempt to link these events to the support of Palestinians — whether at protests, universities, conferences or writers’ festivals — has been irresponsible and dangerous.” Truth in spades.
And ask yourself this question. Let’s say the Dural caravan contained notes about mosques and Arab Australian community centres. Would the media, politicians and others have whipped up the same level of hysteria and divisive rhetoric?
The answer is no.
One assumes Dutton, Segal, the Zionist Federation and others who frothed at the mouth in January will now offer a collective mea culpa. Sadly, they won’t because there will be no demands to do so.
The damage to our legal system has been done because political opportunism and milking antisemitism for political ends comes first for those who should know better.
Greg Barns SC is national criminal justice spokesperson for the Australian Lawyers Alliance. This article was first published by Pearls and Irritations social policy journal and is republished with permission.
While Rodrigo Duterte may still command support from his core base in the Philippines, something has clearly shifted. Yet the power he did wield haunts the nation as it awaits his trial at the International Criminal Court and it renews speculation about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who also has an ICC arrest warrant out for him.
COMMENTARY:By Pia Ranada of Rappler
I witnessed former President Rodrigo Duterte when he was at the height of power. I witnessed how he would walk into an event five hours late and still be applauded.
I remember how he was allowed to say he was protecting the rights of children, in the same breath as giving his blessing for a drug raid that killed children.
Award-winning Rappler journalist Ranada . . . “His allies turned a blind eye or made excuses whenever Duterte chipped at the integrity of our democratic institutions.” Image: Rappler
I remember how he was able to address the United Nations General Assembly after years of threatening to slap and kill its rapporteurs.
His allies turned a blind eye or made excuses whenever Duterte chipped at the integrity of our democratic institutions — his threats and curses against the Commission on Audit and Commission on Human Rights, the Vice President, the Supreme Court, the media.
The brute force of his power
On a personal level, I experienced being at the end of the brute force of his power.
Rendered voiceless in a press conference where he ranted about a Rappler story on a military project (he silenced the microphone so my responses would not be heard). Told several times I was “not a Filipino” for being so critical in my reporting about his administration.
Many Filipinos took his words as gospel truth and, no matter what I did, could not convince them otherwise.
What made it terrifying was not the violent language he used but the knowledge that he had the entire power of the state to back him up. That power was given to him by Filipinos who voted him into the presidency.
He wielded a terrible power. Opposition was a shout in the dark. Most people could only watch in horror as Duterte did the unthinkable every day and was applauded for it. The excuse of his allies was his popularity, his approval ratings.
For others, the reason was fear.
Duterte playing the ‘victim’
Today, Duterte finds himself playing a role he never expected to play: a victim.
A president so secretive of his health and hospital visits now puts his personal physician front and center and allows himself to appear weak and ailing. Government doctors declared him healthy during a check-up right after he landed from Hong Kong.
Beside him, in the room where he waited, is lawyer Salvador Medialdea, arguing and appealing to the prosecutor general. Only years ago, Medialdea was executive secretary, his words and signature able to mobilise entire government bodies to do Duterte’s bidding.
The man on Duterte’s left is identified by today’s news articles as his lawyer. But not long ago, Martin Delgra was the powerful chief of the Land Transportation Office.
These two men bewailed the various deprivations Duterte has supposedly had to suffer. But when they held power, they did not lift a finger against the blatant violations of rule of law perpetrated against teenage boys, fathers, mothers, daughters, tricycle drivers, vendors, opposition leaders, journalists, and more.
The reversal of fate is the most stunning aspect of this arrest.
The choices a nation makes
I, too, was in Hong Kong at the same time as Duterte, though I did not know it at the time. I was there for a layover of my flight from a work trip.
I took a Cathay Pacific flight back to Manila, eager to return to my family, knowing there was a lot of work at the newsroom waiting for me.
Duterte, too, would take a Cathay Pacific flight to the same airport terminal I landed in. But he would be returning as the subject of an ICC arrest warrant, the first former Asian head of state to be summoned to answer for crimes against humanity.
But the true horror of Duterte’s violations is not that he committed them but that most Filipinos allowed them to happen. Even now, Duterte is rallying his support base around the idea that he waged his drug war for the preservation of the country.
It took a process in an international court to arrest Duterte. Investigations in the House and Senate came late in the day and only after the crumbling of a political alliance that for quite some time protected Duterte.
As we await Duterte’s ICC trial, Filipinos have to come to terms with the Duterte presidency enabled by our choices and what choices have to be made to ensure those offences never happen again.
A leader, no matter how charismatic, must never be allowed to exploit our differences, tap into our fears and insecurities as a nation, benefit from forgiving natures in order to dismantle our democratic processes, and commit the mass murder of our citizens.
It’s a trial of our consciences that must also begin now.
Pia Ranada is Rappler’s community lead, in charge of linking the news website’s journalism with communities for impact. Previously, she was an investigative and senior reporter for Rappler. She is best known for her coverage of the Rodrigo Duterte administration when she was Rappler’s Malacañang reporter.
An open letter signed by 100 Christian leaders, calling for the granting of humanitarian visas to Aotearoa New Zealand for families of Palestinians trapped in Gaza has been handed over on the steps of Parliament.
The letter was presented yesterday on Ash Wednesday to opposition Labour Party MP Phil Twyford, who was joined by six other members of Parliament.
Minister for Immigration Erica Stanford and Associate Minister for Immigration Chris Penk were invited to receive the letter, but both declined the invitation.
The open letter was signed by leaders from Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Quaker, non-denominational and Methodist movements, and leaders from organisations and groups such as Caritas, Student Christian Movements and Te Mīhana Māori.
Granting immediate emergency humanitarian visas to Palestinians in Gaza who have family in New Zealand;
Providing sustained diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government to allow visa-holders to safely evacuate from Gaza and humanitarian aid to freely enter; and
Providing robust resettlement assistance once these families arrive in New Zealand.
Hoped for troops withdrawal
The letter comes after the end of the first phase of the Gaza Ceasefire agreement — which was due to see Israel withdraw its military forces from the border between Gaza and Egypt.
Christians United for Refuge spokesperson Esmé Hulbert-Putt said: “When we first prepared this letter, we hoped and prayed that we would see the withdrawal of military forces from the border.”
She added that this opening, alongside strong diplomacy and visa pathways, would allow for the family reunification that Palestinians in Aotearoa had been asking for for more than a year.
Following this handover, a separate group, organised by Aotearoa Christians for Peace in Palestine completed a 10km pilgrimage in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington, symbolising the distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and the many military checkpoints along the way.
These pilgrimages each involved praying at the arrivals terminals of the respective international airports — in prayerful hope that one day these doors would open to families of Palestinians in Gaza.
Christian pilgrims have staged airport protests around New Zealand calling for humanitarian visas for Palestinians from Gaza. Image: Christians United for Refuge Aotearoa Campaign
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
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