Officials in the United States have said that Washington still does not “know with full certainty what transpired” when a US citizen was killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank last week, stressing that they were waiting for the findings of an Israeli investigation.
The US on Monday also appeared to reject calls for an independent investigation into the fatal shooting of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi,reports Al Jazeera.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to acknowledge that Eygi was killed by an Israeli soldier, but he called for the process to “play out and for the facts to be gathered”.
He also urged Israel to “quickly and robustly conduct” its probe and make the findings public but confirmed the administration is not planning to independently investigate the killing — as Eygi’s family had requested.
“We are working closely to ascertain the facts, but there is not a State Department-led investigation that is going on,” Patel told a press briefing yesterday.
Eygi, 26, a Turkish-American citizen, was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper on Friday while attending a demonstration against the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in Beita, south of Nablus.
Israeli forces fired live ammunition, stun grenades and tear gas at demonstrators, with eyewitnesses saying Eygi was intentionally targeted even as she posed no threat.
Palestinian rights advocates and Eygi’s loved ones have been calling for accountability for her killing.
Earlier this month, following the killing in Gaza of US-Israeli captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the US Department of Justice quickly announced it was investigating his killing “and each and every one of Hamas’s brutal murders of Americans”.
Procession for Turkish American activist killed by Israeli forces. Video: Al Jazeera
Pressed on the double standard yesterday, Patel sought to differentiate Goldberg-Polin’s killing from the shooting of Eygi.
“Let’s make sure we are not conflating the direct murder of American-Israeli citizens, hostages, being held by a terrorist group,” he told reporters.
“Each circumstance is unique and different,” he added.
The department did not immediately answer a request by Al Jazeera to elaborate on that comment.
Patel also did not directly answer questions about how Eygi’s family and those of others killed by Israel could trust an investigation process handled by the perpetrators of their killings.
NoUS investigation After the White House said on Friday that it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and that it had requested Israel to conduct an investigation, Eygi’s family pushed back and called for an independent one.
American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi . . . shot dead by an Israeli sniper and her family has called for an independent investigation. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot
“We welcome the White House’s statement of condolences, but given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate,” they said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the White House said on Monday that US President Joe Biden had not yet spoken to the family.
Ahmad Abuznaid, the executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USPCR), dismissed the US call for Israel to investigate its own forces.
Israeli authorities rarely ever prosecute troops for abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories despite reports of rampant rights violations against Palestinians.
“The first investigation should be into how the State Department continues to arm the state of Israel as it’s killed several US citizens and tens of thousands of Palestinians in the last year alone. That’s the primary investigation we’re waiting on the results for,” Abuznaid told Al Jazeera.
Margaret DeReus, executive director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, also described the US call for an Israeli investigation as “wholly insufficient”.
“Israel doesn’t conduct transparent investigations and neither Israel nor the US hold the perpetrators of these killings accountable. You don’t rely on the criminal to investigate his crime,” DeReus said.
“Over the past nearly 11 months, President Biden has shown daily which lives he values and which lives he deems dispensable. He cannot place his allegiance to this genocidal regime over the lives of his own citizens,” she added.
‘Cover-ups’ over US citizens Israeli forces have killed several US citizens in recent years, but the Biden administration has consistently rejected calls for independent investigations into those incidents as well.
For example, in 2022, Washington resisted demands for a US-led probe into the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military in the West Bank, urging Israel to conduct its own probe instead.
Israeli authorities eventually dismissed the fatal shooting as an “accident” and refused to pursue criminal charges in the case.
Israeli and US media outlets reported months after the killing of Abu Akleh that the US Justice Department opened a probe into the shooting. But US officials have not publicly confirmed the existence of the investigation, whose findings remain unknown.
Families of the victims have condemned the decision to once again allow Israel to investigate a killing by its own forces.
“Israel does not do investigations; they do cover-ups,” Cindy Corrie, Rachel Corrie’s mother, told Democracy Now on Monday.
An Israeli soldier crushed Rachel Corrie to death with a bulldozer in Rafah in 2003. Her family spent years lobbying multiple administrations to launch an independent, US-led probe — to no avail.
“Our family worked for an investigation into Rachel’s killing, and we wanted some consequences out of that. And we hoped — even though we didn’t know the names of the people that would be killed in the future, we hoped that that would stop and it would not happen,” Cindy Corrie said.
Some advocates have argued that even a US-led investigation would not suffice.
“An international investigation, ideally by the ICC, must commence because Israeli authorities cannot be trusted to credibly investigate the killings of American citizens, and the US government is unwilling to hold Israel accountable,” human rights lawyer Jamil Dakwar, who co-represented the Corrie family in their civil case in Israeli courts, said.
Eygi, who was born in Antalya, Turkey but grew up in Seattle, Washington in the US, had recently graduated from the University of Washington, where she had participated in campus protests against US support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
She was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organisation.
In recent years, Beita has been the site of weekly demonstrations against the construction of new illegal Israeli outposts. Before Eygi, 17 Palestinian protesters were killed there since 2020, according to the group.
Pro-Palestinian anti-war activists in Australia have protested in Melbourne, disrupting a defence expo set to open on Wednesday.
Protesters gathered yesterday in front of companies connected to weapons manufacturing across Melbourne as police were called to prevent an escalation of the events, according to 7News Melbourne.
Many police cars and units were visible in front of company buildings to prevent an escalation of the protests.
Protests are expected to move across the city to different areas ahead of the Land Forces Military Expo on Wednesday, with more than 25,000 participants, potentially one of the biggest in the country in decades.
On Sunday, Extinction Rebellion activists blocked Montague Street near the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre where the expo is being held.
Pro-Palestinian protesters in Australia have been urging the government to impose sanctions on Israel for its genocidal war on Gaza.
Israel has continued a devastating military offensive in the Gaza Strip since an attack by Hamas resistance forces on October 7, 2023, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and more than 91,700 wounded, according to local health authorities.
As the Israeli war enters its 12th month, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.
Israel has also intensified its attacks on the Occupied West Bank in recent weeks, killing at least 692 Palestinians.
Extinction Rebellion disruption
Formed in 2018, Extinction Rebellion has employed disruptive tactics targeting roads and airports to denounce the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, reports Al Jazeera.
However, since the war on Gaza, they have also taken a strong position on the fighting and have called for an immediate ceasefire.
“If we believe in climate and ecological justice, we must seek justice in all forms. The climate and ecological emergency has roots in centuries of colonial violence, exploitation and oppression,” the UK-based group said in a statement in November.
In July 2014, shortly after the kickoff of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” in the Gaza Strip — a 51-day affair that ultimately killed 2251 Palestinians, including 551 children — Danish journalist Nikolaj Krak penned a dispatch from Israel for the Copenhagen-based Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper.
Describing the scene on a hill on the outskirts of the Israeli city of Sderot near the Gaza border, Krak noted that the area had been “transformed into something that most closely resembles the front row of a reality war theatre”.
Israelis had “dragged camping chairs and sofas” to the hilltop, where some spectators sat “with crackling bags of popcorn”, while others partook of hookahs and cheerful banter.
Fiery, earth-shaking air strikes on Gaza across the way were met with cheers and “solid applause”.
To be sure, Israelis have always enjoyed a good murderous spectacle — which is hardly surprising for a nation whose very existence is predicated on mass slaughter. But as it turns out, the applause is not quite so solid when Israeli lives are caught up in the explosive apocalyptic display.
For the past 11 months, Israel’s “reality war theatre” has offered a view of all-out genocide in the Gaza Strip, where the official death toll has reached nearly 41,000.
A July Lancet study found that the true number of deaths may well top 186,000 — and that is only if the killing ends soon.
Protests for hostage deal
Now, massive protests have broken out across Israel demanding that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enact a ceasefire and hostage deal to free the remaining 100 or so Israeli captives held in Gaza.
Last week, when the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six captives, CNN reported that some 700,000 protesters had taken to the streets across the country. And on Monday, a general strike spearheaded by Israel’s primary labour union succeeded in shutting much of the economy down for several hours.
Although certain wannabe peaceniks among the international commentariat have blindly attributed the protests to a desire to end the bloodshed, the fact of the matter is that Palestinian blood is not high on the list of concerns.
Rather, the only lives that matter in the besieged, pulverised, and genocide-stricken Gaza Strip are the lives of the captives — whose captivity, it bears underscoring, is entirely a result of Israeli policy and Israel’s unceasing sadistic treatment of Palestinians.
As Israeli analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg recently commented to Al Jazeera regarding the aims of the current protests, “the issue of returning the hostages is centre stage”.
Acknowledging that “an understanding that a deal would also mean an end to the conflict is there, but rarely stated”, Flaschenberg emphasised that “as far as the protests’ leadership goes, no, it’s all about the hostages”.
The captives, then, have assumed centre stage in Israel’s latest bout of blood-soaked war theatrics, while for some Israelis the present genocide is evidently not nearly genocidal enough.
Press a button for ‘wipe out’
During a recent episode of the popular English-language Israeli podcast “Two Nice Jewish Boys”, the podcasting duo in question suggested that it would be cool to just press a button and wipe out “every single living being in Gaza” as well as in the West Bank.
Time to break out the popcorn and hookahs.
At the end of the day, the disproportionate value assigned to the lives of the Israeli captives in Gaza vis-à-vis the lives of the Palestinians who are being annihilated is of a piece with Israel’s trademark chauvinism.
This outlook casts Israelis as the perennial victims of Palestinian “terrorism” even as Palestinians are consistently massacred at astronomically higher rates by the Israeli military.
During Operation Protective Edge in 2014, for example, no more than six Israeli civilians were killed. And yet Israel maintained its monopoly on victimisation.
In June of this year, the Israeli army undertook a rescue operation in Gaza that freed four captives but reportedly killed 210 Palestinians in the process — no doubt par for the disproportionate course.
Meanwhile, following the recovery of the bodies of the six captives last week, Netanyahu blamed Hamas for their demise, declaring: “Whoever murders hostages doesn’t want a deal.”
General consensus over Israeli life
But what about “whoever” continues to preside over a genocide while assassinating the top ceasefire negotiator for Hamas and sabotaging prospects for a deal at every turn?
As the protests now demonstrate, many Israelis are on to Netanyahu. But the issue with the protests is that genocide is not the issue.
Even among Netanyahu’s detractors, there persists a general consensus as to the unilateral sacrosanctity of Israeli life, which translates into the assumption of an inalienable right to slaughter Palestinians.
And as the latest episode of Israel’s “reality war theatre” drags on — with related Israeli killing sprees available for viewing in the West Bank and Lebanon, too — this show is really getting old.
One would hope Israeli audiences will eventually tire of it all and walk out, but for the time being bloodbaths are a guaranteed blockbuster.
Belén Fernández is the author of Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), and Martyrs Never Die: Travels through South Lebanon (Warscapes, 2016). She writes for numerous publications and this article was first published by Al Jazeera.
We are deeply concerned with the misleading nature of the journalism presented in your recent coverage of the escalating crisis in Gaza and the West Bank. By focusing on specific language and framing, while leaving out the necessary context of international law, the broadcast misrepresents the reality of the situation faced by Palestinians.
This has the effect of perpetuating a narrative that could be seen and experienced as biased and dehumanising.
This ruling highlights the severity of Israel’s actions and the international community’s obligation to hold those responsible accountable. However, TVNZ’s coverage has often failed to reflect this legal and humanitarian perspective.
Instead it echos biased narratives that obscure these realities. This includes the expansion of genocidal like acts to the West Bank and the serious concerns about the potential for mass ethnic cleansing and further escalation of grave human rights violations.
Under international law, including the Genocide Convention, media organisations have a crucial responsibility to report accurately and avoid inciting violence or supporting those committing genocidal acts.
Complicity in genocide can occur when media coverage supports or justifies the actions of perpetrators, contributing to the dehumanisation of victims and the perpetuation of violence. By failing to provide balanced reporting and instead contributing to harmful stereotypes and misinformation, TVNZ risks being complicit in these grave violations of human rights.
Tragic history of attacks
New Zealand’s own tragic history of attacks on Muslims, such as the Al Noor Mosque shootings, should serve as a powerful reminder of the consequences of dehumanising narratives. The media plays a pivotal role in shaping public perception, and it is deeply concerning to see TVNZ contributing to the marginalisation and demonisation of Muslims and Palestinians through biased reporting.
We urge you to review your coverage of the genocide to ensure that it is fair, balanced, and aligned with international law and journalistic ethics. Specific examples of biased reporting include recent stories on Gaza that failed to mention the ICJ ruling or the context of an illegal occupation.
This includes decades of systematic land confiscation, military control, restrictions on movement, and the suppression of Palestinian voices through media censorship and the shutdown of local newspapers. Accurate and responsible journalism is essential in fostering an informed and empathetic public, especially on matters as sensitive and impactful as this.
On August 29, 2024, TVNZ aired a news story that exemplifies problematic media framing when reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The story begins by benignly describing Israel’s “entry into the West Bank” as part of a “counter-terrorism strike”— the largest operation in 10 years — implying that the context is solely anti-terrorism.
Automatically, the use of the word terrorism, sets the narrative of “good Israel” and “bad Palestinian” for the remainder of the news story. However, the report fails to mention numerous critical aspects, such as the provocations by Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque and threatening to build a synagogue at Islam’s third holiest site, or Israel’s escalations and violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The Convention considers the transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population into the territory it occupies a war crime, and under international law, Palestinians have the right to resist such occupation, a right recognised and protected by international legal frameworks.
The story uses footage, presumably provided by the IDF, that portrays the Israeli military as a calm, moral force entering “terrorist strongholds”, which is at odds with abundant open-source footage showing the IDF destroying infrastructure, terrorising civilians, and protecting armed settlers as they displace Palestinians from their homes.
Bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian homes
It portrays the IDF entering the town with bulldozers, but makes no mention of how those bulldozers are used to destroy Palestinian homes and infrastructure to make way for Israeli settlements.
Furthermore, the report fails to mention that just last month, the Israeli government announced its plans to officially recognise five more illegal settlements in the West Bank and expand existing settlements, understandably exacerbating tensions.
The narrative is further reinforced by giving airtime to an Israeli spokesperson who frames the operation as a defensive counter-terrorism initiative. The journalist echoes this narrative, positioning Israel as merely responding to threats.
Although a brief soundbite from a Palestinian Red Crescent worker expresses fears of what might happen in the West Bank, the report fails to provide any counter-narrative to Israel’s self-defence claim.
The story concludes by listing the number of deaths in the West Bank since October 19, implying that the situation began with Hamas’s actions in Gaza on that date, rather than addressing the illegal Israeli occupation since 1967, as the root cause of the violence.
Why is this important? The news story is a violation of the Accuracy and Impartiality Standard with TVNZ failing to present a balanced view of the situation in Palestine, potentially misleading the audience on critical aspects of the conflict.
Secondly, the news story violates the Harm and Offence Standard, being an insufficient and inflammatory portrayal of the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine contributing to public misperception and harm.
Additionally, there is a concern regarding the Fairness Standard, with individuals and groups affected by the conflict not being given fair opportunity to respond or be represented in the broadcast.
These breaches are significant as they undermine the integrity of the reporting and fail to uphold the standards of responsible journalism. Holding our media outlets to high journalistic standards is essential, particularly in the context of the genocide in Gaza.
The media plays a significant part in either exposing or obscuring the realities of such atrocities. When news outlets fail to report accurately or neglect to label the situation in Gaza as genocide, they contribute to a narrative that minimises the severity of the crisis and enables and prolongs Israel’s social license to continue it’s genocidal actions.
Should there be no substantial changes to address our concerns, we will escalate this matter to the Broadcasting Standards Authority for further review.
Regional leaders will gather later this month in Tonga for the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Tonga and high on the agenda will be Japan’s dumping of
treated nuclear wastewater in the Pacific Ocean.
A week ago on the 6 August 2024, the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima in 1945 and the 39th anniversary of the Treaty of Rarotonga opening for signatures in 1985 were marked.
As the world and region remembered the horrors of nuclear weapons and stand in solidarity, there is still work to be done.
READ MORE: Other nuclear wastewater in Pacific reports
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has stated that Japan’s discharge of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean does not breach the Rarotonga Treaty which established a Nuclear-Free Zone in the South Pacific.
Civil society groups have been calling for Japan to stop the dumping in the Pacific Ocean, but Brown, who is also the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum and represents a country
associated by name with the Rarotonga Treaty, has backtracked on both the efforts of PIFS and his own previous calls against it.
Brown stated during the recent 10th Pacific Alliance Leaders Meeting (PALM10) meeting in
Tokyo that Pacific Island Leaders stressed the importance of transparency and scientific evidence to ensure that Japan’s actions did not harm the environment or public health.
But he also defended Japan, saying that the wastewater, treated using the Advanced Liquid
Processing System (ALPS) to remove most radioactive materials except tritium, met the
standard set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Harmful isotopes removed
“No, the water has been treated to remove harmful isotopes, so it’s well within the standard guidelines as outlined by the global authority on nuclear matters, the IAEA,” Brown said in an Islands Business article.
“Japan is complying with these guidelines in its discharge of wastewater into the ocean.”
The Cook Islands has consistently benefited from Japanese development grants. In 2021, Japan funded through the Asian Development Bank $2 million grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, financed by the Government of Japan.
Together with $500,000 of in-kind contribution from the government of the Cook Islands, the grant funded the Supporting Safe Recovery of Travel and Tourism Project.
Just this year Japan provided grants for the Puaikura Volunteer Fire Brigade Association totaling US$132,680 and a further US$53,925 for Aitutaki’s Vaitau School.
Long-term consequences
In 2023, Prime Minister Brown said it placed a special obligation on Pacific Island States because of ’the long-term consequences for Pacific peoples’ health, environment and human rights.
Pacific states, he said, had a legal obligation “to prevent the dumping of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter by anyone” and “to not . . . assist or encourage the dumping by anyone of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter at sea anywhere within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone.
“Our people do not have anything to gain from Japan’s plan but have much at risk for
generations to come.”
The Pacific Islands Forum went on further to state then that the issue was an “issue of significant transboundary and intergenerational harm”.
The Rarotonga Treaty, a Cold War-era agreement, prohibits nuclear weapons testing and
deployment in the region, but it does not specifically address the discharge of the treated
nuclear wastewater.
Pacific civil society organisations continue to condemn Japan’s dumping of nuclear-treated
wastewater. Of its planned 1.3 million tonnes of nuclear-treated wastewater, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has conducted seven sets of dumping into the Pacific Ocean and was due to commence the eighth between August 7-25.
Regardless of the recommendations provided by the Pacific Island Forum’s special panel of
experts and civil society calls to stop Japan and for PIF Leaders to suspend Japan’s dialogue
partner status, the PIF Chair Mark Brown has ignored concerns by stating his support for
Japan’s nuclear wastewater dumping plans.
Contradiction of treaty
This decision is being viewed by the international community as a contradiction of the Treaty of Rarotonga that symbolises a genuine collaborative endeavour from the Pacific region, born out of 10 years of dedication from Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, the Cook Islands, and various other nations, all working together to establish a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific. Treaty Ratification
Bedi Racule, a nuclear justice advocate said the Treaty of Rarotonga preamble had one of the most powerful statements in any treaty ever. It is the member states’ promise for a nuclear free Pacific.
“The spirit of the Treaty is to protect the abundance and the beauty of the islands for future
generations,” Racule said.
She continued to state that it was vital to ensure that the technical aspects of the Treaty and the text from the preamble is visualised.
“We need to consistently look at this Treaty because of the ongoing nuclear threats that are
happening”.
Racule said the Treaty did not address the modern issues being faced like nuclear waste dumping, and stressed that there was a dire need to increase the solidarity and the
universalisation of the Treaty.
“There is quite a large portion of the Pacific that is not signed onto the Treaty. There’s still work within the Treaty that needs to be ratified.
“It’s almost like a check mark that’s there but it’s not being attended to.”
The Pacific islands Forum meets on August 26-30.
Brittany Nawaqatabuis assistant media and communications officer of the Suva-based Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG).
Of the international intelligence information that comes to Australian agencies from the Five Eyes, 90 percent comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we have the colonisation of our intelligence agencies These agencies dominate the advice to ministers, writes John Menadue.
Michael Lester:Hello again listeners to Community Radio Northern Beaches Community Voices and also the Pearls and Irritations podcast. I’m Michael Lester.
Our guest today is the publisher and founder of the Pearls and Irritations Public Policy online journal, the celebrated John Menadue, with whom we’ll be so pleased to have a discussion today. John has a long and high profile experience in both the public service, for which he’s been awarded the Order of Australia and also in business.
As a public servant, he was secretary of a number of departments over the years, prime minister and cabinet under a couple of different prime ministers, immigration and ethnic affairs, special minister of state and the Department of Trade and also Ambassador to Japan.
And in his private sector career, he was a general manager at News Corp and the chief executive of Qantas. These are just among many of his considerable activities.
These days, as I say, he’s a publisher, public commentator, writer, and we’re absolutely delighted to welcome you here to Radio Northern Beaches and the P&I podcast, John.
John Menadue: Thank you, Michael. Thanks for the welcome and for what you’ve had to say about Pearls and Irritations. My wife says that she’s the Pearl and I’m the Irritation.
ML:You launched, I think, P&I, what, 2013 or 2011; anyway, you’ve been going a long while. And I noticed the other day you observed that you’d published some 20,000 items on Pearls and Irritations to do with public policy. That’s an amazing achievement itself as an independent media outlet in Australia, isn’t it?
JM: I’m quite pleased with it and so is Susie, my wife. We started 13 years ago and we did everything. I used to write all the stories and Susie handled the technical, admin, financial matters, but it’s grown dramatically since then. We now contract some of the work to people that can help us in editorial, in production and IT. It’s achieving quite a lot of influence among ministers, politicians, journalists and other opinion leaders in the community.
We’re looking now at what the future holds. I’m 89 and Susie, my wife, is not in good health. So we’re looking at new governance arrangements, a public company with outside directors so that we can continue Pearls and Irritations well into the future.
Pearls and Irritations publisher John Menadue . . . “I’m afraid some of [the mainstream media] are just incorrigible. They in fact act as stenographers to powerful interests.” Image: Independent AustralianML: So you made a real contribution through this and you’ve given the opportunity for so many expert, experienced, independent voices to commentate on public policy issues of great importance, not least vis-a-vis, might I say, mainstream media treatment of a lot of these issues.
This is one of your themes and motivations with Pearls and Irritations as a public policy journal, isn’t it? That our mainstream media perhaps don’t do the job they might do in covering significant issues of public policy?
JM: That’s our hope and intention, but I’m afraid some of them are just incorrigible. They in fact act as stenographers to powerful interests.
It’s quite a shame what mainstream media is serving up today, propaganda for the United States, so focused on America.Occasionally we get nonsense about the British royal family or some irrelevant feature like that.
But we’re very badly served. Our media shows very little interest in our own region. It is ignorant and prejudiced against China. It is not concerned about our relations with Indonesia, with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam.
It’s all focused on the United States.We’re seeing it on an enormous scale now with the US elections. Even the ABC has a Planet America programme.
It’s so much focused on America as if we’re an island parked off New York. We are being Americanised in so many areas and particularly in our media.
ML: What has led to this state of affairs in the way that mainstream media treats major public policy issues these days? It hasn’t always been like that or has it?
JM: We’ve been a country that’s been frightened of our region, the countries where we have to make our future. And we’ve turned first to the United Kingdom as a protector. That ended in tears in Singapore.
And now we turn to the United States to look after us in this dangerous world, rather than making our own way as an independent country in our own region. That fear of our region, racism, white Australia, yellow peril all feature in Australia and in our media.
But when we had good, strong leaders, for example, Malcolm Fraser on refugees, he gave leadership and our role in the region.
Gough Whitlam did it also. If we have strong leadership, we can break from our focus on the United States at the expense of our own region. In the end, we’ve got to decide that as we live in this region, we’ve got to prosper in this region.
Security in our region, not from our region. We can do it, but I’m afraid that we’ve been retreating from Asia dreadfully over the last two or three decades. I thought when we had a Labor government, things would be different, but they’re not.
We are still frightened of our own region and embracing at every opportunity, the United States.
ML: Another theme of the many years of publishing Pearls and Irritations is that you are concerned to rebuild some degree of public confidence and trust that has been lost in the political system and that you seek to provide a platform for good policy discussion with the emphasis being on public policy. How has the public policy process been undermined or become so narrow minded if that’s one way of describing it?
JM: Contracting out work to private contractors, the big four accounting firms, getting advice, and not trusting the public service has meant that the quality of our public service has declined considerably. That has to be rebuilt so we get better policy development.
Ministers have been responsible, particularly Scott Morrison, for downgrading the public service and believing somehow or other that better advice can be obtained in the private sector.
Another factor has been the enormous growth in the power of lobbyists for corporate Australia and for foreign companies as well. Ministers have become beholden to pressure from powerful lobby groups.
One particular example, with which I’m quite familiar is in the health field. We are never likely to have real improvements in Medicare, for example, unless the government is prepared to take on the power of lobbyists — the providers, the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies in Australia.
But it’s not just in health where lobbyists are causing so much damage. The power of lobbyists has discredited the role of governments that are seduced by powerful interests rather than serving the community.
The media have just entrenched this problem. Governments are criticised at every opportunity. Australia can be served by the media taking a more positive view about the importance of good policy development and not getting sidetracked all the time about some trivial personal political issue.
The media publish the handouts of the lobbyists, whether it’s the health industry or whether it’s in the fossil fuel industries. These are the main factors that have contributed to the lack of confidence and the lack of trust in good government in Australia.
ML: A particular editorial focus that’s evident in Pearls and Irritations is promoting, I think in your words, a peaceful dialogue and engagement with China. Why is this required and why do you put it forward as a particularly important part of what you see as the mission of your Pearls and Irritations public policy journal?
JM; China, is our largest market and will continue to be so. There is a very jaundiced view, particularly from the United States, which we then copy, that China is a great threat. It’s not a threat to Australia and it’s not a threat to the United States homeland.
But it is to a degree a threat, a competitive threat to the United States in economy and trade. America didn’t worry about China when it was poor, but now that it’s strong militarily, economically and in technology, America is very concerned and feels that its future, its own leadership, its hegemony in the world is being contested.
Unfortunately, Australia has allowed itself to be drawn into the American contest with China. It’s one provocation after another. If it’s not within China itself, it’s on Taiwan, human rights in Hong Kong. Every opportunity is found by the United States to provoke China, if possible, and lead it into war.
I think, frankly, China will be more careful than that.
China’s problem is that it’s successful. And that’s what America cannot accept. By comparison, China does not make the military threat to other countries that the United States presents.
America is the most violent, aggressive country in the world. The greatest threat to peace in the world is the United States and we’re seeing that particularly now expressed in Israel and in Gaza.
But there’s a history. America’s almost always at war and has been since its independence in 1776. By contrast, China doesn’t have that sort of record and history. It is certainly concerned about security on its borders, and it has borders with 14 countries.
But it doesn’t project its power like the US. It doesn’t bomb other countries like the United States. It doesn’t have military bases surrounding the United States.
The United States has about 800 bases around the world. It’s not surprising that China feels threatened by what the United States is doing. And until the United States comes to a sensible, realistic view about China and deals with it politically, I think they’re going to make continual problems for us.
We have this dichotomy that China is our major trading partner but it’s seen by many as a strategic threat. I think that is a mistake.
ML: But what about your views about the public policy process underlying Australia’s policy in reaching the positions that we’re taking vis-a-vis China?
JM: There are several reasons for it, but I think the major one is that Australian governments, the previous government and now this one, takes the advice of intelligence agencies rather than the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Our intelligence agencies are part of Five Eyes. Of the international intelligence which comes to Australian agencies, 90 percent comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we’ve had the colonisation of our intelligence agencies and they’re the ones that the Australian government listens to.
Very senior people in those agencies have direct access to the Prime Minister. He listens to them rather than to Penny Wong or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. On most public issues involving China, the Department of Foreign Affairs has become a wallflower.
It’s a great tragedy because so much of our future in the region depends on good diplomacy with China, with the ASEAN, with the countries of our region.
Those intelligence agencies in Australia, together with American funded, military funded organisations such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have the ear of governments. They’ve also got the ear of the media.
Stories are leaked to the media all the time from those agencies in order to heighten our fear of the region. The Americanisation of Australia is widespread. But our intelligence agencies have been Americanised as well, and they’re leading us down a very dangerous path.
ML: I’m speaking with our guest today on Reno Northern Beaches Community Voices and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast with the publisher of Pearls and Irritations Public Policy Journal, John Menadue, distinguished Australian public servant and businessman.
John, again, it’s one thing to talk about that, but governments, when they change, and we’ve had a change of government recently, very often, as I’m sure you know from personal experience, have the opportunity and do indeed change their advisors and adopt different policies, and one might have expected this to happen.
Why didn’t we see a change of the guard like we saw a change of government?
JM: I think this government is timid on almost everything. It was timid from day one on administrative arrangements, departmental arrangements, heads of departments.
For example, there was no change made to dismantle the Department of Home Affairs with Michael Pezzullo. That should have happened on day one, but it didn’t happen.
Concerns we’ve had in migration, the role of foreign affairs and intelligence with all those intelligence agencies gathered together in one department has been very bad for Australia.
Very few changes were made in the leadership of our intelligence agencies, the Office of National Assessments, in ASIO. The same advice has been continued. In almost every area you can look at, the government has been timid, unprepared to take on vested interests, lobbyists, and change departments to make them more attuned to what the government wants to do.
But the government doesn’t want to upset anyone. And as a result, we’re having a continuation of badly informed ministers and departments that have really not been effectively changed to meet the requirements and needs of, what I thought was a reforming government.
ML: In that context, AUKUS and the nuclear submarine deal might be perhaps a case in point of the broader issues and points you’re making. How would you characterise the nature of the public policy process and decision behind AUKUS? How were the decisions made and in what manner?
JM: By political appointees and confidants of Morrison. There’s been no public discussion. There’s been no public statement by Morrison or by Albanese about AUKUS — its history, why we’re doing it.
It’s been left to briefings of journalists and others. I think it’s disgraceful what’s happened in that area. It’s time the Australian government spelled out to us what it all means, but it’s not going to do it. Because I believe the case is so threadbare that it’s not game to put it to the public test.
And so we’re continuing in this ludicrous arrangement, this fiscal calamity, which Morrison inflicted on the Albanese government which it hasn’t been game to contest.
My own view is that frankly, AUKUS will never happen. It is so absurd — the delay, the cost, the failure of submarine construction or the delays in the United States, the problems of the submarine construction and maintenance in the United Kingdom.
For all those sorts of reasons, I don’t think it’ll really happen. Unfortunately, we’re going to waste a lot of money and a lot of time. I don’t think the Department of Defence could run any major project, certainly not a project like this.
Defence has been unsuccessful in the frigate and numerous other programmes. Our Department of Defence really is not up to the job and that among other reasons gives me reason to believe, and hope frankly, that AUKUS will collapse under its own stupidity.
But what I think is of more concern is the real estate, which we are freely leasing to the Americans. We had it first with the Marines in Darwin. We have it also coming now with US B-52 aircraft based out of Tindal in the Northern Territory and the submarine base in Perth, Western Australia.
These bases are being made available to the United States with very little control by Australia. The government carries on with nonsense about how our sovereignty will be protected.
In fact, it won’t be protected. If there’s any difficulties, for example, over a war with China over Taiwan, and the Americans are involved, there is no way Americans will consult with us about whether they can use nuclear armed vessels out of Tindal, for example.
The Americans will insist that Pine Gap continues to operate. So we are locked in through ceding so much of our real estate and the sovereignty that goes with it.
Penny Wong has been asked about American aircraft out of Tindal, carrying nuclear weapons and she says to us, sorry but the Americans won’t confirm or deny what they do.
Good heavens, this is our territory. This is our sovereignty. And we won’t even ask the Americans operating out of Tindal, whether they’re carrying nuclear weapons.
Back in the days of Malcolm Fraser, he made a statement to the Parliament insisting that no vessels or aircraft carrying nuclear weapons or ships carrying nuclear weapons could access Australian ports or operate over Australia without the permission of the Australian government.
And now Penny Wong says, we won’t ask. You can do what you like. We know the US won’t confirm or deny.
When it came to the Solomon Islands, a treaty that the Solomons negotiated with China on strategic and defence matters, Penny Wong was very upset about this secret agreement. There should be transparency, she warned.
But that’s small fry, compared with the fact that the Australian government will allow United States aircraft to operate out of Tindal without the Australian government knowing whether they are carrying nuclear weapons. I think that’s outrageous.
ML: Notwithstanding many of the very technical and economic and other discussions around the nuclear submarine’s acquisition, it does seem that politically, at least, and not least from the media presentation of our policy position that we’re very clearly signing up with our US allies against contingency attacks on Taiwan that we would be committed to take a part in and we’re also moving very closely, to well the phrase is interoperability, with the US forces and equipment but also personnel too.
You mentioned earlier, intelligence personnel and I believe there’s a lot of US personnel in the Department of Defence too?
JM: That’s right. It’s just another example of Americanisation which is reflected in our intelligence agencies, Department of Defence, interchangeability of our military forces, the fusion of our military or particularly our Navy with the United States. It’s all becoming one fused enterprise with the United States.
And in any difficulties, we would not be able, as far as I can see, to disengage from what the United States is doing. And we would be particularly vulnerable because of the AUKUS submarines. That’s if they ever come to anything. Because the AUKUS submarines, we are told, would operate off the Chinese coast to attack Chinese submarines or somehow provide intelligence for the Americans and for us.
These submarines will not be nuclear armed, which means that in the event of a conflict, we would have no bargaining or no counter to China. We’d be the weak link in the alliance with the United States.
China will not be prepared to strike the mainland United States for fear of massive retaliation. We are the weak link with Pine Gap and other real estate that I mentioned. We would be making ourselves much more vulnerable by this association with the United States.
Those AUKUS submarines will provide no deterrence for us, but make us more vulnerable if a conflict arises in which we are effectively part of the US military operation.
ML: How would you characterise the mainstream media’s presentation and treatment of these issues?
JM: The mainstream media is very largely a mouthpiece for Washington propaganda. And that American propaganda is pushed out through the legacy media, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the news agencies, Fox News which in turn are influenced by the military/ business complex which Eisenhower warned us about years ago.
The power of those groups with the CIA and the influence that they have, means that they overwhelm our media. That’s reflected particularly in The Australian and News Corporation publications.
I don’t know how some of those journalists can hold their heads. They’ve been on the drip feed of America for so long. They cannot see a world that is not dominated and led by the United States.
I’m hoping that over time, Pearls and Irritations and other independent media will grow and provide a more balanced view about Australia’s role in our region and in our own development.
We need to keep good relations with the United States. They’re an important player, but I think that we are unnecessarily risking our future by throwing our lot almost entirely in with the United States.
Minister for Defence, Richard Marles is leading the Americanisation of our military. I think Penny Wong is to some extent trying to pull him back. But unfortunately so much of the leadership of Australia in defence, in the media, is part and parcel of the mistaken United States view of the world.
ML: What sort of voices are we not hearing in the media or in Australia on this question?
JM: It’s not going to change, Michael. I can’t see it changing with Lachlan Murdoch in charge. I think it’s getting worse, if possible, within News Corporation. It’s a very, very difficult and desperate situation where we’re being served so poorly.
ML: Is there a strong independent media and potential for voices through independent media in Australia?
JM: No, we haven’t got one. The best hope at the side, of course, is the ABC and SBS public broadcasters, but they’ve been seduced as well by all things American.
We’ve seen that particularly in recent months over the conflict in Gaza. The ABC and SBS heavily favour Israel. It is shameful.
They’re still the best hope of the side, but they need more money. They’re getting a little bit more from the government, but I think they are sadly lacking in leadership and proper understanding of what the role of a public broadcaster should be.
I don’t think there’s a quick answer to any of this. And I hope that we can extricate ourselves without too much damage in the future. Our media has a great responsibility and must be held responsible for the damage that it is causing in Australia.
ML: Well, look, thank you very much, John Menadue, for joining us on Radio Northern Beaches and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast. John Menadue, publisher, founder, editor-in-chief of, for the last 13 years, the public policy journal Pearls and Irritations. We’ve been discussing the role of the mainstream media, independent media, in the public policy processes too in Australia, and particularly in the context of international relations and in this case our relationships with the US and China.
Thank you so much John for taking the time and for sharing your thoughts with us here today. Thanks for joining us John.
JM: Thank you. Let’s hope for better days.
John Menadue, founder and publisher of Pearls and Irritations public policy journal has had a senior professional career in the media, public service and airlines. In 1985, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for public service. In 2009, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Adelaide in recognition of his significant and lifelong contribution to Australian society. This transcript of the Pearls and Irritations podcast on 10 August 2024 is republished with permission.
Of the international intelligence information that comes to Australian agencies from the Five Eyes, 90 percent comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we have the colonisation of our intelligence agencies These agencies dominate the advice to ministers, writes John Menadue.
Michael Lester:Hello again listeners to Community Radio Northern Beaches Community Voices and also the Pearls and Irritations podcast. I’m Michael Lester.
Our guest today is the publisher and founder of the Pearls and Irritations Public Policy online journal, the celebrated John Menadue, with whom we’ll be so pleased to have a discussion today. John has a long and high profile experience in both the public service, for which he’s been awarded the Order of Australia and also in business.
As a public servant, he was secretary of a number of departments over the years, prime minister and cabinet under a couple of different prime ministers, immigration and ethnic affairs, special minister of state and the Department of Trade and also Ambassador to Japan.
And in his private sector career, he was a general manager at News Corp and the chief executive of Qantas. These are just among many of his considerable activities.
These days, as I say, he’s a publisher, public commentator, writer, and we’re absolutely delighted to welcome you here to Radio Northern Beaches and the P&I podcast, John.
John Menadue: Thank you, Michael. Thanks for the welcome and for what you’ve had to say about Pearls and Irritations. My wife says that she’s the Pearl and I’m the Irritation.
ML:You launched, I think, P&I, what, 2013 or 2011; anyway, you’ve been going a long while. And I noticed the other day you observed that you’d published some 20,000 items on Pearls and Irritations to do with public policy. That’s an amazing achievement itself as an independent media outlet in Australia, isn’t it?
JM: I’m quite pleased with it and so is Susie, my wife. We started 13 years ago and we did everything. I used to write all the stories and Susie handled the technical, admin, financial matters, but it’s grown dramatically since then. We now contract some of the work to people that can help us in editorial, in production and IT. It’s achieving quite a lot of influence among ministers, politicians, journalists and other opinion leaders in the community.
We’re looking now at what the future holds. I’m 89 and Susie, my wife, is not in good health. So we’re looking at new governance arrangements, a public company with outside directors so that we can continue Pearls and Irritations well into the future.
Pearls and Irritations publisher John Menadue . . . “I’m afraid some of [the mainstream media] are just incorrigible. They in fact act as stenographers to powerful interests.” Image: Independent AustralianML: So you made a real contribution through this and you’ve given the opportunity for so many expert, experienced, independent voices to commentate on public policy issues of great importance, not least vis-a-vis, might I say, mainstream media treatment of a lot of these issues.
This is one of your themes and motivations with Pearls and Irritations as a public policy journal, isn’t it? That our mainstream media perhaps don’t do the job they might do in covering significant issues of public policy?
JM: That’s our hope and intention, but I’m afraid some of them are just incorrigible. They in fact act as stenographers to powerful interests.
It’s quite a shame what mainstream media is serving up today, propaganda for the United States, so focused on America.Occasionally we get nonsense about the British royal family or some irrelevant feature like that.
But we’re very badly served. Our media shows very little interest in our own region. It is ignorant and prejudiced against China. It is not concerned about our relations with Indonesia, with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam.
It’s all focused on the United States.We’re seeing it on an enormous scale now with the US elections. Even the ABC has a Planet America programme.
It’s so much focused on America as if we’re an island parked off New York. We are being Americanised in so many areas and particularly in our media.
ML: What has led to this state of affairs in the way that mainstream media treats major public policy issues these days? It hasn’t always been like that or has it?
JM: We’ve been a country that’s been frightened of our region, the countries where we have to make our future. And we’ve turned first to the United Kingdom as a protector. That ended in tears in Singapore.
And now we turn to the United States to look after us in this dangerous world, rather than making our own way as an independent country in our own region. That fear of our region, racism, white Australia, yellow peril all feature in Australia and in our media.
But when we had good, strong leaders, for example, Malcolm Fraser on refugees, he gave leadership and our role in the region.
Gough Whitlam did it also. If we have strong leadership, we can break from our focus on the United States at the expense of our own region. In the end, we’ve got to decide that as we live in this region, we’ve got to prosper in this region.
Security in our region, not from our region. We can do it, but I’m afraid that we’ve been retreating from Asia dreadfully over the last two or three decades. I thought when we had a Labor government, things would be different, but they’re not.
We are still frightened of our own region and embracing at every opportunity, the United States.
ML: Another theme of the many years of publishing Pearls and Irritations is that you are concerned to rebuild some degree of public confidence and trust that has been lost in the political system and that you seek to provide a platform for good policy discussion with the emphasis being on public policy. How has the public policy process been undermined or become so narrow minded if that’s one way of describing it?
JM: Contracting out work to private contractors, the big four accounting firms, getting advice, and not trusting the public service has meant that the quality of our public service has declined considerably. That has to be rebuilt so we get better policy development.
Ministers have been responsible, particularly Scott Morrison, for downgrading the public service and believing somehow or other that better advice can be obtained in the private sector.
Another factor has been the enormous growth in the power of lobbyists for corporate Australia and for foreign companies as well. Ministers have become beholden to pressure from powerful lobby groups.
One particular example, with which I’m quite familiar is in the health field. We are never likely to have real improvements in Medicare, for example, unless the government is prepared to take on the power of lobbyists — the providers, the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies in Australia.
But it’s not just in health where lobbyists are causing so much damage. The power of lobbyists has discredited the role of governments that are seduced by powerful interests rather than serving the community.
The media have just entrenched this problem. Governments are criticised at every opportunity. Australia can be served by the media taking a more positive view about the importance of good policy development and not getting sidetracked all the time about some trivial personal political issue.
The media publish the handouts of the lobbyists, whether it’s the health industry or whether it’s in the fossil fuel industries. These are the main factors that have contributed to the lack of confidence and the lack of trust in good government in Australia.
ML: A particular editorial focus that’s evident in Pearls and Irritations is promoting, I think in your words, a peaceful dialogue and engagement with China. Why is this required and why do you put it forward as a particularly important part of what you see as the mission of your Pearls and Irritations public policy journal?
JM; China, is our largest market and will continue to be so. There is a very jaundiced view, particularly from the United States, which we then copy, that China is a great threat. It’s not a threat to Australia and it’s not a threat to the United States homeland.
But it is to a degree a threat, a competitive threat to the United States in economy and trade. America didn’t worry about China when it was poor, but now that it’s strong militarily, economically and in technology, America is very concerned and feels that its future, its own leadership, its hegemony in the world is being contested.
Unfortunately, Australia has allowed itself to be drawn into the American contest with China. It’s one provocation after another. If it’s not within China itself, it’s on Taiwan, human rights in Hong Kong. Every opportunity is found by the United States to provoke China, if possible, and lead it into war.
I think, frankly, China will be more careful than that.
China’s problem is that it’s successful. And that’s what America cannot accept. By comparison, China does not make the military threat to other countries that the United States presents.
America is the most violent, aggressive country in the world. The greatest threat to peace in the world is the United States and we’re seeing that particularly now expressed in Israel and in Gaza.
But there’s a history. America’s almost always at war and has been since its independence in 1776. By contrast, China doesn’t have that sort of record and history. It is certainly concerned about security on its borders, and it has borders with 14 countries.
But it doesn’t project its power like the US. It doesn’t bomb other countries like the United States. It doesn’t have military bases surrounding the United States.
The United States has about 800 bases around the world. It’s not surprising that China feels threatened by what the United States is doing. And until the United States comes to a sensible, realistic view about China and deals with it politically, I think they’re going to make continual problems for us.
We have this dichotomy that China is our major trading partner but it’s seen by many as a strategic threat. I think that is a mistake.
ML: But what about your views about the public policy process underlying Australia’s policy in reaching the positions that we’re taking vis-a-vis China?
JM: There are several reasons for it, but I think the major one is that Australian governments, the previous government and now this one, takes the advice of intelligence agencies rather than the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Our intelligence agencies are part of Five Eyes. Of the international intelligence which comes to Australian agencies, 90 percent comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we’ve had the colonisation of our intelligence agencies and they’re the ones that the Australian government listens to.
Very senior people in those agencies have direct access to the Prime Minister. He listens to them rather than to Penny Wong or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. On most public issues involving China, the Department of Foreign Affairs has become a wallflower.
It’s a great tragedy because so much of our future in the region depends on good diplomacy with China, with the ASEAN, with the countries of our region.
Those intelligence agencies in Australia, together with American funded, military funded organisations such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have the ear of governments. They’ve also got the ear of the media.
Stories are leaked to the media all the time from those agencies in order to heighten our fear of the region. The Americanisation of Australia is widespread. But our intelligence agencies have been Americanised as well, and they’re leading us down a very dangerous path.
ML: I’m speaking with our guest today on Reno Northern Beaches Community Voices and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast with the publisher of Pearls and Irritations Public Policy Journal, John Menadue, distinguished Australian public servant and businessman.
John, again, it’s one thing to talk about that, but governments, when they change, and we’ve had a change of government recently, very often, as I’m sure you know from personal experience, have the opportunity and do indeed change their advisors and adopt different policies, and one might have expected this to happen.
Why didn’t we see a change of the guard like we saw a change of government?
JM: I think this government is timid on almost everything. It was timid from day one on administrative arrangements, departmental arrangements, heads of departments.
For example, there was no change made to dismantle the Department of Home Affairs with Michael Pezzullo. That should have happened on day one, but it didn’t happen.
Concerns we’ve had in migration, the role of foreign affairs and intelligence with all those intelligence agencies gathered together in one department has been very bad for Australia.
Very few changes were made in the leadership of our intelligence agencies, the Office of National Assessments, in ASIO. The same advice has been continued. In almost every area you can look at, the government has been timid, unprepared to take on vested interests, lobbyists, and change departments to make them more attuned to what the government wants to do.
But the government doesn’t want to upset anyone. And as a result, we’re having a continuation of badly informed ministers and departments that have really not been effectively changed to meet the requirements and needs of, what I thought was a reforming government.
ML: In that context, AUKUS and the nuclear submarine deal might be perhaps a case in point of the broader issues and points you’re making. How would you characterise the nature of the public policy process and decision behind AUKUS? How were the decisions made and in what manner?
JM: By political appointees and confidants of Morrison. There’s been no public discussion. There’s been no public statement by Morrison or by Albanese about AUKUS — its history, why we’re doing it.
It’s been left to briefings of journalists and others. I think it’s disgraceful what’s happened in that area. It’s time the Australian government spelled out to us what it all means, but it’s not going to do it. Because I believe the case is so threadbare that it’s not game to put it to the public test.
And so we’re continuing in this ludicrous arrangement, this fiscal calamity, which Morrison inflicted on the Albanese government which it hasn’t been game to contest.
My own view is that frankly, AUKUS will never happen. It is so absurd — the delay, the cost, the failure of submarine construction or the delays in the United States, the problems of the submarine construction and maintenance in the United Kingdom.
For all those sorts of reasons, I don’t think it’ll really happen. Unfortunately, we’re going to waste a lot of money and a lot of time. I don’t think the Department of Defence could run any major project, certainly not a project like this.
Defence has been unsuccessful in the frigate and numerous other programmes. Our Department of Defence really is not up to the job and that among other reasons gives me reason to believe, and hope frankly, that AUKUS will collapse under its own stupidity.
But what I think is of more concern is the real estate, which we are freely leasing to the Americans. We had it first with the Marines in Darwin. We have it also coming now with US B-52 aircraft based out of Tindal in the Northern Territory and the submarine base in Perth, Western Australia.
These bases are being made available to the United States with very little control by Australia. The government carries on with nonsense about how our sovereignty will be protected.
In fact, it won’t be protected. If there’s any difficulties, for example, over a war with China over Taiwan, and the Americans are involved, there is no way Americans will consult with us about whether they can use nuclear armed vessels out of Tindal, for example.
The Americans will insist that Pine Gap continues to operate. So we are locked in through ceding so much of our real estate and the sovereignty that goes with it.
Penny Wong has been asked about American aircraft out of Tindal, carrying nuclear weapons and she says to us, sorry but the Americans won’t confirm or deny what they do.
Good heavens, this is our territory. This is our sovereignty. And we won’t even ask the Americans operating out of Tindal, whether they’re carrying nuclear weapons.
Back in the days of Malcolm Fraser, he made a statement to the Parliament insisting that no vessels or aircraft carrying nuclear weapons or ships carrying nuclear weapons could access Australian ports or operate over Australia without the permission of the Australian government.
And now Penny Wong says, we won’t ask. You can do what you like. We know the US won’t confirm or deny.
When it came to the Solomon Islands, a treaty that the Solomons negotiated with China on strategic and defence matters, Penny Wong was very upset about this secret agreement. There should be transparency, she warned.
But that’s small fry, compared with the fact that the Australian government will allow United States aircraft to operate out of Tindal without the Australian government knowing whether they are carrying nuclear weapons. I think that’s outrageous.
ML: Notwithstanding many of the very technical and economic and other discussions around the nuclear submarine’s acquisition, it does seem that politically, at least, and not least from the media presentation of our policy position that we’re very clearly signing up with our US allies against contingency attacks on Taiwan that we would be committed to take a part in and we’re also moving very closely, to well the phrase is interoperability, with the US forces and equipment but also personnel too.
You mentioned earlier, intelligence personnel and I believe there’s a lot of US personnel in the Department of Defence too?
JM: That’s right. It’s just another example of Americanisation which is reflected in our intelligence agencies, Department of Defence, interchangeability of our military forces, the fusion of our military or particularly our Navy with the United States. It’s all becoming one fused enterprise with the United States.
And in any difficulties, we would not be able, as far as I can see, to disengage from what the United States is doing. And we would be particularly vulnerable because of the AUKUS submarines. That’s if they ever come to anything. Because the AUKUS submarines, we are told, would operate off the Chinese coast to attack Chinese submarines or somehow provide intelligence for the Americans and for us.
These submarines will not be nuclear armed, which means that in the event of a conflict, we would have no bargaining or no counter to China. We’d be the weak link in the alliance with the United States.
China will not be prepared to strike the mainland United States for fear of massive retaliation. We are the weak link with Pine Gap and other real estate that I mentioned. We would be making ourselves much more vulnerable by this association with the United States.
Those AUKUS submarines will provide no deterrence for us, but make us more vulnerable if a conflict arises in which we are effectively part of the US military operation.
ML: How would you characterise the mainstream media’s presentation and treatment of these issues?
JM: The mainstream media is very largely a mouthpiece for Washington propaganda. And that American propaganda is pushed out through the legacy media, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the news agencies, Fox News which in turn are influenced by the military/ business complex which Eisenhower warned us about years ago.
The power of those groups with the CIA and the influence that they have, means that they overwhelm our media. That’s reflected particularly in The Australian and News Corporation publications.
I don’t know how some of those journalists can hold their heads. They’ve been on the drip feed of America for so long. They cannot see a world that is not dominated and led by the United States.
I’m hoping that over time, Pearls and Irritations and other independent media will grow and provide a more balanced view about Australia’s role in our region and in our own development.
We need to keep good relations with the United States. They’re an important player, but I think that we are unnecessarily risking our future by throwing our lot almost entirely in with the United States.
Minister for Defence, Richard Marles is leading the Americanisation of our military. I think Penny Wong is to some extent trying to pull him back. But unfortunately so much of the leadership of Australia in defence, in the media, is part and parcel of the mistaken United States view of the world.
ML: What sort of voices are we not hearing in the media or in Australia on this question?
JM: It’s not going to change, Michael. I can’t see it changing with Lachlan Murdoch in charge. I think it’s getting worse, if possible, within News Corporation. It’s a very, very difficult and desperate situation where we’re being served so poorly.
ML: Is there a strong independent media and potential for voices through independent media in Australia?
JM: No, we haven’t got one. The best hope at the side, of course, is the ABC and SBS public broadcasters, but they’ve been seduced as well by all things American.
We’ve seen that particularly in recent months over the conflict in Gaza. The ABC and SBS heavily favour Israel. It is shameful.
They’re still the best hope of the side, but they need more money. They’re getting a little bit more from the government, but I think they are sadly lacking in leadership and proper understanding of what the role of a public broadcaster should be.
I don’t think there’s a quick answer to any of this. And I hope that we can extricate ourselves without too much damage in the future. Our media has a great responsibility and must be held responsible for the damage that it is causing in Australia.
ML: Well, look, thank you very much, John Menadue, for joining us on Radio Northern Beaches and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast. John Menadue, publisher, founder, editor-in-chief of, for the last 13 years, the public policy journal Pearls and Irritations. We’ve been discussing the role of the mainstream media, independent media, in the public policy processes too in Australia, and particularly in the context of international relations and in this case our relationships with the US and China.
Thank you so much John for taking the time and for sharing your thoughts with us here today. Thanks for joining us John.
JM: Thank you. Let’s hope for better days.
John Menadue, founder and publisher of Pearls and Irritations public policy journal has had a senior professional career in the media, public service and airlines. In 1985, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for public service. In 2009, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Adelaide in recognition of his significant and lifelong contribution to Australian society. This transcript of the Pearls and Irritations podcast on 10 August 2024 is republished with permission.
Many in the international community are finally coming to accept that the earth’s ecosystem can no longer bear the weight of military occupation.
Most have reached this inevitable conclusion, clearly articulated in the environmental movement’s latest slogan “No Climate Justice on Occupied Land”, in light of the horrors we have witnessed in Gaza since October 7.
While the correlation between military occupation and climate sustainability may be a recent discovery for those living their lives in relative peace and security, people living under occupation, and thus constant threat of military violence, have always known any guided missile strike or aerial bombardment campaign by an occupying military is not only an attack on those being targeted but also their land’s ability to sustain life.
A recent hearing on “State and Environmental Violence in West Papua” under the jurisdiction of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), for example, heard that Indonesia’s military occupation, spanning more than seven decades, has facilitated a “slow genocide” of the Papuan people through not only political repression and violence, but also the gradual decimation of the forest area — one of the largest and most biodiverse on the planet — that sustains them.
West Papua hosts one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, is the site of a major BP liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, and is the fastest-expanding area of palm oil and biofuel plantation in Indonesia.
All of these industries leave ecological dead zones in their wake, and every single one of them is secured by military occupation.
At the PPT hearing, prominent Papuan lawyer Yan Christian Warinussy spoke of the connection between human suffering in West Papua and the exploitation of the region’s natural resources.
Shot and wounded
Just one week later, he was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant. The PPT Secretariat noted that the attack came after the lawyer depicted “the past and current violence committed against the defenceless civil population and the environment in the region”.
What happened to Warinussy reinforced yet again the indivisibility of military occupation and environmental violence.
I’m stand in solidarity with West Papuans rising up against colonialism, racism, state violence, sexual violence, and environmental destruction.
West Papua’s “special autonomy” is another euphemism for control and exploitation pic.twitter.com/cvP7fp2Ml0
In total, militaries around the world account for almost 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually — more than the aviation and shipping industries combined.
Our colleagues at Queen Mary University of London recently concluded that emissions from the first 120 days of this latest round of slaughter in Gaza alone were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries; emissions from rebuilding Gaza will be higher than the annual emissions of more than 135 countries, equating them to those of Sweden and Portugal.
But even these shocking statistics fail to shed sufficient light on the deep connection between military violence and environmental violence. War and occupation’s impact on the climate is not merely a side effect or unfortunate consequence.
We must not reduce our analysis of what is going on in Gaza, for example, to a dualism of consequences: the killing of people on one side and the effect on “the environment” on the other.
Inseparable from impact on nature
In reality, the impact on the people is inseparable from the impact on nature. The genocide in Gaza is also an ecocide — as is almost always the case with military campaigns.
In the Vietnam War, the use of toxic chemicals, including Agent Orange, was part of a deliberate strategy to eliminate any capacity for agricultural production, and thus force the people off their land and into “strategic hamlets”.
Forests, used by the Vietcong as cover, were also cut by the US military to reduce the population’s capacity for resistance. The anti-war activist and international lawyer Richard Falk coined the phrase “ecocide” to describe this.
In different ways, this is what all military operations do: they tactically reduce or completely eliminate the capacity of the “enemy” population to live sustainably and to retain autonomy over its own water and food supplies.
Since 2014, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and other essential infrastructure by the Israeli occupation forces has been complemented by chemical warfare, with herbicides aerially sprayed by the Israeli military destroying entire swaths of arable land in Gaza.
In other words, Gaza has been subjected to an “ecocide” strategy almost identical to the one used in Vietnam since long before October 7.
The occupying military force has been working to reduce, and eventually completely eliminate, the Palestinian population’s capacity to live sustainably in Gaza for many years. Since October 7, it has been waging a war to make Gaza completely unliveable.
50% of Gaza farms wiped out
As researchers at Forensic Architecture have concluded, at least 50 percent of farmland and orchards in Gaza are now completely wiped out. Many ancient olive groves have also been destroyed. Fields of crops have been uprooted using tanks, tractors and other vehicles.
Widespread aerial bombardment reduced the Gaza Strip’s greenhouse production facilities to rubble. All this was done not by mistake, but in a deliberate effort to leave the land unable to sustain life.
The wholesale destruction of the water supply and sanitation facilities and the ongoing threat of starvation across the Gaza Strip are also not unwanted consequences, but deliberate tactics of war. The Israeli military has weaponised food and water access in its unrelenting assault on the population of Gaza.
Of course, none of this is new to Palestinians there, or indeed in the West Bank. Israel has been using these same tactics to sustain its occupation, pressure Palestinians into leaving their lands, and expand its illegal settlement enterprise for many years.
Since October 7, it has merely intensified its efforts. It is now working with unprecedented urgency to eradicate the little capacity the occupied Palestinian territory has left in it to sustain Palestinian life.
Just as is the case with the occupation of Papua, environmental destruction is not an unintended side effect but a primary objective of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The immediate damage military occupation inflicts on the affected population is never separate from the long-term damage it inflicts on the planet.
For this reason, it would be a mistake to try and separate the genocide from the ecocide in Gaza, or anywhere else for that matter.
Anyone interested in putting an end to human suffering now, and preventing climate catastrophe in the future, should oppose all wars of occupation, and all forms of militarism that help fuel them.
David Whyte is professor of climate justice at Queen Mary University of London and director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice. Samira Homerang Saunders is research officer at the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, Queen Mary University.
There should be nothing surprising about the revelation that troops at Sde Teiman, a detention camp set up by Israel in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, are routinely using rape as a weapon of torture against Palestinian inmates.
Last month, nine soldiers from a prison unit, Force 100, were arrested for gang-raping a Palestinian inmate with a sharp object. He had to be hospitalised with his injuries.
At least 53 prisoners are known to have died in Israeli detention, presumed in most cases to be either through torture or following the denial of access to medical care. No investigations have been carried out by Israel and no arrests have been made.
Why should it be of any surprise that Israel’s self-proclaimed “most moral army in the world” uses torture and rape against Palestinians? It would be truly surprising if this was not happening.
After all, this is the same military that for 10 months has used starvation as a weapon of war against the 2.3 million people of Gaza, half of them children.
It is the same military that since October has laid waste to all of Gaza’s hospitals, as well as destroying almost all of its schools and 70 percent of its homes. It is the same military that is known to have killed over that period at least 40,000 Palestinians, with a further 21,000 children missing.
It is the same military currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court in the world.
No red lines If there are no red lines for Israel when it comes to brutalising Palestinian civilians trapped inside Gaza, why would there be any red lines for those kidnapped off its streets and dragged into its dungeons?
I documented some of the horrors unfolding in Sde Teiman in these pages back in May.
Months ago, the Israeli media began publishing testimonies from whistleblowing guards and doctors detailing the depraved conditions there.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access to the detention camp, leaving it entirely unmonitored.
The United Nations published a report on July 31 into the conditions in which some 9400 captive Palestinians have been held since last October. Most have been cut off from the outside world, and the reason for their seizure and imprisonment was never provided.
The report concludes that “appalling acts” of torture and abuse are taking place at all of Israel’s detention centres, including sexual violence, waterboarding and attacks with dogs.
The authors note “forced nudity of both men and women; beatings while naked, including on the genitals; electrocution of the genitals and anus; being forced to undergo repeated humiliating strip searches; widespread sexual slurs and threats of rape; and the inappropriate touching of women by both male and female soldiers”.
There are, according to the investigation, “consistent reports” of Israeli security forces “inserting objects into detainees’ anuses”.
Children sexually abused
Last month, Save the Children found that many hundreds of Palestinian children had been imprisoned in Israel, where they faced starvation and sexual abuse.
And this week B’Tselem, Israel’s main human rights group monitoring the occupation, produced a report — titled “Welcome to Hell” — which included the testimonies of dozens of Palestinians who had emerged from what it called “inhuman conditions”. Most had never been charged with an offence.
It concluded that the abuses at Sde Teiman were “just the tip of the iceberg”. All of Israel’s detention centres formed “a network of torture camps for Palestinians” in which “every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering”. It added that this was “an organised, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities”.
Tal Steiner, head of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which has long campaigned against the systematic torture of Palestinian detainees, wrote last week that Sde Teiman “was a place where the most horrible torture we had ever seen was occurring”.
In short, it has been an open secret in Israel that torture and sexual assault are routine at Sde Teiman.
The abuse is so horrifying that last month Israel’s High Court ordered officials to explain why they were operating outside Israel’s own laws governing the internment of “unlawful combatants”.
The surprise is not that sexual violence is being inflicted on Palestinian captives. It is that Israel’s top brass ever imagined the arrest of Israeli soldiers for raping a Palestinian would pass muster with the public.
Toxic can of worms
Instead, by making the arrests, the army opened a toxic can of worms.
The arrests provoked a massive backlash from soldiers, politicians, Israeli media, and large sections of the Israeli public.
Rioters, led by members of the Israeli Parliament, broke into Sde Teiman. An even larger group, including members of Force 100, tried to invade a military base, Beit Lid, where the soldiers were being held in an attempt to free them.
The police, under the control of Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler leader with openly fascist leanings, delayed arriving to break up the protests. Ben Gvir has called for Palestinian prisoners to be summarily executed — or killed with “a shot to the head” — to save on the costs of holding them.
No one was arrested over what amounted to a mutiny as well as a major breach of security.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, helped whip up popular indignation, denouncing the arrests and describing the Force 100 soldiers as “heroic warriors”.
Other prominent cabinet ministers echoed him.
Three soldiers freed
Already, three of the soldiers have been freed, and more will likely follow.
The consensus in Israel is that any abuse, including rape, is permitted against the thousands of Palestinians who have been seized by Israel in recent months — including women, children and many hundreds of medical personnel.
That consensus is the same one that thinks it fine to bomb Palestinian women and children in Gaza, destroy their homes and starve them.
Such depraved attitudes are not new. They draw on ideological convictions and legal precedents that developed through decades of Israel’s illegal occupation. Israeli society has completely normalised the idea that Palestinians are less than human and that any and every abuse of them is allowed.
Hamas’s attack on October 7 simply brought the long-standing moral corruption at the core of Israeli society more obviously out into the open.
In 2016, for example, the Israeli military appointed Colonel Eyal Karim as its chief rabbi, even after he had declared Palestinians to be “animals” and had approved the rape of Palestinian women in the interest of boosting soldiers’ morale.
Compensation suit dismissed
In 2015, Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed a compensation suit from a Lebanese prisoner that his lawyers submitted after he was released in a prisoner swap. Mustafa Dirani had been raped with a baton 15 years earlier in a secret jail known as Facility 1391.
Despite Dirani’s claim being supported by a medical assessment from the time made by an Israeli military doctor, the court ruled that anyone engaged in an armed conflict with Israel could not make a claim against the Israeli state.
Meanwhile, human and legal rights groups have regularly reported cases of Israeli soldiers and police raping and sexually assaulting Palestinians, including children.
A clear message was sent to Israeli soldiers over many decades that, just as the genocidal murder of Palestinians is considered warranted and “lawful”, the torture and rape of Palestinians held in captivity is considered warranted and “lawful” too.
Understandably, there was indignation that the long-established “rules” — that any and every atrocity is permitted — appeared suddenly and arbitrarily to have been changed.
The biggest question is this: why did the Israeli military’s top legal adviser approve opening an investigation into the Force 100 soldiers — and why now?
The answer is obvious. Israel’s commanders are in panic after a spate of setbacks in the international legal arena.
‘Plausible’ Gaza genocide
The ICJ, sometimes referred to as the World Court, has put Israel on trial for committing what it considers a “plausible” genocide in Gaza.
Separately, it concluded last month that Israel’s 57-year occupation is illegal and a form of aggression against the Palestinian people. Gaza never stopped being under occupation, the judges ruled, despite claims from its apologists, including Western governments, to the contrary.
Significantly, that means Palestinians have a legal right to resist their occupation. Or, to put it another way, they have an immutable right to self-defence against their Israeli occupiers, while Israel has no such right against the Palestinians it illegally occupies.
Israel is not in “armed conflict” with the Palestinian people. It is brutally occupying and oppressing them.
Israel must immediately end the occupation to regain such a right of self-defence — something it demonstrably has no intention to do.
Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICJ’s sister court, is actively seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes.
The various cases reinforce each other. The World Court’s decisions are making it ever harder for the ICC to drag its feet in issuing and expanding the circle of arrest warrants.
Countervailing pressures
Both courts are now under enormous, countervailing pressures.
On the one side, massive external pressure is being exerted on the ICJ and ICC from states such as the US, Britain and Germany that are prepared to see the genocide in Gaza continue.
And on the other, the judges themselves are fully aware of what is at stake if they fail to act.
The longer they delay, the more they discredit international law and their own role as arbiters of that law. That will give even more leeway for other states to claim that inaction by the courts has set a precedent for their own right to commit war crimes.
International law, the entire rationale for the ICJ and ICC’s existence, stands on a precipice. Israel’s genocide threatens to bring it all crashing down.
Israel’s top brass stand in the middle of that fight.
They are confident that Washington will block at the UN Security Council any effort to enforce the ICJ rulings against them — either a future one on genocide in Gaza or the existing one on their illegal occupation.
No US veto at ICC
But arrest warrants from the ICC are a different matter. Washington has no such veto. All states signed up to the ICC’s Rome Statute – that is, most of the West, minus the US — will be obligated to arrest Israeli officials who step on their soil and to hand them over to The Hague.
Israel and the US had been hoping to use technicalities to delay the issuing of the arrest warrants for as long as possible. Most significantly, they recruited the UK, which has signed the Rome Statute, to do their dirty work.
It looked like the new UK government under Keir Starmer would continue where its predecessor left off by tying up the court in lengthy and obscure legal debates about the continuing applicability of the long-dead, 30-year-old Oslo Accords.
A former human rights lawyer, Starmer has repeatedly backed Israel’s “plausible” genocide, even arguing that the starvation of Gaza’s population, including its children, could be justified as “self-defence” — an idea entirely alien to international law, which treats it as collective punishment and a war crime.
But now with a secure parliamentary majority, even Starmer appears to be baulking at being seen as helping Netanyahu personally avoid arrest for war crimes.
That has suddenly left both Netanyahu and the Israeli military command starkly exposed — which is the reason they felt compelled to approve the arrest of the Force 100 soldiers.
Top prass pretexts
Under a rule known as “complementarity”, Israeli officials might be able to avoid war crimes trials at The Hague if they can demonstrate that Israel is able and willing to prosecute war crimes itself. That would avert the need for the ICC to step in and fulfil its mandate.
The Israeli top brass hoped they could feed a few lowly soldiers to the Israeli courts and drag out the trials for years. In the meantime, Washington would have the pretext it needed to bully the ICC into dropping the case for arrests on the grounds that Israel was already doing the job of prosecuting war crimes.
The patent problem with this strategy is that the ICC isn’t primarily interested in a few grunts being prosecuted in Israel as war criminals, even assuming the trials ever take place.
At issue is the military strategy that has allowed Israel to bomb Gaza into the Stone Age. At issue is a political culture that has made starving 2.3 million people seem normal.
At issue is a religious and nationalistic fervour long cultivated in the army that now encourages soldiers to execute Palestinian children by shooting them in the head and chest, as a US doctor who volunteered in Gaza has testified.
At issue is a military hierarchy that turns a blind eye to soldiers raping and sexually abusing Palestinian captives, including children.
The buck stops not with a handful of soldiers in Force 100. It stops with the Israeli government and military leaders. They are at the top of a command chain that has authorised war crimes in Gaza for the past 10 months – and before that, for decades across the occupied territories.
What is at stake
This is why observers have totally underestimated what is at stake with the rulings of the ICC and ICJ.
These judgments against Israel are forcing out into the light of day for proper scrutiny a state of affairs that has been quietly accepted by the West for decades. Should Israel have the right to operate as an apartheid regime that systematically engages in ethnic cleansing and the murder of Palestinians?
A direct answer is needed from each Western capital. There is nowhere left to hide. Western states are being presented with a stark choice: either openly back Israeli apartheid and genocide, or for the first time withdraw support.
The Israeli far-right, which now dominates both politically and in the army’s combat ranks, cares about none of this. It is immune to pressure. It is willing to go it alone.
As the Israeli media has been warning for some time, sections of the army are effectively now turning into militias that follow their own rules.
Israel’s military commanders, on the other hand, are starting to understand the trap they have set for themselves. They have long cultivated fascistic zealotry among ground troops needed to dehumanise and better oppress Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But the war crimes proudly being live-streamed by their units now leave them exposed to the legal consequences.
Israel’s international isolation means a place one day for them in the dock at The Hague.
Israeli society’s demons exposed The ICC and ICJ rulings are not just bringing Israeli society’s demons out into the open, or those of a complicit Western political and media class.
The international legal order is gradually cornering Israel’s war machine, forcing it to turn in on itself. The interests of the Israeli military command are now fundamentally opposed to those of the rank and file and the political leadership.
The result, as military expert Yagil Levy has long warned, will be an increasing breakdown of discipline, as the attempts to arrest Force 100 soldiers demonstrated all too clearly.
The Israeli military juggernaut cannot be easily or quickly turned around.
The military command is reported to be furiously trying to push Netanyahu into agreeing on a hostage deal to bring about a ceasefire — not because it cares about the welfare of Palestinian civilians, or the hostages, but because the longer this “plausible” genocide continues, the bigger chance the generals will end up at The Hague.
Israel’s zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want not only to continue the drive to eliminate the Palestinian people but to widen the circle of war, whatever the consequences.
That included the reckless, incendiary move last month to assassinate Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran — a provocation with one aim only: to undermine the moderates in Hamas and Tehran.
If, as seems certain, Israel’s commanders are unwilling or incapable of reining in these excesses, then the World Court will find it impossible to ignore the charge of genocide against Israel and the ICC will be compelled to issue arrest warrants against more of the military leadership.
A logic has been created in which evil feeds on evil in a death spiral. The question is how much more carnage and misery can Israel spread on the way down.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Fiji’s Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, says he will “apologise” to fellow Melanesian leaders later this month after failing to secure agreement from Indonesia to visit its restive West Papua province.
At last year’s Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders meeting in Cook Islands, the Melanesian Spearhead Group appointed Rabuka and PNG Prime Minister James Marape as the region’s “special envoys” on West Papua.
Several Pacific officials and advocacy groups have expressed anguish over alleged human rights abuses committed by Indonesian forces in West Papua, where an indigenous pro-independence struggle has simmered for decades.
Rabuka and Marape have been trying to organise a visit to West Papua for more than nine months now.
But in an exclusive interview with the ABC’s Pacific Beat, Rabuka said conversations on the trip were still “ongoing” and blamed Indonesia’s presidential elections in February for the delay.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t go . . . Indonesia was going through elections. In two months’ time, they will have a new substantive president in place in the palace. Hopefully we can still move forward with that,” he said.
“But in the meantime, James Marape and I will have to apologise to our Melanesian counterparts on the side of the Forum Island leaders meeting in Tonga, and say we have not been able to go on that mission.”
Pacific pressing for independent visit
Pacific nations have been pressing Indonesia to allow representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct an independent visit to Papua.
A UN Human Rights committee report released in May found there were “systematic reports” of both torture and extrajudicial killings of indigenous Papuans in the province.
But Indonesia usually rejects any criticism of its human rights record in West Papua, saying events in the province are a purely internal affair.
West Papua Resistance Leader, Victor Weimo: I must thank the colonialists for continuously teaching us to aspire to true humanity by means of rebellion. pic.twitter.com/h9n4rN9yyN
Rabuka said he was “still committed” to the visit and would like to make the trip after incoming Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto takes power in October.
The Fiji prime minister made the comments ahead of a 10-day trip to China, with Rabuka saying he would travel to a number of Chinese provinces to see how the emerging great power had pulled millions of people out of poverty.
He praised Beijing’s development record, but also indicated Fiji would not turn to China for loans or budget support.
“As we take our governments and peoples forward, the people themselves must understand that we cannot borrow to become embroiled in debt servicing later on,” he said.
“People must understand that we can only live within our means, and our means are determined by our own productivity, our own GDP.”
Rabuka is expected to meet Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing towards the end of his trip, at the beginning of next week.
Delegation to visit New Caledonia After his trip to China, the prime minister will take part in a high level Pacific delegation to Kanaky New Caledonia, which was rocked by widespread rioting and violence earlier this year.
While several Pacific nations have been pressing France to make fresh commitments towards decolonisation in the wake of a contentious final vote on independence back in 2021, Rabuka said the Pacific wanted to help different political groups within the territory to find common ground.
“We will just have to convince the leaders, the local group leaders that rebuilding is very difficult after a spate of violent activities and events,” he said.
Rabuka gave strong backing to a plan to overhaul Pacific policing which Australia has been pushing hard ahead of the PIF leaders meeting in Tonga at the end of this month.
Senior Solomon Islands official Collin Beck took to social media last week to publicly criticise the initiative, suggesting that its backers were trying to “steamroll” any opposition at Pacific regional meetings.
Rabuka said the social media post was “unfortunate” and suggested that Solomon Islands or other Pacific nations could simply opt out of the initiative if they didn’t approve of it.
“When it comes to sovereignty, it is a sovereign state that makes the decision,” he said.
Republished with permission from ABC Pacific Beat.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
A global media watchdog has expressed concern for the safety of an Al Jazeera reporter after false claims by the Israeli military.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was concerned for Anas al-Sharif, Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondent in northern Gaza, after an Israel military spokesperson accused him of “presenting a lie” in his coverage of Israel’s air strike on al-Tabin School on August 10.
The Israeli military claimed al-Sharif was “‘covering up’ for Hamas and Islamic Jihad after Israel killed dozens in its strike on a Gaza City school complex,” said CPJ programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna.
The strike killed some 100 people in a building housing Palestinians displaced by the war on the besieged enclave.
“Al Jazeera journalists have been paying a devastating price for documenting the war. They and all journalists should be protected and allowed to work freely,” Martinez de la Serna said.
Israel claims Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were operating from a mosque in the school complex.
Al-Sharif has been threatened previously over his work and his father was killed on December 11, 2023, in an Israeli air strike on the family home in Jabalia.
CPJ has documented the killing of at least seven journalists and media workers affiliated with Al Jazeera — which Israel has banned from operating inside Israel — since October 7.
‘Blatant intimidation’
In an earlier statement made by the Al Jazeera Media Network, it described the Israeli military views as a “blatant act of intimidation and incitement against our colleague Anas Al-Sharif”.
“Such remarks are not only an attack on Anas’s character and integrity but also a clear attempt to stifle the truth and silence those who are courageously reporting from Gaza.”
“No amount of disinformation by radical Israeli officials spreading lies, including about Jordan, will change the fact that Israel’s continued aggression on Gaza . . . [is] the biggest threat to regional security,” he said.
In a post on X, Safadi added: “The facts about the horrors this most radical of Israeli governments is bringing upon innocent Palestinian[s] . . . and the threat of its illegal actions and radical policies to the security and stability of [the] region are so clear and documented.
“No propaganda campaigns, no lies, no fabrications can cover that.”
“I have to say there is widespread support for the membership of Guam and American Samoa, and so that is the recommendation in principle coming from foreign ministers that will be tabled with leaders,” he said.
However, Griffith Asia Institute’s Pacific Hub project lead Dr Tess Newton Cain said the move had a geopolitical aspect.
Forum foreign ministers gathered at the PIF Secretariat for its meeting on Friday. Image: Pacific Islands Forum
“When it comes to the Pacific Islands Forum, the US has struggled with the fact that it sits at the same table as China — they are both dialogue partners,” she said.
“It is like when you invite people to a wedding — the US does not like the table it is on.
US seeking ‘better table’
“It wants to be on a better table and being able to have two of its territories, American Samoa and Guam, get that associate membership — if that happens — does seem to indicate this is how they get a little bit of an edge on China.”
She expects the application to be accepted at the Leaders’ Meeting in Tonga at the end of the month.
Tokelau and Wallis and Futuna are currently the associate members of the Forum. American Samoa and Guam are currently forum observers; being upgraded to associate members will give them better participation in the regional institution.
Guam’s Governor Lou Leon Guerrero told RNZ Pacific last week the territory would ultimately want to be full voting members.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had previously said the territories’ political status meant they could not be full members but he supported the application for associate membership.
French territories New Caledonia and French Polynesia became full members in 2016.
Newton Cain believes full membership for the two US territories would be a push.
French territories ‘justified’
But she said for the French territories it was “kind of justified” — New Caledonia was on the path to independence, while French Polynesia was re-inscribed to the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories (C-24 list).
“If Guam and American Samoa are not interested, or there is no kind of indication that they are moving towards being sovereign or even in a compact, like Marshall Islands and Palau and FSM, then that would be a big ask.”
Newton Cain thinks full membership would mean some member states would have concerns because it means Washington is getting closer to the decision making.
“There is also regional concern surrounding Guam’s military build-up. If the territory wanted to progress to full membership it may not be able to comply with the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Treaty,” Newton Cain said.
Architecture reform Brown said the Forum was undergoing a review of its architecture, including criteria for associate member status and observer status, which would likely see changes to associate membership applications.
“So, while [Guam and American Samoa] applications will be considered by leaders, and in this case, it looks favourably to be elevated to associate membership — the review of the regional architecture, as it pertains to associate membership, may see some changes,” he said.
Newton Cain said it was not clear what Brown meant.
“It would be a very bad look diplomatically if they were to allow them to become associate members and then in a couple of years say, ‘oh we have changed the rules now and you no longer qualify’.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
An appeals court has struck down a 2018 government order that sought to shut down Rappler, an online Philippine news site celebrated for its critical coverage of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs” that left thousands dead.
The Court of Appeals (CA) Special 7th Division, in a ruling on July 23 but publicly released on Friday, ordered the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to “restore the Certificate of Incorporation of Rappler Inc. and Rappler Holdings Corp. in its records and system.”
The court stated that all issuances and actions relating to “[Rappler’s] illegal revocation” must be withdrawn.
Rappler and its chief executive, Nobel Peace prize laureate Maria Ressa, faced years-long legal battles after drawing condemnation from Duterte for the outlet’s critical reporting of the deadly drug war.
“This court decision, the latest in a string of court victories for Rappler, is a much-needed reminder that the mission of journalism can thrive even in the line of fire: to speak truth to power, to hold the line, to build a better world,” the online news portal said in a statement.
“It’s a vindication after a tortuous eight years of harassment. The CA was unequivocal in its rejection of the SEC’s 2018 shutdown order, declaring it ‘illegal’ and a ‘grave abuse of discretion’,” it said.
Standing in front of her news organisation’s logo, Rappler chief executive Maria Ressa speaks to reporters at the office in suburban Pasig city on Friday. Image: Gerard Carreon/BenarNews
Rappler’s business certificate was revoked in January 2018 after the SEC claimed the news website was partly owned by foreign entities Omidyar Network, founded by eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar and North Base Media, owned and founded by a group of journalists advocating free press.
Foreign ownership prohibited
The SEC took issue with Philippine depository receipts issued by Rappler to the two foreign groups. The Philippine Constitution prohibits foreign ownership of media sites.
Omidyar subsequently donated its shares to Rappler’s Filipino managers. The CA then asked the corporate regulator to restudy its ruling because the issue had been resolved. However, the SEC upheld its order before Duterte ended his term.
Rappler continued to operate while the website appealed the order.
Philippine media freedom – Rappler wins new court ruling. Video: Al Jazeera
In its decision, the CA said Rappler is “currently wholly owned and managed by Filipinos, in compliance with the constitutional mandate.”
In 2021, Ressa won the Nobel Peace Prize for shining a light on thousands of extrajudicial killings under Duterte, who is being investigated by the International Criminal Court.
The Philippines ranks among the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists.
At least 199 media workers have been killed in the Philippines since the restoration of democracy in 1986, according to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
That figure includes the 32 journalists and media workers murdered in one incident in 2009, the Ampatuan massacre in Mindanao described as the world’s biggest single-day attack on the working press.
Speakers at a large rally in the heart of New Zealand’s largest city today strongly condemned Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinian children in its 10-month genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
The 2000-strong rally was replicated in “Stop the war on children” protests across New Zealand this weekend.
Ironically, the demonstrations came as world leaders and humanitarian organisations condemned the latest atrocity by the Israeli military.
An Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians in Gaza City has killed more than 100 people, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian officials who expect the death toll to rise.
While the Israeli military claimed in a statement that its air force on Saturday struck a “command and control centre” that “served as a hideout for Hamas terrorists and commanders” at the al-Tabin school.
However, it did not provide evidence and claimed it had taken steps to reduce the risk of harming civilians while questioning the accuracy of the reported death toll.
“There has been no evidence to back up the claims made by the Israeli military over the last 10 months when targeting civilian infrastructure and densely populated areas that are filled with displaced Palestinians,” reports Hamdah Salhut of Al Jazeera.
“Right after the Gaza City school was struck with three air strikes by the Israeli army, the military released a statement claiming that they were targeting Hamas operatives inside both the school and the mosque.
The Israeli carnage at Gaza’s al-Tabin school . . . world condemnation. Image: AJ screenshot APR
“They say that they use precise munitions in order to minimise the civilian damage and death, that this was an intelligence-based attack carried out in coordination with the Shin Bet, the internal security agency.
‘Pictures show different story’
“But pictures show a different story. The sources on the ground, the medics and the Civil Defence workers who are picking up body parts of Palestinians that have been blown to pieces tell a different story.
“We also heard from an Israeli army spokesperson in English who said that the military is denying the fact that more than 100 Palestinians were killed, based on Israeli military intelligence, which again was not provided.”
Al Jazeera has been banned by the Israeli government from reporting or broadcasting within Israel. It is reporting the Israeli side of the war from Amman, capital of the neighbouring state of Jordan.
Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that Israel’s attack went against “all humanitarian values” and was “an indication of the Israeli government’s attempt to block [peace] efforts and postpone them”.
It added that “the absence of a decisive international stance to restrain Israeli aggression and compel it to respect international law and stop its aggression against Gaza” was resulting in “unprecedented killings, deaths and human catastrophe”.
Five Israeli attacks on Gaza schools this week . . . at least 179 people killed and 154 wounded or missing. Graphic: Al Jazeera CC (creative commons) 10 August 2024
Qatar Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the attack constituted a “horrific massacre and a brutal crime against defenceless civilians”.
It called for an independent UN fact-finding mission to investigate attacks on shelters for displaced Palestinians in Gaza and demanded that the international community oblige Israel to ensure their protection and uphold international law.
Qatar, Egypt and the United States are the mediators between Israel and Gaza and have called for a new round of ceasefire negotiations for Thursday as fears grow of a broader conflict involving Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
Auckland “Stop The War on Children” protesters in Te Komititanga Square today. Image: David Robie/APR
Hamas “The massacre at al-Tabin school in the Daraj neighbourhood in central Gaza City is a horrific crime that constitutes a dangerous escalation,” said the movement that governs the Gaza Strip.
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the Palestinian group’s political bureau, said there were no armed men at the school.
Hamas said in its statement that Israel’s claims of the school being used as the group’s command centre were “excuses to target civilians, schools, hospitals, and refugee tents, all of which are false pretexts and expose lies to justify its crimes”.
“We call on our Arab and Islamic countries and the international community to fulfill their responsibilities and take urgent action to stop these massacres and halt the escalating Zionist aggression against our people and defenseless citizens,” the statement said.
Ismail al-Thawabta, the director-general of Gaza’s Government Media Office, called on the international community and UN Security Council “to pressure Israel to end this cascading bloodbath among our people, namely innocent women and children”.
Fatah Fatah, the rival Palestinian faction that last month signed a “national unity” agreement with Hamas, said the attack was a “heinous bloody massacre” that represented the “peak of terrorism and criminality”.
“Committing these massacres confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt its efforts to exterminate our people through the policy of cumulative killing and mass massacres that make living consciences tremble,” it said in a statement.
A distraught Gazan mother wails for her family killed in an Israeli attack on al-Tabin school killing at least 100 people people. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Iran Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, said the Israeli government’s goal was to thwart ceasefire negotiations and continue the war.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Israel had again shown it was not committed to international law as he condemned the attack as genocide and a war crime.
He urged immediate action from the UN Security Council and said Israel’s actions in Gaza were a threat to international peace and security.
Protesters at the “Stop the War on Children” rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today. Image: David Robie/APR
Egypt The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Israel’s “deliberate killing” of unarmed Palestinians showed it lacked the political will to end the war in Gaza.
In a statement cited by the state-run Middle East News Agency, it accused Israel of repeatedly committing “large-scale crimes” against “unarmed civilians” whenever there was an international push for a ceasefire.
It said such attacks reflected “an unprecedented disregard” for international law.
Saudi Arabia The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it denounced the attack in the “strongest terms” and stressed that “mass massacres” in the enclave “need to stop”.
Gaza is “experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe due to the ongoing violations of international law”, the ministry said.
Lebanon The strike offered clear evidence of the Israeli government’s disregard for international humanitarian law and its intention to prolong the war and expand its scope, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
It called on the international community to take a unified stance and stressed that stopping the war in Gaza is necessary to prevent an escalation in the region.
Turkey “Israel has committed a new crime against humanity by massacring more than a hundred civilians who had taken refuge in a school,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said.
It accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of wanting “to sabotage ceasefire negotiations”.
UNRWA
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, called for an end to the “horrors unfolding under our watch”.
“We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm,” he wrote on X.
“The more recurrent, the more we lose our collective humanity,” he said, reiterating his call for a “ceasefire now”.
Gaza civil defence workers and community volunteers trying to save lives after the Israeli bombing of the al-Tabin school in Gaza City. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation The strike was “an extension of the brutal massacres and genocide committed by the Israeli occupation for more than ten months in the Gaza Strip”, the OIC said.
It called on the international community, especially the UN Security Council, to oblige Israel to respect its obligations as an occupying power under international law and provide protection to the Palestinian people.
European Union The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said he was “horrified” by the images of the attack, adding that at least 10 schools had been targeted in the past week.
“There’s no justification for these massacres,” he said.
Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, w/ reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims.
At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres
We are dismayed by the terrible overall death toll. 1/2
UN rapporteur
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, condemned the world’s “indifference” to mass bloodshed in Gaza.
“Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one ‘safe zone’ at the time. With US and European weapons,” Albanese posted on X.
“May the Palestinians forgive us for our collective inability to protect them, honouring the most basic meaning of international law.”
Gaza: In the largest and most shameful concentration camp of the 21st century, Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one ‘safe zone’ at the time. With US and European… https://t.co/bHmrFbySYi
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) August 10, 2024
Save the Children Tamer Kirolos, a regional director for the United Kingdom-based charity, called it the “deadliest attack on a school since last October”.
“It is devastating to see the toll this has taken, including so many children and people at the school for dawn prayers,” Kirolos said, adding that “children make up around 40 percent of the population and of people killed and injured since October” in the enclave.
“Civilians, children, must be protected. An immediate definitive ceasefire is the only foreseeable way that will happen.”
A leading peace campaigner is calling Aotearoa New Zealand’s decision to stay away from a peace event in Nagasaki paying tribute to victims of the Japanese city’s 1945 nuclear bombing “outrageous”.
Former trade union leader Robert Reid said New Zealand could have acted as a strong independent Pacific voice by attending today’s peace gathering, held annually on August 9 to commemorate the estimated 70,000 people killed in a US nuclear attack on the Japanese city at the end of World War II.
“New Zealand has missed an opportunity to demarcate itself from the cheerleaders of the Gaza genocide, from the US and the UK and other Western countries, and in a way has turned its back on Japan, which was an ally with us in the anti-nuclear position that New Zealand has held for many years,” the former Unite president said.
His comments come after a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat) spokesperson confirmed to In Context neither New Zealand’s ambassador to Japan Hamish Hooper nor any other consulate official would be attending the peace ceremony, stressing the move was due to “resourcing” and unrelated to a boycott by Western nations following the city’s decision not to invite Israel.
The US and its Western allies are staying away from the peace ceremony because Nagasaki’s Mayor Shiro Suzuki declined to send an invitation to Israel to attend, over events in the Middle East and to avoid protests against the war in Gaza at the event.
In a statement a Mfat spokesperson said: “The New Zealand government will not be represented at the commemorations at Nagasaki on 9 August 2024. This decision reflects limited resourcing of the Embassy in Tokyo, and is not associated with attendance of other countries.”
However, it is understood New Zealand was represented at a commemoration event at head of mission level in Hiroshima last Tuesday. Nagasaki is located south of Hiroshima and a journey three-and-a-half hours by train.
Cancelled last year
The Nagasaki commemoration was cancelled last year due to a typhoon warning. New Zealand had been represented at both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events in recent years, at head of mission level in 2022 and 2021.
It only attended the Hiroshima commemoration in 2020, a period when covid-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions were widespread.
New Zealand’s absence comes after envoys of the US, Canada, Germany, France, the UK and other Western nations sent a letter to Nagasaki organisers expressing concern over the city not inviting Israel.
The letter, dated July 19, warned that if Israel was excluded, “it would become difficult for us to have high-level participation” in the event as it would “result in placing Israel on the same level as countries such as Russia and Belarus,” both having been excluded from the ceremony since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In a statement on July 31 outlining the reasons for excluding Israel, Suzuki said officials feared protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza would take away the ceremony’s solemnity.
He added that he made the decision based on “various developments in the international community in response to the ongoing situation in the Middle East”.
ICJ ruled Israel as apartheid state
An International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on July 19 ruled Israel’s occupation of Palestine illegal and that Israel was administering a system of apartheid through discriminatory laws and policies. Apartheid is a crime against humanity.
In a 14-1 ruling, the ICJ directed Israel to immediately cease all settlement activity, evacuate settlers from occupied Palestinian territories, and pay reparations to Palestinians. It also voted 12-3 that UN states not render aid or assistance to Israel to continue the illegal occupation.
On July 30, the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner said in light of the ruling: “States must immediately review all diplomatic, political, and economic ties with Israel, inclusive of business and finance, pension funds, academia and charities.”
There were protests on Wednesday following a decision by the Hiroshima municipality to allow Israeli representation at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park event the day before, while not inviting a Palestinian envoy on the basis that the occupied country was not a United Nations member and that Japan did not recognise it as a state.
“I understand New Zealand is not calling its absence a boycott, but just that it’s too busy, but it has attended in the past,” Read said.
“I think we’re just playing with words here. This was a chance for New Zealand to stand with the people of Palestine, to stand with the Japanese people, who have had bombs dropped on them and they have perhaps taken a weak way out by not attending.”
The Disarmament and Security Centre Aotearoa is holding a Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemoration event on Sunday, August 11, at Christchurch’s Botanic Gardens.
Virtual centre
The non-profit organisation is a virtual centre connecting disarmament experts, lawyers, political scientists, academics, teachers, students and disarmament proponents.
Its spokesperson, Dr Marcus Coll, said he was shocked New Zealand would not be attending the Nagasaki event this year.
“These sorts of things should never be about resources because it’s the symbolism of it that is so important and actually showing solidarity with the victims of Nagasaki,” he said.
“In the Pacific region especially, we’ve really felt the effects of nuclear testing throughout the decades and then in Japan, there still are a lot of the survivors and their families are affected because of the intergenerational effects.”
Dr Coll spent seven years studying and working in Japan. His doctoral research involved interviewing and researching survivors of the atomic bombings, as well as indigenous rights activists, religious and military leaders, peace campaigners, and others who were instrumental in shaping New Zealand’s nuclear free identity.
He said Japan’s survivors had expressed awe at a small country in the Pacific taking a strong stand against nuclear weapons.
“New Zealand has really been a kind of a beacon of hope for a lot of those people,” he said.
Nuclear-free legacy
New Zealand became a nuclear-free country in 1987, with a Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act that effectively banned US nuclear vessels from its waters.
It led to New Zealand being frozen out of the ANZUS security treaty and allowed the country to develop a more independent policy engagement with the Pacific and the rest of the world.
“That came from the government level as well,” Dr Coll said.
“It was a groundswell from the public, which changed our policy, but governments of all stripes up until recently have really not contested that legacy and actually been kind of proud of it.
“It really is something that sets us apart, especially internationally and we’re respected for it . . . So, it seems like a real let down that our own government can’t even show up.”
Dr Coll said New Zealand had nurtured a significant link with Nagasaki, being the last place to suffer a nuclear attack in warfare.
“Our former director used to go to Nagasaki. She had very strong connections with the mayor there. There’s actually a sculpture in the Nagasaki Peace Park, given to the city on behalf of New Zealand cities and the New Zealand government back in 2000s, forging that strong connection.
“It’s called the Korowai of Peace. Phil Goff as foreign minister, the New Zealand ambassador and other civil society people were there . . . This decision I suspect is a kind of PR and not to attend is a blow to our heritage of promoting disarmament and being anti-nuclear.”
The US envoy to Japan Rahm Emanuel is expected to attend a peace ceremony at the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo on Friday instead.
Nagasaki was bombed by the United States on August 9, 1945, after Hiroshima had been hit by atomic bomb on August 6. The two attacks at the end of World War II killed up to 250,000 people. Japan surrendered on August 15.
Republished from Mick Hall In Context with permission.
We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin, writes Jonathan Cook.
COMMENTARY:By Jonathan Cook
The headline above, about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published in yesterday’s Middle East Eye.
When I began studying Israeli history more than a quarter of a century ago, people claiming to be experts proffered plenty of excuses to explain why Israelis should not be held responsible for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes — what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe.
1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew nothing of the war crimes carried out against the Palestinians during Israel’s establishment.
2. I was told that those Israelis who did take part in war crimes, like Operation Broom to expel Palestinians from their homeland, did so only because they were traumatised by their experiences in Europe. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, these Israelis assumed that, were the Jewish people to survive, they had no alternative but to drive out the Palestinians en masse.
3. From others, I was told that no ethnic cleansing had taken place. The Palestinians had simply fled at the first sign of conflict because they had no real historical attachment to the land.
4. Or I was told that the Palestinians’ displacement was an unfortunate consequence of a violent war in which Israeli leaders had the best interests of Palestinians at heart. The Palestinians hadn’t left because of Israeli violence but because they has been ordered to do so by Arab leaders in the region. In fact, the story went, Israel had pleaded with many of the 750,000 refugees to come home afterwards, but those same Arab leaders stubbornly blocked their return.
Every one of these claims was nonsense, directly contradicted by all the documentary evidence.
That should be even clearer today, as Israel continues the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the Palestinian people more than 75 years on.
1. Every Israeli knows exactly what is going on in Gaza – after all, their children-soldiers keep posting videos online showing the latest crimes they have committed, from blowing up mosques and hospitals to shooting randomly into homes. Polls show all but a small minority of Israelis approve of the savagery that has killed many tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children. A third of them think Israel needs to go further in its barbarity.Today, Israeli TV shows host debates about how much pain soldiers should be allowed to inflict by raping their Palestinian captives. Don’t believe me? Watch this from Israel’s Channel 12:
SHOCKING
Israel is quite possibly the only nation in the world where it is permissable and commonplace to go on TV and openly declare that the RAPING of prisoners should be a LEGITIMATE and OFFICIAL POLICY of the state and must be widely implemented. pic.twitter.com/1PyRXk8fxU
2. If the existential fears of Israelis and Jews still require the murder, rape and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians three-quarters of a century on from the Holocaust, then we need to treat that trauma as the problem – and refuse to indulge it any longer.
3. The people of Gaza are fleeing their homes — or at least the small number who still have homes not bombed to ruins — not because they lack an attachment to Palestine. They are fleeing from one part of the cage Israel has created for them to another part of it for one reason alone: because all of them — men, women and children — are terrified of being slaughtered by an Israeli military, at best, indifferent to their suffering and their fate.
The official death toll in Gaza is a lie. The casualty numbers are far, far higher.
4. No serious case can be made today that Israel is carrying out any of its crimes in Gaza — from bombing civilians to starving them — with regret, or that its leaders seek the best for the Palestinian population. Israel is on trial for genocide at the world’s highest court precisely because the judges there suspect it has the very worst intentions possible towards the Palestinian people.
We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was always a settler colonial project.
And like other settler colonial projects — from the US and Australia to South Africa and Algeria — it always viewed the native people as inferior, as non-human, as animals, and was bent on their elimination.
What is so obviously true today was true then too, at Israel’s birth. Israel was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin.
We in the West abetted its crimes in 1948, and we’re still abetting them today. Nothing has changed, except the excuses no longer work.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission.
On August 3, last Saturday, prisoner rights institutions and Palestinians all around the world were standing in solidarity with Gaza and Palestininian prisoners. This day is dedicated to highlighting Israeli crimes and violations of Palestinian prisoners’ rights and the continuing genocide in Gaza.
The machinery of brutality that punishes and tortures in secrecy in Israeli prisons must be brought to light.
Since October 7, Palestinian detainees have faced horrific crimes.
Shortly after Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced that Israel was cutting off food, water, electricity and fuel to Gaza, effectively announcing the start of the genocide, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir launched his own war against Palestinian political prisoners and detainees held in Israeli jails and camps, by declaring a policy of “overcrowding”.
Since then, the Israeli army and security services have launched mass arrest campaigns, which have swelled the number of Palestinian citizens from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to 9800.
At least 335 women and 680 children have been arrested. More than 3400 have been put under administrative detention — that is, they are held indefinitely without charge. Among them, there are 22 women and 40 children.
There has never been such a high number of administrative detainees since 1967.
Gaza arrests number unknown
Israel has also arrested an unknown number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, possibly exceeding thousands, according to our humble estimates. They are held under the 2002 “Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law”, which allows the Israeli army to detain people without issuing a detention order.
Israeli prisons cut food rations for Palestinians to the point of starvation since 7 Oct.
Testimonies of freed prisoners reveal that Israeli authorities rapidly converted more than a dozen prison facilities into a network of torture camps for Palestinian detainees. >> pic.twitter.com/BzciJGfzGY
Under Ben-Gvir’s orders, the already grave conditions in Israeli prisons have been made even worse. The prison authorities sharply reduced food rations and water, closing down the small shops where Palestinian detainees could purchase food and other necessities.
The cover of “Welcome to Hell”, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem’s report on systemic violations against Palestinian prisoners. Image: APR screenshot
They also cut off water and power and even reduced the time allocated to using the restrooms. Prisoners are also prohibited from showering, which has resulted in the spread of diseases, especially skin-related ones like scabies.
There have been reports of Palestinian prisoners being deprived of medical care.
The systematic malnutrition and dehydration Palestinian prisoners are facing has taken a toll. The few that are released leave detention centres in horrific physical condition.
Even the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that such weaponisation of food is “unacceptable”.
The use of torture, including rape and beatings, has become widespread. There have been shocking reports about prison guards urinating on detainees, torturing them with electric shock and using dogs to sexually assault them.
Human shield detainees
There have been even testimonies of Israeli forces using detainees as human shields during combat in Gaza.
The systemic use of torture and other ill-treatment has predictably gone as far as extrajudicial killings.
According to a recent report by Hebrew daily Haaretz, 48 Palestinians have died in detention centres. Among them is Thaer Abu Asab, who was brutally beaten by Israeli prison guards in Ketziot Prison, and died of his injuries at the age of 38.
According to Haaretz, 36 Gaza detainees have also died in the Sde Teiman camp. Testimonies from Israeli medical staff working at the detention centre have revealed horrific conditions for Palestinians held there.
Detainees are reportedly often operated on without anaesthesia and some have had to have their limbs amputated because they were shackled even when sleeping or receiving treatment.
Palestinians who have been released have said what they were subject to was more horrific than what they had heard took place at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo detention centres, where American forces tortured and forcibly disappeared Arabs and other Muslim men.
They have also testified that some detainees were killed through torture and severe beatings. One prisoner from Bethlehem, Moazaz Obaiat, who was released in July, has alleged that Ben-Gvir personally took part in torturing him.
Denied lawyer, family visits
Israeli authorities have denied prisoners visits by lawyers, family, and even medics, including the International Committee of the Red Cross. They have carried out acts of collective punishment, destroying the homes of their families, arresting their relatives and holding them hostage, and illegally transferring some to secret detention camps and military bases without disclosing their fate, which constitutes the crime of enforced disappearance.
Despite condemnations from various human rights orgaisations, Ben-Gvir and the rest of the Israeli governing coalition have doubled down on these policies. “[Prisoners] should be killed with a shot to the head and the bill to execute Palestinian prisoners must be passed in the third reading in the Knesset […]
“Until then, we will give them minimal food to survive. I don’t care,” Ben-Gvir said on July 1.
Electric shocks, rape, and torture to death.. Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons face serious violations, with some families receiving news of their deaths weeks later.
Euro-Med Monitor regularly documents dozens of testimonies from released Palestinian detainees and… pic.twitter.com/o04T1JS9bG
By using mass detention, Israel, the occupying power, has systematically destroyed Palestinian social, economic and psychological fabric since 1967. Over one million Palestinians have been arrested since then, thousands have been held hostage for extended periods under administrative detention and 255 detainees have died in Israeli prisons.
Israeli crimes against the Palestinians did not begin in October 2023, but are a continuation of a systematic process of ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and apartheid that began even before 1948.
But Israel’s colonial regime overlooks the Palestinian people’s resilience. Inspired by the experiences of the free nations of Ireland, South Africa and Vietnam, we draw strength from our determination to achieve our right to self-determination, freedom and independence.
This is why on this day, August 3, we urged the world to collectively protest against Israeli occupation crimes and racist laws and we call on governments to uphold their legal duties to prevent such crimes from happening.
Political prisoners solidarity
We also called on unions, universities, parliaments and political parties to effectively participate in large-scale events, demonstrations and digital campaigns in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners.
The international community should hold the occupying power to account by imposing a complete arms embargo on it, applying economic sanctions, and suspending its UN membership.
They should also nullify bilateral agreements, and halt Israel’s participation in international forums and events until it abides by international law and human rights. The international community must compel Israel to protect civilians according to its obligations as an occupying power.
Israel must also reveal the identities and conditions of people it has forcibly disappeared. We demand an end to arbitrary and administrative detention policies. The bodies of those who have died inside and outside prisons must also be released, and all prisoners must receive legal protection.
Israel, the occupying power, is under the obligation to allow special rapporteurs, United Nations experts, and the International Criminal Court prosecutor to visit Palestine, inspect prisons and deliver justice for the victims, including material and moral compensation.
Israel must not be allowed to get away with these horrific crimes.
Qadura Fares is head of the Commission of Detainees Affairs in Palestine. Republished from Al Jazeera.
The West Papuan resistance movement OPM has blamed the tragic death of a New Zealand helicopter pilot in a remote part of the troubled Melanesian region on Indonesia’s security forces and “every nation supporting barbarity”.
In a statement today, the OPM (Free Papua Organisation) chairman-commander Jeffrey Bomanak claimed his movement had undertaken a “thorough investigation” and unilaterally rejected any implication of responsibility for the death of pilot Glen Conning.
He also expressed sincere apologies to the pilot’s family.
Bomanak said the OPM “respects civilians from Sorong to Merauke” and also from “other parts of the world”.
Commander Bayu Suseno holds a photo of the NZ pilot Glen Conning . . . describes the recovery operation. Image: AJ screenshot APR
The Jakarta Post reports that Glen Malcolm Conning, 50, a pilot for PT Intan Angkasa Air Service, was killed yesterday after landing in a remote part of Central Papua province with two Indonesian health workers and two children, all of whom survived.
The Cartenz Peace Taskforce, assembled to deal with Papuan independence fighters, retrieved his body from the remote area and transported it to Timika near the Freeport copper and gold mine, reported the newspaper citing a military statement.
“The body of the pilot has been evacuated from the Alama district to Timika and arrived at 12:50 pm local time. The body is currently at the Mimika General Hospital for an autopsy,” Cartenz spokesman Adjutant Senior Commander Bayu Suseno said.
Mimika police head Adjutant Senior Commander I Komang Budiartha told reporters yesterday that three helicopters had been dispatched for the search effort, according to The Post.
‘Heart-broken’ for loss RNZ Pacific reports that a statement by Natasha Conning on behalf of his family said he was truly loved by his family and friends, who he had cherished spending time with when he was not flying or being in the outdoors.
“Our hearts are broken from this devastating loss,” she said.
The OPM statement today from chairman-commander Jeffrey P. Bomanak. Image: APR
In the OPM statement today, Commander Bomanak said: “From the beginning of the brutal invasion and illegal annexation, our war of liberation is the very defence of our homeland, just as it would be for you, and as it was during WWII.”
The “barbarity” of the Indonesian military and police was well known and “illegally supported by a tyranny of vested interests — geopolitical and trade from every nation with armament exports and a resource industry that steals our natural resources”, Bomanak said.
He said the death of the New Zealand pilot was “another tragic chapter in six decades of international support for Indonesia’s crimes against humanity”.
Bomanak also criticised the New Zealand government for allowing citizens to be employed by the “rogue state”.
NZ hostage pilot
In February 2023, pro-independence fighters took another New Zealand pilot hostage. Phillip Mehrtens, 37, who was captured shortly after landing his plane in the remote mountainous area of Nduga to drop off passengers.
He has been held hostage ever since and has featured in several videos and photographs circulated by his captors.
A spokesperson for the West Papua Action Aotearoa (WPAA) group, former Green MP Catherine Delahunty, said in a statement that the killing of Conning was an “utter tragedy for his family and friends”, adding that her movement was concerned over the killing of any civilians in West Papua.
She also noted that the area of the tragedy was a “conflict zone” and that the Indonesian military had a responsibility for the safety of pilots flying there.
Delahunty said the New Zealand government needed to respond to the dangerous situation “affecting our pilots” by calling on Indonesia to allow the UN Human Rights Commissioner and foreign media into West Papua.
She said the government should stop “sitting on their hands and start negotiating with Indonesia for peace, human rights and self-determination in West Papua”.
Since the arrival of Zionism in Palestine, the impulse of the Palestinians has not been about violence or revenge. The impulse remains the return to normal and natural life, writes Ilan Pappe.
ANALYSIS:By Ilan Pappe
“When we revolt, it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.”
— Franz Fanon
Since the 1948 Nakba and arguably before, Palestine has not seen levels of violence as high as those experienced since October 7, 2023. But we need to address how this violence is being situated, treated, and judged.
Indeed, mainstream media often portrays Palestinian violence as terrorism while depicting Israeli violence as self-defence. Rarely is Israeli violence labelled excessive.
Meanwhile, international legal institutions hold both sides equally responsible for this violence, which they classify as war crimes.
READ MORE: Middle East on edge as Israel continues to bombard Gaza
Both perspectives are flawed. The first perspective wrongly differentiates between the “immoral” and “unjustified” violence of Palestinians and Israel’s “right to defend itself.”
The second perspective, which assigns blame to both sides, provides a misguided and ultimately harmful framework for understanding the current situation — likely the most violent chapter in Palestine’s modern history.
And all of these perspectives overlook the crucial context necessary to understand the violence that erupted on October 7.
This is not merely a conflict between two violent parties, nor is it simply a clash between a terrorist organisation and a state defending itself.
Rather, it represents a chapter in the ongoing decolonisation of historic Palestine, which began in 1929 and continues today. Only in the future will we know whether October 7 marked an early stage in this decolonisation process or one of its final phases.
Throughout history, decolonisation has been a violent process, and the violence of decolonisation has not been confined to one side only. Apart from a few exceptions where very small, colonised islands were evicted “voluntarily” by colonial empires, decolonisation has not been a pleasant consensual affair by which colonisers end decades, if not centuries, of oppression.
But for this to be our entry point to discuss Hamas, Israel, and the various positions held towards them in the world, one has to acknowledge the colonialist nature of Zionism and therefore recognise the Palestinian resistance as an anti-colonialist struggle — a framework negated totally by American administrations and other Western countries since the birth of Zionism, and so therefore also by other Western countries.
Framing the conflict as a struggle between the colonisers and the colonised helps detect the origin of the violence and shows that there is no effective way of stopping it without addressing its origins.
The root of the violence in Palestine is the evolvement of Zionism in the late 19th century into a settler colonial project.
Like previous settler colonial projects, the main violent impulse of the movement — and later the state that was established — was and is to eliminate the indigenous population. When elimination is not achieved by violence, the solution is always to use more extraordinary violence.
Therefore, the only scenario in which a settler colonial project can end its violent treatment of the indigenous people is when it ends or collapses. Its inability to achieve the absolute elimination of the native population will not deter it from constantly attempting to do so through an incremental policy of elimination or genocide.
The anti-colonial impulse, or propensity, to employ violence is existential — unless we believe that human beings prefer to live as occupied or colonised people.
The colonisers have an option not to colonise or eliminate but rarely cease from doing so without being forced to by the violence of the colonised or by outside pressure from external powers.
Indeed, as is in the case of Israel and Palestine, the best way to avoid violence and counter-violence is to force the settler colonial project to cease through pressure from the outside.
The historical record is worth recollecting to give credence to our claim that the violence of Israel must be judged differently — in moral and political terms — from that of the Palestinians.
This, however, does not mean that condemnation for violation of international law can only be directed towards the coloniser; of course not.
It is an analysis of the history of violence in historical Palestine that contextualises the events of October 7 and the genocide in Gaza and indicates a way to end it.
The history of violence in Modern Palestine: 1882-2000 The arrival of the first group of Zionist settlers in Palestine in 1882 was not, by itself, the first act of violence. The violence of the settlers was epistemic, meaning that the violent removal of the Palestinians by the settlers had already been written about, imagined, and coveted upon their arrival in Palestine — debunking the infamous “land without people” myth.
To translate the imagined removal into reality, the Zionist movement had to wait for the occupation of Palestine by Britain in 1918.
A few years later in the mid-1920s, with assistance from the British mandatory government, 11 villages were ethnically cleansed following the purchase of the regions Marj Ibn Amer and Wadi Hawareth by the Zionist movement from absentee landlords in Beirut and a landowner in Jaffa.
This had never happened before in Palestine. Landowners, whoever they were, did not evict villages that had been there for centuries since Ottoman law enabled land transactions.
This was the origin and the first act of systemic violence in the attempt to dispossess the Palestinians.
Another form of violence was the strategy of “Hebrew Labour” meant to drive out Palestinians from the labour market. This strategy, and the ethnic cleansing, pauperised the Palestinian countryside, leading to forced emigration to towns that could not provide work or proper housing.
It was only in 1929, when these violent actions were coupled with a discourse on constructing a third temple in place of Haram al-Sharif, that the Palestinians responded with violence for the first time.
This was not a coordinated response, but a spontaneous and desperate one against the bitter fruits of the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.
Seven years later, when Britain permitted more settlers to arrive and supported the formation of a nascent Zionist state with its own army, the Palestinians launched a more organised campaign.
This was the first uprising, lasting three years (1936-1939), known as the Arab Revolt. During this period, the Palestinian elite finally recognised Zionism as an existential threat to Palestine and its people.
The main Zionist paramilitary group collaborating with the British army in quelling the revolt was known as the Haganah, meaning “The Defence,” and hence the Israeli narrative to depict any act of aggression against Palestinians as self-defence — a concept reflected in the name of the Israeli army, the Israel Defence Forces.
From the British Mandate period to today, this military power was used to take over land and markets. It was deployed as a “defence” force against the attacks of the anti-colonialist movement and as such was not different from any other coloniser in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The difference is that in most instances of modern history where colonialism has come to an end, the actions of the colonisers are now viewed retrospectively as acts of aggression rather than self-defence.
The great Zionist success has been to commodify their aggression as self-defence and the Palestinian armed struggle as terrorism. The British government, at least until 1948, regarded both acts of violence as terrorism but allowed the worst violence to take place against the Palestinians in 1948 when it watched the first stage of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Between December 1947 and May 1948, when Britain was still responsible for law and order, the Zionist forces urbicided, that is obliterated, the main towns of Palestine and the villages around it. This was more than terror; this was a crime against humanity.
After completing the second stage of the ethnic cleansing between May and December 1948, through the most violent means that Palestine has witnessed for centuries, half of Palestine’s population was forcefully expelled, half of its villages destroyed, as well as most of its towns.
Israeli historians would later claim that “the Arabs” wanted to throw the Jews into the sea. The only people who were literally thrown into the sea — and drowned — were those expelled by the Zionist forces in Jaffa and Haifa.
Israeli violence continued after 1948 but was answered sporadically by Palestinians in an attempt to build a liberation movement.
It began with refugees trying to retrieve what was left of their husbandry and crops in the fields, later accompanied by Fedayeen attacking military installations and civilian places. It only gelled into a significant enterprise in 1968, when the Fatah Movement took over the Arab League’s PLO.
The pattern before 1967 is familiar — the dispossessed used violence in their struggle, but on a limited scale, while the Israeli army retaliated with overwhelming, indiscriminate violence, such as the massacre of the village of Qibya in October 1953 where Ariel Sharon’s unit 101 murdered 69 Palestinian villagers, many of them blown up within their own homes.
No group of Palestinians have been spared from Israeli violence. Those who became Israeli citizens were subjected, until 1966, to the most violent form of oppression: military rule. This system routinely employed violence against its subjects, including abuse, house demolitions, arbitrary arrests, banishment, and killings. Among these atrocities was the Kafr Qassem massacre in October 1956, where Israeli border police killed 49 Palestinian villagers.
This same violent system was transited to the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the June 1967 War. For 19 years, the violence of the occupation was tolerated by the occupied until the mostly non-violent First Intifada in December 1987. Israel responded with brutality and violence that left 1,200 Palestinians dead, 300 of them children — 120,000 were injured and 1,800 homes were demolished. 180 Israelis were killed.
The pattern here continued — an occupied people, disillusioned with their own leadership and the indifference of the region and the world, rose in a non-violent revolt, only to be met with the full, brutal force of the coloniser and occupier.
Another pattern also emerges. The Intifada triggered a renewed interest in Palestine — as has the Hamas attack on October 7 — and produced a “peace process”, the Oslo Accords that raised the hopes of ending the occupation but instead, it provided immunity to the occupier to continue its occupation.
The frustration led, inevitably, to a more violent uprising in October 2000. It also shifted popular support from those leaders who still put their faith in the diplomatic way of ending occupation to those who were willing to continue the armed struggle against it — the political Islamic groups.
Violence in 21st century Palestine Hamas and Islamic Jihad enjoy great support because of their choice of continuing to fight the occupation, not because of their theocratic vision of a future Caliphate or their particular wish to make the public space more religious.
The horrific pendulum continued. The Second Intifada was met by a more brutal Israeli response.
For the first time, Israel used F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters against the civilian population, alongside battalions of tanks and artillery that led to the 2002 Jenin massacre.
The brutality was directed from above to compensate for the humiliating withdrawal from southern Lebanon forced upon the Israeli army by Hezbollah in the summer of 2000 — the Second Intifada broke out in October 2000.
The direct violence against the occupied people from 2000 took also the form of intensive colonisation and Judaisation of the West Bank and Greater Jerusalem area.
This campaign was translated into the expropriation of Palestinian lands, encircling the Palestinian areas with apartheid walls, and giving a free license to the settlers to perpetrate attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem.
In 2005, Palestinian civil society tried to offer the world a different kind of struggle through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – a non-violent struggle based on a call to the international community to put a stop to the Israeli colonialist violence, which has not been heeded, so far, by governments.
Instead, Israeli brutality on the ground increased and the Gaza resistance in particular fought back resiliently to the point that forced Israel to evict its settlers and soldiers from there in 2005.
However, the withdrawal did not liberate the Gaza Strip, it transformed from being a colonised space into becoming a killing field in which a new form of violence was introduced by Israel.
The colonising power moved from ethnic cleansing to genocide in its attempt to deal with the Palestinian refusal, in particular in the Gaza Strip, to live as a colonised people in the 21st century.
Since 2006, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have used violence in response to what they view as ongoing genocide by Israel against the people of the Gaza Strip. This violence has also been directed at the civilian population in Israel.
Western politicians and journalists often overlooked the indirect and long-term catastrophic effects of these policies on the Gaza population, including the destruction of health infrastructure and the trauma experienced by the 2.2 million people living in the Gaza ghetto.
As it did in 1948, Israel alleges that all its actions are defensive and retaliatory in response to Palestinian violence. In essence, however, Israeli actions since 2006 have not been retaliatory.
Israel initiated violent operations driven by the wish to continue the incomplete 1948 ethnic cleansing that left half of Palestinians inside historic Palestine and millions of others on Palestine’s borders. The eliminatory policies, as brutal as they were, were not successful in this respect; the desperate bouts of Palestinian resistance have instead been used as a pretext to complete the elimination project.
And the cycle continues. When Israel elected an extreme right-wing government in November 2022, Israeli violence was not restricted to Gaza. It appeared everywhere in historical Palestine. In the West Bank, the escalating violence from soldiers and settlers led to incremental ethnic cleansing, particularly in the southern Hebron mountains and the Jordan Valley. This resulted in an increase in killings, including those of teenagers, as well as a rise in arrests without trial.
Since November 2022, a different form of violence has plagued the Palestinian minority living in Israel. This community faces daily terror from criminal gangs that clash with each other, resulting in the murder of one or two community members each day. The police often ignore these issues. Some of these gangs include former collaborators with the occupation who were relocated to Palestinian areas following the Oslo agreement and maintain connections with the Israeli secret service.
Additionally, the new government has exacerbated tensions around the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, permitting more frequent and aggressive incursions into the Haram al-Sharif by politicians, police, and settlers.
It is too difficult to know yet whether there was a clear strategy behind the Hamas attack on October 7, or whether it went according to plan or not, whatever that plan may be. However, 17 years under Israeli blockade and the particularly violent Israeli government of November 2022 added to their determination to try a more drastic and daring form of anti-colonialist struggle for liberation.
Whatever we think about October 7, and we do not have yet a full picture, it was part of a liberation struggle. We may raise both moral questions about Hamas’ actions as well as questions of efficacy; liberation struggles throughout history have had their moments when one could raise such questions and even criticism.
But we cannot forget the source of violence that forced the pastoral people of Palestine after 120 years of colonisation to adopt armed struggle alongside non-violent methods.
On July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice issued a significant ruling regarding the status of the West Bank, which went largely unnoticed. The court affirmed that the Gaza Strip is organically connected to the West Bank, and therefore, under international law, Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza. This means that actions against Israel by the people of Gaza are considered part of their right to resist occupation.
Once again, under the guise of retaliation and revenge, Israeli violence following October 7 bears the marks of its previous exploitation of cycles of violence.
This includes using genocide as a means to address Israel’s “demographic” issue — essentially, how to control the land of historical Palestine without its Palestinian inhabitants. By 1967, Israel had taken all of historical Palestine, but the demographic reality thwarted the goal of complete dispossession.
Ironically, Israel established the Gaza Strip in 1948 as a receptor for hundreds of thousands of refugees, “willing” to concede 2% of historical Palestine to remove a significant number of Palestinians expelled by its army during the Nakba.
This particular refugee camp has proven more challenging to Israel’s plans to de-Arabize Palestine than any other area, due to the resilience and resistance of its people.
Any attempt to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza must be made in two ways. First, immediate action is needed to stop the violence through a ceasefire and, ideally, international sanctions on Israel. Second, it is crucial to prevent the next phase of the genocide, which could target the West Bank. This requires the continuation and intensification of the global solidarity movement’s campaign to pressure governments and policymakers into compelling Israel to end its genocidal policies.
Since the late 19th century and the arrival of Zionism in Palestine, the impulse of the Palestinians has not been about violence or revenge. The impulse remains the return to normal and natural life, a right that has been denied to the Palestinians for more than a century, not only by Zionism and Israel but by the powerful alliance that allowed and immunised the project of the dispossession of Palestine.
This is not a wish to romanticise or idealise Palestinian society. It was, and would continue to be, a typical society in a region where tradition and modernity often coexist in a complex relationship, and where collective identities can sometimes lead to divisions, especially when external forces seek to exploit these differences.
However, pre-Zionist Palestine was a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted peacefully, and where most people experienced violence only rarely — likely less frequently than in many parts of the Global North.
Violence as a permanent and massive aspect of life can only be removed when its source is removed. In the case of Palestine, it is the ideology and praxis of the Israeli settler state, not the existential struggle of the colonised Palestinian people.
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and socialist activist. He is a professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is also the author of the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld) and many other books. Republished from The New Arab.
The coalition government is telling New Zealanders in Iran and Lebanon to leave immediately as tensions rise in the Middle East.
“The New Zealand government urges New Zealanders in Lebanon and Iran to leave now while options remain available,” Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said in a social media post today.
“We also recommend New Zealanders in Israel consider whether they need to remain in the country.”
It comes after the government updated its Safetravel advisory, warning people not to travel to Lebanon due to what it called the volatile security situation.
The advisory elevated Lebanon to the highest level, meaning “extreme risk”.
Iran vowed retaliation
Iran has vowed to retaliate against Israel, which it blames for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political bureau, earlier this week.
No other world conflict has killed as many journalists in recent memory.
Israel has a long history of violently targeting journalists, so their Gaza kill total is not necessarily surprising.
In fact, a 2023 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report documented a “decades-long pattern” of Israel targeting and killing Palestinian journalists.
Targeted attacks
For example, a Human Rights Watch investigation found that Israel targeted “journalists and media facilities” on four separate occasions in 2012. During the attacks, two journalists were killed, and many others were injured.
In 2019, a United Nations commission found that Israel “intentionally shot” a pair of Palestinian journalists in 2018, killing both.
More recently, in 2022, Israel shot and killed Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank.
Israel attempted to deny responsibility, as it almost always does after it carries out an atrocity, but video evidence was overwhelming, and Israel was forced to admit guilt.
There have been no consequences for the soldier who fired at Abu Akleh, who had been wearing a press vest and a press helmet, or for the Israelis involved in the other incidents targeting journalists.
CPJ has suggested that Israeli security forces enjoy “almost blanket immunity” in incidents of attacks on journalists.
Given this broader context, Israel’s targeting of journalists during the current genocide is genuinely not surprising, or out of the ordinary.
Relative silence
However, what is truly surprising, and even shocking, is the relative silence of Western journalists.
While there has certainly been some reportage and sympathy in North America and Europe, particularly from watchdog organisations like the CPJ and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), there is little sense of journalistic solidarity, and certainly nothing approaching widespread outrage and uproar about the threat Israel’s actions pose to press freedoms.
Can we imagine for a moment what the Western journalistic reaction might be if Russian forces killed more than 100 journalists in Ukraine in under a year?
Even when Western news outlets have reported on Palestinian journalists killed since the start of the current war, coverage has tended to give Israel the benefit of the doubt, often framing the killings as “unintentional casualties” of modern warfare.
Also, Western journalism’s overwhelming reliance on pro-Israel sources has ensured the avoidance of colourful adjectives and condemnations.
Moreover, overreliance on pro-Israel sources has sometimes made it difficult to determine which party to the conflict was responsible for specific killings.
BREAKING: Al Jazeera “journalist” Ismail al-Ghoul has reportedly been killed in Gaza.
A unique case? One might assume here that Western news outlets have simply been maintaining their devotion to stated Western reporting principles of detachment and neutrality.
But, in other situations, Western journalists have shown that they are indeed capable of making quite a fuss, and also of demonstrating solidarity.
The 2015 killing of 12 Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists provides a useful case in point.
Following that attack, a genuine media spectacle ensued, with seemingly the entire institution of Western journalism united to focus on the event.
Thousands of reports were generated within weeks, a solidarity hashtag (“Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie”) went viral, and statements and sentiments of solidarity poured in from Western journalists, news outlets and organisations dedicated to principles of free speech.
Freedom House issued a similarly harsh commendation, calling the attack “horrific,” and noting that it constituted a “direct threat to the right of freedom of expression”.
PEN America and the British National Secular Society presented awards to Charlie Hebdo and the Guardian Media Group donated a massive sum to the publication.
All journalists threatened
The relative silence and calm of Western journalists over the killing of at least 100 Palestinian journalists in Gaza is especially shocking when one considers the larger context of Israel’s war on journalism, which threatens all journalists.
In October, around the time the current war began, Israel told Western news agencies that it would not guarantee the safety of journalists entering Gaza.
Ever since, Israel has maintained a ban on international journalists, even working to prevent them from entering Gaza during a brief November 2023 pause in fighting.
More importantly, perhaps, Israel has used its sway in the West to direct and control Western news narratives about the war.
Western news outlets have often obediently complied with Israeli manipulation tactics.
For example, as global outrage was mounting against Israel in December 2023, Israel put out false reports of mass, systematic rape against Israeli women by Palestinian fighters on October 7.
Western news outlets, including The New York Times, were suckered in. They downplayed the growing outrage against Israel and began prominently highlighting the “systematic rape” story.
ICJ provisional measures
Later, in January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures against Israel.
Israel responded almost immediately by issuing absurd terrorism accusations against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
Western news outlets downplayed the provisional measures story, which was highly critical of Israel, and spotlighted the allegations against UNRWA, which painted Palestinians in a negative light.
These and other examples of Israeli manipulation of Western news narratives are part of a broader pattern of influence that predates the current war.
One empirical study found that Israel routinely times attacks, especially those likely to kill Palestinian civilians, in ways that ensure they will be ignored or downplayed by US news media.
During the current genocide, Western news organisations have also tended to ignore the broad pattern of censorship of pro-Palestine content on social media, a fact which should concern anyone interested in freedom of expression.
It’s easy to point to a handful of Western news reports and investigations which have been critical of some Israeli actions during the current genocide.
But these reports have been lost in a sea of acquiescence to Israeli narratives and overall pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian framing.
Several studies, including analyses by the Centre for Media Monitoring and the Intercept, demonstrated overwhelming evidence of pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian framing in Western news reportage of the current war.
Is Western journalism dead? Many journalists in the United States and Europe position themselves as truth-tellers, critical of power, and watchdogs.
While they acknowledge mistakes in reporting, journalists often see themselves and their news organisations as appropriately striving for fairness, accuracy, comprehensiveness, balance, neutrality and detachment.
But this is the great myth of Western journalism.
A large body of scholarly literature suggests that Western news outlets do not come close to living up to their stated principles.
Israel’s war on Gaza has further exposed news outlets as fraudulent.
With few exceptions, news outlets in North America and Europe have abandoned their stated principles and failed to support Palestinian colleagues being targeted and killed en masse.
Amid such spectacular failure and the extensive research indicating that Western news outlets fall well short of their ideals, we must ask whether it is useful to continue to maintain the myth of the Western journalistic ideal.
Is Western journalism, as envisioned, dead?
Mohamad Elmasry is professor in the Media Studies programme at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. Republished from Al Jazeera.
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian political leader and a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee, says Israel’s “gangster style assassination and extrajudicial executions” are designed to “inflame the whole region”, reports Al Jazeera.
The killings of the Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon, were carried out to “sabotage any chances” of a ceasefire deal in Gaza and regional de-escalation, Ashrawi said.
Haniyeh was a chief Hamas negotiator for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war and had built up formidable diplomatic credentials across the region.
“These are attacks not just on the capitals of sovereign states but also on significant leaders to ensure total provocation [and] destabilisation,” Ashrawi wrote on social media.
“Israel is a rogue state that represents a real [and] present danger globally,” she said.
‘Maddening and shameful’
Marking the 300th day of Israel’s war on Gaza yesterday, Palestinian-American scholar Noura Erakat said it was “maddening and shameful” that the world had not been able to stop one of the “grossest, most blatant colonial genocides”.
In a post on social media, Erakat said Israel’s genocide in Gaza had featured the use of advanced weapons as well as the spread of disease, “poisoning of the earth” as well as sexual assault and torture, reports Al Jazeera.
Israel’s genocide must be remembered for what it is, Erakat said, adding “we cannot afford to lose the next battle over narrative”.
“A blight on all humanity, to ascribe shame to all who let it happen [and] glory to those who fought so that the future indeed ensures: never again,” she said.
Day 300. Its maddening and shameful we have not been able to end one of the grossest, most blatant colonial #genocides feat disease, poisoning of the earth, sexual assualt, torture, & advanced weapons. This will end & we cannot afford to lose the next battle over narrative (1/2)
According to an analysis of data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), Israel is responsible for 17,081 incidents of air/drone raids, shelling/missile attacks, remote explosives and property destruction in eight countries since October 7, including the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Iran and Iraq.
A majority of these attacks were on the Palestinian territory, specifically the Gaza Strip, with 10,389 incidents accounting for more than 60 percent of the total offensives.
There were at least 6,544 incidents of Israeli attacks on Lebanon (38 percent), followed by Syria with 144 such incidents recorded.
Haniyeh funeral final ceremonies in Qatar. Video: Al Jazeera
Released 15 Palestinian prisoners tortured
Israeli forces have released 15 Palestinian prisoners into Gaza. They were dropped off at a military checkpoint near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. Many spoke of abuse and torture while detained.
Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians during the war in Gaza and stands accused of numerous cases of torture, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says in a new report.
The 23-page report, released on Wednesday, noted allegations of widespread abuse of prisoners being held incommunicado in arbitrary, prolonged detention.
It was published during a tense standoff in Israel as far-right politicians and demonstrators opposed an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers.
The death toll in the genocidal war at the 300 day mark has topped 40,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children.
Day 300 . . . and the death toll in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has topped 40,000, including more than 16,000 children. Graphic: Al Jazeera/Creative Coommons
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has told supporters that the “Break the Siege” aid project for besieged Gaza from Turkey has been put on hold — indefinitely — due to rising tensions in the wake of the assassinations of key resistance leaders in the capitals of Lebanon and Iran.
“We will continue to work tirelessly to attempt to sail but, in the meantime, we need to let everyone know that for the moment, the sailing of Break the Siege must be put on hold, indefinitely,” said flotilla reporter Tan Safi in a video to supporters.
“Our other campaign vessel, Handala, will continue its journey towards Gaza.
An update from the Freedom Flotilla. Video: Gaza Freedom Flotilla
“Our respective national campaigns remain active and engaged: please watch for updates about our actions and other Palestine solidarity actions near you.
“Keep an eye on the crew and participants of Handala and continue demanding their safe passage according to international law.
“Together we must and will continue to demand sanctions, an end to the genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation, and justice for all the babies, children, mothers, fathers, and grandparents — human beings who have been murdered by the genocidal machine that is Israel.
Two New Zealand volunteers, Youssef Sammour and Rana Hamida, are crew on the Handala and feature in the the video.
Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard were killed in the early hours of Wednesday at his war veterans’ guest house in Tehran in an assassination blamed on Israel by Iran.
His assassination came hours after top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut. According to Lebanon’s health ministry, five civilians – three women and two children – also died in the attack.
President Biden — if you feel like pretending Biden is still serving as President and still making the decisions in the White House — has pledged to support Israel against any retaliations for its recent assassination spree in Iran and Lebanon which killed high-profile officials from Hamas and Hezbollah.
A White House statement asserts that Biden spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday and “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis,” and “discussed efforts to support Israel’s defence against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive US military deployments.”
Hilariously, the statement also claims that “the President stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate broader tensions in the region.”
Yep, nothing emphasises the importance of de-escalating broader tensions in the region like pledging unconditional military support for the region’s single most belligerent actor no matter how reckless and insane its aggressions become.
This statement from the White House echoes comments from Secretary of “Defence” Lloyd Austin a day earlier, who said “We certainly will help defend Israel” should a wider war break out as a result of Israel’s assassination strikes.
Biden promises Netanyahu the U.S. will defend Israel from any reprisal attacks pic.twitter.com/9meq2hTBmq
All this babbling about “defending” the state of Israel is intended to convey the false impression that Israel has just been sitting there minding its own business, and is about to suffer unprovoked attacks from hostile aggressors for some unfathomable reason.
As though detonating military explosives in the capital cities of two nations to conduct political assassinations would not be seen as an extreme act of war in need of a violent response by literally all governments on this planet.
Helping Israeli attacks
In reality, the US isn’t vowing to defend the state of Israel, the US is vowing to help Israel attack other countries.
If you’re pledging unconditional support to an extremely belligerent aggressor while it commits the most demented acts of aggression imaginable, all you’re doing is condoning those acts of aggression and making sure it will suffer no consequences when it conducts more of them.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has reiterated its calls for Israeli forces “to minimize the impact of military operations on civilians in Gaza and to end the killing of journalists.”
Washington’s position is made even more absurd after all the hysterical shrieking and garment-rending from the Washington establishment following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Israel murdered the leader of the Hamas political bureau, not a military commander, and he was the primary negotiator in the mediated ceasefire talks with Israel.
This was a political assassination just like a successful attempt on Trump’s life would have been, but probably a lot more consequential. And yet the only response from Washington has been to announce that it will help Israel continue its incendiary brinkmanship throughout the Middle East.
Washington swamp monsters talk all the time about their desire to promote “peace and stability in the Middle East”, while simultaneously pledging loyalty and support for a Middle Eastern nation whose actions pose a greater obstacle to peace and stability in the region than any other.
These contradictions are becoming more and more glaring and apparent before the entire world.
Israel’s assassination of the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, on yesterday is part of Tel Aviv’s overall desperate search for a wider conflict. It is a criminal act that reeks of desperation.
Almost immediately after the start of the Gaza war on October 7, Israel hoped to use the genocide in the Strip as an opportunity to achieve its long-term goal of a regional war — one that would rope in Washington as well as Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.
Despite unconditional support for its genocide in Gaza, and various conflicts throughout the region, the United States refrained from entering a direct war against Iran and others.
Although defeating Iran is an American strategic objective, the US lacks the will and tools to pursue it now.
After 10 months of a failed war on Gaza and a military stalemate against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel is, once more, accelerating its push for a wider conflict. This time around, however, Israel is engaging in a high-stakes game — the most dangerous of its previous gambles.
The current gamble involved the targeting of a top Hezbollah leader by bombing a residential building in Beirut on Tuesday — and, of course, the assassination of Palestine’s most visible, let alone popular political leader.
Successful Haniyeh diplomacy
Haniyeh, has succeeded in forging and strengthening ties with Russia, China, and other countries beyond the US-Western political domain.
Israel chose the place and timing of killing Haniyeh carefully. The Palestinian leader was killed in the Iranian capital, shortly after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The Israeli message was a compound one, to Iran’s new administration — that of Israel’s readiness to escalate further — and to Hamas, that Israel has no intentions to end the war or to reach a negotiated ceasefire.
The latter point is perhaps the most urgent. For months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done everything in his power to impede all diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war.
By killing the top Palestinian negotiator, Israel delivered a final and decisive message that Israel remains invested in violence, and in nothing else.
The scale of the Israeli provocations, however, poses a great challenge to the pro-Palestinian camp in the Middle East, namely, how to respond with equally strong messages without granting Israel its wish of embroiling the whole region in a destructive war.
Considering the military capabilities of what is known as the “Axis of Resistance”, Iran, Hezbollah and others are certainly capable of managing this challenge despite the risk factors involved.
Equally important regarding timing: the Israeli dramatic escalation in the region, followed a visit by Netanyahu to Washington, which, aside from many standing ovations at the US Congress, didn’t fundamentally alter the US position, predicated on the unconditional support for Israel without direct US involvement in a regional war.
Coup a real possibility
Additionally, Israel’s recent clashes involving the army, military police, and the supporters of the far right suggest that an actual coup in Israel might be a real possibility. In the words of Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid: Israel is not nearing the abyss, Israel is already in the abyss.
It is, therefore, clear to Netanyahu and his far-right circle that they are operating within an increasingly limited time and margins.
By killing Haniyeh, a political leader who has essentially served the role of a diplomat, Israel demonstrated the extent of its desperation and the limits of its military failure.
Considering the criminal extent to which Israel is willing to go, such desperation could eventually lead to the regional war that Israel has been trying to instigate, even before the Gaza war.
Keeping in mind Washington’s weakness and indecision in the face of Israel’s intransigence, Tel Aviv might achieve its wish of a regional war after all.
Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.
Al Jazeera Arabic journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi have been killed in an Israeli air attack on the Gaza Strip, reports Al Jazeera.
The reporters were killed when their car was hit on Wednesday in the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, according to initial information.
They were in the area to report from near the Gaza house of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas who was assassinated in the early hours of Wednesday in Iran’s capital, Tehran, in an attack the group has blamed on Israel.
Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif, reporting from Gaza, was at the hospital where the bodies of his two colleagues were brought.
“Ismail was conveying the suffering of the displaced Palestinians and the suffering of the wounded and the massacres committed by the [Israeli] occupation against the innocent people in Gaza,” he said.
“The feeling — no words can describe what happened.”
Al Jazeera journalist and cameraman killed in Israeli attack on Gaza. Video: Al Jazeera
Ismail and Rami were wearing media vests and there were identifying signs on their car when they were attacked. They had last contacted their news desk 15 minutes before the strike.
During the call, they had reported a strike on a house near to where they were reporting and were told to leave immediately. They did, and were traveling to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital when they were killed.
There was no immediate comment by Israel, which has previously denied targeting journalists in its 10-month war on Gaza, which has killed at least 39,445 people, the vast majority of whom were children and women.
In a statement, Al Jazeera Media Network called the killings a “targeted assassination” by Israeli forces and pledged to “pursue all legal actions to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes”.
“This latest attack on Al Jazeera journalists is part of a systematic targeting campaign against the network’s journalists and their families since October 2023,” the network said.
According to preliminary figures by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 111 journalists and media workers are among those killed since the start of the war on October 7. The Gaza government media office has put the figure at 165 Palestinian journalists killed since the war began.
Mohamed Moawad, Al Jazeera Arabic managing editor, said the Qatar-based network’s journalists were killed on Wednesday as they were “courageously covering the events in northern Gaza”.
Ismail was renowned for his professionalism and dedication, bringing the world’s attention to the suffering and atrocities committed in Gaza, especially at al-Shifa Hospital and the northern neighbourhoods of the besieged enclave.
His wife has been living in a camp for internally displaced people in central Gaza and had not seen her husband for months. He is also survived by a young daughter.
Both Ismail and Rami were born in 1997.
“Without Ismail, the world would not have seen the devastating images of these massacres,” Moawad wrote on X, adding that al-Ghoul “relentlessly covered the events and delivered the reality of Gaza to the world through Al Jazeera”.
“His voice has now been silenced, and there is no longer a need to call out to the world Ismail fulfilled his mission to his people and his homeland,” Moawad said. “Shame on those who have failed the civilians, journalists, and humanity.”
String of journalist killings The killings on Wednesday bring the total number of Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war to four.
In December, Al Jazeera Arabic journalist Samer Abudaqa was killed in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis. Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, was also wounded in that attack.
Dadouh’s wife, son, daughter and grandson had been killed in an Israeli air raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp in October.
In January, Dahdouh’s son, Hamza, who was also an Al Jazeera journalist, was killed in an Israeli missile strike in Khan Younis.
Prior to the war, Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli soldier as she covered an Israeli raid in Jenin in the occupied West Bank in May 2022. While Israel has acknowledged its soldier likely fatally shot Abu Akleh, it has not pursued any criminal investigation into her death.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Wednesday, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reflected on the daily dangers journalists face.
“We do everything [to stay safe]. We wear our press jackets. We wear our helmets. We try not to go anywhere that is not safe. We try to go to places where we can maintain our security,” she said.
“But we have been targeted in normal places where normal citizens are.”
She added: “We’re trying to do everything, but at the same time, we want to report, we want to tell the world what’s going on.”
Jodie Ginsberg, the president of the CPJ, said the killing of al-Ghoul and al-Refee is the latest example of the risks of documenting the war in Gaza, which is the deadliest conflict for journalists the organisation has documented in 30 years.
Ginsberg told Al Jazeera the organisation haD found at least three journalists had been directly targeted by Israeli forces in Gaza since the war began.
She said CPJ was investigating an additional 10 cases, while noting the difficulty of determining the full details without access to Gaza.
“That’s not just a pattern we’ve seen in this conflict, it appears to be part of a broader [Israeli] strategy that aims to stifle the information coming out of Gaza,” Ginsberg said, citing the ban on Al Jazeera from reporting in Israel as part of this trend.
Ismail Haniyeh, a prominent Palestinian political leader and the head of Hamas’ political bureau, has been assassinated today in an Israeli airstrike on Tehran.
Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Both Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard confirmed his death and announced ongoing investigations into the incident.
Commentators have said this assassination and the “reckless Israeli behaviour” of continuously targeting civilians in Gaza would lead to the region slipping into chaos and undermine the chances of peace.
A Palestinian refugee Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh was born on 23 January 1962 in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
His family originated from the village of Al-Jura, near the city of Asqalan, which was mostly destroyed and completely ethnically cleansed during the Nakba in 1948.
Haniyeh completed his early education in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools and graduated from Al-Azhar Institute before earning a BA in Arabic literature from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1987.
During his university years, he was active in the Student Union Council and later held various positions at the Islamic University, eventually becoming its dean in 1992.
Following his release from an Israeli prison in 1997, Haniyeh became the head of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s office.
Political life Haniyeh’s political experience included multiple arrests by Israeli authorities during the First Intifada, with charges related to his involvement with the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas.
He was exiled to southern Lebanon in 1992 but returned to Gaza after the Oslo Accords.
Haniyeh led the “Change and Reform List”, which won the majority in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, leading to his appointment as the head of the Palestinian government in February 2006.
Despite being dismissed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 after the Hamas military wing took control of Gaza, Haniyeh continued to lead the government in Gaza.
He later played a role in national reconciliation efforts, which led to the formation of a unity government in June 2014.
Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in May 2017.
A warning from Iran over the assassination of Hamas politIcal leader Ismael Haniyeh while staying in Tehran as a “guest” of the newly inaugurated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Al-Aqsa flood On 7 October 2023, the Al-Qassam Brigades, led by Mohammed Deif, launched the Al-Aqsa Flood operation against Israel.
In the genocidal Israel war that has followed in the past nine months, Haniyeh suffered personal losses, including the killings of several family members due to Israeli airstrikes.
Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.
Ismail Haniyeh, a prominent Palestinian political leader and the head of Hamas’ political bureau, has been assassinated today in an Israeli airstrike on Tehran.
Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Both Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard confirmed his death and announced ongoing investigations into the incident.
Commentators have said this assassination and the “reckless Israeli behaviour” of continuously targeting civilians in Gaza would lead to the region slipping into chaos and undermine the chances of peace.
A Palestinian refugee Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh was born on 23 January 1962 in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
His family originated from the village of Al-Jura, near the city of Asqalan, which was mostly destroyed and completely ethnically cleansed during the Nakba in 1948.
Haniyeh completed his early education in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools and graduated from Al-Azhar Institute before earning a BA in Arabic literature from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1987.
During his university years, he was active in the Student Union Council and later held various positions at the Islamic University, eventually becoming its dean in 1992.
Following his release from an Israeli prison in 1997, Haniyeh became the head of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s office.
Political life Haniyeh’s political experience included multiple arrests by Israeli authorities during the First Intifada, with charges related to his involvement with the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas.
He was exiled to southern Lebanon in 1992 but returned to Gaza after the Oslo Accords.
Haniyeh led the “Change and Reform List”, which won the majority in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, leading to his appointment as the head of the Palestinian government in February 2006.
Despite being dismissed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 after the Hamas military wing took control of Gaza, Haniyeh continued to lead the government in Gaza.
He later played a role in national reconciliation efforts, which led to the formation of a unity government in June 2014.
Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in May 2017.
A warning from Iran over the assassination of Hamas politIcal leader Ismael Haniyeh while staying in Tehran as a “guest” of the newly inaugurated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Al-Aqsa flood On 7 October 2023, the Al-Qassam Brigades, led by Mohammed Deif, launched the Al-Aqsa Flood operation against Israel.
In the genocidal Israel war that has followed in the past nine months, Haniyeh suffered personal losses, including the killings of several family members due to Israeli airstrikes.
Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.
Former New Zealand attorney-general David Parker spoke on day 295 of Israel’ genocidal war on Gaza in Auckland today, condemning the National-led government’s inaction over the ongoing crisis.
Responding to the recent International Court of Justice’s landmark advisory ruling that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem — Occupied Palestine — was illegal and must end as soon as possible, Parker said he was disappointed in New Zealand’s “equivocal” response.
He also called on the government to recognise the state of Palestine, along with some 145 countries around the world that have already done so.
A large banner at the rally illustrated the massive global support for Palestine statehood, with a map showing the main countries that have not supported recognition to be the white English-speaking settler colonial nations such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States.
The map banner at today’s Auckland rally showing NZ among a minority of US-led countries that have failed so far to recognise Palestinian statehood. At least 145 countries – an overwhelming majority of United Nations members – have already recognised Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR
Among the speakers were two Palestinian teenagers, Lujain Al-Badry, who spoke of the litany of the latest Israeli massacres in Gaza — but she also highlighted the “forgotten” atrocities by illegal settlers and the military in the West Bank — and the other a poet who spoke passionately of the constant evictions of Palestinians from their own homes and land.
More than 700 Israelis have illegally settled on Palestinian land since the territory was occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war in defiance of repeated UN resolutions declaring the settlements unlawful.
Lujain Al-Badry, 14, spoke of the latest Israeli massacres in Gaza and of the “forgotten” atrocities by illegal settlers in the West Bank at today’s rally. Image: David Robie/APR
Irish activist and trade unionist Joe Carolan, just back from a visit to Ireland, spoke of the political drift to the right in France and other European Union countries and reminded the crowd that support for the Palestinian cause and against colonialism was “liberation for all”.
The crowd marched around the block to protest outside the US consulate in Auckland, calling on Washington to end its support and funding for the Israeli genocide.
At least 39,324 Palestinians have been killed and 90,830 others wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Protesters at today’s Auckland rally calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s nine-month war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR
The Surafend massacre
Meanwhile, an RNZ podcast released at the weekend has revealed new insights into what has been described as the worst New Zealand military atrocity — the Surafend massacre during the First World War in Palestine in 1918.
According to the new season RNZ’s Black Sheep podcast, New Zealand and Australian soldiers “murdered upwards of 40 Arab civilians in a Palestinian village” in December 2018.
“But,” continued the podcast report, “more than 100 years later, we still don’t know exactly who did it, or why.
“We investigate what one military historian describes as ‘by far the worst war crime ever committed by New Zealand military personnel’ — The Surafend massacre — and other allegations of war crimes against Anzacs in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Dr David Robie is editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report.
Watermelon protest placards at today’s pro-Palestinian rally in downtown Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
The thing I hate about Western electoral politics in general and US presidential races in particular is that they take the focus off the depravity of the US-centralised Empire itself, and run cover for its criminality.
In the coming months you’re going to be hearing a lot of talk about the two leading presidential candidates and how very very different they are from each other, and how one is clearly much much worse than the other.
But in reality the very worst things about both of them will not be their differences — the worst things about them will be be the countless ways in which they are both indistinguishably in lockstep with one another.
Donald Trump is not going to end America’s non-existent “democracy” if elected and rule the United States as an iron-fisted dictator, and he’s certainly not going to be some kind of populist hero who leads a revolution against the Deep State.
He will govern as your standard evil Republican president who is evil in all the usual ways US presidents are evil, just like he did during his first term.
His administration will continue to fill the world with more war machinery, implement more starvation sanctions, back covert operations, uprisings and proxy conflicts, and work to subjugate the global population to the will of the empire, all while perpetuating the poisoning of the earth via ecocidal capitalism, just as all his predecessors have done.
And the same will be true of whatever moronic fantasies Republicans wind up concocting about Kamala Harris between now and November. She’s not going to institute communism or give everyone welfare, implement Sharia law, weaken Israel, take everyone’s guns, subjugate Americans to the “Woke Agenda” and make everyone declare their pronouns and eat bugs, or any of that fuzzbrained nonsense.
She will continue to expand US warmongering and tyranny while making the world a sicker, more violent, and more dangerous place for everyone while funneling the wealth of the people and the planet into the bank accounts of the already obscenely rich. Just as Biden has spent his entire term doing, and just as Trump did before him.
Caitlin Johnston’s article on YouTube.
The truth is that while everyone’s going to have their attention locked on the differences between Trump and Harris these next few months, by far the most significant and consequential things about each of these candidates are the ways in which they are similar.
The policies and agendas either of them will roll out which will kill the most people, negatively impact the most lives and do the most damage to the ecosystem are the areas in which they are in complete agreement, not those relatively small and relatively inconsequential areas in which they differ.
You can learn a lot more about the US and its globe-spanning empire by looking at the similarities between presidential administrations than you can by looking at their differences, because that’s where the overwhelming majority of the abusiveness can be found.
But nobody’s going to be watching any of that normalised criminality while the drama of this fake election plays out. More and more emotional hysteria is going to get invested in the outcome of this fraudulent two-handed sock puppet popularity contest between two loyal empire lackeys who are both sworn to advance the interests of the Empire no matter which one wins, and the mundane day-to-day murderousness of the Empire will continue to tick on unnoticed in the background.
US military commander’s casual declaration of independence from democratic control.
“Regardless of who’s in our political parties &whatever is happening in that space, it’s allies &partners that are always our priority”
The other day the US Navy’s highest-ranking officer just casually mentioned that the AUKUS military alliance which is geared toward roping Australia into a future US-driven military confrontation with China will remain in place no matter who wins the presidential election.
“Regardless of who is in our political parties and whatever is happening in that space, it’s allies and partners that are always our priority,” said Admiral Lisa Franchetti in response to the (completely baseless) concern that Trump will withdraw from military alliances and make the US “isolationist” if elected.
How could Franchetti make such a confident assertion if the behaviour of the US war machine meaningfully changed from administration to administration? The answer is that she couldn’t, and it doesn’t. The official elected government of the United States may change every few years, but its real government does not.
To be clear, I am not telling you not to vote here. These elections are designed to function as an emotional pacifier for the American people to let them feel like they have some control over their government, so if you feel like you want to vote then vote in whatever way pacifies your emotions.
I’ve got nothing invested in convincing you either way.
Whenever I talk about this stuff I get people accusing me of being defeatist and interpreting this message as a position that there’s nothing anyone can do, but that’s not true at all. I’m just saying the fake election ritual you’ve been given by the powerful and told that’s how you solve your problems is not the tool for the job.
You’re as likely to solve your problems by voting as you are by wishing or by praying — but that doesn’t mean problems can’t be solved. If you thought you could cure an infection by huffing paint thinner I’d tell you that won’t work either, and tell you to go see a doctor instead.
Just because the only viable candidates in any US presidential race will always be murderous empire lackeys doesn’t mean things are hopeless; that’s just what it looks like when you live in the heart of an empire that’s held together by lies, violence and tyranny, whose behavior has too much riding on it for the powerful to allow it to be left to the will of the electorate.
Cultivate A Habit Of Small Acts Of Sedition
Fighting the machine can be disheartening and disappointing as power comes up victorious time and time again. But that doesn’t mean you are powerless, and it doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do.https://t.co/O0vZRHX2ue
Your vote won’t make any difference to the behavior of the empire, but what can make a difference is taking actions every day to help pave the way toward a genuine people’s uprising against the empire later on down the road.
You do this by opening people’s eyes to the reality that what they’ve been taught about their government, their nation and their world is a lie, and that the mainstream sources they’ve been trained to look to for information are cleverly disguised imperial propaganda services.
What we can all do as individuals right here and now is begin cultivating a habit of committing small acts of sedition. Making little paper cuts in the flesh of the beast which add up over time. You can’t stop the machine by yourself, but you can sure as hell throw sand in its gears.
Giving a receptive listener some information about what’s going on in the world. Creating dissident media online. Graffiti with a powerful message.
Amplifying an inconvenient voice. Sharing a disruptive idea. Supporting an unauthorised cause. Organizing toward forbidden ends. Distributing eye-opening literature.
Creating eye-opening literature. Creating eye-opening art. Having authentic conversations about real things with anyone who can hear you.
Every day there’s something you can do. After you start pointing your creativity at cultivating this habit, you’ll surprise yourself with the innovative ideas you come up with.
Even a well-placed meme or tweet can open a bunch of eyes to a reality they’d previously been closed to. Remember: they wouldn’t be working so frantically to restrict online speech if it didn’t pose a genuine threat to the Empire.
Such regular small acts of sabotage do infinitely more damage to the imperial machine than voting, talking about voting or thinking about voting, which is why voting, talking about voting and thinking about voting is all you’re ever encouraged to do.
The more people wake up to the fact that they’re running to nowhere on a hamster wheel built by the powerful for the benefit of the powerful, the more people there will be to step off the wheel and start pushing for real change in real ways that matter — and the more people there will be to help wake up everyone else.
Once enough eyes are open, the people will be able to use the power of their numbers to force real change and shrug off the chains of their abusers like a heavy coat on a warm day.
There is nothing that could stop us once enough of us understand what’s happening. That’s why so much effort goes into obfuscating people’s understanding, and keeping everyone endlessly diverted with empty nonsense like presidential elections.
(@uriohau) 
SHOCKING
