More To The Story: John J. Lennon thinks true crime is exploitative—and he has a unique perspective. In 2001, he killed a man on a street in New York City. He was convicted of murder several years later and given the maximum sentence—25 years to life in prison—on top of three additional years for two other convictions. From behind bars, he began reckoning with his crime through in-prison writing workshops and soon fell in love with journalism. He’s since made a name for himself as an incarcerated journalist and has been published in The Atlantic, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine, often writing about the criminal justice system and conditions in correctional facilities, all from the inside. In the decades Lennon’s been behind bars, America has become increasingly fixated on stories like his—true crime—through endless podcasts, documentary series, and streaming shows. But Lennon argues that tragedy is too often being turned into entertainment. True crime “creates this thirst for punishment,” he says. On this week’s More To The Story, Lennon joins with host Al Letson to discuss how his first book, The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us, inverts the basic structure of the true crime genre. They also discuss how his portrayal on a cable news show hosted by Chris Cuomo inspired him to write the book and how Lennon now views the murder he committed almost a quarter-century ago.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
Israeli prison guards punish the prisoners “by breaking their thumbs” said a released detainee as lawyers speak out about torture, abuse, rape, starving and killings in a notorious underground Israeli prison facility where detainees are held without sunlight, brutalised.
And nobody in New Zealand says a word.
Scores of detainees from Gaza have also been held in a notorious Israeli military detention camp known as Sde Teiman, where reports of killings, torture and sexual violence, including rape, have been rife since the Gaza war began in October 2023.
And Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has not said anything about a new law that Israel just voted for that would impose the death penalty for so-called “terrorism” offences based on “racist” motives against Israelis.
That’s a law exclusively aimed at Palestinians while Israeli settlers are exempt.
Go ahead, terrorise the people living there.
Winston Peters is silent on behalf of you and me. He’s representing us on the world stage.
We not only do not condemn this, we don’t even mention it. New Zealand doesn’t care.
They are not us, they are not “we”.
Gerard Otto is a digital creator, satirist and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. This article is an excerpt from a G News commentary and republished with permission.
UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese talks to journalist Chris Hedges about her new report that examines how 60+ countries are complicit in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity demonstrated to the world in a “livestreamed atrocity”.
INTERVIEW:The Chris Hedges Report
After two years of genocide, it is no longer possible to hide complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Entire countries and corporations are — according to multiple reports by UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese — either directly or indirectly involved in Israel’s economic proliferation.
In her latest report, Gaza Genocide: a collective crime, Albanese details the role 63 nations played in supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. She chronicles how countries like the United States, which directly funds and arms Israel, are a part of a vast global economic web.
This network includes dozens of other countries that contribute with seemingly minor components, such as warplane wheels.
Rejection of this system is imperative, Albanese says. These same technologies used to destroy the lives of Palestinians will inevitably be turned against the citizens of Israel’s funders.
“Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go,” Albanese warns.
“Every worker today should draw a lesson from what’s happening to the Palestinians, because the large injustice system is connected and makes all of us connected to what’s happening there.”
The transcript: Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, in her latest report, Gaza Genocide: a collective crime, calls out the role 63 nations have in sustaining the Israeli genocide. Albanese, who because of sanctions imposed on her by the Trump administration, had to address the UN General Assembly from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, slams what she calls “decades of moral and political failure.”
“Through unlawful actions and deliberate omissions, too many states have harmed, founded and shielded Israel’s militarized apartheid, allowing its settler colonial enterprise to metastasize into genocide, the ultimate crime against the indigenous people of Palestine,” she told the UN.
The genocide, she notes, has diplomatic protection in international “fora meant to preserve peace,” military ties ranging from weapons sales to joint trainings that “fed the genocidal machinery,” the unchallenged weaponization of aid, and trade with entities like the European Union, which had sanctioned Russia over Ukraine yet continued doing business with Israel.
The 24-page report details how the “live-streamed atrocity” is facilitated by third states. She excoriates the United States for providing “diplomatic cover” for Israel, using its veto power at the UN Security Council seven times and controlling ceasefire negotiations. Other Western nations, the report noted, collaborate with abstentions, delays and watered-down draft resolutions, providing Israel with weapons, “even as the evidence of genocide … mounted.”
The report chastised the US Congress for passing a $26.4 billion arms package for Israel, although Israel was at the time threatening to invade Rafah in defiance of the Biden administration’s demand that Rafah be spared.
The report also condemns Germany, the second-largest arms exporter to Israel during the genocide, for weapons shipments that include everything from “frigates to torpedoes,” as well as the United Kingdom, which has allegedly flown more than 600 surveillance missions over Gaza since war broke out in October 2023.
At the same time, Arab states have not severed ties with Israel. Egypt, for example, maintained “significant security and economic relations with Israel, including energy cooperation and the closing of the Rafah crossing” during the war.
Francesca Albanese talks to Chris Hedges Video: The Chris Hedges Report
The Gaza genocide, the report states, “exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest.” Her report coincides with the ceasefire that isn’t. More than 300 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israel since the ceasefire was announced two weeks ago.
The first major ceasefire breach on October 19 led to Israeli air strikes that killed 100 Palestinians and wounded 150 others. Palestinians in Gaza continue to endure daily bombings that obliterate buildings and homes. Shelling and gunfire continue to kill and wound civilians, while drones continue to hover overhead broadcasting ominous threats.
Essential food items, humanitarian aid and medical supplies remain scarce because of the ongoing Israeli siege. And the Israeli army controls more than half of the Gaza Strip, shooting anyone, including families, who come too close to its invisible border known as the “yellow line”.
Joining me to discuss her report, the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the complicity of numerous states in sustaining the genocide in Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine.
Before we get into the report, let’s talk a little bit about what’s happening in Gaza. It’s just a complete disconnect between what is described by the international community, i.e. “a ceasefire”, the pace may have slowed down, but nothing’s changed.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, thank you for having me, Chris. I do agree that it seems that there is a complete disconnect between reality and political discourse. Because after the ceasefire, the attention has been forced to shift from Gaza elsewhere.
I do believe, for example, that the increased attention to the catastrophic situation in Sudan, which has been such for years now, all of a sudden is due to the fact that there is a need for, especially from Western countries and the US, Israel and their acolytes to focus on a new emergency.
‘There is the pretence that there is peace, there is no need to protest anymore because finally, there is peace. There is no peace.’
There is the pretence that there is peace, there is no need to protest anymore because finally, there is peace. There is no peace. I mean, the Palestinians have not seen a day of peace because Israel has continued to fire, to use violence against the Palestinians in Gaza. Over 230 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire, 100 of them in one day in 24 hours, including 50 children.
And starvation continues. Yes, there has been an increase in the number of trucks, but far, far below what is needed with much confusion because it’s very hard to deliver aid. All the more, Israel maintains a control over 50 percent of the Gaza Strip while the entire Gaza population is amassed in small portions, guarded portions of the territory.
So there is no peace. Meanwhile, while the Security Council seems to be ready to approve a Security Council resolution that will create a non-acronistic form of tutelage, of trusteeship over Palestine, over Gaza, the West Bank is abandoned to the violence and the ethnic cleansing pushed by armed settlers and soldiers while Israel jails continue to fill up with bodies to torture of adults and children alike. This is the reality in the occupied Palestinian territory today and so it makes absolutely no sense where the political discourse is.
CHRIS HEDGES: Two issues about Gaza. One, of course, Israel has seized over 50% or occupies over 50 percent of Gaza. And as I understand it, they’re not allowing any reconstruction supplies, including cement, in.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: This is also my understanding. They have allowed in food, water and some essential materials needed for hospitals, mainly camp hospitals, tents. But anything related to sustainability is prohibited.
There are many food items that are also prohibited because they are considered luxurious. And the question, Chris, is, and this is why I harbor so much frustration these days toward member states because in the case of genocide, you have heard yourself the argument, well, the recalcitrance of certain states to use the genocide framework saying — and it’s pure nonsense from a legal point of view — but saying, well, the International Court of Justice has not concluded that it’s genocide.
Well, it has concluded already that there is a risk of genocide two years ago, in January, 2024. But however, even when the court does conclude on something relevant like in July, 2024, that the occupation is illegal and must be dismantled totally and unconditionally, this should be the starting point of any peace related or forward-looking discussions.
Instead of deliberating how to force Israel to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territory, member states continue to maintain dialogue with Israel as Israel has sovereignty over the territory. See, so it’s completely dystopic, the future they are leading Palestinians out of despair into.
But they are also forcing the popular movement, the global movement that has formed made of young people and workers to stop. Because look at what’s happening in France, in Italy, in Germany, in the UK — any kind of attempt at maintaining the light turned on Palestine from Gaza to the West Bank is assaulted. Protests, conferences, there is a very active assault on anything that concerns Palestine.
So this is why I’m saying we are far, far beyond the mismanagement of the lack of understanding, I mean the negligence in approaching the question of Palestine, it’s active complicity to sustain Israel in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
CHRIS HEDGES: Which, as you point out in your report, has been true from the beginning despite a slight change in rhetoric recognising the two-state solution. The UK did this while only cutting back on shipments by 10 percent.
But I want to ask before we get into the report, what do you think Israel’s goal is? Is it just to slow-walk the genocide until it can resume it? Is it to create this appalling, uninhabitable, unlivable ghetto? What do you think Israel’s goal is?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I think that now more than ever it is impossible to separate and distinguish the goals of Israel from the goals of the United States. We tend to have a fragmented view of what happens, analysing for example the relationship between Lebanon and Israel, between Iran and Israel, or between Israel and the Palestinians.
‘One of the things that Palestine has made me realise is the meaning of “Greater Israel” because I do believe that what the current leadership in Israel has in mind and it’s supported by many willing or not in the Israeli society, many who are fine with the erasure of the Palestinians.’
In fact, do, I mean, one of the things that Palestine has made me realise is the meaning of “Greater Israel” because I do believe that what the current leadership in Israel has in mind and it’s supported by many willing or not in the Israeli society, many who are fine with the erasure of the Palestinians.
But there is this idea of Greater Israel and for a long time I have been among those who thought, who were wondering what it is, this “Greater Israel” because of course you look at the map by Israeli leaders in several occasions with this Greater Israel going from the Nile to the Euphrates and you say come on they cannot do that, they cannot occupy Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq.
But then everything changes when you look at it from a non-territorial border expansion perspective. And if you think that in fact domination can be exerted, established, other than by expanding the physical borders and through military occupation, but through domination and financial control, control from outside, power domination, you see that the Greater Israel project has already started and it’s very advanced.
Look at the annihilation of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon. So all those who were historically considered not friends of Israel have been annihilated. And the other Arab countries that remain either do not have the capacity to confront Israel and perish the thought they explored the idea of unity among them or with others. And the others are fine with it.
Ultimately, I think that Greater Israel is the quintessential explanation of the US imperialistic design in that part of the world for which the Palestinians remain a thorn in the side not just for Israel but for the imperialistic project itself because the Palestinians are still there resisting.
They don’t want to go, they don’t want to be tamed, they don’t want to be dominated so they are the last line, the last frontier of resistance, both physically and in the imagination. And therefore, you see, the fierceness against them has scaled up, with the US now getting ready with boots on the ground to get rid of them. This is my interpretation of the general design behind Israel-United States, where Israelis are going to pay a heavy price like many in the region, not just the Palestinians.
CHRIS HEDGES:So you see the imposition of American troops in Gaza as another step forward to the depopulation of Gaza.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, yes, yes, I don’t trust any promise made to the Palestinians either by Israel or by the United States because what I’ve seen over the past two years shows me, demonstrates to all of us in fact, that they don’t care at all about the Palestinians. Otherwise, they would have seen their suffering.
‘The beginning of genocide has changed my perception of the world in a way, for me personally, it’s the end of an era of innocence when I really believed that the United Nations were a place where things could still be advanced in the pursuit of peace.’
It’s just not like people like us who can really divide their life. Is it pre-genocide? Does it happen to you as well? Are you talking of pre-genocide or after genocide? Because in fact, the beginning of genocide has changed my perception of the world in a way, for me personally, it’s the end of an era of innocence when I really believed that the United Nations were a place where things could still be advanced in the pursuit of peace.
Now I don’t think so, which doesn’t mean that I think that the UN is over, but in order not to be over, in order to make sense to the people, it is to be led by dignity, principles like dignity, equality and freedom for all. And we are absolutely far from that today.
CHRIS HEDGES: And what is it that brought you to this decision? Is it the acceptance of this faux ceasefire on the part of the UN, or was it before this moment?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: No, it’s before. It’s before. It’s the fact that for two years most states, primarily in the West, but with the acquiescence of other states in the region have supported the Israeli mantra of “self-defence”.
Sorry, it was a mantra because again, self-defence has a very, I’m not saying that Israel had no right to protect itself. Of course Israel had suffered a ferocious attack on October 7. Some say similar to the attacks it had inflicted on the Palestinians. Others say more brutal, say less brutal. It doesn’t matter.
Israel suffered a horrible, violent attack. Israeli civilians suffered a horrible attack on October 7th. But hey, this didn’t give the possibility to Israel to invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter, meaning the right to wage a war.
This is not legal. And on this I can say I’m surprised by how conservative are member states when it comes to the interpretation of international law, except on this, in the sense that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has already set the limits of the right of invoking self-defence for member states.
And it can only be done against states where there is a concrete threat that the state will attack which is not the case here. So yes, Israel could defend itself, but not wage a war. And while the war was clearly identifiable more for its crimes than not its tendency to avoid crimes, member states have continued to say nothing and it was very extreme violence against the Palestinians in Gaza but also against the Palestinians in the West Bank. And for two years they’ve not used their power to stop it.
So I’m convinced that in order to have a political shift vis-à-vis Israel, there must be a political shift at the country level, because governments are completely subdued to the dictates of the US. Of course, if the US wanted, this would stop, but the US with this constellation of figures in the government is not going to stop.
And plus look at how the West in particular has contributed to dehumanise the Palestinians. Even today you hear people saying yes, Palestinians have been killed in these numbers because they’ve been used as human shields when the only evidence that they’ve been used as human shields is against Israel because Israel has used Palestinians as human shields in the West Bank and in Gaza alike.
You see Palestinians have returned to be wrapped into this colonial tropism of them being the savages, the barbarians, in a way, they have brought havoc upon themselves. This is the narrative that the West has used toward the Palestinians. And by doing that, it has created, they have created the fertile ground for Israel’s impunity.
CHRIS HEDGES: Let’s talk about the nations that you single out in your report that have continued to sustain the genocide, either through weapons shipments, but also the commercial interests. I think your previous report talked about the money that was being made off of the genocide. Just lay out the extent of that collaboration and to the extent that you can, the sums of money involved.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, yeah, let me start with introducing generally two components, the military component and the trade and investment ones, which are quite interrelated. And states have, in general, I name 62 states, primarily Western states, but with substantive collaboration of states from the Global South, global majority, including some Arab states.
So they have altogether ignored, obscured and somewhat even profited from Israel’s violations of international law through military and economic channels. So military cooperation through arms trades or intelligence sharing has fueled Israel’s war machine during the occupation, the illegal occupation, and especially during the genocide while the United States and Germany alone have provided about 90 percent of Israel’s arms export.
At least 26 states have supplied or facilitated the transfer of arms or components, while many others have continued to buy weapons tested on the Palestinians. And this is why in my previous report, the ones looking at the private sector, I was shocked to see how much the Israeli stock exchange had gone up during the genocide.
And this is particularly because of a growth in the military industry. On the other hand, there is the trade and investment sector. Both have sustained and profited from Israel’s economy. Think that between 2023, 2024, actually the end of 2022 and 2024, exports of electronics, pharmaceuticals, energy minerals and what is called the dual-use have totaled almost US$500 billion, helping Israel finance its military occupation.
Now one third of this trade is with the European Union while the rest is complemented by North American countries, the US and Canada, who have free trade agreements with Israel and several Arab states that have continued to deepen economic ties.
Only a few states have marginally reduced trade during the genocide, but in general the indirect commercial flows, including with states that have supposedly no diplomatic relations with Israel, have continued undisturbed.
It’s a very grim picture of the reality. But let me add just one extra element. I do believe that in many respects, the problem is ideological. As I said, there is a tendency to treat Ukraine, for example, vis-a-vis Russia, in a very different fashion than Palestine versus Israel. And this is why I think there is an element of Orientalism that accompanies also the tragedy of the Palestinian people.
CHRIS HEDGES:Talk a little bit about the kinds of weapons that have been shipped to Israel. These are, and we should be clear that, of course, the Palestinians do not have a conventional army, don’t have a navy, they don’t have an air force, they don’t have mechanized units, including tanks, they don’t have artillery, and yet the weapons shipments that are coming in are some of the most sophisticated armaments that are used in a conventional war.
And as a leaked Israeli report, I think it was +972, provided, 83 percent of the people killed in Gaza are civilians.
FRANCISCA ALBANESE: Yes, yes. First of all, there are two things that are weapons, what is considered conventional weapons and dual-use. And both should have been suspended according to the decision of the International Court of Justice concerning Israel in the Nicaragua v. Germany case.
Meanwhile, there are two things: there is the transfer of weapons directly to Israel, and this includes aircraft, materials to compose the drones, because Israel doesn’t produce anything on its own, it requires components — artillery shells, for example, cannon ammunition, rifles, anti-tank missiles, bombs.
So these are all things that have been provided primarily by the United States. Germany, which is the second largest arms exporter to Israel has supplied a range of weapons from frigates to torpedoes.
And also, and then there is Italy, which has also provided spare parts for bombs and airplanes and the United Kingdom, who has played a key role in providing intelligence. And there is also the question of the UN. Not everything is easy to track because the United States have traveled … the United States are the prime provider of weapons, also because they are the assembler of the F-35 programme.
So there are 17 or 19 countries which cooperate and all of them say, well, you know, I mean, yes, I know that the F-35 is used in Israel, by Israel, but I only contribute to a small part. I only contribute to the wheels. I only contribute to the wings. I only provide these hooks or this engine.
Well, everything is assembled in the US and then sold or transferred or gifted to Israel. And it’s extremely problematic because this is why I say it’s a collective crime, because no one can assume the responsibility on their own but eventually all together they contribute to make this genocide implicating so many countries.
CHRIS HEDGES: So Francesca, Israel is the ninth largest arms exporter in the world. To what extent do those relationships have? I mean, I think one of the largest purchasers of Israeli drones is India. We’ve seen India shift its position vis-a-vis Palestine.
Historically, it’s always stood with the Palestinian people. That’s no longer true under [Narendra] Modi. To what extent do those ties affect the response by the 63 some states that you write about for collaborating with the genocide.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: So let me first expand on this. Weapon and military technology sale is a core component of Israel’s economy. And since 2024, it has constituted one third of Israeli exports. And of course, there are two elements connected to this, is that these exports enhances Israel’s manufacturing capacity, but also horribly worsens the life of the Palestinians because Israeli military technology is tested on the Palestinians under occupation or other people under other Israeli related military activities.
Now, the fact that the arms export has increased of nearly 20 percent during the genocide, doubling toward Europe. And only the trade with Europe accounts for over 50 percent of Israeli military sales, selling to so many other countries, including in the Global South, the Asia and Pacific states in the Asia-Pacific region account for 23 percent of the purchase, with India being probably the major. But also 12 percent of the weapons tested on the Palestinians are purchased by Arab countries under the Abraham Accords. So what does it tell us?
It explains what you were hinting at in the question, the fact that this is also reflected in the political shift toward Israel that has been recorded at the General Assembly level. If you see how some African countries and Asian countries, including India, are behaving vis-a-vis Israel, it’s 180 degrees turn compared to where they were in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
This is because on the one hand, Israel is embedded in the global economy, but also it’s a global economy that is veering toward ultra liberal, I mean, it’s following ultra-liberalist ideologies and therefore capital and wealth and accumulation of resources, including military power, comes first.
‘It’s very sad, but this is the reality . . . since the end of the Cold War that there has been an increasing globalisation of the system where the common denominator is force.’
It’s very sad, but this is the reality. And it’s important to know because this is a long, as I was hinting before, my sense is that this is a long term trajectory that didn’t start on October 7, 2023. I mean, probably since the end of the Cold War that there has been an increasing globalisation of the system where the common denominator is force.
I mean, there is this, not a common denominator, but the unifying factor for many is force, how the monopoly of force that comes with weapons, capital and algorithms. And yeah, this is where the world is going.
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, we’ve seen these weapons systems which of course are tested. They’re sold as bad. say the term is battle tested without naming the Palestinians, but they are sold to Greece to hold back migrants coming from North Africa. They are used along the border in the United States with Mexico.
And it’s not just that these weapons are “battle tested” on the Palestinians and we haven’t even spoken about these huge surveillance systems, but the very methods of control, the way they’re used are exported through military advisors.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Of course, because in fact, the Israeli population is made almost entirely of soldiers. Of course, there are those who do not enlist in the army for religious reasons or because they are contentious objectors, they’re a tiny minority. But the majority of the people of Israelis go through the army.
And then many of them transfer their know-how or what they have been doing into their next career steps. So the fact that Israel, as I was documenting in my previous report, Israel’s startup economy has a huge dark side to the fact that it’s connected to the military industry and to the surveillance industry.
There is a significant body of Israeli citizens who are going around providing advice, intelligence and training in the Global South both to mercenaries and states proper like Morocco. So there is an Israelisation and Palestinianisation of the international relations or rather of the relations between individuals and states.
And I think the interesting thing, this is why I’m saying Palestine is such a revealer, it’s because, as you say, eventually these tools of control and securitisation have concentrated in the hands of those who are fortifying borders at the expense of refugees and migrants.
So it’s really clear what’s happening here. There are oligarchs who are getting richer and richer and more and more protected in their fortresses where the state is providing the fertile ground to have it, but it’s not states that are benefiting from this inequality, because the majority of the people within states, look at the US, but also in Europe, are not benefiting from anything, in fact.
They’re victims. This is why you equally exploit it. This is why I’m saying it’s another degree of suffering, of course, than the Palestinians. But every worker today should draw a lesson from what’s happening to the Palestinians, because the large injustice system is connected and makes all of us connected to what’s happening there.
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, internally as well. I mean, with Sikh farmers who were protesting Modi were out on the roads, suddenly, over their heads were Israeli-made drones dropping tear gas canisters.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, exactly. Drones are one of the most exported devices from Israel’s technology and they are in use by Frontex to surveil the Mediterranean Sea, as you were saying, the US-Mexican border. But more and more, they’re getting into people’s lives.
Also look at the way certain technologies have been perfected across borders. I remember earlier this summer, this is very anecdotal, I’ve not done research on it, but I knew that we were seeing something quite and horribly revolutionary.
This year, this summer during the protests in Serbia, where students and ordinary citizens were taken to the streets against the government and have been protesting for one year now, people in Serbia. I saw the use of these sound weapons, oxygen-fed weapons.
So there are bombs that produce such a pain in the body who finds itself in the wave that it’s excruciating. And then of course people try to flee, but they also lose senses, et cetera. And I’ve seen this in Serbia.
And now I understand that it’s being used in Gaza as well, where the bomb doesn’t produce fire, it produces a movement of air that causes pain to the body and even to internal organs. It’s incredible. And these are weapons that have been perfected through testing here and there, and Serbia keeps on selling and buying military technology to and from Israel.
CHRIS HEDGES: I just want to close with, I mean, I think your reports, the last two reports in particular, show the complete failure on the part of governments as well as corporations to respond legally in terms of their legal obligations to the genocide. What do we do now? What must be done to quote Lenin?
How, because this, as you have pointed out repeatedly, really presages the complete breakdown of the rule of law. What as citizens must we do?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I think that we have passed the alarm area. I mean, we are really in a critical place and I sense it because instead of correcting itself, the system led by governments is accentuating its authoritarian traits. Think of the repressive measures that the UK government is taking against protesters, against civil society, against journalists standing in solidarity with Palestine, for justice in Palestine.
In France and in Italy at the same time, conferences academic freedom is shrinking and in the same days, conferences of reputable historians and military and legal experts have been cancelled owing to the pressure of the pro-genocide groups, pro-Israel groups in their respective countries. People, including in Germany, are being persecuted, including academics, for their own exercise of free speech.
This tells me that there is very little pretense that Western states, so-called liberal democracies, the most attached to this idea of democracy are ready to defend for real. So in this sense, it’s up to us citizens to be vigilant and to make sure that we do not buy products connected or services connected to the legality of the occupation, the apartheid and the genocide.
And there are various organisations that collect lists of companies and entities, including universities that are connected to this unlawful endeavor. BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] is one, don’t buy into the occupation who profits profundo, but also students associations.
‘There is a need to speak about Palestine, to make choices about Palestine and not because everything needs to revolve around Palestine, but because Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go is clearly evident in this.’
And this is something that has taught me, it’s very touching because it’s really the work of students, faculty members and staff that has mapped what each university does. And I think it gives the possibility to act, everyone in our own domain. Then of course there is a need to speak about Palestine, to make choices about Palestine and not because everything needs to revolve around Palestine, but because Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go is clearly evident in this.
But also we need to make sure that businesses divest. Either through our purchase power, people have to step away and stop using platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com. I know that Amazon is very convenient, but guys, we might also return to buy books in libraries, ordering books through libraries.
Of course, not all of us can, but many do, many can. On the way to work, buy a book in a library, order a book in a bookstore. We need to reduce our reliance on the tools that have been used, that have been perfected through the slaughter of the Palestinians. And of course, make government accountable. There are lawyers, associations, and jurists who are taking government officials to court, businesses to court. But again, I do not think that there is one strategy that is going to be the winning one.
It’s the plurality of actions from a plurality of actors that is going to produce results and slow down the genocide and then help dismantle the occupation and the apartheid. It’s a long trajectory and the fight has just started.
CHRIS HEDGES: Thank you, Francesca, and I want to thank Thomas [Hedges], Diego [Ramos], Max [Jones] and Sofia [Menemenlis], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times. This interview is republished from The Chris Hedges Report.
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) National Media Section usually campaigns for journalists’ rights and industrial agency in Australia — but today, we join hands with the IFJ — International Federation of Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters sans frontières — Reporters Without Borders, to make a stand against the global assault on press freedom.
The past few years have been particularly hostile for journalists around the world.
From the press briefing rooms in the White House to the streets of Gaza, journalists have been in the crosshairs.
Shortly after assuming office in January 2017, US President Donald Trump accused the press of being an “enemy of the American people”. He has doubled down in his second term.
We have seen newsroom after newsroom fall foul of White House press secretaries; we saw bans on CNN, The New York Times, the LA Times and Politico back in 2017, and now, the Associated Press for simply refusing to fall in line with the so-called renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.
Three weeks ago, the world watched Pentagon journalists exit en masse, after rejecting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s latest edict.
Another White House rule
Just last week, we saw the declaration of another White House rule — this time, restricting credentialed journalists from freely accessing the Press Secretary’s offices in the West Wing.
These attacks on US soil are complemented by an equally invidious assault on media outlets on a global scale.
Funding freezes and mass sackings have all but silenced Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Asia — the latter of which employed several of our colleagues here in Queensland and the Pacific.
We have seen Trump’s verbal attack on the ABC’s John Lyons, and how that presidential tantrum led to the ABC being excluded from the Trump–Starmer press conference in the UK.
Apparently, they simply didn’t have space for the national broadcaster of the third AUKUS partner — and all this with barely a whimper from the Australian government.
But then, why would our Prime Minister leap to journalism’s defence when he sees fit to exclude Pacific journalists from his Pacific Island Forum press conference — in, you guessed it, the Pacific.
This enmity towards journalism, has been a hallmark of the Trump presidency.
Blatant ignorance, hubris
His blatant ignorance, hubris, and perfidy — indulged by US allies — has emboldened other predators and enemies of the press around the world.
As at December 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) listed 376 journalists as being imprisoned in various countries around the world — it was the highest number three years running, since the record started in 1992.
China topped the list with 52 imprisoned journalists, with Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory a close second with 48.
Myanmar had 35, Belarus 33, Russia 30 and the list continues.
Among this group are 15 journalists arrested in Eritrea more than two decades ago, between 2000 and 2002, who continue to be held without charge.
And it gets worse.
The same CPJ database records 2023, 24 and 25 as the worst years for the deaths of journalists and media workers — worse than the years at the height of the US and allied invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the war against the Islamic State.
Killed journalists
The war in Gaza accounts for a significant number of these deaths.
A staggering 185 journalists and media workers have been killed directly because of their work in the past 25 months — on a small strip of land just 2.3 per cent the size of Greater Brisbane.
I urge you to read the ICRC case study on the legal protection of journalists in combat zones. It clearly explains how Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention protects journalists, even when they engage in producing “propaganda” for the conflicting parties.
Since our vigil 12 months ago, the CPJ has recorded the deaths of 122 journalists and media workers around the world. These are deaths the CPJ has confirmed as being directly linked to their work — such as those killed while reporting in combat zones or on dangerous assignments.
Of those, 33 were confirmed murders — meaning those journalists were deliberately targeted.
A staggering 61 of those 122 were killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory — in Israel’s war on Gaza. Another 31 were killed in a single day during targeted Israeli airstrikes on two newspapers in Sana’a in Yemen. And three more were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a compound housing journalists in Lebanon — meaning Israeli defence forces were responsible for 78 percent of last year’s killings.
We talk of Israel’s attack on journalists because it is unprecedented, but Israel is by no means the only perpetrator of such crimes — there was the Mozambique journalist murdered during a live broadcast; a video journalist tortured and killed in Saudi Arabia; and a print journalist tortured and killed in Bangladesh.
Today we read the names of 122 fallen comrades and remember them one by one.
The arrest of the former top lawyer in the Israeli military for the leak of a video showing Israeli soldiers assaulting a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military prison has created a political and legal storm in Israel.
The Israeli government is accusing Military Advocate-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalm of “blood libel” against the Israeli army, of defaming Israeli soldiers, reports Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as saying this was the “most dangerous assault” on Israel’s image since its establishment in 1948.
Many in Israel are fearful that Netanyahu and his coalition partners will use this as a pretext to introduce the changes they want in the Israeli military and judiciary.
There is so much focus on the fact that this video — which was alleged to show a gang rape of a blindfolded Palestinian prisoner — was leaked, at the expense of discussing how this crime actually happened.
The UN says that these kinds of crimes are being committed in a systematic manner.
In one way, it’s a way to shift attention from the fact that these crimes are happening, by focusing on this woman and the fact that she leaked the video.
Five soldiers indicted Middle East Eye reports that at least nine Israeli soldiers were questioned over the assault in late July, sparking widespread anger across Israel.
Only five were indicted for “severe abuse” of the detainee, but not for rape. The trial remains ongoing.
On Sunday, the accused soldiers called for the case to be dropped.
The Palestinian detainee shown in an alleged rape video leaked to the Israeli outlet Channel 12 last year has been returned to Gaza, news agencies report, citing a document from the military prosecutor’s office.
The fallout from the leak has led to the resignation and arrest of the Israeli army’s top lawyer, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, on suspicion of allowing the clip to become public.
Meanwhile, the Islamic bloc has condemned Israel’s proposed death penalty law as “discriminatory, legally untenable”.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a 57-nation bloc of Muslim-majority countries, dsaid the a draft law before the Israeli parliament that could impose the death penalty on those convicted of “terrorism”, a move critics say would legalise the execution of Palestinian prisoners.
‘Legally untenable’
In a statement posted on X, the OIC described the proposed law as “discriminatory and legally untenable”.
It added: “The OIC has urged the international community to fulfil its obligations in halting all violations perpetrated by the Israeli occupation and to extend international protective measures for the Palestinian people.”
The bill has been forwarded by the far-right and internationally sanctioned Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and is backed by Netanyahu.
The head of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has described the bill to introduce the death penalty for Palestinian “terrorism” suspects as a crime against humanity.
Former UK minister regrets silence over Palestinian nurse’s death, calls Israeli actions ‘murder’
A former Conservative minister in the United Kingdom has accused Netanyahu’s government of killing a young Palestinian nurse.
Alistair Burt, who served as Middle East minister in Theresa May’s government, told the UK newspaper The Independent he now regretted staying silent when 21-year-old medic Razan al-Najjar was fatally shot while treating wounded protesters near Gaza’s border in 2018.
Burt said Najjar had been “clearly targeted and murdered”, adding that Israel’s pledges to investigate such incidents were “bogus” attempts to “cover up killings”.
The arrest of the former top lawyer in the Israeli military for the leak of a video showing Israeli soldiers assaulting a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military prison has created a political and legal storm in Israel.
The Israeli government is accusing Military Advocate-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalm of “blood libel” against the Israeli army, of defaming Israeli soldiers, reports Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went as far as saying this was the “most dangerous assault” on Israel’s image since its establishment in 1948.
Many in Israel are fearful that Netanyahu and his coalition partners will use this as a pretext to introduce the changes they want in the Israeli military and judiciary.
There is so much focus on the fact that this video — which was alleged to show a gang rape of a blindfolded Palestinian prisoner — was leaked, at the expense of discussing how this crime actually happened.
The UN says that these kinds of crimes are being committed in a systematic manner.
In one way, it’s a way to shift attention from the fact that these crimes are happening, by focusing on this woman and the fact that she leaked the video.
Five soldiers indicted Middle East Eye reports that at least nine Israeli soldiers were questioned over the assault in late July, sparking widespread anger across Israel.
Only five were indicted for “severe abuse” of the detainee, but not for rape. The trial remains ongoing.
On Sunday, the accused soldiers called for the case to be dropped.
The Palestinian detainee shown in an alleged rape video leaked to the Israeli outlet Channel 12 last year has been returned to Gaza, news agencies report, citing a document from the military prosecutor’s office.
The fallout from the leak has led to the resignation and arrest of the Israeli army’s top lawyer, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, on suspicion of allowing the clip to become public.
Meanwhile, the Islamic bloc has condemned Israel’s proposed death penalty law as “discriminatory, legally untenable”.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a 57-nation bloc of Muslim-majority countries, dsaid the a draft law before the Israeli parliament that could impose the death penalty on those convicted of “terrorism”, a move critics say would legalise the execution of Palestinian prisoners.
‘Legally untenable’
In a statement posted on X, the OIC described the proposed law as “discriminatory and legally untenable”.
It added: “The OIC has urged the international community to fulfil its obligations in halting all violations perpetrated by the Israeli occupation and to extend international protective measures for the Palestinian people.”
The bill has been forwarded by the far-right and internationally sanctioned Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and is backed by Netanyahu.
The head of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has described the bill to introduce the death penalty for Palestinian “terrorism” suspects as a crime against humanity.
Former UK minister regrets silence over Palestinian nurse’s death, calls Israeli actions ‘murder’
A former Conservative minister in the United Kingdom has accused Netanyahu’s government of killing a young Palestinian nurse.
Alistair Burt, who served as Middle East minister in Theresa May’s government, told the UK newspaper The Independent he now regretted staying silent when 21-year-old medic Razan al-Najjar was fatally shot while treating wounded protesters near Gaza’s border in 2018.
Burt said Najjar had been “clearly targeted and murdered”, adding that Israel’s pledges to investigate such incidents were “bogus” attempts to “cover up killings”.
The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says it “regrets” the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to grant the Tel Aviv government 30 days to respond to a petition to allow journalists access to the Gaza Strip following the ceasefire.
RSF said in a statement it believes the blockade on access — in place for more than two years — remains illegal, unjustifiable and contrary to the public’s fundamental right to news and information, and should be lifted at once.
During a hearing before the Supreme Court on October 23 — in which RSF participated as an interested party having contributed an amicus brief in the petition by the Jerusalem-based Foreign Press Association (FPA) — the Israeli government acknowledged that the ceasefire constituted a significant change in circumstances justifying a review of its policy on journalists’ access.
The court ordered the Israeli government to present a clear position on its blockade in light of the new circumstances but granted it another 30 days to do this, despite the urgency of the situation and although the Israeli government had already benefited from six postponements since the start of these proceedings.
“If the blockade preventing journalists from entering Gaza was already illegal and seriously violated the fundamental right to information of the Palestinian, Israeli, and international public, it is now totally unjustifiable,” said RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin.
“RSF deplores the Supreme Court’s decision to give the Israeli government 30 days to reach this obvious conclusion, and calls on the Israeli government to open Gaza’s borders to journalists immediately and without conditions.”
Israel has closed off Gaza and denied external journalists’ independent access to the besieged territory since 7 October 2023.
To counter this ban, RSF has joined the FPA’s petition for the Gaza Strip’s borders to be opened to independent entry by journalists, andfiled an amicus brief with the Israeli Supreme Court on October 15 that was designed to help the judges understand the FPA’s position.
This major investigative documentary examines the facts surrounding the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Akleh, as she was reporting in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, in May 2022.
Palestine: Who killed Shireen? Video: Al Jazeera
It sets out to discover who killed her — and after months of painstaking research, succeeds in identifying the Israeli sniper who pulled the trigger.
Eleven Al Jazeera journalists have been killed by the Israeli military among at least 248 Gaza media workers slain by the IDF, reports Anadolu Ajansı,
“Nearly nine out of 10 journalists killings remain unresolved. Gaza has been the deadliest place for journalists in any conflict,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman to the UN secretary-general, told reporters.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “independent, impartial” investigations into the killings of journalists, emphasising that “impunity is an assault on press freedom and a threat to democracy itself,” Dujarric said.
“When journalists are silenced, we all lose our voice,” he said.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says it “regrets” the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to grant the Tel Aviv government 30 days to respond to a petition to allow journalists access to the Gaza Strip following the ceasefire.
RSF said in a statement it believes the blockade on access — in place for more than two years — remains illegal, unjustifiable and contrary to the public’s fundamental right to news and information, and should be lifted at once.
During a hearing before the Supreme Court on October 23 — in which RSF participated as an interested party having contributed an amicus brief in the petition by the Jerusalem-based Foreign Press Association (FPA) — the Israeli government acknowledged that the ceasefire constituted a significant change in circumstances justifying a review of its policy on journalists’ access.
The court ordered the Israeli government to present a clear position on its blockade in light of the new circumstances but granted it another 30 days to do this, despite the urgency of the situation and although the Israeli government had already benefited from six postponements since the start of these proceedings.
“If the blockade preventing journalists from entering Gaza was already illegal and seriously violated the fundamental right to information of the Palestinian, Israeli, and international public, it is now totally unjustifiable,” said RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin.
“RSF deplores the Supreme Court’s decision to give the Israeli government 30 days to reach this obvious conclusion, and calls on the Israeli government to open Gaza’s borders to journalists immediately and without conditions.”
Israel has closed off Gaza and denied external journalists’ independent access to the besieged territory since 7 October 2023.
To counter this ban, RSF has joined the FPA’s petition for the Gaza Strip’s borders to be opened to independent entry by journalists, andfiled an amicus brief with the Israeli Supreme Court on October 15 that was designed to help the judges understand the FPA’s position.
This major investigative documentary examines the facts surrounding the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Akleh, as she was reporting in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, in May 2022.
Palestine: Who killed Shireen? Video: Al Jazeera
It sets out to discover who killed her — and after months of painstaking research, succeeds in identifying the Israeli sniper who pulled the trigger.
Eleven Al Jazeera journalists have been killed by the Israeli military among at least 248 Gaza media workers slain by the IDF, reports Anadolu Ajansı,
“Nearly nine out of 10 journalists killings remain unresolved. Gaza has been the deadliest place for journalists in any conflict,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman to the UN secretary-general, told reporters.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “independent, impartial” investigations into the killings of journalists, emphasising that “impunity is an assault on press freedom and a threat to democracy itself,” Dujarric said.
“When journalists are silenced, we all lose our voice,” he said.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica has stepped down from his position on the eve of his court appearance for corruption-related charges.
Kamikamica has been charged by the country’s anti-corruption office with perjury and providing false information in his capacity as a public servant.
Kamikamica, who also serves as the Minister for Trade and Communications, informed Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka yesterday that he would focus on clearing his name in relation to the charges laid against him by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC).
He is one of three deputy prime ministers in Rabuka’s coalition government.
“I have accepted his decision to step down, and he has assured me of his unwavering commitment to the government and the people of Fiji,” Rabuka said in a statement.
“I will be overseeing his portfolio responsibilities for the foreseeable future.”
The deputy prime minister was overseas on official duties and was returning to the country.
His case is scheduled to appear at the Suva Magistrates Court today.
FICAC has not publicly commented on the specifics of the case.
The charges were filed following investigations related to the Commission of Inquiry report into the appointment of Barbara Malimali as FICAC chief, according to the state broadcaster FBC.
FBC reported that FICAC officers had seized Kamikamica’s mobile phone in July during the execution of a search warrant.
Kamikamica is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
FBC reports that Kamikamica’s legal representative, Wylie Clarke, appeared before the court today and raised serious concerns about the validity of the charges.
Clarke told the court that the case was fundamentally flawed, both in its legal foundation and in the evidence supporting it.
Since the start of September, the Trump administration has busied itself with striking boats in international waters stemming from Venezuelan and possibly Colombian waters. Their mortal offence: allegedly carrying narcotics cargo destined for consumers in the United States. A few days following the first strike on September 2, President Donald Trump stated in a War Powers Resolution notification to Congress that the action was one of “self-defense” motivated by “the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories.”
In early October, a presidential notice was issued deeming those killed in such strikes on suspicion of drug smuggling “unlawful combatants”. The notice to Congress advanced an anaemic excuse to justify murder instead of arrest, an echo of previous, elastic rationales used by administrations to justify an enlargement of executive war powers: “based on the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations.” The US had “reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.”
The document amounted to an arrogation of extraordinary wartime powers to combat drug cartels, treating the trafficking of illicit narcotics to an armed assault on US citizens. Geoffrey S. Corn, a former judge advocate general lawyer, thought it a most adventurous move, given that drug cartels were not engaged in “hostilities”. “This is not stretching the envelope,” he told the New York Times. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”
In the kingdom of alternative legal realities, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly articulated the position in an email: “the president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores, and he is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.”
The number of possible international law violations are far from negligible. Michael Schmitt lists a few in Just Security. Most obvious is the physical violation of a State’s sovereignty, which can take place through interfering with its “inherently governmental functions” comprising such matters as law enforcement. To also authorise kinetic operations in another State’s territory can amount to wrongful intervention in its international affairs. Last, though not least, is that using force in this context may be unlawful, violating Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and customary law.
Nothing in this cooked up scheme adds up. If the intention is to curb overdoses on US soil from drug use, flow of fentanyl would be the object of the exercise. But fentanyl hails from Mexico, not South America. The broader agenda is a more traditional one: the assertion of the imperium’s control over countries in the Americas, eliminating regimes deemed unfriendly to Washington’s interests. Narcotics has become the throbbing pretext, with Trump accusing Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro of being the leader of the drug trafficking organisation Cartel of the Suns. He is also accused of using the dark offices of the Tren de Aragua prison gang to conduct “irregular warfare” against the United States, despite countering claims by the intelligence community that the gang is not under Maduro’s control. (The reaffirmation of the initial intelligence assessment by the National Intelligence Council led to the sacking of its acting director, Michael Collins.)
In 2020, the first Trump administration offered a reward of up to US$15 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Maduro. Two more increases to the bounty followed, the latest on August 7 being US$50 million following the sanctioning of the Cartel of the Suns by the Department of Treasury as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. “As leader of Cartel of the Suns,” declares the State Department in its notice of reward, “Maduro is the first target in the history of the Narcotics Rewards Program with a reward offer exceeding $25 million.”
Trump, in one of his moments of sharp frankness, concedes that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been authorised to conduct covert lethal operations on Venezuelan soil and more broadly through the Caribbean in a presidential finding. “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea well under control,” he told reporters hours after the secret authorisation was revealed.
In explaining his shoddy reasons, Trump cited Venezuela’s emptying of its “prisons into the United States of America” and the issue of drugs. “We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you get to see that, but we’re going to stop them by land also.”
To the finding can be added a bulking military presence in the region: eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean, 10,000 US troops, largely garrisoned at bases in Puerto Rico, with a contingent of Marines equipped with amphibious assault boats. In the meantime, the recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado, salivates at the prospect of regime change with muscular intervention from Washington. The pieces are being moved into place, and the self-proclaimed peace maker in the White House is readying for war.
Ask yourself this: Knowing what horrific genocidal revenge that Israel has dished out since October 2023, why have both the Biden and now Trump 2 regimes enabled it? I mean it is one thing to simply look-the-other-way to remain somewhat neutral, but to continually allow billions of dollars and millions of weaponry into Israel is something else. Look at how many members of both political parties continued to vote YES to whatever Israel has chosen to do to Gaza. Cui Bono?
This writer has read from more than a few sources the rumor (or fact?) that Jeffery Epstein was pretty tight with the Israelis , going back decades. Isn’t it a fact that former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak visited Epstein at least over 30 times from 2013 -2017? He went twice to Epstein’s island and was very friendly with him for years. Researcher Max Blumenthal was interviewed many times on Jeffery Epstein and has said the following in a July , 2025 interview with a Norwegian journalist:
Epstein’s High-Level Connections
“So how can we evaluate whether Jeffrey Epstein was actually a Mossad agent who is meeting around a glass table with the Mossad chief, getting instructions when the relationships are so fluid? What is clear is Jeffrey Epstein would have meetings with very influential foreign officials and salons at his townhouse. One of them was Ehud Barak, who visited about 36 times, worked with Jeffrey Epstein, I think, to set up a surveillance company or surveillance startup. Ehud Olmert, former Israeli Prime Minister, also had several meetings with Epstein. Shimon Peres had some meetings with Epstein. Epstein even reportedly set up a meeting for JP Morgan executives with Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jeffrey Epstein helped Peter Thiel from Palantir who has major investments with Israeli intelligence, make enormous amounts of money through firm, through an – like, through an investment. He helped guide his investments. So he had connections with all of these intelligence connected individuals. He applied for multiple passports to travel to the Middle East and Africa. This was reported by CBS News.
Jeffrey Epstein went to Israel in 2008 when he was facing his first prosecution for sex trafficking in Florida. And then there’s the Daily Beast report which claimed that Alex Acosta, the Florida prosecutor, was told to back off Epstein because he, quote unquote, “belonged to intelligence.” I don’t know if that’s dependable, a dependable report or not. Alex Acosta, by the way, now is in the Trump administration.”
The real conundrum is how is it that the most powerful country in the world can continually do whatever the Israeli government wants done with no backlash? More so, knowing that Jeffery Epstein had perhaps thousands of videos that he made from his homes in NYC and Florida, and that he traveled in the highest circles with very Super Rich people, put two and two together. Blackmail and the threat of exposing child predators are, in this current USA moral climate, an added two to the Bible’s Seven Deadly Sins. Doesn’t matter whether one is Christian, Jewish, Muslim or whatever. This threat to one’s moral compass pushes the needle beyond the boundary. Therefore, it seems to me that it is not just Trump who may or may not be behind that Wizard of Oz screen. Question is: How many powerful people, in the business world and politics, that are being protected from the truth? Could it be that any nation which has that info, that proof, can get just about whatever it wants?
While speaking to reporters at the Kolkata airport on October 12 on the alleged ‘gang rape’ of a medical student in Durgapur, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that the alleged assault took place at 12.30 am and asked why the victim was out of the campus so late.
The second-year MBBS student, originally from Odisha, was allegedly gang-raped on Friday, October 10, evening outside the institute campus in Durgapur, about 170 km from Kolkata. At the time of this report being written, three individuals were arrested in the case, identified as Apu Bauri (21), Firdous Shiekh (23), and Sheikh Riazuddin (32).
Coming close on the heels of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata in August 2024 and the alleged rape of a student at the South Calcutta Law College in June this year, the Durgapur incident saw all Opposition parties coming down heavily on the Mamata Banerjee-government.
When asked to comment about the incident before she boarded a flight for flood-hit north Bengal, Banerjee urged private colleges to take responsibility of their students’ safety. Her words, which immediately triggered an outrage from the Opposition, were as follows:
“….if in Bengal anything happens to women, we do not allow anything to be considered as a casual case. It’s a serious case we consider. And that girl.. it’s shocking.. she was studying in a private medical college. So all the private medical college.. whose responsibility? How they came out in the night at 12.30? And it happens in the… so far I know… in the forest area. At 12.30… I do not know what happened. Investigation is on. I am shocked to see the incident. But private medical colleges also should take care for their students. And specially the girl child… at night time… they should not be allowed to come out in the outside. They have to protect themselves also…” (sic)
She also said, “Nobody will be excused. Whoever is guilty will be strictly punished.”
#WATCH | Kolkata, WB: On the alleged gangrape of an MBBS student in Durgapur, CM Mamata Banerjee says, “This is a private college. Three weeks ago, three girls were raped on the beach in Odisha. What action is being taken by the Odisha government?… The girl was studying in a… pic.twitter.com/ugQrQwNeW7
Multiple sources confirm that the alleged gang rape occurred between 8 and 9.30 pm on October 10.
1. Press Release by the medical college:
The institute where the survivor was a second-year MBBS student published a press note detailing the timing of the incident based on CCTV footage available with them.
According to the statement, the survivor left the campus for dinner with another student around 7:58 pm. Following this, “One of them returned at 8:42 pm, but after loitering around the main exit area for around 5-6 minutes, he stepped out again at about 8:48 pm. The two then returned together at 9:29 p.m. The female student proceeded toward the Girls Hostel at around 9:31 pm. Later, it came to light that the female student, while she was outside campus, bad endured an assault — an occurrence she has herself claimed and reported.”
2. Police complaint by survivor’s father
Alt News accessed the police complaint submitted by the student’s father at New Township police station under Asansol-Durgapur Commissionerate on October 11, on the basis of which a case (No. 131/25 dated 11.10.2025) under section 70(1)/3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita was lodged. The complaint was signed as ‘Received’ by an officer at the station.
According to the complaint, the alleged assault took place a little after 8 pm on October 10. Alt News is in possession of the document but we won’t publish it in the interest of the survivor and the investigation.
3. In an interview, the survivor’s father mentioned that time of the incident as around 9-9:30 pm. He said a friend of her daughter took her near the gate for eating ‘gupchup’ (panipuri) when two or three more people arrived. “Seeing this, the friend fled leaving the girl alone. She was raped after this.”
To sum up, the claim by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee that the victim had stepped out of the college campus at 12.30 in the night is false. In a conversation with media persons on October 12, she mentioned at least twice that the alleged assault had taken place at 12.30 am.
Who would have imagined five years ago when we were seeing Greta Thunberg amplified by every mainstream western liberal institution that we would one day hear reports that she has been captured and tormented by the Israeli military for trying to bring formula to starving babies?
“In an email sent by the Swedish foreign ministry to people close to Thunberg, and seen by the Guardian, an official who has visited the activist in prison said she claimed she was detained in a cell infested with bedbugs, with too little food and water.
“ ‘The embassy has been able to meet with Greta,’ reads the email. ‘She informed of dehydration. She has received insufficient amounts of both water and food. She also stated that she had developed rashes which she suspects were caused by bedbugs. She spoke of harsh treatment and said she had been sitting for long periods on hard surfaces.’
“ ‘Another detainee reportedly told another embassy that they had seen her [Thunberg] being forced to hold flags while pictures were taken. She wondered whether images of her had been distributed,’ the Swedish ministry’s official added.
“The allegation was corroborated by at least two other members of the flotilla who had been detained by Israeli forces and released on Saturday.
“ ‘They dragged little Greta [Thunberg] by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,’ the Turkish activist Ersin Çelik, a participant in the Sumud flotilla, told Anadolu news agency.
“Lorenzo D’Agostino, a journalist and another flotilla participant, said after returning to Istanbul that Thunberg was ‘wrapped in the Israeli flag and paraded like a trophy’ — a scene described with disbelief and anger by those who witnessed it.”
These reports, as shocking as they are, also happen to more or less reflect exactly what the Israeli regime said it intended to do to Global Sumud Flotilla activists when they were captured.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said last month that Sumud activists must be treated as terrorists in order to “create a clear deterrent” from future flotilla activism, declaring that “Anyone who chooses to collaborate with Hamas and support terrorism will meet a firm and unyielding response from Israel.”
“We will not allow individuals who support terrorism to live in comfort. They will face the full consequences of their actions,” Ben-Gvir said at the time.
So it would appear that they singled out the most high-profile activist on the flotilla for abuse in order to send a message and deter future efforts to break the siege on Gaza.
Citing two US intelligence officials, CBS reports that Benjamin Netanyahu personally authorized attacks in which drones were deployed from an Israeli submarine to drop incendiary devices onto the boats to set them on fire.
Israel has been documented using quadcopter drones to drop incendiary firebombs on tents and buildings in Gaza. Last month Trump’s middle east envoy Tom Barrack casually admitted during an interview that “Israel is attacking Tunisia,” which was where the boat carrying Greta Thunberg was docked during the first drone attack.
Like the reported mistreatment of Thunberg, these drone attacks would also fit in perfectly with the Israeli government’s depraved and cynical decision to treat the flotilla activists as terrorists.
After the initial claims of a drone attack on the flotilla, the information ecosystem was flooded with hasbarists claiming it was ridiculous to blame Israel for the attacks, and that the fire hadn’t come from a drone at all.
Odious genocide propagandist Eyal Yakoby got nearly ten million views on a tweet where he falsely claimed to have video evidence showing that the fire was actually the result of a misfired flare from one of the boat’s crew members. Anyone who’d actually watched the video would have seen that it showed nothing of the sort, but because Yakoby inserted a narrative above the video claiming it shows that, I had people in my Twitter notifications telling me for days that it had been conclusively proven the fire was started by a flare.
I encountered even some solid Palestine supporters expressing doubt about the drone attacks when the reports first emerged, because it seemed too heinous to be believed. But this just goes to show that there really is nothing you can put past these freaks.
Israel and its apologists lie about everything. Everything, everything, everything. We are far past the point where it is reasonable to give Israel the benefit of the doubt when we hear reports that it has done something evil. If you’ll launch drone attacks on activists trying to bring aid to starving civilians, there’s nothing you won’t do.
Who would have imagined five years ago when we were seeing Greta Thunberg amplified by every mainstream western liberal institution that we would one day hear reports that she has been captured and tormented by the Israeli military for trying to bring formula to starving babies?
“In an email sent by the Swedish foreign ministry to people close to Thunberg, and seen by the Guardian, an official who has visited the activist in prison said she claimed she was detained in a cell infested with bedbugs, with too little food and water.
“ ‘The embassy has been able to meet with Greta,’ reads the email. ‘She informed of dehydration. She has received insufficient amounts of both water and food. She also stated that she had developed rashes which she suspects were caused by bedbugs. She spoke of harsh treatment and said she had been sitting for long periods on hard surfaces.’
“ ‘Another detainee reportedly told another embassy that they had seen her [Thunberg] being forced to hold flags while pictures were taken. She wondered whether images of her had been distributed,’ the Swedish ministry’s official added.
“The allegation was corroborated by at least two other members of the flotilla who had been detained by Israeli forces and released on Saturday.
“ ‘They dragged little Greta [Thunberg] by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,’ the Turkish activist Ersin Çelik, a participant in the Sumud flotilla, told Anadolu news agency.
“Lorenzo D’Agostino, a journalist and another flotilla participant, said after returning to Istanbul that Thunberg was ‘wrapped in the Israeli flag and paraded like a trophy’ — a scene described with disbelief and anger by those who witnessed it.”
These reports, as shocking as they are, also happen to more or less reflect exactly what the Israeli regime said it intended to do to Global Sumud Flotilla activists when they were captured.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said last month that Sumud activists must be treated as terrorists in order to “create a clear deterrent” from future flotilla activism, declaring that “Anyone who chooses to collaborate with Hamas and support terrorism will meet a firm and unyielding response from Israel.”
“We will not allow individuals who support terrorism to live in comfort. They will face the full consequences of their actions,” Ben-Gvir said at the time.
So it would appear that they singled out the most high-profile activist on the flotilla for abuse in order to send a message and deter future efforts to break the siege on Gaza.
Citing two US intelligence officials, CBS reports that Benjamin Netanyahu personally authorized attacks in which drones were deployed from an Israeli submarine to drop incendiary devices onto the boats to set them on fire.
Israel has been documented using quadcopter drones to drop incendiary firebombs on tents and buildings in Gaza. Last month Trump’s middle east envoy Tom Barrack casually admitted during an interview that “Israel is attacking Tunisia,” which was where the boat carrying Greta Thunberg was docked during the first drone attack.
Like the reported mistreatment of Thunberg, these drone attacks would also fit in perfectly with the Israeli government’s depraved and cynical decision to treat the flotilla activists as terrorists.
After the initial claims of a drone attack on the flotilla, the information ecosystem was flooded with hasbarists claiming it was ridiculous to blame Israel for the attacks, and that the fire hadn’t come from a drone at all.
Odious genocide propagandist Eyal Yakoby got nearly ten million views on a tweet where he falsely claimed to have video evidence showing that the fire was actually the result of a misfired flare from one of the boat’s crew members. Anyone who’d actually watched the video would have seen that it showed nothing of the sort, but because Yakoby inserted a narrative above the video claiming it shows that, I had people in my Twitter notifications telling me for days that it had been conclusively proven the fire was started by a flare.
I encountered even some solid Palestine supporters expressing doubt about the drone attacks when the reports first emerged, because it seemed too heinous to be believed. But this just goes to show that there really is nothing you can put past these freaks.
Israel and its apologists lie about everything. Everything, everything, everything. We are far past the point where it is reasonable to give Israel the benefit of the doubt when we hear reports that it has done something evil. If you’ll launch drone attacks on activists trying to bring aid to starving civilians, there’s nothing you won’t do.
More To The Story: When Brandon Scott took office in late 2020 as one of the youngest mayors in Baltimore’s history, he pledged to reduce the number of homicides and incidents of gun violence. That year, there were 335 reported homicides in the city of roughly 600,000 people, making it one of the most dangerous cities per capita in the US. Scott began implementing a violence prevention strategy designed to get at the root causes of gun violence. Over the last few years, Baltimore has been witnessing a remarkable drop in violent crime, especially homicides. But that progress doesn’t seem to matter to the White House. Last month, President Donald Trump listed the city as one of several led by Democratic mayors where he’s considering sending the National Guard.
On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Scott talks to host Al Letson about what he thinks is really driving the Trump administration to send troops to Democratic-led cities, why the city’s strategy to reduce gun violence appears to be working, and what his political future might look like.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
President Donald Trump announced during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” that he is planning to send military troops to Memphis, Tennessee. During his appearance on September 12, Trump said his administration would deploy the National Guard “and anybody else we need” to the Tennessee city. Trump did not provide a timeline for the deployment. “By the way, we’ll bring in the military too…
In a speech at the Museum of the Bible on Monday, President Donald Trump announced that his administration will soon issue new guidance about prayer in public schools, vowing to “bring back religion in America.” At Monday’s meeting of the Religious Liberty Commission, Trump told attendees, “As President, I will always defend our nation’s glorious heritage, and we will protect the Judeo…
Jamie Raskin says Farage is ‘a Trump sycophant’ before UK politician addresses the House judiciary committee in Washington
Kemi Badenoch is probably hastily redrafting her PMQs script in the light of Angela Rayner’s statement about underpaying her stamp duty. She has got less than half an hour to craft the right questions. And she will probably want to ask about the economy, and hate speech laws, too.
The concept of “crime” is not a fixed, objective reality but a fluid and politically potent construct which has been meticulously weaponized to serve the interests of power. Crime is in fact a dialectical product of the very systems of domination it purportedly challenges. An elusive chameleon, the shifting definitions of crime justifies the expansion of state control, the suppression of dissent, and the advancement of imperial projects, both domestically and globally. Whether “high crime” or “low crime” , the rhetoric is rarely about public safety; rather, it is the primary language through which state agencies validate their own existence, and the imperialist state escalates its violence, masking the carceral and militaristic enforcement of social order to maintain hegemony under the guise of moral necessity.
Western reporters are full partners in the genocide. They amplify Israeli lies, which they know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel.
ANALYSIS:By Chris Hedges
There are two types of war correspondents. The first type does not attend press conferences. They do not beg generals and politicians for interviews. They take risks to report from combat zones.
They send back to their viewers or readers what they see, which is almost always diametrically opposed to official narratives. This first type, in every war, is a tiny minority.
Then there is the second type, the inchoate blob of self-identified war correspondents who play at war. Despite what they tell editors and the public, they have no intention of putting themselves in danger.
They are pleased with the Israeli ban on foreign reporters into Gaza. They plead with officials for background briefings and press conferences. They collaborate with their government minders who impose restrictions and rules that keep them out of combat.
They slavishly disseminate whatever they are fed by officials, much of which is a lie, and pretend it is news. They join little jaunts arranged by the military — dog and pony shows — where they get to dress up and play soldier and visit outposts where everything is controlled and choreographed.
The mortal enemy of these poseurs are the real war reporters, in this case, Palestinian journalists in Gaza. These reporters expose them as toadies and sycophants, discrediting nearly everything they disseminate. For this reason, the poseurs never pass up a chance to question the veracity and motives of those in the field.
I watched these snakes do this repeatedly to my colleague Robert Fisk.
Took huge hit
When war reporter Ben Anderson arrived at the hotel where journalists covering the war in Liberia were encamped — in his words getting “drunk” at bars “on expenses,” having affairs and exchanging “information rather than actually going out and getting information” — his image of war reporters took a huge hit.
“I thought, finally, I’m amongst my heroes,” Anderson recalls. “This is where I’ve wanted to be for years. And then me and the cameraman I was with — who knew the rebels very well — he took us out for about three weeks with the rebels.
“We came back to Monrovia. The guys in the hotel bar said, ‘Where have you been? We thought you’d gone home.’ We said, ‘We went out to cover the war. Isn’t that our job? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?’
“The romantic view I had of foreign correspondents was suddenly destroyed in Liberia,” he went on. “I thought, actually, a lot of these guys are full of shit. They’re not even willing to leave the hotel, let alone leave the safety of the capital and actually do some reporting.”
You can see an interview I did with Anderson here.
This dividing line, which occurred in every war I covered, defines the reporting on the genocide in Gaza. It is not a divide of professionalism or culture. Palestinian reporters expose Israeli atrocities and implode Israeli lies. The rest of the press does not.
Palestinian journalists, targeted and assassinated by Israel, pay — as many great war correspondents do — with their lives, although in far greater numbers.
Israel has murdered 245 journalists in Gaza by one count and more than 273 by another. The goal is to shroud the genocide in darkness.
No other war close
No war I covered comes close to these numbers of dead. Since October 7, Israel has killed more journalists “than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.” Journalists in Palestine leave wills and recorded videos to be read or played at their death.
A funeral for Palestine TV correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab. Hatab was killed, along with his family members, in an airstrike on his home in Khan Yunis, Gaza. Image: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images
The colleagues of these Palestinian journalists in the Western press broadcast from the border fence with Gaza decked out in flak jackets and helmets, where they have as much chance of being hit by shrapnel or a bullet as being struck by an asteroid. They scurry like lemmings to briefings by Israeli officials. They are not only the enemies of truth, but also the enemies of journalists doing the real work of war reporting.
When Iraqi troops attacked the Saudi border town of Khafji during the first Gulf War, Saudi soldiers fled in panic. Two French photographers and I watched frantic soldiers commandeering fire trucks and racing south. US Marines pushed the Iraqis back.
But in Riyadh, the press was told of our gallant Saudi allies defending their homeland. Once fighting ended, the press bus stopped a few miles down the road from Khafji. The pool reporters clambered out, escorted by military minders. They did stand-ups with the distant sound of artillery and smoke as a backdrop and repeated the lies the Pentagon wanted to tell.
Meanwhile, the two photographers and I were detained and beaten by enraged Saudi military police, furious that we had documented the panicked flight of Saudi forces, as we tried to leave Khafji.
My refusal to abide by press restrictions in the first Gulf War saw the other New York Times reporters in Saudi Arabia write a letter to the foreign editor saying I was ruining the paper’s relationship with the military. If not for the intervention of R.W. “Johnny” Apple, who had covered Vietnam, I would have been sent back to New York.
I do not fault anyone for not wanting to go into a war zone. This is a sign of normality. It is rational. It is understandable. Those of us who volunteer to go into combat — my colleague Clyde Haberman at The New York Times once quipped “Hedges will parachute into a war with or without a parachute” — have obvious personality defects.
Pretend war correspondents
But I fault those who pretend to be war correspondents. They do tremendous damage. They peddle false narratives. They mask reality. They serve as witting — or unwitting — propagandists. They discredit the voices of the victims and exonerate the killers.
When I covered the war in El Salvador, before I worked for The New York Times, the paper’s correspondent dutifully regurgitated whatever the embassy fed her. This had the effect of making my editors — as well as editors of the other correspondents who did report the war– question our veracity and “impartiality.”
It made it harder for readers to understand what was happening. The false narrative neutered and often overpowered the real one.
The slander used to discredit my Palestinian colleagues — claiming they are members of Hamas — is sadly familiar. Many Palestinian reporters I know in Gaza are, in fact, quite critical of Hamas. But even if they have ties with Hamas, so what?
Israel’s attempt to justify targeting journalists from the Hamas-run al-Aqsa media network is also a violation of Article 79 of the Geneva Convention.
I worked with reporters and photographers who had a wide variety of beliefs, including Marxist-Leninists in Central America. This did not prevent them from being honest. I was in Bosnia and Kosovo with a Spanish cameraman, Miguel Gil Moreno, who was later killed with my friend Kurt Schork.
Miguel was a member of the right-wing Catholic group Opus Dei. He was also a journalist of tremendous courage, great compassion and moral probity, despite his opinions about Spain’s fascist ruler Francisco Franco. He did not lie.
Seeking to crush
In every war I covered, I was attacked as supporting or belonging to whatever group the government, including the US government, was seeking to crush. I was accused of being a tool of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, Hamas, the Muslim-led government in Bosnia and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
John Simpson of the BBC, like many Western reporters, argues that the “world needs honest, unbiased eyewitness reporting to help people make up their minds about the major issues of our time. This has so far been impossible in Gaza.”
The assumption that if Western reporters were in Gaza the coverage would improve is risible. Trust me. It would not.
Israel bans the foreign press because there is a bias in Europe and the United States in favour of reporting by Western reporters. Israel is aware that the scale of the genocide is too vast for Western outlets to hide or obscure, despite all the ink and airtime they give to Israeli and US apologists.
Israel also cannot continue its systematic campaign of annihilation of journalists in Gaza if it has to contend with foreign media in its midst.
Israel ‘lies like it breathes’
I covered the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis, much of that time in Gaza, for seven years. If there is one indisputable fact, it is that Israel lies like it breathes. The decision by Western reporters to give credibility to these lies, to give them the same weight as documented Israeli atrocities, is a cynical game.
The reporters know these lies are lies. But they, and the news outlets that employ them, prize access — in this case access to Israeli and US officials — above truth. The reporters, as well as their editors and publishers, fear becoming targets of Israel and the powerful Israel lobby.
There is no cost for betraying the Palestinians. They are powerless.
Call those lies out and you will swiftly find your requests for briefings and interviews with officials rebuffed. You won’t be invited by press officers to participate in staged visits to Israeli military units. You and your news organisation will be viciously attacked.
You will be left out in the cold. Your editors will terminate your assignment or your employment. This is not good for careers. And so, the lies are dutifully repeated, no matter how absurd.
It is pathetic watching these reporters and their news outlets, as Fisk writes, fight “like tigers to join these ‘pools’ in which they would be censored, restrained and deprived of all freedom of movement on the battlefield”.
When Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, along with Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri, and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha, and Mariam Dagga — who had worked with several media outlets, including the Associated Press — were killed in a “double tap” strike — designed to kill first responders arriving to treat casualties from initial strikes — at Nasser Medical Complex, how did Western news agencies respond?
‘Hamas camera’
“Israeli military says strikes on Gaza hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera,” the Associated Press reported.
“IDF claims hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera,” announced CNN.
“Israel army says six ‘terrorists’ killed in Monday strikes on Gaza hospital,” the AFP headline read.
“Initial inquiry says Hamas camera was target of Israeli strike that killed journalists,” Reuters said.
“Israel claims troops saw Hamas camera before deadly hospital attack,” Sky News explained.
Just for the record, the camera belonged to Reuters, which said Israel was “fully aware” the news agency was filming from the hospital.
When Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and three other journalists were killed on August 10 in their media tent near al-Shifa Hospital, how was it reported in the Western press?
Pulitzer prize-winner
“Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” Reuters titled its story, despite the fact al-Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.
The German newspaper Bild, published a front page story headlined: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.”
The barrage of Israeli lies amplified and given credibility by the Western press violates a fundamental tenet of journalism, the duty to transmit the truth to the viewer or reader.
It legitimizes mass slaughter. It refuses to hold Israel to account. It betrays Palestinian journalists, those reporting and being killed in Gaza. And it exposes the bankruptcy of Western journalists, whose primary attributes are careerism and cowardice.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.
I am alarmed by reports that Filipino journalists were flown in by the Israeli government to participate in what is essentially a whitewashing campaign for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to “the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,” Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes, akin to writing a travel blog about Nazi Germany.
In a Facebook post, Flores further parrots Israel’s propaganda by highlighting how the brutal IDF employs both men and women to carry out atrocities, a cynical weaponisation of “feminism.”
Even more repulsive is the piece from the Daily Tribune about “Gaza’s Fake Famine” from Vernon Velasco. It is a parody of a story, overly simplifying the famine of Gaza to a matter of food truck logistics, and uncritically quoting an IDF Officer.
Fittingly, the article contains three photos of shipping containers but not a single photo of a human being.
This runs counter to facts laid out by UN officials, including Joyce Msuya, the UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, who points out how half a million people face “starvation, destitution, and death”.
‘Moral failure’ over Gaza
A study published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet points to the “moral failure” as 1-2 million people live in the most extreme food insecurity level (phase 5 or catastrophe famine) according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
“By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to ‘the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,’ Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes, akin to writing a travel blog about Nazi Germany.” Image: TPS “Life” screenshot APR
This famine unfolds as shameless journalists make food vlogs kilometres away.
The facts are clear. At least 63,000 people have been killed and 150,000 injured, with women and children making up a significant portion of the casualties. The UN has also reported that nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s population (around 1.9 million people) has been displaced.
Widespread destruction has left over 70 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, including more than 94 percent of hospitals either damaged or destroyed. No amount of narrative spin or “complexity” can sanitise this genocide.
As we celebrate National Press Freedom Day, I implore friends in the press to not fall for the lies of the murderous Zionist regime.
It would be tragic for journalists to provide cover for a regime that has murdered at least 240 of their peers.
Filipino journalists must shed the unhealthy culture of silence and non-intervention, and not hesitate to criticise errant colleagues.
They must make it clear that these recipients of Zionist gold are a disgrace to Philippine journalism. The Philippine government must look into the activities of the Israeli Embassy and their manipulation of local media narratives to sanitise their genocide.
Filipino journalists must stand in solidarity with their slain colleagues abroad, not with their killers.
Walden Bello is a Filipino academic and analyst of Global South issues who was awarded Amnesty International Philippines’ Most Distinguished Defender of Human Rights Award in 2023. He has also served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.
“Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘lost the plot’ and has condemned attacks on Gaza.
“It is among the strongest language the New Zealand leader has used against Netanyahu and comes amid reports of intense aerial attacks on Gaza after Israel’s decision to launch a fresh military operation.”
These are the opening two paragraphs of The New Zealand Herald coverage by political reporter Jamie Ensor of Prime Minister Luxon’s public declaration that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lost the plot.
His comment was in the context of the Israeli government’ genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and their increasing persecution on the Israeli occupied West Bank (August 13): Netanyahu lost the plot says Luxon.
Spectrum of NZ government’s response to genocide The New Zealand government’s response to this ethnic cleansing by genocide strategy in Gaza has ranged on a spectrum between pathetically weak to callous disregard.
Previously I’ve described this spectrum as between limp and deplorable; both have their own validity.
Consequently, the many New Zealanders who were appalled by this response might have been somewhat relieved by Luxon’s frankness.
Perhaps a long overdue change of direction towards humanitarianism? In the interests of confusion avoidance this is a rhetorical question.
However, there is a big problem with Luxon’s conclusion. Quite simply, he is wrong; there is a plot and it is based on a perverse biblical origin.
Why NZ Prime Minister Luxon got it wrong. Video: RNZ
Just over three weeks from the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack across the border in the Israeli occupied former Palestinian land, Netanyahu made the following broadcast, including on You Tube (October 30): Netanyahu’s biblical justification.
The ‘”war criminal” is explicit that there is a plot behind the ethnic cleansing through genocide strategy in Gaza. It is a dogmatically blood thirsty and historically inaccurate biblical centred plot.
In his own words:
“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible — and we do remember. And we are fighting — our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza, or around Gaza, and in all other regions in Israel, are joining this chain of Jewish heroes — a chain that started 3000 years ago, from Joshua until the heroes of the Six-Day War in 1948 [sic], the 1973 October War, and all other wars in this country.
“Our heroic troops — they have only one supreme goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country.”
Netanyahu was referring to the Book of 1 Samuel (Chapter 15, Verse 3) which states:
“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
Samuel was a prophet through who the Jewish God Yahweh commanded one Saul to conduct a total war of annihilation against the Amalekites.
The Amalekites were a biblical nation who, so biblical history goes, had attacked the Israelites during their “Exodus” from Egypt.
From apartheid to ethnic cleansing to recognition of Palestine Previously I have published four posts on the Gaza genocide. The first (March 15) discussed it in the context of the apartheid in the South Africa of the past and apartheid as continuing defining feature in Israel since its creation in 1948: When apartheid met Zionism.
From Netanyahu to Zelda In the context of the truer number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, my fourth previous post (July 2) was more directly closer to the theme of this post: How to biblically justify 400,000 Palestinian deaths.
I quoted a genocide supporter going by the name of “Zelda” justifying Israel’s war in similar vein to Bejamin Netanyahu:
“Gaza belongs to Israel! This is not just a political claim; it is a sacred, unbreakable decree from Almighty God Himself. If any government from around the world recognises Palestine, the United States needs to declare it part of the Axis of Evil
“The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness. No enemy, no terrorist, no foreign power can wrest it away. Those who reject this truth stand against God’s will and will face His judgment.
“If Palestinians want aid and peace, they must recognise Israel’s God-given right and leave Gaza forever. Only under God’s blessing can this land flourish, and all who defy His plan will be cast down.”
From Zelda to Alfred On July 4, I received the following email from a reader called Alfred. In his words (be warned, at the very least this is a mind-boggling read):
“Accidentally I came across your blog on ‘How To Justify 400,000 Palestinian Deaths In Gaza: Ask ‘Zelda’ (Thursday, 3 July 2025). It was an interesting read.
With all due respect, I would like to place before you my ‘two cents’
Consider this history Mr Ian:
1) Before the modern state of Israel there was the British mandate, Not a Palestinian state.
2) Before the British mandate there was the Ottoman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
3) Before the Ottoman empire there was the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt, Not a Palestinian state.
4)Before the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt there was the Ayyubid dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. Godfrey of Bouillon conquered it in 1099.
5) Before the Ayyubid dynasty there was the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, Not a Palestinian state.
6) Before the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem there was the Fatimid caliphate, Not a Palestinian state.
7) Before the Fatimid caliphate there was the byzantine empire, Not a Palestinian state. 8. Before the Byzantine empire there was the Roman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
9) Before the Roman empire there was the Hasmonaean dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. 10) Before the Hasmonean dynasty there was the Seleucid empire, Not a Palestinian state.
11) Before the Seleucid empire there was the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon, Not a Palestinian state.
12) Before the empire of Alexander, the 3rd of Macedon there was the Persian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
13) Before the Persian empire there was the Babylonian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
14) Before the Babylonian empire there was the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, Not a Palestinian state.
15) Before the kingdoms of Israel and Judea there was the kingdom of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
16) Before the kingdom of Israel there was the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
17) Before the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel there was the individual state of Canaan, Not a Palestinian state.
In fact, in that corner of the earth there was everything but a Palestinian state!
Interesting history isn’t it?
Yes, I agree with Zelda’s statement that …
‘The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness.’
Mr Ian, if you go back to the Bible to read the Old Testament history, we see that God declares time and again that they (Israelites) are His chosen people, and He will bring them back to land of Israel. (Which has started to happen, as you observe world events). He also condemns His own chosen that if they turn away from Him, he will turn away His face. And that was what He did to the 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. They were wiped out. And the sort of genocide that we see today in Gaza, was prevalent in that time, when Gentile nations were even wiped out if they stood between the Israelites and the ‘promised land’ (Israel). Even the lives of His own chosen people were not valuable to Him, and was at stake (holocaust recently) when they turned away from Him, as those many of their enemies (or opponents)!
8000-year-old history is repeating itself now in Gaza, I believe.
Alfred
Mapping the success of Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The views of both Zelda and Alfred are not off the planet in terms of supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through genocide.
They are thoroughly consistent with Netanyahu’s well-thought out plot. Both are part of his “echo chamber”.
Who has really lost the plot?
The genocide towards Palestinians will not end in Gaza. All the evidence is that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are next.
Gaza the precursor to West Bank Palestinians.
There the ethnic cleansing is continuing in the form of persecution and repression, including imprisonment (hostage-taking by another name).
But it is escalating and, unless there is a change in direction, it is only a matter of time before persecution and repression morph into genocide.
Benjamin Netanyahu has not lost the plot. However, Christopher Luxon has. His criticism of Netanyahu is a flimsy attempt to avoid doing what a humanitarian government with a “plot” should do. This includes:
Recognising the Palestinian Territories as an official independent state;
Sanctioning Israeli Defence Force (IDF) visitors;
Close the Israel Embassy;
Impose trade and bilateral sanctions; and
Suspend Israel from the United Nations.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
A media studies analyst has condemned the latest deadly attack by Israel on journalists in Gaza and challenged Western media over the carnage, asking “where is the outrage” and international solidarity?
Four journalists were reported to have been assassinated among 20 people killed in the air strike on the al-Nasser Medical Centre in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
The others killed were first responders and medical staff, said the Gaza Health Ministry.
Dr Mohamad Elmasry, media studies professor at Qatar’s Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera in an interview he was “at a loss for words” over the latest attack.
“Israel has been at war with journalism and journalists from the very beginning of the war,” Elmasry told Al Jazeera. “They’re not hiding it. They’re very open about this.
“But the question that I have is, where are the international journalists?
‘Where is Western media?’
“Where is The New York Times? Where is CNN? Where are the major mainstream Western news outlets?
“Because when Charlie Hebdo [a French satirical magazine based in Paris] journalists were killed in 2015, that caused global outrage for months.
“It was a major story in every single Western news outlet. And I applauded journalists for coming to the aid of their colleagues. But now, where is the outrage?”
The Gaza Media Office said the death toll of Palestinian journalists in Gaza had risen to 246 and identified latest casualties as:
Hossam al-Masri – photojournalist with Reuters news agency
Mohammed Salama – photojournalist with Al Jazeera
Mariam Abu Daqa – journalist with several media outlets including The Independent Arabic and US news agency Associated Press
Moaz Abu Taha – journalist with NBC network
In a statement when announcing that the death toll from the al-Nasser hospital attack had risen to 20, the Gaza Health Ministry said:
“The [Israeli] occupation forces’ targeting of the hospital today and the killing of medical personnel, journalists, and civil defence personnel is a continuation of the systematic destruction of the health system and the continuation of genocide.
“It is a message of defiance to the entire world and to all values of humanity and justice.”
‘Killed in line of duty’
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, posted on X after the Israeli strikes killed the journalists and members of Gaza’s civil defence:
“Rescuers killed in line of duty. Scenes like this unfold every moment in Gaza, often unseen, largely undocumented,” she wrote.
“I beg states: how much more must be witnessed before you act to stop this carnage?
“Break the blockade. Impose an arms embargo. Impose sanctions.”
Her remarks came after she shared a video appearing to show a second Israeli air strike during a live broadcast on Al-Ghad TV — just minutes after the first attack on al-Nasser hospital.
Albanese later gave an interview, renewing her call for sanctions on Israel.
BREAKINGRescuers killed in line of duty.
Scenes like this unfold every moment in Gaza, often unseen, largely undocumented. I beg STATES: how much more must be witnessed before you act to stop this carnage? Break the blockade Impose an Arms Embargo Impose Sanctions. https://t.co/FgMvIyYem0
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) August 25, 2025
One of Al Jazeera’s reporters described working with hospitals as a base.
Deprived of electricity, internet
Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in Gaza, said: “I’m one of the Palestinian journalists reporting from hospitals.
“We are in a two-year war where we have been deprived of electricity and internet, so Palestinian journalists are using these services at hospitals to continue reporting.
“We are also following news of wounded Palestinians, funerals, and malnutrition cases, as these are always transferred to hospitals.
“That is why Palestinian journalists are making hospitals their base and end up being attacked.”
The Australian author of The Palestine Laboratory, Antony Loewenstein, being interviewed by Al Jazeera from Sydney. Image: AJ screenshot APR
If it were China or Russia, the imposition of sanctions and threats of harm to prosecutors and judges of the International Criminal Court would be front page news in Australia- and in New Zealand.
The Australian’s headline writers and columnists, for example, would be apoplectic. Prime Minister Albanese, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland and Foreign Minister Penny Wong would issue the strongest possible warnings to those countries about consequences.
But, of course, that’s not happening because instead it is the US that is seeking to put the lives and well-being of the ICC’s staff in danger, the reasons the ICC has rightly issued arrest warrants against undoubted war criminals and genocide enablers such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, purely a slavish appendage of the worst US president on record, Donald Trump, announced sanctions on two judges and two prosecutors at the ICC.
Rubio issued a statement calling the ICC “a national security threat that has been an instrument for lawfare” against the US and Israel. A statement that, no doubt, war criminals around the world will be applauding.
These are not the first attacks on the ICC.
In February this year, Trump issued an order that said the US “will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions, some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the US of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our nation would be detrimental to the interests of the US”.
The ICC was established in 2002 to administer the Rome Statute, the international law that governs war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and other crimes.
Leading atrocity nations
Australia is a signatory, but the US and Israel have not signed up in the case of the former, and failed to ratify in the case of the latter, because they are, of course, leading nations when it comes to committing atrocities overseas and — in the case of Israel — within its own borders, through what many scholars say is a policy of apartheid inflicted on Arab Israelis.
So, despite the relatively muted interest in Australia today at the latest outrage against the international order by the corrupt thugs in the Trump Administration, what should the Albanese government do?
Trump’s shielding of Netanyahu and his advisers from criminal proceedings through sanctions and threats to members of the court is akin to both aiding and abetting crimes under the Rome Statute and clearly threatening judges, prosecutors and court officials.
This means Australia should make it very clear, in very public terms, that this nation will not stand for conduct by a so-called ally, which is clearly running a protection racket.
Australia has long joined with the US and other allies in imposing sanctions on regimes around the world.
When it comes to Washington, those days are over.
Sarah Dehm of UTS and Jessica Whyte of the University of New South Wales, writing in The Conversation in December last year, referenced Trump and Rubio’s thuggery towards the ICC among other sanctions outrages, and observed correctly that “Australian sanctions law and decision-making be reoriented towards recognising core principles of international law, including the right of all people to self-determination”.
A ‘trigger mechanism’
Dehm and Whyte argued this “could be done through ‘a trigger mechanism’ that automatically implements sanctions in accordance with decisions of the International Court of Justice concerning serious violations and abuses of human rights”.
What the Albanese government could do immediately is make it abundantly clear that any person subject to an ICC arrest warrant would be detained if they set foot in Australia. This would obviously include Netanyahu and Gallant.
And further, that Australia stands to contribute to protection for any ICC personnel.
Not only that, but given the Rome Statute is incorporated into domestic law in Australia via the Commonwealth Criminal Code, a warning should be given by Attorney-General Rowland that any person suspected of breaches of the Rome Statute could be prosecuted under Australian law if they visit this country.
What Australia could also do is make it mandatory, rather than discretionary, for the attorney-general to issue an arrest warrant if Netanyahu and others subject to ICC warrants came to this country.
As Oxford international law scholar, Australian Dane Luo, has observed, while Foreign Minister Wong has said in relation to the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants that “Australia will act consistently with our obligations under international law and our approach will be informed by international law, not by politics”, this should not be taken as an indication that Rowland would have them arrested.
The Trump administration must be told clearly Australia will not harbour international criminals. And while we are at it, tell Washington we are imposing economic, cultural, educational and other sanctions on Israel.
Greg Barns SC is a former national president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance. This article was first published byPearls and Irritations : John Menadue’s public poiicy journal.
Sociologists correlate high homicide rates to high unemployment and poverty rates; known historically as the Black Belt, Chicago’s predominantly African American South side is home to both. Characterized by disinvestment schemes such as tax increment financing districts which divert property tax money from the neighborhoods to white elephant projects that benefit the wealthy, southside Chicago was also home to the late police commander, Jon Burge, whose detectives extracted confessions from more than 100 people, mostly Black, by shocking them with cattle prods, smothering them with plastic typewriter covers and pointing guns in their mouths while pretending to play Russian roulette.
Three media spokespeople addressed the 98th week of New Zealand solidarity rallies for Palestine in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland today, criticising the quality of news reporting about the world’s biggest genocide crisis this century.
Speakers at other locations around the country also condemned what they said was biased media coverage.
The critics said they were affirming their humanity in solidarity with the people of Palestine as the United Nations this week officially declared a man-made famine in Gaza because of Israel’s weaponisation of starvation against the besieged enclave with 2 million population.
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 22 months of conflict – mostly women and children.
One of the major criticisms was that the New Zealand media has consistently framed the series of massacres as a “war” between Israel and Hamas instead of a military land grab based on ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The first speaker, Mick Hall, a former news agency journalist who is currently an independent political columnist, said the way news media had covered these crimes had “undoubtedly affected public opinion”.
“As Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza devolved into a full-blown genocide, our media continued to frame Israel’s attack on Gaza as a war against Hamas, while they uncritically recorded Western leaders’ claims that Israel was exercising a ‘right of self-defence’,” he said.
NZ media lacking context
New Zealand news outlets continued to “present an ahistorical account of what has transpired since October 7, shorn of context, ignoring Israel’s history of occupation, of colonial violence against the Palestinian people”.
“An implicit understanding that violence and ethnic cleansing forms part of the organisational DNA of Zionism should have shaped how news stories were framed and presented over the past 22 months.
Independent journalist Mick Hall speaking at today’s rally . . . newsrooms “failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.”
“Instead, newsroom leaders took their lead from our politicians, from the foreign policy positions from those in Washington and other aligned centres of power.”
Hall said newsrooms had not taken a “neutral position” — “nor are they attempting to keep us informed in any meaningful sense”.
“They failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.
“By wilfully declining to adjudicate between contested claims of Israel and its victims, they failed to meet the informational needs of democratic citizenship in a most profound way.
“They lowered the standard of news, instead of upholding it, as they so sanctimoniously tell us.”
Evans slams media ‘apologists’
Award-winning New Zealand cartoonist Malcolm Evans congratulated the crowd of about 300 protesters for “being on the right side of history”.
“As we remember more than 240 journalists, camera and media people, murdered, assassinated, by Zionist Israel — who they were and the principles they stood for we should not forget our own media,” he said.
Cartoonist and commentator Malcolm Evans . . . “It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
“The media which, contrary to the principles they claim to stand for, tried to tell us Zionist Israeli genocide was justified.”
“Whatever your understanding of the conflict in Palestine, which has brought you here today and for these past many months, it won’t have come first from the mainstream media.
“It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.
“The reporters whose witness to Zionist Israel’s war crimes sparked your outrage were not from the ranks of Western media apologists.”
Describing the mainstream media as “pimps for propaganda”, Evans said that in any “decent world” he would not be standing there — instead the New Zealand journalists organisation would be, “expressing solidarity with their murdered Middle Eastern colleagues”.
Palestinian journalists owed debt
David Robie, author and editor of Asia Pacific Report, said the world owed a huge debt to the Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
“Although global media freedom groups have conflicting death toll numbers, it is generally accepted that more than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed — many of them deliberately targeted by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force], even killing their families as well.”
Journalist and author Dr David Robie . . . condemned New Zealand media for republishing some of the Israeli “counter-narratives” without question. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Dr Robie stressed that the Palestinian journalist death toll had eclipsed that of the combined media deaths of the American Civil War, First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cambodian War, Yugoslavia Wars, Afghan War, and the ongoing Ukraine War.
“The Palestinian death toll of journalists is greater than the combined death toll of all these other wars,” he said. “This is shocking and shameful.”
He pointed out that when Palestinian reporter Anas al-Sharif was assassinated on August 10, his entire television crew was also wiped out ahead of the Israeli invasion of Gaza City — “eliminating the witnesses, that’s what Israel does”.
Six journalists died that day in an air strike, four of them from Al Jazeera, which is banned in Israel.
Dr Robie also referred to “disturbing reports” about the existence of an IDF military unit — the so-called “legitimisation cell” — tasked with smearing and targeting journalists in Gaza with fake information.
He condemned the New Zealand media for republishing some of these “counter-narratives” without question.
“This is shameful because news editors know that they are dealing with an Israeli government with a history of lying and disinformation; a government that is on trial with the International Court of Justice for ‘plausible genocide’; and a prime minister wanted on an International Criminal Court arrest warrant to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said.
“Why would you treat this government as a credible source without scrutiny?”
Mock media cemetery
The protest included a mock pavement cemetery with about 20 “bodies” of murdered journalists and blue “press” protective vests, and placards declaring “Killing journalists is killing the truth”, “Genocide: Zionism’s final solution” and “Zionism shames Jewish tradition”.
The demonstrators marched around Te Komititanga Square, pausing at strategic moments as Palestinians read out the names of the hundreds of killed Gazan journalists to pay tribute to their courage and sacrifice.
Author and journalist Saige England . . . “The truth is of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon.” Image: Claire Coveney/APR
In Ōtautahi Christchurch today, one of the speakers at the Palestine solidarity rally there was author and journalist Saige England, who called on journalists to “speak the truth on Gaza”.
“The truth of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon — slow starvation, mutilation by hunger,” she said.
“The truth is a statement by Israel that journalists are ‘the enemy’. Israel says journalists are the enemy, what does that tell you?
“Why? Because it has carried out invasions, apartheid and genocide for decades.”
Some of the mock bodies today representing the slaughtered Gazan journalists with Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif in the forefront. Image: APR
New Zealand’s police commissioner says he understands the potential impact the country’s criminal deportees have on smaller Pacific Island nations.
Commissioner Richard Chambers’ comments on RNZ Pacific Waves come as the region’s police bosses gathered for the annual Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police conference in Waitangi.
The meeting, which is closed to media, began yesterday.
Chambers said a range of issues were on the agenda, including transnational organised crime and the training of police forces.
Inspector Riki Whiu, of Northland police, leads (from right), Secretary-General of Interpol Valdecy Urquiza, Vanuatu Police Commissioner Kalshem Bongran and Northern Mariana Islands Police Commissioner Anthony Macaranas during the pōwhiri. Image: RNZ/Peter de Graaf
Across the Pacific, the prevalence of methamphetamine and its role in driving social, criminal and health crises have thrust the problem of organised crime into the spotlight.
Commissioner Chambers said New Zealand had offered support to its fellow Pacific nations to combat transnational organised crime, in particular around the narcotics trade.
Deportation policies
However, the country’s own transnational crime advisory group also identified the country’s deportation policies as a “significant contributor to the rise of organised crime in the Pacific”.
In 2022, a research report showed that New Zealand returned 400 criminal deportees to Pacific nations between 2013 and 2018.
The report from the Lowy Institute also said criminal deportees from New Zealand, as well as Australia and the US, were a significant contributor to transnational crime in the Pacific.
Te Waaka Popata-Henare, of the Treaty Grounds cultural group Te Pito Whenua, leads the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police to Te Whare Rūnanga for a formal welcome. Image: RNZ/Peter de Graaf
When Chambers was asked about the issue and whether New Zealand’s criminal deportation policy undermined work against organised crime across the region, he said it had not been raised with him directly.
“The criminal networks that we are dealing with, in particular those such as the cartels out of South America, the CJNG [cartels] and Sinaloa cartels, who really do control a lot of the cocaine and also methamphetamine trades, also parts of Asia with the Triads,” Commissioner Chambers said.
“I know that the Pacific commissioners that I work with are very, very focused on what we can do to combat and disrupt a lot of that activity at source, in both Asia and South America.
“So that’s where our focus has been, and that’s what the commissioners have been asking me for in terms of support.”
Pacific nation difficulties
He said he understood the difficulties law enforcement in Pacific nations faced regarding criminal deportees, as New Zealand faced similar challenges under Australia’s deportation policy.
In New Zealand, the country’s returned nationals from Australia are known as 501 deportations, named after the section of the Australian Migration Act which permits their deportation due to criminal convictions.
These individuals have often spent the majority of their lives in Australia and have no family or ties to New Zealand but are forced to return due to Australia’s immigration laws.
New Zealand’s authorities have tracked how these deportees — who number in the hundreds — have contributed significantly to the country’s increasingly sophisticated and established organised crime networks over the past decade.
Chambers said that because police dealt with the real impacts of Australia’s 501 law, he could relate to what his Pacific counterparts faced.
“I understand from the New Zealand perspective [which is] the impact that New Zealand nationals returning to our country have on New Zealand, and the reality is, they’re offending, they’re re-offending.
“I suspect it’s no different from our Pacific colleagues in their own countries. And it may be something that we can talk about.”
This week’s conference was scheduled to finish tomorrow. Speakers due to appear included Interpol Secretary-General Valdecy Urquiza and Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Baron Waqa.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Protesters staged pro-Palestinian demonstrations across Aotearoa New Zealand at the weekend, calling on the government to place sanctions on Israel for its war on Gaza.
The government announced last week it was considering whether to join other countries like France, Canada and Australia in recognising Palestinian statehood at a United Nations leader’s meeting next month.
Demonstrators took to the streets in about 20 cities and towns on Saturday in a “National Day of Protest”, waving Palestinian and other flags, holding vigils, and banging pots and pans to represent what a UN-backed food security agency has called “the worst case scenario of famine”.
They also condemned Israel’s targeted killing of journalists.
In Wellington, about 2000 protesters gathered at Te Aro Park, and formed a crowd almost a kilometre long during the march, an RNZ journalist estimated.
One demonstrator, who carried a sign which read “Palestine is in our hearts”, said the government had been “woefully silent” on what was happening in Gaza.
The Wellington Gaza protest on Saturday. Video: RNZ
It was her first protest, she said, and she intended to go to others in order to “agitate for our politicians to listen and take a stand”.
“I hope the country comes out in force today right across all of our regions, to give Palestine a voice, to show that we care, and to inspire action from our politicians — who have been woefully silent and as a result compliant in the genocide in Palestine.”
A protester’s “Palestine is in our hearts” placard at the Wellington protest. Image: Mark Papalii/RNZ News
She said she wanted to see the New Zealand government sanction Israel and take a global stand against the war in Gaza.
Another protester said the killings of four Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza this week was what had spurred him to join the crowd.
A “grow a spine Luxon!” placard at the Wellington protest in reference to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s “woeful” stance on the Israeli war on Gaza. Photo: Mark Papalii/RNZ
“You know hearing about the attack on the journalists, the way they were targeting just one purportedly but were willing to kill [others] just to get their man.
“It’s not right.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters condemn the killing of journalists by Israel and call for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador as part of nationwide demonstrations. Image: Mark Papalii/RNZ
Others in the capital carried signs showing Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif and his three Al Jazeera colleagues who were killed by an Israeli strike on a tent of reporters in Gaza.
The IDF claimed that al-Sharif was working for the Hamas resistance — something Al Jazeera has strongly denied.
Some of the demonstrators at the Wellington protest against Israel. Image: Mark Papalii/RNZ
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
This morning there is no article on the political page of The New Zealand Herald about the plight of people in Gaza, the same is the case at The Post and at RNZ. Even the 1News political page is Gaza free but what may stun you over a Sunday morning coffee is the fact that there is also no mention of Gaza on the “World Pages” of any of these so-called news organisations.
It’s not news in the world of our mainstream media journalists.
Instead, there is articles about “no deal” between Trump and Putin, 300 dead in Pakistan, Trump will meet Zelenskyy, Stone Age Humans were picky about what stones they used . . . and other things — in fact the only article in the “big ” New Zealand mainstream media “World” pages about Gaza is at Stuff and it’s a link to a three minute news video item from yesterday’s Auckland protest about Neil Finn supporting Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.
Chlöe said the evidence is pretty clear and you don’t kill journalists for no reason when Israel laughed off claims that people in Gaza were starving.
Last night, TVNZ 1News broadcast a news item that led with Neil Finn singing “Don’t Dream it’s Over” and Simon Mercep interviewing Chlöe about her stance on an apology.
The news Chlöe would be back next week at Parliament probably shocked Duncan Garner but there was precious little coverage of what was said in protest speeches because the limitations of broadcasting news concision (a sequence of soundbites) prevent the New Zealand public from hearing too much about Gaza from our own mainstream news services.
Gordon’s action list
Over on social media many people are sharing Gordon Campbell’s article around — where he details the actions you could take and points out how the people of Gaza don’t have time for symbolic stances and the kinds of actions that might help — like sanctions and UN peacekeeping intervention on the ground.
Gordon Campbell has “a go at” the stance taken by the NZ government that “it’s not a matter of if, but when” by adding “but not now” and why not now?
One reason for “but not now” pitched by Campbell is that with Todd McClay now heading over to the US to beg for a return to 10 percent tariffs, New Zealand is stalling and playing a wait and see game — watching whether Australia will be punished for backing a Palestinian state and whether tariffs will be part of the game.
G News on yesterday’s Palestine solidarity rally in Te Komititanga Square, Auckland.
A map of the nations in the world who support a Palestinian state shows most of it in green — and the holdouts in white — with New Zealand holding out in white as we recite “Not if, but when, but not now”.
The editorial at The New Zealand Herald this morning is about how Labour MPs should have shown up and performed publicly at the Covid Circus Phase 2 Royal Commission of Inquiry in the opinion of the Herald (run by Steven Joyce and cookers from The Centrist) — because an urgent Taxpayers’ Union Poll claims 53 percent say so with a giant margin for error not even mentioned — nor how the Royal Commission has all the information it needs from the previous government but it needs the same questions answered in public.
The priorities and partisanship of The NZ Herald are on show as it campaigns hard against Labour and the left bloc even while there’s an unfolding genocide taking place in the world and it’s “World” pages are empty about this — while decent people cancel their subscriptions.
Many of us are still aghast at the way senior political correspondent Audrey Young wished Chlöe would go away when all she was doing was asking National MPs to act with their conscience and Speaker Gerry Brownlee had taken offence and dished out injustice — which now has backfired at grassroots level across the nation and media starve us all of the real content in those speeches.
Chlöe has said from the start this is not about her and she was telling people this again yesterday as folks thanked her for taking an unapologetic stand.
Green Party’s Chlöe Swarbrick has said from the start this is not about her and she was telling people this again yesterday as folks thanked her for taking an unapologetic stand. Image: Stuff screenshot APR
Who controls the spotlight? Media!
We wanted to hear from Chlöe and we wanted to hear those speeches.
I personally felt I had let down the show yesterday because my cell and sound gear seized up in the bitter cold wind and rain so I missed Chlöe’s speech and some of the other messages — Hey Now Don’t Dream it’s Over — but with no umbrella, no raincoat and standing in the rain my frozen fingers took some time to come right and I sat on a ferry in cold wet clothes like a failure afterwards but it is what it is.
My apologies for not being better prepared.
It was pointed out in speeches at the rally (there has almost been 100 of them now) how NZ journalists do not support their colleagues who are being murdered for doing their jobs in Gaza and when I got home and warmed up we discussed the way Al Jazeera is a good news channel and how crap things are in New Zealand media.
Gordon Campbell and a few other notable exceptions keep the faith and his observation “but not now” has done the thinking for many of us about the spineless government who are stalling and pretending this is complex and needs to take weeks while every day more people starve to death, get shot going for food. And it all just happens as if — it’s “a mystery” – while our government names Hamas strongly but nobody else.
Criticism of State Terror is more toned down and we care more about our US relationship than anything much else it seems — putting our own interests first and not reporting much about the facts.
RNZ has finally published “Spine and Punishment: A review of Swarbrick v Brownlee” because the media spotlight was on this local issue and the history of Speakers’ rulings versus “a new decency” because Gerry was offended and overreached.
Gerry must withdraw In my opinion, Gerry has got to withdraw and apologise or step down and any more stick about this towards Chlöe is going to further the focus on National MPs who are silent and hiding behind “But not now”.
If only six of 68 National MPs voted with their conscience and not their party “but not now” instructions then we’d be actively progressing a new law to sanction Israel — and our actions would speak louder than merely words and symbolic gestures.
The unfolding genocide in Gaza seems to be going to plan as NZ news media also lack a spine and any kind of support for their dead colleagues while this one term government clings to “Not if, but when — but not now”.
Might as well carry on starving until September.
“He’s lost the plot” – “but not now”.
Because this government and its sycophantic media need more time to argue about this very “complex” issue.
Gerard Otto is a digital creator and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. Republished with permission.
Why NZ Prime Minister Luxon got it wrong. Video: RNZ
Mapping the success of Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
BREAKING
Break the blockade
