Six Republican-led states have now pledged National Guard troops to the Trump administration’s takeover of Washington, D.C., where it has assumed control of policing under the claim of tackling crime. Along with the D.C. National Guard that Trump already controlled, this brings the total number of troops in the streets of the capital to more than 2,000. The federal takeover comes even as violent crime in the capital is at a 30-year low — numbers the Trump administration now disputes, with the Justice Department launching an investigation into whether those crime statistics were manipulated by city officials.
“What we’re seeing is lawlessness, but it’s all coming from the White House,” says community activist Keya Chatterjee, the executive director of the group Free DC.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Six Republican-led states have now pledged National Guard troops to the Trump administration’s takeover of Washington, D.C., where it has assumed control of policing under the claim of tackling crime. Along with the D.C. National Guard that Trump already controlled, this brings the total number of troops in the streets of the capital to more than 2,000. The federal takeover comes even as violent crime in the capital is at a 30-year low — numbers the Trump administration now disputes, with the Justice Department launching an investigation into whether those crime statistics were manipulated by city officials.
“What we’re seeing is lawlessness, but it’s all coming from the White House,” says community activist Keya Chatterjee, the executive director of the group Free DC.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls is once again in New Caledonia for a four-day visit aimed at maintaining dialogue, despite a strong rejection from a significant part of the pro-independence camp.
He touched down at the Nouméa-La Tontouta Airport last night on his fourth trip to New Caledonia since he took office in late 2024.
For the past eight months, he has made significant headway by managing to get all political parties to sit together again around the same table and discuss an inclusive, consensual way forward for the French Pacific territory, where deadly riots have erupted in May 2024, causing 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) in material damage.
On July 12, during a meeting in Bougival (west of Paris), some 19 delegates from parties across the political spectrum signed a 13-page document, the Bougival Accord, sketching what is supposed to pave the way for New Caledonia’s political future.
The document, labelled a “project” and described as “historic”, envisages the creation of a “State” of New Caledonia, a dual New Caledonia-French citizenship and the transfer of key powers such as foreign affairs from France to New Caledonia.
The document also envisions a wide range of political reforms, more powers for each of the three provinces and enlarging the controversial list of eligible citizens allowed to vote at the crucial local provincial elections.
When they signed the text in mid-July, all parties (represented by 18 politicians) at the time pledged to go along the new lines and defend the contents, based on the notion of a “bet on trust”.
But since the deal was signed at the 11th hour in Bougival, after a solid 10 days of tense negotiations, one of the main components of the pro-independence camp, the FLNKS, has pronounced a “block rejection” of the deal.
FLNKS said their delegates and negotiators (five politicians), even though they had signed the document, had no mandate to do so because it was incompatible with the pro-independence movement’s aims and struggle.
Signatures on the last page of New Caledonia’s new agreement. Image: Philippe Dunoyer/RNZ Pacific
FLNKS rejection of Bougival The FLNKS and its majority component, Union Calédonienne, said that from now on, while maintaining dialogue with France, they would refuse to talk further about the Bougival text or any related subject.
They also claim they are the only pro-independence legitimate representative of the indigenous Kanak people.
They maintain they will only accept their own timetable of negotiation, with France only (no longer including the pro-France parties) in “bilateral” mode to conclude before 24 September 2025.
French Overseas Minister Manuel Valls . . . not giving up on the Bougival project and his door remains open. Image: Outre-mer la Première
Later on, the negotiations for a final independence should conclude before the next French Presidential elections (April-May 2027) with the transfer of all remaining powers back to New Caledonia.
The FLNKS also demands that any further talks with France should take place in New Caledonia and under the supervision of its President.
It warns against any move to try and force the implementation of the Bougival text, including planned reforms of the conditions of voter eligibility for local elections (since 2007, the local “special” electoral roll has been restricted to people living in New Caledonia before 1998).
During his four-day visit this week (20-24 August), Valls said he would focus on pursuing talks, sometimes in bilateral mode with FLNKS.
The minister, reacting to FLNKS’s move to reject the Accord, said several times since that he did not intend to give up and that his door remained open.
‘Explain and convince’ He would also meet “as many New Caledonians as possible” to “explain and convince”.
Apart from party officials, Valls also plans to meet New Caledonia’s “Customary (chiefly) Senate”, the mayors of New Caledonia, the presidents of New Caledonia’s three provinces and representatives of the economic and civil society.
The May-July 2024 riots have strongly impacted on New Caledonia’s standard of living, with thousands of jobless people because of the destruction of hundreds of businesses.
Health sector in crisis Valls also intends to devote a large part of his visit to meetings with public and private health workers, who also remain significantly affected by an acute shortage of staff, both in the capital Nouméa and rural areas.
Tomorrow, Valls plans to implement one of the later stages of the Bougival signing — the inaugural session of a “drafting committee”, aimed at agreeing on how necessary documents for the implementation of the Bougival commitments should be formulated.
These include working on writing a “fundamental law” for New Caledonia (a de facto constitution) and constitutional documents to make necessary amendments to the French Constitution.
Elections again postponed to June 2026 Steps to defer once again the provincial elections from November 2025 to May-June 2026 were also recently taken in Paris, at the Senate, Valls said earlier this week.
A Bill has been tabled for debates in the Senate on 23 September 2025. In keeping with the Bougival commitments and timeline, it proposes a new deadline for provincial elections: no later than 28 June 2026.
But FLNKS now demands that those elections be maintained for this year.
On a tightrope again This week’s visit is perceived as particularly sensitive: as Valls’s trip is regarded as focusing on saving his Bougival deal, he is also walking on a tightrope.
On one side, he wants to maintain contact and an “open-door” policy with the hard-line group of the FLNKS, even though they have now denounced his Bougival deal.
On the other side, he has to pursue talks with all the other parties who have, since July 12, kept their word and upheld the document.
If Valls was perceived to concede more ground to the FLNKS, following its recent claims and rejections, parts of the pro-Bougival leaders who have signed and kept their word and commitment could well, in turn, denounce some kind of betrayal, thus jeopardising the precarious equilibrium.
The “pro-Bougival” signatories held numerous public meetings with their respective militant bases to explain the agreement and the “Bougival spirit”, as well as the reasons for why they had signed.
This not only includes pro-France parties who oppose independence, but also two moderate pro-independence parties, the PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and the UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie), formed into a “UNI” platform (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance), who have, since August 2024, distanced themselves from the FLNKS.
At the same time, FLNKS took into its fold a whole new group of smaller parties, unions and pressure groups (including the Union Calédonienne-created CCAT –a field action coordination group dedicated to organising political campaigns on the ground) and has since taken a more radical turn.
Simultaneously, Christian Téin, head of CCAT, was also elected FLNKS president in absentia, while serving a pre-trial jail term in mainland France.
His pre-trial judicial control conditions were loosened in June 2025 by a panel of three judges, but he is still not allowed to return to New Caledonia.
One of the moderate UNI leaders, Jean-Pierre Djaïwé (PALIKA) told his supporters and local media last week that he believed through the Bougival way, it would remain possible for New Caledonia to eventually achieve full sovereignty, but not immediately.
Ruffenach: No intention to ‘undo’ Bougival Several pro-France components have also reacted to the FLNKS rejection by saying they did not intend to “undo” the Bougival text, simply because it was the result of months of negotiations and concessions to reach a balance between opposing aspirations from the pro-independence and pro-France camps.
“Let’s be reasonable. Let’s get real. Let’s come back to reality. Has this country ever built itself without compromise?,” pro-France Le Rassemblement-LR party leader Virginie Ruffenach told Radio Rythme Bleu yesterday.
“We have made this effort at Bougival, to find a middle way which is installing concord between those two aspirations. We have made steps, the pro-independence have made steps. And this is what allowed this agreement to be struck with its signatures”.
She said the FLNKS, in its “new” version, was “held hostage by . . . radicalism”.
“Violence will not take the future of New Caledonia and we will not give into this violence”.
She said all parties should now take their responsibilities and live up to their commitment, instead of applying an “empty chair” policy.
No credible alternative: Valls Earlier this week, Valls repeated that he did not wish to “force” the agreement but that, in his view, “there is no credible alternative. The Bougival agreement is an extraordinary and historic opportunity”.
“I will not fall into the trap of words that hurt and lead to confrontation. I won’t give in to threats of violence or blockades,” he wrote on social networks.
Last night, as Valls was already on his way to the Pacific, FLNKS political bureau and its president, Christian Téin, criticised the “rapport de force” seemingly established by France.
He also deplored that, in the view of numerous reactions following the FLNKS rejection of the Bougival text, his political group was now being “stigmatised”.
Ahead of the French minister’s visit, the FLNKS has launched a “peaceful” campaign revolving around the slogan “No to Bougival”.
The FLNKS is scheduled to meet Valls today.
The inaugural session of the “drafting committee” is supposed to take place the following day on Thursday.
He is scheduled to leave New Caledonia on Saturday.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
I unequivocally support Irish author Sally Rooney with all my heart and soul. The author risks imprisonment for donating funds from her books and the TV series based on Normal People to a Palestinian group.
Once again the United Kingdom tells Palestinians who they should support. Go figure.
In her opinion piece in The Irish Times last Saturday she said that:
“Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation.”
Whenever the people resist or rebel they are deemed terrorists. That has been the case for indigenous people around the world from indigenous Americans to Indians in India to Aborigine and Māori, the Irish and the Scots, and the Welsh.
I went from being a “born-again” starry-eyed kibbutznik who believed in Zionism to a journalist who researched the facts and the hidden truths.
Those facts are revolting. Settler colonialism is revolting. Stealing homes is theft.
I kept in touch with some of my US-based Zionist kibbutznik mates. When I asked them to stop calling Palestinians animals, when I asked them not to say they had tails, when I asked them to stop the de-humanisation — the same de-humanisation that happened during the Nazi regime, they dumped me.
Zionism based on a myth
Jews who support genocide are antisemitic. They are also selfish and greedy. Zionists are the bully kids at school who take other kids toys and don’t want to share. They don’t play fair.
The notion of Zionism is based on a myth of the superiority of one group over another. It is religious nutterism and it is racism.
Empire is greed. Capitalism is greed. Settler colonialism involves extermination for those who resist giving up their land. Would you or I accept someone taking our homes, forcing us to leave our uneaten dinner on the table? Would you or I accept our kids being stolen, put in jail, raped, tortured.
Irish author Sally Rooney on why she supports Palestine Action and rejects the UK law banning this, and she argues that nation states have a duty not only to punish but also to prevent the commission of this “incomparably horrifying crime of genocide”. Image: Irish Times screenshot APR
The country was weird when I visited in 1982. It had just invaded Lebanon. Later that year it committed a genocide.
The Sabra and Shatila massacre was a mass murder of up to 3500 Palestinian refugees by Israel’s proxy militia, the Phalange, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The horrific slaughter prompted outrage and condemnation around the world, with the UN General Assembly condemning it as “an act of genocide”.
I had been primed for sunshine and olives, but the country gave me a chill. The toymaker I worked with was a socialist and he told me I should feel sorry for the Palestinians.
It isn’t normal for a country to be ruled by the militia. Gun-toting soldiers roamed the streets. But you need to defend yourself when you steal.
Paranoia from guilt
Paranoia is a consequence of a persecutor who fails to recognise their guilt. It happens when you steal. The paranoia happens when you close doors. When you don’t welcome the other — whose home you stole.
In 2014, soldiers of the IDF — a mercenary macho army — were charged with raping their own colleagues. Now footage of the rape of Palestinian men are celebrated on national television in Israel in front of live audiences. Any decent person would be disgusted by this.
The army under this Zionist madness has committed — and continues to commit — the crimes it lied about Palestinians committing. And yes, the big fat liar has even admitted its own lies. The bully in the playground really doesn’t care now, it does not have to persuade the world it is right, because it is supported, it has the power.
This isn’t the warped Wild West where puritans invented the scalping of women and children — the sins of colonisers are many — this is happening now. We can stand for the might of racism or we can stand against racist policies and regimes. We can stand against apartheid and genocide.
Indigenous people must have the right to live in their homeland. Casting them onto designated land then invading that land is wrong.
When Israelis are kidnapped they are called hostages. When Palestinians are kidnapped they are called prisoners. It’s racist. It’s cruel. It’s revolting that anyone would support this travesty.
Far far more Palestinians were killed in the year leading up to October 7, 2023, than Israelis killed that day (and we know now that some of those Israelis were killed by their own army, Israel has admitted it lied over and again about the murder of babies and rapes).
Ōtautahi author and journalist Saige England . . . “It isn’t normal for a country to be ruled by the militia. Gun-toting soldiers roamed the streets.” Image: Saige England
Mercenary macho army
So who does murder and rape? The IDF. The proud mercenary macho army.
Once upon a time, a Palestinian kid who threw a stone got a bullet between the eyes. Now they get a bullet for carrying water, for going back to the homeground that has been bombed to smithereens. Snipers enjoy taking them down.
Drones operated by human beings who have no conscience follow children, follow journalists, follow nurses, follow someone in a wheelchair, and blow them to dust.
This is a game for the IDF. I’m sure some feel bad about it but they have to go along with it because they lose privileges if they do not. This sick army run by a sick state includes soldiers who hold dual US and Israeli citizenship.
Earlier this year I met a couple of IDF soldiers on holidays from genocide, breezily ordering their lattes in a local cafe. I tried to engage with them, to garner some sense of compassion but they used “them” and “they” to talk about Palestinians.
They lumped all Palestinians into a de-humanised mass worth killing. They blamed indigenous people who lived under a regime of apartheid and who are now being exterminated, for the genocide.
The woman was even worse than the man. She loathed me the minute she saw my badge supporting the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aoteara. Hate spat from her eyes.
Madness.
De-brainwashing
I saw that the only prospect for them to change might be a de-brainwashing programme. Show them the real facts they were never given, show them real Palestinians instead of figments of their imagination.
It occurred to me that it really was very tempting to take them home and offer them a different narrative. I asked them if they would listen, and they said no. If I had forced them to come with me I would have been, you know, a hostage-taker.
Israel is evidence that the victim can become the persecutor when they scapegoat indigenous people as the villain, when they hound them for crime of a holocaust they did not commit.
And I get it, a little. My Irish and French Huguenot ancestors were persecuted. I have to face the sad horrid fact that those persecuted people took other people’s land in New Zealand. The victims became the persecutor.
Oh they can say they did not know but they did know. They just did not look too hard at the dispossession of indigenous people.
I wrote my book The Seasonwife at the ripe young age of 63 to reveal some of the suppressed truths about colonisation and about the greed of Empire — a system where the rich exploit the poor to help themselves. I will continue to write novels about suppressed truths.
And I call down my Jewish ancestors who hid their Jewishness to avoid persecution. I have experienced antisemitism.
Experienced cancelling
But I have experienced cancelling, not by my publisher I hasten to add, but I know agencies and publishers in my country who tell authors to shut up about this genocide, who call those who speak up anti-semitic.
I have been cancelled by Zionist authors. I don’t have a publisher like that but I know those who do, I know agencies who pressure authors to be silent.
I call on other authors to follow Rooney’s example and for pity’s sake stop referencing Hamas. Learn the truth.
Benjamin Netanyahu refused to deal with any other Palestinian representative. Palestinians have the right to choose their own representatives but they were denied that right.
What is a terrorist army? The IDF which has created killing field after killing field. Not just this genocide, but the genocide in Lebanon in 1982.
I have been protesting against the massacre of Palestinians since 2014 and I wish I had been more vocal earlier. I wish I had left the country when the Phalangists were killed. I did go back and report from the West Bank but I feel now, that I did not do enough. I was pressured — as Western writers are — to support the wrongdoer, the persecutor, not the victim.
I will never do that again.
Change with learning
I do believe that with learning we can change, we can work towards a different, fairer system — a system based on fairness not exploitation.
I stand alongside indigenous people everywhere.
So I say again, that I support Sally Rooney and any author who has the guts to stand up to the pressure of oppressive regimes that deny the rights of people to resist oppression.
I have spent a decade proudly standing with Palestinians and I will never stop. I believe they will be granted the right to return to their land. It is not anyone else’s right to grant that, really, the right of return for those who were forced out, and their descendants, is long overdue.
And their forced exile is recent. Biblical myths don’t stack up. Far too often they are stacked to make other people fall down.
Perhaps if we had all stood up more than 100,000 Palestinians would still be alive, a third of those children, would still be running around, their voices like bells instead of death calls.
I support Palestinians with all my heart and soul.
Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
Journalists like Anas al-Sharif who report the truth in Gaza to the world and are targeted by Israel deserve protection, not just sympathy.
COMMENTARY:By Sara Qudah
During the past 22 months in Gaza, the pattern has become unbearable yet tragically predictable: A journalist reports about civilians; killed or starved, shares footage of a hospital corridor, shelters bombed out, schools and homes destroyed, and then they are silenced.
Killed.
At the Committee to Protect Journalists we documented that 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists, with an unprecedented number of those killed by Israel reporting from Gaza while covering Israel’s military operations.
That trend did not end; it continued instead in 2025, making this war by far the deadliest for the press in history.
When a journalist is killed in a besieged war city, the loss is no longer personal. It is institutional, it is the loss of eyes and ears on the ground: a loss of verification, context, and witness.
Journalists are the ones who turn statistics into stories. They give names to numbers and faces to headlines. They make distant realities real for the rest of the world, and provide windows into the truth and doors into other worlds.
That is why the killing of Anas al-Sharif last week reverberates so loudly, not just as a tragic loss of one life, but as a silencing of many stories that will now never be told.
Not just reporting Anas al-Sharif was not just reporting from Gaza, he was filling a vital void. When international journalists couldn’t access the Strip, his work for Al Jazeera helped the world understand what was happening.
On August 10, 2025, an airstrike hit a tent near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City where journalists had gathered. Al-Sharif and several of his colleagues were killed.
The strike — its method, its targets, and its aftermath – wasn’t isolated. It fits a pattern CPJ and other press freedom organisations have tracked for months: in Gaza, journalists are facing not just the incidental risks of war, but repeated, targeted threats.
And so far, there has been no accountability.
The Israeli military framed its action differently: officials alleged that al-Sharif was affiliated with Hamas and that the attack was aimed at a legitimate threat. But so far, the evidence presented publicly failed to meet the test of independent witnesses; no public evidence has met the basic standard of independent verification.
UN experts and press freedom groups have called for transparent investigations, warning of the danger in labelling journalists as combatants without clear, verifiable proof.
In the turmoil of war, there’s a dangerous tendency to accept official narratives too quickly, too uncritically. That’s exactly how truth gets lost.
Immediate chilling effect
The repercussions of silencing reporters in a besieged territory are far-reaching. There is the immediate chilling effect: journalists who stay risk death; those who leave — if they even can — leave behind untold stories.
Second, when local journalists are killed, international media have no choice but to rely increasingly on official statements or third-party briefings for coverage, many with obvious biases and blind spots.
And third, the families of victims and the communities they represented are denied both justice and memory.
Al-Sharif’s camera recorded funerals and destroyed homes, bore witness to lives cut short. His death leaves those images without a voice, pointing now only into silence.
We also need to name the power dynamics at play. When an enormously powerful state with overwhelming military capability acts inside a densely populated area, the vast majority of casualties will be civilians — those who cannot leave — and local reporters, who cannot shelter.
This is not a neutral law of physics; it is the to-be-anticipated result of how this war waged in a space where journalists will not be able to go into shelter.
We have repeatedly documented that journalists killed in this war are Palestinian — not international correspondents. The most vulnerable witnesses, those most essential to documenting it, are also the most vulnerable to being killed.
So what should the international community and the world leaders do beyond offering condolences?
Demand independent investigation
For starters, they must demand an immediate, independent investigation. Not just routine military reviews, but real accountability — gathering evidence, preserving witness testimony, and treating each death with the seriousness it deserves.
Accountability cannot be a diplomatic nicety; it must be a forensic process with witnesses and evidence.
Additionally, journalists must be protected as civilians. That’s not optional. Under international law, reporters who aren’t taking part in the fighting are civilians — period.
That is an obligation not a choice. And when safety isn’t possible, we must get them out. Evacuate them. Save their lives. And in doing so, allow others in — international reporters who can continue telling the story.
We are past the time for neutrality. The use of language like “conflict”, “collateral damage”, or “civilian casualties” cannot be used to deflect responsibility, especially when the victims are people whose only “crime” was documenting human suffering.
When the world loses journalists like Anas al-Sharif, it loses more than just one voice. We lose a crucial balance of power and access to truth; it fails to maintain the ability to understand what’s happening on the ground. And future generations lose the memory — the record — of what took place here.
Stand up for facts
The international press community, human rights organisations, and diplomatic actors need to stand up. Not just for investigations, but for facts. Families in Gaza deserve more than empty statements. They deserve the truth about who was killed, and why. So does every person reading this from afar.
And the journalists still risking everything to report from inside Gaza deserve more than sympathy. They deserve protection.
The killing of journalists — like those from Al Jazeera — isn’t just devastating on a human level. It’s a direct attack on journalism itself. When a state can murder reporters without consequence, it sends a message to the entire world: telling the truth might cost you your life.
I write this as someone who believes that journalism is, above all, a moral act. It’s about bearing witness. It’s about insisting that lives under siege are still lives that matter, still worth seeing.
Silencing a journalist doesn’t just stop a story — it erases a lifetime of effort to bring others into view.
The murder of al-Sharif isn’t just another tragedy. It’s an assault on truth itself, in a place where truth is desperately needed. If we let this keep happening, we’re not just losing lives — we’re losing the last honest witnesses in a world ruled by force.
And that’s something we can’t afford to give up.
Sara Qudah is the regional director for Middle East and North Africa of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Sara on LinkedIn: Sara Qudah
Amanda Trebach, a member of the immigrant rights’ group Unión del Barrio and an ICU nurse, was monitoring ICE operations in the Los Angeles area when she was targeted and arrested herself. Video of the scene shows masked agents in plainclothes forcing her to the ground and briefly kneeling on her head. “They took me into an unmarked vehicle. They did not read me my rights. They didn’t tell me where I was going,” says Trebach, who was detained overnight before being released without charges the following evening after an outpouring of community support. She recounts her experience and explains why she will continue to fight for her immigrant neighbors in the face of the ongoing danger to her community.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
President Trump says he is working on a “deal” to end the Russia-Ukraine war by hosting a series of meetings between the U.S., European Union, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin is insisting Russia keep areas of Ukraine that it has seized, including the long-contested Donbas region, while Zelensky is asking the U.S. for security guarantees to prevent future invasion by its powerful neighbor. We host a conversation with two political scientists, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Ukrainian democratic socialist Denys Pilash, about the likely outcome of the talks and the roots of the conflict. Mearsheimer says “the sides remain so far apart” when it comes to the possibility of a ceasefire during peace negotiations that “the best outcome would be to settle this war now.” Pilash, on the other hand, says there are still measures that can be taken to pressure Russia to agree to a ceasefire and to secure more favorable postwar terms for Ukraine.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Why the recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia is an important development. Meanwhile, New Zealand still dithers. This article unpacks the hypocrisy in the debate.
ANALYSIS:By Paul Heywood-Smith
The recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia, leading, it is hoped, to full UN member state status, is an important development.
What has followed is a remarkable demonstration of ignorance and/or submission to the Zionist lobby.
Rewarding Hamas Let us consider aspects of the response. One aspect is that recognising Palestine is rewarding the resistance organisation Hamas.
There are a number of issues involved here. The first issue is that Hamas is branded as a “terrorist organisation”. So much is said, apparently, by eight nations compared to the overwhelming majority of UN recognised states which do not so regard it.
That was Hamas’s objective when it fought the election against Fatah in 2006.
As an aside, it now results in the lie that it is ridiculous that the Albanese government would recognise Palestine as part of a two-state solution when Hamas rejects a two-state solution. This is just yet another attempt to demonise Hamas.
Hamas leaders have repeatedly said they would accept a two-state solution. It has only recently done so again.
On 23 July last, when Hamas responded to a US draft ceasefire framework the Hamas official, Basem Naim, affirmed Hamas’s publicly stated pledge that it would give up power in Gaza and support a two-state solution on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine.
These are the very borders stipulated by international law — see hereunder.
The Palestinians constituting Hamas are residents of an illegally occupied territory. International law affords to them the right to resist: Geneva Conventions I-IV, 1949.
The hypocrisy associated with the demonisation of Hamas is massive. Much is made of hostages having been taken on 7 October 2023 — a war crime according to international law. Those militants who took the hostages might be forgiven for thinking that it was minimal compared with the seven years of non-compliance with Security Council Resolution (SCR) 2334 calling for the end of occupation and removal of settlements.
The events of October 7 are, in any event, shrouded in doubt. This follows from Israel’s suppression of evidence concerning what happened. What we do know is that the Israel Defence Force (IDF) received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases on October 7.
In addition, the Hannibal Directive justified IDF slaughter of Israelis potentially being taken as hostages. It is also accepted that allegations of rape and beheading of babies by Hamas militants were false. The disinformation put out by Israel, and Israel’s refusal to allow journalists on site, or to interview participants, make it impossible to form any clear or credible understanding of what happened on October 7.
It is accepted that Hamas militants attacked three Israeli military bases, no doubt with the intention that those bases should withdraw from their positions relative to Gazan territory. Such action can be understood as consistent with an occupied citizenry resisting such illegal occupation.
Compounding the uncertainty over October 7 is the continuing conjecture, leakage, of information suggesting that the IDF had advance warning of the proposed Hamas attack but chose, for other purposes, to take no action. These uncertainties are never adverted to by our press which repeatedly attributes responsibility for all Israeli deaths on the day to the actions of Hamas militants, which actions are presented as an “abomination, barbarity”. Refer generally to P&I, November 5, 2023 (Stuart Rees) Expose and dismiss the domination Israeli narrative; P&I, January 4, 2024 Israeli general killed Israelis on 7 October and then lied about it.
The third issue, the major hypocrisy, is that Hamas is being rewarded. Consider the position of Israel. Israel is, and has been, illegally occupying Palestinian territory since 1967. This is undisputed according to international law as articulated in the following instruments:
1967 – SCR 242;
2004 – the ICJ decision concerning The Wall;
Dec. 2016 – SCR 2334, not vetoed by Obama, recognising the illegal occupation and calling for its end; and
2024 – the Advisory Opinion of the ICJ of 19 July.
Israel has done nothing to comply with any of these instruments. It is set on a programme of gradual acquisition.
The result is that now there are illegal settlements all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. When Israel is told: the West Bank and East Jerusalem are to be part of a Palestinian state, it will scream, “But large parts are occupied by Jewish Israelis!” These are “facts on the ground”.
Supporters of Israel ignore the fact that occupation by settlers occurred in the full knowledge that international law branded such occupation as illegal. If the settlements are considered as a “done deal”, that would be rewarding knowingly illegal conduct — some might say, Israeli terrorism.
So that there can be no doubt about the import of the position it is appropriate to specify the critical parts of SCR 2334:
The Security Council
Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;
Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;
Underlines that it will not recognise any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations;
Stresses that the cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-State solution, and calls for affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground that are imperilling the two-State solution;.
Following the ICJ Advisory Opinion of July 19, the UN General Assembly in adopting the same set 17 September 2025 as the deadline for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territory.
Negotiated settlement And when Israel now says, “Recognition now is going to prevent a negotiated settlement”, it is ignoring the fact that in the six, 12, 20 months, two, three, four years until such negotiated settlement occurs, many more settlements would have been commenced, which of course, are more “facts on the ground”.
Then we have the response of the Coalition, which demonstrates how irrelevant the Opposition is in today’s Australia. That response is that the recognition will inhibit a negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestinians.
The Coalition, however, says nothing about the fact that the Israeli government has repeatedly stated that there will never be a Palestinian State. Indeed, Israel has legislated to that effect and is moreover periodically purporting to annex Palestinian land.
So how does the Coalition believe that a negotiated settlement will come about? Well, one way, over which Israel may have no say, is for Palestine to become a full member State of the UN. One UN member state cannot occupy the land of another.
Failure of our press to ask any question of pro-Israel interviewees about the end of occupation is a disgrace.
Next challenge Now for the next challenge — to bring about the end of occupation. Israel will not accede readily. Sanctions must be the first step. Such sanctions must be immediate, concrete and crippling.
They must result in the immediate suspension of trade. That can be the first step.
Watch this space.
Paul Heywood-Smith is an Adelaide SC (senior counsel) of some 20 years. He was the initial chairperson of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, an incorporated association registered in South Australia in 2004. He is the author of The Case for Palestine, The Perspective of an Australian Observer (Wakefield Press, 2014). This article was first published by Pearls & Irritations and is republished with permission.
The New Zealand Green Party co-leader suspended over criticising government MPs over a “spineless” stance over Gaza has called for action.
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said in an interview with Al Jazeera that public pressure was mounting on governments to end the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The politician continues to push for recognition of Palestinian statehood and sanctions on Israel, despite being ejected from New Zealand’s Parliament for a week for her remarks.
She refused to apologise in the House last week, telling Al Jazeera that New Zealand must “stand on the right side of history”.
“We in Aotearoa New Zealand have a long proud history of standing typically on the right side of things, whether that be our anti-nuclear stance or our stance against apartheid in South Africa,” she said.
“So it really is a question for this current government whether they are now willing to do the right thing and stand on the right side of history, and that was precisely the point that we were making last week in Parliament.”
Seeing video evidence this week of the physical and psychological mistreatment of the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti sickened me. I have written a number of articles about Marwan.
Researching and writing builds knowledge and empathy and I am one of those who believes, given the opportunity, he really could be the Palestinian Mandela. How should you and I respond to this criminality by the Israeli state?
Marwan’s wife and human rights activist Fadwa Barghouti, was shocked to see the heavy toll the Israelis had inflicted on a man legendary for his indomitable spirit.
“I didn’t recognise you or your features, and maybe part of me doesn’t want to admit everything your face and body express about what you and the prisoners have endured,” she wrote in a public message to her husband.
“They are still, Marwan, chasing you and pursuing you even after 23 years in prison and in the solitary cell you’ve been living in for two years.”
She added: “I know that the only thing that hurts you is the inability to protect Palestinian children.”
NEW: Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir filmed threatening Marwan Barghouti, the most prominent Palestinian prisoner, during a prison visit.
“Whoever murders our children… we will obliterate them.”
International protocols on prisoner treatment The mistreatment of prisoners like Marwan Barghouti is a crime under international law; the relevant international protocols include: Geneva Convention IV (1949) — Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War; Common Article 3 (minimum protections including bans on torture, cruel treatment, and “outrages upon personal dignity”); UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Nelson Mandela Rules).
These establish prohibitions against torture, degrading treatment, and requirements for humane conditions of detention. Look at Marwan Barghouti and weep that we support Israel, a state that has defecated on the Geneva Convention, the Genocide Convention and every memorial to the victims of the Shoah.
The Israelis, “our allies”, have committed rape-murders of prisoners (documented in their own posted videos), killed countless Palestinian leaders and hold thousands of hostages in gruesome captivity — even as they commit ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and forced starvation in Gaza.
Barghouti, who would win any free and fair elections in Palestine in a landslide, has since 2023, according to human rights organisations, been repeatedly assaulted and subjected to Abu Ghraib-style treatment, had joints dislocated and other forms of torture while our governments turn a blind eye and work day and night to provide the Israelis with the political cover needed to pursue the Greater Israel project.
Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti has now been in prison for 23 years so far . . . he would win any free and fair elections in Palestine in a landslide, but he has been repeatedly assaulted and subjected to Abu Ghraib-style treatment by the Israelis. Image: The New Arab
Terrible news from Yousef Aljamal I also received terrible news this week that my friend Yousef Aljamal had suffered yet another horror at the hands of the Israelis: his sister Somaiya, 35; her husband Anas, 35; and their daughters Hoor, 13, and Sham, 9, had been killed in an Israeli missile attack earlier this month as they slept.
A third daughter, Noor, 14, was injured and is now the family’s sole survivor.
I interviewed Yousef in my home in Wellington a few weeks ago; it was a privilege and an education to spend time with the distinguished Palestinian writer. As I said in the subsequent article, the encounter made visceral for me that word genocide.
Sitting opposite me in my study in my serene Wellington coastal suburb, Yousef told me of the 40 members of his family who had been murdered by the Israelis. Now four more members of his family have been taken.
These are people like us, with feelings like us. They are not the Hated Others so long painted by our mainstream media as unworthy of naming, unworthy of human dignity.
The collective West is responsible under law The Israelis have turned Gaza into a hellscape that would shock Dante Alighieri. Over two million people are being tortured in the cruellest way every day and our governments refuse to intervene in powerful and meaningful ways.
According to whistleblower US Green Beret Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Anthony Aguilar, the Israelis and the American GHF contractors use pepper spray and gunfire instead of signs to direct the human traffic. Waves of suffering humanity are tossed hither and thither on a sea of diabolical inhumanity. Nearly 2000 starving innocents have been gunned down while seeking food.
To be blunt: If the Israelis don’t want to be likened to the Nazis, they should stop acting like Nazis.
The responsibility to prevent and punish This evil is supported to astonishing lengths by the morally empty governments of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and, of course, the great arsenals of genocide the US, UK and Germany. The leaders of the powerful Western countries are fully aware of what is being done and allow it to continue — and therefore represent the moral nadir of our species.
Leaders like Anthony Albanese, Christopher Luxon and Keir Starmer make corporeal the term Banality of Evil. They calculate, they mumble and equivocate, then they comply with the Americans. “Genocide enabler” should be their sole epitaph.
Our countries are signatories to the Genocide Convention, the first Article of which states: “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”
Prevent and punish. Legal scholars and the ICJ’s opinions affirm that states providing military, financial, or political support with knowledge of likely genocidal acts risk being found complicit.
Our governments have failed to reach the lowest bar of human decency or fulfil this fundamental duty. It is up to us to act. If it was right to oppose Nazism in the Second World War it is most certainly a moral imperative to oppose the brand of Nazism the Jewish State of Israel has created today. We must find the courage to oppose them.
The International Court of Justice ruled in 2007 in the ICJ Bosnia Genocide case that Serbia was guilty of breaching its duty to prevent the 1995 genocide at Srebrenica. Countries like the UK, Germany, New Zealand and Australia would likely, if international law was applied evenly, be found similarly culpable for failing to prevent genocide by Israel and the US.
This is the legal concept of erga omnes partes, the collective responsibility that signatory states share.
On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel faces credible allegations of genocide in Gaza and imposed urgent, legally binding measures, including an obligation to allow humanitarian access and prevent genocidal acts. All our states are fully aware Israel has defied this ruling.
War crimes tribunals on the Palestine Genocide will be essential to restore international law. War criminals whether in Tel Aviv, London, Canberra or Wellington must one day face justice.
In a recent article I described Stéphane Hessel, a leading member of the French Resistance, who survived time in Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald. After the war he was one of the co-authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a pillar of international law to this day. The Declaration affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans.
In later years Hessel (d. 2013), who was Jewish, saw the treatment of the Palestinians as an affront to this and repeatedly called Israel out for crimes against humanity.
Hessel argued people needed to be outraged just as he and his fellow fighters had been during the war. In 2010, he said: “Today, my strongest feeling of indignation is over Palestine, both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The starting point of my outrage was the appeal launched by courageous Israelis to the Diaspora: you, our older siblings, come and see where our leaders are taking this country and how they are forgetting the fundamental human values of Judaism.”
Imagine what action he would call for today.
Aaron Bushnell’s challenge to us So, back to the core challenge I posed at the beginning. Are we willing to do what it takes to save Marwan Barghouti, to save our brothers and sisters in Palestine?
As Aaron Bushnell, the active duty US serviceman said the day he self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington last year to protest the genocide against the Palestinian people:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or Apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
Michael A. McCarthy’s The Master’s Tools is about the power that finance exerts over people. He inquires into the problem and how it could realistically be solved:
Why has finance capitalism left people worse off and further wrecked democracy along the way? Why does the financial sector increasingly determine our lives and politics… ? [H]ow might an alternative to investment for profit leave people better off, reinvigorate the demos, and rebuild democracy? (xii)
When I started reading the book I thought maybe McCarthy’s response to these questions could be better reviewed by someone whose work is directly related to them. Still it seemed like an excellent resource for someone who is seeking to learn about the subject. It soon became apparent that the point of his book — ‘democratizing finance’ (9) — calls for responses from outsiders to the author’s field.
NEW: Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir filmed threatening Marwan Barghouti, the most prominent Palestinian prisoner, during a prison visit.
First time Barghouti seen publicly in years — frail, gaunt, unrecognisable.… 