This week on CounterSpin: In July last year, CounterSpinrecalled a statement from Donald Trump on Fox & Friends in 2020, that if voting access were expanded—meaning easing of barriers to voting for disabled people, poor people, rural people, working people—if voting were made more widely accessible, Trump said, “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Many of us wondered at the time why news media wouldn’t call that out as anti-democratic, and talk up the multivocal, multiregional, multiracial democracy we’ve always said we’re aspiring to.
But here we are, dealing with the fallout of, among many things, that news media failure—now including the possible erasure of the landmark Voting Rights Act. Ari Berman is national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, and his new book is called Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It. We talk about that with him this week.
As U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska for a high-stakes summit to discuss a possible ceasefire in Ukraine, we host a debate between two foreign policy thinkers about the war, its causes and how it could be brought to a conclusion.
John Mearsheimer is an international relations theorist at the University of Chicago, known for his realist perspective. He has long argued that Western policies are the main cause of the Ukraine crisis. “There’s overwhelming evidence that it was NATO expansion into Ukraine that drove this train,” says Mearsheimer.
Matt Duss is executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and the former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. He says that despite Western missteps, Russia is ultimately the main cause of the current war, which Putin started in 2022 with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “Putin has made clear that he has a pretty grandiose historical conception of what he sees as a kind of renewed Russian empire,” he says.
Both Mearsheimer and Duss say Ukraine’s war effort is flagging and that the best way out is to “make the best peace they can,” even if it means conceding territory to Russia.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
President Trump says his takeover of policing in Washington, D.C., will serve as an example of policies he hopes to enact in other major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. All the cities on his target list are led by Black mayors, and most have “sanctuary” policies limiting local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Responding to Trump’s threats, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson tells Democracy Now! that his city will not “cower or bend or be intimidated by these attempts to divide and conquer our communities.” He says that unlike Trump’s militarized approach, Chicago has been investing in mental health services, raising wages and building affordable housing as part of a larger campaign to improve quality of life. Contrary to Trump’s claims, violent crime is down in Chicago.
“We’re building the safest, most affordable big city in America, the most pro-worker city in America, and we’re doing it in a very collective way,” says Johnson.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Weeks after Zarah Sultana joined efforts to build a new left party, local campaigners in West Yorkshire have confirmed that she will be coming up north to support their 2026 electoral campaign launch.
“The march of the north in support of the new left party”
The People’s Alliance for Change and Equality (PACE) has been connecting campaigners, trade unionists, and politicians across Kirklees in opposition to war, cuts, and racism.
Back in May, Jeremy Corbyn came up to Huddersfield to support its official launch, as an example of how “this whole cause is coming together” to challenge Labour’s embrace of war and cuts under prime minister Keir Starmer. Since then, PACE has been busy standing alongside local campaigners against the awfulbehaviour of Labour-led Kirklees Council. And it’s very much preparing to take current councillors on in the 2026 local elections.
Encouraging people to come along to Huddersfield on 18 October to join Zarah Sultana, PACE Kirklees said:
We will be running our electoral campaign in tandem with the wider movement on the streets, in workplaces and on campuses. We are a party willing to fight alongside the community, against the cuts and austerity from Labour and the racism stoked by Reform.
It added:
Once Your Party is officially launched, PACE will be affiliating to it, so come along to what will be the march of the north in support of the new left party!
Over 700,000 people have signed up to the new party, called by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Once this translates into membership, it will be the biggest political party in Europe!
Asking people to “spread the word about this protest”, which PACE hopes will be its largest so far, it insisted:
Join us, march with Zarah in Huddersfield and let’s get this party started!
Get ready for 2026 – and join Zarah Sultana
Zarah Sultana attending the launch of PACE is a timely move.
Labour-led Kirklees Council has been on a cuttingspree of public services. And it’s a clear example of how Labour across the country has adopted the austerity ideology, while refusing to listen to local people. Its councillors won’t get away with that, though. And the 2026 local election will provide a perfect opportunity for voters to hold them to account, together with PACE and the new left party. The October march in Huddersfield will be an important opportunity to organise and grow momentum ahead of next year’s vote.
Leading PACE campaigner Mike Forster had the following message:
The Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher (8/12/25) envisions “a a scenario in which [Trump’s] dramatic takeover of the nation’s capital and his pronouncement that he will miraculously put an end to its crime might be greeted with more hope than skepticism or outrage.”
President Donald Trump has now put troops on the District of Columbia’s streets in both of his terms. This time around, the Washington Post is less alarmed.
In addition to calling up 800 DC National Guard troops—which Trump can do because DC isn’t a state—he also seized control of DC’s police force in the name of a “crime emergency,” despite the city experiencing its lowest violent crime rate in 30 years.
With DC’s self-governance under threat, the city’s paper of record is positioned to play a critical role. Right off the bat, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher sounded the alarm about Trump’s actions, telling the New Yorker (8/11/25), “This is troops-in-the-streets, shades-of-authoritarian-rule bad.”
The next day, however, Fisher sounded like a different person in his Post column (8/12/25). Trump was transformed from authoritarian to astute-but-flawed leader; despite his “uncanny knack for identifying the problems that really bother voters,” Trump rarely translates that “into helpful solutions.” Regarding DC crime—Trump’s justification for his power grab—Fisher wrote that Trump
instinctively understands that the city feels unsafe, that the now-common sight of teens riding presumably stolen ATVs down DC’s grand avenues, popping wheelies and taunting motorists; the ubiquity of shoplifters…and the horror stories about violent carjackings—all this makes residents feel disrespected and unprotected.
‘A major problem’
Megan McCardle (Washington Post, 8/12/25) said DC had “a massive 32% drop from the 273 people who were killed in 2023, but that probably wasn’t much comfort to those 187 people or their grieving families.”
In a matter of 24 hours, Fisher went from condemning Trump’s authoritarianism to almost welcoming it. The latter position puts him in good stead with fellow Washington Post columnists—who’ve been told to “communicate with optimism about this country” or take a generous buyout. (Unprecedented numbers have done the latter.)
“I’m afraid [Trump] is right that in DC, crime and disorder are a major problem,” Megan McArdle (8/12/25) wrote. “The problem isn’t as big as it was a few years ago, but with crime, as with cancer, ‘somewhat less of a problem than it was’ is not really very good news.” McArdle concluded with a lecture for activists: “Those who are opposed to Trump’s recent moves should argue not that they constitute incipient fascism, but that they aren’t a real solution.”
Also weighing in was the Post editorial page, now headed by 33-year-old opinion editor Adam O’Neal, who has promised his section will be “unapologetically patriotic.”
“President Donald Trump is putting on quite the show,” read the opening of a Post editorial (8/11/25), which said Trump placing “armed troops on the streets of DC will probably have limited value.” So, some value.
The Post editorial seemed to provide Trump with precedent for militarizing DC, noting that while the US has historically had “clear distinctions between the police and the military,” many European countries haven’t. (Not always for the better, as I recall).
Regarding Trump’s false claim of a DC crime wave, the Post equivocated, saying, “Whether a genuine emergency exists is up for debate.”
This bothsidesism bled into the Post’s (8/13/25) reporting, which quoted Trump’s false attack on DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, then discounted her factual response about DC violent crime being at a 30-year low:
“She’s been here for many years and the numbers are worse than they ever were,”[Trump] said, dismissing data DC officials have been citing.
The Post’s August 11 editorial concluded by assuring District residents that Trump’s moves were just politics as usual: “However unpopular he might be in the deep-blue District, Trump is trying to deliver on the law-and-order message of his presidential campaign.”
‘A mouthpiece for Trump’
In a Washington Post op-ed (8/12/25), US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said the need for tougher laws was demonstrated by the case of a defendant given probation under the Youth Rehabilitation Act after shooting someone (nonfatally) on a bus. Pirro linked to a news report that described the shooting victim as “harassing” the defendant on video “in the minutes before the shooting, as the defendant appeared to try avoiding confrontation.”
On the heels of this editorial, O’Neal, the opinions editor, published and gave top billing to an op-ed (8/12/25) by Trump’s handpicked US attorney for DC, former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. In portraying DC as crime-infested, Pirro offered justification for Trump’s takeover.
“While not quite as incendiary as Tom Cotton’s infamous New York Timesop-ed calling to ‘send in the troops,’ [Pirro’s op-ed’s] timing and framing were jarring for a paper that still claims ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’ wrote Status’s Oliver Darcy (8/13/25).
Under prior opinions chiefs, editorials like this wouldn’t have seen the light of day, according to a former Post opinion editor, who told Status, “They are turning the Post into a mouthpiece for the Trump administration.”
The Post’s subtle support for Trump’s DC crime narrative even extended into the Letters to the Editor (8/12/25), which were published under the Trump-echoing headline “Making DC Safe Again.”
Departure from first term
The WashingtonPost’s acquiescence to Trump’s power grab is just the latest favor the president has received from the Jeff Bezos–owned paper (FAIR.org, 2/28/25). In addition to spiking the paper’s intended endorsement of Trump opponent Kamala Harris and showing up as a guest of honor at his second inauguration, Bezos and the company he founded, Amazon, have lavished tens of millions of dollars on Trump and his family. Meanwhile, Amazon and Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, continue to rake in billions in federal contracts (Financial Times, 3/20/25).
The Washington Post editorial board (6/2/20) had a very different tone when Trump sent National Guard troops to DC in 2020: “In enabling his incitement, Mr. Trump’s aides are helping him to push the country closer not to order but to anarchy.”
The close partnership between Bezos and Trump marks a departure from Trump’s first term, when Bezos stood up to the president, as did his paper’s opinion page. When Trump put troops on DC’s streets in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests, a Washington Post editorial headline (6/2/20) read, “Trump’s Threats to Deploy Troops Move America Closer to Anarchy.”
The next day, the Post’s Philip Kennicott (6/3/20) noted how the Guard “looked like outsiders, like a colonial force” on DC’s streets. A Post op-ed (6/8/20) by Benjamin Haas and Kori Schake read:
The image of soldiers controlling America’s streets and engaging in law enforcement activity is evocative of the conduct of authoritarian countries from whom the United States takes pride in maintaining a distinction.
Trump’s justification for his “palace guard” was nothing more than “cynical hyperbole,” stated a Post editorial (6/2/20).
Also, back in 2020, Post columnist Colbert King (6/7/20) found the nature of Trump’s actions clear:
Trump’s views of African Americans match the spirit of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s observation in the 1857 Dred Scott decision that the black man “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
A ‘federal coup’
National Urban League president Marc Morial (NBC, 8/12/25): “This is trying to…in effect, create a de facto police state in these cities.”
What’s happening today is no less authoritarian or racist.
At his 80-minute news conference in the White House briefing room Monday, Trump claimed DC had become a hellscape “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.” And he told law enforcement to “do whatever the hell they want” with suspected wrongdoers in DC, even “knock the hell out of them, because it’s the only language they understand.”
In addition to DC, Trump singled out as crime-ridden the cities of “Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Oakland—all of which have Black mayors and large minority populations that overwhelmingly voted against him in his three presidential runs,” Politico (8/12/25) reported.
Amid this backdrop, NAACP President Derrick Johnson (NBC News, 8/12/25) called what’s happening in DC a “federal coup.”
No such critique can be found in the Post, at least not this time around.
Union members of Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) have made a video honouring the 242 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed by the Israeli military since October 2023 — many of them targeted.
The death toll has been reported by the Gaza Media Office since the latest killing of six media workers last Sunday, four of them from the Qatar-based global television channel Al Jazeera.
This figure is higher than the 180 deaths recorded by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and other media freedom agencies.
“While international media remains locked out of Gaza, Palestinian journalists work under fire, starvation and sickness to report the reality on the ground,” says the MEAA.
“Targeting journalists is a war crime.
“As colleagues, we remember them.”
In this video, MEAA members say the names of many Gazan journalists who have been killed by the Israeli military.
Music in the MEAA “Stop Killing Journalists” video is composed by Connor D’Netto and performed by Jayson Gillham. The video is edited by Jack Fisher and (A)manda Parkinson for MEAA and was released on YouTube yesterday.
Stop Killing Journalists Video: MEAA
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe was recently sentenced to 12 years of house arrest after he was found guilty of bribing imprisoned members of paramilitary groups to coax them into retracting damaging testimony exposing Uribe’s ties to U.S.-backed, right-wing paramilitary groups. Uribe was a staunch U.S. ally who ruled Colombia from 2002 to 2010, during which time there were thousands of extrajudicial killings of civilians, who were then purposely mislabeled as rebel fighters in what became known as the “false positives” scandal. “Álvaro Uribe is a very powerful figure. He is the leading figure of the far right in Colombia and, I would say, a leading figure of the far right in the Americas,” says leftist Colombian Senator Iván Cepeda. His own father, leading leftist politician Manuel Cepeda, was assassinated in 1994 by right-wing paramilitaries working with the government.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
As President Trump threatens to use U.S. special forces against drug cartels abroad, a new book, The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, reveals some of the most secretive and elite special forces in the Army are heavily involved in narcotrafficking themselves. “There’s at least 14 cases that I’m tracking of Fort Bragg-trained soldiers who have been either arrested, apprehended or killed in the course of trafficking drugs in the last five years or so,” says author Seth Harp. The book also looks at “how U.S. military intervention often stimulates drug production,” including in Afghanistan, which he says became the biggest narco-state in the world during the 20-year U.S. occupation. “Most of the drug trafficking and drug production was being carried out and done by warlords, police chiefs, militia commanders, who were on the U.S. payroll in a corrupt structure,” says Harp.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Netanyahu’s mass ethnic cleansing strategy pulls the rug out from under the West’s cherished pretext for supporting Israeli criminality: the fabled two-state solution.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
If you thought Western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel’s engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed.
As ever, events have moved on — even if the extreme hunger and malnourishment of the two million people of Gaza have not abated.
Western leaders are now expressing “outrage”, as the media call it, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “take full control” of Gaza and “occupy” it.
At some point in the future, Israel is apparently ready to hand the enclave over to outside forces unconnected to the Palestinian people.
The Israeli cabinet agreed last Friday on the first step: a takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are huddled in the ruins, being starved to death. The city will be encircled, systematically depopulated and destroyed, with survivors presumably herded southwards to a “humanitarian city” — Israel’s new term for a concentration camp — where they will be penned up, awaiting death or expulsion.
At the weekend, foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and other Western nations issued a joint statement decrying the move, warning it would “aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians”.
Germany, Israel’s most fervent backer in Europe and its second-biggest arms supplier, is apparently so dismayed that it has vowed to “suspend” — that is, delay — weapons shipments that have helped Israel to murder and maim hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the past 22 months.
Netanyahu is not likely to be too perturbed. Doubtless, Washington will step in and pick up any slack for its main client state in the oil-rich Middle East.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has once again shifted the West’s all-too-belated focus on the indisputable proof of Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions — evidenced by Gaza’s skeletal children — to an entirely different story.
Now, the front pages are all about the Israeli prime minister’s strategy in launching another “ground operation”, how much pushback he is getting from his military commanders, what the implications will be for the Israelis still held captive in the enclave, whether the Israeli army is now overstretched, and whether Hamas can ever be “defeated” and the enclave “demilitarised”.
We are returning once again to logistical analyses of the genocide — analyses whose premises ignore the genocide itself. Might that not be integral to Netanyahu’s strategy?
Life and death It ought to be shocking that Germany has been provoked into stopping its arming of Israel — assuming it follows through — not because of months of images of Gaza’s skin-and-bones children that echo those from Auschwitz, but only because Israel has declared that it wants to “take control” of Gaza.
It should be noted, of course, that Israel never stopped controlling Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories — in contravention of the fundamentals of international law, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled last year. Israel has had absolute control over the lives and deaths of Gaza’s people every day — bar one — since its occupation of the tiny coastal enclave many decades ago.
On 7 October 2023, thousands of Palestinian fighters briefly broke out of the besieged prison camp they and their families had endured after Israel momentarily dropped its guard.
Gaza has long been a prison that the Israeli military illegally controlled by land, sea and air, determining who could enter and leave. It kept Gaza’s economy throttled, and put the enclave’s population “on a diet” that saw rocketing malnourishment among its children long before the current starvation campaign.
Trapped behind a highly militarised fence since the early 1990s, unable to access their own coastal waters, and with Israeli drones constantly surveilling them and raining down death from the air, the people of Gaza viewed it more as a modernised concentration camp.
But Germany and the rest of the West were fine supporting all that. They have continued selling Israel arms, providing it with special trading status, and offering diplomatic cover.
Only as Israel carries through to a logical conclusion its settler-colonial agenda of replacing the native Palestinian people with Jews, is it apparently time for the West to vent its rhetorical “outrage”.
Two-state trickery Why the pushback now? In part, it is because Netanyahu is pulling the rug out from under their cherished, decades-long pretext for supporting Israel’s ever-greater criminality: the fabled two-state solution.
Israel conspired in that trickery with the signing of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s.
The goal was never the realisation of a two-state solution. Rather, Oslo created a “diplomatic horizon” for “final status issues” — which, like the physical horizon, always remained equally distant, however much ostensible movement there was on the ground.
Lisa Nandy, Britain’s Culture Secretary, peddled precisely this same deceit last week as she extolled the virtues of the two-state solution. She told Sky News: “Our message to the Palestinian people is very, very clear: There is hope on the horizon.”
UK Government Minister Lisa Nandy:
‘Our message to the Palestinian people is very clear. There is hope on the horizon.’
Palestinians are expected to believe words of ‘hope’ from a Minister of a government that has aided and supported Israel’s genocide against them pic.twitter.com/appizVm0QY
Every Palestinian understood her real message, which could be paraphrased as: “We’ve lied to you about a Palestinian state for decades, and we’ve allowed a genocide to unfold before the world’s eyes for the past two years. But hey, trust us this time. We’re on your side.”
In truth, the promise of Palestinian statehood was always treated by the West as little more than a threat — and one directed at Palestinian leaders. Palestinian officials must be more obedient, quieter. They had to first prove their willingness to police Israel’s occupation on Israel’s behalf by repressing their own people.
Hamas, of course, failed that test in Gaza. But Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank, bent over backwards to reassure his examiners, casting as “sacred” his lightly armed security forces’ so-called “cooperation” with Israel. In reality, they are there to do its dirty work.
Nonetheless, despite the PA’s endless good behaviour, Israel has continued to expel ordinary Palestinians from their land, then steal that land — which was supposed to form the basis of a Palestinian state — and hand it over to extremist Jewish settlers backed by the Israeli army.
Former US President Barack Obama briefly and feebly tried to halt what the West misleadingly calls Jewish “settlement expansion” — in reality, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — but rolled over at the first sign of intransigence from Netanyahu.
Israel has stepped up the process of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank even more aggressively over the past two years, while global attention has been on Gaza — with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretzwarning this week that settlers have been given “free rein”.
A small window into the impunity granted to settlers as they wage their campaign of violence to depopulate Palestinian communities was highlighted at the weekend, when B’Tselem released footage of a Palestinian activist, Awdah Hathaleen, inadvertently filming his own killing.
Extremist settler Yinon Levi was released on grounds of self-defence, even though the video shows him singling out Hathaleen from afar, taking aim and shooting.
Alibi gone It is noticeable that, having stopped making reference to Palestinian statehood for many years, Western leaders have revived their interest only now — as Israel is making a two-state solution unrealisable.
That was graphically illustrated by footage broadcast this month by ITV. Shot from an aid plane, it showed the wholesale destruction of Gaza — its homes, schools, hospitals, universities, bakeries, shops, mosques and churches gone.
Apocalyptic scenes in Gaza Video: ITV News
Gaza is in ruins. Its reconstruction will take decades. Occupied East Jerusalem and its holy sites were long ago seized and Judaised by Israel, with Western assent.
Suddenly, Western capitals are noticing that the last remnants of the proposed Palestinian state are about to be swallowed whole by Israel, too. Germany recently warned Israel that it must not take “any further steps toward annexing the West Bank”.
US President Donald Trump is on his own path. But this is the moment when other major Western powers — led by France, Britain and Canada — have started threatening to recognise a Palestinian state, even as the possibility of such a state has been obliterated by Israel.
Australia announced it would join them this week after its foreign minister, a few days earlier, said the quiet part out loud, warning: “There is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise if the international community don’t move to create that pathway to a two-state solution.”
That is something they dare not countenance, because with it goes their alibi for supporting all these years the apartheid state of Israel, now deep into the final stages of a genocide in Gaza.
That was why British Prime Minister Keir Starmer desperately switched tack recently. Instead of dangling recognition of Palestinian statehood as a carrot encouraging Palestinians to be more obedient — British policy for decades — he wielded it as a threat, and a largely hollow one, against Israel.
He would recognise a Palestinian state if Israel refused to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and proceeded with the West Bank’s annexation. In other words, Starmer backed recognising a state of Palestine – after Israel has gone ahead with its complete erasure.
Extracting concessions Still, France and Britain’s recognition threat is not simply too late. It serves two other purposes.
Firstly, it provides a new alibi for inaction. There are plenty of far more effective ways for the West to halt Israel’s genocide. Western capitals could embargo arms sales, stop intelligence sharing, impose economic sanctions, sever ties with Israeli institutions, expel Israeli ambassadors, and downgrade diplomatic relations. They are choosing to do none of those things.
And secondly, recognition is designed to extract from the Palestinians “concessions” that will make them even more vulnerable to Israeli violence.
According to France’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot: “Recognising a State of Palestine today means standing with the Palestinians who have chosen non-violence, who have renounced terrorism, and are prepared to recognise Israel.”
In other words, in the West’s view, the “good Palestinians” are those who recognise and lay down before the state committing genocide against them.
Western leaders have long envisioned a Palestinian state only on condition that it is demilitarised. Recognition this time is premised on Hamas agreeing to disarm and its departure from Gaza, leaving Abbas to take on the enclave and presumably continue the “sacred” mission of “cooperating” with a genocidal Israeli army.
As part of the price for recognition, all 22 members of the Arab League publicly condemned Hamas and demanded its removal from Gaza.
Boot on Gaza’s neck How does all of this fit with Netanyahu’s “ground offensive”? Israel isn’t “taking over” Gaza, as he claims. Its boot has been on the enclave’s neck for decades.
While Western capitals contemplate a two-state solution, Israel is preparing a final mass ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.
Starmer’s government, for one, knew this was coming. Flight data shows that the UK has been constantly operating surveillance missions over Gaza on Israel’s behalf from the Royal Air Force base Akrotiri on Cyprus. Downing Street has been following the enclave’s erasure step by step.
Netanyahu’s plan is to encircle, besiege and bomb the last remaining populated areas in northern and central Gaza, and drive Palestinians towards a giant holding pen — misnamed a “humanitarian city” — alongside the enclave’s short border with Egypt. Israel will then probably employ the same contractors it has been using elsewhere in Gaza to go street to street to bulldoze or blow up any surviving buildings.
The next stage, given the trajectory of the last two years, is not difficult to predict. Locked up in their dystopian “humanitarian city”, the people of Gaza will continue to be starved and bombed whenever Israel claims it has identified a Hamas fighter in their midst, until Egypt or other Arab states can be persuaded to take them in, as a further “humanitarian” gesture.
Then, the only matter to be settled will be what happens to the real estate: build some version of Trump’s gleaming “Riviera” scheme, or construct another tawdry patchwork of Jewish settlements of the kind envisioned by Netanyahu’s openly fascist allies, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.
There is a well-established template to be drawn on, one that was used in 1948 during Israel’s violent creation. Palestinians were driven from their cities and villages, in what was then called Palestine, across the borders into neighbouring states. The new state of Israel, backed by Western powers, then set about methodically destroying every home in those hundreds of villages.
Over subsequent years, they were landscaped either with forests or exclusive Jewish communities, often engaged in farming, to make Palestinian return impossible and stifle any memory of Israel’s crimes. Generations of Western politicians, intellectuals and cultural figures have celebrated all of this.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Austrian President Heinz Fischer are among those who went to Israel in their youth to work on these farming communities. Most came back as emissaries for a Jewish state built on the ruins of a Palestinian homeland.
An emptied Gaza can be similarly re-landscaped. But it is much harder to imagine that this time the world will forget or forgive the crimes committed by Israel — or those who enabled them.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published Middle East Eye and republished from the author’s blog with permission.
New Caledonia’s pro-independence front, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), has formally confirmed its “block rejection” of the French-sponsored Bougival project, signed last month.
The pact has been presented as an agreement between all parties to serve as a guide for the French Pacific territory’s political future.
This follows the FLNKS’s extraordinary congress held at the weekend in Mont-Dore, near Nouméa.
Statements made yesterday confirmed the pro-independence umbrella’s unanimous rejection of the document.
At the weekend congress, FLNKS president Christian Téin (speaking via telephone from mainland France), had called on FLNKS to “clearly and unequivocally” reject the Bougival document.
He said the document demonstrated “the administrating power’s [France] contempt towards our struggle for recognition as the colonised people”.
However, he called on the FLNKS to “remain open to dialogue”, but only focusing on ways to obtain “full sovereignty” after bilateral talks only with the French State, and no longer with the opposing local political parties (who want New Caledonia to remain a part of France).
He mentioned deadlines such as 24 September 2025 and eventually before the end of President Macron’s mandate in April 2027, when French presidential elections are scheduled to take place.
Téin was also part of the August 13 media conference, joining via videoconference, to confirm the FLNKS resolutions made at the weekend.
Apart from reiterating its calendar of events, the FLNKS, in its final document, endorsed the “total and unambiguous rejection” of the French-sponsored document because it was “incompatible” with the right to self-determination and bore a “logic of recolonisation” on the part of France.
The document, labelled “motion of general policy”, also demands that as a result of the rejection of the Bougival document, and since the previous 1998 Nouméa Accord remains in force, provincial elections previously scheduled for no later than November 2025 should now be maintained.
Under the Bougival format, the provincial elections were to be postponed once again to mid-2026.
“This will be a good opportunity to verify the legitimacy of those people who want to discuss the future of the country,” FLNKS member Sylvain Pabouty (head of Dynamique Unitaire Sud-DUS) told reporters.
Signatures on the last page of the now rejected Bougival project for New Caledonia’s political future. Image: Philippe Dunoyer/RNZ
Five FLNKS negotiators demoted As for the five negotiators who initially put their signatures on the document on behalf of FLNKS (including chief negotiator and Union Calédonienne chair Emmanuel Tjibaou), they have been de-missioned and their mandate withdrawn.
“Let this be clear to everyone. This is a block rejection of all that is related to the Bougival project,” FLNKS political bureau member and leader of the Labour party Marie-Pierre Goyetche told local reporters.
“Bougival is behind us, end of the story. The fundamental aim is for our country to access full sovereignty and independence through a decolonisation process within the framework of international law, including the right of the peoples for self-determination.”
She said that the FLNKS would refuse to engage in any aspect of the Bougival document.
Part of this further Bougival engagement is a “drafting committee” suggested by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls aimed at coordinating all documents (including necessary bills, legal and constitutional texts) related to the general agreement signed in July.
Anticipating the FLNKS decision, Minister Valls has already announced he will travel to New Caledonia next week to pursue talks and further “clarify” the spirit of the negotiations that led to the signing.
He said he would not give up and that a failure to go along with the agreed document would be “everyone’s failure”.
The Bougival document envisages a path to more autonomy for New Caledonia, including transferring more powers (such as foreign affairs) from France.
It also proposes to augment its status by creating a “state” of New Caledonia and creating dual French/New Caledonia citizenship.
Still want to talk, but with France only The FLNKS stressed it still wanted to talk to Valls, albeit on their own terms, especially when Valls visits New Caledonia next week.
However, according to the FLNKS motion, this would mean only on one-to-one format (no longer inclusively with the local pro-France parties), with United Nations “technical assistance” and “under the supervision” of the FLNKS president.
The only discussion subjects would then be related to a path to “full sovereignty” and further talks would only take place in New Caledonia.
As for the timeline, the FLNKS motion states that a “Kanaky Agreement” should be signed before September 24, which would open a transitional period to full sovereignty not later than April 2027, in other words “before [French] presidential elections”.
Goyetche also stressed that the FLNKS motion was warning France against “any new attempt to force its way”, as was the case in the days preceding 13 May 2024.
This is when a vote in Parliament to amend the French constitution and change the rules of eligibility for voters at New Caledonia’s local provincial elections triggered deadly and destructive riots that killed 14 people and caused damage worth more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) due to arson and looting.
“It seems as if the French government wants to go through the same hardships again”, Téin was heard saying through his telephone call at the Wednesday conference.
“Don’t make the same mistake again,” Pabouty warned Valls.
In his message posted on social networks on Sunday (August 10), the French minister had blamed those who “refuse the agreement” and who “choose confrontation and let the situation rot”.
Reactivate the mobilisation At the same media conference yesterday, FLNKS officials also called on “all of pro-independence forces to do all in their power to peacefully stop the [French] state’s agenda as agreed in Bougival”.
The FLNKS text, as released yesterday, also “reaffirms that FLNKS remains the only legitimate representative of the Kanak people, to carry its inalienable right to self-determination”.
FLNKS recent changes Téin is the leader of the CCAT (field action coordinating cell), a group set up by Union Calédonienne late in 2023 to protest against the proposed French constitutional amendment to alter voters’ rules of eligibility at local elections.
The protests mainly stemmed from the perception that if the new rules were to come into force, the indigenous Kanaks would find themselves a minority in their own country.
Téin was arrested in June 2024 and was charged for a number of crime-related offences, as well as his alleged involvement in the May 2024 riots.
He was released from jail mid-June 2025 pending his trial and under the condition that he does not return to New Caledonia for the time being.
However, from his prison cell in Mulhouse (northeastern France), Téin was elected president of the FLNKS in absentia in late August 2024.
At the same time, CCAT was admitted as one of the new components of FLNKS, just like a number of other organisations such as the trade union USTKE, the Labour party, and other smaller pro-independence movement groups.
Some groups have joined, others have left Also late August 2024, in a de facto split, the two main moderate pillars of FLNKS — UPM and PALIKA — distanced themselves from the pro-independence UC-dominated platform.
They asked their supporters to stay away from the riot-related violence, which destroyed hundreds of local businesses and cost thousands of jobs.
UPM and PALIKA did not take part in the latest FLNKS meeting at the weekend.
The two moderate pro-independence parties are part of the political groups who also signed the Bougival document and pledged to uphold it, as it is formulated, and keep the “Bougival spirit” in further talks.
The other groups, apart from UPM and PALIKA, are pro-France (Les Loyalistes, Rassemblement-LR, Calédonie Ensemble, and the Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien.
The FLNKS, even though five of their negotiators had also signed the document, has since denounced them and said their representatives had “no mandate” to do sign up.
Reaction from two main pro-France parties Pro-France parties had carefully chosen not to comment on the latest FLNKS moves until they were made public. However, the formal rejection was met by a joint communiqué from Les Loyalistes and Rassemblement-LR.
In a long-winded text, the two outspoken pro-France parties “deplored” what they termed “yet another betrayal”.
They confirmed they would meet Valls along Bougival lines when he visits next week and are now calling on a “bipartisan” committee of those supporting the Bougival text, including parties from all sides, as well as members of the civil society and “experts”.
They maintain that the Bougival document is “the only viable way to pull New Caledonia out of the critical situation in which it finds itself” and the “political balances” it contains “cannot be put into question”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Researcher John Hobbs . . . “So far, our ministers have chosen carefully crafted diplomatic language buried under joint country statements to influence the situation in Gaza.” Image: John Hobbs
So far, our ministers have chosen carefully crafted diplomatic language buried under joint country statements to influence the situation in Gaza, while at the same time protecting relationships with allies, particularly the US.
An example of these was a statement issued last month, in which New Zealand joined a group of 28 “concerned” countries to express horror at the “suffering of civilians in Gaza”, which, it says, “has reached new depths”. The statement calls for the lifting of restrictions on the “flow of aid” and demands “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire.”
Just to be clear, the “flow of aid” is the life-saving food and water that’s needed to prevent the mass starvation of Palestinians as famine driven by Israel deepens.
Demands for a ceasefire have been made on numerous occasions in the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, to no effect.
Failure to sanction Israel
Yet countries like New Zealand fail to sanction Israel for its non-compliance. Indeed, they do worse. These same countries continue to trade with Israel, and a number of them continue to provide weapons and arms.
According to trade data, New Zealand in 2023 imported goods and services of US$191 million from Israel and exported US$16.4 million the other way.
Most recently, New Zealand joined 14 other countries to “express the willingness or the positive consideration of our countries to recognise the State of Palestine, as an essential step towards the two-State solution.”
The statement is heavily caveated by saying that “positive consideration” is one option — so it’s not clear if all, or indeed any, of the countries will end up recognising Palestinian statehood.
By contrast, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has issued a separate statement, saying the UK would recognise the state of Palestine in September if Israel doesn’t agree to a ceasefire.
Starmer’s concern for the starvation of civilians in Gaza hasn’t stopped the UK from sending military arms to Israel. But this is at least a clearer stance than New Zealand has been able to muster.
More than 147 UN member states out of 193 formally recognise Palestinian statehood now.
Level of solidarity
And while recognition of statehood is largely symbolic, it does signal a level of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Inexplicably, New Zealand has been unwilling to take that step, while calling it a future option under “two-state” diplomacy.
New Zealand has trundled out its support of the two-state solution since at least 1993, reinforced by its co-sponsorship, in 2015-16, of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion.
That resolution declared settlements in occupied territories illegal under international law and urged member states to distinguish in its dealings between Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.
Since then, Israel has continued to transfer its citizens to the West Bank and Gaza. More than 750,000 Israeli settlers are now living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — areas where a future Palestinian state would be located.
Meanwhile, New Zealand has failed to take any meaningful action — sanctions or suspension of trade, for example — to implement the requirements of the Security Council resolution. That the government consistently frames its response as supporting a two-state solution beggars belief in light of such inaction.
New Zealand’s refusal to sanction Israel is nothing but shameful.
When foreign affairs minister Winston Peters expressed shock about the “intolerable situation” in Gaza, RNZ asked him whether New Zealand would entertain placing sanctions on Israel. He responded by saying that we are a “long, long way off doing that.”
The genocide in Gaza is happening with the support of countries like New Zealand, through inaction and failure to implement sanctions.
And statements about recognising statehood provide the appearance of supporting an end to the genocide, but change nothing in reality.
John Hobbs has been a career public servant, working in a number of government departments (most recently the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet). He also worked for a number of ministers on secondment from government agencies. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, Otago University. This article was first published by E-Tangata and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.
Anas al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, last Sunday has triggered protests around the world, including journalists in Israel. He left behind a powerful farewell message — his final testament to his people, his family, and the world.
Palestine Chronicle staff
Palestinian journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqea were killed last Sunday in an Israeli bombardment that struck a journalists’ tent near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
Cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal also died in the attack, which was carried out by an Israeli drone. The Israeli army admitted targeting al-Sharif shortly after the strike.
Al-Sharif, 28, from Jabaliya refugee camp, was an award-winning journalist who became a leading global voice from Gaza during the war. He inspired thousands.
Protest and vigils have been held around the world from South Africa’s Cape Town to Manila in the Philippines and London in the UK to honour al-Sharif and his colleagues in condemnation of this targeted murder.
Less than two weeks ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists had warned that his life was in “acute” danger due to repeated threats from an Israeli military spokesperson.
Before his death, al-Sharif prepared a farewell message to be shared if he was killed. His family and colleagues posted it to his social media accounts after the news of his death.
Below is the full English translation of that message.
Anas al-Sharif’s final message “This is my will and my final message.
“If my words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.
“First, peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessings.
“God knows I gave all I had — strength and effort — to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys of Jabaliya refugee camp. My hope was to live long enough to return with my family and loved ones to our original town, Asqalan (al-Majdal), now under occupation.
هذه وصيّتي، ورسالتي الأخيرة.
إن وصلَتكم كلماتي هذه، فاعلموا أن إسرائيل قد نجحت في قتلي وإسكات صوتي.
بداية السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
يعلم الله أنني بذلت كل ما أملك من جهدٍ وقوة، لأكون سندًا وصوتًا لأبناء شعبي، مذ فتحت عيني على الحياة في أزقّة وحارات مخيّم جباليا للاجئين،…
— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) August 10, 2025
“But God’s will came first, and His decree is final.
“I have lived pain in all its details and tasted loss many times. Yet I never stopped telling the truth as it is, without falsification or distortion — so that God may bear witness over those who stayed silent, accepted our killing, and did nothing to stop the massacre our people have endured for more than a year and a half.
“I entrust you with Palestine — the jewel of the Muslim crown and the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people and children, whose pure bodies have been crushed under Israeli bombs and missiles.
Australian journalists protest over the killings. Video: MEAA
“Do not let chains silence you or borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.
“I entrust you with my family: my beloved daughter Sham; my dear son Salah; my mother, whose prayers were my fortress; and my steadfast wife Bayan (Umm Salah), who carried the responsibility in my absence with strength and faith. Stand by them after God.
Two more journalists, Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qaryaq, have been killed in Gaza. These brilliant young reporters were known for their courage and powerful commitment to the truth.
Israel’s strategy is clear: silence the truth by murdering those who report it. They accuse… pic.twitter.com/G0I3xny1IV
“If I die, I die steadfast in my principles. I bear witness that I am content with God’s decree, certain of our meeting, and convinced that what is with God is better and everlasting.
“O God, accept me among the martyrs, forgive me my sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people. Forgive me if I fell short, and pray for me with mercy, for I have kept my pledge and never changed.
“Do not forget Gaza… and do not forget me in your prayers.”
Anas Jamal al-Sharif
April 6, 2025
Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif with his daughter Sham and his son Salah. Image: via social media
