More than 200,000 people took the streets across Australia on Saturday in a national day of action demanding that the Labor government sanctions Israel and stops the two-way arms trade.
It comes after 300,000 people marched, in driving rain, across Sydney Harbour Bridge on August 3 to demand the same.
Palestine solidarity groups across the country are coordinating their plans as Israel’s illegal deliberate starvation policy is delivering its expected results.
Protests were organised in more than 40 cities and towns– a first in nearly two years since the genocidal war began.
At least 50,000 rallied on Gadigal Country/Sydney, 10,000 in Nipaluna/Hobart, 50,000 in Magan-djin/Brisbane, 100,000 in Naarm/Melbourne, 10,000 in Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide, 15,000 in Boorloo/Perth, 600 in the Blue Mountains, 500 in Bathurst, 5000 in Muloobinba/Newcastle, 1600 in Gimuy/Cairns and 700 in Djilang/Geelong.
West Papuan journalist Victor Mambor has vowed not to be silenced despite years of threats, harassment and even a bomb attack on his home.
The 51-year-old founder and editor-in-chief of Jubi, West Papua’s leading media outlet, was in Fiji this week, where he spoke exclusively to The Fiji Times about his fight to expose human rights abuses.
“Despite them bombing my home and office with molotov bombs, I am still doing journalism today because my people are hurting — and I won’t stop,” Mambor said.
A newly established “drafting committee” held its inaugural meeting in Nouméa this week, aiming to translate the Bougival agreement — signed by New Caledonian political parties in Paris last month — into a legal and constitutional form.
However, the first sitting of the committee on Thursday took place without one of the main pro-independence parties, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), which chose to stay out of the talks.
Visiting French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls, who was in New Caledonia until the weekend, met a delegation of the FLNKS on Wednesday for more than two hours to try and convince them to participate.
The FLNKS earlier announced a “block rejection” of the deal signed in Bougival because it regarded the text as “incompatible” with the party’s objectives and a “lure” in terms of self-determination and full sovereignty.
The deal outlines a roadmap for New Caledonia’s political future.
It is a compromise blueprint signed by New Caledonia’s parties from across the political spectrum and provides a vision for a “State” of New Caledonia, a dual French-New Caledonian citizenship, as well as a short-term transfer of such powers as foreign affairs from France to New Caledonia.
Even though FLNKS delegates initially signed the document in Bougival on July 12, their party later denounced the agreement and said its negotiators had no mandate to do so.
On Wednesday, as part of a round-up of talks with most political parties represented at the New Caledonian Congress, Valls held a separate meeting with a new delegation from FLNKS officials in Nouméa, in a last-ditch bid to convince them to take part in the “drafting committee” session.
The draft document for a “State of New Caledonia”. Image: Haut-commissariat de la République en Nouvelle-Calédonie
‘Serene but firm’, says FLNKS The FLNKS described the talks with Valls as “serene but firm”.
The FLNKS is demanding a “Kanaky Agreement” to be concluded before 24 September 2025 and a fully effective sovereignty process to be achieved before the next French Presidential elections in April 2027.
It also wants the provincial elections, initially scheduled to take place no later than November 30, to be maintained at this date, instead of being postponed once again to mid-2026 under the Bougival prescriptions.
But they were nowhere to be seen on Thursday, when the drafting group was installed.
Valls also spoke to New Caledonia’s chiefly (customary) Senate to dispel any misconception that the Bougival deal would be a setback in terms of recognition of the Indigenous Kanak identity and place in New Caledonia.
He said the Bougival pact was a “historic opportunity” for them to seize “because there is no other credible alternative”.
Indigenous recognition
The minister stressed that. even though this Indigenous recognition may be perceived as less emphatic in the Bougival document, the same text also clearly stipulated that all previous agreements and accords, including the 1998 Nouméa Accord which devoted significant chapters to the Kanak issue and recognition, were still fully in force.
And that if needed, amendments could still be made to the Bougival text to make this even more explicit.
The chiefs were present at the opening session of the committee on Thursday.
So was a delegation of mayors of New Caledonia, who expressed deep concerns about New Caledonia’s current situation, 15 months after the riots that broke out in New Caledonia mid-May 2024, causing 14 deaths, more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) in material damages and thousands of jobless due to the destruction of hundreds of businesses.
New Caledonia’s gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have dropped by 10 to 15 percent over the past 15 months.
As part of the post-riot ongoing trauma, New Caledonia is currently facing an acute shortage in the medical sector personnel — many of them have left following security issues related to the riots, gravely affecting the provision of essential and emergency services both in the capital Nouméa and in rural areas.
Participants at New Caledonia’s drafting committee launched at the French High Commission. Image: Haut-commissariat de la République en Nouvelle-Calédonie
Who turned up? Apart from the absent FLNKS, two other significant components of the pro-independence movement, former FLNKS moderate members Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance (UNI), consisting of PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie) were also part of the new drafting committee participants.
UNI leaders said earlier they had signed the Bougival document because they believe even though it does not provide a short-term independence for New Caledonia, this could be gradually achieved in the middle run.
PALIKA and UPM, in a de facto split, distanced themselves from the FLNKS in August 2024 and have since abstained from taking part in the FLNKS political bureau.
On the side of those who wish New Caledonia to remain part of France (pro-France), all of its representative parties, who also signed the Bougival document, were present at the inaugural session of the drafting committee.
This includes Les Loyalistes, Le Rassemblement-LR, Calédonie Ensemble and Wallisian-based “kingmaker” party Eveil Océanien.
After the first session on Thursday, pro-France politicians described the talks as “constructive” on everyone’s part.
New Caledonia’s drafting committee launched at the French High Commission in Nouméa. Image: Haut-commissariat de la République en Nouvelle-Calédonie
‘My door remains wide open’ But there are also concerns as to whether such sessions (the next one is scheduled for Saturday) can viably and credibly carry on without the FLNKS taking part.
“We just can’t force this or try to achieve things without consensus,” Eveil Océanien leader Milakulo Tukumuli told local media on Thursday.
Since Valls arrived in New Caledonia (on his fifth trip since he took office late 2024) this week, he has mentioned the FLNKS issue, saying his door remained “wide open”.
“I am well aware of the FLNKS position. But we have to keep going”, he told the drafting committee on Thursday.
The “drafting” work set in motion will have to focus in formulating, with the help of a team of French officials (legalists and constitutionalists), a series of documents which all trickle down from the Bougival general agreement so as to translate it in relevant and appropriate terms.
Pro-France leaders Sonia Backès and Nicolas Metzdorf at New Caledonia’s drafting committee launch. Image: Haut-commissariat de la République en Nouvelle-Calédonie
Some of the most urgent steps to be taken include formalising the postponement of the provincial elections to mid-2026, in the form of an “organic law”.
Among other things, the “organic law” is supposed to define the way that key powers should be transferred from France to New Caledonia, including following a vote by the local Congress with a required majority of 36 MPs (over two thirds), the rules on the exercise of the power of foreign affairs “while respecting France’s international commitments and fundamental interests”
Tabled in French Parliament
The text would be tabled to the French Parliament for approval, first before the Senate’s Law Committee on 17 September 2025 and then for debate on 23 September 2025. It would also need to follow a similar process before the other Parliament chamber, the National Assembly, before it can be finally endorsed by December 2025.
And before that, the French State Council is also supposed to rule on the conformity of the Constitutional Amendment Bill and whether it can be tabled before a Cabinet meeting on 17 September 2025.
Another crucial text to be drafted is a Constitutional amendment Bill that would modify the description of New Caledonia, wherever it occurs in the French Constitution (mostly in its Title XIII), into the “State of New Caledonia”.
The modification would translate the concepts described in the Bougival Agreement but would not cancel any previous contents from the 1998 Nouméa Accord, especially in relation to its Preamble in terms of “founding principles related to the Kanak identity and (New Caledonia’s) economic and social development”.
In the same spirit, every paragraph of the Nouméa Accord which does not contradict the Bougival text would remain fully valid.
The new Constitutional amendment project is also making provisions for a referendum to be held in New Caledonia no later than 28 February 2026, when the local population will be asked to endorse the Bougival text.
Another relevant instrument to be formulated is the “Fundamental Law” for New Caledonia, to be later endorsed by New Caledonia’s local Congress.
The “Fundamental Law”, a de facto Constitution, is supposed to focus on such notions and definitions as New Caledonia “identity signs” (flag, anthem, motto), a “charter of New Caledonia values, as well as the rules of eligibility to acquire New Caledonia’s nationality and a “Code of Citizenship”.
Valls said he was aware the time frame for all these texts was “constrained”, but that it was a matter of “urgency”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Two New Zealand Palestinians, Rana Hamida and Youssef Sammour, left Auckland today to join the massive new Global Sumud Flotilla determined to break Israel’s starvation blockade of the besieged enclave. Here, two journalists report on the Asia-Pacific stake in the initiative.
Ellie Aben in Manila and Sheany Yasuko Lai in Jakarta
Asia-Pacific activists are preparing to set sail with the Global Sumud Flotilla, an international fleet from 44 countries aiming to reach Gaza by sea to break Israel’s blockade of food and medical aid.
They have banded together under the Sumud Nusantara initiative, a coalition of activists from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan, to join the global flotilla movement that will begin launching convoys from August 31.
Sumud Nusantara is part of the GSF, a coordinated, nonviolent fleet comprising mostly small vessels carrying humanitarian aid, which will first leave Spanish ports for the Gaza Strip, followed by more convoys from Tunisia and other countries in early September.
The international coalition is set to become the largest coordinated civilian maritime mission ever undertaken to Gaza.
“This movement comes at a very crucial time, as we know how things are in Gaza with the lack of food entering the strip that they are not only suffering from the impacts of war but also from starvation,” Indonesian journalist Nurhadis said ahead of his trip.
“Israel is using starvation as a weapon to wipe out Palestinians in Gaza. This is why we continue to state that what Israel is doing is genocide.”
Since October 2023, Israel has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians and injured over 157,000 more.
Gaza famine declared
As Tel Aviv continued to systematically obstruct food and aid from entering the enclave, a UN-backed global hunger monitor — the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification — declared famine in Gaza on Friday, estimating that more than 514,000 people are suffering from it.
Nurhadis is part of a group of activists from across Indonesia joining the GSF, which aims to “break Israel’s illegal blockade and draw attention to international complicity in the face of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.”
“We continue to try through this Global Sumud Flotilla action, hoping that the entire world, whether it’s governments or the people and other members of society, will pressure Israel to open its blockade in Palestine,” he said.
“This is just beyond the threshold of humanity. Israel is not treating Palestinians in Gaza as human beings and the world must not keep silent. This is what we are trying to highlight with this global convoy.”
The GSF is a people-powered movement that aims to help end the genocide in Gaza, said Rifa Berliana Arifin, Indonesia country director for the Sumud Nusantara initiative and executive committee member of the Jakarta-based Aqsa Working Group.
“Indonesia is participating because this is a huge movement. A movement that aspires to resolve and end the blockade through non-traditional means.
“We’ve seen how ineffective diplomatic, political approaches have been, because the genocide in Gaza has yet to end.
‘People power’ movement
“This people-power movement is aimed at putting an end to that,” Arifin said.
“This is a non-violent mission . . . Even though they are headed to Gaza, they are boarding boats that have no weapons . . . They are simply bringing themselves . . . for the world to see.”
As the Sumud Nusantara initiative is led by Malaysia, activists were gathering this weekend in Kuala Lumpur, where a ceremonial send-off for the regional convoy is scheduled to take place on Sunday, led by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
One of them is Philippine activist Drieza Lininding, leader of civil society group Moro Consensus Group, who is hoping that the Global Sumud Flotilla will inspire others in the Catholic-majority nation to show their support for Palestine.
“We are appealing to all our Filipino brothers and sisters, Muslims or Christians, to support the Palestinian cause because this issue is not only about religion, but also about humanity. Gaza has now become the moral compass of the world,” he said.
“Everybody is seeing the genocide and the starvation happening in Gaza, and you don’t need to be a Muslim to side with the Palestinians.
“It is very clear: if you want to be on the right side of history, support all programmes and activities to free Palestine . . . It is very important that as Filipinos we show our solidarity.”
So here we are, 2025, and Israel has finally achieved what no terrorist group, no hostile neighbour, no antisemitic tyrant ever could: it has become the most dangerous country on earth — for its own people.
Not because of rockets or boycotts, but because its government has decided that the only way to secure the future is to annihilate everyone else’s.
The Zionist project — once sold as a miraculous refuge for a persecuted people — now stands revealed as a 70‑year experiment in ethnic cleansing, wrapped in biblical entitlement and armed with American money.
The current phase? Bulldozers in the West Bank, tanks in Gaza, and a prime minister whose personal survival depends on keeping his citizens permanently terrified and morally anesthetised.
Netanyahu and his coalition of zealots have at last clarified Israel’s mission statement: kill or expel two million Palestinians, and call it “security.”
Reduce Gaza to rubble, herd the survivors into tents, and then — here’s the punchline — offer them “resettlement packages” in Libya or South Sudan, as though genocide could be rebranded as humanitarian outsourcing.
And the world? Still dithering over whether to call this behaviour “problematic.” As if sanctions and isolation are reserved only for the unlucky states without lobbyists in Washington or friends in European parliaments.
Israel is begging to be treated as a pariah, but we keep dressing it up as a partner.
The most awkward truth of all: Jews in the diaspora now face a choice. Condemn this grotesque betrayal of Jewish history, or keep defending the indefensible until Israel itself becomes the nightmare prophecy it was meant to escape.
Richard David Hames is an American philosopher-activist, strategic adviser, entrepreneur and mentor and he publishes The Hames Report on Substack.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Three media spokespeople addressed the 98th week of New Zealand solidarity rallies for Palestine in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland today, criticising the quality of news reporting about the world’s biggest genocide crisis this century.
Speakers at other locations around the country also condemned what they said was biased media coverage.
The critics said they were affirming their humanity in solidarity with the people of Palestine as the United Nations this week officially declared a man-made famine in Gaza because of Israel’s weaponisation of starvation against the besieged enclave with 2 million population.
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 22 months of conflict – mostly women and children.
One of the major criticisms was that the New Zealand media has consistently framed the series of massacres as a “war” between Israel and Hamas instead of a military land grab based on ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The first speaker, Mick Hall, a former news agency journalist who is currently an independent political columnist, said the way news media had covered these crimes had “undoubtedly affected public opinion”.
“As Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza devolved into a full-blown genocide, our media continued to frame Israel’s attack on Gaza as a war against Hamas, while they uncritically recorded Western leaders’ claims that Israel was exercising a ‘right of self-defence’,” he said.
NZ media lacking context
New Zealand news outlets continued to “present an ahistorical account of what has transpired since October 7, shorn of context, ignoring Israel’s history of occupation, of colonial violence against the Palestinian people”.
“An implicit understanding that violence and ethnic cleansing forms part of the organisational DNA of Zionism should have shaped how news stories were framed and presented over the past 22 months.
Independent journalist Mick Hall speaking at today’s rally . . . newsrooms “failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.”
“Instead, newsroom leaders took their lead from our politicians, from the foreign policy positions from those in Washington and other aligned centres of power.”
Hall said newsrooms had not taken a “neutral position” — “nor are they attempting to keep us informed in any meaningful sense”.
“They failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.
“By wilfully declining to adjudicate between contested claims of Israel and its victims, they failed to meet the informational needs of democratic citizenship in a most profound way.
“They lowered the standard of news, instead of upholding it, as they so sanctimoniously tell us.”
Evans slams media ‘apologists’
Award-winning New Zealand cartoonist Malcolm Evans congratulated the crowd of about 300 protesters for “being on the right side of history”.
“As we remember more than 240 journalists, camera and media people, murdered, assassinated, by Zionist Israel — who they were and the principles they stood for we should not forget our own media,” he said.
Cartoonist and commentator Malcolm Evans . . . “It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
“The media which, contrary to the principles they claim to stand for, tried to tell us Zionist Israeli genocide was justified.”
“Whatever your understanding of the conflict in Palestine, which has brought you here today and for these past many months, it won’t have come first from the mainstream media.
“It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.
“The reporters whose witness to Zionist Israel’s war crimes sparked your outrage were not from the ranks of Western media apologists.”
Describing the mainstream media as “pimps for propaganda”, Evans said that in any “decent world” he would not be standing there — instead the New Zealand journalists organisation would be, “expressing solidarity with their murdered Middle Eastern colleagues”.
Palestinian journalists owed debt
David Robie, author and editor of Asia Pacific Report, said the world owed a huge debt to the Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
“Although global media freedom groups have conflicting death toll numbers, it is generally accepted that more than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed — many of them deliberately targeted by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force], even killing their families as well.”
Journalist and author Dr David Robie . . . condemned New Zealand media for republishing some of the Israeli “counter-narratives” without question. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Dr Robie stressed that the Palestinian journalist death toll had eclipsed that of the combined media deaths of the American Civil War, First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cambodian War, Yugoslavia Wars, Afghan War, and the ongoing Ukraine War.
“The Palestinian death toll of journalists is greater than the combined death toll of all these other wars,” he said. “This is shocking and shameful.”
He pointed out that when Palestinian reporter Anas al-Sharif was assassinated on August 10, his entire television crew was also wiped out ahead of the Israeli invasion of Gaza City — “eliminating the witnesses, that’s what Israel does”.
Six journalists died that day in an air strike, four of them from Al Jazeera, which is banned in Israel.
Dr Robie also referred to “disturbing reports” about the existence of an IDF military unit — the so-called “legitimisation cell” — tasked with smearing and targeting journalists in Gaza with fake information.
He condemned the New Zealand media for republishing some of these “counter-narratives” without question.
“This is shameful because news editors know that they are dealing with an Israeli government with a history of lying and disinformation; a government that is on trial with the International Court of Justice for ‘plausible genocide’; and a prime minister wanted on an International Criminal Court arrest warrant to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said.
“Why would you treat this government as a credible source without scrutiny?”
Mock media cemetery
The protest included a mock pavement cemetery with about 20 “bodies” of murdered journalists and blue “press” protective vests, and placards declaring “Killing journalists is killing the truth”, “Genocide: Zionism’s final solution” and “Zionism shames Jewish tradition”.
The demonstrators marched around Te Komititanga Square, pausing at strategic moments as Palestinians read out the names of the hundreds of killed Gazan journalists to pay tribute to their courage and sacrifice.
Author and journalist Saige England . . . “The truth is of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon.” Image: Claire Coveney/APR
In Ōtautahi Christchurch today, one of the speakers at the Palestine solidarity rally there was author and journalist Saige England, who called on journalists to “speak the truth on Gaza”.
“The truth of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon — slow starvation, mutilation by hunger,” she said.
“The truth is a statement by Israel that journalists are ‘the enemy’. Israel says journalists are the enemy, what does that tell you?
“Why? Because it has carried out invasions, apartheid and genocide for decades.”
Some of the mock bodies today representing the slaughtered Gazan journalists with Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif in the forefront. Image: APR
Family and community members are mourning 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a father and grandfather from Guatemala who died while attempting to escape an anti-immigrant raid at a Home Depot in California last week. Montoya, a day laborer who had lived and worked in the United States for about three years, was struck and killed by a car while fleeing across a nearby freeway. Democracy Now! speaks with Montoya’s wife and daughter, Ana María Vásquez and Ana Victoria Montoya, at their home in Guatemala. “We want people to remember my dad in the same way we will remember him: as a loving, respectful, brave man,” says Ana Victoria. “He died because of these injustices, this persecution.”
At least two men have now died while attempting to flee the Trump administration’s massive expansion of federal immigration enforcement. Authorities have yet to confirm which agencies or groups were behind the raid. “If it was indeed a fact that Roberto Carlos was being chased by an individual into the highway, the community, the family, needs to know the truth. We need to, most of all, bring justice,” says Pablo Alvarado, the co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. NDLON is calling on Home Depot to release any video footage it has, and demanding an immediate and full investigation of the events that led to Montoya’s death.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Protesters in their thousands have been taking to the streets in Aotearoa New Zealand demonstrating in solidarity with Palestine and against genocide for the past 97 weeks.
Yet rarely have the protests across the motu made headlines — or even the news for that matter — unlike the larger demonstrations in many countries around the world.
At times the New Zealand news media themselves have been the target over what is often claimed to be “biased reportage lacking context”. Yet even protests against media, especially public broadcasters, on their doorstep have been ignored.
Reporters have not even engaged, let alone reported the protests.
Last weekend, this abruptly changed with two television crews on hand in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland days after six Palestinian journalists — four Al Jazeera correspondents and cameramen, including the celebrated Anas al-Shifa, plus two other reporters were assassinated by the Israeli military in targeted killings.
With the Gaza Media Office confirming a death toll of almost 270 journalists since October 2023 — more than the combined killings of journalists in both World Wars, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Afghan wars — a growing awareness of the war was hitting home.
After silence about the killing of journalists for the past 22 months, New Zealand this week signed a joint statement by 27 nations for the Media Freedom Coalition belatedly calling on Israel to open up access to foreign media and to offer protection for journalists in Gaza “in light of the unfolding catastrophe”.
Sydney Harbour Bridge factor
Another factor in renewed media interest has probably been the massive March for Humanity on Sydney Harbour Bridge with about 300,000 people taking part on August 3.
One independent New Zealand journalist who has been based in the West Bank for two periods during the Israeli war on Gaza – last year for two months and again this year – is unimpressed with the reportage.
Why? Video and photojournalist Cole Martin from Ōtautahi Christchurch believes there is a serious lack of understanding in New Zealand media of the context of the structural and institutional violence towards the Palestinians.
“It is a media scene in Aotearoa that repeats very harmful and inaccurate narratives,” Martin says.
“Also, there is this idea to be unbiased and neutral in a conflict, both perspectives must have equal legitimacy.”
As a 26-year-old photojournalist, Cole has packed in a lot of experience in his early career, having worked two years for World Vision, meeting South Sudanese refugees in Uganda who had fled civil war. He shared their stories in Aotearoa.
“New Zealand must move beyond empty statements on Gaza” . . . says Cole Martin. Image: The Spinoff screenshot
‘Struggle of the oppressed’
This taught him to put “the struggle of the oppressed and marginalised” at the heart of his storytelling.
Cole studied for a screen and television degree at NZ Broadcasting School, which led to employment with the news team at Whakaata Māori, then a video journalist role with the Otago Daily Times.
He first visited Palestine in early 2019, “seeing the occupation and injustice with my own eyes”. After the struggle re-entered the news cycle in October 2023, he recognised that as a journalist with first-hand contextual knowledge and connections on the ground he was in a unique position to ensure Palestinian voices were heard.
Cole spent two months in the West Bank last year and then gained a grant to study Arabic “which allowed me to return longer-term as New Zealand’s only journalist on the ground”.
“Yes, there are competing narratives,’ he admits, “but the reality on the ground is that if you engage with this in good faith and truth, one of those narratives has a lot more legitimacy than the other.”
Martin says that New Zealand media have failed to recognise this reality through a “mix of ignorance and bias”.
“They haven’t been fair and honest, but they think they have,” he says.
Hesitancy to engage
He argues that the hesitancy to engage with the Palestinian media, Palestinian journalists and Palestinian sources on the ground “springs from the idea that to be Palestinian you are inherently biased”.
“In the same way that being Māori means you are biased,” he says.
“Your world view shapes your experiences. If you are living under a system of occupation and domination, or seeing that first hand, it would be wrong and immoral to talk about it in a way that is misleading, the same way that I cannot water down what I am reporting from here.
“It’s the reality of what I see here, I am not going to water it down with a sort of ‘bothsideism’.”
Martin says the media in New Zealand tend to cover the tragic war which has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians so far — most of them women and children — “like we would cover an everyday story of Miss Jones fetching a cat from the tree.”
“This war is treated as a one-off event without putting it in the context of 76 years of occupation and domination by Israel and without actually challenging some of these narratives, without providing the context of why, and centring it on the violations of international law.”
It is a very serious failure and not just in the way things have been reported, but in the way editors source stories given the heavy dependency in New Zealand media on international media that themselves have been persistently and strongly criticised for institutional bias — such as the BBC, CNN, The New York Times and the Associated Press news agency, which all operate from news bureaux inside Israel.
“Firsthand view of peacemaking challenge in the ‘Holy Land’.” Image: Asia Pacific Report screenshot
‘No independent journalism’
“I have heard from editors that I have reached out to who have basically said, ‘No, we’re not going to publish any independent or freelance work because we depend on syndicated sources like BBC, CNN and Associated Press’.
“Which means that they are publishing news that doesn’t have a relevant New Zealand connection. Usually this is what local media need, a NZ connection, yet they will publish work from the BBC, CNN and Associated Press that has no relevance to New Zealand, or doesn’t highlight what is relevant to NZ so far as our government in action.
“And I think that is our big failure, our media has not held our government to account by asking the questions that need to be asked, in spite of the fact that those questions are easily accessed.”
Expanding on this, Martin suggests talking to people in the community that are taking part in the large protests weekly, consistently.
“Why are they doing this? Why are they giving so much of their time to protest against what Israel is doing, highlighting these justices? And yet the media has failed to engage with them in good faith,” he says.
“The media has demonised them in many ways and they kind of create gestures like what Stuff have done, like asking them to write in their opinions.
“Maybe it is well intentioned, maybe it isn’t. It opens the space to kind of more ‘equal platforming’ of very unequal narratives.
“Like we give the same airtime to the spokespeople of an army that is carrying out genocide as we are giving to the people who are facing the genocide.”
Robert Fisk on media balance and the Middle East. Video: Pacific Media Centre
’50/50 journalism’
The late journalist Robert Fisk, the Beirut-based expert on the Middle East writing for The Independent and the prolific author of many books including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, described this phenomena as “50/50 journalism” and warned how damaging it could be.
Among many examples he gave in a 2008 visit to New Zealand, Fisk said journalists should not give “equal time” to the SS guards at the concentration camp, they should be talking to the survivors. Journalists ought to be objective and unbiased — “on the side of those who suffer”.
“They always publish Israel says, ‘dee-dah-de-dah’. That’s not reporting, reporting is finding out what is actually going on on the ground. That’s what BBC and CNN do. Report what they say, not what’s going on. I think they are very limited in terms of how they report the structural stuff,” says Martin.
“CNN, BBC and Associated Press have their place for getting immediate, urgent news out, but I am quite frustrated as the only New Zealand journalist based in the occupied West Bank or on the ground here.
“How little interest media have shown in pieces from here. Even with a full piece, free of charge, they will still find excuses not to publish, which is hard to push back on as a freelancer because ultimately it is their choice, they are the editors.
“I cannot demand that they publish my work, but it begs the question if I was a New Zealand journalist on the ground reporting from Ukraine, there would be a very different response in their eagerness to publish, or platform, what I am sharing.
“Particularly as a video and photojournalist, it is very frustrating because everything I write about is documented, I am showing it.
NZ journalist documents Palestinian life in the West Bank. Image: NZH screenshot
‘Showing with photos’
“It’s not stuff that is hearsay. I am showing them with all these photos and yet still they are reluctant to publish my work. And I think that translates into reluctance to publish anything with a Palestinian perspective. They think it is very complex and difficult to get in touch with Palestinians.
“They don’t know whether they can really trust their voices. The reality is, of course they can trust their voices. Palestinian journalists are the only journalists able to get into Gaza [and on the West Bank on the ground here].
“If people have a problem with that, if Israel has a problem with that, then they should let the international press in.”
Pointing the finger at the failure of Middle East coverage isn’t easy, Martin says. But one factor is that the generations who make the editorial decisions have a “biased view”.
“Journalists who have been here have not been independent, they have been taken here, accompanied by soldiers, on a tailored tour. This is instead of going off the tourist trail, off the media trail, seeing the realities that communities are facing here, engaging in good faith with Palestinian communities here, seeing the structural violence, drawing the connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in the West Bank — and not just the Israeli sources,” Martin says.
“And listening to the human rights organisations, the academics and the experts, and the humanitarian organisations who are all saying that this is a genocide, structural violence . . . the media still fails to frame it in that way.
‘Complete failure’
“It still fails to provide adequate context that this is very structural, very institutional — and it’s wrong.
“It’s a complete failure and it is very frustrating to be here as a journalist on the ground trying to do a good job, trying to redeem this failure in journalism.”
“Having the cover on the ground here and yet there is no interest. Editors have come back to me and said, ‘we can’t publish this piece because the subject matter is “too controversial”. It’s unbelievable that we are explicitly ignoring stories that are relevant because it is ‘controversial’. It’s just an utter failure of journalism.
“As the Fourth Estate, they have utterly failed to hold the government to account for inaction. They are not asking the right questions.
“I have had other editors who have said, ‘Oh, we’re relying on syndicated sources’. That’s our position. Or, we don’t have enough money.
That’s true, New Zealand media has a funding shortage, and journalists have been let go.
“But the truth is if they really want the story, they would find the funding.
Reach out to Palestinians
“If they actually cared, they would reach out to the journalists on the ground, reach out to the Palestinians. The reality is that they don’t care enough to be actually doing those things.
“I think that there is a shift, that they are beginning to respond more and more. But they are well behind the game, they have been complicit in anti-Arab narratives, and giving a platform to genocidal narratives from the Israeli government and government leaders without questioning, without challenging and without holding our government to account.
“The New Zealand government has been very pro-Israel, driven to side with America.
“They need to do better urgently, before somebody takes them to the International Criminal Court for complicity.”
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Shahed Ghoreishi was fired from his position as a press officer for Israeli-Palestinian affairs at the U.S. State Department earlier this week. While no official explanation was given, Ghoreishi was involved in multiple departmental disputes over how to characterize U.S. positions on Israel’s forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the killings of Palestinian journalists. In a TV broadcast exclusive, Ghoreishi speaks to Democracy Now! about his firing and what it may tell us about the Trump administration’s future policy in Israel and Palestine.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Shahed Ghoreishi was fired from his position as a press officer for Israeli-Palestinian affairs at the U.S. State Department earlier this week. While no official explanation was given, Ghoreishi was involved in multiple departmental disputes over how to characterize U.S. positions on Israel’s forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the killings of Palestinian journalists. In a TV broadcast exclusive, Ghoreishi speaks to Democracy Now! about his firing and what it may tell us about the Trump administration’s future policy in Israel and Palestine.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Democrats and Republicans are locked in a historic battle over congressional representation as Texas Republicans gerrymander the state’s district maps to flip five Democratic seats, at the request of President Trump. California Governor Gavin Newsom says he is fighting “fire with fire,” signing legislation to hold special elections for the public to approve a new gerrymandered map of their own. David Daley, a voting rights expert and the author of Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections, calls this a “gerrymandering Armageddon” that threatens to spread nationwide. “Donald Trump does not want to have an election fair and square,” says Texas state legislator Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat representing San Antonio. “He wants to be the 'commander-in-cheat.' He wants to cheat on America, cheat on democracy, steal these congressional seats.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
As President Trump calls for a “comprehensive review” of eight Smithsonian museums, we feature our 2020 interview with Lonnie G. Bunch III, the head of the Smithsonian. Amy Goodman interviewed him in Washington shortly after the publication of his book, A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Support for Nigel Farage’s Reform party among 18-24s has fallen to just 7% in the most recent YouGov voting intention survey. Compare that to 4 August where 21% of young people told YouGov they would vote for the far right party. That’s a drop of 66% in under two weeks.
Farage collapse could benefit Corbyn
It seems more of the youth are wising up to Farage, who has been branded a “con artist”. The fall in support for Farage could benefit Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new left party, which has already reached 750,000 sign ups. Among 18-24 year olds, Corbyn has an approval rating of +18, while Keir Starmer has one of -30.
When it comes to the issues, young people see the economy as by far the most important. As of July 2025, they also view housing and health as more important than immigration, in a blow to Farage.
Farage vs Corbyn: issues that matter to young people
Farage’s policies on the economy are to rig it even further in favour of the already rich. In the 2024 election, he pledged to raise the inheritance tax threshold to estates worth £2m or over. This would mean millionaires can hand over their wealth tax free to people who haven’t earned it, instead of it funding public programmes to help working people.
Corbyn and Sultana’s new party will have members decide its policies at the founding conference. But public ownership of essentials is a uniting policy among its supporters, which would bring down costs for every person and business in the country. This is an economic strategy that would have huge benefits.
Further, Reform is unlikely to do anything about the housing crisis. Reform’s Treasurer is billionaire property developer Nick Candy. This is a man who has made a fortune off the artificially and financially inflated housing market. Reform MP Richard Tice is also heavily invested in property and the commercialisation of the housing essential. Whereas, Corbyn has said the very first thing he would’ve done as prime minister is end homelessness.
Flush out the issues
When it comes to health, in January, Farage toldLBC that he was “open to anything” when it comes to an insurance based model of healthcare. This follows his previous comments at a UKIP (his former party) meeting in East Sussex, where he said:
I think we’re going to have to think about healthcare very, very differently. I think we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare. Frankly, I would feel more comfortable that my money would return value if I was able to do that through the market place of an insurance company than just us trustingly giving £100bn a year to central government and expecting them to organise the healthcare service from cradle to grave for us.
Meanwhile, Corbyn and Sultana are fully committed to an 100% public NHS through ending outsourcing.
Once these issues are flushed out, the new left party may find tonnes of young people joining them.
As Israel expands its relationships with Pacific Island nations, an activist is criticising the region for its “dreadful response” to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rooted in the 1948 Nakba and decades of seized land and expelled indigenous people, escalated after Hamas’ attacks on 7 October 2023.
Since then, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health officials.
John Minto, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). says the Pacific has failed to show adequate support to Palestine and should be “ashamed”.
In an interview with William Terite on Radio 531pi Pacific Mornings, Minto said the Pacific was one of the few areas in the world where support for the Palestinians was diminishing.
“I think this is a real tragedy,” he said.
“They are coming under pressure from the US and from Israel to try and bolster support for Israel at the United Nations. For this part of the world, that’s something we should be ashamed of.”
Minto said several island countries, including Fiji, Nauru, Palau, and Tonga, had refused to recognise Palestinian statehood. But bigger Pacific nations like Papua New Guinea — and Fiji — had recently established an embassy in Jerusalem.
Fiji and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1970 and have developed partnerships in security, peacekeeping, agriculture, and climate change.
Watch John Minto’s full interview
In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced its commitment to diplomacy in the Pacific.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel will lead a delegation to the Pacific to discuss strengthening Israel-Pacific relations.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape (left) and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on 6 September 2023. Image: Israeli Prime Minister’s Office
In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced its commitment to diplomacy in the Pacific.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel will lead a delegation to the Pacific to discuss strengthening Israel-Pacific relations.
The Pacific region has been one of Israel’s strategic development partners, through numerous projects and training programmes led by MASHAV, Israel’s International Development Agency,” the statement read.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka (left) and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu met in 2023. Image: Fiji Government
“This forthcoming visit, and the broader diplomatic effort accompanying it, reflects Israel’s profound appreciation for the Pacific Island states and underscores Israel’s commitment to strengthening cooperation with them.”
Minto highlighted the irony in the support for Israel from small Pacific nations, given their reliance on principles of international law in view of their own vulnerability.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of things that happen behind closed doors that should be happening out in the public,” he told Terite.
“The people of Sāmoa, Tonga, Fiji should be involved in developing their foreign policy. I think if they were, then we would have much stronger support for Palestine.”
Republished from Pacific Media Network (PMN) with permission.
Exiled West Papuan media are calling for Fiji — in a reflection of Melanesian solidarity — to hold the greater Pacific region to account and stand against Indonesia’s ongoing media blackout in addition to its human rights abuses.
The leaders in their field which include two Papuans from Indonesia’s occupied provinces have visited the Pacific country to forge media partnerships, university collaboration and joint advocacy for West Papua self-determination.
They were speaking after the screening of a new documentary film, Pepera 1969: A Democratic Integration, was screened at The University of the South Pacific in Fiji.
The documentary is based on the controversial plebiscite 56 years ago when 1025 handpicked Papuan electors, which were directly chosen by the Indonesian military out of its 800,000 citizens, were claimed to have voted unanimously in favour of Indonesian control of Western New Guinea.
Victor Mambor — a co-founder of Jubi Media Papua — in West Papua; Yuliana Lantipo, one of its senior journalists and editor; and Dandhy Laksono, a Jakarta-based investigative filmmaker; shared their personal experiences of reporting from inside arguably the most heavily militarised and censored region in the Pacific.
“We are here to build bridges with our brothers and sisters in the Pacific,” Mambor told the USP media audience.
Their story of the Papuan territory comes after Dutch colonialists who had seized Western New Guinea, handed control of the East Indies back to the Indonesians in 1949 before The Netherlands eventually withdrew from Papuan territory in 1963.
‘Fraudulent’ UN vote
The unrepresentative plebiscite which followed a fraudulent United Nations-supervised “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 allowed the Indonesian Parliament to grant its legitimacy to reign sovereignty over the West Papuans.
That Indonesian authority has been heavily questioned and criticised over extinguishing independence movements and possible negotiations between both sides.
Indonesia has silenced Papuan voices in the formerly-named Irian Jaya province through control and restrictions of the media.
Mambor described the continued targeting of his Jubi Media staff, including attacks on its office and vehicles, as part of an escalating crackdown under Indonesia’s current President Prabowo Subianto, who took office less than 12 months ago.
“If you report on deforestation [of West Papua] or our culture, maybe it’s allowed,” he said.
“But if you report on human rights or the [Indonesian] military, there is no tolerance.”
An Indonesian MP, Oleh Soleh, warned publicly this month that the state would push for a “new wave of repression” targeting West Papuan activists while also calling the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) – the West Papuan territory’s peak independence movement – as a “political criminal group”.
‘Don’t just listen to Jakarta’
“Don’t just listen to what Jakarta says,” Mambor said.
“Speak to Papuans, listen to our stories, raise our voices.
“We want to bring West Papua back to the Pacific — not just geographically, but politically, culturally, and emotionally.”
Press freedom in West Papua has become most dire more over the past 25 years, West Papuan journalists have said.
Foreign journalists are barred entry into the territory and internet access for locals is often restricted, especially during periods of civil unrest.
Indigenous reporters also risk arrest and/or violence for filing politically sensitive stories.
Most trusted media
Founded in 2001 by West Papuan civil society, Jubi Media Papua’s English-language publication, the West Papua Daily, has become arguably the most trusted, independent source of news in the territory that has survived over its fearless approach to journalism.
“Our journalists are constantly intimidated,” Mambor said, “yet we continue to report the truth”.
The word Jubi in one of the most popular Indigenous Papuan languages means to speak the truth.
Mambor explained that the West Papua Daily remained a pillar of a vocal media movement to represent the wishes of the West Papuan people.
The stories published are without journalists’ bylines (names on articles) out of fear against retribution from the Indonesian military.
“We created a special section just to tell Pacific stories — to remind our people that we are not alone, and to reconnect West Papua with our Pacific identity,” Mambor said.
Lantipo spoke about the daily trauma faced by the Papuan communities which are caught in between the Indonesian military and the West Papua national liberation army who act on behalf of the ULMWP to defend its ancestral homeland.
‘Reports of killings, displacement’
“Every day, we receive reports: killings, displacement, families fleeing villages, children out of school, no access to healthcare,” Lantipo said.
“Women and children are the most affected.”
The journalists attending the seminar urged the Fijian, Melanesian and Pacific people to push for a greater awareness of the West Papuan conflict and its current situation, and to challenge dominant narratives propagated by the Indonesian government.
Laksono, who is ethnically Indonesian but entrenched in ongoing Papuan independence struggles, has long worked to expose injustices in the region.
“There is no hope from the Asian side,” Laksono said.
“That’s why we are here, to reach out to the Pacific.
“We need new audiences, new support, and new understanding.”
Arrested over tweets
Laksono was once arrested in September 2019 for publishing tweets about the violence from government forces against West Papua pro-independence activists.
Despite the personal risks, the “enemy of the state” remains committed to highlighting the stories of the West Papuan people.
“Much of Indonesia has been indoctrinated through school textbooks and [its] media into believing a false history,” he said.
“Our film tries to change that by offering the truth, especially about the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969, which was neither free nor a genuine act of self-determination.”
Andrew Mathieson writes for the National Indigenous Times.
Melanesian supporters for West Papuan self-determination at The University of the South Pacific. Image: USP/NIT
