Category: Global

  • Israel attacked the headquarters of the Iranian national broadcaster, live on air, on Monday, 16 June.

    Sahar Emami, the news anchor, was speaking live when the Israeli attack hit. Everyone watching could clearly see the explosion, followed by audible screams, while it was still live.

    We then watched another journalist continue the broadcast from outside the building. He was visibly distressed, with his hands covered in blood. In the background, you could see the building burning.

    The Geneva Convention

    Article 79 of the Geneva Convention protects journalists in armed conflicts, meaning they cannot be targeted. Clearly, this does not apply to Israel.

    As usual, Israel is taking their strategy from the same old playbook. Target whoever or whatever the hell they want and claim it was being used as some sort of military base. And, failing that, claim there were strategically important tunnels underneath.

    According to The New York Times:

    The Israeli military later said in a statement that its air force had struck the building to target a “communication center” that was being used by the Iranian military “under the guise of civilian activity.” The claim could not be independently verified.

    Trying to silence journalists

    Israel has a long history of murdering journalists. As of June 10, they had murdered 231 Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Additionally, they have assassinated 10 journalists in Lebanon, one in the West Bank, one in Syria, and now one in Iran, too.

    Yet still, most of the West refuse to call it what it is – genocide. If Israel had nothing to hide, it wouldn’t be targeting journalists in broad daylight.

    Israel’s targeting of journalists started long before October 7. Back in 2021, The Canary reported on Israel detaining over a dozen Palestinian journalists. This included an Al Jazeera correspondent in the West Bank

    In 2020, the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) said Israeli forces committed “408 violations of the media” in 2020 in the occupied territories.

    Israel seems to have a real issue with following international law, and allowing a free press would all too obviously expose its war crimes:

    Previously, Israeli forces have attempted to smear journalists as terrorists in order to pre-emptively justify their murders. Because, when the state that has bombed five different countries in less than two years shouts ‘terrorist’, the West takes it as truth.

    Israel has never played by the rules, and they’re not about to start now. Whether it’s children, hospitals, journalists, or now live TV broadcasts – nothing is off limits to the genocidal terrorist state. And let’s face it, nothing is about to change unless Western media and politicians find a shred of moral decency and a backbone.

    Feature image via ABC News/Youtube 

    By HG

  • A New Zealand journalist on the ground in the Middle East summarises events from the occupied West Bank.

    UPDATES: By Cole Martin in Occupied Bethlehem

    Fifty six Palestinians were killed by Israel in Gaza today, 38 of them while seeking aid, while five were killed and 20 wounded in an Israeli attack on aid workers northwest of Gaza City.

    Al-Qassam Brigades reportedly blew up a house in southern Gaza where a number of Israeli soldiers were operating from.

    Israel’s forced starvation and indiscriminate targeting of civilians continues.

    Israeli media report that Iranian missile strikes on Haifa oil refinery yesterday killed 3 people and closed down the installation.

    The Israeli death toll has risen to 24, with 400 injured and more than 2700 people displaced.

    Israeli authorities report 370 missiles fired by Iran in total, 30 reaching their targets. Iranian military report they have carried out 550 drone operations.

    224 killed in Iran
    Two hundred and twenty four people have been killed by Israeli attacks on Iran, with 1277 hospitalised.

    The state radio and television building was targeted by Israeli strikes twice — while broadcasting live — with the broadcast back online within 5 minutes despite the attack.

    In response, Iran has issued a warning to evacuate the central offices of Israeli television channels 12 and 14.

    An Israeli attack on a Red Crescent ambulance in Tehran resulted in the deaths of two relief workers.

    Israel’s Finance Minister Belazel Smotrich, who is accused of being a war criminal and the target of sanctions by five countries including New Zealand, claims they have hit 800 targets in Iran, with aircraft flying freely in the nation’s airspace.

    In the West Bank, the tension continues, with business continuing at a subdued level, everyone waiting to see how the situation will unfold.

    Israel’s illegal siege continues, cutting off cities and villages from one another, while blocking ambulances and urgent medical access in several locations today.

    Israeli and Iranian strikes are expected to continue, and potentially escalate, over the coming days.

    Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues.

    Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

    Iranian missiles raining down on Tel Aviv as seen from the occupied West Bank
    Iranian missiles raining down on Tel Aviv as seen from the occupied West Bank. Image: CM screenshot APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ANALYSIS: By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent

    The recent series of high-level agreements between Papua New Guinea and France marks a significant development in PNG’s geopolitical relationships, driven by what appears to be a convergence of national interests.

    The “deepening relationship” is less about a single personality and more about a calculated alignment of economic, security, and diplomatic priorities with PNG, taking full advantage of its position as the biggest, most strategically placed island player in the Pacific.

    An examination of the key outcomes reveals a partnership of mutual benefit, reflecting both PNG’s strategic diversification and France’s own long-term ambitions as a Pacific power.

    A primary driver is the shared economic rationale. From Port Moresby’s perspective, the partnership offers a clear path to economic diversification and resilience.

    But many in PNG have been watching with keen interest and asking: how badly does PNG want this?

    While Prime Minister James Marape offered France a Special Economic Zone in Port Moresby (SEZ) for French businesses, he also named the lookout at Port Moresby’s Variarata National Park after President Emmanuel Macron drawing the ire of many in the country.

    The proposal to establish a SEZ specifically for French industries is a notable attempt to attract capital from beyond PNG’s traditional partners.

    Strategically coupled
    This is strategically coupled with securing the future of the multi-billion-dollar Papua LNG project.

    Macron’s personal undertaking to work with TotalEnergies to keep the project on schedule provides crucial stability for one of PNG’s most significant economic ventures.

    For France, these arrangements secure a major energy investment for its national corporate champion and establish a stronger economic foothold in a strategically vital region between Asia and the Pacific.

    In the area of security, the relationship addresses tangible needs for both nations.

    PNG is faced with the immense challenge of monitoring a 2.4 million sq km Exclusive Economic Zone, making it vulnerable to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

    The finalisation of a Shiprider Agreement with France provides a practical force-multiplier, leveraging French naval assets to enhance PNG’s maritime surveillance capabilities. This move, along with planned defence talks on air and maritime cooperation, allows PNG to diversify its security architecture.

    For France, a resident power with Pacific territories like New Caledonia and French Polynesia, participating in regional security operations reinforces its role and commitment to stability in the Indo-Pacific.

    Elevating diplomatic influence
    The partnership is also a vehicle for elevating diplomatic influence.

    Port Moresby has noted the significance of engaging with a partner that holds permanent membership on the UN Security Council and seats at the G7 and G20.

    This alignment provides PNG with a powerful channel to global decision-making forums. The reciprocal move to establish a PNG embassy in Paris further cements the relationship on a mature footing.

    The diplomatic synergy is perhaps best illustrated by France’s full endorsement of PNG’s bid to host a future UN Ocean Conference. This support provides PNG with a major opportunity to lead on the world stage, while allowing France to demonstrate its credentials as a key partner to the Pacific Islands.

    This deepening PNG-France partnership does not exist in a vacuum.

    It is unfolding within a broader context of heightened geopolitical competition across the Pacific.

    The West’s view of China’s rapid emergence as a dominant economic and military force in the region has reshaped the strategic landscape, prompting traditional powers to re-engage with renewed urgency.

    increased diplomatic footprint
    The United States has responded by significantly increasing its diplomatic and security footprint, a move marked by Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Port Moresby to sign the Defence Cooperation Agreement.

    Similarly, Australia, PNG’s traditional security partner, is working to reinforce its long-standing influence through initiatives like the multi-million-dollar deal to establish a PNG team in its National Rugby League (NRL), a soft-power exercise reportedly linked to security outcomes.

    This competitive environment has, in turn, created greater agency for Pacific nations, allowing them to diversify their partnerships beyond old allies and providing a fertile ground for European powers like France to assert their own strategic interests.

    A strong foundation for the relationship is a shared public stance on environmental stewardship. The agreement on the need for rigorous scientific studies before any deep-sea mining occurs aligns PNG’s national policy with a position of environmental caution.

    This common ground extends to broader climate action, where France’s commitment to conservation in the Pacific resonates with PNG’s status as a frontline nation vulnerable to climate change.

    This alignment on values provides a durable and politically important basis for cooperation, allowing both nations to jointly advocate for climate justice and ocean protection.

    For the Papua New Guinea economy, this deepening partnership with France is critically important as it provides high-level stability for the multi-billion-dollar Papua LNG project and creates a direct pathway for new investment through a proposed SEZ for French businesses.

    Vital economic resource
    Furthermore, by moving to finalise a Shiprider Agreement to combat illegal fishing, the government is actively protecting a vital economic resource.

    For Marape’s credibility in local politics, these outcomes are tangible successes he can present to the nation as he battles a massive credibility dip in recent years.

    Securing a personal undertaking from the leader of a G7 nation, gaining support for PNG to host a future UN Ocean Conference, and enhancing national security demonstrates effective leadership on the world stage.

    This allows him to build a narrative of a competent statesman who, through “warm, personal relationships”, can deliver on promises of economic opportunity and national security while strengthening his political standing at home.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RNZ Pacific

    New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters says countries have the right to choose who enters their borders in response to reports that the Trump administration is planning to impose travel restrictions on three dozen nations, including three in the Pacific.

    But opposition Labour’s deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni says the foreign minister should push back on the US proposal.

    Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu have reportedly been included in an expanded proposal of 36 additional countries for which the Trump administration is considering travel restrictions.

    The plan was first reported by The Washington Post. A State Department spokesperson told the outlet that the agency would not comment on internal deliberations or communications.

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Peters said countries had the right to decide who could cross their borders.

    “Before we all get offended, we’ve got the right to decide in New Zealand who comes to our country. So has Australia, so has . . . China, so has the United States,” Peters said.

    US security concerns
    He said New Zealand would do its best to address the US security concerns.

    “We need to do our best to ensure there are no misunderstandings.”

    Peters said US concerns could be over selling citizenship or citizenship-by-investment schemes.

    Vanuatu runs a “golden passport” scheme where applicants can be granted Vanuatu citizenship for a minimum investment of US$130,000.

    Airplane in the sky at sunrise
    Peters says citizenship programmes, such as the citizenship-by-investment schemes which allow people to purchase passports, could have concerned the Trump administration. Image: 123rf/RNZ Pacific

    Peters said programmes like that could have concerned the Trump administration.

    “There are certain decisions that have been made, which look innocent, but when they come to an international capacity do not have that effect.

    “Tuvalu has been selling passports. You see where an innocent . . . decision made in Tuvalu can lead to the concerns in the United States when it comes to security.”

    Sepuloni wants push back
    However, Sepuloni wants Peters to push back on the US considering travel restrictions for Pacific nations.

    Labour Party Deputy Leader Carmel Sepuloni.
    Labour Party Deputy Leader Carmel Sepuloni . . . “I would expect [Peters] to be pushing back on the US and supporting our Pacific nations to be taken off that list.” Image: RNZ/Angus Dreaver

    Sepuloni said she wanted the foreign minister to get a full explanation on the proposed restrictions.

    “From there, I would expect him to be pushing back on the US and supporting our Pacific nations to be taken off that list,” she said.

    “Their response is, ‘why us? We’re so tiny — what risk do we pose?’”

    Wait to see how this unfolds – expert
    Massey University associate professor in defence and security studies Anna Powles said Vanuatu has appeared on the US’ bad side in the past.

    “Back in March Vanuatu was one of over 40 countries that was reported to be on the immigration watchlist and that related to Vanuatu’s golden passport scheme,” Dr Powles said.

    However, a US spokesperson denied the existence of such a list.

    “What people are looking at . . . is not a list that exists here that is being acted on,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said, according to a transcript of her press briefing.

    “There is a review, as we know, through the president’s executive order, for us to look at the nature of what’s going to help keep America safer in dealing with the issue of visas and who’s allowed into the country.”

    Dr Powles said it was the first time Tonga had been included.

    “That certainly has raised some concern among Tongans because there’s a large Tongan diaspora in the United States.”

    She said students studying in the US could be affected; but while there was a degree of bemusement and concern over the issue, there was also a degree of waiting to see how this unfolded.

    Trump signed a proclamation on June 4 banning the nationals of 12 countries from entering the United States, saying the move was needed to protect against “foreign terrorists” and other security threats.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    Israel targeted one of the buildings of the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) in Tehran on the fourth day of attacks on Iran, interrupting a live news broadcast, reports Press TV.

    The attack, involving at least four bombs, struck the central building housing IRIB’s news department, while a live news broadcast was underway.

    The transmission was briefly interrupted before Hassan Abedini, IRIB’s news director and deputy for political affairs, appeared on air to condemn the “terrorist crime”.

    At the time of the attack, news anchor Sahar Emami was presenting the news. Despite the building trembling under the first strike, she stood her ground and continued the broadcast.

    “Allah o Akbar” (God is Great), she proclaimed, drawing global attention to the war crime committed by Israel against Iran’s national broadcaster.

    Moments later, another blast filled the studio with smoke and dust, forcing her to evacuate. She returned shortly after to join Abedini and share her harrowing experience.

    “If I die, others will take my place and expose your crimes to the world,” she declared, looking straight into the camera with courage and composure.

    Casualties unconfirmed
    While the number of casualties remains unconfirmed, insiders reported that several journalists inside the building had been injured in the bombing.

    Israel’s war ministry promptly claimed responsibility for the attack.

    Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the aggression on the state broadcaster as a “war crime” and called on the United Nations to take immediate action against the regime.

    . . . ABut after a brief interruption on screen as debris fell from a bomb strike, Sahar Emami was back presenting the news
    . . . But after a brief interruption on screen as debris fell from a bomb strike, Sahar Emami was back courageously presenting the news and denouncing the attack. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei denounced the attack and urged the international community to hold the regime accountable for its assault on the media.

    “The world is watching: targeting Iran’s news agency #IRIB’s office during a live broadcast is a wicked act of war crime,” Baghaei wrote on X.

    The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) also condemned the bombing of the IRIB news building, labeling it an “inhuman, criminal, and a terrorist act.”

    CPJ ‘appalled’ by Israeli attack
    The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was “appalled by Israel’s bombing of Iran’s state TV channel while live on air.”

    “Israel’s killing, with impunity, of almost 200 journalists in Gaza has emboldened it to target media elsewhere in the region,” Sara Qudah, the West Asia representative for CPJ, said in a statement after the attack on an IRIB building.

    The Israeli regime has a documented history of targeting journalists globally. Since October 2023, it has killed more than 250 Palestinian journalists in the besieged Gaza Strip.

    The regime launched its aggression against the Islamic Republic, including Tehran, early on Friday, leading to the assassination of several high-ranking military officials, nuclear scientists, and civilians, including women and children.

    In response, Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones late Friday night, followed by more retaliatory operations on Saturday and Sunday as part of Operation True Promise III.

    In Israel, 24 people have been killed and hundreds wounded since hostilities began. In Iran, 224 people have been killed.

    Plumes of black smoke billowing after an Israeli attack against Iran's state broadcaster
    Plumes of black smoke billowing after an Israeli attack against Iran’s state broadcaster yesterday. Image: PressTV

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Following Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, Britain’s Labour government has faced renewed scrutiny for arming and supporting the rogue apartheid state. Now – understandably – the media is asking Labour and its ministers if they’re clueless or misanthropic enough to drag us into a wider regional conflict. Alarmingly, the response from Rachel Reeves suggests they very much are.

    UK doublespeak as Israel pushes for war on Iran

    Speaking to Sky News, Reeves said:

    This is a fast moving situation. Israel has every right to defend itself. We also are very concerned about Iran’s nuclear deterrent.

    Clearly, this is Reeves and Labour seeking to echo the Israeli government’s lie that its unprovoked assault was somehow an ‘act of self-defence’.

    Reeves also said:

    We have, in the past, supported Israel when there had been missiles coming in. I’m not going to comment on what might happen in the future. But so far we haven’t been involved. We’re sending in assets to protect ourselves and also potentially to support our allies.

    And when pushed on whether Labour would be foolish enough to join this war, she said:

    I’m not going to rule anything out at this stage. It’s a fast moving situation, a very volatile situation. But we don’t want to see escalation.

    Any reasonable person would agree that if the Labour doesn’t want to see escalation in a Middle Eastern conflict, then they probably shouldn’t be shipping in more weapons and troops (or training Israeli soldiers, or sending regular flights from RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, or pretending that the genocide in Gaza doesn’t exist). Indeed, many ordinary people did say this:

    History repeating itself

    Make no mistake – sending the UK army into this mess would mean sacrificing the lives of countless British people for the sake of propping up a crooked and genocidal regime (not to mention the countless more lives that our troops would cut short in the territories they invade).

    This has the potential to be the invasion of Iraq all over again, and with that in mind, let’s remind ourselves of what a then-obscure Labour backbencher said in 2003 (emphasis added):

    For those who say that this is a necessary and just conflict because it will bring about peace and security: September the 11th was a dreadful event. 8000 deaths in Afghanistan brought back none of those who died in the World Trade Centre. Thousands more deaths in Iraq will not make things right. It will set off a spiral of conflict, of hate, of misery, of desperation, that will fuel the wars, the conflict, the terrorism, the depression, and the misery of future generations.

    You cannot humiliate the Palestinian people in the way that they’ve been humiliated and not expect some problem in the future. You cannot arm regimes like Iraq, Iran, and many others, without expecting further problems in the future.

    Our message, our message today here in London, a million and more strong, is this. We want to live in a world free from war. The way to free us from the scourge of war is to free ourselves from the scourge of injustice, of poverty, and the misery that’s associated with that. This movement, this movement is giving that message to the British government. Stop now, or pay a political price.

    That figure was Jeremy Corbyn, and history has proven him to be right on both the invasion of Iraq and how the Labour right would behave if they returned to power.

    Remember the disaster that followed the invasion of Iraq

    On the “spiral of conflict” which Corbyn predicted, Kim Sengupta wrote in 2023 of how the disastrous occupation of Iraq spawned much of the Middle Eastern conflict which followed. In part, this happened because US “neo-cons, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld” and others pursued:

    a disastrous policy of de-Baathification – banning anyone who had been a member of the ruling Baath Party. This failed to take into account the fact that membership of the Baath was necessary to get government jobs in Iraq and did not indicate blind adherence to the regime. The ban also meant it became virtually impossible to keep the machinery of government running in an increasingly chaotic environment.

    The occupying forces additionally made conditions for the Iraqi police forces intolerable, with Sengupta noting:

    There was confusion, followed by anger when the American military decreed that patrols going out must be unarmed. Most of the Iraqi officers simply refused to set out and many walked off. Among them was Major Rashid Hussein Janabi who said, shaking his head in disbelief: “Do they even realise this is Baghdad?”

    Sengupta highlighted how these decisions would go on to have staggering repercussions:

    The conditions were brewing for a perfect storm. Many of the experienced Iraqi police and soldiers sent home under de-Baathification stayed away from the vicious insurgent war which followed. Worse, others joined the Islamist fighters, providing valuable experience and leadership.

    One head of Isis military council, Abu Muhanad al Sweidawi, was a former member of the Iraqi military, as was his successor, Abu Ahmad al Alwani. Major Janabi, the disgruntled police officer I met in 2003, died fighting for Isis in Mosul 11 years later.

    Within months of the regime’s fall, a savage insurgent war broke out, with bombings and shootings, kidnappings and murders. The death toll began to rise dramatically as Sunni insurgents stepped up their attacks on Western forces.

    Then came an incendiary sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shias Waves of Sunni suicide bombers left Fallujah to wreak havoc on Baghdad, and Shia fighters, some in government-run militias, sought vengeance.

    Insanity is repeating the same action yet expecting a different outcome

    At this point, the impacts of the invasion of Iraq are well known to everyone. Now, just imagine the impacts of an even larger conflict overseen by an even more temperamental US president.

    The horrors that will unfold really don’t bear thinking about, and yet Labour is immediately willing to sign us up.

    We cannot allow them to do this again.

    Featured image via Sky News

    By John Shafthauer

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • On 13 June, Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran to distract from its ongoing genocide in Gaza. Claiming that it launched the assault because Iran was developing weapons of mass destruction (which Israel already has many of itself), the apartheid state’s justification mirrored that which the US and UK used to pardon their illegal invasion of Iraq. The difference between now and 2003 is that no one is buying it anymore, and this means that even the usually compliant BBC has to question the narrative:

    A history of dehumanisation

    Tzipi Hotovely is Israel’s ambassador to the UK. As The Canary reported in December 2023:

    The Labour Muslim Network has written to leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer outlining an expectation “that no further engagements be made or platforms shared by Labour Party representatives with the current Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely”. …

    Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom Hotovely made clear in a Sky News interview last week that Israel will never accept a Palestinian state. When pressed on the question of an independent Palestinian state in the future, Hotovely answered without equivocation “the answer is absolutely no.” A two-state solution has been the policy of the Labour Party, the UK, and has had international consensus, for decades.

    Moreover, Hotovely is considered to be far-right politically by many people. She has repeatedly denied Israel is causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Hotovely also repeated the lie that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies on 7 October.

    When Israel made Hotovely the ambassador in 2020, the Guardian described “outrage as hardliner is chosen as next Israeli ambassador to UK”, writing:

    The appointment of a hardline supporter of the annexation of Palestinian land as the next Israeli ambassador to the UK has dismayed sections of the British Jewish community, with some calling on the UK government to refuse to accept the nomination.

    Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s settlements minister, has been named by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the successor to Mark Regev, who stepped down as ambassador to the UK last week.

    She has described herself as “a religious rightwinger” and rejects Palestinian claims to any part of the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem. In a speech in 2015, she said Israel had tried too hard to appease the world. “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

    The Canary also covered Hotovely attending the Labour conference in 2024, with Hannah Sharland writing:

    If the new Labour government signalled one thing indisputably at its party conference this year, is that it’s an unrepentant apologist for genocidal war criminals. This was particularly apparent at a Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) official fringe event. There, cabinet members – half themselves funded by the pro-Israel lobby group – welcomed Israel’s hard right genocide-mongering ambassador with open arms. Obviously, this was in sharp contrast to its violent repressive reception towards activists protesting for Palestine at conference.

    Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely’s disgusting genocidal rap-sheet has been hard to miss. But it didn’t stop Labour’s top-dogs hobnobbing will Hotovely anyway

    ‘There was no imminent threat’

    Speaking to the BBC‘s Laura Kuenssberg, Hotovely explained Israel’s convoluted reasoning for why its unprovoked assault was actually “an act of self-defence”, explaining:

    Now, we are in a point where president Trump gave sixty days of negotiation to the Iranians to give a diplomatic solution, and the Iranians didn’t really [want] to have any diplomatic solution. They were actually – when the IAEA published this report that was clearly showing that Iran was misleading the international community, enriching uranium – and we saw with our intelligence abilities, that they were racing fast to get nuclear bombs with the combination of enrichment and weaponization. When all this happened, we had to move fast to operate against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

    We criticise Kuenssberg most weeks, but in this instance she did clearly point out the following:

    But let me tell people… what the director of intelligence of the United States said very clearly – recently – [was] ‘we continue to assess that Iran is not yet building a nuclear weapon’.

    Israel has faced ongoing threats from Iran for many years. There was no imminent threat.

    While Kuenssberg is simply stating the obvious, those of you who are old enough to have lived through the invasion of Iraq (or are aware of the BBC‘s clear pro-Israel bias) know that we can’t always trust our media to do the absolute bare minimum.

    The ‘crybully’ technique

    The term ‘crybully’ is defined as follows:

    A person who intimidates, harasses, or abuses others yet, esp. following resistance or disagreement, claims to be a victim of ill-treatment

    The Israeli government is the greatest crybully on the planet, and its representatives like Hotovely are masters of the technique. This is how the crybully tactic manifested in the interview, with Hotovely saying:

    Actually, what we are seeing is targeting communities in the centre of Israel. My parents live in the city that was hurt yesterday. Now, I was talking to my father and to my mother – 3 o’clock in the morning Israel time – and their whole house was shaking. And – and they had to go to to their shelter. They’re in their seventies.

    Once again, Kuenssberg didn’t let her get away with it, cutting Hotovely off to say:

    That is retaliation to strikes by Israel. That is retaliation from Iran.

    Hotovely has been the ambassador to the UK since 2020, which is more than long enough for her to have heard the phrase ‘chat shit, get banged’, and in this instance Israel did far more than just chat.

    Dragging us all into hell

    What Israel has done to the Palestinians – with Western support and participation – is one of the greatest atrocities of this or any other century. Now, in what seems to be an attempt to draw its supposed allies into a much larger war, Israel is purposefully starting a conflict with Iran.

    We all need to be very clear about this.

    We will not support any involvement in this war, and we should immediately stop providing Israel with the weapons and other assistance it’s using to commit these atrocities.

    As grim as things seem, though, we are at least optimistic that the tide is turning. After all, when even Laura Kuenssberg can’t help but challenge the bullshit, it’s obvious that no one can.

    Featured image via BBC 

    By John Shafthauer

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • By Laura Bergamo in Nice, France

    The UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) concluded today with significant progress made towards the ratification of the High Seas Treaty and a strong statement on a new plastics treaty signed by 95 governments.

    Once ratified, it will be the only legal tool that can create protected areas in international waters, making it fundamental to protecting 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030.

    Fifty countries, plus the European Union, have now ratified the Treaty.

    New Zealand has signed but is yet to ratify.

    Deep sea mining rose up the agenda in the conference debates, demonstrating the urgency of opposing this industry.

    The expectation from civil society and a large group of states, including both co-hosts of UNOC, was that governments would make progress towards stopping deep sea mining in Nice.

    UN Secretary-General Guterres said the deep sea should not become the “wild west“.

    Four new pledges
    French President Emmanuel Macron said a deep sea mining moratorium is an international necessity. Four new countries pledged their support for a moratorium at UNOC, bringing the total to 37.

    Attention now turns to what actions governments will take in July to stop this industry from starting.

    Megan Randles, Greenpeace head of delegation regarding the High Seas Treaty and progress towards stopping deep sea mining, said: “High Seas Treaty ratification is within touching distance, but the progress made here in Nice feels hollow as this UN Ocean Conference ends without more tangible commitments to stopping deep sea mining.

    “We’ve heard lots of fine words here in Nice, but these need to turn into tangible action.

    “Countries must be brave, stand up for global cooperation and make history by stopping deep sea mining this year.

    “They can do this by committing to a moratorium on deep sea mining at next month’s International Seabed Authority meeting.

    “We applaud those who have already taken a stand, and urge all others to be on the right side of history by stopping deep sea mining.”

    Attention on ISA meeting
    Following this UNOC, attention now turns to the International Seabed Authority (ISA) meetings in July. In the face of The Metals Company teaming up with US President Donald Trump to mine the global oceans, the upcoming ISA provides a space where governments can come together to defend the deep ocean by adopting a moratorium to stop this destructive industry.

    Negotiations on a Global Plastics Treaty resume in August.

    John Hocevar, oceans campaign director, Greenpeace USA said: “The majority of countries have spoken when they signed on to the Nice Call for an Ambitious Plastics Treaty that they want an agreement that will reduce plastic production. Now, as we end the UN Ocean Conference and head on to the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations in Geneva this August, they must act.

    “The world cannot afford a weak treaty dictated by oil-soaked obstructionists.

    “The ambitious majority must rise to this moment, firmly hold the line and ensure that we will have a Global Plastic Treaty that cuts plastic production, protects human health, and delivers justice for Indigenous Peoples and communities on the frontlines.

    “Governments need to show that multilateralism still works for people and the planet, not the profits of a greedy few.”

    Driving ecological collapse
    Nichanan Thantanwit, project leader, Ocean Justice Project, said: “Coastal and Indigenous communities, including small-scale fishers, have protected the ocean for generations. Now they are being pushed aside by industries driving ecological collapse and human rights violations.

    “As the UN Ocean Conference ends, governments must recognise small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples as rights-holders, secure their access and role in marine governance, and stop destructive practices such as bottom trawling and harmful aquaculture.

    “There is no ocean protection without the people who have protected it all along.”

    The anticipated Nice Ocean Action Plan, which consists of a political declaration and a series of voluntary commitments, will be announced later today at the end of the conference.

    None will be legally binding, so governments need to act strongly during the next ISA meeting in July and at plastic treaty negotiations in August.

    Republished from Greenpeace Aotearoa with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    A Paris-based military and political analyst, Elijah Magnier, says he believes the hostilities between Israel and Iran will only get worse, but that Israeli support for the war may wane if the destruction continues.

    “I think it’s going to continue escalating because we are just in the first days of the war that Israel declared on Iran,” he told Al Jazeera in an interview.

    “And also the Israeli officials, the prime minister and the army, have all warned Israeli society that this war is going to be heavy and . . .  the price is going to be extremely high.

    “But the society that stands behind [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and supports the war on Iran did not expect this level of destruction because, since 1973, Israel has not waged a war on a country and never been attacked on this scale, right in the heart of Tel Aviv,” Magnier said.

    “So now they are realising what the Palestinians have been suffering, what the Lebanese have been suffering, and they see the destruction in front of them — buildings in Tel Aviv, in Haifa destroyed, fire everywhere.

    “The properties no longer exist. Eight people killed, 250 wounded in one day.

    “That’s unheard of since a very long time in Israel. So, all that is not something that the Israeli society has been ready for,” added Magnier, veteran war correspondent and political analyst with more than 35 years of experience covering decades of war in the Middle East and North Africa.

    Peters criticised over ‘craven’ statement
    Meanwhile, in Auckland, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) criticised New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters for “refusing to condemn Israel for its egregious war crimes of industrial-scale killing and mass starvation of civilians in Gaza”.

    It also said that Peters had “outdone himself with the most craven of tweets on Israel’s massive attack on Iran”.


    Iran missiles strikes on Israel for third day in retaliation to the surprise attack. Video: Al Jazeera

    Co-chair Maher Nazzal said in a statement that minister Peters had said he was “gravely concerned by the escalation in tensions between Israel and Iran” and that “all actors” must “prioritise de-escalation”.

    But there was no mention of Israel as the aggressor and no condemnation of Israel’s attack launched in the middle of negotiations between Iran and the US on Iran’s nuclear programme, said Maher.

    “It’s Mr Peters’ most obsequious tweet yet which leaves a cloud of shame hanging over the country.

    “Appeasement of this rogue state, as our government and other Western countries have done over 20 months, have led Israel to believe it can attack any country it likes with absolute impunity.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RNZ Pacific

    A renowned Samoan fashion designer was fatally shot at the “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City on Saturday, the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) has confirmed.

    Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, known as Afa Ah Loo, an “innocent bystander” at the protest, died despite efforts by paramedics to save his life, police said.

    Ah Loo, a Utah resident, died at the hospital. The Utah Office of the Medical Examiner will determine the official cause and manner of death.

    The SLPCD said the incident began about 7.56pm local time when a sergeant assigned to the SLCPD Motor Squad reported hearing gunfire near 151 South State Street.

    It said the sergeant and his squad were working to facilitate traffic and help to ensure public safety during a permitted demonstration that drew an estimated 10,000 participants.

    “As panic spread throughout the area, hundreds of people ran for safety, hiding in parking garages, behind barriers, and going into nearby businesses.

    “The first officers on scene notified SLCPD’s incident management team using their police radios.”

    The SLCPD said officers quickly moved in to secure the scene and search for any active threats and found a man who had been shot and immediately began life-saving efforts.

    “Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the 39-year-old man who was killed, and with the many community members who were impacted by this traumatic incident,” Salt Lake City police chief Brian Redd said.

    “When this shooting happened, the response of our officers and detectives was fast, brave, and highly coordinated. It speaks to the calibre of this great department and our law enforcement partners.”

    Detectives working to thoroughly investigate
    The SLCPD said about 8pm, members of its Violent Criminal Apprehension Team (VCAT) and Gang Unit were flagged down near 102 South 200 East, where officers found a man crouching among a group of people with a gunshot wound.

    The man is identified as 24-year-old Arturo Gamboa, who was dressed in all black clothing and wearing a black mask.

    “As officers approached, community members pointed out a nearby firearm, which was described as an AR15-style rifle.

    “Officers also located a gas mask, black clothing, and a backpack in close proximity. The items were collected and processed by the SLCPD Crime Lab.

    “Paramedics took Gamboa to the hospital. Detectives later booked Gamboa into the Salt Lake County Metro Jail on a charge of murder.

    Police said officers also detained two men who were wearing high-visibility neon green vests and carrying handguns.

    Peacekeeping team
    These men were apparently part of the event’s peacekeeping team.

    According to the police, detectives learned during interviews that the two peacekeepers saw Gamboa move away from the crowd and move into a secluded area behind a wall — behavior they found suspicious.

    “One of the peacekeepers told detectives he saw Gamboa pull out an AR15-style rifle from a backpack and begin manipulating it.

    “The peacekeepers drew their firearms and ordered Gamboa to drop the weapon.

    “Witnesses reported Gamboa instead lifted the rifle and began running toward the crowd gathered on State Street, holding the weapon in a firing position.

    “In response, one of the peacekeepers fired three rounds. One round struck Gamboa, while another tragically wounded Mr Ah Loo.”

    “Our detectives are now working to thoroughly investigate the circumstances surrounding this incident,” Redd said.

    “We will not allow this individual act to create fear in our community.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

  • COMMENTARY: By Antony Loewenstein

    War is good for business and geopolitical posturing.

    Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington in early February for his first visit to the US following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he issued a bold statement on the strategic position of Israel.

    “The decisions we made in the war [since 7 October 2023] have already changed the face of the Middle East,” he said.

    “Our decisions and the courage of our soldiers have redrawn the map. But I believe that working closely with President Trump, we can redraw it even further.”

    How should this redrawn map be assessed?

    Hamas is bloodied but undefeated in Gaza. The territory lies in ruins, leaving its remaining population with barely any resources to rebuild. Death and starvation stalk everyone.

    Hezbollah in Lebanon has suffered military defeats, been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence, and now faces few viable options for projecting power in the near future. Political elites speak of disarming Hezbollah, though whether this is realistic is another question.

    Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE accounted for 12 percent of Israel’s record $14.8bn in arms sales in 2024 — up from just 3 percent the year before

    In Yemen, the Houthis continue to attack Israel, but pose no existential threat.

    Meanwhile, since the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, Israel has attacked and threatened Syria, while the new government in Damascus is flirting with Israel in a possible bid for “normalisation“.

    The Gulf states remain friendly with Israel, and little has changed in the last 20 months to alter this relationship.

    According to Israel’s newly released arms sales figures for 2024, which reached a record $14.8bn, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates accounted for 12 percent of total weapons sales — up from just 3 percent in 2023.

    It is conceivable that Saudi Arabia will be coerced into signing a deal with Israel in the coming years, in exchange for arms and nuclear technology for the dictatorial kingdom.

    An Israeli and US-assisted war against Iran began on Friday.

    In the West Bank, Israel’s annexation plans are surging ahead with little more than weak European statements of concern. Israel’s plans for Greater Israel — vastly expanding its territorial reach — are well underway in Syria, Lebanon and beyond.

    Shifting alliances
    On paper, Israel appears to be riding high, boasting military victories and vanquished enemies. And yet, many Israelis and pro-war Jews in the diaspora do not feel confident or buoyed by success.

    Instead, there is an air of defeatism and insecurity, stemming from the belief that the war for Western public opinion has been lost — a sentiment reinforced by daily images of Israel’s campaign of deliberate mass destruction across the Gaza Strip.

    What Israel craves and desperately needs is not simply military prowess, but legitimacy in the public domain. And this is sorely lacking across virtually every demographic worldwide.

    It is why Israel is spending at least $150 million this year alone on “public diplomacy”.

    Get ready for an army of influencers, wined and dined in Tel Aviv’s restaurants and bars, to sell the virtues of Israeli democracy. Even pro-Israel journalists are beginning to question how this money is being spent, wishing Israeli PR were more responsive and effective.

    Today, Israeli Jews proudly back ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza in astoundingly high numbers. This reflects a Jewish supremacist mindset that is being fed a daily diet of extremist rhetoric in mainstream media.

    There is arguably no other Western country with such a high proportion of racist, genocidal mania permeating public discourse.

    According to a recent poll of Western European populations, Israel is viewed unfavourably in Germany, Denmark, France, Italy and Spain.

    Very few in these countries support Israeli actions. Only between 13 and 21 percent hold a positive view of Israel, compared to 63-70 percent who do not.

    The US-backed Pew Research Centre also released a global survey asking people in 24 countries about their views on Israel and Palestine. In 20 of the 24 nations, at least half of adults expressed a negative opinion of the Jewish state.

    A deeper reckoning
    Beyond Israel’s image problems lies a deeper question: can it ever expect full acceptance in the Middle East?

    Apart from kings, monarchs and elites from Dubai to Riyadh and Manama to Rabat, Israel’s vicious and genocidal actions since 7 October 2023 have rendered “normalisation” impossible with a state intent on building a Jewish theocracy that subjugates millions of Arabs indefinitely.

    While it is true that most states in the region are undemocratic, with gross human rights abuses a daily reality, Israel has long claimed to be different — “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

    But Israel’s entire political system, built with massive Western support and grounded in an unsustainable racial hierarchy, precludes it from ever being fully and formally integrated into the region.

    The American journalist Murtaza Hussain, writing for the US outlet Drop Site News, recently published a perceptive essay on this very subject.

    He argues that Israeli actions have been so vile and historically grave — comparable to other modern holocausts — that they cannot be forgotten or excused, especially as they are publicly carried out with the explicit goal of ethnically cleansing Palestine:

    “This genocide has been a political and cultural turning point beyond which we cannot continue as before. I express that with resignation rather than satisfaction, as it means that many generations of suffering are ahead on all sides.

    “Ultimately, the goal of Israel’s opponents must not be to replicate its crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, nor to indulge in nihilistic hatred for its own sake.

    “People in the region and beyond should work to build connections with those Israelis who are committed opponents of their regime, and who are ready to cooperate in the generational task of building a new political architecture.”

    The issue is not just Netanyahu and his government. All his likely successors hold similarly hardline views on Palestinian rights and self-determination.

    The monumental task ahead lies in crafting an alternative to today’s toxic Jewish theocracy.

    But this rebuilding must also take place in the West. Far too many Jews, conservatives and evangelical Christians continue to cling to the fantasy of eradicating, silencing or expelling Arabs from their land entirely.

    Pushing back against this fascism is one of the most urgent generational tasks of our time.

    Antony Loewenstein is an Australian/German independent, freelance, award-winning, investigative journalist, best-selling author and film-maker. In 2025, he released an award-winning documentary series on Al Jazeera English, The Palestine Laboratory, adapted from his global best-selling book of the same name. It won a major prize at the prestigious Telly Awards. This article is republished from Middle East Eye with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Anish Chand in Suva

    The son of a Fiji assistant minister is under investigation for allegedly driving a government vehicle without authority and causing an accident that killed two men.

    The accident took place along Bau Road, Nausori, last night.

    The vehicle involved in the accident was the official government vehicle issued for the assistant minister.

    It is alleged the 17-year-old took the vehicle without the knowledge of his father.

    Police have confirmed the incident.

    “The suspect is alleged to have taken the keys of the vehicle from his father while he slept and was driving along Bau Road, when he bumped the two victims standing on the roadside, and he fled the scene,” said the Fiji Police Force.

    “He later relayed the matter to his father who reported the matter to police.

    “The two victims in their 40s were conveyed to the Nausori Health Centre where their deaths were confirmed by medical officials.”

    Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    “Just do it, before it is too late,” US President Donald Trump said.

    The Western media described Trump’s and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats after the first wave of attacks on Iran as “warnings”. They were, in fact, expressions of genocidal intent.

    “The United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come.

    “And they know how to use it. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire … JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

    As Pascal Lottaz and a number of other analysts pointed out on Friday, preemptive war or just war theory requires imminent threats not conceptual ones. As I also pointed out on Friday, the United States’ own intelligence agencies have consistently determined that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons programme and there has been no change to the regime’s position since the Grand Ayatollah issued a fatwa against such weapons in 2003.

    Israel and the US may now have forced a change in that theology or calculus.

    What we are witnessing is a war of aggression designed to trigger regime change and destroy Iran — to reduce it to the kind of chaos that Israel and the US have inflicted on Iraq, Libya, Lebanon and many other countries.

    This is only possible because of the collusion of the Collective West. At the core of this project of endless violence towards non-white people is racism: contempt for people who are not like us.

    Nearly half of Israelis support army killing all Palestinians in Gaza, poll finds.
    Today an overwhelming majority of Israelis want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians — one of the very definitions of genocide — not just from Gaza but from Israel itself. Nearly half of Israelis support the army killing all Palestinians in Gaza, a recent US Penn State University poll finds.

    Genocide has been normalised in Israel. Yet our political leaders and much of our media tell us we share values with these people.

    One of the sickest, most profoundly tragic ironies of history is that the long suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of Western racism has culminated in a triumphalist Jewish State doing to the Palestinians what the Plantagenets and the Popes, the Medicis and the Russian boyars, the Italian Fascists and the Nazis did to the Jews.

    Europeans perpetrated the Holocaust not the Palestinians or the Iranians. Israel, dominated as it is by Ashkenazi Jews, has now been incorporated into the Western project to maintain global hegemony.

    They are today’s uber Aryans lording it over the untermenschen. It is the grim fulfillment of what the Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned back in the 1980s was Israel’s incipient slide into what he termed “Judeo Nazism”.

    ‘We, the Israelis, are the victims’
    Isn’t it time we woke from our deep slumber? Generations of people in Western countries were lied to for generations about the Zionist project. We were bombarded with propaganda that the Israelis were the victims, the plucky battlers; the Palestinians were somehow a nation of terrorists in their own land.

    So too, the propaganda goes, are pretty much all of Israel’s neighbours, particularly Iran.

    The propaganda shredded our minds, particularly people of my generation. It made most of our populations and all of our governments totally indifferent to the constant killing, repression and land thieving by generations of Israelis.

    “We, the Israelis, are the victims.” They weep for themselves as they rape Palestinian prisoners — and call themselves heroes for doing so. In researching stories like this I had the unpleasant experience of watching videos of both the rape of Palestinians prisoners at Sde Temein (gloatingly shared by the perpetrators) and the repellent sight of Benjamin Netanyahu’s rabbi blessing one of these rapists and praising him for his work.

    We are repeatedly told we share values with these people. I believe our governments really do share those values. I do not.

    ‘Hath not a Palestinian eyes? If you prick an Iranian do they not bleed?’
    I’m a student of Shakespeare and have spent hours every month reading, watching and studying his plays. The Merchant of Venice, a complex play with highly contested interpretations, can be viewed as a masterful exploration of a dominant society enforcing its own double standards on a Hated Other.

    The last time I watched it was a Royal Shakespeare Company performance with Palestinian actor Makram Khoury in the role of Shylock (the Jew).

    Over the centuries Shylock had morphed from a pantomime villain, to an arch-villain to, in the 19th Century, a figure of pathos, dignity and loss, through to 20th Century interpretations of him as a powerful, albeit highly flawed, figure of resistance in the face of a supremacist society.

    Palestinian Makram Khoury’s performance capped this transition and was an eloquent plea to see our common humanity whether we be Jewish, Muslim, Christian or any other slice of humanity.

    “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

    How would our reading of this passage change if we changed “Jew” to “Palestinian” or “Iranian”?

    Only an utterly incoherent and damaged mind can continue to believe the propaganda coming out of the White House, the Pentagon, and out of the mouths of psychotic madmen like Netanyahu, Smotrich and the rest of Team Genocide.

    It’s time to wake up. If not, we ourselves become victims. Only a hollowed-out heart and mind could content themselves with turning a blind eye to genocide, to turn a blind eye to the war of aggression just launched against Iran.

    How will this end?

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    The Islamic Council of New Zealand (ICONZ) has protested over Israel’s “unprovoked military strikes” against Iran, killing at least 80 people — 20 of them children, and called on the NZ government to publicly condemn Israeli’s actions.

    An open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, read out to a Palestine rally in Henderson yesterday by advocate Dr Adnan Ali, said the attacks — targeting residential areas as well as military and nuclear facilities — represented a “grave escalation in regional tensions and pose a serious threat to global peace and stability”.

    “This act of aggression undermines international diplomatic efforts and risks igniting a broader conflict that could engulf the Middle East and beyond,” the letter said.

    The council’s letter, signed by ICONZ president Dr Muhammad Sajjad Haider Naqvi, said it was “particularly alarmed by the timing of the strikes, which come amid ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme”.

    The ICONZ letter sent to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon
    The ICONZ letter sent to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Friday protesting over the Israeli attacks on Iran. Image: APR

    It said the Israeli attack set a “dangerous precedent” and violated international law and sovereignty.

    The council urged the NZ government to:

    • Publicly condemn the Israeli government’s actions and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities;
    • Engage diplomatically with international partners to de-escalate tensions and promote peaceful resolution;
    • Support humanitarian efforts to assist affected civilians in Iran; and
    • Reaffirm NZ’s commitment to international law, peace and justice.

    The council said New Zealand had “long been a voice of reason and compassion on the global stage” and it hoped that this would guide Luxon’s leadership.

    In retaliatory missile attacks by Iran, at least four people have been killed and 200 wounded in Israel.

    Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Israel has banned Al Jazeera from reporting on its territory, said attacking Iran allowed Israel to deflect attention away from Gaza.

    “Israel says the focus of its military activities is now on Iran and not on Gaza. But it also conveniently allows . . . the focus of attention on what’s happening in Israel to move from Gaza to Iran,” he said.

    “Until Israel hit those targets in Iran, it was coming under increasing international scrutiny over the conduct of the war in Gaza.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    Labour MP for Te Atatu Phil Twyford criticsed the New Zealand government today for failing to take stronger action against Israel over its genocide and starvation strategy in Gaza, saying that at the very least the ambassador should be expelled.

    Speaking at a rally in Henderson organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa in West Auckland suburbs for the first time in the 88th week of protest, Twyford said: “The Israeli government is operating in an apartheid state.

    “They subject the Palestinian people under their military.

    “People who are under international law they are obliged to protect,” he told about 500 protesters.

    “They are subjecting them to the most ruthless, most brutal system of apartheid.”

    It was a story of “ethnic cleansing, dispossesion, terror routinely visited upon Palestinian people on a daily basis in their land”, said Twyford, who is Labour Party spokesperson on immigration, disarmament and foreign affairs.

    “And it is being done, not only by the forces of Zionism, but by the Western world complicit, knowing, understanding and actively conniving in that dispossession and repression.”

    Widely condemned move
    Twyford referred to the government’s move this week alongside four other countries to impose sanctions on two far-right ministers in the the Israeli cabinet, illegal settlers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, which has been widely condemned as too little and too late.

    Labour MP Phil Twyford speaking at the Henderson pro-Palestinian humanitarian rally today
    Labour MP Phil Twyford speaking at the Henderson pro-Palestinian humanitarian rally today . . . Palestinians are subjected by Israel to “the most ruthless, most brutal, system of apartheid.” Image: Asia Pacific Report

    Leading British journalist Jonathan Cook this week criticised Britain, Australia, Canada and Norway along with New Zealand, saying they may have been “seeking strength in numbers” to withstand retaliation from Israel and the United States.

    “But in truth, they have selected the most limited and symbolic of all the possible sanctions they could have imposed on the Israeli government.”

    Israel was also condemned by speakers at the rally for its “unprovoked attack” on Iran and its strategy of forced starvation on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the repression in occupied West Bank.

    The death toll in Gaza was almost 62,000 Palestinians — more than 17,000 of them children — and Israel had also killed at least 78 people in the first waves of attacks on Iran.

    Meanwhile, in a statement today, the PSNA said it was appalled at the deportation of a Palestinian New Zealander from Egypt.

    PSNA said it had conveyed to the Egyptian government its “shock and anger” at the deportation of Rana Hamida who had travelled to Egypt to take part in the Global March to Gaza.

    "This Jew stands for Palestine" and "Sanction Israel now"
    “This Jew stands for Palestine” and “Sanction Israel now” placards at today’s Henderson rally. Image: APR

    Egyptian deportations over ‘global march’
    Egyptian authorities have deported dozens of people, including Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Moroccan, Greek and US citizens.

    The Global March to Gaza is due to start this weekend in Egypt with thousands of people from throughout the world taking part.

    PSNA co-chair John Minto said the march was to “express humanity’s outrage” at the ongoing Gaza-wide bombing and starving of the Palestinian population by Israel.

    “Egypt’s action in deporting activists can only be seen as assisting Israel’s attacks against the Palestinian population,” he said.

    “Unfortunately, Egypt has a long history of collaboration with the US and Israel to stifle the Palestine liberation struggle. This is in sharp contrast to the Egyptian people who are as appalled and angry as the rest of humanity at Israel’s horrendous war crimes.”

    Minto said the following message from Rana as she returned to New Zealand — she was due at Auckland International Airport this afternoon:

    ‘The more we will roar’
    “The Egyptian authorities, along with other governments, think that blocking humanity from this act of solidarity will stop because of them blocking people from being there and doing the job that they continue failing to do.

    “They are so mistaken — the more complicit and enabling they get in their inaction and in this case their active participation, the more we will rise, and roar.

    “We are escalating as you awaken the dragons within us.

    “We will sing louder and we will walk longer — with our hiking shoes in the Sinai desert, or barefoot towards your embassies.

    “We will disrupt your meetings, we will crowd your phone with calls and emails, and we will be the light that blinds your robotic heart and melts it alongside the lies you stand for.

    “This is not about us, it is about HUMANITY within us that is dying and being oppressed in various forms, it is about the humans enduring hell in Gaza, West Bank and Falastine as a whole.

    “Muslims, Jews and Christians together.

    “It is about NEVER AGAIN.

    “Boycott, divest — we will not stop we will not rest.”

    Pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protesters at the Henderson rally
    Pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protesters at the Henderson rally today with Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford speaking. Image: APR

    Expel Israeli ambassador call
    In an earlier statement in the wake of Israel’s attack on Iran, PSNA called on the government to immediately expel the Israeli ambassador from New Zealand.

    Minto said Israel’s strikes on Iran were “unprovoked, unilateral and a massive threat to humanity everywhere”.

    “This is such a dangerous action, that diplomatic weasel words about Israel are not acceptable. Israel is an out-of-control rogue state playing with the future of humanity. We must send it the strongest possible message.”

    “Israel’s using its often repeated lies and misinformation to attempt to justify it’s unconscionable violence and aggression.”

    Minto pointed to Iran’s right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.

    “Even US intelligence officials have made is clear very recently that Iran is NOT on the way to produce a nuclear weapon.”

    “And neither is Iran committed to the ‘annihilation’ of Israel.

    ‘Liberation for Palestine’
    “Iran does not support Israel as a racist, apartheid state and wants to see liberation for Palestine.

    “In this, Iran has, along with the overwhelming majority of countries in the world, called for an end to Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, the end of its apartheid policies directed against Palestinians and the return of Palestinian refugees.”

    New Zealand had the same policies, Minto said.

    However, he condemned NZ’s “appeasement of this apartheid state, as our government and other Western countries have done over 20 months”.

    A "Save the world from evil Zionism" placard
    A “Save the world from evil Zionism” placard at the Henderson rally today. Image: APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    Labour MP for Te Atatu Phil Twyford criticised the New Zealand government today for failing to take stronger action against Israel over its genocide and starvation strategy in Gaza, saying that NZ should implement comprehensive sanctions and recognise Palestine.

    Speaking at a rally in Henderson organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa in West Auckland suburbs for the first time in the 88th week of protest, Twyford said: “The Israeli government is operating in an apartheid state.

    “They subject the Palestinian people under their military.

    “People who are under international law they are obliged to protect,” he told about 500 protesters.

    “They are subjecting them to the most ruthless, most brutal system of apartheid.”

    It was a story of “ethnic cleansing, dispossesion, terror routinely visited upon Palestinian people on a daily basis in their land”, said Twyford, who is Labour Party spokesperson on immigration, disarmament and foreign affairs.

    “And it is being done, not only by the forces of Zionism, but by the Western world complicit, knowing, understanding and actively conniving in that dispossession and repression.”

    Widely condemned move
    Twyford referred to the government’s move this week alongside four other countries to impose sanctions on two far-right ministers in the the Israeli cabinet, illegal settlers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, which has been widely condemned as too little and too late.

    Labour MP Phil Twyford speaking at the Henderson pro-Palestinian humanitarian rally today
    Labour MP Phil Twyford speaking at the Henderson pro-Palestinian humanitarian rally today . . . Palestinians are subjected by Israel to “the most ruthless, most brutal, system of apartheid.” Image: Asia Pacific Report

    Leading British journalist Jonathan Cook this week criticised Britain, Australia, Canada and Norway along with New Zealand, saying they may have been “seeking strength in numbers” to withstand retaliation from Israel and the United States.

    “But in truth, they have selected the most limited and symbolic of all the possible sanctions they could have imposed on the Israeli government.”

    Israel was also condemned by speakers at the rally for its “unprovoked attack” on Iran and its strategy of forced starvation on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the repression in occupied West Bank.

    The death toll in Gaza was almost 62,000 Palestinians — more than 17,000 of them children — and Israel had also killed at least 78 people in the first waves of attacks on Iran.

    Meanwhile, in a statement today, the PSNA said it was appalled at the deportation of a Palestinian New Zealander from Egypt.

    PSNA said it had conveyed to the Egyptian government its “shock and anger” at the deportation of Rana Hamida who had travelled to Egypt to take part in the Global March to Gaza.

    "This Jew stands for Palestine" and "Sanction Israel now"
    “This Jew stands for Palestine” and “Sanction Israel now” placards at today’s Henderson rally. Image: APR

    Egyptian deportations over ‘global march’
    Egyptian authorities have deported dozens of people, including Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Moroccan, Greek and US citizens.

    The Global March to Gaza is due to start this weekend in Egypt with thousands of people from throughout the world taking part.

    PSNA co-chair John Minto said the march was to “express humanity’s outrage” at the ongoing Gaza-wide bombing and starving of the Palestinian population by Israel.

    “Egypt’s action in deporting activists can only be seen as assisting Israel’s attacks against the Palestinian population,” he said.

    “Unfortunately, Egypt has a long history of collaboration with the US and Israel to stifle the Palestine liberation struggle. This is in sharp contrast to the Egyptian people who are as appalled and angry as the rest of humanity at Israel’s horrendous war crimes.”

    Minto said the following message from Hamida was sent as she returned to New Zealand — she was welcomed by Kia Ora Gaza freedom flotilla supporters at Auckland International Airport this afternoon:

    ‘The more we will roar’
    “The Egyptian authorities, along with other governments, think that blocking humanity from this act of solidarity will stop because of them blocking people from being there and doing the job that they continue failing to do.

    “They are so mistaken — the more complicit and enabling they get in their inaction and in this case their active participation, the more we will rise, and roar.

    “We are escalating as you awaken the dragons within us.

    “We will sing louder and we will walk longer — with our hiking shoes in the Sinai desert, or barefoot towards your embassies.

    “We will disrupt your meetings, we will crowd your phone with calls and emails, and we will be the light that blinds your robotic heart and melts it alongside the lies you stand for.

    “This is not about us, it is about HUMANITY within us that is dying and being oppressed in various forms, it is about the humans enduring hell in Gaza, West Bank and Falastine as a whole.

    “Muslims, Jews and Christians together.

    “It is about NEVER AGAIN.

    “Boycott, divest — we will not stop we will not rest.”

    Pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protesters at the Henderson rally
    Pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protesters at the Henderson rally today with Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford speaking. Image: APR

    Expel Israeli ambassador call
    In an earlier statement in the wake of Israel’s attack on Iran, PSNA called on the government to immediately expel the Israeli ambassador from New Zealand.

    Minto said Israel’s strikes on Iran were “unprovoked, unilateral and a massive threat to humanity everywhere”.

    “This is such a dangerous action, that diplomatic weasel words about Israel are not acceptable. Israel is an out-of-control rogue state playing with the future of humanity. We must send it the strongest possible message.”

    “Israel’s using its often repeated lies and misinformation to attempt to justify it’s unconscionable violence and aggression.”

    Minto pointed to Iran’s right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.

    “Even US intelligence officials have made is clear very recently that Iran is NOT on the way to produce a nuclear weapon.”

    “And neither is Iran committed to the ‘annihilation’ of Israel.

    ‘Liberation for Palestine’
    “Iran does not support Israel as a racist, apartheid state and wants to see liberation for Palestine.

    “In this, Iran has, along with the overwhelming majority of countries in the world, called for an end to Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, the end of its apartheid policies directed against Palestinians and the return of Palestinian refugees.”

    New Zealand had the same policies, Minto said.

    However, he condemned NZ’s “appeasement of this apartheid state, as our government and other Western countries have done over 20 months”.

    A "Save the world from evil Zionism" placard
    A “Save the world from evil Zionism” placard at the Henderson rally today. Image: APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo

    Unlike the Palestinian message, the Israeli message is not global, but very much a localised cry for help — get us out of Gaza.

    This is not your typical video. The event itself might be similar to numerous other events in Gaza — a fighter emerging from a tunnel, placing a bomb under an Israeli Merkava tank, and returning to his tunnel before a massive explosion takes place.

    This is what is called an operation from zero distance. But the video, this time, is different, as it was not released by the Al-Qassam Brigades or any other group.

    There is no foreboding music in the background, no slick edits, no red triangles. The reason? The video was released by the Israeli army itself.

    This raises many questions, including why the Israeli army would report the bravery of a Palestinian fighter and the successful blowing up of the pride and joy of the Israeli military  — the Merkava.

    The answer might lie in the sense of despair in the Israeli military, an army that knows well that it has lost the war or, at best, is unable to clinch victory, even after it laid Gaza to waste and exterminated nearly 10 percent of its 2.3 million population (between the killed, wounded, and missing).

    This sentiment is now very well-known among Israelis, as Israeli media, which initially touted the idea of “total victory”, is now the one promoting a version of Israel’s own total defeat.

    On verge of ‘collective suicide’
    Writing in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, retired Major-General Itzhak Brik said that Israel was on the verge of “collective suicide” and that the army has effectively been defeated by Hamas in Gaza.

    “With a political and military echelon of this type, there is no need for external enemies; they will bring disaster upon us in their stupidity,” he warned, adding:

    “We may soon reach a point of no return, and the only thing left for us to do is pray to our God to come to our aid, and then we will all become messiahs who pray for miracles.”

    General Brik can no longer be accused of being the detached former soldier who is horribly misreading the situation on the ground. Even those on the ground are expressing the exact same sentiment.

    On Tuesday, June 4, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted an Israeli infantry soldier who expressed a feeling of brokenness after returning to fighting in Gaza, stating that “everyone is exhausted and uncertain”.

    The Israeli soldier reportedly added that he feelt there was no appreciation for the lives of soldiers fighting in Gaza and that they had moved from offence to defence, noting that the soldiers “doubt the objectives of the war”.

    ‘Hamas has Defeated Us’ – Ret. Israeli Maj. Gen. Brik Speaks of ‘Collective Suicide’

    Dominant global narrative
    Many in the pro-Palestine circle, which now represents the dominant global narrative on the war, are celebrating the bravery of the young men in the video and, by extension, the bravery of Gaza, deeply wounded but still fighting — in fact, winning.

    But there is more to the story than this. The fact that a tank belonging to the 401st Brigade would be blown up in such a way, under the watchful eye of Israeli drones, which could only report the event without being able to change it, is telling us something.

    But unlike the Palestinian message, the Israeli message is not global, but very much a localised cry for help — get us out of Gaza.

    Whether Israeli politicians, lead among them the master of political survival, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will listen or not, that is a completely different question.

    Republished with permission from The Palestine Chronicle.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Susana Suisuiki, Presenter/producer of RNZ Pacific Waves

    Fiji’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi says it is closely monitoring the situation in Iran and Israel as tensions remain high.

    Israel carried out a dozen strikes against Iranian military and nuclear sites on Friday, claiming it acted out of “self-defence”, saying Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon.

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Israel that “severe punishment” would follow and two waves of missiles were fired at Israel.

    Fiji’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi is urging the Fijian community there to remain calm, stay informed, and reach out to the Embassy should they have any concerns or require assistance during this period of heightened regional tensions.

    A Fiji national in Abu Dhabi said he had yet to hear how other Pacific communities in the Middle East were coping amid the Israel-Iran conflict.

    Speaking to RNZ Pacific Waves from Abu Dhabi, Fiji media specialist Kelepi Abariga said the situation was “freaky and risky”.

    Abariga has lived in Abu Dhabi for more than a decade and while he was far from the danger zones, he was concerned for his “fellow Pacific people”.

    ‘I hope they are safe’
    “I just hope they are safe as of now, this is probably the first time Israel has attacked Iran directly,” he said.

    “Everybody thinks that Iran has a huge nuclear deposit with them, that they could use it against any country in the world.

    “But you know, that is yet to be seen.

    “So right now, you know we from the Pacific, we’re right in the middle of everything and I think you know, our safety is paramount.”

    Abariga was not aware of any Pacific people in Tehran but said if they were, they were most likely to be working for an NGO or the United Nations.

    However, Abariga said there were Fiji nationals working at the International Christian embassy in Jerusalem and Solomon Island students in the south of Israel.

    He also said that Fijian troops were stationed at Golan Heights occupied by Israel.

    While Abariga described Abu Dhabi as the safest country in the Middle East, he said the politics in the region were volatile.

    “It’s been intense like that for all this time, and I think when you mention Iran in this country [UAE], they have all the differences so it’s probably something that has started a long way before.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    I have visited Iran twice. Once in June 1980 to witness an unprecedented event: the world’s first Islamic Revolution. It was the very start of my writing career.

    The second time was in 2018 and part of my interest was to get a sense of how disenchanted the population was — or was not — with life under the Ayatollahs decades after the creation of the Islamic Republic.

    I loved my time in Iran and found ordinary Iranians to be such wonderful, cultured and kind people.

    When I heard the news today of Israel’s attack on Iran I had the kind of emotional response that should never be seen in public. I was apoplectic with rage and disgust, I vented bitterly and emotively.

    Then I calmed down. And here is what I would like to say:

    Just last week former CIA officer Ray McGovern, who wrote daily intelligence briefings for the US President during his 27-year career, reminded me when I interviewed him that the assessment of the US intelligence community has been for years that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and had not recommenced since.

    The departing CIA director William Burns confirmed this assessment recently.  Propaganda aside, there is nothing new other than a US-Israeli campaign that has shredded any concept of international laws or norms.

    I won’t mince words: what we are witnessing is the racist, genocidal Israeli regime, armed and encouraged by the US, Germany, UK and other Western regimes, launching a war that has no justification other than the expansion of Israeli power and the advancement of its Greater Israel project.

    This year, using American, German and British armaments, supported by underlings like Australia and New Zealand, the Israelis have pursued their genocide against the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, and attacked various neighbours, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran.

    They represent a clear and present danger to peace and stability in the region.

    Iran has operated with considerable restraint but has also shown its willingness to use its military to keep the US-Israeli menace at bay. What most people forget is that the project to secure Iran’s borders and keep the likes of the British, Israelis and Americans out is a multi-generational project that long predates the Islamic Revolution.

    I would recommend Iran: A modern history by the US-based scholar Abbas Amanat that provides a long-view of the evolution of the Iranian state and how it has survived centuries of pressure and multiple occupations from imperial powers, including Russia, Britain, the US and others.

    Hard-fought independence
    The country was raped by the Brits and the Americans and has won a hard-fought independence that is being seriously challenged, not from within, but by the Israelis and the Western warlords who have wrecked so many countries and killed millions of men, women and children in the region over recent decades.

    I spoke and messaged with Iranian friends today both in Iran and in New Zealand and the response was consistent. They felt, one of them said, 10 times more hurt and emotional than I did.

    Understandable.

    A New Zealand-based Iranian friend had to leave work as soon as he heard the news.  He scanned Iranian social media and found people were upset, angry and overwhelmingly supportive of the government.

    “They destroyed entire apartment buildings! Why?”, “People will be very supportive of the regime now because they have attacked civilians.”

    “My parents are in the capital. I was so scared for them.”

    Just a couple of years ago scholars like Professor Amanat estimated that core support for the regime was probably only around 20 percent.  That was my impression too when I visited in 2018.

    Nationalism, existential menace
    Israel and the US have changed that. Nationalism and an existential menace will see Iranians rally around the flag.

    Something I learnt in Iran, in between visiting the magnificent ruins of the capital of the Achaemenid Empire at Persepolis, exploring a Zoroastrian Tower of Silence, chowing down on insanely good food in Yazd, talking with a scholar and then a dissident in Isfahan, and exploring an ancient Sassanian fort and a caravanserai in the eastern desert, was that the Iranians are the most politically astute people in the region.

    Many I spoke to were quite open about their disdain for the regime but none of them sought a counter-revolution.

    They knew what that would bring: the wolves (the Americans, the Israelis, the Saudis, and other bad actors) would slip in and tear the country apart. Slow change is the smarter option when you live in this neighbourhood.

    Iranians are overwhelmingly well-educated, profoundly courteous and kind, and have a deep sense of history. They know more than enough about what happened to them and to so many other countries once a great power sees an opening.

    War is a truly horrific thing that always brings terrible suffering to ordinary people. It is very rarely justified.

    Iran was actively negotiating with the Americans who, we now know, were briefed on the attack in advance and will possibly join the attack in the near future.

    US senators are baying for Judeo-Christian jihad. Democrat Senator John Fetterman was typical: “Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel. We must provide whatever is necessary — military, intelligence, weaponry — to fully back Israel in striking Iran.”

    We should have the moral and intellectual honesty to see the truth:  Our team, Team Genocide, are the enemies of peace and justice.  I wish the Iranian people peace and prosperity.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook in Middle East Eye

    If you imagined Western politicians and media were finally showing signs of waking up to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, think again.

    Even the decision this week by several Western states, led by the UK, to ban the entry of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, is not quite the pushback it is meant to seem.

    Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway may be seeking strength in numbers to withstand retaliation from Israel and the United States. But in truth, they have selected the most limited and symbolic of all the possible sanctions they could have imposed on the Israeli government.

    Their meagre action is motivated solely out of desperation. They urgently need to deter Israel from carrying through plans to formally annex the Occupied West Bank and thereby tear away the last remnants of the two-state comfort blanket — the West’s solitary pretext for decades of inaction.

    And as a bonus, the entry ban makes Britain and the others look like they are getting tough with Israel on Gaza, even as they do nothing to stop the mounting horrors there.

    Even the Israeli Ha’aretz newspaper’s senior columnist Gideon Levy mocked what he called a “tiny, ridiculous step” by the UK and others, saying it would make no difference to the slaughter in Gaza. He called for sanctions against “Israel in its entirety”.

    “Do they really believe this punishment will have some sort of effect on Israel’s moves?” Levy asked incredulously.

    2500 sanctions on Russia
    Remember as Britain raps two cabinet ministers on the knuckles that the West has imposed more than 2500 sanctions on Russia.

    While David Lammy, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, worries about the future of a non-existent diplomatic process — one trashed by Israel two decades ago — Palestinian children are still starving to death unseen.

    The genocide is not going to end unless the West forces Israel to stop. This week more than 40 Israeli military intelligence officers went on an effective strike, refusing to be involved in combat operations, saying Israel was waging a “clearly illegal” and “eternal war” in Gaza.

    Yet Starmer and Lammy will not even concede that Israel has violated international law.  

    What is clear is that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s sighs of regret last month — expressing how “intolerable” he finds the “situation” in Gaza — were purely performative.

    Starmer and the rest of the Western establishment have continued tolerating what they claim to find “intolerable”, even as the death toll from Israel’s bombs, gunfire and starvation campaign grow day by day.

    Those emaciated children — profoundly malnourished, their stick-then legs covered by the thinnest membrane of skin — aren’t going to recover without meaningful intervention. Their condition won’t stabilise while Israel deprives them of food day after day. Sooner or later they will die, mostly out of our view.

    Parents must risk lives
    Meanwhile, desperate parents must now risk their lives, forced to run the gauntlet of Israeli gunfire, in a — usually forlorn — bid to be among the handful of families able to grab paltry supplies of largely unusable, dried food. Most families have no water or fuel to cook with.

    As if mocking Palestinians, the Western media continue to refer to this real-life, scaled-up Hunger Games — imposed by Israel in place of the long-established United Nations relief system — as “aid distribution”.

    We are supposed to believe it is addressing Gaza’s “humanitarian crisis” even as it deepens the crisis.

    On the kindest analysis, Western capitals are settling back into a mix of silence and deflections, having got in their excuses just before Israel crosses the finishing line of its genocide.

    They have readied their alibis for the moment when international journalists are allowed in — the day after the population of Gaza has either been exterminated or violently herded into neighbouring Sinai.

    Or more likely, a bit of both.

    Truth inverted
    What distinguishes Israel’s ongoing slaughter of the two million-plus people of Gaza is this. It is the first stage-managed genocide in history. It is a Holocaust rewritten as public theatre, a spectacle in which every truth is carefully inverted.

    That can best be achieved, of course, if those trying to write a different, honest script are eliminated. The extent and authorship of the horrors can be edited out, or obscured through a series of red herrings, misdirecting onlookers.

    Israel has murdered more than 220 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past 20 months, and has been keeping Western journalists far from the killing fields.

    Like the West’s politicians, the foreign correspondents finally piped up last month — in their case, to protest at being barred from Gaza. No less than the politicians, they were keen to ready their excuses.

    They have careers and their future credibility to think about, after all.

    The journalists have publicly worried that they are being excluded because Israel has something to hide. As though Israel had nothing to hide in the preceding 20 months, when those same journalists docilely accepted their exclusion — and invariably regurgitated Israel’s deceitful spin on its atrocities.

    If you imagine that the reporting from Gaza would have been much different had the BBC, CNN, The Guardian or The New York Times had reporters on the ground, think again.

    The truth is the coverage would have looked much as it has done for more than a year and a half, with Israel dictating the story lines, with Israel’s denials foregrounded, with Israel’s claims of Hamas “terrorists” in every hospital, school, bakery, university, and refugee camp used to justify the destruction and slaughter.

    British doctors volunteering in Gaza who have told us there were no Hamas fighters in the hospitals they worked in, or anyone armed apart from the Israeli soldiers that shot up their medical facilities, would not be more believed because Jeremy Bowen interviewed them in Khan Younis rather than Richard Madeley in a London studio.

    Breaking the blockade
    If proof of that was needed, it came this week with the coverage of Israel’s brazen act of piracy against a UK-flagged ship, the Madleen, trying to break Israel’s genocidal aid blockade.

    Israel’s law-breaking did not happen this time in sealed-off Gaza, or against dehumanised Palestinians.

    Israel’s slaughter of the two million-plus people of Gaza is the first stage-managed genocide in history. It is a Holocaust rewritten as public theatre

    Israel’s ramming and seizure of the vessel took place on the high seas, and targeted a 12-member Western crew, including the famed young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. All were abducted and taken to Israel.

    Thunberg was trying to use her celebrity to draw attention to Israel’s illegal, genocidal blockade of aid. She did so precisely by trying to break that blockade peacefully.

    The defiance of the Madleen’s crew in sailing to Gaza was intended to shame Western governments that are under a legal — and it goes without saying, moral — obligation to stop a genocide under the provisions of the 1948 Genocide Convention they have ratified.

    Western citizens wring hands
    Western capitals have been ostentatiously wringing their hands at the “humanitarian crisis” of Israel starving two million people in full view of the world.

    The Madleen’s mission was to emphasise that those states could do much more than tell two Israeli cabinet ministers they are not welcome to visit. Together they could break the blockade, if they so wished.

    Britain, France and Canada — all of whom claimed last month that the “situation” in Gaza was “intolerable” — could organise a joint naval fleet carrying aid to Gaza through international waters. They would arrive in Palestinian territorial waters off the coast of Gaza.

    At no point would they be in Israel territory.

    Any attempt by Israel to interfere would be an act of war against these three states — and against Nato. The reality is Israel would be forced to pull back and allow the aid in.

    But, of course, this scenario is pure fantasy. Britain, France and Canada have no intention of breaking Israel’s “intolerable” siege of Gaza.

    None of them has any intention of doing anything but watch Israel starve the population to death, then describe it as a “humanitarian catastrophe” they were unable to stop.

    The Madleen has preemptively denied them this manoeuvre and highlighted Western leaders’ actual support for genocide — as well as let the people of Gaza know that a majority of the Western public oppose their governments’ collusion in Israel’s criminality.

    ‘Selfie yacht’
    The voyage was intended too as a vigorous nudge to awaken those in the West still slumbering through the genocide. Which is precisely why the Madleen’s message had to be smothered with spin, carefully prepared by Israel.

    The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued statements calling the aid ship a “celebrity selfie yacht“, while dismissing its action as a “public relations stunt” and “provocation”. Israeli officials portrayed Thunberg as a “narcissist” and “antisemite”.

    When Israeli soldiers illegally boarded the ship, they filmed themselves trying to hand out sandwiches to the crew — an actual stunt that should appall anyone mindful that, while Israel was concern-trolling Western publics about the nutritional needs of the Madleen crew, it was also starving two million Palestinians to death, half of them children.

    Did the British government, whose vessel was rammed and invaded in international waters, angrily protest the attack? Did the reliably patriotic British media rally against this humiliating violation of UK sovereignty?

    No, Starmer and Lammy once again had nothing to say on the matter.

    They have yet to concede that Israel is even breaking international law in denying the people of Gaza all food and water for more than three months, let alone acknowledge that this actually constitutes genocide.

    Instead, Lammy’s officials — 300 of whom have protested against the UK’s continuing collusion in Israeli atrocities — have been told to resign rather than raise objections rooted in international law.

    Bypass legal advisers
    According to sources within the Foreign Office cited by former British ambassador Craig Murray, Lammy has also insisted that any statements relating to the Madleen bypass the government’s legal advisers.

    Why? To allow Lammy plausible deniability as he evades Britain’s legal obligation to respond to Israel’s assault on a vessel sailing under UK protection.

    The media, meanwhile, has played its own part in whitewashing this flagrant crime — one that has taken place in full view, not hidden away in Gaza’s conveniently engineered “fog of war”.

    Much of the press adopted the term “selfie yacht” as if it were their own. As though Thunberg and the rest of the crew were pleasure-seekers promoting their social media platforms rather than risking their lives taking on the might of a genocidal Israeli military.

    They had good reason to be fearful. After all, the Israeli military shot dead 10 of their predecessors — activists on the Mavi Marmara aid ship to Gaza — 15 years ago. Israel has killed in cold blood American citizens such as Rachel Corrie, British citizens such as Tom Hurndall, and acclaimed journalists such as Shireen Abu Akleh.

    And for those with longer memories, the Israeli air force killed more than 30 American servicemen in a two-hour attack in 1967 on the USS Liberty, and wounded 170 more. The anniversary of that crime — covered up by every US administration — was commemorated by its survivors the day before the attack on the Madleen.

    ‘Detained’, not abducted
    Israel’s trivialising smears of the Madleen crew were echoed uncritically from Sky News and The Telegraph to LBC and Piers Morgan. 

    Strangely, journalists who had barely acknowledged the tsunami of selfies taken by Israeli soldiers glorifying their war crimes on social media were keenly attuned to a supposed narcissistic, selfie culture rampant among human-rights activists.

    As Thunberg headed back to Europe on Tuesday, the media continued with its assault on the English language and common sense. They reported that she had been “deported” from Israel, as though she had smuggled herself into Israel illegally rather than being been forcibly dragged there by the Israeli military.

    But even the so-called “serious” media buried the significance both of the Madleen’s voyage to Gaza and of Israel’s lawbreaking. From The Guardian and BBC to The New York Times and CBS, Israel’s criminal attack was characterised as the aid ship being “intercepted” or “diverted”, and of Israel “taking control” of the vessel.

    For the Western media, Thunberg was “detained”, not abducted.

    The framing was straight out of Tel Aviv. It was a preposterous narrative in which Israel was presented as taking actions necessary to restore order in a situation of dangerous rule-breaking and anarchy by activists on a futile and pointless excursion to Gaza.

    The coverage was so uniform not because it related to any kind of reality, but because it was pure propaganda — narrative spin that served not only Israel’s interests but that of a Western political and media class deeply implicated in Israel’s genocide.

    Arming criminals
    In another glaring example of this collusion, the Western media chose to almost immediately bury what should have been explosive comments last week from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    He admitted that Israel has been arming and cultivating close ties with criminal gangs in Gaza.

    He was responding to remarks from Avigdor Lieberman, a former political ally turned rival, that some of those assisted by Israel are affiliated to the jihadist group Islamic State. The most prominent is named Yasser Abu Shabab.

    The Western media either ignored this revelation or dutifully accepted Netanyahu’s self-serving characterisation of these ties as an alliance of convenience: one designed to weaken Hamas by promoting “rival local forces” and opening up new “post-war governing opportunities”.

    The real aim — or rather, two aims: one immediate, the other long term — are far more cynical and disturbing.

    More than six months ago, Palestinian analysts and the Israeli media began warning that Israel — after it had destroyed Gaza’s ruling institutions, including its police force – was working hand in hand with newly reinvigorated criminal gangs.

    Israel’s immediate aim of arming the criminals — turning them into powerful militias — was to intensify the breakdown of law and order. That served as the prelude to a double-barrelled Israeli disinformation campaign.

    Instead of the UN’s trusted and wide distribution network across Gaza, the GHF’s four “aid hubs” were perfectly designed to advance Israel’s genocidal goals

    Prime looting position
    These gangs were put in a prime position to loot food from the United Nations’ long-established aid distribution system and sell it on the black market. The looting helped Israel falsely claim both that Hamas was stealing aid from the UN and that the international body had proven itself unfit to run humanitarian operations in Gaza.

    Israel and the US then set about creating a mercenary front group — misleadingly called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — to run a sham replacement operation.

    Instead of the UN’s trusted and wide distribution network across Gaza, the GHF’s four “aid hubs” were perfectly designed to advance Israel’s genocidal goals.

    They are located in a narrow strip of territory next to the border with Egypt. Palestinians are forced to ethnically cleanse themselves into a tiny area of Gaza — if they are to stand any hope of eating — in preparation for their expulsion into Sinai.

    They have been herded into a massively congested area without the space or facilities to cope, where the spread of disease is guaranteed, and where they can be more easily massacred by Israeli bombs.

    An increasingly malnourished population must walk long distances and wait in massive crowds in the heat in the hope of small handouts of food. It is a situation engineered to heighten tensions, and lead to chaos and fighting.

    All of which provide an ideal pretext for Israeli soldiers to halt “aid distribution” pre-emptively in the interests of “public safety” and shoot into the crowds to “neutralise threats”, as has happened to lethal effect day after day.

    Repeated ‘aid hub’ massacres
    The repeated massacres at these “aid hubs” mean that the most vulnerable — those most in need of aid — have been frightened off, leaving gang members like Abu Shabab’s to enjoy the spoils.

    On Wednesday, Israel massacred at least 60 Palestinians, most of them seeking food, in what has already become normalised, a daily ritual of bloodletting that is already barely making headlines.

    And to add insult to injury, Israel has misrepresented its own drone footage of the very criminal gangs it arms, looting aid from trucks and shooting Palestinian aid-seekers as supposed evidence of Hamas stealing food and of the need for Israel to control aid distribution.

    All of this is so utterly transparent, and repugnant, it is simply astonishing it has not been at the forefront of Western coverage as politicians and media worry about how “intolerable the situation” in Gaza has become.

    Instead, the media has largely taken it as read that Hamas “steals aid”. The media has indulged an entirely bogus Israeli-fuelled debate about the need for aid distribution “reform”.

    And the media has equivocated about whether it is Israeli soldiers shooting dead those seeking aid.

    Of course, the media has refused to draw the only reasonable conclusion from all of this: that Israel is simply exploiting the chaos it has created to buy time for its starvation campaign to kill more Palestinians.

    Calibrated warlordism
    But there is much more at stake. Israel is fattening up these criminal gangs for a grander, future role in what used to be termed the “day after” — until it became all too clear that the period in question would follow the completion of Israel’s genocide.

    It comes as no surprise to any Palestinian to hear confirmation from Netanyahu that Israel has been arming criminal gangs in Gaza, even those with affiliations to Islamic State.

    It should not surprise any journalist who has spent serious time, as I have, living in a Palestinian community and studying Israel’s colonial control mechanisms over Palestinian society.

    For years, Israel’s ultimate vision for the Palestinians – if they cannot be entirely expelled from their historic homeland – has been of carefully calibrated warlordism

    Palestinian academics have understood for at least two decades — long before Hamas’ lethal one-day break-out from Gaza on 7 October 2023 — why Israel has invested so much of its energy in dismantling bit by bit the institutions of Palestinian national identity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

    The goal, they have been telling me and anyone else who would listen, was to leave Palestinian society so hollowed out, so crushed by the rule of feuding criminal gangs, that statehood would become inconceivable.

    As the Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada observes of what is taking place in Gaza: “Israel is NOT using [the gangs] to go after Hamas, they’re using them to destroy Gaza itself from the inside.”

    For years, Israel’s ultimate vision for the Palestinians — if they cannot be entirely expelled from their historic homeland — has been of carefully calibrated warlordism. Israel would arm a series of criminal families in their geographic heartlands.

    Each would have enough light arms to terrorise their local populations into submission, and fight neighbouring families to define the extent of their fiefdom.

    None would have the military power to take on Israel. Instead they would have to compete for Israel’s favour — treating it like some inflated Godfather —  in the hope of securing an advantage over rivals.

    In this vision, the Palestinians — one of the most educated populations in the Middle East – are to be driven into a permanent state of civil war and “survival of the fittest” politics. Israel’s ambition is to eviscerate Palestinian social cohesion as effectively as it has bombed Gaza’s cities “into the Stone Age”.

    Divinely blessed
    This is a simple story, one that should be all too familiar to European publics if they were educated in their own histories.

    For centuries, Europeans spread outwards — driven by a supremacist zealotry and a desire for material gain — to conquer the lands of others, to steal resources, and to subordinate, expel and exterminate the natives that stood in their way.

    The native people were always dehumanised. They were always barbarians, “human animals”, even as we — the members of a supposedly superior civilisation — butchered them, starved them, levelled their homes, destroyed their crops.

    Our mission of conquest and extermination was always divinely blessed. Our success in eradicating native peoples, our efficiency in killing them, was always proof of our moral superiority.

    We were always the victims, even while we humiliated, tortured and raped. We were always on the side of righteousness.

    Israel has simply carried this tradition into the modern era. It has held a mirror up to us and shown that, despite all our grandstanding about human rights, nothing has really changed.

    There are a few, like Greta Thunberg and the crew of the Madleen, ready to show by example that we can break with the past. We can refuse to dehumanise. We can refuse to collude in industrial savagery. We can refuse to give our consent through silence and inaction.

    But first we must stop listening to the siren calls of our political leaders and the billionaire-owned media. Only then might we learn what it means to be human.

    Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission.

  • EDITORIAL: By Martyn Bradbury, editor of The Daily Blog

    The madness has begun.

    We should have suspected something when the cloud strike shut down occurred.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to continue war so that he is never held to account.

    This madness is the last straw.

    NZ must immediately expel the Israeli Ambassador for this unprovoked attack on Iran.

    As moral and ethical people, we must turn away from Israel’s new war crime, they have started a war, we must as righteous people condemn Israel and their enabler America.

    This is the beginning of madness.

    We cannot be party to it.

    Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said the Israeli army radio was reporting that in addition to the air strikes, Israel’s external intelligence service Mossad had carried out some sabotage activities and attacks inside Iran.

    “There are also several reports and leaks in the Israeli media talking not only about the assassination of the top chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard but rather a very large number of senior military commanders in addition to prominent academics and nuclear scientists,” she said.

    “This is a very large-scale attack, not just on military installations, but also on the people who could potentially be making decisions about what Iran can do next, how Iran can respond to this attack that continues as we speak.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    Reports in Papua New Guinea say the governments of Bougainville and PNG have agreed to table the 2019 independence referendum results in Parliament.

    While discussions are ongoing, some degree of consensus has been reached during the talks, being held at Burnham Military Camp, just outside of Christchurch in New Zealand’s South Island.

    The talks are not open to the media.

    The PNG government agreed to a Bougainville request for a moderator to be brought in to solve an impasse over the tabling of the region's independence referendum.
    The PNG government agreed to a Bougainville request for a moderator to be brought in to solve an impasse over the tabling of the region’s independence referendum. Image: 123rf/RNZ Pacific

    A massive 97.7 percent of Bougainvillians voted for independence in 2019.

    Former Bougainville president John Momis told delegates in Burnham to “take the bull by the horn” and confront the independence issue without further delay.

    Both governments have agreed to present three highly pivotal documents to the PNG National Parliament.

    The commitment was formally conveyed by PNG’s Minister of Bougainville Affairs, Manaseh Makiba.

    Only sovereignty acceptable
    Meanwhile, the ABG President, Ishmael Toroama, said Bougainville would not accept a governance model that did not grant sovereignty.

    This comes amid talk of other options, such as self-government in free association.

    To achieve membership of the United Nations sovereignty is needed.

    Writing in the Post-Courier, journalist Gorethy Kenneth said the Bougainville national leaders, for the “first time have come out in aligning with the Bougainville team in New Zealand”.

    She reported that Police Minister and Bougainville regional MP Peter Tsiamalili Jr said he was in a peculiar position but he represented the 97.7 percent who voted for independence and he would go with the wishes of his people.

    The ICT Minister, and South Bougainville MP Timothy Masiu also said his one vote in Parliament would be for independence as far as his people were concerned.

    The PNG government has spoken previously of fears that independence for Bougainville would encourage other provinces to seek autonomy.

    Provinces, such as New Ireland, have made no secret of their dissatisfaction with Port Moresby and desire to control more of their own affairs.

    But the Bougainville Minister of Independence Implementation, Ezekiel Massat, said Bougainville’s status was constitutionally “ring-fenced” and could not set a precedent for other provinces.

    He said “under the Bougainville Peace Agreement, independence is a compulsory option”.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Russell Palmer, RNZ News political reporter

    Opposition parties say Aotearoa New Zealand’s government should be going much further, much faster in sanctioning Israel.

    Foreign Minister Winston Peters overnight revealed New Zealand had joined Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway in imposing travel bans on Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

    Some of the partner countries went further, adding asset freezes and business restrictions on the far-right ministers.

    Peters said the pair had used their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution.

    Israel and the United States criticised the sanctions, with the US saying it undermined progress towards a ceasefire.

    Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, attending Fieldays in Waikato, told reporters New Zealand still enjoyed a good relationship with the US administration, but would not be backing down.

    “We have a view that this is the right course of action for us,” he said.

    Behind the scenes job
    “We have differences in approach but the Americans are doing an excellent job of behind the scenes trying to get Israel and the Palestinians to the table to talk about a ceasefire.”

    Asked if there could be further sanctions, Luxon said the government was “monitoring the situation all the time”.

    Peters has been busy travelling in Europe and was unavailable to be interviewed. ACT — probably the most vocally pro-Israel party in Parliament — refused to comment on the situation.

    The opposition parties also backed the move, but argued the government should have gone much further.

    Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has since December been urging the coalition to back her bill imposing economic sanctions on Israel. With support from Labour and Te Pāti Māori it would need just six MPs to cross the floor to pass.

    Calling the Israeli actions in Gaza “genocide”, she told RNZ the government’s sanctions fell far short of those imposed on Russia.

    “This is symbolic, and it’s unfortunate that it’s taken so long to get to this point, nearly two years . . .  the Minister of Foreign Affairs also invoked the similarities with Russia in his statement this morning, yet we have seen far less harsh sanctions applied to Israel.

    “We’re well past the time for first steps.”

    ‘Cowardice’ by government
    The pushback from the US was “probably precisely part of the reason that our government has been so scared of doing the right thing”, she said, calling it “cowardice” on the government’s part.

    “What else are you supposed to call it at the end of the day?,” she said, saying at a bare minimum the Israeli ambassador should be expelled, Palestinian statehood should be recognised, and a special category of visas for Palestinians should be introduced.

    She rejected categorisation of her stance as anti-semitic, saying that made no sense.

    “If we are critiquing a government of a certain country, that is not the same thing as critiquing the people of that country. I think it’s actually far more anti-semitic to conflate the actions of the Israeli government with the entire Jewish peoples.”

    Debbie Ngarewa-Packer
    Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer . . . “It’s not a war, it’s an annihilation”. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone

    Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the sanctions were political hypocrisy.

    “When it comes to war, human rights and the extent of violence and genocide that we’re seeing, Palestine is its own independent nation . . .  why is this government sanctioning only two ministers? They should be sanctioning the whole of Israel,” she said.

    “These two Israel far right ministers don’t act alone. They belong to an entire Israel government which has used its military might and everything it can possibly do to bombard, to murder and to commit genocide and occupy Gaza and the West Bank.”

    Suspend diplomatic ties
    She also wanted all diplomatic ties with Israel suspended, along with sanctions against Israeli companies, military officials and additional support for the international courts — also saying the government should have done more.

    “This government has been doing everything to do nothing . . .  to appease allies that have dangerously overstepped unjustifiable marks, and they should not be silent.

    “It’s not a war, it’s an annihilation, it’s an absolute annihilation of human beings . . .  we’re way out there supporting those allies that are helping to weaponise Israel and the flattening and the continual cruel occupation of a nation, and it’s just nothing that I thought in my living days I’d be witnessing.”

    She said the government should be pushing back against “a very polarised, very Trump attitude” to the conflict.

    “Trumpism has arrived in Aotearoa . . .  and we continue to go down that line, that is a really frightening part for this beautiful nation of ours.

    “As a nation, we have a different set of values. We’re a Pacific-based country with a long history of going against the grain – the mainstream, easy grind. We’ve been a peaceful, loving nation that stood up against the big boys when it came to our anti nuclear stance and that’s our role in this, our role is not to follow blindly.”

    Undermining two-state solution
    In a statement, Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson Peeni Henare said the actions of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir had attempted to undermine the two-state solution and international law, and described the situation in Gaza as horrific.

    “The travel bans echo the sanctions placed on Russian individuals and organisations that supported the illegal invasion of Ukraine,” he said.

    He called for further action.

    “Labour has been calling for stronger action from the government on Israel’s invasion of Gaza, including intervening in South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, creation of a special visa for family members of New Zealanders fleeing Gaza, and ending government procurement from companies operating illegally in the Occupied Territories.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

  • COMMENTARY: By Steven Cowan, editor of Against The Current

    The New Zealand Foreign Minster’s decision to issue a travel ban against two Israeli far-right politicians is little more than a tokenistic gesture in opposing Israel’s actions.

    It is an attempt to appease growing opposition to Israel’s war, but the fact that Israel has killed more than 54,000 innocent people in Gaza, a third under the age of 18, still leaves the New Zealand government unmoved.

    Foreign Minister Peters gave the game away when he commented that the sanctions were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.

    Issuing travel bans against two Israeli politicians, who are unlikely to visit New Zealand at any stage, is the easy option.

    It appears to be doing something to protest against Israel’s actions when actually doing nothing. And it doesn’t contradict the interests of the United States in the Middle East.

    Under the government of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, New Zealand has become a vassal state of American imperialism.

    New Zealand has joined four other countries, the United States, Britain, Australia and Norway, in issuing a travel ban. But all four countries continue to supply Israel with arms.

    Unions demand stronger action
    Last week, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions demanded that the New Zealand government take stronger action against Israel. In a letter to Winston Peters, CTU president Richard Wagstaff wrote:

    “For too long, the international community has allowed the state of Israel to act with impunity. It is now very clearly engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

    “All efforts must be made to put diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel to end this murderous campaign.”

    THE CTU has called for a series of sanctions to be imposed on Israel. They include “a ban on all imports of goods made in whole or in part in Israel” and “a rapid review of Crown investments and immediately divest from any financial interests in Israeli companies”.

    The CTU is also calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.

    This article was first published on Steven Cowan’s website Against The Current. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RNZ News

    The United States has denounced sanctions by Britain and allies — including New Zealand and Australia — against Israeli far-right ministers, saying they should focus instead on the Palestinian armed group Hamas.

    New Zealand has banned two Israeli politicians from travelling to the country because of comments about the war in Gaza that Foreign Minister Winston Peters says “actively undermine peace and security”.

    New Zealand joins Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway in imposing the sanctions on Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

    Peters said they were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.

    “Our action today is not against the Israeli people, who suffered immeasurably on October 7 [2023] and who have continued to suffer through Hamas’ ongoing refusal to release all hostages.

    “Nor is it designed to sanction the wider Israeli government.”

    The two ministers were “using their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution”, Peters said.

    ‘Severely and deliberately undermined’ peace
    “Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have severely and deliberately undermined that by personally advocating for the annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements, while inciting violence and forced displacement.”

    The sanctions were consistent with New Zealand’s approach to other foreign policy issues, he said.

    Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (left) and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
    Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (left) and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich . . . sanctioned by Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway because they have “incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. These actions are not acceptable,” says British Foreign Minister David Lammy. Image: TRT screenshot APR

    “New Zealand has also targeted travel bans on politicians and military leaders advocating violence or undermining democracy in other countries in the past, including Russia, Belarus and Myanmar.”

    New Zealand had been a long-standing supporter of a two-state solution, Peters said, which the international community was also overwhelmingly in favour of.

    “New Zealand’s consistent and historic position has been that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law. Settlements and associated violence undermine the prospects for a viable two-state solution,” he said.

    “The crisis in Gaza has made returning to a meaningful political process all the more urgent. New Zealand will continue to advocate for an end to the current conflict and an urgent restart of the Middle East Peace Process.”

    ‘Outrageous’, says Israel
    Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the move was “outrageous” and the government would hold a special meeting early next week to decide how to respond to the “unacceptable decision”.

    His comments were made while attending the inauguration of a new Israeli settlement on Palestinian land.

    Peters is currently in Europe for the sixth Pacific-France Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Nice.

    US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters: “We find that extremely unhelpful. It will do nothing to get us closer to a ceasefire in Gaza.”

    Britain, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and Australia “should focus on the real culprit, which is Hamas”, she said of the sanctions.

    “We remain concerned about any step that would further isolate Israel from the international community.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.


  • This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • RNZ Pacific

    French Polynesia’s president has announced his administration will establish one of the world’s largest networks of highly protected marine areas (MPAs).

    The highly protected areas will safeguard 220,000 sq km of remote waters near the Society Islands and 680,000 sq km near the Gambier Islands.

    Speaking at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, President Moetai Brotherson pledged to protect nearly 23 percent of French Polynesia’s waters.

    “In French Polynesia, the ocean is much more than a territory — it’s the source of life, culture, and identity,” he said.

    “By strengthening the protection of Tainui Atea (the existing marine managed area that encompasses all French Polynesian waters) and laying the foundations for future marine protected areas . . .  we are asserting our ecological sovereignty while creating biodiversity sanctuaries for our people and future generations.”

    Once implemented, this would be one of the world’s single-largest designations of highly protected ocean space in history.

    Access will be limited, and all forms of extraction, such as fishing and mining, will be banned.

    Together, the zones encompass an area about twice the size of continental France.

    President Brotherson also promised to create additional artisanal fishing zones and two more large, highly protected MPAs within the next year near the Austral and Marquesas islands.

    He also committed to bolster conservation measures within the rest of French Polynesia’s waters.

    Donatien Tanret, who leads Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy’s work in French Polynesia, said local communities had made it clear that they wanted to see stronger protections that reflected both scientific guidance and their ancestral culture for future generations.

    “These protections and commitments to future designations are a powerful example of how local leadership and traditional measures such as rāhui can address modern challenges.”

    Samoa announces MPAs
    Before the conference, Samoa adopted a legally binding Marine Spatial Plan — a step to fully protect 30 percent and ensure sustainable management of 100 percent of its ocean.

    The plan includes the establishment of nine new fully protected MPAs, covering 36,000 sq km of ocean.

    Toeolesulsulu Cedric Schuster, Samoa’s Minister for Natural Resources and Environment, said Samoa was a large ocean state and its way of life was under increased threat from issues including climate change and overfishing.

    “This Marine Spatial Plan marks a historic step towards ensuring that our ocean remains prosperous and healthy to support all future generations of Samoans — just as it did for us and our ancestors.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RNZ Pacific

    French Polynesia’s president has announced his administration will establish one of the world’s largest networks of highly protected marine areas (MPAs).

    The highly protected areas will safeguard 220,000 sq km of remote waters near the Society Islands and 680,000 sq km near the Gambier Islands.

    Speaking at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, President Moetai Brotherson pledged to protect nearly 23 percent of French Polynesia’s waters.

    “In French Polynesia, the ocean is much more than a territory — it’s the source of life, culture, and identity,” he said.

    “By strengthening the protection of Tainui Atea (the existing marine managed area that encompasses all French Polynesian waters) and laying the foundations for future marine protected areas . . .  we are asserting our ecological sovereignty while creating biodiversity sanctuaries for our people and future generations.”

    Once implemented, this would be one of the world’s single-largest designations of highly protected ocean space in history.

    Access will be limited, and all forms of extraction, such as fishing and mining, will be banned.

    Together, the zones encompass an area about twice the size of continental France.

    President Brotherson also promised to create additional artisanal fishing zones and two more large, highly protected MPAs within the next year near the Austral and Marquesas islands.

    He also committed to bolster conservation measures within the rest of French Polynesia’s waters.

    Donatien Tanret, who leads Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy’s work in French Polynesia, said local communities had made it clear that they wanted to see stronger protections that reflected both scientific guidance and their ancestral culture for future generations.

    “These protections and commitments to future designations are a powerful example of how local leadership and traditional measures such as rāhui can address modern challenges.”

    Samoa announces MPAs
    Before the conference, Samoa adopted a legally binding Marine Spatial Plan — a step to fully protect 30 percent and ensure sustainable management of 100 percent of its ocean.

    The plan includes the establishment of nine new fully protected MPAs, covering 36,000 sq km of ocean.

    Toeolesulsulu Cedric Schuster, Samoa’s Minister for Natural Resources and Environment, said Samoa was a large ocean state and its way of life was under increased threat from issues including climate change and overfishing.

    “This Marine Spatial Plan marks a historic step towards ensuring that our ocean remains prosperous and healthy to support all future generations of Samoans — just as it did for us and our ancestors.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    Aotearoa New Zealand’s Te Pāti Māori has condemned the Israeli navy’s armed interception of the Madleen, a civilian aid vessel attempting to carry food, medical supplies, and international activists to Gaza, including Sweden’s climate activist Greta Thunberg.

    In a statement after the Madleen’s communications were cut, the indigenous political party said it was not known if the crew were safe and unharmed.

    However, Israel has begun deportations of the activists and has confiscated the yacht and its aid supplies for Gaza.

    “This is the latest act in a horrific string of violence against civilians trying to access meagre aid,” said Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

    “Since May 27, more than 130 civilians have murdered been while lining up for food at aid sites.

    “This is not an arrest [of the Madleen crew], it as an abduction. We have grave concerns for the safety of the crew.

    “Israel [has] proven time again they aren’t above committing violence against civilians.

    “Blocking baby formula and prosthetics while a people are deliberately starved is not border patrol, it is genocide.”

    Te Pāti Māori said it called on the New Zealand government to:

    • Demand safe release of all crew;
    • Demand safe passage of Aid to Gaza;
    • Name this blockade and starvation campaign for what it is — genocide; and
    • Sanction Israel for their crimes against humanity

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    Pacific advocacy movements and civil society organisations have challenged French credentials in hosting a global ocean conference, saying that unless France is accountable for its actions in the Pacific, it is merely “rebranding”.

    The call for accountability marked the French-sponsored UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice this week, during which President Emmanuel Macron will be hosting a France-Pacific Summit.

    French officials have described the UNOC event as a coming together “in the true spirit of Talanoa” and one that would be inconceivable without the Pacific.

    While acknowledging the importance of leveraging global partnerships for urgent climate action and ocean protection through the UNOC process, Pacific civil society groups have issued a joint statement saying that their political leaders must hold France accountable for its past actions and not allow it to “launder its dirty linen in ‘Blue Pacific’ and ‘critical transition’ narratives”.

    ‘Responsible steward’ image undermined
    France’s claims of being a “responsible steward” of the ocean were undermined by its historical actions in the Pacific, said the statement. This included:

    ● A brutal colonial legacy dating back to the mid-1800s, with the annexation of island nations now known as Kanaky-New Caledonia and Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia;

    ● A refusal to complete the decolonisation process, and in fact the perpetuation of the colonial condition, particularly for the those “territories” on the UN decolonisation list. In Kanaky-New Caledonia, for instance, France and its agents continue to renege on longstanding decolonisation commitments, while weaponising democratic ideals and processes such as “universal” voting rights to deny the fundamental rights of the indigenous population to self-determination;

    ● 30 years of nuclear violence in Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia with 193 test detonations — 46 in the atmosphere and close to 150 under the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, irradiating both land and sea, and people. Approximately 90 percent of the local population was exposed to radioactive fallout, resulting in long-term health impacts, including elevated rates of cancer and other radiation-related illnesses;

    ● Active efforts to obscure the true extent of its nuclear violence in Maʻohi Nui-French Polynesia, diverting resources to discredit independent research and obstructing transparency around health and environmental impacts. These actions reveal a persistent pattern of denial and narrative control that continues to undermine compensation efforts and delay justice for victims and communities;

    ● French claims to approximately one-third of the Pacific’s combined EEZ, and to being the world’s second largest ocean state, accruing largely from its so-called Pacific dependencies; and

    ● The supply of French military equipment, and the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior by French secret service agents — a state-sponsored terrorist attack with the 40th anniversary this year.

    A poster highlighting the issue of political prisoners depicting the Kanak flag after the pro-independence unrest and riots
    A poster highlighting the issue of political prisoners depicting the Kanak flag after the pro-independence unrest and riots in New Caledonia last year. Image: Collectif Solidarité Kanaky

    Seeking diplomatic support
    “Since the late 1980s, France has worked to build on diplomatic, development and defence fronts to garner support from Pacific governments.

    This includes development assistance through the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), Asian Development Fund, language and cultural exchanges, scientific collaboration and humanitarian assistance.

    A strong diplomatic presence in Pacific capitals as well as a full schedule of high-level exchanges, including a triennial France-Oceania leaders’ Summit commencing in 2003, together function to enhance proximity with and inclination towards Paris sentiments and priorities.

    The Pacific civil society statement said that French leadership at this UNOC process was once again central to its ongoing efforts to rebrand itself as a global leader on climate action, a champion of ocean protection, and a promoter of sovereignty.

    “Nothing can be further from the truth,” the groups said.

    “The reality is that France is rather more interested in strengthening its position as a middle power in an Indo-Pacific rather than a Pacific framework, and as a balancing power within the context of big-power rivalry between the US and China, all of which undermines rather than enhances Pacific sovereignty.”

    New global image
    The statement said that leaders must not allow France to build this new global image on the “foundations of its atrocities against Pacific peoples” and the ocean continent.

    Pacific civil society called on France:

    ● For immediate and irreversible commitments and practical steps to bring its colonial presence in the Pacific to an end before the conclusion, in 2030, of the 4th International Decade on the Eradication of Colonialism; and

    ● To acknowledge and take responsibility for the oceanic and human harms caused by 30 years of nuclear violence in Maʻohi Nui–French Polynesia, and to commit to full and just reparations, including support for affected communities, environmental remediation of test sites, and full public disclosure of all health and contamination data.

    The statement also called on Pacific leaders to:

    ● Keep France accountable for its multiple and longstanding debt to Pacific people; and

    ● Ensure that Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia and Kanaky-New Caledonia remain on the UN list of non-self-governing territories to be decolonised (UN decolonisation list).

    “Pacific leaders must ensure that France does not succeed in laundering its soiled linen — soiled by the blood of thousands of Pacific Islanders who resisted colonial occupation and/or who were used as test subjects for its industrial-military machinery — in the UNOC process,” said the statement.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.