A record 34 women are standing, including 14 in the three seats reserved for women.
Former teacher Palin ran in 2020 and has wide political experience at the local level.
She spoke with RNZ Pacific.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
Elizabeth Palin: I was a former chair lady in the local level government, community government, and I just resigned to contest the seat. I served in the community government and at the ward assembly system for 10 years. But prior to that I was a teacher by profession,
Don Wiseman: Being in the local level government. Is that a full time activity, is it for you?
EP: It is, yes.
DW: What does it involve?
EP: It involves chairing the local level government at the community base level, and also taking care of the five wards within the respective community government that I’m heading.
And, formally, in the first establishment of the first House of Assembly, I was the vice-chair lady. So as one of the ward members in the five wards under the urban council, urban community government. I contested the fourth House and I came second. I came back to be with the community, and then I worked with the people.
I went contested [a second election] and I became the ward member and also lobbied for the chair position, and I became the chairperson.
DW: So you want to be in the ABG [Autonomous Bougainville Government]. What is it you want to achieve there?
EP: Being in the local level government, I have experienced a lot where we do not see the link. We do not really see that link from the top level of leadership down to the local level. We do not really feel it in some sense.
Therefore, I decided that maybe I can be able to contest and get that leadership, and in experiencing my leadership at the ward level and community government level, I believe that I can be able to take that leadership and build that link from the top down to the ward assembly level, which includes the community government and vice versa, from the community government up to the top.
This is what I experienced, and that is the main reason why I am contesting the seat. Also, I believe in my leadership because I have been with the local level government, and I believe I can perform at a much higher level as well.
DW: Yes, well, you will have been campaigning now for weeks, because it’s such a long period of campaigning, isn’t it? How are people reacting to you?
EP: Oh, I have been receiving positive responses from the people, from the voters, in terms of the way I present my campaign strategy, my platform, especially.
I have so far received very positive response from the general public and the voters in the region, and from all the locations that I have conducted my campaign.
DW: Yes, I wouldn’t expect a politician to say anything else going into an election. Independence for Bougainville is, it would seem, very close. How important is it to you that it’s sorted sooner rather than later?
EP: Being a leader, a woman leader in having gone through my people’s experience in terms of fighting for their rights and for their independence, this coming independence, and what we we have been standing for as our political agenda is very, very crucial to me as with the general population of Bougainville.
I cannot say no to that. I do understand a lot of work to do in terms of getting us prepared, in terms of demonstrating the indications and so forth, that we are able to get independence and we are independently ready. But based on the fights of our forefathers and our people and having lost the 20,000 lives, I stand for that.
I believe that such a person like me, a woman with a strong voice at the political scene, in the political scene and level, I can be able to work as a team with the other leaders of Bougainville to get that independence.
But having said that, it does not really mean that that is it. We are ready. As leaders, on the ground and at the different levels of governance, we need to work, and we have this how many years that have been given within the time frame for us to work in order to show that we’re able to be an independent, sovereign state, and that is what I believe in.
Union members of Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) have made a video honouring the 242 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed by the Israeli military since October 2023 — many of them targeted.
The death toll has been reported by the Gaza Media Office since the latest killing of six media workers last Sunday, four of them from the Qatar-based global television channel Al Jazeera.
This figure is higher than the 180 deaths recorded by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and other media freedom agencies.
“While international media remains locked out of Gaza, Palestinian journalists work under fire, starvation and sickness to report the reality on the ground,” says the MEAA.
“Targeting journalists is a war crime.
“As colleagues, we remember them.”
In this video, MEAA members say the names of many Gazan journalists who have been killed by the Israeli military.
Music in the MEAA “Stop Killing Journalists” video is composed by Connor D’Netto and performed by Jayson Gillham. The video is edited by Jack Fisher and (A)manda Parkinson for MEAA and was released on YouTube yesterday.
Stop Killing Journalists Video: MEAA
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Netanyahu’s mass ethnic cleansing strategy pulls the rug out from under the West’s cherished pretext for supporting Israeli criminality: the fabled two-state solution.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
If you thought Western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel’s engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed.
As ever, events have moved on — even if the extreme hunger and malnourishment of the two million people of Gaza have not abated.
Western leaders are now expressing “outrage”, as the media call it, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “take full control” of Gaza and “occupy” it.
At some point in the future, Israel is apparently ready to hand the enclave over to outside forces unconnected to the Palestinian people.
The Israeli cabinet agreed last Friday on the first step: a takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are huddled in the ruins, being starved to death. The city will be encircled, systematically depopulated and destroyed, with survivors presumably herded southwards to a “humanitarian city” — Israel’s new term for a concentration camp — where they will be penned up, awaiting death or expulsion.
At the weekend, foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and other Western nations issued a joint statement decrying the move, warning it would “aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians”.
Germany, Israel’s most fervent backer in Europe and its second-biggest arms supplier, is apparently so dismayed that it has vowed to “suspend” — that is, delay — weapons shipments that have helped Israel to murder and maim hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the past 22 months.
Netanyahu is not likely to be too perturbed. Doubtless, Washington will step in and pick up any slack for its main client state in the oil-rich Middle East.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has once again shifted the West’s all-too-belated focus on the indisputable proof of Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions — evidenced by Gaza’s skeletal children — to an entirely different story.
Now, the front pages are all about the Israeli prime minister’s strategy in launching another “ground operation”, how much pushback he is getting from his military commanders, what the implications will be for the Israelis still held captive in the enclave, whether the Israeli army is now overstretched, and whether Hamas can ever be “defeated” and the enclave “demilitarised”.
We are returning once again to logistical analyses of the genocide — analyses whose premises ignore the genocide itself. Might that not be integral to Netanyahu’s strategy?
Life and death It ought to be shocking that Germany has been provoked into stopping its arming of Israel — assuming it follows through — not because of months of images of Gaza’s skin-and-bones children that echo those from Auschwitz, but only because Israel has declared that it wants to “take control” of Gaza.
It should be noted, of course, that Israel never stopped controlling Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories — in contravention of the fundamentals of international law, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled last year. Israel has had absolute control over the lives and deaths of Gaza’s people every day — bar one — since its occupation of the tiny coastal enclave many decades ago.
On 7 October 2023, thousands of Palestinian fighters briefly broke out of the besieged prison camp they and their families had endured after Israel momentarily dropped its guard.
Gaza has long been a prison that the Israeli military illegally controlled by land, sea and air, determining who could enter and leave. It kept Gaza’s economy throttled, and put the enclave’s population “on a diet” that saw rocketing malnourishment among its children long before the current starvation campaign.
Trapped behind a highly militarised fence since the early 1990s, unable to access their own coastal waters, and with Israeli drones constantly surveilling them and raining down death from the air, the people of Gaza viewed it more as a modernised concentration camp.
But Germany and the rest of the West were fine supporting all that. They have continued selling Israel arms, providing it with special trading status, and offering diplomatic cover.
Only as Israel carries through to a logical conclusion its settler-colonial agenda of replacing the native Palestinian people with Jews, is it apparently time for the West to vent its rhetorical “outrage”.
Two-state trickery Why the pushback now? In part, it is because Netanyahu is pulling the rug out from under their cherished, decades-long pretext for supporting Israel’s ever-greater criminality: the fabled two-state solution.
Israel conspired in that trickery with the signing of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s.
The goal was never the realisation of a two-state solution. Rather, Oslo created a “diplomatic horizon” for “final status issues” — which, like the physical horizon, always remained equally distant, however much ostensible movement there was on the ground.
Lisa Nandy, Britain’s Culture Secretary, peddled precisely this same deceit last week as she extolled the virtues of the two-state solution. She told Sky News: “Our message to the Palestinian people is very, very clear: There is hope on the horizon.”
UK Government Minister Lisa Nandy:
‘Our message to the Palestinian people is very clear. There is hope on the horizon.’
Palestinians are expected to believe words of ‘hope’ from a Minister of a government that has aided and supported Israel’s genocide against them pic.twitter.com/appizVm0QY
Every Palestinian understood her real message, which could be paraphrased as: “We’ve lied to you about a Palestinian state for decades, and we’ve allowed a genocide to unfold before the world’s eyes for the past two years. But hey, trust us this time. We’re on your side.”
In truth, the promise of Palestinian statehood was always treated by the West as little more than a threat — and one directed at Palestinian leaders. Palestinian officials must be more obedient, quieter. They had to first prove their willingness to police Israel’s occupation on Israel’s behalf by repressing their own people.
Hamas, of course, failed that test in Gaza. But Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank, bent over backwards to reassure his examiners, casting as “sacred” his lightly armed security forces’ so-called “cooperation” with Israel. In reality, they are there to do its dirty work.
Nonetheless, despite the PA’s endless good behaviour, Israel has continued to expel ordinary Palestinians from their land, then steal that land — which was supposed to form the basis of a Palestinian state — and hand it over to extremist Jewish settlers backed by the Israeli army.
Former US President Barack Obama briefly and feebly tried to halt what the West misleadingly calls Jewish “settlement expansion” — in reality, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — but rolled over at the first sign of intransigence from Netanyahu.
Israel has stepped up the process of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank even more aggressively over the past two years, while global attention has been on Gaza — with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretzwarning this week that settlers have been given “free rein”.
A small window into the impunity granted to settlers as they wage their campaign of violence to depopulate Palestinian communities was highlighted at the weekend, when B’Tselem released footage of a Palestinian activist, Awdah Hathaleen, inadvertently filming his own killing.
Extremist settler Yinon Levi was released on grounds of self-defence, even though the video shows him singling out Hathaleen from afar, taking aim and shooting.
Alibi gone It is noticeable that, having stopped making reference to Palestinian statehood for many years, Western leaders have revived their interest only now — as Israel is making a two-state solution unrealisable.
That was graphically illustrated by footage broadcast this month by ITV. Shot from an aid plane, it showed the wholesale destruction of Gaza — its homes, schools, hospitals, universities, bakeries, shops, mosques and churches gone.
Apocalyptic scenes in Gaza Video: ITV News
Gaza is in ruins. Its reconstruction will take decades. Occupied East Jerusalem and its holy sites were long ago seized and Judaised by Israel, with Western assent.
Suddenly, Western capitals are noticing that the last remnants of the proposed Palestinian state are about to be swallowed whole by Israel, too. Germany recently warned Israel that it must not take “any further steps toward annexing the West Bank”.
US President Donald Trump is on his own path. But this is the moment when other major Western powers — led by France, Britain and Canada — have started threatening to recognise a Palestinian state, even as the possibility of such a state has been obliterated by Israel.
Australia announced it would join them this week after its foreign minister, a few days earlier, said the quiet part out loud, warning: “There is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise if the international community don’t move to create that pathway to a two-state solution.”
That is something they dare not countenance, because with it goes their alibi for supporting all these years the apartheid state of Israel, now deep into the final stages of a genocide in Gaza.
That was why British Prime Minister Keir Starmer desperately switched tack recently. Instead of dangling recognition of Palestinian statehood as a carrot encouraging Palestinians to be more obedient — British policy for decades — he wielded it as a threat, and a largely hollow one, against Israel.
He would recognise a Palestinian state if Israel refused to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and proceeded with the West Bank’s annexation. In other words, Starmer backed recognising a state of Palestine – after Israel has gone ahead with its complete erasure.
Extracting concessions Still, France and Britain’s recognition threat is not simply too late. It serves two other purposes.
Firstly, it provides a new alibi for inaction. There are plenty of far more effective ways for the West to halt Israel’s genocide. Western capitals could embargo arms sales, stop intelligence sharing, impose economic sanctions, sever ties with Israeli institutions, expel Israeli ambassadors, and downgrade diplomatic relations. They are choosing to do none of those things.
And secondly, recognition is designed to extract from the Palestinians “concessions” that will make them even more vulnerable to Israeli violence.
According to France’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot: “Recognising a State of Palestine today means standing with the Palestinians who have chosen non-violence, who have renounced terrorism, and are prepared to recognise Israel.”
In other words, in the West’s view, the “good Palestinians” are those who recognise and lay down before the state committing genocide against them.
Western leaders have long envisioned a Palestinian state only on condition that it is demilitarised. Recognition this time is premised on Hamas agreeing to disarm and its departure from Gaza, leaving Abbas to take on the enclave and presumably continue the “sacred” mission of “cooperating” with a genocidal Israeli army.
As part of the price for recognition, all 22 members of the Arab League publicly condemned Hamas and demanded its removal from Gaza.
Boot on Gaza’s neck How does all of this fit with Netanyahu’s “ground offensive”? Israel isn’t “taking over” Gaza, as he claims. Its boot has been on the enclave’s neck for decades.
While Western capitals contemplate a two-state solution, Israel is preparing a final mass ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.
Starmer’s government, for one, knew this was coming. Flight data shows that the UK has been constantly operating surveillance missions over Gaza on Israel’s behalf from the Royal Air Force base Akrotiri on Cyprus. Downing Street has been following the enclave’s erasure step by step.
Netanyahu’s plan is to encircle, besiege and bomb the last remaining populated areas in northern and central Gaza, and drive Palestinians towards a giant holding pen — misnamed a “humanitarian city” — alongside the enclave’s short border with Egypt. Israel will then probably employ the same contractors it has been using elsewhere in Gaza to go street to street to bulldoze or blow up any surviving buildings.
The next stage, given the trajectory of the last two years, is not difficult to predict. Locked up in their dystopian “humanitarian city”, the people of Gaza will continue to be starved and bombed whenever Israel claims it has identified a Hamas fighter in their midst, until Egypt or other Arab states can be persuaded to take them in, as a further “humanitarian” gesture.
Then, the only matter to be settled will be what happens to the real estate: build some version of Trump’s gleaming “Riviera” scheme, or construct another tawdry patchwork of Jewish settlements of the kind envisioned by Netanyahu’s openly fascist allies, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.
There is a well-established template to be drawn on, one that was used in 1948 during Israel’s violent creation. Palestinians were driven from their cities and villages, in what was then called Palestine, across the borders into neighbouring states. The new state of Israel, backed by Western powers, then set about methodically destroying every home in those hundreds of villages.
Over subsequent years, they were landscaped either with forests or exclusive Jewish communities, often engaged in farming, to make Palestinian return impossible and stifle any memory of Israel’s crimes. Generations of Western politicians, intellectuals and cultural figures have celebrated all of this.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Austrian President Heinz Fischer are among those who went to Israel in their youth to work on these farming communities. Most came back as emissaries for a Jewish state built on the ruins of a Palestinian homeland.
An emptied Gaza can be similarly re-landscaped. But it is much harder to imagine that this time the world will forget or forgive the crimes committed by Israel — or those who enabled them.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published Middle East Eye and republished from the author’s blog with permission.
New Caledonia’s pro-independence front, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), has formally confirmed its “block rejection” of the French-sponsored Bougival project, signed last month.
The pact has been presented as an agreement between all parties to serve as a guide for the French Pacific territory’s political future.
This follows the FLNKS’s extraordinary congress held at the weekend in Mont-Dore, near Nouméa.
Statements made yesterday confirmed the pro-independence umbrella’s unanimous rejection of the document.
At the weekend congress, FLNKS president Christian Téin (speaking via telephone from mainland France), had called on FLNKS to “clearly and unequivocally” reject the Bougival document.
He said the document demonstrated “the administrating power’s [France] contempt towards our struggle for recognition as the colonised people”.
However, he called on the FLNKS to “remain open to dialogue”, but only focusing on ways to obtain “full sovereignty” after bilateral talks only with the French State, and no longer with the opposing local political parties (who want New Caledonia to remain a part of France).
He mentioned deadlines such as 24 September 2025 and eventually before the end of President Macron’s mandate in April 2027, when French presidential elections are scheduled to take place.
Téin was also part of the August 13 media conference, joining via videoconference, to confirm the FLNKS resolutions made at the weekend.
Apart from reiterating its calendar of events, the FLNKS, in its final document, endorsed the “total and unambiguous rejection” of the French-sponsored document because it was “incompatible” with the right to self-determination and bore a “logic of recolonisation” on the part of France.
The document, labelled “motion of general policy”, also demands that as a result of the rejection of the Bougival document, and since the previous 1998 Nouméa Accord remains in force, provincial elections previously scheduled for no later than November 2025 should now be maintained.
Under the Bougival format, the provincial elections were to be postponed once again to mid-2026.
“This will be a good opportunity to verify the legitimacy of those people who want to discuss the future of the country,” FLNKS member Sylvain Pabouty (head of Dynamique Unitaire Sud-DUS) told reporters.
Signatures on the last page of the now rejected Bougival project for New Caledonia’s political future. Image: Philippe Dunoyer/RNZ
Five FLNKS negotiators demoted As for the five negotiators who initially put their signatures on the document on behalf of FLNKS (including chief negotiator and Union Calédonienne chair Emmanuel Tjibaou), they have been de-missioned and their mandate withdrawn.
“Let this be clear to everyone. This is a block rejection of all that is related to the Bougival project,” FLNKS political bureau member and leader of the Labour party Marie-Pierre Goyetche told local reporters.
“Bougival is behind us, end of the story. The fundamental aim is for our country to access full sovereignty and independence through a decolonisation process within the framework of international law, including the right of the peoples for self-determination.”
She said that the FLNKS would refuse to engage in any aspect of the Bougival document.
Part of this further Bougival engagement is a “drafting committee” suggested by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls aimed at coordinating all documents (including necessary bills, legal and constitutional texts) related to the general agreement signed in July.
Anticipating the FLNKS decision, Minister Valls has already announced he will travel to New Caledonia next week to pursue talks and further “clarify” the spirit of the negotiations that led to the signing.
He said he would not give up and that a failure to go along with the agreed document would be “everyone’s failure”.
The Bougival document envisages a path to more autonomy for New Caledonia, including transferring more powers (such as foreign affairs) from France.
It also proposes to augment its status by creating a “state” of New Caledonia and creating dual French/New Caledonia citizenship.
Still want to talk, but with France only The FLNKS stressed it still wanted to talk to Valls, albeit on their own terms, especially when Valls visits New Caledonia next week.
However, according to the FLNKS motion, this would mean only on one-to-one format (no longer inclusively with the local pro-France parties), with United Nations “technical assistance” and “under the supervision” of the FLNKS president.
The only discussion subjects would then be related to a path to “full sovereignty” and further talks would only take place in New Caledonia.
As for the timeline, the FLNKS motion states that a “Kanaky Agreement” should be signed before September 24, which would open a transitional period to full sovereignty not later than April 2027, in other words “before [French] presidential elections”.
Goyetche also stressed that the FLNKS motion was warning France against “any new attempt to force its way”, as was the case in the days preceding 13 May 2024.
This is when a vote in Parliament to amend the French constitution and change the rules of eligibility for voters at New Caledonia’s local provincial elections triggered deadly and destructive riots that killed 14 people and caused damage worth more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) due to arson and looting.
“It seems as if the French government wants to go through the same hardships again”, Téin was heard saying through his telephone call at the Wednesday conference.
“Don’t make the same mistake again,” Pabouty warned Valls.
In his message posted on social networks on Sunday (August 10), the French minister had blamed those who “refuse the agreement” and who “choose confrontation and let the situation rot”.
Reactivate the mobilisation At the same media conference yesterday, FLNKS officials also called on “all of pro-independence forces to do all in their power to peacefully stop the [French] state’s agenda as agreed in Bougival”.
The FLNKS text, as released yesterday, also “reaffirms that FLNKS remains the only legitimate representative of the Kanak people, to carry its inalienable right to self-determination”.
FLNKS recent changes Téin is the leader of the CCAT (field action coordinating cell), a group set up by Union Calédonienne late in 2023 to protest against the proposed French constitutional amendment to alter voters’ rules of eligibility at local elections.
The protests mainly stemmed from the perception that if the new rules were to come into force, the indigenous Kanaks would find themselves a minority in their own country.
Téin was arrested in June 2024 and was charged for a number of crime-related offences, as well as his alleged involvement in the May 2024 riots.
He was released from jail mid-June 2025 pending his trial and under the condition that he does not return to New Caledonia for the time being.
However, from his prison cell in Mulhouse (northeastern France), Téin was elected president of the FLNKS in absentia in late August 2024.
At the same time, CCAT was admitted as one of the new components of FLNKS, just like a number of other organisations such as the trade union USTKE, the Labour party, and other smaller pro-independence movement groups.
Some groups have joined, others have left Also late August 2024, in a de facto split, the two main moderate pillars of FLNKS — UPM and PALIKA — distanced themselves from the pro-independence UC-dominated platform.
They asked their supporters to stay away from the riot-related violence, which destroyed hundreds of local businesses and cost thousands of jobs.
UPM and PALIKA did not take part in the latest FLNKS meeting at the weekend.
The two moderate pro-independence parties are part of the political groups who also signed the Bougival document and pledged to uphold it, as it is formulated, and keep the “Bougival spirit” in further talks.
The other groups, apart from UPM and PALIKA, are pro-France (Les Loyalistes, Rassemblement-LR, Calédonie Ensemble, and the Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien.
The FLNKS, even though five of their negotiators had also signed the document, has since denounced them and said their representatives had “no mandate” to do sign up.
Reaction from two main pro-France parties Pro-France parties had carefully chosen not to comment on the latest FLNKS moves until they were made public. However, the formal rejection was met by a joint communiqué from Les Loyalistes and Rassemblement-LR.
In a long-winded text, the two outspoken pro-France parties “deplored” what they termed “yet another betrayal”.
They confirmed they would meet Valls along Bougival lines when he visits next week and are now calling on a “bipartisan” committee of those supporting the Bougival text, including parties from all sides, as well as members of the civil society and “experts”.
They maintain that the Bougival document is “the only viable way to pull New Caledonia out of the critical situation in which it finds itself” and the “political balances” it contains “cannot be put into question”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Researcher John Hobbs . . . “So far, our ministers have chosen carefully crafted diplomatic language buried under joint country statements to influence the situation in Gaza.” Image: John Hobbs
So far, our ministers have chosen carefully crafted diplomatic language buried under joint country statements to influence the situation in Gaza, while at the same time protecting relationships with allies, particularly the US.
An example of these was a statement issued last month, in which New Zealand joined a group of 28 “concerned” countries to express horror at the “suffering of civilians in Gaza”, which, it says, “has reached new depths”. The statement calls for the lifting of restrictions on the “flow of aid” and demands “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire.”
Just to be clear, the “flow of aid” is the life-saving food and water that’s needed to prevent the mass starvation of Palestinians as famine driven by Israel deepens.
Demands for a ceasefire have been made on numerous occasions in the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, to no effect.
Failure to sanction Israel
Yet countries like New Zealand fail to sanction Israel for its non-compliance. Indeed, they do worse. These same countries continue to trade with Israel, and a number of them continue to provide weapons and arms.
According to trade data, New Zealand in 2023 imported goods and services of US$191 million from Israel and exported US$16.4 million the other way.
Most recently, New Zealand joined 14 other countries to “express the willingness or the positive consideration of our countries to recognise the State of Palestine, as an essential step towards the two-State solution.”
The statement is heavily caveated by saying that “positive consideration” is one option — so it’s not clear if all, or indeed any, of the countries will end up recognising Palestinian statehood.
By contrast, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has issued a separate statement, saying the UK would recognise the state of Palestine in September if Israel doesn’t agree to a ceasefire.
Starmer’s concern for the starvation of civilians in Gaza hasn’t stopped the UK from sending military arms to Israel. But this is at least a clearer stance than New Zealand has been able to muster.
More than 147 UN member states out of 193 formally recognise Palestinian statehood now.
Level of solidarity
And while recognition of statehood is largely symbolic, it does signal a level of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Inexplicably, New Zealand has been unwilling to take that step, while calling it a future option under “two-state” diplomacy.
New Zealand has trundled out its support of the two-state solution since at least 1993, reinforced by its co-sponsorship, in 2015-16, of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion.
That resolution declared settlements in occupied territories illegal under international law and urged member states to distinguish in its dealings between Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.
Since then, Israel has continued to transfer its citizens to the West Bank and Gaza. More than 750,000 Israeli settlers are now living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — areas where a future Palestinian state would be located.
Meanwhile, New Zealand has failed to take any meaningful action — sanctions or suspension of trade, for example — to implement the requirements of the Security Council resolution. That the government consistently frames its response as supporting a two-state solution beggars belief in light of such inaction.
New Zealand’s refusal to sanction Israel is nothing but shameful.
When foreign affairs minister Winston Peters expressed shock about the “intolerable situation” in Gaza, RNZ asked him whether New Zealand would entertain placing sanctions on Israel. He responded by saying that we are a “long, long way off doing that.”
The genocide in Gaza is happening with the support of countries like New Zealand, through inaction and failure to implement sanctions.
And statements about recognising statehood provide the appearance of supporting an end to the genocide, but change nothing in reality.
John Hobbs has been a career public servant, working in a number of government departments (most recently the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet). He also worked for a number of ministers on secondment from government agencies. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, Otago University. This article was first published by E-Tangata and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.
Anas al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, last Sunday has triggered protests around the world, including journalists in Israel. He left behind a powerful farewell message — his final testament to his people, his family, and the world.
Palestine Chronicle staff
Palestinian journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqea were killed last Sunday in an Israeli bombardment that struck a journalists’ tent near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
Cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal also died in the attack, which was carried out by an Israeli drone. The Israeli army admitted targeting al-Sharif shortly after the strike.
Al-Sharif, 28, from Jabaliya refugee camp, was an award-winning journalist who became a leading global voice from Gaza during the war. He inspired thousands.
Protest and vigils have been held around the world from South Africa’s Cape Town to Manila in the Philippines and London in the UK to honour al-Sharif and his colleagues in condemnation of this targeted murder.
Less than two weeks ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists had warned that his life was in “acute” danger due to repeated threats from an Israeli military spokesperson.
Before his death, al-Sharif prepared a farewell message to be shared if he was killed. His family and colleagues posted it to his social media accounts after the news of his death.
Below is the full English translation of that message.
Anas al-Sharif’s final message “This is my will and my final message.
“If my words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.
“First, peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessings.
“God knows I gave all I had — strength and effort — to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys of Jabaliya refugee camp. My hope was to live long enough to return with my family and loved ones to our original town, Asqalan (al-Majdal), now under occupation.
هذه وصيّتي، ورسالتي الأخيرة.
إن وصلَتكم كلماتي هذه، فاعلموا أن إسرائيل قد نجحت في قتلي وإسكات صوتي.
بداية السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
يعلم الله أنني بذلت كل ما أملك من جهدٍ وقوة، لأكون سندًا وصوتًا لأبناء شعبي، مذ فتحت عيني على الحياة في أزقّة وحارات مخيّم جباليا للاجئين،…
— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) August 10, 2025
“But God’s will came first, and His decree is final.
“I have lived pain in all its details and tasted loss many times. Yet I never stopped telling the truth as it is, without falsification or distortion — so that God may bear witness over those who stayed silent, accepted our killing, and did nothing to stop the massacre our people have endured for more than a year and a half.
“I entrust you with Palestine — the jewel of the Muslim crown and the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people and children, whose pure bodies have been crushed under Israeli bombs and missiles.
Australian journalists protest over the killings. Video: MEAA
“Do not let chains silence you or borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.
“I entrust you with my family: my beloved daughter Sham; my dear son Salah; my mother, whose prayers were my fortress; and my steadfast wife Bayan (Umm Salah), who carried the responsibility in my absence with strength and faith. Stand by them after God.
Two more journalists, Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qaryaq, have been killed in Gaza. These brilliant young reporters were known for their courage and powerful commitment to the truth.
Israel’s strategy is clear: silence the truth by murdering those who report it. They accuse… pic.twitter.com/G0I3xny1IV
“If I die, I die steadfast in my principles. I bear witness that I am content with God’s decree, certain of our meeting, and convinced that what is with God is better and everlasting.
“O God, accept me among the martyrs, forgive me my sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people. Forgive me if I fell short, and pray for me with mercy, for I have kept my pledge and never changed.
“Do not forget Gaza… and do not forget me in your prayers.”
Anas Jamal al-Sharif
April 6, 2025
Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif with his daughter Sham and his son Salah. Image: via social media
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Global condemnation is mounting over Israel’s assassination of one of the most prominent journalists in Gaza, the Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, along with four of his colleagues at the network and another freelance journalist.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for an independent investigation after the five Al Jazeera journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli strike outside Al-Shifa Hospital in a tent clearly marked in Gaza City. European Union officials and international press freedom groups have also denounced the assassinations.
The sixth journalist, freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khalidi, was also killed in the same strike. Minutes before the strike, al-Sharif posted to X, “If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.”
On Monday, crowds of mourners gathered for a funeral procession for al-Sharif and his colleagues, marching from Al-Shifa to Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in central Gaza, carrying the journalists’ bodies wrapped in white sheets.
A dark blue flak press jacket and a Palestinian flag were placed on al-Sharif’s remains. People embraced as they decried Israel’s relentless targeting of journalists in Gaza.
Meanwhile, at rallies and vigils worldwide, people are demanding accountability for the attack on journalists, including in Tunisia, Belfast, Dublin, Berlin, London, Oslo, Stockholm and Washington, DC.
For more, we go to Geneva, Switzerland, where we’re joined by Irene Khan, UN special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. She served as secretary-general of Amnesty International from 2001 to 2009.
Irene Khan, welcome back to Democracy Now! In late July, you publicly denounced Israel’s threats against Anas al-Sharif. Can you talk about what you understood at that time, and then this young 28-year-old reporter’s response to your press statement?
IRENE KHAN: Yes, well, Anas actually contacted me, and Al Jazeera contacted me to tell me of this impending threat on his head. They had seen it before. He’s not the first one, as you know.
There are some — anything between 26 to 30 journalists — who have been targeted in this campaign of assassination. And Anas wanted me to go public, he wanted others to go public, to stop what Israel was doing.
But at the same time, he thanked me for my support, and then he said nothing would stop him from speaking the truth. And in a way, he signed his own death warrant by that, because, as you know, he and the others, Al Jazeera’s entire team in northern Gaza, were killed, murdered, just as Israel ramps up its military action on the city, Gaza City.
So, there is a clear pattern here of killing journalists to clear the path, to silence voices, to stop the international, global opinion from being informed of the genocide in Gaza.
Assassination: Israel’s killing of Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif Video: Democracy Now!
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Irene Khan, the number of journalists — so, more than 200 have been killed in Gaza. That’s more than all the journalists killed in World War I, World War II, Korea, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Afghanistan War combined.
Your sense of the Israeli impunity here in being able to basically kill the corps of journalists that are still able to report from Gaza?
IRENE KHAN: Well, you also have to take into account that Israel has refused to give access to international media. So these are all local Gazan journalists who are putting their lives on the line to keep the world informed. Many of them — you named some 200 — many of them, of course, have been killed in the intensity of the battle. Many of them have been killed while asleep in their own apartments. But these cases, the cases of Anas now, and his colleagues, and a number of other cases of targeted killing, is really murder.
It is not killing in the context of war. It is a deliberate strategy to stop independent voices reporting. So it’s as much a threat to independent journalism as it is to the journalists themselves, as well as a blatant attempt by the Israelis to stop the world witnessing what they are doing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And these killings also came as the Israeli government announced they’re unleashing a new operation in the area of Gaza. Who will be left to document this operation now?
IRENE KHAN: Well, absolutely. And that is why Anas got in touch with me, because he realised what was happening. You know, from his message on LinkedIn and from his message that he has sent to me and to others, it was very, very clear.
He has been there on the ground since October 2023. He could see the pattern. He could see what was happening. He knew they were coming for him.
And that is why it is incumbent on all of us now not to just condemn, but actually to act, before independent media is totally obliterated from Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Irene Khan, I want to ask what you’re calling for, and the significance of Netanyahu holding this news conference on Sunday and saying — he has now said that the Israeli military can bring in journalists, but they’re most concerned about protecting their safety.
A few hours later is when Israel assassinated these six journalists. Now, it is the first time, NPR reports, since October 2023 that Israel so quickly took responsibility for their assassination.
You know, compare it to Shireen Abu Akleh, May 11, 2022, when Israel said it was not clear, and then, you know, so many studies were done, but it became very clear. Talk about what you are calling for at this point.
IRENE KHAN: It’s not actually an admission of taking responsibility, because there is no accountability in it. It’s actually a brazen attempt to show the world that the Israeli army can work as it wishes, regardless of international humanitarian law that protects journalists as civilians.
Now, what I’m calling for is, of course, independent investigation, truly independent investigation. But I’m also calling for protection of journalists on the ground and for access to international journalists.
Israel always covers these assassinations and murders with allegations and smear campaigns — the journalists are simply agents of Hamas or members of Hamas — and that kind of gives Israel a veil of impunity.
It’s important for international journalists to be on the ground so they can actually investigate and expose this false story and the string of assassinations that Israel is carrying out.
And I think we need to remember the message that Israel’s action is sending to the rest of the world, because there are other spots, other conflict areas, where also others are learning that you need to be just brazen and go ahead and kill journalists, and you can get away with it.
AMY GOODMAN: Irene Khan, we’re speaking to you in Geneva, Switzerland — Geneva, the Geneva Conventions. Can you talk about how the conventions specifically protect journalists?
IRENE KHAN: Well, the convention gives journalists civilian status, which means that, like all other civilians, they should not be targeted during the war.
The problem is the journalists are not just civilians. They are the kind of civilians that have to go to the frontline and not run away somewhere else. You know, they are not like women and children, who can move and seek shelter elsewhere.
They have to be where the fighting is. And that exposes them. They are much more like humanitarian workers. And journalists need to be recognised as humanitarian workers. There needs to be — I believe there needs to be additional protection given to them, because it shows how vulnerable they are, on the one hand, to attacks, and, on the other hand, how important their work is to the rest of the world, to any peace process, to any attempt to have accountability and justice for the victims.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Last month, the union representing reporters at the French press agency AFP warned that the agency staff were in danger of starving to death, and they issued an open letter condemning what Israel was doing in terms of denying food, not just to the population in general, but also to journalists, as well.
Your response?
IRENE KHAN: Well, absolutely. These journalists are local journalists, as I said, so they have faced all the problems that the population is facing. They’ve had their own families killed. They have to hunt for food, even as they hunt for news.
So, they have been put in a terrible situation. And that’s why Israel has to open the gates, not under military protection, but allow journalists independently to come and investigate. It has to stop the starvation, the blockade. It has to allow humanitarian assistance to come in. And it has to agree to a ceasefire and, of course, stop the genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with the words of Anas al-Sharif himself. Anticipating his own murder by Israeli forces, he wrote a preprepared message that was posted on his X account after his death. Al Jazeera read part of his message on air.
AL JAZEERA REPORTER: “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice, I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification, so that God may bear witness against those who stayed silent and accepted our killing.”
He ends, “Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.”
AMY GOODMAN: The words of Anas al-Sharif, posted after he was killed by the Israeli military along with five other journalists. Five of them were with Al Jazeera.
Irene Khan, I want to thank you so much for being with us, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, speaking to us from Geneva, Switzerland. To see our interview with the managing editor of Al Jazeera, go to democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Nicole Salazar, Sara Nasser, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Safwat Nazzal. Our executive director is Julie Crosby.
I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!
It was a bit like the old days — the heyday of Aotearoa New Zealand’s nuclear-free movement in the 1980s, leading up to the Rarotonga Treaty for a nuclear free Pacific zone that was signed on 6 August 1985 just weeks after the Rainbow Warrior bombing.
Mike Smith got the packed audience on track, introducing himself.
“I’m a member of a peace group calling ourselves Just Defence,” he said. “We’ve been helping Aro Valley resident Tim Bollinger’s initiative to establish this community event.
“Today we have been invited by Tim to reflect on the anniversary of the destruction of Nagasaki in japan by the second use of a nuclear weapon in this event.
“Our very great thanks are due to Tim for creating this opportunity to reflect on those horrific events 80 years ago. This is all the more crucial because most people are not aware that right now the world is at a moment as dangerous as the 1960s Cuban Missile Crisis.
“The anti-nuclear peace movement has lost its salience in our community.”
Nuclear-free heritage
Smith reminded the audience — if they needed to be — of Aotearoa New Zealand’s nuclear-free heritage.
“We are proudly nuclear-free because nearly 50 years ago we rejected the entry of US warships that would not declare they were nuclear-free.
“That was a bold and courageous decision,” he continued. “But it was only possible because Kiwi citizens the length and breadth of our country declared their communities nuclear-free, town-by-town and city-by-city, due to the work of tireless activists such as Larry Ross.
“Some of their symbols are on display today.”
And then came the pièce de résistance.
Aro Valley Peace Talks musician and event coordinator Tim Bollinger . . . “A lot has been stolen from us over the past decades.” Image: APR
“Today, I would like to offer a dedication, that we who are assembled here now declare Aro Valley ‘nuclear free’.
“Great things can come from small beginnings, and it is once again time that we raise the demand for a world free from the threat of nuclear devastation.”
An eclectic day
And so be it declared, judging by the enthusiastic applause greeting Mike Smith’s remarks.
It was an eclectic day of contributions, but mostly to the already converted.
First speaker on the main programme was activist and peace movement historian Maire Leadbeater who spoke about her recent book The Enemy Within and a century of state surveillance in Aotearoa that had penalised activists for social change.
She was followed by historian and writer Mark Derby, co-editor with the late May Bass of Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, who outlined the life and multi-talents of one of New Zealand’s most extraordinary peace activists.
Former local council politician Helene Ritchie spoke of the campaign to declare Pōneke Wellington a nuclear weapons-free zone in 1982.
She was followed by former trade unionist Graeme Clark detailing how the union movement played a key role in opposing nuclear ship visits and its influence on the anti-nuclear policies of the NZ Labour Party.
Posters from the nuclear-free exhibition at the Aro Community Centre. Image: APR
Pacific coverage
The afternoon session kicked off with a “conversation” between journalists and activists Jeremy Rose, formerly of RNZ and who now writes a substack blog Towards Democracy, and David Robie, retired media academic who now publishes Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific. They discussed issues raised in David’s new book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and the weak Pacific coverage in mainstream media.
Doctor and activist Karl Geiringer spoke about his documentary on the role of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War’s bid to have nuclear weapons ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice, and the contribution of his peace activist father Dr Erich Geiringer.
Glenn Colquhoun and Inshirah Mahal offered inspiring poems.
Peace activist Valerie Morse gave an overview of 25 years of Peace Action and Sonya Smith, an activist and spokesperson for the Wairoa-based group Rocket Lab Monitor, gave an update on their campaign.
An important day but short on plans for the future. As at least one participant noted: “Our talks have been mainly about success of the past – but what about our action plans for the present and future?”
More posters from the nuclear-free exhibition. Image: APR
‘Working for peace’
A flyer for Just Defence, with the slogan “Work for peace — not war” with a call to action saying what is needed in New Zealand is:
A genuinely independent foreign policy for Aotearoa New Zealand;
Defence that is just — not for aggression against other people or nations;
A smart, well-paid defence force designed for our real needs — patrolling our waters, carrying out UN peacekeeping missions, responding to civil defence emergencies here and in our Pacific neighbourhood;
Affirmation of our nuclear-free status and our support for a nucear-free Pacific; and
Building our reputation for promoting peace through dialogue.
And the flyer flagged a reality check: “China is not our enemy.”
A couple of days after the event, coordinator Tim Bollinger emailed all participants promising some important developments, including deciding on a draft Nagasaki Day resolution.
“The time has never been more important for the exchange of ideas and experiences with those whose land and planet we share — to counter apathy and ignorance with the rich legacy of learning and ideas we each have to give,” Bollinger said.
“A lot has been stolen from us over the past decades . . .
“The victories of the past have been deliberately underplayed, undervalued, undermined and clawed back by those who never believed in them in the first place.”
Bollinger promised a community pushback and the resolution would be a first step. Along with a batch of audio and video recordings from the weekend as an action resource.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister says the war in Gaza is “utterly appalling” and Israeil Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost the plot”.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s comments came on a tense day in Parliament today, where the Green Party’s co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was “named” for refusing to leave the House following a heated debate on the government’s plan to consider recognising Palestinian statehood.
Speaking to media, Luxon said Netanyahu had “gone too far”.
“I think he has lost the plot and I think that what we’re seeing overnight — the attack on Gaza City — is utterly, utterly unacceptable,” he said.
Luxon said Israel had consistently ignored pleas from the international community for humanitarian aid to be delivered “unfettered” and the situation was driving more human catastrophe across Gaza.
“We are a small country a long way away, with very limited trade with Israel. We have very little connection with the country, but we have stood up for values, and we keep articulating them very consistently, and what you have seen is Israel not listening to the global community at all,” Luxon said.
“We have said a forcible displacement of people and an annexation of Gaza would be a breach of international law. We have called these things out consistently time and time again.
“You’ve seen New Zealand join many of our friends and partners around the world to make these statements, and he’s just not listening,” the Prime Minister said.
Considering statehood
The government is considering whether it will join other countries like France, Canada and Australia in recognising Palestinian statehood at a UN Leader’s Meeting next month.
Luxon said recent attacks could “extinguish a pathway” to a two-state solution.
“I’m telling you what my personal view is, as a human being, looking at the situation, that’s how I feel about,” he said.
“She’s used the words ‘unfolding genocide’, and yes, I do agree with that. That’s a good description of the situation at the moment.”
Hipkins said calling it an “unfolding genocide” meant that New Zealand was not “appointing ourselves judge and jury” because there was still a case to be heard before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“Recognising that there is an unfolding genocide in Gaza is an important part of the world community standing up and saying, we’re not going to tolerate it.
“We should recognise that there is now a growing acknowledgement around the world that there is an unfolding genocide in Gaza, and I think we should call that for what it is, and the world community needs to react to that to prevent it from happening,” Hipkins said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark says she has witnessed Israel deliberately obstructing life-saving humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Together with former Irish president Mary Robinson, Clark visited the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Palestinian territory this week.
The two former world leaders are part of The Elders, an independent, non-government organisation of global leaders working together for peace, justice, human rights and sustainability.
Their joint statement said they saw evidence of food and medical aid being denied entry to Gaza, “causing mass starvation to spread”.
“What we saw and heard underlines our personal conviction that there is not only an unfolding, human-caused famine in Gaza, there is an unfolding genocide,” the statement said.
“The deliberate destruction of health facilities in Gaza means children facing acute malnutrition cannot be treated effectively.”
At least 36 Palestinian children starved to death last month, they said.
Israel has repeatedly denied famine and genocide were happening in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that if his army had a policy of starvation “no one would be alive two years into the war”.
Figures disputed
Israel also disputed the figures provided by authorities in the Palestinian territory, but had not provided its own.
No shelter materials had entered Gaza since March this year, the statement said, leaving families already displaced multiple times without protection.
Former Irish president Mary Robinson and former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark have visited the Rafah border crossing. Image: The Elders/RNZ
“Many new mothers are unable to feed themselves or their new-born babies adequately, and the health system is collapsing,” Clark said.
“All of this threatens the very survival of an entire generation,” she said.
‘Truth matters’ “The uncomfortable truth is that many states are prioritising their own economic and security interests, even as the world is reeling from the images of Gazan children starving to death,” Robinson said.
“Political leaders have the power and the legal obligation to apply measures to pressure this Israeli government to end its atrocity crimes.”
“This is all the more urgent in light of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Gaza City takeover plan. President Trump has the leverage to compel a change of course. He must use it now,” she said.
Hamas authorities said Israeli air attacks had increased in recent days as the Israel Defence Force (IDF) prepared to take over Gaza City, home to some one million Palestinians.
Netanyahu had defended his plan, saying the best option to defeat Hamas was to take the city by force.
The plan has been heavily criticised by Israelis, Palestinians, international organisations and other countries.
Israel has repeatedly denied famine and genocide were happening in Gaza. Image: The Elders/RNZ
‘Re-engage’ ceasefire talks
Robinson and Clark urged Hamas and Israel to re-engage in ceasefire talks and immediately release Israeli hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinian prisoners, and for Israel to immediately open all border crossings into Gaza.
They also called for states to suspend existing and future trade agreements with Israel, as well as the transfer of arms and weapons to Israel, urging the world to follow the lead of Germany and Norway.
“We call for recognition of the State of Palestine by at least 20 more states by September, including G7 members, EU member states and others,” their joint statement said.
Australia was the latest to announce it would made the decree at a UN General Assembly next month if its conditions were met, following in the footsteps of Canada, France and the UK.
At least 20 countries had on Wednesday called for aid to urgently be released into Gaza, saying suffering in the Palestinian territory had reached “unimaginable” levels.
New Zealand was not among them, and had not yet made any pledge to recognise a Palestinian state, but the government said it was a matter of “when not if” it would.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance has condemned the continued targeted killing of media workers in Gaza and the baseless smearing of working journalists as “terrorists”, following the deaths of five Al Jazeera staff over the weekend.
Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and assistant Moamen Aliwa were killed on Sunday when Israel bombed a tent housing journalists in Gaza City, near Al-Shifa Hospital.
Shockingly, the Israeli military confirmed the targeted killing on social media, with a post to X accompanied by a target emoji.
The latest deaths come after Israel had conducted a long smear campaign of unsubstantiated allegations against Al Sharif and other journalists, labelling them “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists”, which the International Federation of Journalists has condemned.
As Al Jazeera has said, this was a “dangerous attempt to justify the targeting of journalists in the field”.
“The targeting of journalists is a blatant attack on press freedom, and it is also a war crime.
“It must stop.”
Call for ‘unfettered coverage’
MEAA also said the Israeli ban preventing the world’s media from accessing the region and providing unfettered coverage of the worsening humanitarian crisis must stop.
The silencing of Palestinian journalists via a rising death toll that the Gaza Media Office puts at 242 must also stop, the union said.
“In his final words, Al-Sharif said he never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is — without distortion or falsification,” said MEAA
“His reports brought to the world the reality of the horrors being inflicted by the Israeli government on the civilians in Gaza.
“He asked the world to not forget Gaza and to not forget him.”
MEAA said it stood up against attacks on press freedom around the world.
Pacific Media Watch says there has been no equivalent condemnation by New Zealand journalists, who have mostly remained silent during the 22 months of Israel’s war on Gaza.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the Israeli military’s “disgraceful tactic” to cover up war crimes in the wake of the killing of six journalists in Gaza on Sunday.
It has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to stop the massacre of journalists, RSF said in a statement.
The August 10 Israeli strike killed six media professionals in Gaza, five of whom currently work or formerly worked for the Qatari television network Al Jazeera and one freelance journalist.
The strike, which has been claimed by the Israeli army, targeted Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, whom it accused, without providing solid evidence, of “terrorist affiliation”.
RSF said the military had repeatedly used this tactic against journalists to cover up war crimes, while the army has already killed more than 200 media professionals.
“RSF strongly condemns the killing of six media professionals by the Israeli army, once again carried out under the guise of terrorism charges against a journalist,” said RSF’s director-general Thibaut Bruttin.
“One of the most famous journalists in the Gaza Strip, Anas al-Sharif, was among those killed.
“The Israeli army has killed more than 200 journalists since the start of the war. This massacre and Israel’s media blackout strategy, designed to conceal the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the besieged and starving Palestinian enclave, must be stopped immediately.
“The international community can no longer turn a blind eye and must react and put an end to this impunity.
“RSF calls on the UN Security Council to meet urgently on the basis of Resolution 2222 of 2015 on the protection of journalists in times of armed conflict in order to stop this carnage.”
Targeted strike on tent
The Israeli army killed Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif in a targeted strike on a tent housing a group of journalists near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
The strike, claimed by Israeli authorities, also killed five other media professionals, including four working or having worked for Al Jazeera — correspondent Mohammed Qraiqea, video reporter Ibrahim al-Thaher, Mohamed Nofal, assistant cameraman and driver that day, and Moamen Aliwa, a freelance journalist who worked with Al Jazeera — as well as another freelance journalist, Mohammed al-Khaldi, creator of a YouTube news channel.
The attack also wounded freelance reporters Mohammed Sobh, Mohammed Qita, and Ahmed al-Harazine.
This attack, claimed by the Israeli army, replicates a tactic previously used against Al Jazeera journalists. On 31 July 2024, the Israeli army killed reportersIsmail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi in a targeted strike, following a smear campaign against the former, who, like Anas al-Sharif, was accused of “terrorist affiliation”.
Hamza al-Dahdouh, Mustafa Thuraya and Hossam Shabat, who also worked for the Qatari media outlet, are among the victims of this method denounced by RSF.
As early as October 2024, RSF warned of an imminent attack on Anas al-Sharif following accusations by the Israeli army.
The international community, led by the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, ignored these warnings.
Under Resolution 2222 of 2015 on the protection of journalists in armed conflict, the UN Security Council has a duty to convene urgently in response to this latest extrajudicial killing by the Israeli army.
Since October 2023, RSF has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) requesting investigations into what it describes as war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists in Gaza.
The New Zealand-based Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
New Zealand Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has been ejected from Parliament’s debating chamber and told to leave for the rest of the week after a fiery speech about the war in Gaza.
As Swarbrick came to the end of her contribution, she challenged coalition MPs to back her member’s bill allowing New Zealand to apply sanctions on Israel “for its war crimes”.
Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick asked to leave Parliament after Gaza speech Video: Parliament TV
“If we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history,” Swarbrick said.
Almost immediately, Speaker Gerry Brownlee condemned the remark as “completely unacceptable” and demanded she “withdraw it and apologise”.
Swarbrick shot back a curt — “no” — prompting Brownlee to order her out of the chamber for the remainder of the week.
“Happily,” Swarbrick said, as she rose to leave.
Green Party whip Ricardo Menéndez March later stood to question the severity of punishment, saying Parliament’s rules suggested Swarbrick should be barred for no more than a day.
Brownlee later clarified that Swarbrick could come back to the debating chamber on Wednesday, but only if she agreed to withdraw and apologise.
“If she doesn’t, then she’ll be leaving the House again,” he said.
“I’m not going to sit in this chair and tolerate a member standing on her feet . . . and saying that other members of this House are spineless.”
‘What the hell is the point?’ — Swarbrick Speaking outside the debating chamber, Swarbrick described the ruling as “ridiculous” and the punishment excessive.
“As far as the robust debate goes in that place, I think that was pretty mild in the context of the war crimes that are currently unfolding.”
She drew a comparison with comments made by former prime minister Sir John Key in 2015 when he challenged the opposition to “get some guts”.
Swarbrick said she was tired and angry at the massacre of human beings.
“What the hell is the point of everything that we do if the people in my place, in my job don’t do their job?” she said.
“If we allow other human beings to be just mercilessly slaughtered, to be shot while waiting for food aid, what hope is there for humanity?”
Swarbrick was not the only MP to run afoul of the Speaker during today’s debate.
Earlier, Labour MP Damien O’Connor was told to either exit the chamber or apologise after interjecting while Foreign Minister Winston Peters was speaking. O’Connor stood and left.
Brownlee also demanded ACT MP Simon Court say sorry — which he did — after Court accused Swarbrick of “hallucinating outrage”.
Government urges caution, opposition demands action In his speech, Court said any recognition of a Palestinian state must be conditional on all Israeli hostages being returned and Hamas being disarmed and dismantled.
“Security must come before politics,” he said.
No National MPs spoke during the urgent debate.
Peters — who is also NZ First leader — told MPs the matter of Palestinian statehood was not a straightforward or clear-cut issue.
“There are strong opinions on both sides,” he said. “That is why we are approaching this issue carefully, judiciously and calmly.”
Peters also took umbrage with the opposition’s complaints, pointing out Labour never moved on the matter when it was in government.
In a 10 minute speech, Labour foreign affairs spokesperson Peeni Henare said New Zealand was being left behind as the coalition walked into a “sunset of denial”.
“How many more people will suffer and how many more people will die?”
‘Despicable’ justifications
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told MPs it was “despicable” to hear the justifications for another month’s delay.
“What will be left? Rubble? Martyred spirits? What is that you want to have left in a month’s time?” she said. “I have never been more ashamed to be in the House than I am today.”
In her speech, Swarbrick told MPs libraries of evidence demonstrated that the events unfolding in Palestine were “ethnic cleansing… apartheid [and]… genocide”.
“We are a laggard, we are an outlier,” she said. “We are one of the very few countries in the world who so far refuse to acknowledge the absolute bare minimum.”
Earlier, during Parliament’s Question Time, ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour objected to Swarbrick having a Palestinian scarf, or keffiyeh, draped across her seat.
“I invite you to consider what this House might look like if everybody who had an interest in a global conflict started adorning their seats with symbols of one side or another of a conflict,” he said.
“I think that would bring the House into disrepute and no member should be allowed to do such a thing.”
Brownlee said Seymour raised a good point, only for Swarbrick to then wrap the scarf around her neck.
“Oh, here we go,” he said. “Well, stay warm. We’ll move on now.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
I never knew Anas al-Sharif personally. But somehow he seemed to be part of our whānau.
We watched so many of his reports from Gaza that it just appeared he would be always around keeping us up-to-date on the horrifying events in the besieged enclave.
Although he actually worked for Al Jazeera Arabic, the 28-year-old was probably the best known Palestinian journalist in the Strip and many of his stories were translated into English.
It is yet another despicable act by the Israeli military to assassinate him and four of his colleagues on the eve of launching their new mass crime to seize and demolish Gaza City with a population of about one million as part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to occupy the whole of Gaza.
In many ways the bravery of al-Sharif — he had warned several times that he was being targeted — was the embodiment of the Palestinian courage under fire when UNESCO awarded the 2024 World Press Freedom Award collectively to the Gazan journalists.
But it wasn’t enough just to “murder” him and his colleagues — as the Al Jazeera channel proclaimed in red banner television headlines — Israel attempted unsuccessfully to try to smear him in death as a “Hamas platoon leader” without a shred of evidence.
The drone attack late on Sunday night hit a journalists’ work tent near the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, killing seven people. Among those killed beside al-Sharif were fellow Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Noufal.
Call for UNSC emergency session
Al Jazeera later said a sixth journalist, freelancer Mohammad al-Khaldi, was also killed in the strike. Reporters Without Borders said three more journalists had been wounded and called for a UN Security Council emergency session to discuss journalist safety.
Al Jazeera condemns the assassination of its journalists by Israeli occupation forces
Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the targeted assassination of its correspondents Anas Al Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqea, along with photographers Ibrahim Al Thaher, and… pic.twitter.com/0otP6IYIgC
In a statement, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network condemned in “the strongest terms” the killing of its media staff in “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”, noting that the Israeli occupation force had “admitted to their crimes”.
“This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities,” Al Jazeera said.
“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people.”
Five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza by Israel’s “psychopathic liar” — Marwan Bishara Video: Al Jazeera
“In fact, we have decided, and I’ve ordered, directed the military, to bring in foreign journalists, more foreign journalists,” Netanyahu told a news conference in Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities have in the past barred any foreign media from entering the Gaza Strip, while it has been deliberately targeting and killing local Palestinian journalists.
Other attacks on Al Jazeera
The deadly strike on Anas al-Sharif and his four colleagues is not the first attack on Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza since the start of Israel’s current war on the Palestinian territory in October 2023
Israeli forces have previously killed five Al Jazeera journalists: Samer Abudaqa, Ismael al-Ghoul, Ahmed al-Louh, Hossam Shabat and Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, as well as many of the family members of Al Jazeera journalists.
The Israeli military has been systematically killing journalists, photographers and local media workers in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war in an attempt to silence their reports.
But some media freedom groups put the casualty figure even higher. The Government Media Office in Gaza, for example, reports that 242 journalists have been killed.
The Israeli military have frequently accused journalists of being “terrorists” without evidence.
‘Enormous influence’
“He’s held enormous influence there, and that’s precisely why Israel murdered him.
Shehada told Al Jazeera he had “looked into the allegations” that Israel produced, trying to smear him as a Hamas militant, adding that “the allegations were completely contradictory.” He added:
“There’s zero evidence that al-Sharif took part in any hostilities, in any armed actions, aided or abetted any kind of these hostilities. None at all. His entire daily routine was standing in front of a camera from morning to evening.”
An early Instagram report of the killing of the Gazan journalists . . . later updated to five Al Jazeera staff and a sixth journalist. Image: AJ
It had been alleged by Israel that Anas al-Sharif was a member of the military wing of Hamas, and the army claimed that it had found documents in Gaza that proved their point.
“It includes some links to content that anyone could have printed,” she said. “This has been going on for a few weeks, ever since Anas started reporting on the starvation in Gaza, and he had such a huge impact on the Arab world.
“Immediately after, a spokesman for the Israeli army in Arabic… posted a video on social media, accusing al-Sharif of being a Hamas member and threatening him.”
‘Knew he was at serious risk’
Abdel-Hamid said she had been going through his X feed.
“He knew his life was at serious risk, and he repeatedly wrote that he was just a journalist, and he wanted his message to be spread widely, because he thought that was a way to protect him.”
Posted on his X account in case he was killed was his “last will” and final message. He wrote in part:
“I entrust you with Palestine — the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace.
“Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.
“I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland . . . “
This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings.
Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my…
— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) August 10, 2025
Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said that last October Israel had accused al-Sharif and “a number of other journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof”.
“We warned back then that this felt to us like a precursor to justify assassination, and, of course, last month… we saw again, a repeated smear campaign”, she told Al Jazeera.
“This is not solely about Anas al-Sharif, this is part of a pattern that we have seen from Israel… going back decades, in which it kills journalists.”
Accusations repeated
Al-Sharif had warned last month about the starvation facing journalists — “and we saw then the accusations repeated.
“Of course, now we are seeing a new offensive, plans for a new offensive, in Gaza, the kind of thing that Anas has been reporting on for the best part of three years.”
“The [Israeli] occupation is preparing for a major massacre in Gaza, but this time without sound or image,” Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya told Turkiye’s Anadolu news agency.
“It wants to kill and displace the largest number of Palestinians in Gaza City but this time in the absence of the voice of Anas, Mohamed, Al Jazeera and all satellite channels.”
Assassinated Gazan journalist Anas al-Sharif . . . “killed to prevent coverage of atrocities” Israel intends to carry out in its Gaza City seizure. Image: AJ screenshot APR
‘Fabrications don’t wash’
Al Jazeera’s senior analyst Marwan Bishara warned that “Israel’s lies” about al-Sharif endangered journalists everywhere, saying that the “best response to the killing of our colleagues is by continuing to do what we do”.
“I want to correct one thing [about Western media reports], and I need our viewers and readers around the world to pay attention:
“It doesn’t matter whether what Israel said about al-Sharif is correct or not.
“It’s an absolute fabrication. It’s wrong. But it doesn’t matter.
“Because if every American journalist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been killed because there’s a suspicion that they worked for the CIA; if every French and British journalist would be killed because they work for the MI5 or something like that, then I think there will be no Western journalists working in the Middle East.
“It’s not OK to kill a journalist in a tent of journalists because you accuse him of something.
“If you accuse him of something, you take him to court, you make a complaint, you follow certain procedures, with the network, with the [International Federation of Journalists], and so on and so forth.
“You don’t kill a journalist who has been doing their job for months on, day in, day out, night and day, and claim later that they work for Hamas.
“That doesn’t wash.
“It’s wrong, it’s a lie, it’s a fabrication as usual, but this psychopathic liar should not get away with killing a journalist and simply attaching an accusation to it.
“It doesn’t wash, because otherwise, every single Western journalist covering a war that a Western government is involved in is going to be a target.
I wrote that it was time for journalists to take a moral stand for truth and justice, and although I expected a strong response, the feedback was merely tepid. It was as if Western journalists did not comprehend the enormity of the Gaza crisis facing the world.
It is shameful that New Zealand journalists and media groups have not come out in the past 22 months with strong denunciations of Israel’s war on both journalists and truth – and the genocide against Palestinians.
A leading advocacy group supporting Palerstine has called on the government to follow Germany’s lead and suspend New Zealand military support for Israel to continue its mass killing and mass starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
Germany and New Zealand were two of the countries to sign a letter yesterday condemning Israel’s plans to extend its war to Gaza City, displacing another million Palestinians.
However, one of the other signatories, Australia, announced that it would go a step further by moving to recognise a state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly next month.
“I have said it publicly and I said it directly to Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu: the situation in Gaza has gone beyond the world’s worst fears,” he said.
“Far too many innocent lives have been lost. The Israeli government continues to defy international law and deny sufficient aid, food and water to desperate people, including children.”
The decision rides on a condition that the Palestinian resistance group Hamas plays no role in its future governance.
Letter condemns Israel
New Zealand joined Australia, United Kingdom, Germany and Italy in signing a letter that said:
“The plans that the government of Israel has announced risk violating international humanitarian law. Any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension violate international law.
It will aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians.”
PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement that Israel had a long history of ignoring outside opinion because they never included accountabilities.
“However, Germany has followed its condemnation with action. New Zealand needs to do the same,” he said.
Minto says New Zealand should:
• End approval for Rakon to export crystal oscillators to the US which are used in guided bombs sent to Israel for bombing Gaza;
• Ban all Rocket Lab launches from Mahia which are used for Israel reconnaissance in Gaza; and
• Launch an investigation by the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence into the sharing of intelligence with the US and Israel which can be used for targeting Palestinians.
“New Zealanders expect our government to end its empty condemnations of Israel and act to sanction this rogue, genocidal state,” Minto said.
Another truth-teller targeted and killed in Gaza. I wish the journalists — some of whom I taught to master the skills of journalism, would look at this travesty and call it what it is: a genocide.
I wish they would remember that journalists have a code of ethics, I wish they would remember to serve the people and not despotic governments.
Good journalists are truth seekers and truth tellers.
Like this man, Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif, targeted, murdered for revealing the truth that tens of thousands of children, women, and men are regarded as the enemy by a country that wants to take their land and expand.
His Al Jazeera crew of five were wiped out yesterday.
In 1982, I asked an Israeli what he thought of the (then) invasion into Lebanon. He replled that if the government in Tel Aviv had its way and some Israelis were not against invasion, the army would have invaded Turkey. Look at what has happened now.
Massacre after massacre
Far more Palestinians were killed in the year leading up to October 7, 2023, than Israelis killed on that day. Palestinians have faced massacre after massacre ever since the Nakba in 1948.
They experience apartheid, they experience exile, they are not allowed to call Palestine their homeland, but it is their homeland.
Britain swooped into that country and appropriated a religious myth that dated back thousands of years, but being anti anti semitism means ensuring that people are comfortable in their own land, it does not mean booting one people out to make a home for yourself.
Settler colonisation continues to perpetuate the worst injustice. It just dealt another blow. Starving children and a good man, a truth teller, killed in cold blood.
Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This commentary was first published on England’s social media.
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. https://t.co/f5TlGRMjIH
The Committee to Protect Journalists has made a statement today that it is appalled to learn of the killing of an Al Jazeera media crew of five, including journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The journalists were killed in an attack on a tent used by media near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during a targeted Israeli bombardment, according to Al Jazeera which has described the killings as “murders”.
In a statement announcing the killing of Al-Sharif, Israel’s military accused the journalist of heading a Hamas cell and of “advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and [Israeli] troops”.
Israel has a longstanding, documented pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof.
“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.
“Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted. Those responsible for these killings must be held accountable.”
Al-Sharif had been one of Al Jazeera’s best-known reporters in Gaza since the start of the war and one of several journalists whom Israel had previously alleged were members of Hamas without providing evidence.
Reported on starvation
Most recently, Al-Sharif had reported on the starvation that he and his colleagues were experiencing because of Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient food aid into Gaza.
In a July 24 video, Avichay Adraee, an Israel Defence Forces spokesperson, accused Al-Sharif of having been a member of Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam, since 2013 and working during the war “for the most criminal and offensive channel”, apparently referring to Al Jazeera Arabic.
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. https://t.co/f5TlGRMjIH
Al-Sharif told CPJ in July: “Adraee’s campaign is not only a media threat or an image destruction — it is a real-life threat.”
He said: “All of this is happening because my coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip harms them and damages their image in the world.
“They accuse me of being a terrorist because the occupation wants to assassinate me morally.”
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Irene Khan, said she was “deeply alarmed by repeated threats and accusations of the Israeli army” against al-Sharif.
Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7, 2023, CPJ has documented 186 journalists having been killed. At least 178 of those journalists are Palestinians killed by Israel.
Pacific affairs and media commentator Dr David Robie reflected on the 1985 Rainbow Warrior mission to Rongelap atoll to help US nuclear refugees and the bombing of the Greenpeace campaign ship by French secret agents in a kōrero hosted by the NZ Fabian Society.
His analysis is that far from the sabotage being an isolated incident, it was part of a cynical and sordid colonial policy that impacts on the Pacific until today.
He also spoke on wide-ranging issues ranging from decolonisation in Kanaky New Zealand and Palestine to climate crisis and opposition to AUKUS in the livestreamed event on Friday evening.
The Fabian Society and Just Defence spokeperson Mike Smith introducing journalist and author David Robie at the kōrero on Friday.
Former professor David Robie has a passion for the Asia-Pacific region and he founded the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology in 2007 which ran until 2020 when he retired from academic life.
A journalist for more than 60 years, David has reported on postcolonial coups, indigenous struggles for independence and environmental and developmental issues in the Asia-Pacific.
On Saturday, he participated in the Nagasaki Day / Aro Valley Peace Talks where he and former RNZ journalist Jeremy Rose were in conversation analysing Pacific geopolitics and media coverage and challenges of the future.
Journalist and author Dr David Robie speaking to the Fabian Society about environmental activism, decolonisation and Pacific geopolitics. Image: Del Abcede.APR
Greenpeace says moves to weaken ocean protection through dodgy fisheries “reforms” will be met with strong opposition, as Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announces he wants to proceed with a raft of proposed changes to fisheries laws.
The controversial changes are some of the largest in decades, and would restrict public access to cameras on boats footage, remove the requirement for fishers to land all their catch, and stop legal challenges to catch limits that have been successful in protecting species in recent years.
The reforms will also give the minister the ability to set catch limits for five years.
Greenpeace oceans campaigner Ellie Hooper said these proposals would give the industry carte blanche on ocean destruction, weaken transparency and block the public from having input into fisheries decisions.
“These changes spell disaster for the already struggling ocean around us,” she said.
“Championed by the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, the changes green light ocean destruction and remove the already minimal checks and balances designed to keep the fishing industry accountable.
“It is yet another example of how this government is pandering to the fishing industry while ignoring the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders who want more ocean protection, not less.
“New Zealanders want a healthy, thriving ocean where fish are plentiful and ecosystems are thriving.
‘More destruction’
“These reforms will mean more destruction, more decline in fish populations, and will allow the industry to go back to operating in the dark — hiding the impact they have.”
One of the proposed reforms is to restrict access to footage from cameras on boats to industry and government only.
“This is not how it should work,” said Hooper.
“There are far more people in this country than just the commercial fishing industry who have a right to know how the ocean is being impacted, and have a say on what happens about protecting it.”
Hooper also warns that setting catch limits for five years could spell disaster for fish numbers, noting the recent collapse of the Chatham Rise Orange Roughy fishery, which has been so mismanaged it could now be at 8 percent of its original size.
“Greenpeace, backed by thousands of New Zealanders, stands for defending nature and ocean health. We are calling for an urgent end to destructive bottom trawling on seamounts and other vulnerable features, and for all footage from cameras on boats to be made accessible via the OIA (Offical Information Act),” she said.
“During a biodiversity and ocean crisis, we will strongly oppose moves to expedite destruction at the hands of the commercial fishing industry, as will the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who also back ocean protection.”
The words and pictures documenting the famine in the Gaza strip are horrifying.
The coverage has led to acrimonious and often misguided debates about whether there is famine, and who is to blame for it — most recently exemplified by the controversy surrounding a picture published by The New York Times of an emaciated child who is also suffering from a preexisting health condition.
While pictures and words may mislead, numbers usually don’t.
The Nobel prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen observed some decades ago that famines are always political and economic events, and that the most direct way to analyse them is to look at food quantities and prices.
This has led to decades of research on past famines. One observation is that dramatic increases in food prices always mean there is a famine, even though not every famine is accompanied by rising food costs.
The price increases we have seen in Gaza are unprecedented.
The economic historian Yannai Spitzer observed in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that staple food prices during the Irish Potato Famine showed a three- to five-fold increase, while there was a ten-fold rise during the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. In the North Korean famine of the 1990s, the price of rice rose by a factor of 12.
At least a million people died of hunger in each of these events.
Now, The New York Times has reported the price of flour in Gaza has increased by a factor of 30 and potatoes cost 50 times more.
Israel’s food blockade As was the case for the UK government in Ireland in the 1840s and Bengal in the 1940s, Israel is responsible for this famine because it controls almost all the Gaza strip and its borders. But Israel has also created the conditions for the famine.
Following a deliberate policy in March of stopping food from coming in, it resumed deliveries of food in May through a very limited set of “stations” it established through a new US-backed organisation (the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation), in a system that seemed designed to fail.
Before Israel’s decision in March to stop food from coming in, the price of flour in Gaza was roughly back to its prewar levels (having previously peaked in 2024 in another round of border closures). Since March, food prices have gone up by an annualised inflation rate of more than 5000 percent.
The excuse the Israeli government gives for its starvation policy is that Hamas controls the population by restricting food supplies. It blames Hamas for any shortage of food.
However, if you want to disarm an enemy of its ability to wield food supplies as a weapon by rationing them, the obvious way to do so is the opposite: you would increase the food supply dramatically and hence lower its price.
Restricting supplies and increasing their value is primarily immoral and criminal, but it is also counterproductive for Israel’s stated aims. Indeed, flooding Gaza with food would have achieved much more in weakening Hamas than the starvation policy the Israeli government has chosen.
The UN’s top humanitarian aid official has described Israel’s decision to halt humanitarian assistance to put pressure on Hamas as “cruel collective punishment” — something forbidden under international humanitarian law.
The long-term aftermath of famines Cormac Ó Gráda, the Irish economic historian of famines, quotes a Kashmiri proverb which says “famine goes, but the stains remain”.
The current famine in Gaza will leave long-lasting pain for Gazans and an enduring moral stain on Israel — for many generations.
Ó Gráda points out two main ways in which the consequences of famines endure. Most obvious is the persistent memory of it; second are the direct effects on the long-term wellbeing of exposed populations and their descendants.
The Irish and the Indians have not forgotten the famines that affected them. They still resent the British government for its actions. The memory of these famines still influences relations between Ireland, India and the UK, just as Ukraine’s famine of the early 1930s is still a background to the Ukraine-Russia war.
The generational impact is also significant. Several studies in China find children conceived during China’s Great Leap Forward famine of 1959–1960 (which also killed millions) are less healthy, face more mental health challenges and have lower cognitive abilities than those conceived either before or after the famine.
Other researchers found similar evidence from famines in Ireland and the Netherlands, supporting what is known as the “foetal origins” hypothesis, which proposes that the period of gestation has significant impacts on health in adulthood. Even more worryingly, recent research shows these harmful effects can be transmitted to later generations through epigenetic channels.
Each day without available and accessible food supplies means more serious ongoing effects for the people of Gaza and the Israeli civilian hostages still held by Hamas — as well as later generations. Failure to prevent the famine will persist in collective memory as a moral stain on the international community, but primarily on Israel. Only immediate flooding of the strip with food aid can help now.
Leaders of the three Pacific nations with diplomatic ties to Taiwan are united in a message to the Pacific Islands Forum that the premier regional body must not allow non-member countries to dictate Forum policies — a reference to the China-Taiwan geopolitical debate.
Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, in remarks to the opening of Parliament in Majuro yesterday, joined leaders from Tuvalu and Palau in strongly worded comments putting the region on notice that the future unity and stability of the Forum hangs in the balance of decisions that are made for next month’s Forum leaders’ meeting in the Solomon Islands.
This is just three years since the organisation pulled back from the brink of splintering.
Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu are among the 12 countries globally that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
At issue is next month’s annual meeting of leaders being hosted by Solomon Islands, which is closely allied to China, and the concern that the Solomon Islands will choose to limit or prevent Taiwan’s engagement in the Forum, despite it being a major donor partner to the three island nations as well as a donor to the Forum Secretariat.
President Surangel Whipps Jr . . . diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Richard Brooks/RNZ Pacific
China worked to marginalise Taiwan and its international relationships including getting the Forum to eliminate a reference to Taiwan in last year’s Forum leaders’ communique after leaders had agreed on the text.
“I believe firmly that the Forum belongs to its members, not countries that are non-members,” said President Heine yesterday in Parliament’s opening ceremony. “And non-members should not be allowed to dictate how our premier regional organisation conducts its business.”
Heine continued: “We witnessed at the Forum in Tonga how China, a world superpower, interfered to change the language of the Forum Communique, the communiqué of our Pacific Leaders . . . If the practice of interference in the affairs of the Forum becomes the norm, then I question our nation’s membership in the organisation.”
She cited the position of the three Taiwan allies in the Pacific in support of Taiwan participation at next month’s Forum.
Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo . . . also has diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Ludovic Marin/RNZ Pacific:
“There should not be any debate on the issue since Taiwan has been a Forum development partner since 1993,” Heine said.
Heine also mentioned that there was an “ongoing review of the regional architecture of the Forum” and its many agencies “to ensure that their deliverables are on target, and inter-agency conflicts are minimised.”
The President said during this review of the Forum and its agencies, “it is critical that the question of Taiwan’s participation in Forum meetings is settled once and for all to safeguard equity and sovereignty of member governments.”
Leaders of the three Pacific nations with diplomatic ties to Taiwan are united in a message to the Pacific Islands Forum that the premier regional body must not allow non-member countries to dictate Forum policies — a reference to the China-Taiwan geopolitical debate.
Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, in remarks to the opening of Parliament in Majuro yesterday, joined leaders from Tuvalu and Palau in strongly worded comments putting the region on notice that the future unity and stability of the Forum hangs in the balance of decisions that are made for next month’s Forum leaders’ meeting in the Solomon Islands.
This is just three years since the organisation pulled back from the brink of splintering.
Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu are among the 12 countries globally that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
At issue is next month’s annual meeting of leaders being hosted by Solomon Islands, which is closely allied to China, and the concern that the Solomon Islands will choose to limit or prevent Taiwan’s engagement in the Forum, despite it being a major donor partner to the three island nations as well as a donor to the Forum Secretariat.
President Surangel Whipps Jr . . . diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Richard Brooks/RNZ Pacific
China worked to marginalise Taiwan and its international relationships including getting the Forum to eliminate a reference to Taiwan in last year’s Forum leaders’ communique after leaders had agreed on the text.
“I believe firmly that the Forum belongs to its members, not countries that are non-members,” said President Heine yesterday in Parliament’s opening ceremony. “And non-members should not be allowed to dictate how our premier regional organisation conducts its business.”
Heine continued: “We witnessed at the Forum in Tonga how China, a world superpower, interfered to change the language of the Forum Communique, the communiqué of our Pacific Leaders . . . If the practice of interference in the affairs of the Forum becomes the norm, then I question our nation’s membership in the organisation.”
She cited the position of the three Taiwan allies in the Pacific in support of Taiwan participation at next month’s Forum.
Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo . . . also has diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Ludovic Marin/RNZ Pacific:
“There should not be any debate on the issue since Taiwan has been a Forum development partner since 1993,” Heine said.
Heine also mentioned that there was an “ongoing review of the regional architecture of the Forum” and its many agencies “to ensure that their deliverables are on target, and inter-agency conflicts are minimised.”
The President said during this review of the Forum and its agencies, “it is critical that the question of Taiwan’s participation in Forum meetings is settled once and for all to safeguard equity and sovereignty of member governments.”
The world’s most important hostage — must be released. The powerful Western countries have signalled that in the face of the genocide they may recognise the state of Palestine.
States need leaders. That’s why Marwan Barghouti – often dubbed the Palestinian Mandela — must be freed.
A former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Ephraim Halevy, agrees with calls by leaders from across the Middle East for Barghouti’s release: “Barghouti is popular with his people, he has a clear position, he speaks Hebrew well and can negotiate; all of which qualifies him to lead a new path.
“We have to be creative in dealing with the future in the West Bank as well and the rest of the territories, as there are millions of Palestinians, and transferring two million Palestinians from Gaza is unrealistic,” Halevy told Middle East Monitor.
States need leaders The UK, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a baker’s dozen of Western-aligned states have signalled they may finally join humanity and recognise the right of Palestine to exist as a state.
They are doing so at a moment when the physical existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine is in peril due to the US-Israeli genocide.
If this is not simply another hollow, performative gesture, real things must happen: first and foremost the lifting of the siege and the ending of the man-made famine.
Simultaneously, Palestine needs a credible leadership to negotiate its future. Why call for recognition of a state when hundreds of the top leadership of that future state are held in cruel captivity?
These hostages seldom receive any attention — in contrast to the remaining 20 or so living hostages held by Hamas and other groups.
Who decides who represents Palestine? In typical Western fashion the announcement of potentially recognising the Palestinian state comes with a swag of conditions — foremost that Hamas, the most popular movement in Palestine, the winner of the last free and fair elections in both the West Bank and Gaza, must not be part of any government.
OK, so, if the Palestinians bow to that condition, who will be the leaders of this state? Who has the standing with all the factions of the Palestinian polity?
Marwan Barghouti could be such a man. The geriatric and thoroughly discredited Mahmoud Abbas, unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, is largely seen as a tool of the US and Israel.
More than 90 percent of Palestinians want him gone. In contrast, Barghouti is a revered figure, respected by all Palestinian organisations. He consistently polls as the most popular leader.
The Israelis have murdered many of the Palestinian leaders (along with targeted assassinations of hundreds of writers, professors, lawyers, doctors and other people crucial to state-building). They even killed the lead negotiator in the hostage release process.
It is vital that the West ensures Barghouti is protected from further mistreatment. It is also worth dismissing the lie that Israel has no Palestinian partner to negotiate with; Barghouti has the will and the attributes.
The blockage is actually Western complicity in ethnic cleansing, land stealing and the overall Greater Israel Project.
Barghouti: the most important political prisoner During the past 23 years in Israeli prisons Barghouti has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken, as documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian — a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation.
As I wrote in 2024:
“Barghouti, the terrorist, rotting in jail. Barghouti, the indomitable leader who has not given up on peace. Barghouti, loved by ordinary people as ‘a man of the street’. Barghouti, supporter of the Oslo Accords. Barghouti, the 15 year-old youth leader standing beside Yasser Arafat.
“Barghouti, once a member of parliament and Fatah secretary-general. Barghouti, leader of Tanzim, a PLO military wing, choosing militancy after the betrayal of the Oslo promise by the Americans and Israelis became fully clear.
“Barghouti, a leader of the intifada that restored hope to a broken people. Barghouti, the scholar and thinker. Barghouti, the political strategist and unifier.”
Marwan is the most famous Palestinian prisoner but it should never be forgotten that the entire Palestinian people have been held in bondage for generations.
The West should force the Israelis to release Barghouti — and thousands of other hostages held by Israel. To do so publicly and successfully would be a powerful statement of future intentions.
The release of one man cannot, however, change the world: it will take a genuine course correction by the West to use their collective power to force the Israelis to abandon the endless killings, starvation, land thieving and other lawlessness in the Palestinian lands.
The West must stop posturing and start acting If the Western states fail to quickly move to change facts on the ground, it will suggest that the whole exercise was only intended to achieve political cover for the pro-genocidal forces of the US and the other enablers like Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Netanyahu is driving both the Palestinians and Israel to destruction.
Ironically, the Palestinian Marwan Barghouti could save Israel from moral death and, simultaneously, the Palestinians from further physical destruction. He is a leader that the West and the Israelis, if they chose, could negotiate with.
As Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, said a couple of years ago: Barghouti is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”
One final point: negotiating with ‘terrorists’ The West has made it clear they believe Hamas are too monstrous, too terroristic to be involved in a peace process.
But the West is entirely comfortable with the racist, fascist, genocidal leaders of Israel remaining at the helm of their country. There is a reason for this and one the West needs to front up to: racism and contempt for the Palestinians as a people.
Barghouti and hundrds of other leaders have endured torture and worse without our side raising even an eyebrow. The recent skite videos posted by IDF soldiers committing rape-murder inside Sde Temein prison says it all — they rightly assumed their depraved criminality would be sanctioned by the state and silently tolerated by the West.
War crimes are fine and no barrier to leadership if these crimes are committed by regimes that we are deeply committed to. After all, as our leaders repeatedly tell us: we share values with the Israelis.
I’ll give the last word to Marwan Barghouti.
“Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation. Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.”
It is time to change that and to stand with humanity. Free Marwan Barghouti!
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
In the first part of the program, Dr. Shir Hever joins us to discuss Israel’s disinformation economy, the zombie economy that is held together by nothing more than lies and deception, and how the ongoing genocide in Gaza has made clear that for most Israelis, the need to oppress is greater than the need to make ends meet. Dr. Hever also highlights the journalistic malpractice of Israel’s propaganda machine, the impressive and vital progress of the BDS movement and how politicians are now leveraging Palestine for personal political gain. Next up, Dr. Margaret Flowers comes back on the show to outline the difference between sanctions and unilateral coercive economic measures. We discuss the recent Lancet report showing that US unilateral measures are responsible for more than half a million deaths a year worldwide. Dr. Flowers outlines the shift to a multipolar world, how nations are side-stepping US hegemony and violence, and how we can engage with these interconnected issues.
New Zealand’s foreign minister says Cook Islanders are free to choose whether their country continues in free association with New Zealand.
Winston Peters made the comment at a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the constitution of the Cook Islands in Auckland today.
Peters attended the community event hosted by the Upokina Taoro (East Cook Island Community Group) as part of an official contingent of MPs. Minister for Pacific Peoples Shane Reti and Labour Party deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni also attended.
“We may not be perfect, but we’ve never wavered from our responsibilities wherever they lay,” Peters said.
“For six decades, we have stood by ready to support the Cook Islands economic and social development, while never losing sight of the fact that our financial support comes from the taxes of hard working New Zealanders,”
This week’s anniversary comes at a time of increasing tension between the two nations.
At the heart of that are four agreements between the Cook Islands and China, which Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown signed in February.
NZ funding halted
The New Zealand government said it should have been consulted over the agreements, but Brown disagreed.
The diplomatic disagreement has resulted in New Zealand halting $18.2 million in funding to the Cook Islands, which is a realm country of New Zealand.
Under that arrangement — implemented in 1965 — the country governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides some assistance with foreign affairs, disaster relief and defence.
Peters today said the “beating heart” of the Cook Islands-New Zealand relationship was the “right to choose”.
“Cook Islanders are free to choose where to live, how to live, and to worship whichever God they wish.”
After his formal address, Peters was asked by media about the rift between the governments of the Cooks Islands and New Zealand.
‘Carefully crafted’
He referred back to his “carefully crafted” speech which he said showed “precisely what the New Zealand position is now”.
Brown has previously said that if New Zealand could not afford to fund the country’s national infrastructure investment plan – billed at $650 million — the Cook Islands would need to look elsewhere.
Brown also said in at the time that funding the development needs of the Cook Islands was a major motivator in signing the agreements with China.
Discussions between officials from both countries regarding the diplomatic disagreement were ongoing.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
COMMENTARY:By Clancy Overell, editor of The Betoota Advocate
After years of sitting on the fence and looking the other way, the Australian media is today reckoning with the fact that showing basic sympathy towards the starving and war-weary people of Gaza is actually a very mainstream sentiment.
This explosive moment of self-reflection has rocked newsrooms all over the country, from the talk back radio stations to the increasingly gun-shy ABC.
This comes as the tens of thousands of everyday Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in solidarity in protest against the abhorrent war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.
This existential media feeling of extreme detachment from the general public is only amplified by the undeniable fact this crowd actually isn’t even that representative of the actual number of people who are horrified by the events taking place on the Gaza Strip — as the extreme weather conditions clearly shrank the overall number of people who would have otherwise attended this record-breaking protest.
The crowd that did make it there is still one of the biggest to ever march the Harbour Bridge, many who braved heavy winds and rain to join the chants “ceasefire now” and “free Palestine”.
With a large number of high-profile household names such as Julian Assange and former NSW Premier Bob Carr making their presence known, it’s now very difficult for the media to now write these protesters off as “terrorist sympathisers”.
It’s also clear that the plight of the Palestinians is something that ripples far beyond the university lawns and instagram timelines that have since been dismissed as the musings of “detached inner-city elites” and “brazen antisemites”.
Sydney’s “Rainy Sunday” march also comes as a blow to both the Federal and State Labor governments, which have worked tirelessly to squash these protests using police powers and anti-free speech laws.
The Betoota Advocateis an Australian satirical news website that takes its name from the deserted regional western Queensland town of Betoota but is actually published in Sydney.
Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on the Israeli arms and surveillance industry, says Australian protesters are “outraged” not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also by the Australian government’s “complicity”.
Loewenstein, who also spoke at the rally, told Al Jazeera that Australia has, for many years, including since the start of the war, been part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jets that Israel has been using in attacking the besieged enclave.
“A lot of Australians are aware of this,” he said. “We are deeply complicit, and people are angry that their government is doing little more than talk at this point.”
Asked about opinions within Israel, Loewenstein, who is an Australian-German and Jewish, condemned what he called a prevailing climate of “genocide mania” and also criticised the role of the mainstream media in not reporting accurate coverage of the reality in Gaza.
Organisers of the Palestine Action Group Sydney-led march across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge have said at least 100,000 people — and perhaps as many as 300,000 — took part in the biggest pro-Palestinian held in Australia. Police say more than 90,000.
Mehreen Faruqi, the New South Wales senator for the left-wing Greens party, addressed the crowd gathered at central Sydney’s Lang Park before the march, calling for the “harshest sanctions on Israel”, accusing its forces of “massacring” Palestinians.
The horrifying images of Gazans being deliberately starved is adding to the pressure on Western governments which have been enthusiastic supporters of Israel’s genocide, reports the Sydney-based Green-Left magazine.
Former US President Barack Obama has started to push for an end to Israel’s military operations. Sections of Israeli society, including five human rights organisations, now agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Media corporations, such as BBC, AFP, AP and Reuters, which have been complicit in manufacturing consent for “Israel has a right to defend itself” line, are now condemning the killing of Palestinian journalists.
These shifts reflect the scale of the horror, but also the success of the global Palestine solidarity movement.
With the exception of Ireland and Spain, Western governments have refused to describe Israel’s war as an act of genocide.
.@antloewenstein on the huge pro Palestinian Sydney Harbour bridge march and what it tells us about where people around the world are at. He goes on to draw parallels with the attitude towards apartheid South Africa in the 1980s and notes that that regime ended in 1994. pic.twitter.com/jvCsr8ZgOV
Three times this year the world has been close to nuclear catastrophe of one form or another — the India–Pakistan conflict, the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war and more recently the Israel/US–Iran “12 day war”. Here is one of the speeches at the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima Day in Sydney before the “March for Humanity” on Sydney Harbour Bridge.
COMMENTARY:By Peter Murphy
I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we are gathered and pay respect to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the Pitjantjatjara and other peoples of the APY lands who suffered the direct impact of nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.
I am standing in here for Michael Wright, the national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who was unable to take up our invitation to be here today.
The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has a very solid record for opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and really campaigned hard on this issue against Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the May federal elections.
The ETU campaigned in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and he lost his seat to Labor’s Ali France. You have to conclude that among the many reasons that Australian voters deserted the Coalition and Dutton, the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy was a big one.
Since the election, the Coalition has continued to entertain the idea of a nuclear-powered Australia, showing that they just refuse to listen to the Australian people. But they are only too happy to listen to and take the money of the fossil fuel corporations and the nuclear power companies like Westinghouse, who are the ones who benefit from government policies to foster nuclear power.
They are determined to delay the transition to renewable energy as long as possible, whatever the cost to all of us in runaway climate disasters.
The ETU’s official policy against the nuclear industry dates back to the 1950s, resulting from the shared experiences of ETU members who returned from Japan after the Second World War. In the decades since, the ETU has regularly revisited this policy to learn more about the nuclear fuel cycle, changes and advances to technologies, technical interaction with the network and economic viability.
Opposed nuclear industry
Let’s honour those long-gone ETU members who recognised the crimes that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima 80 years ago by vigorously opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons today. And let’s remember some other Australians who were there then — Tom Uren saw the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki from the copper mine where he was working as a prisoner of war; and Wilfred Burchett, the journalist, who first told the world from Hiroshima about radiation sickness.
Nuclear power stations generate radioactive waste such as spent reactor fuel, reprocessing effluents, and contaminated tools and work clothing. These materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health for tens of thousands of years.
And this is the kind of waste that comes from nuclear-powered submarines, during regular maintenance, and at the end of their life — 30 years we have been told for the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactors.
This waste will need to be trucked across the country on public roads to be disposed of in a nuclear waste facility.
But, Australia does not have a dedicated national radioactive waste facility. And the Albanese government is refusing to say where they plan to put that waste.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those at the nuclear tests sites in Nevada, the Marianas, French Polynesia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Fields, Maralinga in Australia have been living with these nuclear wastes in their environment for up to 80 years.
We don’t want this to go any further in Australia or anywhere else in the world.
Democratic failure over AUKUS
How dare the Albanese government commit future generations to somehow keep that deadly nuclear waste safe for tens of thousands of years.
The ETU stood up at the August 2023 ALP National Conference and opposed the AUKUS project, spelling out these concerns and also the democratic failure of Labor to consult the public and the Parliament before committing to the AUKUS deal.
The Albanese leadership tried very hard to make sure that AUKUS was not debated at that ALP National Conference. So it was a victory first of all to have the debate and openly discuss the big problems with AUKUS.
The pro-AUKUS case was so weak that the Defence Industry Minister at the time, Pat Conroy, defended it by accusing the critics of being like the appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s. In doing so he was saying that China is a fascist state and it is the enemy we have to fight with these hopeless submarines.
The grotesque comparison of us and of China to Nazis is ironically more appropriate for Trump and the USA, who are right now purging people of colour from the streets and workplaces of the United States and supporting a genocide in Gaza.
AUKUS is one building block in the US plan to wage war on China to remove its capacity to challenge US primacy in this region and world-wide. A conga line of US military commanders and cabinet secretaries have made this clear.
It is imperial madness writ large.
The deeper reason
And this is the deeper reason why we must oppose AUKUS, because we have to stop this deadly drive for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers. Such a war would almost certainly go nuclear, the world would go into nuclear winter, there would be no winners and huge huge casualties.
Japan, the Philippines, and Australia would be very early targets in such a war.
We remember that 200,000 people, almost all civilians, men women and children of all ages, were killed by those two nuclear bombs 80 years ago, and endless suffering has continued down to this day.
So we recommit to opposing nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry which produces them. We commit to getting Australia’s signature on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.
We commit to stopping AUKUS. We commit to stopping the active US and Australian plan for a war with China.
This is edited from Peter Murphy’s speech at the 80th anniversary Horoshima Day rally for the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition and Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition on 3 August 2025.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was among the tens of thousands of protesters in Australia staging a “humanitarians for Gaza” march today across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The transparency media campaigner and activist, who moved back to his native Australia last year, after reaching a plea deal with the US government to avoid possible life imprisonment for publishing classified anti-war government information, was not expected to speak at the protest.
The bridge was closed for Australia’s biggest pro-Palestine march.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Sydney Harbour Bridge humanitarian protest for Gaza today. Image: X/@EllaCoo55777104
Protesters marched across the bridge this afternoon after the Supreme Court of New South Wales refused an application by police to ban the demonstration.
Police had raised concerns about public safety and the potential for a “crowd crush”, but Justice Belinda Rigg sided with the organisers, finding that they had convincingly explained the reasons why they believed the Israeli genocide in Gaza demanded an urgent response.
Palestine Action Group Sydney, the organiser of the march, said before the protest that it expected 50,000 people to attend. However, heavy rain was a dampener but thousands still marched onto the bridge with estimates being put at 25,000.
The activist group said it wanted to highlight what the United Nations has described as worsening famine conditions in Gaza.
News media reported that the Israeli military had killed at least 62 people in Gaza yesterday, including 38 people desperately seeking food aid.
A 17-year-old Palestinian was reported to have died of starvation, one of at least seven Palestinians who died of malnutrition within the past 24 hours across Gaza, report medical sources.
The death toll from Israel’s 22-month war on the besieged enclave has reached at least 61,709, including including 17,492 children.
While the Israeli government claims it is backing “clans” in Gaza to counter the resistance movement Hamas, the groups it supports more closely resemble criminal gangs, says a British-based security specialist.
Dr Rob Geist Pinfold, international security lecturer at King’s College London, says: “These are criminal gangs. Many were in prison before October 7 for drug offences, not for being political dissidents.
“They rob Palestinians on the streets. They feed off and contribute to the chaos and disorder,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Many of these people, like Yasser Abu Shabab, are outcasts from their clans. Israel has basically chosen the least popular people in Gaza to arm and equip.
“It’s not trying to create a viable political alternative to Hamas, it’s identifying people who thrive off chaos and encouraging them to further that chaos.”
Dr Pinfold said Israel appeared to be intentionally sowing chaos in Gaza to make the territory “unlivable”.
“It used to look like this chaos in Gaza was the product of Israel not having a day-after plan,” he said. “But I think it is now evident that this chaos is . . . part of the day-after plan, which is a grander strategy to make Gaza unlivable in the long term.”
Arming criminal gangs
To accomplish this, Israel is arming the criminal gangs that “thrive off chaos” and funnelling the little aid coming in through the dysfunctional and violence-ridden GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] system.
From Israel’s perspective, “I actually think this is working very well”, he said, “because its undeclared aims are to create chaos and ensure Gaza becomes unlivable”.
“Unfortunately, so far, that is proving to be a very successful strategy.”
Earlier this week it was announced that the death toll had topped 60,430 people (not including the tens of thousands buried under the rubble, or missing and believed dead). This number of dead included more than 18,000 children.
Also, 148,722 wounded were wounded.
Already there have been 162 deaths from starvation in Gaza, 92 of them children and the predictions are dire.
Also, more than 1300 Palestinians have been killed near the GHF aid depots.
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. 
