New Zealand has joined 24 other countries in calling for an end to the war in Gaza, and criticising what they call the inhumane killing of Palestinians.
“We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”
They said it was “horrifying” that more than 800 civilians had been killed while seeking aid, the majority at food distribution sites run by a US- and Israeli-backed foundation.
“We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and to urgently enable the UN and humanitarian NGOs to do their life saving work safely and effectively,” it said.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters . . . “The tipping point was some time ago . . . it’s gotten to the stage where we’ve just lost our patience.” Image: RN/Mark Papalii
“Proposals to remove the Palestinian population into a ‘humanitarian city’ are completely unacceptable. Permanent forced displacement is a violation of international humanitarian law.”
The statement said the countries were “prepared to take further action” to support an immediate ceasefire.
Reuters reported Israel’s foreign ministry said the statement was “disconnected from reality” and it would send the wrong message to Hamas.
“The statement fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognise Hamas’s role and responsibility for the situation,” the Israeli statement said.
Having NZ voice heard
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report, New Zealand had chosen to be part of the statement as a way to have its voice heard on the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“The tipping point was some time ago . . . it’s gotten to the stage where we’ve just lost our patience . . . ”
Peters said he wanted to see what the response to the condemnation was.
“The conflict in the Middle East goes on and on . . . It’s gone from a situation where it was excusable, due to the October 7 conflict, to inexcusable as innocent people are being swept into it,” he said.
“I do think there has to be change. It must happen now.”
The war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent air and ground war in Gaza has killed more than 59,000 Palestinians — including at least 17,400 children, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, while displacing almost the entire population of more than 2 million and spreading a hunger crisis.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Israel has rejected a statement by 25 countries calling for an end to the war on Gaza as a move “disconnected from reality and sends the wrong message to Hamas.”
Donald Trump has the “greatest chance of any political leader” to broker a ceasefire deal in Gaza, Penny Wong says, after Australia on Tuesday joined with 27 other countries to condemn Israel for the “drip feeding of aid” and the “inhumane killing” of Palestinians.
Wong acknowledged the key role the US – a strong supporter of Israel – plays in the peace process as domestic pressure on the Albanese government to play a more pivotal role in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza mounts.
A new report released Monday by Human Rights Watch details what the organization describes as “abusive practices” at three immigrant detention facilities in the state of Florida. The report documents conditions for detained immigrants at Florida’s Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome), the Broward Transitional Center (BTC), and the Federal Detention Center (FDC) during the period of…
Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark warned activists and campaigners in a speech on the deck of the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow WarriorIII last night to be wary of global “storm clouds” and the renewed existential threat of nuclear weapons.
Speaking on her reflections on four decades after the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985, she said that New Zealand had a lot to be proud of but the world was now in a “precarious” state.
Clark praised Greenpeace over its long struggle, challenging the global campaigners to keep up the fight for a nuclear-free Pacific.
“For New Zealand, having been proudly nuclear-free since the mid-1980s, life has got a lot more complicated for us as well, and I have done a lot of campaigning against New Zealand signing up to any aspect of the AUKUS arrangement because it seems to me that being associated with any agreement that supplies nuclear ship technology to Australia is more or less encouraging the development of nuclear threats in the South Pacific,” she said.
“While I am not suggesting that Australians are about to put nuclear weapons on them, we know that others do. This is not the Pacific that we want.
“It is not the Pacific that we fought for going back all those years.
“So we need to be very concerned about these storm clouds gathering.”
Lessons for humanity
Clark was prime minister 1999-2008 and served as a minister in David Lange’s Labour government that passed New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987 – two years after the Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents.
She was also head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2009-2017.
“When you think 40 years on, humanity might have learned some lessons. But it seems we have to repeat the lessons over and over again, or we will be dragged on the path of re-engagement with those who use nuclear weapons as their ultimate defence,” Clark told the Greenpeace activists, crew and guests.
“Forty years on, we look back with a lot of pride, actually, at how New Zealand responded to the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. We stood up with the passage of the nuclear-free legislation in 1987, we stood up with a lot of things.
“All of this is under threat; the international scene now is quite precarious with respect to nuclear weapons. This is an existential threat.”
Nuclear-free Pacific reflections with Helen Clark Video: Greenpeace
In response to Tahitian researcher and advocate Ena Manuireva who spoke earlier about the legacy of a health crisis as a result of 30 years of French nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa, she recalled her own thoughts.
“It reminds us of why we were so motivated to fight for a nuclear-free Pacific because we remember the history of what happened in French Polynesia, in the Marshall Islands, in the South Australian desert, at Maralinga, to the New Zealand servicemen who were sent up in the navy ships, the Rotoiti and the Pukaki, in the late 1950s, to stand on deck while the British exploded their bombs [at Christmas Island in what is today Kiribati].
“These poor guys were still seeking compensation when I was PM with the illnesses you [Ena] described in French Polynesia.
Former NZ prime minister Helen Clark . . . “I remember one of the slogans in the 1970s and 1980s was ‘if it is so safe, test them in France’.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
Testing ground for ‘others’
“So the Pacific was a testing ground for ‘others’ far away and I remember one of the slogans in the 1970s and 1980s was ‘if it is so safe, test them in France’. Right? It wasn’t so safe.
“Mind you, they regarded French Polynesia as France.
“David Robie asked me to write the foreword to the new edition of his book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and it brought back so many memories of those times because those of you who are my age will remember that the 1980s were the peak of the Cold War.
“We had the Reagan administration [in the US] that was actively preparing for war. It was a terrifying time. It was before the demise of the Soviet Union. And nuclear testing was just part of that big picture where people were preparing for war.
“I think that the wonderful development in New Zealand was that people knew enough to know that we didn’t want to be defended by nuclear weapons because that was not mutually assured survival — it was mutually assured destruction.”
New Zealand took a stand, Clark said, but taking that stand led to the attack on the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour by French state-backed terrorism where tragically Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira lost his life.
“I remember I was on my way to Nairobi for a conference for women, and I was in Zimbabwe, when the news came through about the bombing of a boat in Auckland harbour.
‘Absolutely shocking’
“It was absolutely shocking, we had never experienced such a thing. I recall when I returned to New Zealand, [Prime Minister] David Lange one morning striding down to the party caucus room and telling us before it went public that it was without question that French spies had planted the bombs and the rest was history.
“It was a very tense time. Full marks to Greenpeace for keeping up the struggle for so long — long before it was a mainstream issue Greenpeace was out there in the Pacific taking on nuclear testing.
“Different times from today, but when I wrote the foreword for David’s book I noted that storm clouds were gathering again around nuclear weapons and issues. I suppose that there is so much else going on in a tragic 24 news cycle — catastrophe day in and day out in Gaza, severe technology and lethal weapons in Ukraine killing people, wherever you look there are so many conflicts.
“The international agreements that we have relied are falling into disrepair. For example, if I were in Europe I would be extremely worried about the demise of the intermediate range missile weapons pact which has now been abandoned by the Americans and the Russians.
“And that governs the deployment of medium range missiles in Europe.
“The New Start Treaty, which was a nuclear arms control treaty between what was the Soviet Union and the US expires next year. Will it be renegotiated in the current circumstances? Who knows?”
With the Non-proliferation Treaty, there are acknowledged nuclear powers who had not signed the treaty — “and those that do make very little effort to live up to the aspiration, which is to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons”.
Developments with Iran
“We have seen recently the latest developments with Iran, and for all of Iran’s many sins let us acknowledge that it is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” she said.
“It did subject itself, for the most part, to the inspections regime. Israel, which bombed it, is not a party to the treaty, and doesn’t accept inspections.
“There are so many double standards that people have long complained about the Non-Proliferation Treaty where the original five nuclear powers are deemed okay to have them, somehow, whereas there are others who don’t join at all.
“And then over the Ukraine conflict we have seen worrying threats of the use of nuclear weapons.”
Clark warned that we the use of artificial intelligence it would not be long before asking it: “How do I make a nuclear weapon?”
“It’s not so difficult to make a dirty bomb. So we should be extremely worried about all these developments.”
Then Clark spoke about the “complications” facing New Zealand.
Mangareva researcher and advocate Ena Manuireva . . . “My mum died of lung cancer and the doctors said that she was a ‘passive smoker’. My mum had not smoked for the last 65 years.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
Teariki’s message to De Gaulle
In his address, Ena Manuireva started off by quoting the late Tahitian parliamentarian John Teariki who had courageously appealed to General Charles De Gaulle in 1966 after France had already tested three nuclear devices:
“No government has ever had the honesty or the cynical frankness to admit that its nuclear tests might be dangerous. No government has ever hesitated to make other peoples — preferably small, defenceless ones — bear the burden.”
“May you, Mr President, take back your troops, your bombs, and your planes.
“Then, later, our leukemia and cancer patients would not be able to accuse you of being the cause of their illness.
“Then, our future generations would not be able to blame you for the birth of monsters and deformed children.
“Then, you would give the world an example worthy of France . . .
“Then, Polynesia, united, would be proud and happy to be French, and, as in the early days of Free France, we would all once again become your best and most loyal friends.”
‘Emotional moment’
Manuireva said that 10 days earlier, he had been on board Rainbow Warrior III for the ceremony to mark the bombing in 1985 that cost the life of Fernando Pereira – “and the lives of a lot of Mā’ohi people”.
“It was a very emotional moment for me. It reminded me of my mother and father as I am a descendant of those on Mangareva atoll who were contaminated by those nuclear tests.
“My mum died of lung cancer and the doctors said that she was a ‘passive smoker’. My mum had not smoked for the last 65 years.
“French nuclear testing started on 2 July 1966 with Aldebaran and lasted 30 years.”
He spoke about how the military “top brass fled the island” when winds start blowing towards Mangareva. “Food was ready but they didn’t stay”.
“By the time I was born in December 1967 in Mangareva, France had already exploded 9 atmospheric nuclear tests on Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, about 400km from Mangareva.”
France’s most powerful explosion was Canopus with 2.6 megatonnes in August 1968. It was a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb — 150 times more powerful than Hiroshima.
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman . . . a positive of the campaign future. Image: Asia Pacific Report
‘Poisoned gift’
Manuireva said that by France “gifting us the bomb”, Tahitians had been left “with all the ongoing consequences on the people’s health costs that the Ma’ohi Nui government is paying for”.
He described how the compensation programme was inadequate, lengthy and complicated.
Manuireva also spoke about the consequences for the environment. Both Moruroa and Fangataufa were condemned as “no go” zones and islanders had lost their lands forever.
He also noted that while France had gifted the former headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission (CEP) as a “form of reconciliation” plans to turn it into a museum were thwarted because the building was “rife with asbestos”.
“It is a poisonous gift that will cost millions for the local government to fix.”
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman spoke of the impact on the Greenpeace organisation of the French secret service bombing of their ship and also introduced the guest speakers and responded to their statements.
A Q and A session was also held to round off the stimulating evening.
A question during the open mike session on board the Rainbow Warrior. Image: Asia Pacific Report
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has called on the New Zealand government to immediately condemn Israel’s weaponisation of starvation and demand an end to the siege of Gaza.
It has also called for a permanent ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access to the besieged enclave.
“All political parties and elected officials must break their silence and act with urgency to prevent further loss of life,” said PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal in a statement.
“Hospitals and emergency clinics in Gaza are overwhelmed. Unprecedented numbers of Palestinians, children, women, and the elderly, are collapsing from hunger and exhaustion,” said Nazzal.
“Medical professionals warn that hundreds face imminent death, their bodies unable to survive the severe famine conditions created by Israel’s ongoing siege and deliberate starvation tactics.
“This is not a natural disaster. This is the result of a man-made blockade, a deliberate policy of collective punishment, and it constitutes a grave violation of international law.”
This was an urgent last-minute appeal, Nazzal said.
“The people of Aotearoa must stand up and speak out. Protest. Write. Donate. Mobilise.
“The media need to stop turning away, to report on the famine and the mass suffering of civilians in Gaza with the urgency and humanity it demands.”
“As New Zealanders, we have a proud tradition of standing against injustice and apartheid.
“Now is the time to uphold that legacy — not with words, but with action.
“Gaza is starving. We cannot delay. We must not look away.”
“This is cruelty – this is not a war,” says this young New Zealand girl’s placard in Auckland quoting the late Pope Francis. Image: APR
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Porirua City Council is set to create a memorial for more than 1800 former patients of the local hospital buried in unmarked graves. But Pacific leaders are asking to be “meaningfully involved” in the process, including incorporating prayer, language, and ceremonial practices.
More than 50 people gathered at Porirua Cemetery last month after the council’s plans became public, many of whom are descendants of those buried without headstones.
Cemeteries Manager Daniel Chrisp said it was encouraging to see families engaging with the project.
Chrisp’s team has placed 99 pegs to mark the graves of families who have come forward so far. One attendee told him that it was deeply moving to photograph the site where two relatives were buried.
“It’s fantastic that we’ve got to this point, having the descendants of those in unmarked graves encouraged to be involved,” he said.
“These plots represent mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children and other relatives, so it’s important to a lot of people.”
The Porirua Lunatic Asylum, which later became Porirua Hospital, operated from 1887 until the 1990s. At its peak in the 1960s, it was one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest hospitals, housing more than 2000 patients and staff.
As part of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, the government has established a national fund for headstones for unmarked graves.
Porirua City Council has applied for $200,000 to install a memorial that will list every known name.
Some pegs that mark the resting places of former patients buried in unmarked graves at Porirua Cemetery. Image: Porirua Council/RNZ/LDR
Criticism over lack of Pacific consultation Some Pacific community leaders say they were never consulted, despite Pacific people among the deceased.
Porirua Cook Islands Association chairperson Teurukura Tia Kekena said this was the first she had heard of the project, and she was concerned Pacific communities had not been included in conversations so far.
“If there was any unmarked grave and the Porirua City Council is aware of the names, I would have thought they would have contacted the ethnic groups these people belonged to,” she said.
“From a Cook Islands point of view, we need to acknowledge these people. They need to be fully acknowledged.”
Kekena learned about the project only after being contacted by a reporter, despite the council’s ongoing efforts to identify names and place markers for families who have come forward.
The council’s application for funding is part of its response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry.
A photograph shows Porirua Hospital in the early 1900s. Image: Porirua City Council/LDR
Kekena said it was important how the council managed the memorial, adding that it mattered deeply for Cook Islands families and the wider Pacific community, especially those with relatives buried at the site.
Reflect Pacific values
She believed that a proper memorial should reflect Pacific values, particularly the importance of faith, family, and cultural protocol.
“It’s huge. It’s connecting us to these people,” she said. “Just thinking about it is getting me emotional.
“Like I said, the Pākehā way of acknowledging is totally different from our way. When we acknowledge, when we go for an unveiling, it’s about family. It’s about family. It’s about family honouring the person that had passed.
“And we do it in a way that we have a service at the graveside with the orometua [minister] present. Yeah, unveil the stone by the family, by the immediate family, if there were any here at that time.”
She also underscored the connection between remembering the deceased and healing intergenerational trauma, particularly given the site’s history with mental health.
Healing the trauma
“It helps a lot. It’s a way of healing the trauma. I don’t know how these people came to be buried in an unmarked grave, but to me, it’s like they were just put there and forgotten about.
“I wouldn’t like to have my family buried in a place and be forgotten.”
Kekena urged the council to work closely with the Cook Islands community moving forward and said she would bring the matter back to her association to raise awareness and check possible connections between local families and the names identified.
Yvonne Underhill‑Sem, a Cook Islands community leader and professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland, said the memorial had emotional significance, noting her personal connection to Whenua Tapu as a Porirua native.
“In terms of our Pacific understandings of ancestry, everybody who passes away is still part of our whānau. The fact that we don’t know who they are is unsettling,” she said.
“It would be a real relief to the families involved and to the generations that follow to have those graves named.”
Council reponse A Porirua City Council spokesperson said they had been actively sharing the list of names with the public and encouraged all communities — including Pacific groups, genealogists, and local iwi — to help spread the word.
So far, 99 families have come forward.
“We would encourage any networks such as Pacific, genealogists and local iwi to share the list around for members of the public to get in touch,” the spokesperson said.
Porirua councillors Izzy Ford and Moze Galo say the memorial must reflect Pacific values. Image: Porirua Council/RNZ/LDR
Porirua councillors Izzy Ford and Moze Galo, two of the three Pacific members on the council, said Pacific families must be central to the memorial process. Ford said burial sites carried deep cultural weight for Pacific communities.
“We know that burial sites are more than just places of rest, they are sacred spaces that hold our stories, our ancestry and dignity — they are our connection to those who came before us.”
She said public notices and websites were not enough.
“If we are serious about finding the families of those buried in unmarked graves here in Porirua, we have to go beyond public notices and websites.”
Funding limited
Ford said government funding would be limited, and the council must work with trusted Pacific networks to reach families.
“It means partnering with groups who carry trust in our community . . . Pacific churches, elders, and organisations, communicating in our languages through Pacific radio, social media, community events, churches, and health providers.”
Galo agreed and said the memorial must reflect Pacific values in both design and feeling.
“It should feel warm, colourful, spiritual, and welcoming. Include Pacific designs, carvings, and symbols . . . there should be room for prayer, music, and quiet reflection,” he said.
“Being seen and heard brings healing, honour, and helps restore our connection to our ancestors. It reminds our families that we belong, that our history matters, and that our voice is valued in this space.”
Galo said the work must continue beyond the unveiling.
“Community involvement shouldn’t stop after the memorial is built, we should have a role in how it’s maintained and used in the future.
“These were real people, with families, love, and lives that mattered. Some were buried without names, without ceremony, and that left a deep pain. Honouring them now is a step toward healing, and a way of saying, you were never forgotten.”
Members of the public who recognise a family name on the list are encouraged to get in touch by emailing cemeteries@poriruacity.govt.nz.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a partner in the project.
“We drank the water with which we bathed because they did not give us drinking water,” said a Venezuelan migrant who was repatriated after having been illegally imprisoned in a high-security prison in El Salvador since March. on a repatriation plane on Friday, July 18.
He returned on one of the two repatriation flights that brought back the 252 migrants to Venezuela on Friday, July 18. They had been deported from the US and imprisoned in the Confinement Center for Terrorism (CECOT) in El Salvador without due process. Their repatriation was finally possible due to intense diplomatic negotiations by Nicolás Maduro administration with the US authorities.
International public opinion continues to turn against Israel for its war on Gaza, with more governments slowly beginning to reflect those voices and increase their own condemnation of the country.
In the last few weeks, Israeli government ministers have been sanctioned by several Western countries, with the United Kingdom, France and Canada issuing a joint statement condemning the “intolerable” level of “human suffering” in Gaza.
Last week, a number of countries from the Global South — “The Hague Group” — collectively agreed on a number of measures that they say will “restrain Israel’s assault on the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.
Across the world, and in increasing numbers, the public, politicians and, following an Israeli strike on a Catholic church in Gaza, religious leaders are speaking out against Israel’s killings in Gaza.
So, are world powers getting any closer to putting enough pressure on Israel for it to stop?
Here is what we know.
What is the Hague Group? According to its website, the Hague Group is a global bloc of states committed to “coordinated legal and diplomatic measures” in defence of international law and solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Made up of eight nations; South Africa, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia and Senegal, the group has set itself the mission of upholding international law, and safeguarding the principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations, principally “the responsibility of all nations to uphold the inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination, that it enshrines for all peoples”.
Last week, the Hague Group hosted a meeting of about 30 nations, including China, Spain and Qatar, in the Colombian capital of Bogota. Australia and New Zealand failed to attend in spite of invitations.
Also attending the meeting was UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who characterised the meeting as “the most significant political development in the past 20 months”.
Albanese was recently sanctioned by the United States for her criticism of its ally, Israel.
At the end of the two-day meeting, 12 of the countries in attendance agreed to six measures to limit Israel’s actions in Gaza. Included in those measures were blocks on supplying arms to Israel, a ban on ships transporting weapons and a review of public contracts for any possible links to companies benefiting from Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Have any other governments taken action? More and more.
Last Wednesday, Slovenia barred far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering its territory after the wider European Union failed to agree on measures to address charges of widespread human rights abuses against Israel.
The two men have been among the most vocal Israeli ministers in rejecting any compromise in negotiations with Palestinians, and pushing for the Jewish settlement of Gaza, as well as the increased building of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
In May, the UK, France, and Canada issued a joint statement describing Israel’s escalation of its campaign against Gaza as “wholly disproportionate” and promising “concrete actions” against Israel if it did not halt its offensive.
Later that month, the UK followed through on its warning, announcing sanctions on a handful of settler organisations and announcing a “pause” in free trade negotiations with Israel.
Also in May, Turkiye announced that it would block all trade with Israel until the humanitarian situation in Gaza was resolved.
South Africa first launched a case for genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice in late December 2023, and has since been supported by other countries, including Colombia, Chile, Spain, Ireland, and Turkiye.
In January of 2024, the ICJ issued its provisional ruling, finding what it termed a “plausible” case for genocide and instructing Israel to undertake emergency measures, including the provision of the aid that its government has effectively blocked since March of this year.
Following what was reported to be an “angry” phone call from US President Trump after the bombing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement expressing its “deep regret” over the attack. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Has the tide turned internationally? Mass public protests against Israel’s war on Gaza have continued around the world for the past 21 months.
And there are clear signs of growing anger over the brutality of the war and the toll it is taking on Palestinians in Gaza.
In Western Europe, a survey carried out by the polling company YouGov in June found that net favourability towards Israel had reached its lowest ebb since tracking began.
A similar poll produced by CNN last week found similar results among the American public, with only 23 percent of respondents agreeing Israel’s actions in Gaza were fully justified, down from 50 percent in October 2023.
Public anger has also found voice at high-profile public events, including music festivals such as Germany’s Fusion Festival, Poland’s Open’er Festival and the UK’s Glastonbury festival, where both artists and their supporters used their platforms to denounce the war on Gaza.
Has anything changed in Israel? Protests against the war remain small but are growing, with organisations, such as Standing Together, bringing together Israeli and Palestinian activists to protest against the war.
There has also been a growing number of reservists refusing to show up for duty. In April, the Israeli magazine +972 reported that more than 100,000 reservists had refused to show up for duty, with open letters from within the military protesting against the war growing in number since.
Will it make any difference? Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition has been pursuing its war on Gaza despite its domestic and international unpopularity for some time.
The government’s most recent proposal, that all of Gaza’s population be confined into what it calls a “humanitarian city”, has been likened to a concentration camp and has been taken by many of its critics as evidence that it no longer cares about either international law or global opinion.
Internationally, despite its recent criticism of Israel for its bombing of Gaza’s one Catholic church, US support for Israel remains resolute. For many in Israel, the continued support of the US, and President Donald Trump in particular, remains the one diplomatic absolute they can rely upon to weather whatever diplomatic storms their actions in Gaza may provoke.
In addition to that support, which includes diplomatic guarantees through the use of the US veto in the UN Security Council and military support via its extensive arsenal, is the US use of sanctions against Israel’s critics, such as the International Criminal Court, whose members were sanctioned by the US in June over the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on war crimes charges.
That means, in the short term, Israel ultimately feels protected as long as it has US support. But as it becomes more of an international pariah, economic and diplomatic isolation may become more difficult to handle.
On the world stage, the promise of the United Nations (UN) – to unite all nations, large and small, strong and weak, in the service of peace and justice – has never stood in more peril.
The devastation of Gaza, the wholesale obliteration of civilian life and infrastructure, and the persistent inaction of the very international institutions designed to prevent such catastrophe have driven not only millions of Palestinians from their homes, but have also dislocated the postwar legal order itself.
Amid a torrent of evidence and eyewitness testimony, as the rubble of bombed hospitals and starved neighbourhoods pile high, the crisis reaches far beyond a humanitarian disaster. It has become the ultimate test for international law and the integrity of global institutions.
For former senior UN human rights chiefCraig Mokhiber, who resigned in protest as director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in 2023, after serving the UN for more than three decades, it is a collapse of the system meant to restrain the powerful and uphold basic decency among nations.
The two faces of the UN
He said of the UN:
What we have seen, not for the first time, but very clearly over the past two years in Palestine, is that it has been wholly incapable of launching an effective response to a genocide.
According to Mokhiber, Gaza has not only become the scene of a genocide, but has revealed the extent to which the rules that were designed to protect populations from such horrors are no longer enforced. States with the most responsibility to uphold these rules are instead complicit in breaking them. He argues that paralysis is not accidental but is exactly how the system is structured.
He explained that:
When you have a permanent member of the Security Council with the veto, the system cannot act. In this case, it is the United States, which not only supports the genocide but is also a co-perpetrator in it, and has been actively participating in it, by providing weapons and intelligence and diplomatic cover and the use of the veto and so on. And that is not a mistake but a failure by design. The five permanent members of the Security Council agreed to the UN Charter on the condition that they be provided, effectively, with an impunity for them and for anyone that they want to grant that impunity to. So, this part of the system has failed by design, but the rest of the system has failed by abdication.
Trapped in stalemate thanks to overreach from nuclear weapon states
The UN now has 193 member states. However, only the five permanent members – known as the P5 countries – have been given veto power to disagree with any decision taken by the member nations of the Security Council. These countries are the UK, the US, France, Russia, and China – the five nuclear weapon states recognised under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Mokhiber claims there is a deep divide within the system. The bloodshed in Gaza has continued month after month, because every attempt at the Security Council to pass binding resolutions for humanitarian access, ceasefire, or accountability has been met with determined obstruction.
Time and again, resolutions calling for cessation of violence, protection of medical facilities, or preservation of critical infrastructure have fallen, not due to lack of votes, but because the United States or other P5 states have exercised their veto.
But, while the Security Council remains trapped in stalemate and top offices are paralysed by fear, he praises the independent Human Rights mechanisms of the UN, saying that parts of the system, such as the UN Special Rapporteurs and humanitarian organisations like UNRWA, have:
behaved perfectly, in a principled way and sometimes heroically throughout the genocide.
This is all while many of their employees have been murdered as they try to bring relief to the besieged. These values Mokhiber insist on are what the organisation was meant to represent.
Lack of courage brings failure to the UN
The dysfunction of the Security Council is worsened, he argues, by a failure of leadership at the highest levels of the UN. These senior political offices which have the authority to speak with moral authority, galvanise member states, and activate alternative mechanisms like the General Assembly, are largely inactive.
According to Mokhiber, this inaction stems from fear or undue influence, particularly from powerful states and wealthy donors – leading them to shy away from their responsibilities.
He said:
The Secretary General and the political offices of the organization have failed, not by design, but by abdication. They have lacked the courage and the principle to defend the norms and standards of the organization because they are either afraid or compromised by countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the European Union, and others… They have failed to act not because they don’t have the power to do more, but because they don’t have the will to do more when the perpetrators or the supporters of the perpetrators are Western powers.
The result, Mokhiber claims, is that international norms themselves are undermined, and made meaningless, by the reluctance to enforce them in the face of Western opposition.
‘Uniting for Peace’: The General Assembly’s forgotten tool
As the Security Council remains locked by vetoes – and therefore by the interests of the powerful – the General Assembly stands as the wider world’s democratic institution.
Mokhiber said that:
The General Assembly since 1950 has been specifically empowered, under the Uniting for Peace resolution (377A(V)), to get around the Security Council veto in matters of peace and security where the council is unable or unwilling to act because of the veto of one of its permanent members. There are some very impressive precedents where Uniting for Peace was used in the General Assembly to take concrete measures, and they have not yet done that. And that is, I think, a real failing.
The first use of the Uniting for Peace resolution was against two NATO members, France and the United Kingdom, during the Suez Crisis in 1956. The resolution was invoked because the Security Council was unable to agree on a way forward due to vetoes by France and the UK. As a result, the first UN peacekeeping force was established, known as the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), and was dispatched to the Sinai.
It successfully secured and supervised the cessation of hostilities. Mokhiber pointed to these dormant powers – which allow the Assembly to recommend emergency action including protection forces, sanctions, and accountability measures – as the best hope left:
So we are trying to put pressure on the General Assembly to do what it can do, based upon the precedence of the 1956 use of Uniting for Peace to establish the UN Emergency Force that was deployed to the Sinai, over the objection of the Israelis, over the objection of the French, over the objections of the British. They were able to do that because the General Assembly acted under the Uniting for Peace resolution to mandate an armed emergency force. They could do the same thing now, and it’s even easier now.
When the General Assembly mandates a force, because it does not have the enforcement power of the Security Council, they need the consent of whoever’s territory they are going to deploy to.
Today, legal arguments are even firmer, because the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has determined that Israel does not hold sovereignty in Gaza or any other part of the occupied territories. It has no right to be there and has no authority or decision-making power over what happens there. That is now clearly established as a matter of international law.
The ICJ has also said that the Palestinian people have the right to self-determination. This means the only consent needed for a General Assembly-mandated protection force, would be the consent of the Palestinians. And for the UN, that means the state of Palestine, the Palestinian representatives. Israel has no right to say yes or no.
Genocide beyond bombs and bullets
Addressing the ongoing genocide in Palestine, which is moving at full speed and, according to Mokhiber, will not be stopped by any ceasefire, means moving beyond simplistic images of conflict. Israel’s strategy, he says, is not confined to military attacks, but extends to the destruction of the civilian infrastructure necessary for life.
Mokhiber explained:
The bombs and bullets are only one of the means that are being used by Israel to perpetrate the genocide. Starvation, denial of food, water and shelter, imposed hunger, imposed disease, the destruction of hospitals, the lack of medical care, all of those things will claim more victims than even the intentional bombing and shooting of Palestinian civilians that’s been going on for the past 20 plus months.
So the only way to stop the genocide is to get a force in there, that is mandated to, firstly, protect civilians from any kind of threats, to secure and support the distribution of humanitarian aid to all parts of the strip, including food and water and medicine and shelter and all of the things that are needed for the survival and recovery of the victims of genocide in Palestine, and thirdly- to preserve the evidence of Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, for accountability, as the General Assembly has said that there must be a process of accountability for Israel’s crimes.
That evidence is being destroyed as we speak – a multinational force could help to protect it. All of these things could be done under the authority of the General Assembly, where we know there is more than two thirds of the member states who are opposing Israel’s actions, and who are supporting Palestinians.
According to Mokhiber, legally and politically, logically and practically, it “absolutely could go ahead”, but the question is, would Israel fire on a UN-mandated international force as it entered Gaza to provide humanitarian relief? Mokhiber does not think so, especially if it were a multinational one which included forces from states that Israel does not want to fire upon.
If one of the P5 countries uses its veto power, and the Security council becomes deadlocked, an emergency special session of the General Assembly can be convened within 24 hours, under the Uniting for Peace resolution. In the case of Palestine, this session, called the 10th Emergency Special Session, focuses on illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
This was first convened in 1997, and has been resumed many times, including during this genocide, to address the ongoing Israeli occupation and its impact on the region. But, according to Mokhiber, the resolutions that were adopted:
did not have the kind of teeth that were needed.
Although temporarily adjourned, any member state can call for it to be reopened, allowing for the Assembly to immediately confront genocide and impunity with more than words.
A blueprint for real action
Mokhiber and others are demanding action that goes beyond the symbolic.
They are calling for a resolution that mandates the use of a protective force with the capacity to provide real protection, deployed at first all over Gaza and then, subsequently, over the West Bank, ideally including occupied Jerusalem. This would be a resolution that strips Israel of its credentials in the UN – as was done with South Africa during apartheid – one that establishes an accountability mechanism, such as an international tribunal, to hold the Israelis and complicit others accountable. It would deal with the “thousands upon thousands of war crimes”.
Sanctions and military embargos are also necessary, as are the reestablishment of the anti-racism and anti-apartheid mechanisms, which existed during South African Apartheid, such as diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, travel bans, and robust civil society movements, all backed by the legal and moral authority the UN can bring.
Mokhiber said:
In other words, we need real, concrete measures that have the capacity to change the reality on the ground, to change the incentive structure that currently exists, because the number one challenge to human rights and peace and security in the Middle East is Israeli impunity, and the US and the UK and the Germans and some others are thoroughly dedicated to maintaining absolute impunity by the Israeli regime and, under that impunity, as we have seen in recent months, we have witnessed genocide. We have witnessed serial aggression against other countries in the region perpetrated by Israel. We have witnessed a transnational attack in Lebanon using booby traps pagers, we have witnessed summary executions of people across the region perpetrated by Israel. This is what impunity looks like.
‘This is not just the trial of Israel. It is the trial of the entire international legal system’
Plenty of governments and institutions prefer to avoid naming reality at hand. Instead, standard phrases and calls for ‘restraint’ have replaced what international law demands, justice and accountability. Mokhiber suggests there is a lack of political courage, and this can be seen in the statements that are made:
It’s the same talking points over and over again, that have zero impact on the lives and livelihoods of the Palestinian people. ‘Israel, please let in more humanitarian aid. Let’s talk about a two-state solution. Let’s release the hostages’. What they never deal with is the accountability of the perpetrator, which is required under international law. They never deal with the root causes of ethno-nationalism, ethno-supremacy, apartheid, occupation, the denial of the right of Palestinians to return home – none of the actual root causes of what is defined as a conflict. This is oppressor and oppressed, occupier and occupied, genocidaire and genocide.
This is not two sides of a war, which is language that they’re very comfortable using, because then they don’t have to upset the Americans or the Brits or the Germans or the Israel lobby or others, by daring to speak truth to power and saying ‘this is the genocide and it is perpetrator and victim, and our job is to stand with the victim and to make sure that the perpetrator is forced to stop’.
You don’t have to negotiate for your rights with a regime that’s perpetrating apartheid and genocide. Those rights are guaranteed by international law! The job of all of the states and of international institutions is to enforce that law, not to beg for mercy from the perpetrator regime. But they don’t have that. Unfortunately, that’s been the failure of the international system.
Mokhiber continued:
It’s not just Israel that’s on trial, but the entire international system, the idea of international law, international civil rights, all of that is on trial because if Israel can get away with the first livestream genocide in history, and with the defense of most of the West and the inaction of international institutions, that’s the end of that system – and the UN is the centerpiece of that system, and it will not likely survive.
But, instead of standing up to fight back on principle, what it’s doing is bowing down lower and lower to the US, which is using all sorts of tactics, including cutting its funding and so on, to make them feel an existential threat, to increase their fear so that they will soft pedal on Israel. That’s the wrong strategy on the part of the UN. If they don’t stand up, they will be gone in the medium term.
The UK: ‘one of the three most complicit states in the genocide’
Britain is not at the margins of the genocide of the Palestinian people, but at its heart, and we need to do everything within our power to say that this is not in our name that our governments – our criminal governments – are participating in this. We must hold them accountable. But, as Mokhiber explained, companies and the press are also complicit in the genocide, and they must also be investigated and tried if evidence shows they contributed to unfolding war crimes or the obstruction of justice.
He said:
The UK is one of the three most complicit states in the genocide, along with the US and Germany. There’s no question that the UK Government and some UK companies are guilty of the crime of complicity and genocide. Many of them are guilty because of their actions in facilitating it through armaments and other support, and allowing its continuation through diplomatic cover and other such things. UK media like the BBC have disseminated, non-critically, Israeli propaganda for genocide, hiding the stories of the actual genocide, and sometimes crossing the line into incitement of genocide.
Intensification of repression and the meaning of resistance
As mass protests and solidarity campaigns spread across the West, so too does the backlash, with universities, workplaces, and civic spaces becoming sites of intimidation and punishment. Mokhiber sees this escalation as unprecedented, even compared to anti-apartheid campaigns decades ago, when there were arrests and name-calling but nowhere near the level of repression being faced now. But, he says, people are now being targeted, not because they are wrong, but precisely because those in power know they are losing the moral argument.
Mokhiber said:
Western governments have become aligned with the project of repression in Palestine to the extent that they will punish and oppress their own citizens on behalf of one oppressive foreign regime, Israel. If you’re a student who speaks out, if you’re somebody who speaks out in your workplace, if you’re involved in boycotts and divestments, if you’re involved in direct action, you will be criminalized. You may be expelled from school, fired from your job, beaten by police, arrested, deported. That’s what’s different now, and the reason they’re doing that is because they understand that all they have left is fear. They cannot win the legal argument. They cannot win the moral argument. They cannot win the political argument.
All they have is fear and repression. So, they’re betting the entire shop – including their own constitution and laws, protections for their own citizens, and their own budgets – on the idea that they can frighten us enough that we will shut up and allow it to continue. But, so far, it’s not working. Our numbers are growing.
There is now a new ecosystem of political action and information. Digital networks, independent reporting, and direct testimony make concealment far more difficult, and Mokhiber insists that real change has always come from persistent movements, not elite consensus. Shifting the balance of pressure, from the powerful lobbies and donor states back toward the rule of law, requires sustained mass action and global pressure and legal mobilisation, and is now the main hope for halting impunity:
This isn’t 1950 when you had to rely on network television and mainstream newspapers to tell you what was happening. This is the age of independent media, the age of social media, the age of direct content production, where there’s victims and witnesses on the ground, and they’re not getting away with it. But this is their last-ditch effort to silence and punish us. If we give in then we lose, but if we fight back, we will grow and get stronger. The challenge is the challenge of politics, and that’s why the movement has to keep growing, has to keep being visible and strong in demanding justice.
We are heading back to lawlessness thanks to the UN
Mokhiber laid out a stark choice before the international community: either institutions act, or genocide – and the collapse of international legal order – will proceed unhindered, with devastating consequences:
If the system can steel itself and stand up to this situation, and do what needs to be done, which are the specifics we’re calling for, then international law, international institutions could, over time, be victorious in the same way that they were when they organized that way against the apartheid regime in South Africa. That’s scenario number one.
Scenario number two is they continue where they’re going now, allowing for such absolute Israeli impunity. That will be the end of international law and of the international system, including the UN, they will not come back from that.
And why should any member state of the United Nations respect the rule of law, international human rights, the Geneva Conventions, the prohibition of genocide, if the world is now defined as it was before the UN existed, by the use of force alone? That’s going to mean every state will invest all of its resources in becoming as militarily strong as possible. They will understand that it’s ‘might make right’, that you need to have a nuclear weapon, ideally, if you have to compete in this way. And we are back to the law of the jungle.
And unfortunately, the direction we’re heading in now is the latter, and one very significant step to stop that and redirect would be this Uniting for Peace resolution by the General Assembly, with actual teeth, not another tepid statement of principle, but sanctions, embargo protection, force, removal of Israel’s credentials in the UN accountability mechanism, and the General Assembly have the power to do all of that. They only need now to find the will.
Palestinian supporters and protesters against the 21 months of Israeli genocide in Gaza marched after a rally in downtown Auckland today across the Viaduct to the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior — and met a display of solidarity.
Several people on board the campaign ship, which has been holding open days over last weekend and this weekend, held up Palestinian flags and displayed a large banner declaring “Sanction Israel — Stop the genocide”.
About 300 people were in the vibrant rally and Greenpeace Aotearoa oceans campaigner Juan Parada came out on Halsey Wharf to speak to the protesters in solidarity over Gaza.
“Greenpeace stands for peace and justice, and environmental justice, not only for the environmental damage, but for the lives of the people,” said Parada, a former media practitioner.
Global environmental campaigners have stepped up their condemnation of the devastation in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories as well as the protests over the genocide, which has so far killed almost 59,000 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Department, although some researchers say the actual death toll is far higher.
Greenpeace campaigner Juan Parada (left) and one of the Palestine rally facilitators, Youssef Sammour, at today’s rally as it reached Halsey Wharf. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Gaza war emissions condemned
New research recently revealed that the carbon footprint of the first 15 months of Israel’s war on Gaza would be greater than the annual planet-warming emissions of 100 individual countries, worsening the global climate emergency on top of the huge civilian death toll.
The report cited by The Guardian indicated that Israel’s relentless bombardment, blockade and refusal to comply with international court rulings had “underscored the asymmetry of each side’s war machine, as well as almost unconditional military, energy and diplomatic support Israel enjoys from allies, including the US and UK”.
The Israeli war machine has been primarily blamed.
“This is cruelty – this is not a war”, says the young girl’s placard on the Viaduct today. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Greenpeace open letter
Greenpeace Aotearoa recently came out with strong statements about the genocidal war on Gaza with executive director Russel Norman earlier this month writing an open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters, expressing his grave concerns about the “ongoing genocide in Gaza being carried out by Israeli forces” — and the ongoing failure of the New Zealand Government to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel.
He referred to the mounting death toll of starving Palestinians being deliberately shot at the notorious Israeli-US backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) food distribution sites.
Norman also cited an Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz report that Israeli soldiers had been ordered to deliberately shoot unarmed Palestinians seeking aid, quoting one Israeli soldier saying: “It’s a killing field.”
Today’s rally featured many Palestinians wearing thobe costumes in advance of Palestinian Traditional Dress Day on July 25.
This is a day to showcase and celebrate the rich Palestinian cultural heritage through traditional clothing that is intricately embroidered.
Traditional thobes are a symbol of Palestinian resilience.
“Israel-USA – blood on your hands” banner at today’s rally in Auckland. Image: Asia Pacific Report
United States immigration and deportation enforcement continues to ramp up, impacting on Marshallese and Micronesians in new and unprecedented ways.
The Trump administration’s directive to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest and deport massive numbers of potentially illegal aliens, including those with convictions from decades past, is seeing Marshallese and Micronesians swept up by ICE.
The latest unprecedented development is Marshallese and Micronesians being removed from the United States to the offshore detention facility at the US Navy base in Guantánamo Bay — a facility set up to jail terrorists suspected of involvement in the 9/11 airplane attacks in the US in 2001.
Marshall Islands Ambassador to the US Charles Paul this week confirmed a media report that one Marshallese was currently incarcerated at Guantánamo, which is also known as “GTMO”.
The same report from nationnews.com said 72 detainees from 26 countries had been sent to GTMO last week, including from the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.
A statement issued by the US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE operations, concerning detention of foreigners with criminal records at GTMO said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was using “every tool available to get criminal illegal aliens off our streets and out of our country.”
But the action was criticised by a Marshallese advocate for citizens from the Compact countries in the US.
‘Legal, ethical concerns’
“As a Compact of Free Association (COFA) advocate and ordinary indigenous citizen of the Marshallese Islands, I strongly condemn the detention of COFA migrants — including citizens from the Republic of the Marshall Islands — at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay,” Benson Gideon said in a social media post this week.
“This action raises urgent legal, constitutional, and ethical concerns that must be addressed without delay.”
Since seeing the news about detention of a Marshallese in this US facility used to hold suspected terrorists, Ambassador Paul said he had “been in touch with ICE to repatriate one Marshallese being detained.”
Paul said he was “awaiting all the documents pertaining to the criminal charges, but we were informed that the individual has several felony and misdemeanor convictions. We are working closely with ICE to expedite this process.”
Gideon said bluntly the detention of the Marshallese was a breach of Compact treaty obligations.
“The COFA agreement guarantees fair treatment. Military detention undermines this commitment,” he said.
Gideon listed the strong Marshallese links with the US — service in high numbers in the US military, hosting of the Kwajalein missile range, US military control of Marshall Islands ocean and air space — as examples of Marshallese contributions to the US.
‘Treated as criminals’
“Despite these sacrifices, our people are being treated as criminals and confined in a facility historically associated with terrorism suspects,” he said.
“I call on the US Embassy in Majuro to publicly address this injustice and work with federal agencies to ensure COFA Marshallese residents are treated with dignity and fairness.
“If we are good enough to host your missile ranges, fight in your military, and support your defence strategy, then we are good enough to be protected — not punished. Let justice, transparency, and respect prevail.”
There were 72 immigration detainees at Guantánamo Bay, 58 of them classified as high-risk and 14 in the low-risk category, reported nationnews.com.
The report added that the criminal records of the detainees include convictions for homicide; sexual offences, including against children; child pornography; assault with a weapon; kidnapping; drug smuggling; and robbery.
Civil rights advocates have called the detention of immigration detainees at Guantanamo Bay punitive and unlawful, arguing in an active lawsuit that federal law does not allow the government to hold those awaiting deportation outside of US territory.
In other US immigration and deportation developments:
The delivery last month by US military aircraft of 18 Marshallese deported from the US and escorted by armed ICE agents is another example of the ramped-up deportation focus of the Trump administration. Since the early 2000s more than 300 Marshall Islanders have been deported from the US. Prior to the Trump administration, past deportations were managed by US Marshals escorting deportees individually on commercial flights.
According to Marshall Islands authorities, there have not been any deportations since the June 10 military flight to Majuro, suggesting that group deportations may be the way the Trump administration handles further deportations.
Individual travellers flying into Honolulu whose passports note place of birth as Kiribati are reportedly now being refused entry. This reportedly happened to a Marshallese passport holder late last month who had previously travel
led in and out of the US without issue.
Most Marshallese passport holders enjoy visa-free travel to the US, though there are different levels of access to the US based on if citizenship was gained through naturalisation or a passport sales programme in the 1980s and 1990s.
US Ambassador to the Marshall Islands Laura Stone said, however, that “the visa-free travel rules have not changed.”
She said she could not speak to any individual traveller’s situation without adequate information to evaluate the situation.
She pointed out that citizenship “acquired through naturalisation, marriage, investment, adoption” have different rules. Stone urged all travellers to examine the rules carefully and determine their eligibility for visa-free travel.
“If they have a question, we would be happy to answer their enquiry at ConsMajuro@state.gov,” she added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
“If words shape our consciousness, then the media holds the keys to minds.”
This sentence is not merely a metaphor, but a reality we live daily in the coverage of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, where the crimes of the occupation are turned into “acts of violence”, the siege targeting civilians into “security measures”, and the legitimate resistance into “terrorist acts”.
This linguistic distortion is not innocent; it is part of a “systematic mechanism” practised by major Western media outlets, through which they perpetuate a false image of a “conflict between two equal sides”, ignoring the fact that one is an occupier armed with the latest military technology, and the other is a people besieged in their land for decades.
Here, the ethical question becomes urgent: how does the media shift from conveying truth to becoming a tool for justifying oppression?
Western media institutions promote a colonial narrative that reproduces the discourse of Israeli superiority, using linguistic and legal mechanisms to justify genocide.
But the rise of global awareness through social media platforms and documentaries like We Are Not Numbers, produced by youth in Gaza, exposes this bias and brings the Palestinian narrative back to the forefront.
Selective coverage . . . when injustice becomes an opinion “Terrorism”, “self-defence”, “conflict” . . . are all terms that place the responsibility for violence on Palestinians while presenting Israel as the perpetual victim. This linguistic shift contradicts international law, which considers settlements a war crime (according to Article 8 of the Rome Statute), yet most reports avoid even describing the West Bank as “occupied territory”.
More dangerously, the issue is reduced to “violent events” without mentioning their contexts: how can the Palestinian people’s resistance be understood without addressing 75 years of displacement and the siege of Gaza since 2007? The media is like someone commenting on the flames without mentioning who ignited them.
The Western media coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza represents a blatant model of systematic bias that reproduces the Israeli narrative and justifies war crimes through precise linguistic and media mechanisms. Below is a breakdown of the most prominent practices:
Stripping historical context and portraying Palestinians as aggressor
Ignoring the occupation: Media outlets like the BBC and The New York Times ignored the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories since 1948 and focused on the 7 October 2023 attack as an isolated event, without linking it to the daily oppression such as home demolitions and arrests in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Misleading terms: The war has often been described as a “conflict between Israel and Hamas”, while Gaza is considered the largest open-air prison in the world under Israeli siege since 2007. Example: The Economist described Hamas’s attacks as “bloody”, while Israeli attacks were called “military operations”.
Dehumanising Palestinians Language of abstraction: The BBC used terms like “died” for Palestinians versus “killed” for Israelis, according to a quantitative study by The Intercept, weakening sympathy for Palestinian victims.
Victim portrayal: While Israeli death reports included names and family ties (like “mother” or “grandmother”), Palestinians were shown as anonymous numbers, as seen in the coverage of Le Monde and Le Figaro.
Israeli political rhetoric: Media outlets reported statements by Israeli leaders such as dismissed defence minister Yoav Gallant, who described Palestinians as “human animals”, and Benjamin Netanyahu, who called them “children of darkness”, without critically analysing this rhetoric that strips them of their humanity.
Distorting resistance and linking it to terrorism Misleading comparisons: The October 7 attack was compared to “9/11” and described as a “terrorist attack” in The Washington Post and CNN, reinforcing the “war on terror” narrative and justifying Israel’s excessive response.
Fake news: Papers like The Sun and Daily Mail promoted the story of “beheaded Israeli babies” without evidence, a story even adopted by US president Joe Biden, only to be disproven later by videos showing Hamas’ humane treatment of captives.
Selective coverage and suppression of the Palestinian narrative Silencing journalists: Journalists such as Zahraa Al-Akhras (Global News) and Bassam Bounni (BBC) were dismissed for criticising Israel or supporting Palestine, while others were pressured to adopt the Israeli narrative.
Defaming Palestinian institutions:The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal claimed the Palestinian death toll figures were “exaggerated”, ignoring UN and human rights organisations’ reports that confirmed their accuracy.
Manipulating legal and ethical terms Denying war crimes:Deutsche Welle stated that Israeli attacks are “not considered war crimes”, despite the destruction of hospitals and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians.
Legal misinformation: The BBC referred to Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “disputed territories”, despite the UN declaring them illegal.
The Israeli military joins settlers in attacks because terrorizing Palestinians is state policy. But Western media doesn’t report it that way.
Double standards in conflict coverage Comparison with Ukraine: Western media linked support for Ukraine and Israel as “victims of aggression”, while ignoring that Israel is an occupying power under international law. Terminology shifted immediately: “invasion”, “war crimes”, “occupation” were used for Ukraine but omitted when speaking of Palestine.
According to a 2022 study by the Arab Media Monitoring Project, 90 percent of Western reports on Ukraine used language blaming Russia for the violence, compared to only 30 percent in the Palestinian case.
This contradiction exposes the underlying “racist bias”: how is killing in Europe called “genocide”, while in Gaza it is termed a “complicated conflict”? The answer lies in the statement of journalist Mika Brzezinski: “The only red line in Western media is criticising Israel.”
False neutrality: Sky News claimed it “could not verify” the Baptist Hospital massacre, despite video documentation, yet quickly adopted the Israeli narrative.
Consequences: legitimising genocide and marginalising Palestinian rights Western media practices have contributed to normalising Israeli violence by portraying it as “legitimate defence”, while resistance is labelled as “terrorism.”
Deepening Palestinian isolation: By stripping them of the right to narrate, as shown in an academic study by Mike Berry (Cardiff University), which found emotional terms used exclusively to describe Israeli victims.
Undermining international law: By ignoring reports from organisations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which confirm Israel’s commission of war crimes.
Violating journalistic ethics . . . when the journalist becomes the occupation’s lawyer Journalistic codes of ethics — such as the charter of the “International Federation of Journalists” — unanimously agree that the media’s primary task is “to expose the facts without fear”. But the reality proves the opposite:
In 2023, CNN deleted an interview with a Palestinian survivor of the Jenin massacre after pressure from the Israeli lobby (according to an investigation by Middle East Eye).
The Guardian was forced to edit the headline of an article that described settlements as “apartheid” after threats of legal action.
This self-censorship turns journalism into a “copier of official statements”, abandoning the principle of “not compromising with ruling powers” emphasised by the “International Journalists’ Network”.
Toward human-centred journalism Fixing this flaw requires dismantling biased language: replacing “conflict” with “military occupation”, and “settlements” with “illegal colonies”.
Relying on international law: such as mentioning Articles 49 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention when discussing the displacement of Palestinians.
Giving space to victims’ voices: According to an Amnesty report, 80% of guests on Western TV channels discussing the conflict were either Israeli or Western.
Holding media institutions accountable: through pressure campaigns to enforce their ethical charters (such as obligating the BBC to mention “apartheid” after the HRW report).
Conclusion The war on Gaza has become a stark test of media ethics. While platforms like Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye have helped expose violations, major Western media outlets continue to reproduce a colonial discourse that enables Israel. The greatest challenge today is to break the silence surrounding the crimes of genocide and impose a human narrative that restores the stolen humanity of the victims.
“Occupation doesn’t just need tanks, it needs media to justify its existence.” These were the words of journalist Gideon Levy after witnessing how his camera turned war crimes into “normal news”.
If Western media is serious about its claim of neutrality, it must start with a simple step: call things by their names. Words are not lifeless letters, they are ticking bombs that shape the consciousness of generations.
Refaat Ibrahim is the editor and creator of The Resistant Palestinian Pens website, where you can find all his articles. He is a Palestinian writer living in Gaza, where he studied English language and literature at the Islamic University. He has been passionate about writing since childhood, and is interested in political, social, economic, and cultural matters concerning his homeland, Palestine. This article was first published at Pearls and Irritations social policy journal in Australia.
Ecuador is a country that has developed a strong consciousness for environmental conservation throughout its history. Its constitution, approved in 2008, was a pioneer in the world in granting rights to nature. In 2021, more than 80% of the inhabitants of Cuenca, Ecuador’s third-largest city, voted in favor of banning mining there. In 2023, in a popular consultation, the Ecuadorian people demanded that the oil in the Amazonian Yasuní National Park be left in the ground.
The inhabitants of the country’s capital, Quito, also voted against the exploration and exploitation of metallic minerals in the Andean Chocó area. Mention should also be made of the numerous struggles that Indigenous peoples have waged for decades against the destruction of nature by large mining and oil companies.
On 1 July 2025 DAWN issued a response to reports of a new Israeli directive to ban employees of DAWN, along with other respected human rights and legal advocacy organizations including Al-Haq Europe, Law for Palestine, and Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR), from entering Israel, aiming to punish and suppress accountability efforts for war crimes, apartheid, and genocide, DAWN issues the following:
“Israel is now banning human rights organizations from even entering the country to expose and seek accountability for the atrocities and crimes it is committing,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN’s executive director. “Israel’s ban against organizations seeking accountability for IDF abuses is only the latest indication of its growing isolation in the international community.”
“Israel’s decision to blacklist DAWN is a desperate attempt to block scrutiny of its crimes against the Palestinian people,” said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at DAWN. “We will not be intimidated by authoritarian tactics and will continue our work to expose Israel’s violations of international law until there is full accountability and justice.”
“It’s hard to imagine greater validation of DAWN’s work to hold accountable Israeli officials and soldiers than being banned from entering the country specifically because of that work,” said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, director for Israel-Palestine at DAWN. “This is nevertheless a worrying harbinger of even greater Israeli repression of human rights defenders, be they Palestinian, Israeli, or American.”
Nobody has a bad word to say about the French Resistance in the Second World War, right? Who would criticise a group confronting fascism, right?
Yet this month the UK group Palestine Action has been proscribed as a “terrorist” organisation by their government for their non-violent direct action against UK-based industries supplying technology to fuel Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people.
Are they terrorists or the very best of us in the West?
Stéphane Hessel, a leading member of the French Resistance, survived time in Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald. After the war he was one of the co-authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a pillar of international law to this day.
The Declaration affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. In later years Hessel (d. 2013), who was Jewish, saw the treatment of the Palestinians as an affront to this and repeatedly called Israel out for crimes against humanity.
Hessel argued people needed to be outraged just as he and his fellow fighters had been during the war.
In 2010, he said: “Today, my strongest feeling of indignation is over Palestine, both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The starting point of my outrage was the appeal launched by courageous Israelis to the Diaspora: you, our older siblings, come and see where our leaders are taking this country and how they are forgetting the fundamental human values of Judaism.”
In his book Indignez-vous (Time for Outrage!) he called for a “peaceful insurrection” and pointed to some of the non-violent forms of protests Palestinians had used over the years.
In Kendal, UK, this fellow wasn’t arrested. In Cardiff, this woman was. Perhaps the “terrorism” isn’t saying you support Palestine Action – it’s saying you oppose genocide?! Image: Private Eye/X/@DefendourJuries
“The Israeli authorities have described these marches as ‘nonviolent terrorism’. Not bad . . . One would have to be Israeli to describe nonviolence as terrorism.”
How wrong Stéphane Hessel was on this point. The British Parliament has just proscribed Palestine Action as “terrorists” despite them having never attacked anyone, never used weapons, but only undertaken destruction of property linked to the arms industry.
Does Palestine Action really bear resemblance to Al Qaeda or ISIS, or Israel’s Stern Gang or the IDF? Or, like the French Resistance, will they eventually be recognised as heroes of our time? Will Hollywood romanticise them in their usual tardy way in 50 years time?
In respect to the Palestinians, Hessel was clear that resistance could take many forms: “We must recognise that when a country is occupied by infinitely superior military means, the popular reaction cannot be only nonviolent,” he said.
In his time, he lived by those words.
Resistance – a precious band of brothers and sisters Here’s a statistic that should make you think. In the Second World War less than 2 percent of French people played any active role in the Resistance. Most people just sat back and got on with their lives whether they liked the Germans or didn’t.
The Jews and others were dealt to, stamped on and shipped out, while most of the French could trundle on unharassed. The heavy lifting of resistance was done by a small band of brothers and sisters who took it to the enemy.
History salutes them, as we now salute the Suffragettes, the anti-Apartheid activists, the American civil rights groups and Irish liberation fighters. We’re living through something similar now — and our governments are the bad guys.
I first learned that shocking fact about the composition of the Resistance from my history teacher at l’Université de Franche-Comté, in France in the 1980s. He was the distinguished historian Antoine Casanova, a specialist on Napoleon, Corsica and the Resistance.
Perhaps the low level of resistance is not surprising. Most of the people who put their bodies on the line in Occupied France during the Second World War were either communists or Jews. Good on them. Jewish people made up as much as 20 percent of the French Resistance despite numbering only about 1 percent of the population. This massive over-representation can, understandably, be explained as recognition of the existential threat they faced — but many were also passionate communists or socialists, the ideological enemies of the racist, fascist ideology of their occupiers.
Looking at the Israeli State today, many of those same Jewish Resistance fighters would instantly recognise the racism and fascism that they opposed in the 1940s. We should remember our leaders tell us we share values with Israel.
For anyone not in the United Kingdom (where it is illegal to show any support for Palestine Action) I highly recommend the recently released documentary To Kill A War Machine which gives an absolutely riveting account of both the direct action the group has undertaken and the moral and ideological underpinnings of their actions.
Having seen the documentary I can see why the British Labour government is doing everything in its power to silence and censor them. They really do expose who the true terrorists are. Stéphane Hessel would be proud of Palestine Action.
This week a former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made clear what is going on in Gaza.
The “humanitarian city” Israel is planning to build on the ruins of Rafah would be, in his words, a concentration camp. Others have described it as a Warsaw-ghetto or a “death camp”. Olmert says Israel is clearly committing war crimes in both Gaza and the West Bank and that the concentration camp for the Gazan population would mark a further escalation.
It would go beyond ethnic cleansing and take the Jewish State of Israel shoulder-to-shoulder with other regimes that built such camps. Israel, we should never forget, is our close ally.
Millions of people have hit the streets in Western countries. A majority clearly repudiate what the US and Israel are doing. But the political leadership of the big Western countries continues to enable the racist, fascist genocidal state of Israel to do its evil work. Lesser powers of the white-dominated broederbond, like Australia and New Zealand, also provide valuable support.
Until our populations in the West mobilise in sufficient numbers to force change on our increasingly criminal ruling elites, the heavy-lifting done by groups like Palestine Action will remain powerful forms of the resistance.
I grew up in the Catholic faith. One of the lines indelibly printed on my consciousness was: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Palestine Action is doing that. Francesca Albanese is doing that. Justice for Palestine and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa are doing this.
The real question, the burning question each of us must answer is — given there is no middle ground, there is no fence to sit on when it comes to genocide — whose side are you on? And what are you going to do about it? Vive la Resistance! Vive the defenders of the Palestinian cause!
Rest in Peace Stéphane Hessel. Le temps passe, le souvenir reste.
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
Cristosal says decision to leave country and relocate employees comes after organisation was targeted by Nayib Bukele
El Salvador’s top human rights organisation, Cristosal, announced on Thursday it is leaving the country because of mounting harassment and legal threats by the government of President Nayib Bukele.
The organisation has been one of the most visible critics of Bukele, documenting abuses in the strongman’s war on the country’s gangs and the detention of hundreds of Venezuelan deportees in an agreement with the US president Donald Trump.
Angélique is a Malagasy environmental and community rights defender who founded the Razany Vohibola Association in 2016. She represents over 3,000 villagers from four communities near the Vohibola Forest and leads efforts to preserve one of Madagascar’s last remaining primary forests.
Under her leadership, and in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment, villagers have formed patrols to monitor and protect the forest against illegal logging, poaching, and the growing impacts of climate change. Angélique and her community face ongoing threats, including direct intimidation and violence from the authorities. One of her colleagues, patrol officer Mick, was killed for speaking out against illegal land grabbing, yet his death remains unpunished by local authorities.
Despite these grave risks, Angélique continues to advocate for justice and environmental protection. She also calls for structural change, urging the Malagasy government to pass a law that protects human rights defenders and holds public officials accountable.
There is currently no law to protect human rights defenders in Madagascar. We need this law to pass. The army and the gendarmes must be trained to understand who we are so they can become our allies.
NOTE: Your first look at/ listen to an interview to air in October. DV readers rock!
We talked for an hour, and he’s on his journey, now discontinuing Native Voices, a 33-year run featured on over a hundred community and public radio stations, even three in Germany, this July 6.
Language of intuition, the language of dreams and visions, the language of mystery — Lakota.
“WE THANK THEREFORE WE ARE … BECOMING.” — TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE
I deployed a few of the milestones in his life as a way to talk with him:
Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 33 years in New York City and Seattle/ Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.
The Hopi word “Koyaanisqatsi” translates to “life out of balance,” and it’s also the title of a 1982 non-narrative documentary film by Godfrey Reggio. The film, known for its stunning visuals and Philip Glass’s minimalist score, explores the relationship between nature, humanity, and technology, highlighting the impact of modern civilization on the environment.
We are out of balance, and that is difficult to understand using the language of dominance, this language of the genocidier and the extraction societies. This is the language of transactions and legal documents and of competition and of war.
Here, Tiokasin repeats this statement on the radio and in conferences and during his talks:
“I come from outside the anthropocentric view. We see an egalitarianism in nature. Everything in nature has consciousness, everything is in balance. The Western view ignores this. The concept of domination isn’t even in the original Lakota language.”
“We all rush in like fools to find more solutions, better remedies, fix-its from the profit makers, and fuzzy warm language to comfort the addicted aspects of ourselves. We make films, Facebook pages, petitions, we ask politicians to do our bidding, we cast votes virtually because we have to save our country, save the world, save the Earth, save the whales, save anything, but our own sanity.”
As Vine Deloria, Jr. stated in his seminal book, God is Red, “Unless the sacred places are discovered and protected and used as religious places, there is no possibility of a nation ever coming to grips with the land itself. Without this basic relationship, national psychic stability is impossible.”
We didn’t talk about politics or the Rapist in Chief or much about Palestine. His article (above) starts off looking at the “orange man” and his rape of language and murder of mutual aid and his domination in the way Trump uses business grifting and blackmail and theft and extortion through his ugly white man’s hopes of conquering everything and everyone.
I have done 33 years on the radio, and above all things, that is my work. That makes me an eyapaha, a voice, a communicator: I have been communicating for a long time, and honing that.
I recall in 2019 this western society’s “new” interest in indigenous language: That year, 2019, there were several special events associated with the United Nations’ declaration of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages. Language shift in Indigenous communities has been increasingly addressed in academic publications, with journals like Language Documentation & Conservation (established in 2006 and first published in 2007) recognized as outlets for such work. Language endangerment issues have also become part of Linguistics 101, the topic now a standard chapter in general linguistics textbooks.
I was a member of Cultural Survival, and used the quarterly in my college classes:
Our Mission
Cultural Survival advocates for Indigenous Peoples’ rights and supports Indigenous communities’ self-determination, cultures and political resilience, since 1972.
Our Vision
Cultural Survival envisions a future that respects and honors Indigenous Peoples’ inherent rights and dynamic cultures, deeply and richly interwoven in lands, languages, spiritual traditions, and artistic expression, rooted in self-determination and self-governance.
There is very little “regular” linguistic scholarship (i.e., research that isn’t specifically about Native American languages and people) framed through Native American protocols and ways of knowing. — by Wesley Y. Leonard [Wesley Leonard’s contribution to the “Sociolinguistics Frontiers” series argues that sociolinguistic approaches to Native American languages are best conducted as part of a project of “language reclamation.” Leonard discusses how past framings of Indigenous languages as “endangered,” while in some ways well-intentioned, replicated the distance of language communities from scholarly research. An emphasis on reclamation—“efforts by Indigenous communities to claim the right to speak their heritage languages”—highlights the role of the community members in the production of knowledge on and the revival of Native American languages.]
Language suppression was/is a key tool in the colonization and cultural domination of Native Americans. European settlers viewed indigenous languages as obstacles to assimilation, leading to policies aimed at erasing native tongues and forcing English adoption.
The boarding school era became a primary method for forced assimilation of Native American children. These schools banned native languages, punished their use, and mandated English-only education, causing profound and lasting effects on indigenous communities and their linguistic heritage.
Tiokasin went to a boarding school, which he talks about in many of his interviews.
Notice how the academics give zero Native American influences on this language of war and slavery: And so an intuitive language doesn’t fit the scale and timeline of a language of death and technology and extraction and theft
Indian Tribes and Linguistic Stocks, 1650
And, this is antithetical to what Tiokasin talks about when he expresses the intuitive language of Lakota, and when he rejects Western materialism and binary thinking and Socratic intellectual dominance and the very idea of “a Big Bang” defining life’s first flicker on earth. Always a bang, a bomb, not mother giving birth, the sound of the drum (heart) and her cooing (the flute) the language of mother earth.
The Europeans who arrived in Virginia discovered numerous tribes with distinct identities, but the different tribes used only three major linguistic groups: Algonquian, Siouan, and Iroquoian.
At the time of first contact in the 1500’s, Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere spoke 800-1,000 different languages. Based on similarities between them, there were 25-30 “families” of languages.
Linguists compare words for common terms in different languages, such as “child,” to identify original source languages and how they have differentiated over time. The technique offers a clue regarding how long people have been in the Western Hemisphere.
One thesis is that First American (Amerind), Eskimo-Aleut, and Na-Dene are the three major groups of languages in the Western Hemisphere, and those three groups reflect three migrations via Beringia at different times. The time required for the evolution of language differences suggests people have lived in the Western Hemisphere for 50,000 years.
However, genetic evidence suggests that language differences are not based on initial “waves” of migration from Beringea. It is more likely that more than three groups moved out of Beringea into North America, and movements were not limited to three major migrations of people using separate languages.
Perhaps the first people arrived more than 50,000 years ago, but none survived and the first languages brought to North America disappeared with them. It is possible that there were additional migrations by people speaking languages not associated with First American (Amerind), Eskimo-Aleut, or Na-Dene, but languages used by those migrants completely died out.1
When the English arrived in the 1600’s, Native Americans in Virginia spoke languages associated with three major groups. Different tribes spoke different variants of Algonquian, Siouan, or Iroquoian languages
*****
Tiokasin:
I tried to go through the history that I know of and the studies that I have researched from where educational processes started. And usually, when I say young, we’re talking college age or more. And so I find I just finished a semester at Union Theological Seminary in New York and graduate and postgrad students, they either were angry or sad or just, you know, in shock that they have never heard through the whole semester, after years of study, that they’ve never heard the Native history as we know it. We’ve always been overrun with Western historical domination as they see it, that they came here for benevolence, they were brought a civilization, they brought us cars and tech, you know, all these things. It was the ships that came while we stood on the shore, watching the ships come, welcoming, abundance, giving. And then they came and they took what we offered, but they took more. And that’s where we’re at. And now we’re seeing a whole abandonment of spirit and put into the ideas of a dogmatic soul. So when I approach these peoples in these educational institutions often come with those two perspectives, knowing that Native people also are forgetting our own perspective and mimicking the Western educational process.
Again, I’ll go with cultural etymology of this language English. And the word education where does it come from? Well, it comes from scholars and whatever, but the etymology of the word education, what does it mean? It means to adduce or seduce. And there’s different evolutions of the word, and in one dictionary I saw before 1940 says, of course, to adduce or seduce, but it also says “to draw out or lead away from” – and get this – “to lead away from spirit.” And what has it done? Replaced, draw out, or lead away from spirit. So what that’s done is replace it with information and knowledge. And that’s control by domination. Here’s how: So schools started out in the Catholic churches, because the monks, they drew the monks away when they were boys to read and script and to keep this educational process moving. So they were away from nature and only of men’s minds. And so this is how it’s been proceeding since then. So it’s a controlled education where you’re instructed mechanically to get the right answer. Where in Native is that we are shown the possibilities, and we’re able to choose freely about what we’re shown. We’re never told to do this or say that or we were shown because it was a living and is a living language. Learning is a living, it’s not a stagnant informational data bank. So this is how education is to me, and how I view it and how I try to explain it to college age, grad, and post grad.
I’ll insert here some contextualization on language that we did not talk about in the interview.
John Gatto, who won the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 2008, upon his retirement, specifically said, “It takes 12 years to learn how to become reflexive to authority.” And who is the authority? Who is controlling information? Who’s controlling education? Who’s controlling knowledge? And now they want to control Wisdom, and all wisdom means is common sense.
Language suppression emerged as a tool of colonization and cultural domination in Native American history
European settlers viewed indigenous languages as obstacles to assimilation and control
Suppression of native languages became a key strategy in the broader campaign of cultural erasure
Pre-colonial linguistic diversity
North America boasted over 300 distinct indigenous languages before European contact
Language families included Algonquian, Iroquoian, Siouan, and Uto-Aztecan
Many languages had complex grammatical structures and rich oral traditions
Linguistic diversity reflected the cultural and ecological diversity of Native American societies
European attitudes toward languages
Colonizers often viewed indigenous languages as primitive or uncivilized
Some European scholars attempted to document native languages for academic purposes
Missionaries sometimes learned indigenous languages to facilitate religious conversion
Many settlers saw native languages as barriers to economic and political integration
Early policies on native languages
Initial colonial policies varied from tolerance to outright suppression
Some early treaties recognized the right of tribes to use their own languages
Gradual shift towards English-only policies in government interactions
Missionaries established schools that taught in both native languages and English
Boarding school era
Boarding schools became a primary tool for forced assimilation of Native American children
Language suppression was a central component of the boarding school system
The era lasted from the late 19th century through much of the 20th century
Forced assimilation programs
Government-funded boarding schools removed children from their families and communities
Schools aimed to “civilize” Native American children by immersing them in Euro-American culture
Children were often forbidden from speaking their native languages or practicing cultural traditions
Assimilation programs extended beyond language to include dress, hairstyles, and religious practices
English-only education policies
Boarding schools mandated English as the sole language of instruction
Native languages were banned from classrooms, dormitories, and all school activities
English proficiency became a measure of students’ progress and assimilation
Curriculum focused on Western subjects with little regard for indigenous knowledge or perspectives
Punishment for native language use
Students caught speaking their native languages faced severe consequences
Punishments included physical abuse (corporal punishment, mouth washing with soap)
Psychological tactics involved public shaming and isolation from peers
Some schools implemented reward systems for students who reported others speaking native languages
Impact on native communities
Language suppression had profound and lasting effects on Native American societies
Loss of language often coincided with erosion of traditional knowledge and cultural practices
Many communities experienced a generational gap in language transmission
Loss of linguistic heritage
Many indigenous languages became endangered or extinct due to suppression policies
Unique concepts and worldviews embedded in native languages were lost or diminished
Traditional stories, songs, and ceremonies tied to specific languages became harder to maintain
Loss of language diversity reduced the overall linguistic and cultural richness of North America
Cultural disconnection
Language barriers emerged between elders and younger generations
Traditional knowledge systems became harder to access and understand
Cultural practices and ceremonies lost nuance when translated into English
Many Native Americans experienced a sense of alienation from their heritage
Intergenerational trauma
Forced separation and language suppression created lasting psychological impacts
Many survivors of boarding schools struggled to reconnect with their families and communities
Shame and stigma associated with native languages persisted across generations
Trauma manifested in various social issues (substance abuse, domestic violence)
Resistance and preservation efforts
Native communities developed strategies to maintain their languages despite suppression
Resistance efforts often operated in secret to avoid punishment
Language preservation became a key aspect of cultural revitalization movements
Underground language practices
Families and communities continued to speak native languages in private settings
Secret language lessons were conducted away from the watchful eyes of authorities
Code-switching and mixing languages helped preserve vocabulary and grammar
Some communities developed new forms of communication to maintain cultural ties
Elder-led teaching initiatives
Elders took on the role of language keepers, preserving vocabulary and stories
Informal language classes were organized within communities
Elders worked to document languages through oral histories and recordings
Mentorship programs paired fluent speakers with younger learners
Community language revitalization programs
Tribes established language immersion schools and after-school programs
Community-wide events promoted the use of native languages
Language camps and cultural retreats provided intensive learning environments
Partnerships with linguists and educators helped develop teaching materials and curricula
Government policies and legislation
Shifts in federal policy gradually recognized the importance of native languages
Legislation aimed to support language preservation and revitalization efforts
Implementation and funding of policies remained challenging
Indian Reorganization Act
Passed in 1934, marked a shift away from assimilation policies
Encouraged tribal self-governance and cultural preservation
Provided some support for native language use in tribal affairs
Did not fully address the damage done by previous language suppression policies
Native American Languages Act
Enacted in 1990, officially recognized the right to use native languages
Declared U.S. policy to preserve, protect, and promote Native American languages
Required federal agencies to consult with tribes on language matters
Lacked substantial funding mechanisms for implementation
Language immersion program funding
Various federal grants became available for language preservation efforts
Administration for Native Americans provided funding for language programs
Department of Education supported bilingual education initiatives
Challenges remained in securing consistent and adequate funding for long-term programs
Modern language revitalization
Contemporary efforts focus on reversing the effects of historical language suppression
Technology and new educational approaches play key roles in revitalization
Challenges persist in creating new generations of fluent speakers
Technology in language preservation
Digital archives store recordings of native speakers and traditional stories
Language learning apps and online courses increase accessibility to language resources
Social media platforms allow for language practice and community building
Virtual reality and augmented reality technologies create immersive language environments
Bilingual education programs
Schools on reservations increasingly offer bilingual curricula
Some public schools in areas with large Native populations introduce indigenous language classes
Dual language immersion programs aim to create balanced bilingualism
Teacher training programs focus on developing qualified bilingual educators
Challenges of language revival
Many languages have few or no remaining fluent speakers
Limited resources and funding for comprehensive language programs
Competing priorities within Native communities (economic development, healthcare)
Balancing traditional language use with modern vocabulary and concepts
Legacy of language suppression
The effects of historical language suppression continue to shape Native American experiences
Language revitalization efforts are seen as crucial for cultural healing and empowerment
Ongoing debates about language rights and education policies persist
Effects on cultural identity
Many Native Americans struggle with questions of authenticity and belonging
Language proficiency often viewed as a marker of cultural connection
Efforts to reclaim language tied to broader movements of cultural revitalization
Multilingual identities emerging as Native Americans navigate between cultures
Linguistic diversity today
Of the estimated 300 pre-colonial languages, about 175 remain in use
Many surviving languages have only a handful of elderly speakers
Some languages (Navajo, Cherokee) have seen successful revitalization efforts
New forms of indigenous languages emerging through creolization and mixing
Ongoing struggles for language rights
Advocacy for increased funding and support for language programs
Push for recognition of indigenous languages in public spaces and government
Efforts to incorporate native languages into mainstream education curricula
Legal battles over language use in voting materials and public services
*****
Again, back to this violent rather immature language, English:
In the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota nations we have no word or concept of domination. You look at Mother Earth and the concept applied to her is domination, and that’s patriarchy. It is basically not in touch with Mother Earth.
Patriarchy destroys our ability to have any intimacy with her. Any other kind of thinking is shoved aside, and distanced, and called indigenous—which means poor people over there. Indigent is poor and genus is race or people, and that is the etymology of the old Latin word. The new meaning of the word indigenous was glossed over to mean, oh, it’s the place that you are from.
There are 427 words in the English language to describe self, and in Lakota, there are maybe one or two, and those are in relationship with something. With English, we have so many layers we have to peel off to get back onto the Red Road of relationship. When you say “I” that is the first word that separates.
What first piqued my interest in using narratives was the reaction I felt after watching the documentary “The Canary Effect.” The film, which addresses a myriad of issues that continue to pervade the Native American community presents an image of Native Americans in a single facet: people dealing with alcoholism, poverty, and the lasting effects of the boarding school era. While this information is critical for people to know, this image is often the only one presented to the majority. As I began to think of an approach to give a more comprehensive overview of modern Native American life, I quickly thought of the “Under My Hood” spoken word event we attended the previous weekend. Inspired by the various stories, I was immediately drawn to this type of storytelling and hope to implement it within my own community–I want my peers and the general community to have the opportunity to hear multiple facets that make up the modern Native American experience and identity. From that night, I was able to come up with my own narrative that chronicles my journey as a Navajo woman using the “Under My Hood” format.
Under my hood is frustration
It is frustration that spans several generations
I carry the pain felt by my ancestors, for I continue to be told my culture is subpar and my history irrelevant. I am frustrated that my people are seen as relics of the past, as imaginary figures in headdresses and buckskin that only exist in western films and dusty textbooks. If only they knew, I tell myself. If only the world could see what I have been privileged to experience would they finally realize how entrenched we are in modern society while still maintaining our unique identities and culture. This frustration is often exacerbated by comments like “You don’t look Native American” or the idea that my education, perspective, and experiences somehow makes me different from other Native Americans. Under my hood is pride. It is pride in everything society tried to make me feel ashamed of. When I look at my hair, hair my people were forced to cut because it was seen as the mark of savagery, I don’t see shame but wisdom. I see the wisdom passed down from my mother and grandmother. I see my traditions, my history, language, and culture society has tried to erase but has failed to do because their greatest mistake is not realizing my people are indestructible. It is a future where my generation stands up and says, “We have had enough!” and we reclaim our own stories that have often been told for us instead of by us.
Finally, under my hood is hope. It is hope that I can use my education to empower my community, give a voice to the silenced, and use this gift to help my people break the chains of colonial oppression. As I continue to navigate this chaotic world I carry the hope that I will be able to successfully walk the tightrope between tradition and modernity, but I am not walking this path alone. I have my ancestors beside me, for I am their greatest dream. — Emily McDonnell
We have a saying that we kind of reinterpret into all my relations, it’s called mitakuye oyasin, and really mitakuye oyasin, you cannot feel, you cannot think in dualism, you can think only in inclusion. And if there is no word for exclusion in our languages, then you see how further along we’ve come in that process of evolving our spirits into understanding the transformation, the complexity, the simplicity, that is complexity, because people want to think that they have to down dress the idea of complexity so it’s simple. But yet, if you’re speaking the languages of the Earth, like I said, Earth doesn’t lie. And so your languages are along the complexities of the Earth and you see how many, so many variants of species and how to deal with the weather, in all of that is to not think that we’re in control of it, or even that God made this for us. You see.
So once we let go of those domination thought processes, that more than two dimensional thought process, you wake up and they come and you’re like, “Wait now, we can’t know all of this, we’re spending our time gathering information without ever experiencing it.” So we are stuck with the ideas of information and knowledge and then we refer to “Well, someone who’s tenured in educational processes is wise now because he’s tenured, he’s older, she’s older. And so they’re wise.” And yet those textbook knowledge keepers are not ever experienced. They may go out and study here and there, but when you have Indigenous peoples always in the rhythm of the Earth, they’re not educated. But yet, in a sense of taking this concept of education and trying to put it on Native people, it’s like injecting with them with something, right, and they’re not ever going to understand it, because they’re already too far ahead of education that this system requires in order for you to get ahead, but with the Indigenous processes of Earth, it doesn’t need education, it needs experience with and that way, we spend all of our time trying to reinterpret something, that we can’t wrap around our minds, and we’re stuck in the same cycle of cause and effect. How do you do this? And what do you do? And that’s a point of privilege that we come from is that, I have a question, you answer it for me and you tell me how to do something so I can take it easy the rest of my life type of thing. But yet we avoid the suffering, we avoid the pain, we avoid the grief, as you said. — Tiokasin Ghosthorse
Globalization is mainly driven by the sole superpower now – the United States and its ally the United Kingdom. The result is that English has become the first truly global language in human history. This global language and other lesser international languages are causing language shift and death at an unprecedented scale.
Overtly violent words that are used with admiration and mean “being successful”:
Slaying
Dominating
Crushing it
Nailing it
Killing it
Conquer
Blowing them away/Blowing it out of the water
Kicking ass and taking names
Dark ways we talk about ourselves and life:
“It kills me.”/”It’s killing me.”
Kicking yourself
Beating yourself up — Wow. I just really don’t think we think about what we’re actually saying. Giving yourself bruises, a black eye, maybe cuts or scrapes. I do think verbally abusing yourself is incredibly serious, so maybe this expression gets a pass for an appropriate level of gravitas. Pain in my ass — Often said of children, unfortunately.
No pain, no gain
“I’m a hot mess.”
“I’m dying to go there.”
“If he texted me back, I’d just die!”
“It’ll be the death of me.”
2024 additions:
Onslaught — Dictionary definitions 1 and 3 are “a violent attack” and “an attack; an onset; esp. a furious or murderous attack or assault.” We mostly use definition 2: “an overwhelming outpouring.” Just a few minutes ago I went to mention “an onslaught of information” and thought, better add it to the article. Ramming/shoving something down your throat (like an idea) See also: Shoving your face in it/rubbing your nose in it
Overkill — “The destructive use of military force beyond the amount needed to destroy an energy,” “excessive use of force in killing,” “elimination… by hunting or killing.” Maybe this phrase is overkill? Butchering — When we retell a story or joke in a way that’s not quite faithful to the original, we use an analogy about how we’ve dismembered it, ripped it limb from limb as its blood drains away
Letting someone off the hook — because… they were squirming on a hard, sharp piece of metal like a worm, damaging their soft skin and internal organs until we changed our mind and decided to free them? Demolished — If you eat your food fast, you might say you demolished your burger (demolish: to tear down, raze, or break something to pieces, or to do away with or destroy something)
Head off at the pass — synonyms include ambush, block, or thwart It hit me like a freight train/ton of bricks
Broke — in every other context than financial, this means broken/damaged/harmed
Master gets its own paragraph. This one I primarily think of in terms of gender. It’s unambiguously male and I don’t know of any corresponding positive female term in our society that would make sense and be understood as a substitution for mastering a skill, masterclass, mastermind, mastery. But there’s also a sense of domination and forced subjugation with this word. A master is what we call someone who commands others to do things and can punish them if they don’t. It’s the main English word used for an owner of slaves, who are controlled by violent force. A master doesn’t partner with, co-create, or negotiate. Though there are surely exceptions, the core of being a master is violent. (from, The casual ultra-violence of the English language)
*****
One of the recent broadcasts of his show on this radio station, KYAQ, was with a returning guest: Steven Newcomb.
“We give it names such as: civilization, empire, imperial, conquest, conquer, conqueror, invade, capture, vanquish, subjugate, enslavement, slavery, subjection, domesticviolence, and so forth, but each of those names simultaneously maintains and yet hides or cloaks the domination. Steven Newcomb is a syndicated columnist, film producer and author of Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.”
The doctrine of discovery is the international legal principle that Europeans used to claim the lands of Indigenous peoples and nations and to assert sovereign, commercial, and diplomatic rights over Indian nations. The doctrine has been a part of Euro-American law in North America from the beginning of Spanish, French, and English exploration and settlement. Not surprisingly, the English colonies, the American states, and the United States adopted this legal tenet as the guiding principle for their interactions with Native nations. The US Supreme Court expressly accepted discovery in 1823 in Johnson v. M’Intosh. As you might imagine, this case and the topic of discovery have been written about and analyzed extensively.
The basic message I glean from Newcomb’s analysis of cognitive theory and metaphor is that Europeans just made it up, and that discovery was just an excuse for Euro-Americans to do what they already wanted to do: confiscate all the lands and assets of the Indigenous peoples of the New World. I agree 100 percent with that statement. The doctrine of discovery is nothing more than an outright and bald-faced attempt to justify claims of superiority and domination due to differences in religion and culture. I disagree, however, with Newcomb on one minor point. He states that most federal Indian law commentators have ignored or are unwilling to address the religious aspects of discovery. He spent a decade trying to engage federal Indian law experts in meaningful discussions on the religious dimensions of Johnson and found most of them unwilling to focus on religion and the implications of Christianity in Johnson (xvi, 139n3). That was obviously his experience. However, in my experience, many Indian law commentators have addressed the relationship of Christianity and discovery at length. (review)
About 200 people marched in Devonport last Saturday in support of Palestine.
Pro-Palestine flags and placards were draped on the band rotunda at Windsor Reserve as speakers, including Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick and the people power manager of Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand Margaret Taylor, a Devonport local, encouraged the crowd to continue to fight for peace in the Middle East.
The Devonport Out For Gaza rally progressed up Victoria Rd to the Victoria Theatre, crossed the road, came down to the ferry terminal, then marched along the waterfront to the New Zealand Navy base.
Swarbrick said the New Zealand government and New Zealanders could not turn a blind eye to what was happening in Palestine.
The rally, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), marked the 92nd consecutive week that a march has been held in Auckland in support of Palestine.
Republished with permission from The Devonport Flagstaff.
Call to action . . . Devonport peace activist Ruth Coombes (left) and Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick at the microphone (right). Image: The Devonport Flagstaff
New Caledonian politicians who inked their commitment to a deal with France last weekend will be offered special police protection following threats, especially made on social media networks.
The group includes almost 20 members of New Caledonia’s parties — both pro-France and pro-independence — who took part in deal-breaking negotiations with the French State that ended on 12 July 2025, and a joint commitment regarding New Caledonia’s political future.
The endorsed document envisages a roadmap in the coming months to turn New Caledonia into a “state” within the French realm.
It is what some legal experts have sometimes referred to as “a state within the state”, while others say this was tantamount to pushing the French Constitution to its very limits.
The document is a commitment by all signatories that they will stick to their respective positions from now on.
The tense but conclusive negotiations took place behind closed doors in a hotel in the small city of Bougival, near Paris, under talks driven by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls and a team of high-level French government representatives and advisers.
It followed Valls’ several unsuccessful attempts earlier this year to reach a consensus between parties who want New Caledonia to remain part of France and others representing the pro-independence movement.
Concessions from both sides But to reach a compromise agreement, both sides have had to make concessions.
The pro-French parties, for instance, have had to endorse the notion of a State of New Caledonia or that of a double French-New Caledonian nationality.
Pro-independence parties have had to accept the plan to modify the rules of eligibility to vote at local elections so as to allow more non-native French nationals to join the local electoral roll.
They also had to postpone or even give up on the hard-line full sovereignty demand for now.
Over the past five years and after a series of three referendums (held between 2018 and 2021) on self-determination, both camps have increasingly radicalised.
This resulted in destructive and deadly riots that broke out in May 2024, resulting in 14 deaths, more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.9 billion) in damage, thousands of jobless and the destruction of hundreds of businesses.
Over one year later, the atmosphere in New Caledonia remains marked by a sense of tension, fear and uncertainty on both sides of the political chessboard.
Since the deal was signed and made public, on July 12, and even before flying back to New Caledonia, all parties have been targeted by a wide range of reactions from their militant bases, especially on social media.
Some of the reactions have included thinly-veiled death threats in response to a perception that, on one side or another, the deal was not up to the militants’ expectations and that the parties’ negotiators are now regarded as “traitors”.
Since signing the Paris agreement, all parties have also recognised the need to “sell” and “explain” the new agreement to their respective militants.
Most of the political parties represented during the talks have already announced they will hold meetings in the coming days, in what is described as “an exercise in pedagogy”.
“In a certain number of countries, when you sign compromises after hundreds of hours of discussions and when it’s not accepted [by your militants], you lose your reputation. In our country . . . you can risk your life,” said moderate pro-France Calédonie Ensemble leader Philippe Gomès told public broadcaster NC La Première on Wednesday.
Pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) chief negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou was the first to face negative repercussions back in New Caledonia.
Tjibaou’s fateful precedent “To choose this difficult and new path also means we’ll be subject to criticism. We’re going to get insulted, threatened, precisely because we have chosen a different path,” he told a debriefing meeting hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.
In 1988, Tjibaou’s father, pro-independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, also signed a historic deal (known as the Matignon-Oudinot accords) with pro-France’s Jacques Lafleur, under the auspices of then Prime Minister Michel Rocard.
The deal largely contributed to restoring peace in New Caledonia, after a quasi-civil war during the second half of the 1980s.
The following year, he and his deputy, Yeiwéné Yeiwéné, were both shot dead by Djubelly Wéa, a hard-line member of the pro-independence movement, who believed the signing of the 1988 deal had been a “betrayal” of the indigenous Kanak people’s struggle for sovereignty and independence.
‘Nobody has betrayed anybody’ “Nobody has betrayed anybody, whichever party he belongs to. All of us, on both sides, have defended and remained faithful to their beliefs. We had to work and together find a common ground for the years to come, for Caledonians. Now that’s what we need to explain,” said pro-France Rassemblement-LR leader Virginie Ruffenach.
In an interview earlier this week, Valls said he was very aware of the local tensions.
“I’m aware there are risks, even serious ones. And not only political. There are threats on elections, on politicians, on the delegations. What I’m calling for is debate, confrontation of ideas and calm.
“I’m aware that there are extremists out there, who may want to provoke a civil war . . . a tragedy is always possible.
“The risk is always there. Since the accord was signed, there have been direct threats on New Caledonian leaders, pro-independence or anti-independence.
“We’re going to act to prevent this. There cannot be death threats on social networks against pro-independence or anti-independence leaders,” Valls said.
Over the past few days, special protection French police officers have already been deployed to New Caledonia to take care of politicians who took part in the Bougival talks and wish to be placed under special scrutiny.
“They will be more protected than (French cabinet) ministers,” French national public broadcaster France Inter reported on Tuesday.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Collective measures to confront Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people have been agreed by 12 nations after an emergency summit of the Hague Group in Bogotá, Colombia.
A joint statement today announced the six measures, which it said were geared to holding Israel to account for its crimes in Palestine and would operate within the states’ domestic legal and legislative frameworks.
Nearly two dozen other nations in attendance at the summit are now pondering whether to sign up to the measures before a September deadline set by the Hague Group.
New Zealand and Australia stayed away from the summit.
The measures include preventing the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel and dual-use items to Israel and preventing the transit, docking or servicing of vessels if there is a risk of vessels carrying such items. No vessel under the flag of the countries would be allowed to carry this equipment.
The countries would also “commence an urgent review of all public contracts, in order to prevent public institutions and public funds, where applicable, from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory, to ensure that our nationals, and companies and entities under our jurisdiction, as well as our authorities, do not act in any way that would entail recognition or provide aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.
The countries will prosecute “the most serious crimes under international law through robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels, in compliance with our obligation to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes”.
They agreed to support universal jurisdiction mandates, “as and where applicable in our legal constitutional frameworks and judiciaries, to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes in the Occupied Palestine Territory”.
This will mean IDF soldiers and others accused of war crimes in Palestine would face arrest and could go through domestic judicial processes in these countries, or referrals to the ICC.
The statement said the measures constituted a collective commitment to defend the foundational principles of international law.
It also called on the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to commission an immediate investigation of the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, devise a plan to meet those needs on a continuing and sustained basis, and report on these matters before the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Following repeated total blockades of Gaza since October 7, 2023, Gazans have been dying of starvation as they continue to be bombed and repeatedly displaced and their means of life destroyed.
The official death toll stands at nearly 59,000, mostly women and children, although some estimates put that number at over 200,000.
The joint statement recognised Israel as a threat to regional peace and the system of international law and called on all United Nations member states to enforce their obligations under the UN charter.
It condemned “unilateral attacks and threats against United Nations mandate holders, as well as key institutions of the human rights architecture and international justice” and committed to build “on the legacy of global solidarity movements that have dismantled apartheid and other oppressive systems, setting a model for future co-ordinated responses to international law violations”.
Countries face wrath of US Ministers, high-ranking officials and envoys from 30 nations attended the two-day event, from July 15-16, called to come up with the measures. It is now hoped some of those attendees will sign up to the statement by September.
For countries like Ireland, which sent a delegation, signing up would have profound implications. The Irish government has been heavily criticised by its own citizens for continuing to allow Shannon Airport as a transit point for military equipment from the United States to be sent to Israel.
It would also face the prospect of severe reprisals by the US, as would others thinking of adding their names to the collective statement. The US is now expected to consult with nations that attended and warn them of the consequences of signing up.
The summit had been billed by the UN Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, as “the most significant political development of the last 20 months”.
Albanese had told attendees that “for too long, international law has been treated as optional — applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful”.
“This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order. That era must end,” she said.
Co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa, the Hague group was established by nine nations in late January at The Hague in the Netherlands to hold Israel to account for its crimes and push for Palestinian self-determination.
Colombia last year ended diplomatic relations with Israel, while South Africa in late December 2023 filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide, which was joined by nearly two dozen countries.
The ICJ has determined a plausible genocide is taking place and issued orders for Israel to protect Palestinians and take measures to stop genocide taking place, a call ignored by the Zionist state.
Representatives from the countries arrived in Bogota this week in defiance of the United States, which last week sanctioned Albanese for attempts to have US and Israeli political officials and business leaders prosecuted by the ICC over Gaza.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it an illegitimate “campaign of political and economic warfare”.
It followed the sanctioning of four ICC judges after arrest warrants were issued in November last year for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Ahead of the Bogota meeting, the US State Department accused The Hague Group of multilateral attempts to “weaponise international law as a tool to advance radical anti-Western agendas” and warned the US would “aggressively defend” its interests.
Signs of division in the West Most of those attending came from nations in the Global South, but not all.
Founding Hague Group members Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa attended the Summit. Joining them were Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iraq, Republic of Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
However, in a sign of increasing division in the West, NATO members Spain, Portugal, Norway, Slovenia and Turkey also attended.
Inside the summit, former US State Department official Annelle Sheline, who resigned in March over Gaza, defended the right of those attending “to uphold their obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.
“This is not the weaponisation of international law. This is the application of international law,” she told delegates.
The US and Israel deny accusations that genocide is taking place in Gaza, while Western media have collectively refused to adjudicate the claims or frame stories around Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the strip, despite ample evidence by the UN and genocide experts.
Since 7 October 2023, US allies have offered diplomatic cover for Israel by repeating it had “a right to defend itself” and was engaged in a legitimate defensive “war against Hamas”.
Israel now plans to corral starving Gazans into a concentration camp in the south of the strip, with many analysts expecting the IDF to exterminate anyone found outside its boundaries, while preparing to push those inside across the border into Egypt.
Asia Pacific and EU allies shun Bogota summit Addressing attendees at the summit yesterday, Albanese criticised the EU for its neo-colonialism and support for Israel, criticisms that can be extended to US allies in the Asia Pacific region.
Independent journalist Abby Martin reported Albanese as saying: “Europe and its institutions are guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vessels to US Empire even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery.
“The Hague Group is a new moral centre in world politics. Millions are hoping for leadership that can birth a new global order, rooted in justice, humanity and collective liberation. It’s not just about Palestine. This is about all of us.”
The Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was asked why Foreign Minister Penny Wong did not take up an invite to attend the Hague Group meeting. In a statement to Mick Hall in Context, a spokesperson said she had been unable to attend, but did not explain why.
She said Australia was a “resolute defender of international law” and added: “Australia has consistently been part of international calls that all parties must abide by international humanitarian law. Not enough has been done to protect civilians and aid workers.
“We have called on Israel to respond substantively to the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
“We have also called on Israel to comply with the binding orders of the ICJ, including to enable the unhindered provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale.”
When asked why New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters had failed to take up the invitation or send any of his officials, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokesperson simply refused to comment.
She said MFAT media advisors would only engage with “recognised news media outlets”.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, as well as a number of his ministers, have been referred to the ICC by domestic legal teams, accused of complicity in the genocide.
Evidence against Albanese was accepted into the ICC’s wider investigation of crimes in Gaza in October last year, while Luxon’s referral earlier this month is being assessed by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office.
Delegates told humanity at stake Delegates heard several impassioned addresses from speakers on what was at stake during the two-day event in Bogota.
Palestinian-American trauma surgeon, Dr Thaer Ahmad, told the gathering that Palestinians seeking food were being met with bullets, describing aid distribution facilities set up by the US contractor-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as “slaughterhouses”. More than 800 starving Gazans have been killed at the GHF aid points so far.
“People know they could die but cannot sit idly by and watch their families starve,” he said.
“The bullets fired by GHF mercenaries are just one part of the weaponisation of aid, where Palestinians are ghettoised into areas where somebody in military fatigues decides if you are worthy of food or not.”
Palestinian diplomat Riyad Mansour had urged the summit attendees to take decisive action to not only save the Palestinian people, but redeem humanity.
“Instead of outrage at the crimes we know are taking place, we find those who defend, normalise, and even celebrate them,” he said.
“The core values we believed humanity agreed were universal are shattered, blown to pieces like the tens of thousands of starved, murdered and injured civilians in Palestine.
“The mind and heart cannot fathom or process the immense pain and horror that has taken hold of the lives of an entire people. We must not fail — not just for Palestine’s sake — but for humanity’s sake.”
At the beginning of the summit, Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir told summit delegates the Palestinian genocide threatened the entire international system.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote in The Guardian last week: “We can either stand firm in defence of the legal principles that seek to prevent war and conflict, or watch helplessly as the international system collapses under the weight of unchecked power politics.”
Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers, as well as Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, met in Brussels at the same time as the Bogota summit, to discuss Middle East co-operation, but also possible options for action against Israel.
At the EU–Southern Neighbourhood Ministerial Meeting, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas put forward potential actions after Israel was found to have breached the EU economic cooperation deal with the bloc on human rights grounds. As expected, no sanctions, restricted trade or suspension of the co-operation deal were agreed.
The EU has been one of Israel’s most strident backers in its campaign against Gaza, with EU members Germany and France in particular supplying weapons, as well as political support.
The UK government has continued to supply arms and operate spy planes over Gaza over the past 21 months, launched from bases in Cyprus, while its military has issued D-Notices to censor media reports that its special forces have been operating inside the occupied territories.
Mick Hall is an independent Irish-New Zealand journalist, formerly of RNZ and AAP, based in New Zealand since 2009. He writes primarily on politics, corporate power and international affairs. This article is republished from his substack Mick Hall in Context with permission.
Greenpeace pioneer and activist Susi Newborn is among the “nuclear free heroes” featured in a video tribute premiered this week in an exhibition dedicated to a nuclear-free Pacific.
A segment dedicated to the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement features Newborn making a passionate speech about the legend of the “Warriors of the Rainbow” on the steps of the Auckland Museum in July 2023 just weeks before she died.
Newborn was an Aotearoa New Zealand author, documentary film-maker, environmental activist and a founding director of Greenpeace UK and co-founder of Greenpeace International.
She was an executive director of the New Zealand non-for-profit group Women in Film and Television.
Newborn was also one of the original crew members on the first Rainbow Warrior which was bombed in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 2025.
The ship’s successor, Rainbow Warrior III, a state-of-the-art environmental campaign ship, has been docked at Halsey Wharf this month for a memorial ceremony to honour the 40th anniversary of the loss of photographer Fernando Pereira and the ship, sabotaged by French secret agents.
Effective activists
In a tribute after her death, Greenpeace stalwart Rex Weyler wrote: “Susi Newborn [was] one of the most skilled and effective activists in Greenpeace’s 52-year history.”
“In 1977, when Susi arrived in Canada for her first Greenpeace action to protect infant harp seal pups in Newfoundland, she was already something of a legend,” Weyler wrote.
“Journalistic tradition would have me refer to her as ‘Newborn’, a name that rang with significance, but I can only think of her as Susi, the tough, smart activist from London.”
Legends of a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific. Video: Talanoa TV
Among other activists featured in the video are NFIP academic Dr Marco de Jong; Presbyterian minister Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua; Professor Vijay Naidu, founding president of the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG); Polynesian Panthers founder Will ‘Ilolahia; NFIP advocate Hilda Halkyard-Harawira (Ngāti Hauā, Te Rarawe); community educator and activist Del Abcede; retired media professor, journalist and advocate Dr David Robie; Anglican priest who founded the Peace Squadron, Reverend George Armstrong; and United Liberation Movement for West Papua vice-president Octo Mote, interviewed at the home of peace author and advocate Maire Leadbeater.
The video sound track is from Herbs’ famous French Letter about nuclear testing in the Pacific.
“It is so important to record our stories and history — especially for our children and future generations,” said video creator Nik Naidu.
Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific . . . an early poster.
“They need to hear the truth from our “legends” and “leaders”. Those who stood for justice and peace.
“The freedoms and benefits we all enjoy today are a direct result of the sacrifice and activism of these legends.”
The video has been one of the highlights of the “Legends” exhibition, created by Heather Devere, Del Abcede and David Robie of the Asia Pacific Media Network; Nik Naidu of the APMN as well as co-founder of the Whānau Community Hub; Antony Phillips and Tharron Bloomfield of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga; and Rachel Mario of the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group and Whānau Hub.
Support has also come from the Ellen Melville Centre (venue and promotion), Padet (for the video series), Pax Christi, Women’s International League for Peace Freedom (WILPF) Aotearoa, and the Quaker Peace Fund.
Professor Vijay Naidu of the University of the South Pacific . . . founding president of the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG), one of the core groups in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement. Image: APR
The Hague Group, a bloc of countries from around the world, are meeting for an emergency summit about Israel’s violations of international law. The meeting is co-hosted by Colombia and South Africa, and according to the group, seeks to:
halt the genocide in Gaza.
Meanwhile, in spite of this principled action from majority Global South states, the EU disgraced itself entirely. Twenty seven foreign ministers from the EU refused to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement in a move that Amnesty International have called a:
cruel and unlawful betrayal.
Hague Group assembles
There are eight member states of the Hague Group: Colombia and South Africa as co-chairs, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, and Senegal. Each of the member nations are located in the global south. Given how fond Western states are of bleating about how they’re the civilised heartbeat of the globe, how they possess freedom, democracy, and principles unseen except in majority white states, their lack of dominance at the summit is notable.
In addition to Colombia and South Africa, states attending the summit include Algeria, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Portugal, Spain, Qatar, Turkey, Slovenia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay and Venezuela.
The member states will, alongside the other attendees:
announce concrete actions to enforce international law through coordinated state action — to end the genocide and ensure justice and accountability.
Speaking at the summit of the conference Francesca Albanese said:
For too long, international law has been treated as optional – applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful.
Indeed, the inaction of Western powers in sanctioning Israel has created a two tier international rule of law. Israel has been allowed to operate with impunity in committing genocide across Palestine. Albanese continued:
This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order. That era must end. The law must either be universal, or it will cease to mean anything at all. No one can afford this selective approach.
Special Rapporteur Albanese was forceful in her condemnation of complicit states:
Here in Bogota, a growing number of states have the opportunity to break the silence and revert to a path of legality by finally saying: enough. Enough impunity. Enough empty rhetoric. Enough exceptionalism. Enough complicity.
The time has come to act in pursuit of justice and peace – grounded in rights and freedoms for all, and not mere privileges for some, at the expense of the annihilation of others.
EU depravity
The EU’s refusal to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement is the epitome of rights and freedom for some, and annihilation for others. The trade agreement makes Israel the EU’s third-biggest trading partner in the Mediterranean. In 2024, the trade in goods between the EU and Israel totalled $42.6 billion. The EU is undoubtedly in a position to use economic sanctions to deter Israel’s genocide against Palestine.
agreed to “keep a close watch” on Israel’s compliance with a recent agreement to improve humanitarian aid access into Gaza.
At this stage of the conflict, when so many Palestinians themselves and organisations working in the area have documented the cruelty and depraved conduct of Israel, ‘keeping a close watch’ is all these morally bankrupt states have done. They sit back and watch, as Israel chases Palestinians across the country with bombs, demolishing homes, hospitals, schools. The EU has done nothing but watch as children have been blown to pieces.
Now, they’ve bravely resolved to watch and do nothing as Israel’s siege starves Palestinians. People are being killed queuing for food and water – most notably children.
The aim is not to punish Israel, the aim is to improve the situation in Gaza.
How exactly they aim to improve the situation in Gaza without stopping Israel slaughtering and starving Palestinians is unclear.
Of course, were it Russia aggressing Ukraine, then the useless EU would trip over themselves in their rush to roll out economic and diplomatic sanctions, while their citizens collectively carried out a cultural boycott. When it’s not Arabs being killed, there’s no difference between punishment and aid. After all, so precious is (white) human life that we must all band together to show we cannot abide the killing of civilians.
‘Cruel and unlawful betrayal’
The EU’s decision has, of course, gone largely unreported across Western media. Unfortunately for them, some of us are paying attention. Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said:
The EU’s refusal to suspend its agreement with Israel is a cruel and unlawful betrayal – of the European project and vision, predicated on upholding international law and fighting authoritarian practices, of the European Union’s own rules and of the human rights of Palestinians.
Whilst EU member states clearly don’t care about the atrocities Israel is committing against Palestinians, they have claimed to care about the European project. We’ve repeatedly been told that project EU is a question of strict adherence of international law, in order to promote peace and security. However, as Callamard said:
The EU’s own review has clearly found that Israel is violating its human rights obligations under the terms of the Association Agreement. Yet, instead of taking measures to stop it and prevent their own complicity, member states chose to maintain a preferential trade deal over respecting their international obligations and saving Palestinian lives.
This is more than political cowardice. Every time the EU fails to act, the risk of complicity in Israel’s actions grows. This sends an extremely dangerous message to perpetrators of atrocity crimes that they will not only go unpunished but be rewarded.
Collapse of international rule of law – but the Hague Group is pushing back
The EU and other Western states may not realise it yet, but their inaction over Israel’s genocide in Palestine has irrevocably weakened their global standing and pretence at moral superiority. The Hague Group have shown them up for the useful idiots that they are. How are any states from the global south to take this group of charlatans remotely seriously when they bleat about justice and safety?
Israel is unleashing hell on Palestine, and it is doing so with the explicit and tacit support of Western powers. Were it not for the Hague Group, Palestinians would be truly alone.
In Chile’s drought-stricken Atacama desert, Indigenous people say desalination plants cannot counter the impact of intensive lithium and copper mining on local water sources
Photographs by Luis Bustamante
Vast pipelines cross the endless dunes of northern Chile, pumping seawater up to an altitude of more than 3,000 metres in the Andes mountains to the Escondida mine, the world’s largest copper producer. The mine’s owners say sourcing water directly from the sea, instead of relying on local reservoirs, could help preserve regional water resources. Yet, this is not the perception of Sergio Cubillos, leader of the Indigenous community Lickanantay de Peine.
Cubillos and his fellow activists believe that the mining industry is helping to degrade the region’s meagre water resources, as Chile continues to be ravaged by a mega-drought that has plagued the country for 15 years. They also fear that the use of desalinated seawater cannot make up for the devastation of the northern Atacama region’s sensitive water ecosystem and local livelihoods.
‘What we need first is peace. (…) The international community, the UN, has the ability to end what’s happening in eastern RDC – what is happening today in the East is truly alarming.’
Judith Maroy is a Congolese journalist and human rights defender from Bukavu, in the South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Judith began her advocacy work through LUCHA, a youth-led citizen movement demanding social justice, democratic governance, and equality. She later became a journalist with La Prunelle RDC and co-founded a local organisation advocating for the rights of women, youth, and Indigenous communities.
She is calling for a just, peaceful Congo where young people have opportunities, women’s voices are heard, and no one is displaced in their own country.
Australia’s race discrimination commissioner has warned there is limited detail in how Jillian Segal’s plan to combat antisemitism would be implemented, and said he would work with her to ensure it does not restrict fundamental rights and freedoms.
Giridharan Sivaraman has responded to the antisemitism envoy’s 20-page plan, released last Thursday, which made a range of recommendations, including withholding government funding from universities that “facilitate, enable or fail to act against antisemitism” and monitoring media organisations “to avoid accepting false or distorted narratives”.
Silivri was once just a getaway town. An hour’s drive west of Istanbul, it was famed for its lavender, its yoghurt, and its summer houses dotted along the Marmara Sea. But to most in Turkey now, Silivri means something different: not the town, but the mega-complex a little further down the coast. This is the prison that since March has held the Istanbul mayor – and rival to president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – Ekrem İmamoğlu, as he awaits trial for corruption – and now, the place where he has been given a twenty month sentence, in another of the litany of charges against him, for insulting and ‘threatening’ a public official.
It started taking in prisoners in 2008. Turkish coverage at the time marvelled at the size. Here was a complex – a “campus”, in the new lingo – made of nine separate prisons, spread across almost 1m sq metres, and with a stated capacity of 11,000 people. For the on-site staff alone, there were 500 apartments, a mosque, a market and restaurant, and a primary school for their children. As one prisoner would later write, he would hear them from his cell singing the Turkish national anthem in the playground.
The New Zealand government needs to do more for its Pacific Island neighbours and stand up to nuclear powers, a distinguished journalist, media educator and author says.
Professor David Robie, a recipient of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM), released the latest edition of his book Eyes of Fire: The last voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior(Little Island Press), which highlights the nuclear legacies of the United States and France.
Dr Robie, who has worked in Pacific journalism and academia for more than 50 years, recounts the crew’s experiences aboard the Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before it was bombed in Auckland Harbour.
At the time, New Zealand stood up to nuclear powers, he said.
“It was pretty callous [of] the US and French authorities to think they could just carry on nuclear tests in the Pacific, far away from the metropolitan countries, out of the range of most media, and just do what they like,” Dr Robie told RNZ Pacific. “It is shocking, really.”
Speaking to Pacific Waves, Dr Robie said that Aotearoa had “forgotten” how to stand up for the region.
“The real issue in the Pacific is about climate crisis and climate justice. And we’re being pushed this way and that by the US [and] by the French. The French want to make a stake in their Indo-Pacific policies as well,” he said.
‘We need to stand up’ “We need to stand up for smaller Pacific countries.”
Dr Robie believes that New Zealand is failing with its diplomacy in the region.
He accused the coalition government of being “too timid” and “afraid of offending President Donald Trump” to make a stand on the nuclear issue.
However, a spokesperson for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Pacific that New Zealand’s “overarching priority . . . is to work with Pacific partners to achieve a secure, stable, and prosperous region that preserves Pacific sovereignty and agency”.
The spokesperson said that through its foreign policy “reset”, New Zealand was committed to “comprehensive relationships” with Pacific Island countries.
“New Zealand’s identity, prosperity and security are intertwined with the Pacific through deep cultural, people, historical, security, and economic linkages.”
Pacific ‘increasingly contested’
The spokesperson said that the Pacific was becoming increasingly contested and complex.
“New Zealand has been clear with all of our partners that it is important that engagement in the Pacific takes place in a manner which advances Pacific priorities, is consistent with established regional practices, and supportive of Pacific regional institutions.”
They added that New Zealand’s main focus remained on the Pacific, “where we will be working with partners including the United States, Australia, Japan and in Europe to more intensively leverage greater support for the region.
“We will maintain the high tempo of political engagement across the Pacific to ensure alignment between our programme and New Zealand and partner priorities. And we will work more strategically with Pacific Governments to strengthen their systems, so they can better deliver the services their people need,” the spokesperson said.
The cover of the latest edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior. Image: Little Island Press
However, former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, writing in the prologue of Dr Robie’s book, said: “New Zealand needs to re-emphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.”
Dr Robie added that looking back 40 years to the 1980s, there was a strong sense of pride in being from Aotearoa, the small country which set an example around the world.
“We took on . . . the nuclear powers,” Dr Robie said.
“And the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was symbolic of that struggle, in a way, but it was a struggle that most New Zealanders felt a part of, and we were very proud of that [anti-nuclear] role that we took.
“Over the years, it has sort of been forgotten”.
‘Look at history’ France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades until 1996 in French Polynesia.
Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were “clean” and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.
From 1946 to 1962, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands by the US.
The 1 March 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, the largest nuclear weapon ever exploded by the United States, left a legacy of fallout and radiation contamination that continues to this day. Image: Marshall Islands Journal
In 2024, then-US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell, while responding to a question from RNZ Pacific about America’s nuclear legacy, said: “Washington has attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”
However, Dr Robie said that was not good enough and labelled the destruction left behind by the US, and France, as “outrageous”.
“It is political speak; politicians trying to cover their backs and so on. If you look at history, [the response] is nowhere near good enough, both by the US and the French.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The EU has been accused of a “cruel and unlawful betrayal” of Palestinians and European values after failing to take action to impose sanctions on Israel over the war in Gaza.
The stinging rebuke from Amnesty International, echoed by other human rights organisations, came after EU ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday declined to endorse any measures to sanction Israel over the brutal war in Gaza and endemic violence in the West Bank.
Occupied West Bank-based New Zealand journalist Cole Martin asks who are the peacemakers?
BEARING WITNESS:By Cole Martin
As a Kiwi journalist living in the occupied West Bank, I can list endless reasons why there is no peace in the “Holy Land”.
I live in a refugee camp, alongside families who were expelled from their homes by Israel’s violent establishment in 1948 — never allowed to return and repeatedly targeted by Israeli military incursions.
Daily I witness suffocating checkpoints, settler attacks against rural towns, arbitrary imprisonment with no charge or trial, a crippled economy, expansion of illegal settlements, demolition of entire communities, genocidal rhetoric, and continued expulsion.
No form of peace can exist within an active system of domination. To talk about peace without liberation and dignity is to suggest submission to a system of displacement, imprisonment, violence and erasure.
I often find myself alongside a variety of peacemakers, putting themselves on the line to end these horrific systems — let me outline the key groups:
Palestinian civil society and individuals have spent decades committed to creative non-violence in the face of these atrocities — from court battles to academia, education, art, co-ordinating demonstrations, general strikes, hīkoi (marches), sit-ins, civil disobedience. Google “Iqrit village”, “The Great March of Return”, “Tent of Nations farm”. These are the overlooked stories that don’t make catchy headlines.
Protective Presence activists are a mix of about 150 Israeli and international civilians who volunteer their days and nights physically accompanying Palestinian communities. They aim to prevent Israeli settler violence, state-sanctioned home demolitions, and military/police incursions. They document the injustice and often face violence and arrest themselves. Foreigners face deportation and blacklisting — as a journalist I was arrested and barred from the West Bank short-term and my passport was withheld for more than a month.
Reconciliation organisations have been working for decades to bridge the disconnect between political narratives and human realities. The effective groups don’t seek “co-existence” but “co-resistance” because they recognise there can be no peace within an active system of apartheid. They reiterate that dialogue alone achieves nothing while the Israeli regime continues to murder, displace and steal. Yes there are “opposing narratives”, but they do not have equal legitimacy when tested against the reality on the ground.
Journalists continue to document and report key developments, chilling statistics and the human cost. They ensure people are seen. Over 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza. High-profile Palestinian Christian journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh was killed by Israeli forces in 2022. They continue reporting despite the risk, and without their courage world leaders wouldn’t know which undeniable facts to brazenly ignore.
Humanitarians serve and protect the most vulnerable, treating and rescuing people selflessly. More than 400 aid workers and 1000 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza. All 38 hospitals have been destroyed or damaged, with just a small number left partially functioning. NGOs have been crippled by USAID cuts and targeted Israeli policies, marked by a mass exodus of expats who have spent years committed to this region — severing a critical lifeline for Palestinian communities.
All these groups emphasise change will not come from within. Protective Presence barely stems the flow.
Reconciliation means nothing while the system continues to displace, imprison and slaughter Palestinians en masse. Journalism, non-violence and humanitarian efforts are only as effective as the willingness of states to uphold international law.
Those on the frontlines of peacebuilding express the urgent need for global accountability across all sectors; economic, cultural and political sanctions. Systems of apartheid do not stem from corrupt leadership or several extremists, but from widespread attitudes of supremacy and nationalism across civil society.
Boycotts increase the economic cost of maintaining such systems. Divestment sends a strong financial message that business as usual is unacceptable.
Many other groups across the world are picketing weapons manufacturers, writing to elected leaders, educating friends and family, challenging harmful narratives, fundraising aid to keep people alive.
Where are the peacemakers? They’re out on the streets. They’re people just like you and me.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the occupied West Bank and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
LIVE updates: https://t.co/iILghl87p3 pic.twitter.com/McUxk6PYMr
