Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report today it was “intolerable” that Israel had blocked any aid reaching residents for many weeks.
The UK, France and Canada have expressed their frustration, with the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy telling Parliament the war in Gaza had entered a “dark new phase” and the UK was cancelling trade talks with Israel.
Although the situation had come about because of acts of terrorism by Hamas, for residents in Gaza it had become “intolerable”, Peters told Morning Report.
“We’ve had enough of this and we want the matter resolved and now.”
A full resumption of aid should have happened a long time ago and it was essential that the United Nations be involved in delivering it.
‘Had enough of it’
“… we’ve just simply had enough of it, utterly so [from Israel].”
The statement by the countries reaffirmed what had been said for a long time that Israel must make aid available.
New Zealand also opposed Israel’s latest expansion of military operations in Gaza, Peters said.
The Palestinian Authority and countries such as Egypt and Indonesia understood New Zealand’s position.
“We just want to sort this out and the long-term thing [Palestinians’ future alongside Israel] has got to be resolved as well.
“Israel needs to get the message very clear — we are running out of patience and hearing excuses.”
Asked if the Israeli ambassador should be called in so the message could be conveyed more clearly, he said it would be a symbolic gesture that would not help starving babies.
Israel already knew what this country’s stance was, he said.
It was an appalling situation that had started with “unforgivable terrorism” but Israel had gone “far too far” in its response, Peters said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Reading an NBC News report a couple of days ago about a Trump administration plan to relocate 1 million Gazans to Libya reminded me of a conversation between the legendary Warsaw Ghetto leader Marek Edelman and fellow fighter and survivor Simcha Rotem that took place more than quarter of a century ago.
In the conversation, first reported in Haaretz in 2023, Rotem said the Jews who walked into the gas chambers without a fight did so only because they were hungry.
Edelman disagreed, but Rotem insisted. “Listen, man. Marek, I’m surprised by your attitude. They only went because they were hungry. Even if they’d known what awaited them they would have walked into the gas chambers. You and I would have done the same.”
Edelman cut him off. “You would never have gone” [to the gas chamber.] Rotem replied, “I’m not so sure. I was never that hungry.”
Edelman agreed, saying: “I also wasn’t that hungry,” to which Rotem said, “That’s why you didn’t go.”
The NBC report claims that Israeli officials are aware of the plan and talks have been held with the Libyan leadership about taking in 1 million ethnically cleansed Palestinians.. The carrot being offered is the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Libya’s own money seized by the US more than a decade ago.
The Arabic word Sumud — or steadfastness — is synonymous with the Palestinian people. The idea that 1 million Gazans would agree to walk off the 1.4 percent of historic Palestine that is Gaza is inconceivable.
Equally incomprehensible
But then the idea that my great grandmother and other relatives walked into the gas chambers is equally incomprehensible. But we’ve never been that hungry.
The people of Gaza are. No food has entered Gaza for 76 days. Half a million Gazans are facing starvation and the rest of the population (more than 1.5 million people) are suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the UN.
Last year, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was widely condemned when he suggested starving Gaza might be “justified and moral”.
The lack of outrage and urgency being expressed by world leaders — particularly Western leaders — after nearly 11 weeks of Israel actually starving the inhabitants of what retired IDF general Giora Eiland has called a giant concentration camp — is an outrage.
As far as I’m aware there’s been no talk of cutting off diplomatic relations, trade embargos or even cultural boycotts.
Israel — which last time I looked wasn’t in Europe — just placed second in Eurovision. “I’m happy,” an Israeli friend messaged me, “that my old genocidal homeland (Austria) won and not my current genocidal nation.”
A third generation Israeli, she’s one of a tiny minority protesting the war crimes being committed less than 100km from her apartment.
Sanchez had declared Israel a genocidal state and said Spain won’t do business with such a nation.
And peaking at a national famine commemoration held over the weekend Higgens said the UN Security Council had failed again and again by not dealing with famines and the current “forced starvation of the people of Gaza”.
He cited UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying “as aid dries up, the floodgates of horror have re-opened. Gaza is a killing field — and civilians are in an endless death loop.”
Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen argued in his 1981 book Poverty and Famines that famines are man-made and not natural disasters.
Unlike Gaza, the famines he wrote about were caused by either callous disregard by the ruling elites for the populations left to starve or the disastrous results of following the whims of an all-powerful leader like Chairman Mao.
He argued that a famine had never occurred in a functioning democracy.
A horrifying fact
It’s a horrifying fact that a self-described democracy, funded and abetted by the world’s most powerful democracy, has been allowed by the international community to starve two million people with no let-up in its bombing of barely functioning hospitals and killing of more than 2000 Gazans since the ban on food entering the strip was put in place. (Many more will have died due to a lack of medicine, food, and access to clean water.)
After more than two months of denying any food or medicine to enter Gaza Israel is now saying it will allow limited amounts of food in to avoid a full-scale famine.
“Due to the need to expand the fighting, we will introduce a basic amount of food to the residents of Gaza to ensure no famine occurs,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained.
“A famine might jeopardise the continuation of Operation Gideon’s Chariots aimed at eliminating Hamas.”
If 19-months of indiscriminate bombardment, the razing to the ground of whole cities, the displacement of virtually the entire population, and more than 50,000 recorded deaths (the Lancet estimated the true figure is likely to be four times that) hasn’t destroyed Hamas to Israel’s satisfaction it’s hard to conceive of what will.
But accepting that that is the real aim of the ongoing genocide would be naïve.
Shamefully indifferent Western world
In the first cabinet meeting following the Six Day War, long before Hamas came into existence, ridding Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants was top of the agenda.
“If we can evict 300,000 refugees from Gaza to other places . . . we can annex Gaza without a problem,” Defence Minister Moshe Dayan said.
The population of Gaza was 400,000 at the time.
“We should take them to the East Bank [Jordan] by the scruff of their necks and throw them there,” Minister Yosef Sapir said.
Fifty-eight years later the possible destinations may have changed but the aim remains the same. And a shamefully indifferent Western world combined with a malnourished and desperate population may be paving the way to a mass expulsion.
If the US, Europe and their allies demanded that Israel stop, the killing would end tomorrow.
Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and his Towards Democracy blog is at Substack.
Israel has been accused of “manipulation” and “cynical” circumvention of global decisions calling for unrestricted humanitarian aid access to the besieged Gaza enclave.
“In a clear act of defiance against international humanitarian obligations, the occupying state has permitted only nine aid trucks to enter the Gaza Strip — covering both the devastated north and south,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal.
“This paltry number of trucks represents a deliberate and cynical attempt to circumvent global decisions calling for unrestricted humanitarian access,” he said in a statement as Britain, France and Canada threatened Israel with sanctions and 22 other countries — including New Zealand — jointly condemned Israel over its siege.
“Under the guise of permitting aid, this token gesture is being used to claim compliance while continuing to suffocate more than two million Palestinians trapped under siege.
“It is a tactic designed to deflect international criticism and ease diplomatic pressure without meaningfully alleviating the catastrophic conditions faced by civilians.
“This is not aid — it is manipulation.”
Nazzal said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza demanded immediate, full, and unhindered access to food, water, medical supplies, and shelter for all areas of the Strip.
“The international community must see through these performative measures and act decisively,” he said.
“We call on governments, humanitarian agencies, and civil society around the world to intensify public and political pressure on the occupying state.
“It is imperative that world leaders hold it accountable for its ongoing violations and demand an end to the blockade, the siege, and these deceptive, life-threatening tactics.”
Every minute of delay cost lives, Nazzal said.
“Nine trucks are not enough. Gaza needs justice, not crumbs.”
UK, France and Canada threaten Israel with sanctions. Video: Al Jazeera
Time to expel ambassador
Letters to the editor in New Zealand newspapers have become increasingly critical of Israel’s war conduct and “atrocities”.
“The daily average number of those Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza is 90 plus, and the United Nations states that 70 percent are women and children,” she wrote.
“After 16 months of brutal onslaught, now including starvation, inside a walled enclave, isn’t it about time our government spoke up regarding this great atrocity of our time? At the very least, by demanding a ceasefire, applying sanctions and expelling the Israeli ambassador?
“That is the obvious route for a last-ditch attempt to be on ‘the right side of history’.”
In another letter, headed Standing by Helpless, Allan Bell or Torbay wrote:
“Countries stand by helpless as the Israelis bomb and shell Palestinians at will in Gaza.
“Rather than negotiate the peaceful return of the hostages, Israel has cynically used them to justify this slaughter.
“The use of starvation and destruction amounts to eradication and annihilation.
“We have protested through the United Nations (an organisation long ignored by the Israelis) to no effect. It’s time to send their ambassador home and close their embassy. A token gesture maybe, but at least we can say we did something.”
When a 25-year-old detonated a car bomb and himself outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, on Saturday, the local interim federal prosecutor, a Donald Trump appointee, was quick to accuse the bomber of harboring “anti pro-life” sentiment.
Well, in a sense, yes. But if the suggestion was that bomber Guy Edward Bartkus was primarily motivated by abortion rights, the accusation missed the point.
Barkus might be more accurately described not so much as anti-pro-life, but rather plain, old anti-life.
Bartkus subscribed to a fringe philosophy that opposes human life in every form.
Bartkus, it turned out, subscribed to a fringe philosophy, circulating primarily among a small group of online adherents, that opposes human life in every form.
Dubbed efilism — for “life” spelled backwards — or anti-natalism, supporters of the philosophy argue that people should avoid having children because human existence is too miserable to justify.
Bartkus appears to have taken the ideology a step further than most subscribers in dying by a suicide accompanied by a spectacular act of violence.
By his own account, Bartkus also suffered from mental health problems.
The Saturday bombing outside the reproductive health clinic left Bartkus dead and four other people injured, according to authorities. None of the clinic’s embryos were damaged since they are stored off-site, the clinic’s director said.
The American Reproductive Centers clinic offers services such as in vitro fertilization, egg freezing, and egg donation, according to its website. It does not offer abortion services.
In an online manifesto attributed to Bartkus, he dubbed his views “pro-mortalism.”
“All a promortalist is saying is let’s make it happen sooner rather than later (and preferably peaceful rather than some disease or accident), to prevent your future suffering, and, more importantly, the suffering your existence will cause to all the other sentient beings,” the apparent manifesto said, according to a copy reviewed by The Intercept. “The end goal is for the truth (Efilism) to win, and once it does, we can finally begin the process of sterilizing this planet of the disease of life.”
Bartkus elaborated in a 30-minute audio recording that his father told news outlets was authentic. Police sources told multiple media outlets that they are investigating the manifesto.
“Basically, it just comes down to, I’m angry that I exist,” Bartkus says in the audio attributed to him. “Nobody got my consent to bring me here.”
Elsewhere in the audio recording, Bartkus complained about IVF clinics, arguing with imagined critics of his views.
“Greatest Problem”
Bartkus’s website also pointed to a since-blocked group on Reddit called “Efilism.” The group’s description states that “EFILism is the belief that DNA, and the suffering of sentient consciousness, is the greatest problem in the universe.”
A more academic version of the philosophy called anti-natalism is primarily associated with the South African philosopher David Benatar, who has written extensively on the thesis.
“Although the good things in one’s life make one’s life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed,” according to the Oxford University Press summary of one of Benatar’s books. “Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence.”
While Benatar has been profiled in outlets such as the New Yorker, Bartkus pointed to more notorious or obscure figures in his online manifesto. Along with the writings of Sandy Hook, Connecticut, Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza, Bartkus also directed readers to the YouTube videos of an influential figure in the small online world of Efilism who goes by “inmendham.”
The YouTuber posted a video Sunday denouncing the bombing of the fertility clinic.
“The fact is that there’s people in the world who are lonely, and some that are crazy, and this that and the other thing,” inmendham said. “They have some reason to be despondent, and they have low investment in their existence, and those are dangerous people.”
Bartkus’s father told the New York Times that he had not seen his son in 10 years. Bartkus burned down the family’s house in 2009 when he was 9 years old, his father said.
Bartkus said on his website that he had borderline personality disorder. According to the Mayo Clinic, people with that mental health condition have “a pattern of unstable, intense relationships, as well as impulsiveness and an unhealthy way of seeing themselves.”
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers 24-hour support for those experiencing difficulties or those close to them, by chat or by telephone at 988.
An effort to empower President Donald Trump to target his ideological enemies in the nonprofit sector stalled when Trump’s sprawling, agenda-setting megabill faced opposition from far-right Republicans in the House.
Now, with an amended version of the longer bill inching toward approval, the push to target nonprofits appeared to suffer a major setback.
“For now it’s not in the text of the bill, and that’s an improvement from where we were at last week.”
The latest draft of the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which passed the House Budget Committee on Sunday night, no longer includes a provision that critics have dubbed the “nonprofit killer.”
The measure, which has surfaced in several different forms over the past two years, would grant the secretary of the Treasury Department broad powers to strip nonprofits’ tax-exempt status by labeling them as a “terrorist supporting organization” — with little in the way of due process or evidentiary standards.
It was not immediately clear why the provision was absent from the latest draft of the bill, but a Democratic congressional aide said the removal was indeed a deliberate move by the GOP.
“Apparently Republican staffers removed it after hearing about it from stakeholders and working with leadership on a solution, but I’m not sure what the solution is,” the source told The Intercept.
The removal of the clause prompted cautious optimism from civil society advocates, according to Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“It’s possible they took it out to rewrite it in some way, because we know that this package is going to be amended,” Hamadanchy told The Intercept. “But for now it’s not in the text of the bill, and that’s an improvement from where we were at last week.”
Fits and Starts
The latest push to get the nonprofit-killer clause into law appeared on page 380 of a 389-page bundle of amendments put forward by the GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee last week and passed out of committee intact.
After far-right Republicans opposed to government spending stalled the megabill, the section on nonprofits appears to have been removed from an updated version put out Monday by the House Committee on Rules.
Proponents of the provision have been trying for well over a year to make it law, an effort that critics have described as an assault on free speech aimed in particular at pro-Palestine groups. First introduced in late 2023, an initial version of the bill passed the House with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans alike.
In the wake of Trump’s reelection victory, however, and in the face of a concerted campaign by the ACLU and other civil society groups, many Democrats changed their tune.
When the last version of the bill, H.R. 9495, was introduced in November, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, marshaled opposition to the measure and even managed to vote it down in one floor vote.
The Republican-controlled House, however, pressed on and the bill eventually passed with near-unanimous GOP support — and with the help of a handful of Democrats — but ultimately stalled in the Senate without becoming law.
The Big, Beautiful Bill passed a major hurdle over the weekend after an initial attempt by four hardline conservatives to block the package.
Opponents of the nonprofit killer clause are not counting it out just yet, Hamadanchy said.
“We are continuing to track things,” he said, “in case this thing comes back from the dead as it has numerous times.”
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the May 19, 2000, coup led by renegade businessman George Speight.
The deposed Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, says Speight’s motive had less to do with indigenous rights and a lot more to do with power, greed, and access to the millions likely to accrue from Fiji’s mahogany plantation.
On this day 25 years ago, the elected government was held hostage at the barrel of the gun, the Parliament complex started filling up with rebels supporting the takeover, Suva City and other areas in Fiji were looted and burnt, and innocent people were attacked just because of their race.
Chaudhry said indigenous emotions were “deliberately ignited to beat up support for the treasonous actions of the terrorists”.
He said the coup threw the nation into chaos from which it had not fully recovered even to this day.
Chaudhry said using George Speight as a frontman, the “real perpetrators” of the coup, assisted by a group of armed rebels from the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF), held Chaudhry and members of his government hostage for 56 days as they plundered, looted and terrorised the Indo-Fijian community in various parts of the country.
The Fiji Labour Party leader said that, as with current Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, who led the first two coups in 1987, so with Speight in May 2000, that the given reason for the treason and the mayhem that followed was to “protect the rights and interests of the indigenous community”.
Chaudhry said today that it was widely acknowledged that the rights of the indigenous community was not endangered either in 1987 or in 2000.
He added that they were simply used to pursue personal and political agendas.
Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka with former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry . . . apology accepted during the Girmit Day Thanksgiving and National Reconciliation church service at the Vodafone Arena in Suva. Image: Jonacani Lalakobau/The Fiji Times
The FLP leader said those who benefitted were the elite in Fijian society, not ordinary people.
Chaudhry said this was obvious from current statistics which showed that currently the iTaukei surveyed made up 75 percent of those living in poverty.
He said poverty reports in the early 1990s showed practically a balance in the number of Fijians and Indo-Fijians living in poverty.
Prisoner George Speight speaking to inmates in 2011 . . . he and his rogue gunmen seized then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his government hostage in a 2000 crisis that lasted for 56 days. Image: Fijivillage News/YouTube screenshot
The former prime minister says it was obvious that the coups had done nothing to improve the quality of life of the ordinary indigenous iTaukei.
Instead, he said the coups had had a devastating impact on the entire socio-economic fabric of Fiji’s society, putting the nation decades behind in terms of development.
Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre coordinator Shamima Ali reflects on the 2000 coup.
Chaudhry said the sorry state of Fiji today — “the suffering of our people and continued high rate of poverty, deteriorating health and education services, the failing infrastructure and weakened state of our economy” — were all indicators of how post-coup governments had failed to deliver on the expectations of the people.
He said: “It is time for us to rise above discredited notions of racism and fundamentalism and embrace progressive, liberal thinking.”
Chaudhry added that leaders needed to be judged on their vision and performance and not on their colour and creed.
Republished with permission from FijiVillage News.
2000 attempted coup leader George Speight with a bodyguard and supporters during the siege drama in May 2000. Image: Fijivillage News
This story discusses graphic details of slavery, sexual abuse and violence
Pacific children as young as six are being adopted overseas and being made to work as house slaves, suffering threats, beatings and rape.
Kris Teikamata — a social worker at a community agency — spoke about the harrowing cases she encountered in her work, from 2019 to 2024, with children who had escaped their abusers in Auckland and Wellington.
“They’re incredibly traumatised because it’s years and years and years of physical abuse, physical labour and and a lot of the time, sexual abuse, either by the siblings or other family members,” she said.
“They were definitely threatened, they were definitely coerced and they had no freedom.
“When I met each girl, [by then] 17, 18, 19 years old, it was like meeting a 50-year-old. The light had gone out of their eyes. They were just really withdrawn and shut down.”
In one case a church minister raped his adopted daughter and got her pregnant.
Teikamata and her team helped 10 Samoan teenagers who had managed to escape their homes, and slavery — two boys and eight girls — with health, housing and counselling. She fears they are the tip of the iceberg, and that many remain under lock and key.
“They were brought over as a child or a teenager, sometimes they knew the family in Samoa, sometimes they didn’t — they had promised them a better life over here, an education and citizenship.
Social worker Kris Teikamata . . . “They were brought over as a child or a teenager, sometimes they knew the family in Samoa, sometimes they didn’t .” Image: RNZ Pacific
“When they arrived they would generally always be put into slavery. They would have to get up at 5, 6 in the morning, start cleaning, start breakfast, do the washing, then go to school and then after school again do cleaning and dinner and the chores — and do that everyday until a certain age, until they were workable.
“Then they were sent out to factories in Auckland or Wellington and their bank account was taken away from them and their Eftpos card. They were given $20 a week.
“From the age of 16 they were put to work. And they were also not allowed to have a phone — most of them had no contact with family back in Samoa.”
‘A thousand kids a year… and it’s still going on’ Nothing stopped the abusive families from being able to adopt again and they did, she said.
A recent briefing to ministers reiterated that New Zealanders with criminal histories or significant child welfare records have used overseas courts to approve adoptions, which were recognised under New Zealand law without further checks.
“When I delved more into it, I just found out that it was a very easy process to adopt from Samoa,” she said.
“There’s no checks, it’s a very easy process. So about a thousand kids [a year] are today being adopted from Samoa. It’s such a high number — whereas other countries have checks or very robust systems. And it’s still going on.”
As children, they could not play with friends and all of their movements were controlled.
Oranga Tamariki uplifted younger children, who were sometimes siblings of older children who had escaped.
“The ones that I met had escaped and found a friend or were homeless or had reached out to the police.”
Loving families
When they were reunited with their birth parents on video calls, it was clear they came from loving families who had been deceived, she said.
While some adoptive parents faced court for assault, only one has been prosecuted for trafficking.
Government, police and Oranga Tamariki were aware and in talks with the Samoan government, she said.
Adoption Action member and researcher Anne Else said several opportunities to overhaul the 70-year-old Adoption Act had been thwarted, and the whole legislation needed ripping up.
“The entire law needs to be redone, it dates back to 1955 for goodness sake,” she said.
“But there’s a big difference between understanding how badly and urgently the law needs changing and actually getting it done.
“Oranga Tamariki are trying, I know, to work with for example Tonga to try and make sure that their law is a bit more conformant with ours, and ensure there are more checks done to avoid these exploitative cases.”
Sold for adoption
Children from other countries had been sold for adoption, she said, and the adoption rules depended on which country they came from. Even the Hague Convention, which is supposed to provide safeguards between countries, was no guarantee.
Immigration minister Erica Stanford said other ministers were looking at what could be done to crack down on trafficking through international adoption.
“If there are non-genuine adoptions and and potential trafficking, we need to get on top of that,” she sad.
“It falls outside of the legislation that I am responsible for, but there are other ministers who have it on their radars because we’re all worried about it. I’ve read a recent report on it and it was pretty horrifying. So it is being looked at.”
A meeting was held between New Zealand and Samoan authorities in March. A summary of discussions said it focused on aligning policies, information sharing, and “culturally grounded frameworks” that uphold the rights, identity, and wellbeing of children, following earlier work in 2018 and 2021.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Seven European nations have called on Israel to “immediately reverse” its military operations against Gaza and lift the food and water blockade on the besieged enclave.
They have also called on all parties to immediately engage with “renewed urgency and good faith” for a ceasefire and release of all hostages.
The seven countries are Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Slovenia, and Spain.
They declared that they would be silent in the face of the man-made humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that has so far killed more than 50,000 men, women and children.
Israeli forces continue bombarding Gaza yesterday, killing at least 125 Palestinians, including 36 in the so-called “safe zone” of al-Mawasi.
The intensified Israeli attacks have rendered all the public hospitals in northern Gaza out of service, said the Health Ministry.
The joint statement
The joint statement signed by the leaders of all seven countries said:
“We will not be silent in front of the man-made humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place before our eyes in Gaza. More than 50.000 men, women, and children have lost their lives. Many more could starve to death in the coming days and weeks unless immediate action is taken.
“We call upon the government of Israel to immediately reverse its current policy, refrain from further military operations and fully lift the blockade, ensuring safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian aid to be distributed throughout the Gaza strip by international humanitarian actors and according to humanitarian principles. United Nations and humanitarian organisations, including UNRWA, must be supported and granted safe and unimpeded access.
“We call upon all parties to immediately engage with renewed urgency and good faith in negotiations on a ceasefire and the release of all hostages, and acknowledge the important role played by the United States, Egypt and Qatar in this regard.
“This is the basis upon which we can build a sustainable, just and comprehensive peace, based on the implementation of the two-State solution. We will continue to support the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and work in the framework of the United Nations and with other actors, like the Arab League and Arab and Islamic States, to move forward to achieve a peaceful and sustainable solution. Only peace can bring security for Palestinians, Israelis and the region, and only respect for international law can secure lasting peace.
“We also condemn the further escalation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, with increased settler violence, the expansion of illegal settlements and intensified Israel military operations. Forced displacement or the expulsion of the Palestinian people, by any means, is unacceptable and would constitute a breach of international law. We reject any such plans or attempts at demographic change.
“We must assume the responsibility to stop this devastation.”
The letter was signed by Kristrún Frostadóttir, Prime Minister of Iceland; Micheál Martin, Taoiseach of Ireland; Luc Frieden, Prime Minister of Luxembourg; Robert Abela, Prime Minister of Malta; Jonas Gahr Støre, Prime Minister of Norway; Robert Golob, Prime Minister of Slovenia; and Pedro Sánchez, President of Spain.
Gaza proves global system ‘incapable of solving issues’
Meanwhile, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, says the crisis in Gaza has once again demonstrated that “the pillars of the international system are incapable of resolving such issues”, reports Al Jazeera.
It also showed “that the fate of the [Middle East] region cannot and should not remain at the mercy of extra-regional powers”, he said during a speech at the Tehran Dialogue Forum.
“What is currently presented by these powers as the ‘regional reality’ is, in fact, a reflection of deeply constructed narratives and interpretations, shaped solely based on their own interests,” Iran’s top diplomat said.
He said these narratives must be redefined and corrected from within the region itself.
“West Asia is in dire need of a fundamental reassessment of how it views itself,” Araghchi said.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Last May, when Eurovision broadcast the musical competition’s semifinals, viewers at home noticed something strange. During rehearsals with a live audience earlier in the week, audience members loudly booed singer Eden Golan, the Israeli entrant whose participation stirred a controversy due to Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza.
When Golan performed live for television on May 9, 2024, however, viewers at home heard no audible boos at all. Had the audiences had a sudden change of heart over a few short days? Commenters online didn’t think so, and speculation ran rampant that the European Broadcasting Union, or EBU, which produces Eurovision, had censored boos from the live show.
There was booing during Golan’s May 9 television performance, with one audience member loudly shouting “Free Palestine!”
In statements at the time, EBU insisted it had not censored any audience reactions.
“Just like in all major TV productions with an audience, SVT” — the national broadcaster in Sweden, where the 2024 Eurovision was hosted — “work on the broadcast sound to even out the levels for TV viewers,” the EBU told HuffPost UK. “This is solely to achieve as balanced a sound mix as possible for the audience; and SVT do not censor sound from the arena audience.”
An analysis of the original broadcast audio feeds by The Intercept shows that there was indeed booing during Golan’s May 9 television performance, with one audience member loudly shouting “Free Palestine!” during the recording. While the cheers from the audience feed remain prominent in the broadcast mix of the audio, neither the booing nor the pro-Palestine slogan were audible in the version of the performance viewers heard at home.
Listen to clips of both audio feeds below. Enable closed captions for notations of audience reactions.
The EBU did not respond to a request for comment.
Golan’s run at Eurovision drew controversy as the death toll of Israel’s war on Gaza mounted. Despite a campaign to exclude Israel, Golan advanced to the finals with her pop song “Hurricane,” ultimately placing fifth. The isolated audience audio from that event was too glitchy to determine whether any boos were also suppressed in the final mix. The song, originally titled “October Rain,” was initially barred from Eurovision, prior to undergoing a title and lyric adjustment for violating the contest’s rules on political neutrality with its reference to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.
In an interview shortly after last year’s Eurovision competition, Golan was played an online video of booing during her live-audience rehearsal.
“Well, that happened in every single performance,” Golan said in response. “There were some days that were more extreme.”
Golan said she was prepared for a negative reaction and had hoped her in-ear monitors for live performances would block out the crowd noises.
“And I was very wrong,” she said, “because after the first rehearsal with the audience I remember not hearing myself, only hearing the boos and the screaming and the yelling.”
Nonpolitical?
Eurovision is the world’s premier international music competition. Under the auspices of their respective national broadcasters, artists from around the globe — originally Europe, but since expanded — come together for over-the-top performances watched by tens of millions of fans. Last year, some 160 million people watched the events on television.
Ahead of last year’s event, dueling letter campaigns and petitions supported and decried Israeli participation. More than 1,000 Swedish artists signed a letter urging Israel’s exclusion, while more than 400 Hollywood celebrities penned a letter supporting Israel.
In the end, the EBU said it conducted a review and decided Israel could be involved.
“The Eurovision song contest is a non-political music event and a competition between public service broadcasters who are members of the EBU,” Noel Curran, the EBU director general, told The Guardian at the time. “It is not a contest between governments.”
More than 56,000 people signed a petition calling for Israel to be banned from the current season of Eurovision, while 72 former Eurovision contestants signed a letter urging the EBU to exclude Israel and its broadcaster, KAN, from the competition. The EBU again decided Israel may participate.
The contest has, in the past, made exclusions based on circumstances apparently linked to geopolitics. In 2022, it barred Russia from competing in the song contest, stating that “in light of the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine, the inclusion of a Russian entry in this year’s Contest would bring the competition into disrepute.”
Last year, EBU published a list of frequently asked questions titled “FAQ: Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest 2024,” stating that Russia was suspended from Eurovision owing to unspecified allegations of “consistent breaches of membership obligations and the violation of public service media values.”
Audio Analysis
The Intercept was able to uncover the suppression of audible discontent with Israel at last year’s Eurovision by examining various feeds sent out by the competition organizers for broadcast across the globe.
When the local host country’s national broadcaster — in last year’s case Sweden and SVT, respectively — produce Eurovision, they collect multiple audio feeds: such as one for the performers, one for the audience, and one for announcer voices. The broadcaster then does a live mix of the three audio feeds into a single stereo mix.
The stereo mix is beamed up to a satellite using a multichannel format which Eurovision has been experimenting with since 2004. The video feed is also sent on a separate channel. The system allows a streamlined approach for local broadcasters around the globe to access the feeds and put the program on their stations.
Along with the final stereo mix and video feeds, however, the EBU also beams the raw audio feeds on different channels. Local broadcasters can then make their own mixes of the audio feeds — though in practice, local stations usually use the provided stereo feed.
Much like anyone can readily record over-the-air television broadcasts so long as they have equipment like an antenna and a recording device, so too can anyone record satellite signals if they have the requisite equipment. While many modern satellite feeds are encrypted, Eurovision appears to have opted for a format which is more readily compatible with older equipment, stating at a press briefing that “to send signal out to the juries during those shows and amongst our different members, technology differs in how modern it is.”
The Intercept was able to review the raw audio feeds from Golan’s performance and compare the isolated audience noise to the final stereo mix.
An audience member can be heard prominently shouting “Free Palestine!” The cry is not on the stereo broadcast mix.
The audio feeds were compared using the time encoding that allows broadcasters to sync up the sound and picture. On the audience feed, cheers swell up from time to time, along with whistles and other noises of audience approval. These swells and other noises correspond between the audience feed and the stereo mix.
Notes of crowd disapproval, however, are present on the audience feed but completely absent from the stereo mix. At one point in the feed at the start of Israel’s performance, scattered boos well up on the audience feed, while the corresponding timestamp in the stereo mix has no audience sound. Likewise, at the start of the performance, an audience member can be heard prominently shouting “Free Palestine!” The cry is not on the stereo broadcast mix.
This year’s performer representing Israel, Yuval Raphael, has said that she expected to be booed and practiced with distracting sounds play in the background. Conflicting news accounts of Raphael’s performance claimed alternatively that the show went on “relatively without a hitch,” in one case, and in another that footage shared on social media showed booing that was not audible in the broadcast.
A pro-Palestine demonstrator holds a “Free Mahmoud Khalil” sign at a protest in New York City on May 15, 2025.Photo: Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images
One of the top job requirements for attorneys in Donald Trump’s Justice Department seems to be an abundance of shamelessness.
A lot of legal professionals have to defend the indefensible as part of their jobs, but arguing that rampant lawlessness is legal — as government attorneys now do in many of the 240-plus lawsuits filed against the current Trump administration — requires a particular flair for impudence.
The effort to deport Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil offers a case in point. The Trump regime abducted Khalil, a green card holder, in the lobby of his New York apartment building in March, and has since held him in a sprawling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana.
Last week, the New Jersey judge hearing Khalil’s habeas corpus challenge against the government made a simple demand: Present the legal precedent. Against this most basic directive to do their jobs, the government’s attorneys filed a whiny formal objection.
The Trump administration complained that it was “misguided” to demand it swiftly present the legal basis for its extreme actions.
They should know the precedents because that is part of arguing the legality of a government action.
The government is trying to use an obscure provision under the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state the power to deport people whose presence it deems to create “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio made just such a determination in his effort to deport Khalil, as well as Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, who is also a green card holder, and Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk.
Judge Michael Farbiarz’s response to invocation of the obscure law seemed reasonable. Last Friday morning, he asked that the government provide examples of “other instances” of the provision’s use by 5 p.m. that day.
Were the government’s case anything but an authoritarian gambit, Justice Department attorneys would be able to present relevant precedent on demand.
They should know the precedents because that is, surely, part of arguing the legality of a government action. And the government has had plenty of time to construct this argument: Khalil’s attorneys filed the habeas petition the night he was detained by ICE, over two months ago.
Instead, the attorneys scrambled that day to produce a bare-bones response, and complained that “limited staff have been searching for records in response to the Court’s orders as well as managing competing litigation requests and other priorities.”
“The Government has made a good faith effort to comply with the Court’s most recent orders,” the attorneys wrote in the objection. “But the Government believes that those orders are misguided, and lodges this formal objection.”
They went on: “Government counsel has also appeared before the Court for conferences scheduled hours beforehand” — complaining that “those instances have adversely affected the Government and counsel’s work on other cases.”
The attorneys said that the judge asking for this extremely basic information about the case’s legal basis amounted to expedited discovery, which Khalil’s team, rather than the judge, should request.
“Give Me a Break!”
The objection means nothing for Khalil’s ongoing case, but it’s a telling example of the Justice Department’s churlish position when it comes to offering legal justifications for government actions.
Numerous judges have now scolded government attorneys in an array of cases, from attacks on law firms to deportation cases to student visa removals. Judges have berated “shoddy work,” “Kafkaesque” arguments, and “disrespectful” behavior from attorneys.
Legal work that leaves something to be desired may in part be due to a dearth of talent in government. Hundreds of attorneys have left the Justice Department since Trump’s return; the department’s civil rights division has seen a 70 percent reduction in attorneys through resignations and reassignments.
“The Trump administration has melted down the DOJ we once knew,” wrote journalist Piper French, “and used the raw material to forge a sleek machine with a unified purpose and total vision.”
Whether the department’s operations are always sleek is questionable: Attorneys have appeared unprepared or evasive and failed to defend Trump’s executive actions against full or partial blocks in courts at least 64 times since January.
“Give me a break!” scoffed one judge, an appointee of George W. Bush, when a Justice Department lawyer tried to argue that Trump’s attack on a major law firm was necessary to defend against racial discrimination. The judge blocked the order.
I don’t envy the job of defending illegal, unconstitutional dreck, but I don’t have to do it — and neither do these lawyers. They ought to save themselves the embarrassment and just quit.
French is right: The Justice Department is unwavering in its ideological backing of Trump’s fascistic agenda. And shamelessness when it comes to the work of defending shameful acts is no doubt a more useful quality than legal wisdom and respect for judicial processes.
The reason many of these lawyers haven’t left, however, is because they believe their own bullshit. Those who remain, along with new staff hired by Trump loyalist Pam Bondi commit themselves to the devil’s work. It offers only minimal comfort that they sometimes do it badly. The U.S. legal system is hardly immune from upholding repressive laws and violently discriminatory government actions.
In Khalil’s case, for example, the Justice Department attorneys are arguing for a gross violation of First Amendment protections, but that’s no assurance that they will lose.
While petulant, the attorneys did comply with the judge’s order. The lawyers proffered twoshort filings that listed seven examples of the law’s invocation — with two of the listed cases being Mahdawi and Öztürk.
The other five cases listed included Osama Bin-Laden’s brother; the leader of a paramilitary group in Haiti; a Palestinian deported in 1997 who, according to the government, “was a top leader of a designated foreign terrorist organization”; an “African national” the government said had contributed to “violent political activity” in Somalia; and the 1995 case of Mario Ruiz Massieu, a former assistant attorney general of Mexico.
Massieu was the only one to challenge his detention in court, in a case overseen by Trump’s older sister, the late federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Barry ruled the deportation provision unconstitutional, but that ruling was reversed on a technicality by none other than Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was then a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge.
Ripe for Abuse
The “foreign policy” provision is ripe for abuse. It places all too much discretion in the hands of the secretary of state in a deportation system that had little in the way of due process even before Trump got ahold of it.
Yet even the previous cases listed by the government make clear that using the law to deport Khalil, Mahdawi, or Öztürk would be an unprecedented overreach.
Rubio has argued that Khalil should be removed for his role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States” — a reprise of the spurious link between protesting Israel and antisemitism. A wealth of Khalil’s Jewish friends and fellow organizers have also spoken out in support of him.
Yet even if Rubio’s lies were true, deporting someone on those grounds alone would be an extraordinary expansion of the “foreign policy” provision’s application, and an unambiguous violation of the First Amendment.
Compared to the rare use of the provision in the last decades — one of which was found to be unconstitutional by a judge — the cases against Khalil, Mahdawi, and Öztürk appear risible additions to the list.
Based on the discretion granted to Rubio under the law, however, an immigration judge deemed Khalil deportable.
About 2000 New Zealand protesters marched through the heart of Auckland city today chanting “no justice, no peace” and many other calls as they demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli atrocities in its brutal war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.
For more than 73 days, Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis with the Strip on the brink of a devastating famine.
Israel’s attacks killed more than 150 and wounded 450 in a day in a new barrage of attacks that aid workers described as “Gaza is bleeding before our eyes”.
in Auckland, several Palestinian and other speakers spoke of the anguish and distress of the global Gaza community in the face of Western indifference to the suffering in a rally before the march marking the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the “Palestinian catastrophe”.
“There are cracks opening up all around the world that haven’t been there for 77 years,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto in an inspired speech to the protesters.
“We’ve got politicians in Britain speaking out for the first time. Some conservative politician got standing up the other day saying, ‘I supported Israel right or wrong for 20 years, and I was wrong.’
‘The world is coming right’
“Yet a lot of the world has been wrong for 77 years, but the world is coming right. We are on the right side of history, give us a big round of applause.”
Minto was highly critical of the public broadcasters, Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand, saying they relied too heavily on a narrow range of Western sources whose credibility had been challenged and eroded over the past 19 months.
PSNA co-chair John Minto . . . .capturing an image of the march up Auckland’s Queen Street in protest over the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Image: APR
He also condemned their “proximity” news value, blaming it for news editors’ lapse of judgment on news values because Israelis “spoke English”.
Minto told the crowd that that they should be monitoring Al Jazeera for a more balanced and nuanced coverage of the war on Palestine.
His comments echoed a similar theme of a speech at the Fickling Centre in Three Kings on Thursday night and protesters followed up by picketing the NZ Voyager Media Awards last night with a light show of killed Gazan journalists beamed on the hotel venue.
Protesters at the NZ Voyager Media Awards protesting last night against unbalanced media coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Image: Achmat Eesau/PSNA
About 230 Gazan journalists have been killed in the war so far, many of them allegedly targeted by the Israeli forces.
Minto said he could not remember a previous time when a New Zealand government had remained silent in the face of industrial-scale killing of civilians anywhere in the world.
“We have livestreamed genocide happening and we have our government refusing to condemn any of Israel’s war crimes,” he said.
NZ ‘refusing to condemn war crimes’
“Yet we’ve got everybody in the leadership of this government having condemned every act of Palestinian resistance yet refused to condemn the war crimes, refused to condemn the bombing of civilians, and refused to condemn the mass starvation of 2.3 million people.
“What a bunch of depraved bastards run this country. Shame on all of them.”
Palestinian speaker Samer Almalalha . . . “Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit.” A golden key symbolising the right of return for Palestinians is in the background. Image: APR
Palestinian speaker Samer Almalalha spoke of the 1948 Nakba and the injustices against his people.
“Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit. The only rights you have are the ones you take,” he said.
“So today we won’t stand here to plead, we are here to remind you of what happened to us. We are here to take what is ours. Today, and every day, we fight for a free Palestine.”
Nakba survivor Ghazi Dassouki . . . a harrowing story about a massacre village. Image: Bruce King survivor
and he told a harrowing story from his homeland. As a 14-year-old boy, he and his family were driven out of Palestine during the Nakba.
He described “waking up to to the smell of gunpowder” — his home was close to the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when Zionist militias attacked the village killing 107 people, including women and children.
‘Palestine will be free – and so will we’
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said: “What we stand for is truth, justice, peace and love.
“Palestine will be free and, in turn, so will we.”
Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis, with the integrated food security agency IPC warning that famine could be declared any time between now and September, reports Al Jazeera.
The head of the UN Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, said the world should be shocked by the killing of 45 children in Israeli air strikes in just two days.
Instead, the slaughter of children in Gaza is “largely met with indifference”.
“More than 1 million children in Gaza are at risk of starvation. They are deprived of food, water and medicine,” Russell wrote in a post on social media.
“Nowhere is safe for children in Gaza,” she said.
“This horror must stop.”
“The coloniser lied” . . . a placard in today’s Palestine rally in Auckland. Image: APR
Famine worst level of hunger
Famine is the worst level of hunger, where people face severe food shortages, widespread malnutrition, and high levels of death due to starvation.
According to the UN’s criteria, famine is declared when:
At least 20 percent (one-fifth) of households face extreme food shortages;
More than 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition; and
At least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.
Famine is not just about hunger; it is the worst humanitarian emergency, indicating a complete collapse of access to food, water and the systems necessary for survival.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), since Israel’s complete blockade began on March 2, at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition.
“Stop Genocide in Gaza” . . . the start of the rally with PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal on the right. Image: APR
A pregnant woman and her 1-year-old baby, who died in an attack on a tent for displaced people, in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip, on March 19, 2025.Photo: Abdallah F.S. Alattar/Anadolu via Getty Images
“Please, don’t put him in the fridge!” she said. “He can’t bear the cold.”
Her voice cracked as she pleaded with medics not to place her 2-year-old son Omar in the morgue. She had tried for nine years to have a child. Then, in the instant it takes an airstrike to crash into a building in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, he was gone.
We often hear that the genocide in Gaza that began in October 2023 has taken the lives of so many innocent people. And though men in Gaza are also entitled to a presumption of innocence, the killings of women — over 20,000 Palestinian women and 15,000 children have been killed — have demonstrated to the world how Israel is targeting not just Palestinians, but also their future.
On May 15, Palestinians mark Nakba Day, a commemoration of their collective dispossession, expulsion, and displacement at the hands of the Zionist project and the state of Israel. Today, more than ever, it is obvious how this catastrophe is not just an event of the past in 1948, around the time of Israel’s declaration of independence, but rather an ongoing effort to destroy the Palestinian people.
This war, after all, is not just about death. It is about making life impossible.
Palestinians are now forced to live, give birth, and bury their children in the same space.
This is especially visible in not just the attacks on children, but also on women’s access to reproductive care. Maternity wards have been shut down, neonatal care all but wiped out, and literally embryos at a fertility clinic destroyed by the thousands. UNICEF reports a 300 percent increase in miscarriages. Eight infants died of hypothermia in January of this year.
To destroy reproductive capacity is to erase the future of a people.
Palestinians are now forced to live, give birth, and bury their children in the same space.
The all-out assault on children puts parents in a constant panic. “It’s like an apocalypse,” one father said. “You have to protect your children from insects, from the heat. There is no clean water, no toilets, and the bombing never stops. You feel subhuman here.”
That is the point.
Genocide is not just about bodies. It is about condition. The attack on the Palestinian future is part and parcel of Israel’s assault. It is part of the ongoing Nakba. Don’t believe me? Just look at what Israel’s Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter said as the war was intensifying in its early days: “We are rolling out the Gaza Nakba. … Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
The Toll
The specifics of the toll on women, reproductive care, and children are staggering.
When Gaza’s health ministry released a 1,516 page document listing the names of confirmed Palestinian deaths, the first 27 pages were comprised of names where the age was listed is 0: children under 1 year old.
An average of 37 mothers have been killed each day. And, for the last 19 months, Israel has killed an average of 30 children per day.
The first 27 pages were comprised of names where the age was listed is 0.
At least, 50,000 pregnant women remain without medical care. Women are giving birth in rubble and tents, without anesthesia. Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, housing 3,000 embryos, was bombed to the ground. Maternity wards were shelled. Incubators shut down after fuel was cut off. And then there are the unnecessary hysterectomies: Doctors removing wombs to prevent infections when there are no antibiotics, no equipment, no clean tools. Lives are saved by ending the ability to give life.
Article II of the Genocide Conventions defines one form of genocide as “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” Article 16 of the Fourth Geneva Convention demands particular protection for expectant mothers, while Articles 55 and 56 compel occupying powers to provide food and maintain medical services. Israel is in flagrant violation of all of these.
She was not alone. According to the U.N. and human rights reports, women across Gaza have suffered late-term miscarriages after exposure to phosphorus, trauma, and starvation.
Hadil Isma’il Sbeihat, eight months pregnant, survives on a single daily plate of rice.
“There’s nothing for the baby,” she said. “Not even water.”
Destroying Survival
If the intention of genocide is to destroy the conditions under which a group can survive, then what is left to argue?
Gaza’s medical system has been collapsed. Al-ShifaHospital, NasserHospital, Al-AwdaHospital, the Turkish FriendshipHospital, the Kuwait SpecialtyHospital — bombed or raided. Only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are evenpartially functional, as of December 2024.
“There’s no safe place in Gaza,” one American nurse, who volunteered with Doctors without Borders,said.
The legal architecture meant to protect these women and children is vast. TheConvention on the Rights of the Child — which Israel ratified in 1991 — requires states to ensure the survival and development of every child.Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions prohibits attacks on civilian infrastructure and mandates the protection of objects “indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.”
And yet, Israel has bombed not only hospitals, but also water towers, bakeries, schools, and cemeteries. The World Health Organization confirms that 95 percent of pregnant and nursing women in Gaza face starvation. Starvation became a weapon of war. Since the start of Ramadan in March, all aid convoys have been denied.
Over 80 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure lies inruins. Thirty-seven million tons ofdebris have replaced what were once homes, clinics, classrooms, and kitchens. Entire neighborhoods destroyed.
Hind Rajab was 6 years old. Her family’s car was hit in Gaza City. She was the only one who survived. For hours, she hid among the corpses: “They are all dead around me,” she said. “I’m so scared.” The ambulance sent to save her was shelled. Her body was found days later, charred and lifeless.
In the West Bank, the machinery of elimination moves in different forms. Children areexecuted at checkpoints. Israel remains the only country in the world that systematically detains and tries minors in militarycourts. Human Rights Watch has documented thetorture of children in Israeli prisons. In 2023 alone, Israeli forceskilled at least 111 Palestinian children in the West Bank.
Palestinian women have always known what it means to raise life in the shadow of death. In 1948, they were raped and exiled. During the First Intifada, they held down the resistance when the men were imprisoned. Now, in 2025, they boil leaves to feed their babies. They breastfeed under bombardment.
Gaza is a womb being emptied. It is a place where birth is a death sentence and motherhood is a target. And the world watches as if Palestinian death were an abstract thing. But Omar was not abstract. Omar had a name. Omar couldn’t bear the cold.
The iconic Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warriorwill return to Aotearoa this year to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original campaign ship at Marsden Wharf in Auckland by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.
The return to Aotearoa comes at a pivotal moment — when the fight to protect our planet’s fragile life-support systems has never been as urgent, or more critical.
Here in Aotearoa, the Luxon government is waging an all-out war on nature, and on a planetary scale, climate change, ecosystem collapse, and accelerating species extinction pose an existential threat.
Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Dr Russel Norman . . . “Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective.” Image: Greenpeace
As we remember the bombing and the murder of our crew member, Fernando Pereira, it’s important to remember why the French government was compelled to commit such a cowardly act of violence.
Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective. We posed a very real threat to the French government’s military programme and colonial power.
It’s also critical to remember that they failed to stop us. They failed to intimidate us, and they failed to silence us. Greenpeace only grew stronger and continued the successful campaign against nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Forty years later, it’s the oil industry that’s trying to stop us. This time, not with bombs but with a legal attack that threatens the existence of Greenpeace in the US and beyond.
We will not be intimidated
But just like in 1985 when the French bombed our ship, now too in 2025, we will not be intimidated, we will not back down, and we will not be silenced.
We cannot be silenced because we are a movement of people committed to peace and to protecting Earth’s ability to sustain life, protecting the blue oceans, the forests and the life we share this planet with,” says Norman.
In the 40 years since, the Rainbow Warrior has sailed on the front lines of our campaigns around the world to protect nature and promote peace. In the fight to end oil exploration, turn the tide of plastic production, stop the destruction of ancient forests and protect the ocean, the Rainbow Warrior has been there to this day.
Right now the Rainbow Warrior is preparing to sail through the Tasman Sea to expose the damage being done to ocean life, continuing a decades-long tradition of defending ocean health.
This follows the Rainbow Warrior spending six weeks in the Marshall Islands where the original ship carried out Operation Exodus, in which the Greenpeace crew evacuated the people of Rongelap from their home island that had been made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons testing by the US government.
In Auckland this year, several events will be held on and around the ship to mark the anniversary, including open days with tours of the ship for the public.
The iconic Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warriorwill return to Aotearoa this year to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original campaign ship at Marsden Wharf in Auckland by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.
The return to Aotearoa comes at a pivotal moment — when the fight to protect our planet’s fragile life-support systems has never been as urgent, or more critical.
Here in Aotearoa, the Luxon government is waging an all-out war on nature, and on a planetary scale, climate change, ecosystem collapse, and accelerating species extinction pose an existential threat.
Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Dr Russel Norman . . . “Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective.” Image: Greenpeace
As we remember the bombing and the murder of our crew member, Fernando Pereira, it’s important to remember why the French government was compelled to commit such a cowardly act of violence.
Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective. We posed a very real threat to the French government’s military programme and colonial power.
It’s also critical to remember that they failed to stop us. They failed to intimidate us, and they failed to silence us. Greenpeace only grew stronger and continued the successful campaign against nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Forty years later, it’s the oil industry that’s trying to stop us. This time, not with bombs but with a legal attack that threatens the existence of Greenpeace in the US and beyond.
We will not be intimidated
But just like in 1985 when the French bombed our ship, now too in 2025, we will not be intimidated, we will not back down, and we will not be silenced.
We cannot be silenced because we are a movement of people committed to peace and to protecting Earth’s ability to sustain life, protecting the blue oceans, the forests and the life we share this planet with,” says Norman.
In the 40 years since, the Rainbow Warrior has sailed on the front lines of our campaigns around the world to protect nature and promote peace. In the fight to end oil exploration, turn the tide of plastic production, stop the destruction of ancient forests and protect the ocean, the Rainbow Warrior has been there to this day.
Right now the Rainbow Warrior is preparing to sail through the Tasman Sea to expose the damage being done to ocean life, continuing a decades-long tradition of defending ocean health.
This follows the Rainbow Warrior spending six weeks in the Marshall Islands where the original ship carried out Operation Exodus, in which the Greenpeace crew evacuated the people of Rongelap from their home island that had been made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons testing by the US government.
In Auckland this year, several events will be held on and around the ship to mark the anniversary, including open days with tours of the ship for the public.
On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. “The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present,” he told the crowd. He simultaneously condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that “under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the native peoples.”
Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism that drives the destruction of the Amazon, supported those who say Indigenous peoples’ guardianship of their own territories should be respected, and urged everyone to defend isolated tribes. “Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture,” he said.
To Julio Cusurichi Palacios, an Indigenous leader who was in the stadium that day, the words from the head of the Catholic Church — which claims 1.4 billion members and has a long, sordid history of violence against Indigenous peoples worldwide — were welcome and momentous.
“Few world leaders have spoken about our issues, and the pope said publicly the rights of Indigenous peoples were historically violated,” he said after Pope Francis died last month. “Let us hope that the new pope is a person who can continue implementing the position the pope who passed away has been talking about.”
Pope Francis delivers a speech during a meeting with representatives of indigenous communities of the Amazon basin from Peru, Brazil and Bolivia, in the Peruvian city of Puerto Maldonado, on January 19, 2018.
Vincenzo Pinto / AFP via Getty Images
During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis radically reshaped how the world’s most powerful religious institution approached the moral and ethical call to protect the planet. Beyond his invocations for Indigenous rights, Francis acknowledged the Church’s role in colonization, and considered climate change a moral issue born of rampant consumption and materialism. As the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples around the world — and far-right politics continues to rise globally — experts see the conclave’s selection of Robert Francis Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV as he is now known, as a clear beacon that the faith-based climate justice movement his predecessor led isn’t going anywhere.
In 2015, Pope Francis released his historic papal letter, or encyclical, titled Laudato si’. In the roughly 180-page document, he unequivocally identified planet-heating pollution as a pressing global issue disproportionately impacting the world’s poor, and condemned the outsize role wealthy countries like the U.S. have in contributing to the climate crisis. With it, Francis did what no pope had done before: He spoke with great clarity and urgency about human degradation of the environment being not just an environmental issue, but a social and moral one. Laudato si’ established the definitive connection between faith, climate change, and social justice, and made it a tenet of Catholic doctrine.
The lasting influence of Francis’ encyclical would be buoyed by his other writings, homilies, and his direct appeals to world leaders. He was, for example, credited with helping rally nearly 200 countries to sign the 2015 Paris Agreement, regularly urged cooperation at international climate summits, and released a follow-up to his pioneering encyclical in 2023 that sounded the alarm in the face of the climate crisis.
“Pope Francis routinely said that we have a throwaway society. We throw away people, we throw away nature … and that we really need a culture that’s much more based in care,” said Christopher Cox, executive director of the Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment and a former priest. “That means care for people, especially the most poor, the most vulnerable, the most marginalized. And we also need much greater care for creation. We’ve been given a beautiful earth and we’re consuming it at a rate that goes far beyond what will be able to sustain life for the long term.”
The first Latin American pope, Francis was unique in implicitly embracing some elements of liberation theology, a Catholic social justice movement that calls for the liberation of marginalized peoples from oppression. Although Francis was occasionally critical of the doctrine’s Marxist elements and never fully supportive of it, many observers see his statements regarding poor and Indigenous peoples as reflective of the doctrine’s central values.
“Right from the beginning of his papacy, that outreach, that recognition of Indigenous ways of being Catholic and Indigenous language in Catholicism, heralded — up to that point — the most expansive official recognition of Indigenous contributions to Catholicism thus far,” said Eben Levey, an assistant professor of history at Alfred University who has studied the relationship between Catholic Church and Indigenous peoples in Latin America. In the centuries since conquistadores arrived in the Americas and forced Indigenous peoples to accept their religion, many Indigenous communities have made Catholicism their own, and a growing number of church leaders have embraced the idea that there are multiple ways of being Catholic and that Catholicism and Indigenous cultures can coexist.
Members of indigenous communities from Peru, Brasil and Bolivia gather during the assembly of the Amazonian church in Puerto Maldonado, before the arrival of Pope Francis, on January 18, 2018.
Ernesto Benavides / AFP via Getty Images
A year after becoming pope, Francis approved the use of two Mayan languages, Tzotzil and Tzeltal, in mass and sacraments like baptism and confession. In 2015 he expanded that list to include the Aztec language Nahuatl, and in 2016, during a visit to Mexico, he celebrated mass in Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chol.
In 2022, Francis officially apologized to Canada for the residential schools that ripped Indigenous children from their families, leading to the deaths of many who were later buried in unmarked graves. The following year, he rejected the Doctrine of Discovery, a religious concept that colonizers used to justify the illegal seizure of land from Indigenous peoples and became part of an 1823 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that described Native Americans as “savages.”
Elder Fernie Marty, a Cree from the Papaschase First Nation, stands next to the portrait of Pope Francis placed on top of the white chair where the Pope sat during his 2022 visit, inside the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples.
Artur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images
“The Doctrine of Discovery is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church,” Pope Francis said, adding that he strongly supports the global implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He also drew a clear connection between those rights and climate action: In 2023, he made clear that Indigenous peoples are critical to fighting climate change when he said, “Ignoring the original communities in the safeguarding of the Earth is a serious mistake, not to say a great injustice.”
But Pope Francis’ progressivism had its limits. In 2019, he called for a meeting of church leaders, known as the Synod of Bishops, for the Pan-Amazon region to address issues affecting the Amazon Basin. Indigenous Catholics who attended brought up illegal logging and violence against land defenders and proposed reforms. “The ancestral wisdom of the aboriginal peoples affirms that mother earth has a feminine face,” reads the document that emerged from the gathering and urged the church to give women more leadership roles and allow married deacons to be ordained as priests. In his response, Francis condemned corporations that destroy the Amazon as committing “injustice and crime,” yet refused to embrace the proposals to make church leadership more inclusive of women and married men.
Francis’ climate activism was also riddled in constraint. He transformed how religious institutions viewed the climate crisis, framing a failure to act on it as a brutal injustice toward the most vulnerable, but could have implemented “more direct institutional action,” said Nadia Ahmad, a Barry University School of Law associate professor who has studied faith-based environmental action. Though the former pontiff publicly supported renewable energy adoption, called for fossil fuel disinvestment, and prompted churches across the world to go solar, he did not mandate what he deemed a “radical energy transition” across dioceses, schools, and hospitals. The work he accomplished “could have been amplified a bit more and had more accountability,” said Ahmad.
But that limitation, she noted, likely stemmed from contradictory politics playing out within the church — many traditional, conservative Catholics, particularly in the United States, resisted Francis’ progressive teachings. A 2021 study found that over a period of five years, most U.S. bishops were “nearly silent and sometimes even misleading,” in their official messaging to parishioners about climate change and the pope’s famed encyclical.
Though Pope Leo XIV has been lauded for his advocacy in defense of immigrants and worker rights — his namesake, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until 1903 is known as a historical Catholic champion of social justice and equality — the new pope’s track record on engaging directly with climate change is sparse.
Still, Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, sees comments the new pope made last year on the need to move “from words to action” as a promising sign that he will continue Francis’ commitment to communicating the urgency of a warming world. The timing of the conclave’s unprecedented decision to select the first pontiff from the United States, coming amid the Trump administration’s sweeping dismissal of climate action, elimination of environmental protections, and attacks on Indigenous rights, isn’t lost on her.
“It may be a signal to say ‘America, come back into the world community, come back into a planetary future where we collectively have been working to create a future worthy of our children and our children’s children,’” she said.
Dancers from Latin America celebrate the newly elected Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s square.
Valeria Ferraro / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Leo grew up in Chicago and is a citizen of both the U.S. and Peru, where he spent decades serving as a missionary and bishop before Francis made him a cardinal in 2023. He speaks five languages fluently and some Quechua, an Indigenous Incan language.
While he was working in Peru in the 1990s, Leo was critical of the government’s human rights abuses — though he refrained from explicitly taking sides in the political fight between Maoist rebels and the government of then-dictator Alberto Fujimori, according to Matthew Casey, a historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University based in Lima. Still, his reaction to the country’s authoritarianism could provide a glimpse of what stances he might take as pope, Casey said. “It doesn’t matter who was abusing human rights, he was on the side of the people,” he said.
In 2016, the would-be pontiff spoke at a conference in Brazil where attendees talked about threats to the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous peoples who lived there. He praised Francis’ encyclical, describing the document as “very important,” and representing “something new in terms of this explicit expression of the church’s concern for all of creation.” To Casey, that suggests Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor, has an awareness of the issues affecting Indigenous peoples, such as the rampant degradation of the environment.
“Both Francis and Prevost are attuned to Indigeneity in ways that they couldn’t have been if they worked in Europe or the United States, because the politics of Indigeneity in Latin America are just so different,” Casey said. More than a week after the conclave that named him pope, communities across Peru are still celebrating the selection of Pope Leo XIV.
Francis and Leo’s shared experiences working with marginalized communities harmed by colonialism and climate change, and their commitment to the social justice aspects of the church’s mission, are particularly meaningful in this political moment, said Levey, the Alfred University historian.
“We are seeing a resurgence of ultra right wing politics globally, and the Catholic Church next to the United Nations is one of the few multilateral organizations perhaps capable of responding in some form or fashion to the questions of our modern age or contemporary moment,” he said.
That date in 1987 is also the date of the first military coup in Fiji.
More than 60,000 men, women and children were brought to Fiji under an oppressive system of bonded labour between 1879 and 1916.
Today, Indo-Fijians make up 33 percent of the population.
While Fiji is part of the Pacific, Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific peoples in New Zealand; instead, they are listed under “Indian” and “Asian” on the Stats NZ website.
Lasting impact on Fiji
The Fiji Centre’s Nik Naidu, who is also a co-founder of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub, said that he understood Fiji was the only country in the Pacific where the British implemented the indentured system.
“It is also a sad legacy and a sad story because it was basically slavery,” he said.
“The positive was that the Fiji Indian community made a lasting impact on Fiji.
“They continue to be around 30 percent of the population in Fiji, and I think significantly in Aotearoa, through the migration, the numbers are, according to the community, over 100,000 in New Zealand.”
Fiji Centre co-founder Nikhil Naidu . . . Girmit Day “is also a sad legacy and a sad story because it was basically slavery.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
“His basic argument was, well, ethnographically, Fijian Indians do not fit the profile of Pacific Islanders,” he said.
Then-minister Aupito William Sio said in 2021 that, while he understood the group’s concerns, the classification for Fijian Indians was in line with an ethnographic profile which included people with a common language, customs and traditions.
Aupito said that profile was different from indigenous Pacific peoples.
StatsNZ and ethnicity
“StatsNZ recognises ethnicity as the ethnic group or groups a person self-identifies with or has a sense of belonging to,” Aupito said in a letter at the time.
It is not the same as race, ancestry, nationality, citizenship or even place of birth, he said.
“They have identified themselves now that the system of government has not acknowledged them.
“Those conversations have to be ongoing to figure out how do we capture the data of who they are as Fijian Indians or to develop policies around that to support their aspirations.”
Girmitiyas – Indentured labourers – in Fiji . . . shedding light on the harsh colonial past in Fiji. Image: RNZ Pacific/Fiji Girmit Foundation
Naidu believes the ethnographic argument was a misunderstanding of the request.
“The request is not to say, like Chinese in Samoa, they are not indigenous to Samoa, but they are Samoans, and they are Pacific Chinese.
“So there is the same thing with Fijian Indians. They are not wanting to be indigenous.
Different from mainland Indians
“They do want to be recognised as separate Indians in the Pacific because they are very different from the mainland Indians.
“In fact, most probably 99 percent of Fijian Indians have never been to India and have no affiliations to India because during the Girmit they lost all connections with their families.”
However, Naidu told Pacific Waves the community was not giving up.
“There was a human rights complaint made — again that did not progress in the favour of the Fijian Indians.
“Currently from . . . Fiji Centre’s perspective, we are still pursuing that.
“We have also had a discussion with Stats NZ about the numbers and trying to ascertain just why they have not managed to put a separate category, so that we can look at the number of Fijian Indians and also relative to Pacific Islanders.”
Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka told RNZ Pacific that as far as Fiji is concerned, Fijians of Indian descent are Fijian.
In a statement, his office said: “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is undertaking ongoing policy work to better understand this issue.”
Meanwhile, the University of Fiji’s vice-chancellor is asking the Australian and British governments to consider paying reparation for the exploitation of the indentured labourers more than a century ago.
Professor Shaista Shameem told the ABC that they endured harsh conditions, with long hours, social restrictions and low wages.
She said the Australian government and the Colonial Sugar Refinery of Australia benefitted the most financially and it was time the descendants were compensated.
While some community leaders have been calling for reparation, Naidu said there were other issues that needed attention.
He said it had been an ongoing discussion for many decades.
“It is a very challenging one, because where do you draw the line? And it is a global problem, the indenture system. It is not just unique to Fiji.
“Personally, yes, I think that is a great idea. Practically, I am not sure if it is feasible and possible.”
Focus on what unites, says Rabuka Fiji is on a path for reconciliation, with leaders from across the political spectrum signing a Forward Fiji Declaration in 2023, hoping to usher in a new era of understanding between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians.
Rabuka announced a public holiday to commemorate Girmit Day in 2023.
In his Girmit Day message this year, Rabuka said his government was dedicated to bringing unity and reconciliation between all races living in Fiji.
“We all know that Fiji has had a troubled past, as it was natural that conflicts would arise when a new group of people would come into another’s space,” he said.
“This is precisely what transpired when the Indians began to live or decided to live as permanent citizens.
“There was distrust as the two groups were not used to living together during the colonial days. Indigenous Fijians did not have a say in why, and how many should come and how they should be settled here. Fiji was not given a time to transit.
“The policy of indenture labour system was dumped on us. Naturally this led to tensions and misunderstandings, reasons that fuelled conflicts that followed after Fiji gained independence.”
He said 146 years later, Fijians should focus on what unites rather than what divides them.
“We have together long enough to know that unity and peace will lead us to a good future.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Only four days have passed since his election to the papacy, and Pope Leo XIV has made it a point to hold an audience with the men and women who were in Rome to report on the death of Pope Francis, the conclave, and the first days of his own ministry.
He met media professionals in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall yesterday, and thanked reporters in Italian for their tireless work over these intense few weeks.
The newly-elected Pope began his remarks with a call for communication to foster peace by caring for how people and events are presented.
He invited media professionals to promote a different kind of communication, one that “does not seek consensus at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition, and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it.”
“The way we communicate is of fundamental importance,” he said. “We must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images; we must reject the paradigm of war.”
Solidarity with persecuted journalists The Pope went on to reaffirm the Church’s solidarity with journalists who have been imprisoned for reporting the truth, and he called for their release.
He said their suffering reminded the world of the importance of the freedom of expression and the press, adding that “only informed individuals can make free choices”.
Service to the truth Pope Leo XIV then thanked reporters for their service to the truth, especially their work to present the Church in the “beauty of Christ’s love” during the recent interregnum period.
He commended their work to put aside stereotypes and clichés, in order to share with the world “the essence of who we are”.
Pope Leo XIV calls for release of journalists imprisoned for ‘seeking truth’ Video: France 24
Our times, he continued, present many issues that were difficult to recount and navigate, noting that they called each of us to overcome mediocrity.
Facing the challenges of our times “The Church must face the challenges posed by the times,” he said. “In the same way, communication and journalism do not exist outside of time and history.
“Saint Augustine reminds of this when he said, ‘Let us live well, and the times will be good. We are the times’.”
Pope Leo XIV said the modern world could leave people lost in a “confusion of loveless languages that are often ideological or partisan.”
The media, he said, must take up the challenge to lead the world out of such a “Tower of Babel,” through the words we use and the style we adopt.
“Communication is not only the transmission of information,” he said, “but it is also the creation of a culture, of human and digital environments that become spaces for dialogue and discussion.”
AI demands responsibility and discernment Pointing to the spread of artificial intelligence, the Pope said AI’s “immense potential” required “responsibility and discernment in order to ensure that it can be used for the good of all, so that it can benefit all of humanity”.
Pope Leo XIV also repeated Pope Francis’ message for the 2025 World Day of Social Communication.
“Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred,” he said. “Let us disarm words, and we will help disarm the world.”
As censorship, misinformation and violence against journalists are on the rise worldwide, RSF has called on the Holy See to maintain a strong, committed voice for press freedom and the protection of journalists everywhere.
“The fact that one of Pope Leo XIV’s first speeches addressed press freedom and the protection of journalists sends a strong signal to news professionals around the world. RSF salutes Pope Leo XIV’s commitment to press freedom and calls on him to build on his declaration with concrete actions to promote the right to information,” said RSF director-generalThibaut Bruttin.
To advance President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cuts, House Republicans on Monday unveiled a proposal that could hand him a powerful new tool to go after his political enemies.
The House Ways and Means Committee will meet Tuesday for a mark-up session of the 389-page draft plan, a massive bundle of draft amendments central to the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that aims to cut trillions of dollars in government spending.
Among those amendments, buried on page 380 of the draft, is a section that would enable Trump’s secretary of the Treasury to denounce any nonprofit as a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip it of its tax-exempt status.
“This seems to just give the president a tool to go after his political enemies and fulfill some of the darker elements of the Project 2025 agenda,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council.
A previous version of the clause — dubbed the “nonprofit killer bill” — was introduced in 2023. Critics viewed that legislation as a bipartisan expression of pro-Israel policy and opposition to pro-Palestinian speech.
The first version of the bill passed the House easily, before languishing in the Senate. But when it reappeared in November — following Trump’s reelection — many Democrats who had backed the bill dropped their support in the face of reporting from The Intercept and a flurry of anger from the party’s base.
At the time, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups warned that the bill would be used by Trump to make good on his campaign promise to crush his political enemies.
Among House Democrats, opposition was marshaled by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas.
“Authoritarianism is not born overnight — it creeps in,” Doggett said during a discussion on the House floor on November 21. “A tyrant tightens his grip not just by seizing power, but when he demands new powers and when those who can stop him willingly cede and bend to his will.”
“Authoritarianism is not born overnight — it creeps in.”
That bill, known as H.R. 9495, or the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, ultimately passed the House 219 to 184, with just 15 Democrats voting in favor. The bill moved on to the Senate, then under Democratic control, where it sat until the end of the lame-duck term.
The language included in the House Republicans’ tax package closely mirrors H.R. 9495.
But the nonprofit clause of the tax bill would give the president wider power to go after organizations that stand in his way.
Republicans control the House and hold the Senate by a narrow margin. Democrats will have the opportunity to attach amendments in committee, giving them a shot to nix the nonprofit clause. But so long as the Republicans remain unified in supporting Trump’s tax plan, they can strike down objections from the opposition.
The reconciliation process is often used as a vehicle for bringing to life policy objectives and previously stalled zombie legislation while sidestepping a potential filibuster in the Senate. The current draft includes a number of clauses intended to offset tax cuts while also securing key policy objectives, such as a provision allowing the taxation of the endowments of private universities and a rollback of access to tax breaks by undocumented immigrants.
Once the Ways and Means Committee settles on an amended version of the current draft, it will move on to the House for debate, further amendment, and a vote, before heading to the Senate.
A group of New Zealand academics at Otago University have drawn up a “Declaration on Palestine” against genocide, apartheid and scholasticide of Palestinians by Israel that has illegally occupied their indigenous lands for more than seven decades.
The document, which had already drawn more than 300 signatures from staff, students and alumni by the weekend, will be formally adopted at a congress of the Otago Staff for Justice in Palestine (OSJP) group on Thursday.
“At a time when our universities, our public institutions and our political leaders are silent in the face of the daily horrors we are shown from illegally-occupied Palestine, this declaration is an act of solidarity with our Palestinian whānau,” declared Professor Richard Jackson from Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa — The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.
“It expresses the brutal truth of what is currently taking place in Palestine, as well as our commitment to international law and human rights, and our social responsibilities as academics.
“We hope the declaration will be an inspiration to others and a call to action at a moment when the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is accelerating at an alarming rate.”
Scholars and students at the university had expressed concern that they did not want to be teaching or learning about the Palestinian genocide in future courses on the history of the Palestinian people, Professor Jackson said.
Nor did they want to feel ashamed when they were asked what they did while the genocide was taking place.
‘Collective moral courage’
“Signing up to the declaration represents an act of individual and collective moral courage, and a public commitment to working to end the genocide.”
The declaration commits its signatories to an academic boycott as part of the wider Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanction (BDS) campaign “until such time as Palestinians enjoy freedom from genocide, apartheid and scholasticide”, they had national self-determination and full and complete enjoyment of human rights, as codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The declaration says that given the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled there is a “plausible” case that Israel has been committing genocide, and that all states that are signatory to the Genocide Convention must take all necessary measures to prevent acts of genocide, the signatories commit themselves to an academic boycott.
BDS is a campaign, begun in 2005, to promote economic, social and cultural boycotts of the Israeli government, Israeli companies and companies that support Israel, in an effort to end the occupation of Palestinian territories and win equal rights for Palestinian citizens within Israel.
It draws inspiration from South African anti-apartheid campaigns and the United States civil rights movement.
The full text of the declaration:
The Otago Declaration on the Situation in Palestine
We, the staff, students and graduates, being members of the University of Otago, make the following declaration.
We fully and completely recognise that: – The Palestinian people have a right under international law to national self-determination; – The Palestinians have the right to security and the full enjoyment of all human and social rights as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
And furthermore that: – Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian nation, according to experts, official bodies, international lawyers and human rights organisations; – Israel operates a system of apartheid in the territories it controls, and denies the full expression and enjoyment of human rights to Palestinians, according to international courts, human rights organisations, legal and academic experts; – Israel is committing scholasticide, thereby denying Palestinians their right to education;
We recognise that: – Given the International Court of Justice has ruled that there is a plausible case that Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, that all states that are signatory to the Genocide Convention, which includes Aotearoa New Zealand, have a responsibility to take all necessary measures to prevent acts of genocide;
We also acknowledge that as members of a public institution with educational responsibilities: – We hold a legal and ethical responsibility to act as critic and conscience of society, both individually as members of the University and collectively as a social institution; – We have a responsibility to follow international law and norms and to act in an ethical manner in our personal and professional endeavours; – We hold an ethical responsibility to act in solidarity with oppressed and disadvantaged people, including those who struggle against settler colonial regimes or discriminatory apartheid systems and the harmful long-term effects of colonisation; – We owe a responsibility to fellow educators who are victimised by apartheid and scholasticide;
Therefore, we, the under-signed, do solemnly commit ourselves to: – Uphold the practices, standards and ethics of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in terms of investment and procurement as called for by Palestinian civil society and international legal bodies; until such time as Palestinians enjoy freedom from genocide, apartheid and scholasticide, national self-determination and full and complete enjoyment of human rights, as codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. – Adopt as part of the BDS campaign an Academic Boycott, as called for by Palestinian civil society and international legal bodies; until such time as Palestinians enjoy freedom from genocide, apartheid and scholasticide, national self-determination and full and complete enjoyment of human rights, as codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Otago Declaration congress meeting will be held on Thursday, May 15, 2025, at 12 noon at the Museum Lawn, Dunedin.
Fresh, stringent security measures have been imposed in New Caledonia following aborted political talks last week and ahead of the first anniversary of the deadly riots that broke out on 13 May 2024, which resulted in 14 deaths and 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4.2 billion) in damages.
On Sunday, the French High Commission in Nouméa announced that from Monday, May 12, to Friday, May 15, all public marches and demonstrations will be banned in the Greater Nouméa Area.
Restrictions have also been imposed on the sale of firearms, ammunition, and takeaway alcoholic drinks.
In the wake of the May 2024 civil unrest, a state of emergency and a curfew had been imposed and had since been gradually lifted.
The decision also comes as “confrontations” between law enforcement agencies and violent groups took place mid-last week, especially in the township of Dumbéa — on the outskirts of Nouméa — where there were attempts to erect fresh roadblocks, High Commissioner Jacques Billant said.
The clashes, including incidents of arson, stone-throwing and vehicles being set on fire, are reported to have involved a group of about 50 individuals and occurred near Médipôle, New Caledonia’s main hospital, and a shopping mall.
Clashes also occurred in other parts of New Caledonia, including outside the capital Nouméa.
It adds another reason for the measures is the “anniversary date of the beginning of the 2024 riots”.
Wrecked and burnt-out cars gathered after the May 2024 riots and dumped at Koutio-Koueta on Ducos island in Nouméa. Image: NC 1ère TV
Law and order stepped up
French authorities have also announced that in view of the first anniversary of the start of the riots tomorrow, law and order reinforcements have been significantly increased in New Caledonia until further notice.
This includes a total of 2600 officers from the Gendarmerie, police, as well as reinforcements from special elite SWAT squads and units equipped with 16 Centaur armoured vehicles.
Drones are also included.
The aim is to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy against “urban violence” through a permanent deployment “night and day”, with a priority to stop any attempt to blockade roads, especially in Greater Nouméa, to preserve freedom of movement.
One particularly sensitive focus would be placed on the township of Saint-Louis in Mont-Dore often described as a pro-independence stronghold which was a hot spot and the scene of violent and deadly clashes at the height of the 2024 riots.
“We’ll be present wherever and whenever required. We are much stronger than we were in 2024,” High Commissioner Billant told local media during a joint inspection with French gendarmes commander General Nicolas Matthéos and Nouméa Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas.
Dupas said that over the past few months the bulk of criminal acts was regarded as “delinquency” — nothing that could be likened to a coordinated preparation for fresh public unrest similar to last year’s.
Billant said that, depending on how the situation evolves in the next few days, he could also rely on additional “potential reinforcements” from mainland France if needed.
French High Commissioner Jacques Billant, Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas and the Gendarmerie commander, General Nicolas Matthéos, confer last Wednesday . . . “We are much stronger than we were in 2024.” Image: Haut-Commissariat de la République en Nouvelle-Calédonie
New Zealand ANZAC war memorial set alight A New Zealand ANZAC war memorial in the small rural town of Boulouparis (west coast of the main island of Grande Terre) was found vandalised last Friday evening.
The monument, inaugurated just one year ago at last year’s ANZAC Day to commemorate the sacrifice of New Zealand soldiers during world wars in the 20th century, was set alight by unidentified people, police said.
Tyres were used to keep the fire burning.
An investigation into the circumstances of the incident is underway, the Nouméa Public Prosecutor’s office said, invoking charges of wilful damage.
Australia, New Zealand travel warnings In the neighbouring Pacific, two of New Caledonia’s main tourism source markets, Australia and New Zealand, are maintaining a high level or increased caution advisory.
The main identified cause is an “ongoing risk of civil unrest”.
In its latest travel advisory, the Australian brief says “demonstrations and protests may increase in the days leading up to and on days of national or commemorative significance, including the anniversary of the start of civil unrest on May 13.
“Avoid demonstrations and public gatherings. Demonstrations and protests may turn violent at short notice.”
Pro-France political leaders at a post-conclave media conference in Nouméa last Thursday . . . objected to the proposed “sovereignty with France”, a kind of independence in association with France. Image: RRB/RNZ Pacific
Inconclusive talks Last Thursday, May 8, French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls, who had managed to gather all political parties around the same table for negotiations on New Caledonia’s political future, finally left the French Pacific territory. He admitted no agreement could be found at this stage.
In the final stage of the talks, the “conclave” on May 5-7, he had put on the table a project for New Caledonia’s accession to a “sovereignty with France”, a kind of independence in association with France.
This option was not opposed by pro-independence groups, including the FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front).
French Overseas Territories Minister Manuel Valls . . . returned to Paris last week without a deal on New Caledonia’s political future. Image: Caledonia TV screenshot APR
But the pro-France movement, in support of New Caledonia remaining a part of France, said it could not approve this.
The main pillar of their argument remained that after three self-determination referendums held between 2018 and 2021, a majority of voters had rejected independence (even though the last referendum, in December 2021, was massively boycotted by the pro-independence camp because of the covid-19 pandemic).
The anti-independence block had repeatedly stated that they would not accept any suggestion that New Caledonia could endorse a status bringing it closer to independence.
New Caledonia’s pro-France MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, told local media at this stage, his camp was de facto in opposition to Valls, “but not with the pro-independence camp”.
Metzdorf said a number of issues could very well be settled by talking to the pro-independence camp.
Electoral roll issue sensitive
This included the very sensitive issue of New Caledonia’s electoral roll, and conditions of eligibility at the next provincial elections.
Mesures administratives
À l’approche de la date d’anniversaire du début des émeutes de 2024, le Haut-commissaire, en lien avec les élus et responsables du monde économique, annonce les mesures suivante du 12 au 15 mai 2025 :
— Haut-commissariat en Nouvelle-Calédonie (@HC98800) May 10, 2025
Direct contacts with Macron Both Metzdorf and Backès also said during interviews with local media that in the midst of their “conclave” negotiations, they had had contacts as high as French President Emmanuel Macron, asking him whether he was aware of the “sovereignty with France” plan and if he endorsed it.
Another pro-France leader, Virginie Ruffenach (Le Rassemblement-Les Républicains), also confirmed she had similar exchanges, through her party Les Républicains, with French Minister of Home Affairs Bruno Retailleau, from the same right-wing party.
As Minister of Home Affairs, Retailleau would have to be involved later in the New Caledonian issue.
Divided reactions Since minister Valls’s departure, reactions were still flowing at the weekend from across New Caledonia’s political chessboard.
“We have to admit frankly that no agreement was struck”, Valls said last week during a media conference.
“Maybe the minds were not mature yet.”
But he said France would now appoint a “follow up committee” to keep working on the “positive points” already identified between all parties.
During numerous press conferences and interviews, anti-independence leaders have consistently maintained that the draft compromise put to them by Minister Valls during the latest round of negotiations last week, was not acceptable.
They said this was because it contained several elements of “independence-association”, including the transfer of key powers from Paris to Nouméa, a project of “dual citizenship” and possibly a seat at the United Nations.
“In proposing this solution, minister [Valls] was biased and blocked the negotiations. So he has prevented the advent of an agreement”, pro-France Les Loyalistes and Southern Province President leader Sonia Backès told public broadcaster NC la 1ère on Sunday.
“For us, an independence association was out of the question because the majority of [New] Caledonians voted three time against independence,” she said.
More provincial power plan
Instead, the Le Rassemblement-LR and Les Loyalistes bloc were advocating a project that would provide more powers to each of the three provinces, including in terms of tax revenue collection.
The project, often described as a de facto partition, however, was not retained in the latest phases of the negotiations, because it contravened France’s constitutional principle of a united and indivisible nation.
“But no agreement does not mean chaos”, Backès said.
On the contrary, she believes that by not agreeing to the French minister’s deal plan, her camp had “averted disaster for New Caledonia”.
“Tomorrow, there will be another minister . . . and another project”, she said, implicitly betting on Valls’s departure.
On the pro-independence front, a moderate “UNI” (National Union For Independence) said a in a statement even though negotiations did not eventuate into a comprehensive agreement, the French State’s commitment and method had allowed to offer “clear and transparent terms of negotiations on New Caledonia’s institutional and political future”.
The main FLNKS group, mainly consisting of pro-independence Union Calédonienne (UC) party, also said that even though no agreement could be found as a result of the latest round of talks, the whole project could be regarded as “advances” and “one more step . . . not a failure” in New Caledonia’s decolonisation, as specified in the 1998 Nouméa Accord, FLNKS chief negotiator and UC party president Emmanuel Tjibaou said.
Deplored the empty outcome
Other parties involved in the talks, including Eveil Océanien and Calédonie Ensemble, have deplored the empty outcome of talks last week.
They called it a “collective failure” and stressed that above all, reaching a consensual solution was the only way forward, and that the forthcoming elections and the preceding campaign could bear the risk of further radicalisation and potential violence.
In the economic and business sector, the conclave’s inconclusive outcome has brought more anxiety and uncertainty.
“What businesses need, now, is political stability, confidence. But without a political agreement that many of us were hoping for, the confidence and visibility is not there, there’s no investment”, New Caledonia’s MEDEF-NC (Business Leaders Union) vice-president Bertrand Courte told NC La Première.
As a result of the May 2024 riots, more than 600 businesses, mainly in Nouméa, were destroyed, causing the loss of more than 10,000 jobs.
Over the past 12 months, New Caledonia GDP (gross domestic product) has shrunk by an estimated 10 to 15 percent, according to the latest figures produced by New Caledonia statistical institute ISEE.
What next? Crucial provincial elections As no agreement was found, the next course of action for New Caledonia was to hold provincial elections no later than 30 November 2025, under the existing system, which still restricts the list of persons eligible to vote at those local elections.
The makeup of the electoral roll for local polls was the very issue that triggered the May 2024 riots, as the French Parliament, at the time, had endorsed a Constitutional amendment to push through opening the list.
At the time, the pro-independence camp argued the changes to eligibility conditions would eventually “dilute” their votes and make indigenous Kanaks a minority in their own country.
The Constitutional bill was abandoned after the May 2024 rots.
The sensitive issue remains part of the comprehensive pact that Valls had been working on for the past four months.
The provincial elections are crucial in that they also determine the proportional makeup of New Caledonia’s Congress and its government and president.
The provincial elections, initially scheduled to take place in May 2024, and later in December 2024, and finally no later than 30 November 2025, were already postponed twice.
Even if the provincial elections are held later this year (under the current “frozen” rules), the anti-independence camp has already announced it would contest its result.
According to the anti-independence camp, the current restrictions on New Caledonia’s electoral roll contradict democratic principles and have to be “unfrozen” and opened up to any citizen residing for more than 10 uninterrupted years.
The present electoral roll is “frozen”, which means it only allows citizens who have have been livingin New Caledonia before November 1998 to cast their vote at local elections.
The case could be brought to the French Constitutional Council, or even higher, to a European or international level, said pro-France politicians.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A decision by the Broadcasting Standards Authority to uphold a complaint against a 1News broadcast last November is a warning to news media, says the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.
1News described violence in the streets of Amsterdam on November 7 and 8 following a soccer match as “disturbing” and ‘antisemitic’ and stated the graphic video of beatings were Maccabi Tel Aviv fans under attack just for being Jewish.
Videographers who took the footage which 1News had used, complained to their news agencies that this description was wrong. The violence had been perpetrated by the Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv fans against those they suspected of being Arab or supporters of Palestine.
The visiting Israelis were the attackers — not the victims, said the PSNA statement, as widely reported by global media correcting initial reports.
Before the match these same Maccabi fans had gathered in large groups to chant “Death to Arabs” — a racist genocidal chant which if used with the races reversed (“Arabs” replaced by Jews”) “would have been rightly condemned in purple prose by Western news media such as TVNZ”, said PSNA co-chair John Minto in the statement.
“But no such sympathy for Palestinians or Arabs,” he added.
Requested broadcast correction
PSNA said in its statement that it had immediately requested that TVNZ broadcast a correction. TVNZ refused, though admitting they had got the story wrong.
PSNA then referred a complaint to the BSA which upheld the complaint as failing to meet the accuracy standard.
Minto said in the statement that the BSA decision should be seen as a warning to news media to be aware that Israel was using “fabricated charges of antisemitism, to justify and divert attention from its genocide in Gaza and silence its critics”.
“Just because [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and the then US President Joe Biden made statements turning Amsterdam attackers into victims, doesn’t mean TVNZ news should automatically parrot them,” Minto said.
“That’s effectively what the BSA concluded.”
Framing violence: How Israel shaped the narrative and the impact on Dutch politics Video: Al Jazeera
Minto also pointed to what he called a recent fabricated hysteria about antisemitism in Sydney, which the New South Wales police found to be completely based on hoaxes by a criminal gang.
“In the US, Trump is using the same charge as an excuse to close down university courses and expel anyone who protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” Minto said.
“Of course, we strongly condemn the real antisemitism of anti-Jewish, Nazi-type Islamophobic groups,” Minto says.
Call for media ‘self education’
“It should be easy for professional reporters and editors to tell the difference between criticism of Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing and violence on one hand, and on the other hand Nazis and their fellow travellers who condemn Jews because they are Jews.
“The BSA is, in effect, demanding the news media educate themselves.”
In a half-hour report on 16 November 2024 headlined “Media bias, inaccuracy and the violence in Amsterdam”, Al Jazeera’s global mediawatch programme The Listening Post said “one night of violence revealed … Western media’s failings on Israel and Palestine”.
“In the wake of an ugly eruption of violence on the streets of Amsterdam, the media coverage of the story [was] put under the microscope with editors scrambling to revise headlines, rework narratives, and reframe video content.”
In an investigative documentary, The Full Report, on 22 January 2025, Al Jazeera’s Dutch correspondent Step Vaessen reported how Israel had framed the violence, shaped the narrative, manipulated the global media, and impacted on Dutch politics.
Israel is in a weak position and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremism knows no bounds. The only other way around an eventual regional war is the ousting of the Israeli prime minister.
US President Donald Trump has closed his line of communication with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to various reports citing officials.
This comes amid alleged growing pressure on Israel regarding Gaza and the abrupt halt to American operations against Ansarallah in Yemen. So, is this all an act or is the US finally pressuring Israel?
On May 1, news broke that President Donald Trump had suddenly ousted his national security advisor Mike Waltz. According to a Washington Post article on the issue, the ouster was in part a response to Waltz’s undermining of the President, for having engaged in intense coordination with Israeli PM Netanyahu regarding the issue of attacking Iran prior to the Israeli Premier’s visit to the Oval Office.
Some analysts, considering that Waltz has been pushing for a war on Iran, argued that his ouster was a signal that the Trump administration’s pro-diplomacy voices were pushing back against the hawks.
This shift also came at a time when Iran-US talks had stalled, largely thanks to a pressure campaign from the Israel Lobby, leading US think tanks and Israeli officials like Ron Dermer.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump publicly announced the end to a campaign designed to destroy/degrade Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government in Sana’a on May 6.
Israeli leadership shocked
According to Israeli media, citing government sources, the leadership in Tel Aviv was shocked by the move to end operations against Yemen, essentially leaving the Israelis to deal with Ansarallah alone.
After this, more information began to leak, originating from the Israeli Hebrew-language media, claiming that the Trump administration was demanding Israel reach an agreement for aid to be delivered to Gaza, in addition to signing a ceasefire agreement.
The other major claim is that President Trump has grown so frustrated with Netanyahu that he has cut communication with him directly.
Although neither side has officially clarified details on the reported rift between the two sides, a few days ago the Israeli prime minister released a social media video claiming that he would act alone to defend Israel.
On Friday morning, another update came in that American Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth would be cancelling his planned visit to Tel Aviv.
Can Trump and Netanyahu remake the Middle East? Video: Palestine Chronicle
Is the US finally standing up to Israel? In order to assess this issue correctly, we have to place all of the above-mentioned developments into their proper context.
The issue must also be prefaced on the fact that every member of the Trump government is pro-Israeli to the hilt and has received significant backing from the Israel Lobby.
Mike Waltz was indeed fired and according to leaked AIPAC audio revealed by The Grayzone, he was somewhat groomed for a role in government by the pro-Israel Lobby for a long time.
Another revelation regarding Waltz, aside from him allegedly coordinating with Netanyahu behind Trump’s back and adding journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a private Signal group chat, was that he was storing his chats on an Israeli-owned app.
Yet, Waltz was not booted out of the government like John Bolton was during Trump’s first term in office, he has instead been designated as UN ambassador to the United Nations.
The UN ambassador position was supposed to be handed to Elise Stefanik, a radically vocal supporter of Israel who helped lead the charge in cracking down on pro-Palestine free speech on university campuses. Stefanik’s nomination was withdrawn in order to maintain the Republican majority in the Congress.
If Trump was truly seeking to push back against the Israel Lobby’s push to collapse negotiations with Iran, then why did Trump signal around a week ago that new sanctions packages were on the way?
He announced on Friday that a third independent Chinese refiner would be hit with secondary sanctions for receiving Iranian oil.
Israeli demands in Trump’s rhetoric
The sanctions, on top of the fact that his negotiating team have continuously attempted to add conditions the the talks, viewed in Tehran as non-starters, indicates that precisely what pro-Israel think tanks like WINEP and FDD have been demanding is working its way into not only the negotiating team, but coming out in Trump’s own rhetoric.
There is certainly an argument to make here, that there is a significant split within the pro-Israel Lobby in the US, which is now working its way into the Trump administration, yet it is important to note that the Trump campaign itself was bankrolled by Zionist billionaires and tech moguls.
Miriam Adelson, Israel’s richest billionaire, was his largest donor. Adelson also happens to own Israel Hayom, the most widely distributed newspaper in Israel that has historically been pro-Netanyahu, it is now also reporting on the Trump-Netanyahu split and feeding into the speculations.
As for the US operations against Yemen, the US has used the attack on Ansarallah as the perfect excuse to move a large number of military assets to the region.
This has included air defence systems to the Gulf States and most importantly to Israel.
After claiming back in March to have already “decimated” Ansarallah, the Trump administration spent way in excess of US$1 billion dollars (more accurately over US$2 billion) and understood that the only way forward was a ground operation.
Meanwhile, the US has also moved military assets to the Mediterranean and is directly involved in intensive reconnaissance over Lebanese airspace, attempting to collect information on Hezbollah.
An Iran attack imminent? While it is almost impossible to know whether the media theatrics regarding the reported Trump-Netanyahu split are entirely true, or if it is simply a good-cop bad-cop strategy, it appears that some kind of assault on Iran could be imminent.
Whether Benjamin Netanyahu is going to order an attack on Iran out of desperation or as part of a carefully choreographed plan, the US will certainly involve itself in any such assault on one level or another.
The Israeli prime minister has painted himself into a corner. In order to save his political coalition, he collapsed the Gaza ceasefire during March and managed to bring back his Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to his coalition.
This enabled him to successfully take on his own Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, in an ongoing purge of his opposition.
However, due to a lack of manpower and inability to launch any major ground operation against Gaza, without severely undermining Israeli security on other fronts, Netanyahu decided to adopt a strategy of starving the people of Gaza instead.
He now threatens a major ground offensive, yet it is hard to see what impact it would have beyond an accelerated mass murder of civilians.
The Israeli prime minister’s mistake was choosing the blocking of all aid into Gaza as the rightwing hill to die on, which has been deeply internalised by his extreme Religious Zionism coalition partners, who now threaten his government’s stability if any aid enters the besieged territory.
Netanyahu in a difficult position
This has put Netanyahu in a very difficult position, as the European Union, UK and US are all fearing the backlash that mass famine will bring and are now pushing Tel Aviv to allow in some aid.
Amidst this, Netanyahu made another commitment to the Druze community that he would intervene on their behalf in Syria.
While Syria’s leadership are signaling their intent to normalise ties and according to a recent report by Yedioth Ahronoth, participated in “direct” negotiations with Israel regarding “security issues”, there is no current threat from Damascus.
However, if tensions escalate in Syria with the Druze minority in the south, failure to fulfill pledges could cause major issues with Israeli Druze, who perform crucial roles in the Israeli military.
Internally, Israel is deeply divided, economically under great pressure and the overall instability could quickly translate to a larger range of issues.
Then we have the Lebanon front, where Hezbollah sits poised to pounce on an opportunity to land a blow in order to expel Israel from their country and avenge the killing of its Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Trigger a ‘doomsday option’?
Meanwhile in Gaza, if Israel is going to try and starve everyone to death, this could easily trigger what can only be called the “doomsday option” from Hamas and other groups there. Nobody is about to sit around and watch their people starve to death.
As for Yemen’s Ansarallah, it is clear that there was no way without a massive ground offensive that the movement was going to stop firing missiles and drones at Israel.
What we have here is a situation in which Israel finds itself incapable of defeating any of its enemies, as all of them have now been radicalised due to the mass murder inflicted upon their populations.
In other words, Israel is not capable of victory on any front and needs a way out.
The leader of the opposition to Israel in the region is perceived to be Iran, as it is the most powerful, which is why a conflict with it is so desired. Yet, Tehran is incredibly powerful and the US is incapable of defeating it with conventional weapons, therefore, a full-scale war is the equivalent to committing regional suicide.
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specialising in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle and it is republished with permission.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:We begin today’s show looking at Israel’s ongoing targeting of Palestinian journalists. A recent report by the Costs of War Project at Brown University described the war in Gaza as the “worst ever conflict for reporters” in history.
By one count, Israel has killed 214 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past 18 months, including two journalists killed on Wednesday — Yahya Subaih and Nour El-Din Abdo. Yahya Subaih died just hours after his wife gave birth to their first child.
Meanwhile, new details have emerged about the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist who was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier three years ago on 11 May 2022.
She was killed while covering an Israeli army assault on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Shireen and another reporter were against a stone wall, wearing blue helmets and blue flak jackets clearly emblazoned with the word “Press”.
Shireen was shot in the head. She was known throughout the Arab world for her decades of tireless reporting on Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel initially claimed she had been shot by Palestinian militants, but later acknowledged she was most likely shot by an Israeli soldier. But Israel has never identified the soldier who fired the fatal shot, or allowed the soldier to be questioned by US investigators.
But a new documentary just released by Zeteo has identified and named the Israeli soldier for the first time. This is the trailer to the documentary Who Killed Shireen?
DION NISSENBAUM: That soldier looked down his scope and could see the blue vest and that it said “press.”
ISRAELI SOLDIER: That’s what I think, yes.
SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: US personnel have never had access to those who are believed to have committed those shootings.
DION NISSENBAUM: No one has been held to account. Justice has not been served.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: She is the first American Palestinian journalist who has been killed by Israeli forces.
DION NISSENBAUM: I want to know: Who killed Shireen?
CONOR POWELL: Are we going to find the shooter?
DION NISSENBAUM: He’s got a phone call set up with this Israeli soldier that was there that day.
CONOR POWELL: We just have to go over to Israel.
DION NISSENBAUM: Did you ever talk to the guy who fired those shots?
ISRAELI SOLDIER: Of course. I know him personally. The US should have actually come forward and actually pressed the fact that an American citizen was killed intentionally by IDF.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: The drones are still ongoing, the explosions going off.
CONOR POWELL: Holy [bleep]! We’ve got a name.
DION NISSENBAUM: But here’s the twist.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:The trailer for the new Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? The film identifies the Israeli soldier who allegedly killed Shireen Abu Akleh as Alon Scagio, who would later be killed during an Israeli military operation last June in Jenin, the same city where Shireen was fatally shot.
AMY GOODMAN:We’re joined right now by four guests, including two members of Shireen Abu Akleh’s family: her brother Anton, or Tony, and her niece Lina. They’re both in North Bergen, New Jersey. We’re also joined by Mehdi Hasan, the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, and by Dion Nissenbaum, the executive producer of Who Killed Shireen?, the correspondent on the documentary, longtime Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem and other cities, a former foreign correspondent. He was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Dion, we’re going to begin with you. This is the third anniversary, May 11th exactly, of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Talk about your revelation, what you exposed in this documentary.
DION NISSENBAUM: Well, there were two things that were very important for the documentary. The first thing was we wanted to find the soldier who killed Shireen. It had been one of the most closely guarded secrets in Israel. US officials said that if they wanted to determine if there was a crime here, if there was a human rights violation, they needed to talk to this soldier to find out what he was thinking when he shot her.
And we set out to find him. And we did. We did what the US government never did. And it turned out he had been killed, so we were never able to answer that question — what he was thinking.
But the other revelation that I think is as significant in this documentary is that the initial US assessment of her shooting was that that soldier intentionally shot her and that he could tell that she was wearing a blue flak jacket with “Press” across it.
That assessment was essentially overruled by the Biden administration, which came out and said exactly the opposite. That’s a fairly startling revelation, that the Biden administration and the Israeli government essentially were doing everything they could to cover up what happened that day to Shireen Abu Akleh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to a clip from the documentary Who Killed Shireen?, in which Dion Nissenbaum, our guest, speaks with former State Department official Andrew Miller. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.
ANDREW MILLER: It’s nearly 100 percent certain that an Israeli soldier, likely a sniper, fired the shot that killed or the shots that killed Shireen Abu Akleh. Based on all the information we have, it is not credible to suggest that there were targets either in front of or behind Shireen Abu Akleh.
The fact that the official Israeli position remains that this was a case of crossfire, the entire episode was a mistake, as opposed to potentially a mistaken identification or the deliberate targeting of this individual, points to, I think, a broader policy of seeking to manage the narrative.
DION NISSENBAUM: And did the Israelis ever make the soldier available to the US to talk about it?
ANDREW MILLER: No. And the Israelis were not willing to present the person for even informal questioning.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was State Department official — former State Department official Andrew Miller, speaking in the Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.
I want to go to Shireen’s family, whom we have as guests, Anton Abu Akleh and Lina, who are joining us from New Jersey. You both watched the film for the first time last night when it premiered here in New York City. Lina, if you could begin by responding to the revelations in the film?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Hi, Amy. Hi. Thank you for having us.
Honestly, we always welcome and we appreciate journalists who try to uncover the killing of Shireen, but also who shed light on her legacy. And the documentary that was released by Zeteo and by Dion, it really revealed findings that we didn’t know before, but we’ve always known that it was an Israeli soldier who killed Shireen. And we know how the US administration failed our family, failed a US citizen and failed a journalist, really.
And that should be a scandal in and of itself.
But most importantly, for us as a family, it’s not just about one soldier. It’s about the entire chain of command. It’s not just the person who pulled the trigger, but who ordered the killing, and the military commanders, the elected officials.
So, really, it’s the entire chain of command that needs to be held to account for the killing of a journalist who was in a clear press vest, press gear, marked as a journalist.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Anton, if you could respond? Shireen, of course, was your younger sister. What was your response watching the documentary last night?
ANTON ABU AKLEH: It’s very painful to look at all these scenes again, but I really extend my appreciation to Zeteo and all those who supported and worked on this documentary, which was very revealing, many things we didn’t know. The cover-up by the Biden administration, this thing was new to us.
He promised. First statements came out from the White House and from the State Department stressed on the importance of holding those responsible accountable. And apparently, in one of the interviews heard in this documentary, he never raised — President Biden never raised this issue with Bennett, at that time the prime minister.
So, that’s shocking to us to know it was a total cover-up, contradictory to what they promised us. And that’s — like Lina just said, it’s a betrayal, not only to the family, not only to Shireen, but the whole American nation.
AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, you’ve backed this documentary. It’s the first big documentary Zeteo is putting out. It’s also the first anniversary of the founding of Zeteo. Can you talk about the proof that you feel is here in the documentary that Alon Scagio, this — and explain who he is and the unit he was a part of? Dion, it’s quite something when you go to his grave. But how you can absolutely be sure this is the man?
MEHDI HASAN:So, Amy, Nermeen, thanks for having us here. I’ve been on this show many times. I just want to say, great to be here on set with both of you. Thank you for what you do.
This is actually our second documentary, but it is our biggest so far, because the revelations in this film that Dion and the team put out are huge in many ways — identifying the soldier, as you mentioned, Alon Scagio, identifying the Biden cover-up, which we just heard Tony Abu Akleh point out. People didn’t realise just how big that cover-up was.
Remember, Joe Biden was the man who said, “If you harm an American, we will respond.” And what is very clear in the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen who spent a lot of her life in New Jersey, they did not respond.
In terms of the soldier itself, when Dion came to me and said, “We want to make this film. It’ll be almost like a true crime documentary. We’re going to go out and find out who did it” — because we all — everyone followed the story. You guys covered it in 2022. It was a huge story in the world.
But three years later, to not even know the name of the shooter — and I was, “Well, will we be able to find this out? It’s one of Israel’s most closely guarded secrets.” And yet, Dion and his team were able to do the reporting that got inside of Duvdevan, this elite special forces unit in Israel.
It literally means “the cherry on top.” That’s how proud they are of their eliteness. And yet, no matter how elite you are, Israel’s way of fighting wars means you kill innocent people.
And what comes out in the film from interviews, not just with a soldier, an Israeli soldier, who speaks in the film and talks about how, “Hey, if you see a camera, you take the shot,” but also speaking to Chris Van Hollen, United States Senator from Maryland, who’s been one of the few Democratic voices critical of Biden in the Senate, who says there’s been no change in Israel’s rules of engagement over the years.
And therefore, it was so important on multiple levels to do this film, to identify the shooter, because, of course, as you pointed out in your news headlines, Amy, they just killed a hundred Palestinians yesterday.
So this is not some old story from history where this happened in 2022 and we’re going back. Everything that happened since, you could argue, flows from that — the Americans who have been killed, the journalists who have been killed in Gaza, Palestinians, the sense of impunity that Israel has and Israel’s soldiers have.
There are reports that Israeli soldiers are saying to Palestinians, “Hey, Trump has our back. Hey, the US government has our back.” And it wasn’t just Trump. It was Joe Biden, too.
And that was why it was so important to make this film, to identify the shooter, to call out Israel’s practices when it comes to journalists, and to call out the US role.
AMY GOODMAN: I just want to go to Dion, for people who aren’t familiar with the progression of what the Biden administration said, the serious cover-up not only by Israel, but of its main military weapons supplier and supporter of its war on Gaza, and that is Joe Biden, from the beginning.
First Israel said it was a Palestinian militant. At that point, what did President Biden say?
DION NISSENBAUM: So, at the very beginning, they said that they wanted the shooter to be prosecuted. They used that word at the State Department and said, “This person who killed an American journalist should be prosecuted.” But when it started to become clear that it was probably an Israeli soldier, their tone shifted, and it became talking about vague calls for accountability or changes to the rules of engagement, which never actually happened.
So, you got to a point where the Israeli government admitted it was likely them, the US government called for them to change the rules of engagement, and the Israeli government said no. And we have this interview in the film with Senator Chris Van Hollen, who says that, essentially, Israel was giving the middle finger to the US government on this.
And we have seen, since that time, more Americans being killed in the West Bank, dozens and dozens and dozens of journalists being killed, with no accountability. And we would like to see that change.
This is a trajectory that you’re seeing. You know, the blue vest no longer provides any protection for journalists in Israel. The Israeli military itself has said that wearing a blue vest with “Press” on it does not necessarily mean that you are a journalist.
They are saying that terrorists wear blue vests, too. So, if you are a journalist operating in the West Bank now, you have to assume that the Israeli military could target you.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to another clip from the film Who Killed Shireen?, which features Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured. In the clip, he speaks to the journalist Fatima AbdulKarim.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: We are set up here now, even though we were supposed to meet at the location where you got injured and Shireen got killed.
ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] We are five minutes from the location in Maidan al-Awdah. But you could lose your soul in the five minutes it would take us to reach it. You could be hit by army bullets. They could arrest you.
So it is essentially impossible to get there. I believe the big disaster which prevented the occupation from being punished and repeating these crimes is the neglect and indifference by many of the institutions, especially American ones, which continue to defend the occupation.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: [translated] We’re now approaching the third anniversary of Shireen’s death. How did that affect you?
ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] During that period, the occupation was making preparations for a dangerous scenario in the Jenin refugee camp. And for this reason, they didn’t want witnesses.
They opened fire on us in order to terroriSe us enough that we wouldn’t go back to the camp. And in that sense, they partially succeeded.
Since then, we have been overcome by fear. From the moment Shireen was killed, I said and continue to say and will continue to say that this bullet was meant to prevent the Palestinian media from the documentation and exposure of the occupation’s crimes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured.
We should note, Ali Samoudi was just detained by Israeli forces in late April. The Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti recently wrote, “Ali Samoudi was beaten so bad by Israeli soldiers he was immediately hospitalised. This man has been one of the few journalists that continues reporting on Israeli military abuses north of the West Bank despite the continued risk on his life,” Mariam Barghouti wrote.
The Committee to Protect Journalists spoke to the journalist’s son, Mohammed Al Samoudi, who told CPJ, quote, “My father suffers from several illnesses, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and a stomach ulcer . . . He needs a diabetes injection every two days and a specific diet. It appears he was subjected to assault and medical neglect at the interrogation center . . .
“Our lawyer told us he was transferred to an Israeli hospital after a major setback in his health. We don’t know where he is being held, interrogated, or even the hospital to which he was taken. My father has been forcibly disappeared,” he said.
So, Dion Nissenbaum, if you could give us the latest? You spoke to Ali Samoudi for the documentary, and now he’s been detained.
DION NISSENBAUM: Yeah. His words were prophetic, right? He talks about this was an attempt to silence journalists. And my colleague Fatima says the same thing, that these are ongoing, progressive efforts to silence Palestinian journalists.
And we don’t know where Ali is. He has not actually been charged with anything yet. He is one of the most respected journalists in the West Bank. And we are just seeing this progression going on.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the latest we know is he was supposed to have a hearing, and that hearing has now been delayed to May 13th, Ali Samoudi?
DION NISSENBAUM: That’s right. And he has yet to be charged, so . . .
AMY GOODMAN:I want to go back to Lina Abu Akleh, who’s in New Jersey, where Shireen grew up. Lina, you were listed on Time magazine’s 100 emerging leaders for publicly demanding scrutiny of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the horror.
And again, our condolences on the death of your aunt, on the killing of your aunt, and also to Anton, Shireen’s brother. Lina, you’ve also, of course, spoken to Ali Samoudi. This continues now. He’s in detention — his son says, “just disappeared”.
What are you demanding right now? We have a new administration. We’ve moved from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. And are you in touch with them? Are they speaking to you?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Well, our demands haven’t changed. From day one, we’re calling for the US administration to complete its investigation, or for the FBI to continue its investigation, and to finally release — to finally hold someone to account.
And we have enough evidence that could have been — that the administration could have used to expedite this case. But, unfortunately, this new administration, as well, no one has spoken to us. We haven’t been in touch with anyone, and it’s just been radio silence since.
For us, as I said, our demands have never changed. It’s been always to hold the entire system to account, the entire chain of command, the military, for the killing of an American citizen, a journalist, a Palestinian, Palestinian American journalist.
As we’ve been talking, targeting journalists isn’t happening just by shooting at them or killing them. There’s so many different forms of targeting journalists, especially in Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem.
So, for us, it’s really important as a family that we don’t see other families experience what we are going through, for this — for impunity, for Israel’s impunity, to end, because, at the end of the day, accountability is the only way to put an end to this impunity.
AMY GOODMAN: I am horrified to ask this question to Shireen’s family members, to Lina, to Tony, Shireen’s brother, but the revelation in the film — we were all there last night at its premiere in New York — that the Israeli soldiers are using a photograph of Shireen’s face for target practice. Tony Abu Akleh, if you could respond?
ANTON ABU AKLEH: You know, there is no words to describe our sorrow and pain hearing this. But, you know, I would just want to know why. Why would they do this thing? What did Shireen do to them for them to use her as a target practice? You know, this is absolutely barbaric act, unjustified. Unjustified.
And we really hope that this US administration will be able to put an end to all this impunity they are enjoying. If they didn’t enjoy all this impunity, they wouldn’t have been doing this. Practising on a journalist? Why? You know, you can practice on anything, but on a journalist?
This shows that this targeting of more journalists, whether in Gaza, in Palestine, it’s systematic. It’s been planned for. And they’ve been targeting and shutting off those voices, those reports, from reaching anywhere in the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:And, Anton, if you could say — you know, you mentioned last night, as well, Shireen was, in fact, extremely cautious as a journalist. If you could elaborate on that? What precisely —
ANTON ABU AKLEH: Absolutely. Absolutely. Shireen was very careful. Every time she’s in the field, she would take her time to put on the gear, the required helmet, the vest with “press” written on it, before going there. She also tried to identify herself as a journalist, whether to the Israelis or to the Palestinians, so she’s not attacked.
And she always went by the book, followed the rules, how to act, how to be careful, how to speak to those people involved, so she can protect herself. But, unfortunately, he was — this soldier, as stated in the documentary, targeted Shireen just because she’s Shireen and she’s a journalist. That’s it. There is no other explanation.
Sixteen bullets were fired on Shireen. Not even her helmet, nor the vest she was wearing, were able to protect her, unfortunately.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mehdi Hasan, you wanted to respond.
MEHDI HASAN: So, Tony asks, “Why? Why would you do this? Why would you target not just a journalist in the field, but then use her face for target practice?” — as Dion and his team reveal in the film. And there is, unfortunately, a very simple answer to that question, which is that the Israeli military — and not just the Israeli military, but many people in our world today — have dehumanised Palestinians.
There is the removal of humanity from the people you are oppressing, occupying, subjugating and killing. It doesn’t matter if you’re an American citizen. It doesn’t matter if you have a press jacket on. It only matters that you are Palestinian in the sniper’s sights.
And that is how they have managed to pull of the killing of so many journalists, so many children. The first documentary we commissioned last year was called Israel’s Real Extremism, and it was about the Israeli soldiers who go into Gaza and make TikTok videos wearing Palestinian women’s underwear, playing with Palestinian children’s toys. It is the ultimate form of dehumanisation, the idea that these people don’t count, their lives have no value.
And what’s so tragic and shocking — and the film exposes this — is that Joe Biden — forget the Israeli military — Joe Biden also joined in that dehumanisation. Do you remember at the start of this conflict when he comes out and he says, “Well, I’m not sure I believe the Palestinian death toll numbers,” when he puts out a statement at the hundred days after October 7th and doesn’t mention Palestinian casualties.
And that has been the fundamental problem. This was the great comforter-in-chief. Joe Biden was supposed to be the empath. And yet, as Tony points out, what was so shocking in the film is he didn’t even raise Shireen’s case with Naftali Bennett, the prime minister of Israel at the time.
Again, would he have done that if it was an American journalist in Moscow? We know that’s not the case. We know when American journalists, especially white American journalists, are taken elsewhere in the world, the government gives a damn. And yet, in the case of Shireen, the only explanation is because she was a Palestinian American journalist.
AMY GOODMAN:You know, in the United States, the US government is responsible for American citizens, which Biden pointed out at the beginning, when he thought it was a Palestinian militant who had killed her. But, Lina, you yourself are a journalist. And I’m thinking I want to hear your response to using her face, because, of course, that is not just the face of Shireen, but I think it’s the face of journalism.
And it’s not just American journalism, of course. I mean, in fact, she’s known to hundreds of millions of people around world as the face and voice of Al Jazeera Arabic. She spoke in Arabic. She was known as that to the rest of the world. But to see that and that revealed in this documentary?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Yeah, it was horrifying, actually. And it just goes on to show how the Israeli military is built. It’s barbarism. It’s the character of revenge, of hate. And that is part of the entire system. And as Mehdi and as my father just mentioned, this is all about dehumanizing Palestinians, regardless if they’re journalists, if they’re doctors, they’re officials. For them, they simply don’t care about Palestinian lives.
And for us, Shireen will always be the voice of Palestine. And she continues to be remembered for the legacy that she left behind. And she continues to live through so many, so many journalists, who have picked up the microphone, who have picked up the camera, just because of Shireen.
So, regardless of how the Israeli military continues to dehumanise journalists and how the US fails to protect Palestinian American journalists, we will continue to push forward to continue to highlight the life and the legacy that Shireen left behind.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:Well, let’s turn to Shireen Abu Akleh in her own words. This is an excerpt from the Al Jazeera English documentary The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh.
SHIREEN ABU AKLEH: [translated] Sometimes the Israeli army doesn’t want you there, so they target you, even if they later say it was an accident. They might say, “We saw some young men around you.” So they target you on purpose, as a way of scaring you off because they don’t want you there.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that was Shireen in her own words in an Al Jazeera documentary. So, Lina, I know you have to go soon, but if you could just tell us: What do you want people to know about Shireen, as an aunt, a sister and a journalist?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Yes, so, we know Shireen as the journalist, but behind the camera, she was one of the most empathetic people. She was very sincere. And something not a lot of people know, but she was a very funny person. She had a very unique sense of humor, that she lit up every room she entered. She cared about everyone and anyone. She enjoyed life.
Shireen, at the end of the day, loved life. She had plans. She had dreams that she still wanted to achieve. But her life was cut short by that small bullet, which would change our lives entirely.
But at the end of the day, Shireen was a professional journalist who always advocated for truth, for justice. And at the end of the day, all she wanted to do was humanise Palestinians and talk about the struggles of living under occupation. But at the same time, she wanted to celebrate their achievements.
She shed light on all the happy moments, all the accomplishments of the Palestinian people. And this is something that really touched millions of Palestinians, of Arabs around the world. She was able to enter the hearts of the people through the small camera lens. And until this day, she continues to be remembered for that.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, we’re going to keep you on, Mehdi, to talk about other issues during the Trump administration, but how can people access Who Killed Shireen?
MEHDI HASAN: So, it’s available online at WhoKilledShireen.com, is where you can go to watch it. We are releasing the film right now only to paid subscribers. We hope to change that in the forthcoming days.
People often say to me, “How can you put it behind a paywall?” Journalism — a free press isn’t free, sadly. We have to fund films like this. Dion came to us because a lot of other people didn’t want to fund a topic like this, didn’t want to fund an investigation like this.
So, we’re proud to be able to fund such documentaries, but we also need support from our contributors, our subscribers and the viewers. But it’s an important film, and I hope as many people will watch it as possible, WhoKilledShireen.com.
AMY GOODMAN:We want to thank Lina, the niece of Shireen Abu Akleh, and Anton, Tony, the older brother of Shireen Abu Akleh, for joining us from New Jersey. Together, we saw the documentary last night, Who Killed Shireen? And we want to thank Dion Nissenbaum, who is the filmmaker, the correspondent on this film, formerly a correspondent with The Wall Street Journal. The founder of Zeteo, on this first anniversary of Zeteo, is Mehdi Hasan.
He became a cardinal only in 2023 and has become the first-ever US pope.
PCC general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan said he was not a Vatican insider, but there had been talk of cardinals feeling that the new pope should be a “middle-of-the-road person”.
Reverend Bhagwan said there had been prayers for God’s wisdom to guide the decisions made at the Conclave.
“I think if we look at where the decisions perhaps were made or based on, there had been a lot of talk that the cardinals going into Conclave had felt that a new pope would need to be someone who could take forward the legacy of Pope Francis, reaching out to those in the margins, but also be a sort of a middle-of-the-road person,” he said.
Hopes for climate response
Reverend Bhagwan said the Pacific hoped that Pope Leo carried on the late Pope Francis’s connection to the climate change response.
He said Pope Francis released his “laudate deum” exhortation on the climate shortly before the United Nations climate summit in Dubai last year.
“The focus on care for creation, the focus for ending fossil fuels and climate justice, the focus on people from the margins — I think that’s important for the Pacific people at this time.
“I know that the Catholic Church in the Pacific has been focused on on its synodal process, and so he spoke about synodality as well.
“I know that there were hopes for an Oceania synod, just as Pope Francis held a synod of the Amazon. And I think that is still something that’s in the hearts of many of our Catholic leaders and Catholic members.
“We hope that this will be an opportunity to still bring that focus to the Pacific.”
He said they were confident Pope Leo would pick up many of the issues Francis was well known for, like speaking up for climate change, human trafficking and the plight of refugees; and within the church, a different way of meeting and talking with one another — known as synodality — which is an ongoing process.
“I think any pope needs to be able to challenge things that are happening around the world, especially if it is affecting the lives of people, where the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.”
Pope Leo appeared to be a very calm person, he added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
We’ve visited Ground Zero. Not once, but three times. But for generations, before these locations were designated as such, they were the ancestral home to the people of the Marshall Islands.
As part of a team of Greenpeace scientists and specialists from the Radiation Protection Advisers team, we have embarked on a six-week tour on board the Rainbow Warrior, sailing through one of the most disturbing chapters in human history: between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs across the Marshall Islands — equivalent to 7200 Hiroshima explosions.
During this period, testing nuclear weapons at the expense of wonderful ocean nations like the Marshall Islands was considered an acceptable practice, or as the US put it, “for the good of mankind”.
Instead, the radioactive fallout left a deep and complex legacy — one that is both scientific and profoundly human, with communities displaced for generations.
Between March and April, we travelled on the Greenpeace flagship vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, throughout the Marshall Islands, including to three northern atolls that bear the most severe scars of Cold War nuclear weapons testing:
Enewetak atoll, where, on Runit Island, stands a massive leaking concrete dome beneath which lies plutonium-contaminated waste, a result of a partial “clean-up” of some of the islands after the nuclear tests;
Bikini atoll, a place so beautiful, yet rendered uninhabitable by some of the most powerful nuclear detonations ever conducted; and
Rongelap atoll, where residents were exposed to radiation fallout and later convinced to return to contaminated land, part of what is now known as Project 4.1, a US medical experiment to test humans’ exposure to radiation.
This isn’t fiction, nor the distant past. It’s a chapter of history still alive through the environment, the health of communities, and the data we’re collecting today.
Each location we visit, each sample we take, adds to a clearer picture of some of the long-term impacts of nuclear testing—and highlights the importance of continuing to document, investigate, and attempt to understand and share these findings.
These are our field notes from a journey through places that hold important lessons for science, justice, and global accountability.
Our mission: why are we here? With the permission and support of the Marshallese government, a group of Greenpeace science and radiation experts, together with independent scientists, are in the island nation to assess, investigate, and document the long-term environmental and radiological consequences of nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands.
Our mission is grounded in science. We’re conducting field sampling and radiological surveys to gather data on what radioactivity remains in the environment — isotopes such as caesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239/240. These substances are released during nuclear explosions and can linger in the environment for decades, posing serious health risks, such as increased risk of cancers in organs and bones.
But this work is not only about radiation measurements, it is also about bearing witness.
We are here in solidarity with Marshallese communities who continue to live with the consequences of decisions made decades ago, without their consent and far from the public eye.
Stop 1: Enewetak Atoll — the dome that shouldn’t exist
At the far western edge of the Marshall Islands is Enewetak. The name might not ring a bell for many, but this atoll was the site of 43 US nuclear detonations. Today, it houses what may be one of the most radioactive places in the world — the Runit Dome.
Once a tropical paradise thick with coconut palms, Runit Island is capped by a massive concrete structure the size of a football field. Under this dome — cracked, weather-worn, and only 46 centimetres thick in some places — lies 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste. These substances are not only confined to the crater — they are also found across the island’s soil, rendering Runit Island uninhabitable for all time.
The contrast between what it once was and what it has become is staggering. We took samples near the dome’s base, where rising sea levels now routinely flood the area.
We collected coconut from the island, which will be processed and prepared in the Rainbow Warrior’s onboard laboratory. Crops such as coconut are a known vector for radioactive isotope transfer, and tracking levels in food sources is essential for understanding long-term environmental and health risks.
The local consequences of this simple fact are deeply unjust. While some atolls in the Marshall Islands can harvest and sell coconut products, the people of Enewetak are prohibited from doing so because of radioactive contamination.
They have lost not only their land and safety but also their ability to sustain themselves economically. The radioactive legacy has robbed them of income and opportunity.
One of the most alarming details about this dome is that there is no lining beneath the structure — it is in direct contact with the environment, while containing some of the most hazardous long-lived substances ever to exist on planet Earth. It was never built to withstand flooding, sea level rise, and climate change.
The scientific questions are urgent: how much of this material is already leaking into the lagoon? What are the exposure risks to marine ecosystems and local communities?
We are here to help answer questions with new, independent data, but still, being in the craters and walking on this ground where nuclear Armageddon was unleashed is an emotional and surreal journey.
Stop 2: Bikini — a nuclear catastrophe, labelled ‘for the good of mankind’
Unlike Chernobyl or Fukushima, where communities were devastated by catastrophic accidents, Bikini tells a different story. This was not an accident.
The nuclear destruction of Bikini was deliberate, calculated, and executed with full knowledge that entire ways of life were going to be destroyed.
Bikini Atoll is incredibly beautiful and would look idyllic on any postcard. But we know what lies beneath: the site of 23 nuclear detonations, including Castle Bravo, the largest ever nuclear weapons test conducted by the United States.
Castle Bravo alone released more than 1000 times the explosive yield of the Hiroshima bomb. The radioactive fallout massively contaminated nearby islands and their populations, together with thousands of US military personnel.
Bikini’s former residents were forcibly relocated in 1946 before nuclear testing began, with promises of a safe return. But the atoll is still uninhabited, and most of the new generations of Bikinians have never seen their home island.
As we stood deep in the forest next to a massive concrete blast bunker, reality hit hard — behind its narrow lead-glass viewing window, US military personnel once watched the evaporation of Bikini lagoon.
On our visit, we noticed there’s a spectral quality to Bikini. The homes of the Bikini islanders are long gone. In its place now stand a scattering of buildings left by the US Department of Energy: rusting canteens, rotting offices, sleeping quarters with peeling walls, and traces of the scientific experiments conducted here after the bombs fell.
On dusty desks, we found radiation reports, notes detailing crop trials, and a notebook meticulously tracking the application of potassium to test plots of corn, alfalfa, lime, and native foods like coconut, pandanus, and banana. The potassium was intended to block the uptake of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope, by plant roots.
The logic was simple: if these crops could be decontaminated, perhaps one day Bikini could be repopulated.
We collected samples of coconuts and soil — key indicators of internal exposure risk if humans were to return. Bikini raises a stark question: What does “safe” mean, and who gets to decide?
The US declared parts of Bikini habitable in 1970, only to evacuate people again eight years later after resettled families suffered from radiation exposure. The science is not abstract here. It is personal. It is human. It has real consequences.
The Rainbow Warrior arrived at the eastern side of Rongelap atoll, anchoring one mile from the centre of Rongelap Island, the church spire and roofs of “new” buildings reflecting the bright sun.
n 1954, fallout from the Castle Bravo nuclear detonation on Bikini blanketed this atoll in radioactive ash — fine, white powder that children played in, thinking it was snow. The US government waited three days to evacuate residents, despite knowing the risks. The US government declared it safe to return to Rongelap in 1957 — but it was a severely contaminated environment. The very significant radiation exposure to the Rongelap population caused severe health impacts: thyroid cancers, birth defects such as “jellyfish babies”, miscarriages, and much more.
In 1985, after a request to the US government to evacuate was dismissed, the Rongelap community asked Greenpeace to help relocate them from their ancestral lands. Using the first Rainbow Warrior, and over a period of 10 days and four trips, 350 residents collectively dismantled their homes, bringing everything with them — including livestock, and 100 metric tons of building material — where they resettled on the islands of Mejatto and Ebeye on Kwajalein atoll.
It is a part of history that lives on in the minds of the Marshallese people we meet in this ship voyage — in the gratitude they still express, the pride in keeping the fight for justice, and in the pain of still not having a permanent, safe home.
Now, once again, we are standing on their island of Rongelap, walking past abandoned buildings and rusting equipment, some of it dating from the 1980s and 1990s — a period when the US Department of Energy launched a push to encourage resettlement declaring that the island was safe — a declaration that this time, the population welcomed with mistrust, not having access to independent scientific data and remembering the deceitful relocation of some decades before.
Here, once again, we sample soil and fruits that could become food if people came back. It is essential to understand ongoing risks — especially for communities considering whether and how to return.
Our scientific mission is to take measurements, collect samples, and document contamination. But that’s not all we’re bringing back.
We carry with us the voices of the Marshallese who survived these tests and are still living with their consequences. We carry images of graves swallowed by tides near Runit Dome, stories of entire cultures displaced from their homelands, and measurements of radiation showing contamination still persists after many decades.
There are 9700 nuclear warheads still held by military powers around the world – mostly in the United States and Russian arsenals. The Marshall Islands was one of the first nations to suffer the consequences of nuclear weapons — and the legacy persists today.
We didn’t come to speak for the Marshallese. We came to listen, to bear witness, and to support their demand for justice. We plan to return next year, to follow up on our research and to make results available to the people of the Marshall Islands.
And we will keep telling these stories — until justice is more than just a word.
Kommol Tata (“thank you” in the beautiful Marshallese language) for following our journey.
Shaun Burnie is a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Ukraine and was part of the Rainbow Warrior team in the Marshall Islands. This article was first published by Greenpeace Aotearoa and is republished with permission.
This article was initially set out to focus onThe Encampments, Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman’s impassioned documentary that chronicles the Columbia University student movement that shook the United States and captured imaginations the world over.
But then it came to my attention that a sparring film has been released around the same time, offering a staunchly pro-Israeli counter-narrative that vehemently attempts to discredit the account offered by The Encampments.
October 8 charts the alleged rise of antisemitism in the US in the wake of the October 7 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas-led Palestinian fighters.
A balanced record though, it is not. Wendy Sachs’s solo debut feature, which has the subhead, “The Fight for the Soul of America”, is essentially an unabashed defence of the silencing of pro-Palestinian voices.
Its omissions are predictable; its moral logic is fascinatingly disturbing; its manipulative arguments are the stuff of Steven Bannon.
It’s easily the most abhorrent piece of mainstream Israeli propaganda this writer has come across .
Ignoring October 8 would be injudicious, however. Selected only by a number of Jewish film festivals in the US, the film was released in mid-March by indie distribution outfit Briarcliff Entertainment in more than 125 theatres.
The film has amassed more than $1.3 million so far at the US box office, making it the second-highest grossing documentary of the year, ironically behind the self-distributed and Oscar-winning No Other Land about Palestine at $2.4 million.
October 8 has sold more than 90,000 tickets, an impressive achievement given the fact that at least 73 percent of the 7.5 million Jewish Americans still hold a favourable view of Israel.
“It would be great if we were getting a lot of crossover, but I don’t know that we are,” Sachs admitted to the Hollywood Reporter.
Zionist films have been largely absent from most local and international film festivals — curation, after all, is an ethical occupation — while Palestinian stories, by contrast, have seen an enormous rise in popularity since October 7.
The phenomenon culminated with the Oscar win for No Other Land.
October 8 . . . “easily the most abhorrent piece of mainstream Israeli propaganda this writer has come across.” Image: Briarcliff Entertainment
But the release of October 8 and the selection of several Israeli hostage dramas in February’s Berlin Film Festival indicates that the war has officially reached the big screen.
With the aforementioned hostage dramas due to be shown stateside later this year, and no less than four major Palestinian pictures set for theatrical release over the next 12 months, this Israeli-Palestinian film feud is just getting started.
Working for change The Encampments, which raked in a highly impressive $423,000 in 50 theatres after a month of release, has been garnering more headlines, not only due to the fact that the recently detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil happens to be one of its protagonists, but because it is clearly the better film.
Pritsker and Workman, who were on the ground with the students for most of the six-week duration of the set-in, provide a keenly observed, intimate view of the action, capturing the inspiring highs and dispiriting lows of the passionate demonstrations and wayward negotiations with Columbia’s administrations.
The narrative is anchored from the point of views of four students: Grant Miner, a Jewish PhD student who was expelled in March for his involvement in the protests; Sueda Polat, a protest negotiator and spokesperson for the encampments; Naye Idriss, a Palestinian organiser and Columbia alumni; and the soft-spoken Khalil, the Palestinian student elected to lead the negotiations.
A desire for justice, for holding Israel accountable for its crimes in Gaza, permeated the group’s calling for divesting Columbia’s $13.6 billion endowment funds from weapons manufacturers and tech companies with business links to the Netanyahu’s administration.
Each of the four shares similar background stories, but Miner and Khalil stand out. As a Jew, Miner is an example of a young Jewish American generation that regard their Jewishness as a moral imperative for defending the Palestinian cause.
Khalil, meanwhile, carries the familiar burden of being a child of the camps: a descendant of a family that was forcibly displaced from their Tiberias home in 1948.
The personal histories provide ample opportunities for reflections around questions of identity, trauma, and the youthful desire for tangible change.
Each protester stresses that the encampment was a last and only resort after the Columbia hierarchy casually brushed aside their concerns.
These concerns transformed into demands when it became clear that only more strident action like sit-ins could push the Columbia administration to engage with them.
In an age when most people are content to sit idly behind their computers waiting for something to happen, these students took it upon themselves to actively work for change in a country where change, especially in the face of powerful lobbies, is arduous.
Only through protests, the viewers begin to realise, can these four lucidly deal with the senseless, numbing bloodshed and brutality in Gaza.
Crackdown on free speech Through skilled placement of archival footage, Pritsker and Workman aptly link the encampments with other student movements in Columbia, including the earlier occupation of Hamilton Hall in 1968 that demonstrated the university’s historic ties with bodies that supported America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
Both anti-war movements were countered by an identical measure: the university’s summoning of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to violently dismantle the protests.
Neither the Columbia administration, represented by the disgraced ex-president Minouche Shafik, nor the NYPD are portrayed in a flattering fashion.
Shafik comes off as a wishy-washy figure, too protective of her position to take a concrete stance for or against the pro-Palestinian protesters.
The NYPD were a regular fixture outside universities in New York during the encampments during 2024 Image: MEE/Azad Essa
The NYPD’s employment of violence against the peaceful protests that they declared to have “devolved into antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric” is an admission that violence against words can be justified, undermining the First Amendment of the US constitution, which protects free speech.
The Encampments is not without flaws. By strictly adhering to the testimonials of its subjects, Pritsker and Workman leave out several imperative details.
These include the identity of the companies behind endowment allocations, the fact that several Congress senators who most prominently criticised the encampments “received over $100,000 more on average from pro-Israel donors during their last election” according to a Guardianfinding, and the revelations that US police forces have received analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict directly from the Israeli army and Israeli think tanks.
The suggested link between the 1968 protests and the present situation is not entirely accurate either.
The endowments industry was nowhere as big as it is now, and there’s an argument to be made about the deprioritisation of education by universities vis-a-vis their endowments.
A bias towards Israel or a determination to assert the management’s authority is not the real motive behind their position — it’s the money.
Lastly, avoiding October 7 and the moral and political issues ingrained within the attack, while refraining from confronting the pro-Israel voices that accused the protesters of aggression and antisemitism, is a major blind spot that allows conservatives and pro-Israel pundits to accuse the filmmakers of bias.
One could be asking too much from a film directed by first-time filmmakers that was rushed into theatres to enhance awareness about Mahmoud Khalil’s political persecution, but The Encampments, which was co-produced by rapper Macklemore, remains an important, urgent, and honest document of an event that has been repeatedly tarnished by the media and self-serving politicians.
The politics of victimhood The imperfections of The Encampments are partially derived from lack of experience on its creators’ part.
Any accusations of malice are unfounded, especially since the directors do not waste time in arguing against Zionism or paint its subjects as victims. The same cannot be said of October 8.
Executive produced by actress Debra Messing of Will & Grace fame, who also appears in the film, October 8 adopts a shabby, scattershot structure vastly comprised of interviews with nearly every high-profile pro-Israel person in America.
The talking heads are interjected with dubious graphs and craftily edited footage culled from social media of alleged pro-Palestinian protesters in college campuses verbally attacking Jewish students and allegedly advocating the ideology of Hamas.
Needless to say, no context is given to these videos whose dates and locations are never identified.
The chief aim of October 8 is to retrieve the victimisation card by using the same language that informed the pro-Palestine discourse
Every imaginable falsification and shaky allegation regarding the righteousness of Zionism is paraded: anti-Zionism is the new form of antisemitism; pro-Palestinian protesters harassed pro-Israel Jewish students; the media is flooded with pro-Palestinian bias.
Other tropes include the claim that Hamas is conspiring to destabilise American democracy and unleash hell on the Western world.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas co-founder who defected to Israel in 1997, stresses that “my definition of Intifada is chaos”.
There is also the suggestion that the protests, if not contained, could spiral into Nazi era-like fascism.
Sachs goes as far as showing historical footage of the Third Reich to demonstrate her point.
The chief aim of October 8 is to retrieve Israel’s victimhood by using the same language that informs pro-Palestine discourse. “Gaza hijacked all underdog stories in the world,” one interviewee laments.
At one point, the attacks of October 7 are described as a “genocide”, while Zionism is referred to as a “civil rights movement”.
One interviewee explains that the framing of the Gaza war as David and Goliath is erroneous when considering that Hamas is backed by almighty Iran and that Israel is surrounded by numerous hostile countries, such as Lebanon and Syria.
In the most fanciful segment of the film, the interviewees claim that the Students for Justice in Palestine is affiliated and under the command of Hamas, while haphazardly linking random terrorist attacks, such as 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting to Hamas and by extension the Palestinian cause.
A simmering racist charge delineate the film’s pro-Israel discourse in its instance on pigeonholing all Palestinians as radical Muslim Hamas supporters.
There isn’t a single mention of the occupied West Bank or Palestinian religious minorities or even anti-Hamas sentiment in Gaza.
Depicting all Palestinians as a rigid monolith profoundly contrasts Pritsker and Workman’s nuanced treatment of their Jewish subjects.
The best means to counter films like October 8 is facts and good journalism
There’s a difference between subtraction and omission: the former affects logical form, while the latter affects logical content.
October 8 is built on a series of deliberate omissions and fear mongering, an unscrupulous if familiar tactic that betrays the subjects’ indignation and their weak conviction.
It is thus not surprising that there is no mention of the Nakba or the fact that the so-called “civil rights movement” is linked to a state founded on looted lands or the grand open prison Israel has turned Gaza into, or the endless humiliation of Palestinians in the West Bank.
There is also no mention of the racist and inciting statements by far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Nor is there mention of the Palestinians who have been abducted and tortured and raped in Israeli prisons.
And definitely not of the more than 52,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza to date.
Sachs’ subjects naturally are too enveloped in their own conspiracies, in the tightly knotted narrative they concocted for themselves, to be aware of their privilege.
The problem is, these subjects want to have their cake and eat it. Throughout, they constantly complain of being silenced; that most institutions, be it the media or college hierarchies or human rights organisations, have not recognised the colossal loss of 7 October 7 and have focused instead on Palestinian suffering.
They theorise that the refusal of the authorities in taking firm and direct action against pro-Palestinian voices has fostered antisemitism.
At the same time, they have no qualms in flaunting their contribution to New York Times op-eds or the testimonies they were invited to present at the Congress.
All the while, Khalil and other Palestinian activists are arrested, deported and stripped of their residencies.
The value of good journalism October 8, which portrays the IDF as a brave, truth-seeking institution, is not merely a pro-Israel propaganda, it’s a far-right propaganda.
The subjects adopt Trump rhetoric in similarly blaming the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies for the rise of antisemitism, while dismissing intersectionality and anti-colonialism for giving legitimacy to the Palestinian cause.
As repugnant as October 8 is, it is crucial to engage with work of its ilk and confront its hyperboles.
Last month, the Hollywood Reporter set up an unanticipated discussion between Pritsker, who is in fact Jewish, and pro-Israel influencer Hen Mazzig.
The heated exchange that followed demonstrated the difficulty of communication with the pro-Israeli lobby, yet nonetheless underlines the necessity of communication, at least in film.
Mazzig spends the larger part of the discussion spewing unfounded accusations that he provides no validations for: “Mahmoud Khalil has links to Hamas,” he says at one point.
When asked about the Palestinian prisoners, he confidently attests that “the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners” — hostages, as Pritsker calls them — they have committed crimes and are held in Israeli prisons, right?
“In fact, in the latest hostage release eight Palestinian prisoners refused to go back to Gaza because they’ve enjoyed their treatment in these prisons.”
Mazzig dismisses pro-Palestinian groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and the pro-Palestinian Jewish students who participated in the encampments.
“No one would make this argument but here we are able to tokenise a minority, a fringe community, and weaponise it against us,” he says.
“It’s not because they care about Jews and want Jews to be represented. It’s that they hate us so much that they’re doing this and gaslighting us.”
At this stage, attempting for the umpteenth time to stress that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not one and the same — a reality that the far-right rejects — is frankly pointless.
Attempting, like Khalil, to continually emphasise our unequivocal rejection of antisemitism, to underscore that our Jewish colleagues and friends are partners in our struggle for equality and justice, is frankly demeaning.
For Mazzig and Messing and the October 8 subjects, every Arab, every pro-Palestinian, is automatically an antisemite until proven otherwise.
The best means to counter films like October 8 is facts and good journalism.
Emotionality has no place in this increasingly hostile landscape. The reason why The Bibi Files and Louis Theroux’s The Settlers work so well is due to their flawless journalism.
People may believe what they want to believe, but for the undecided and the uninformed, factuality and journalistic integrity — values that go over Sachs’ head — could prove to be the most potent weapon of all.
Joseph Fahim is an Egyptian film critic and programmer. He is the Arab delegate of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, a former member of Berlin Critics’ Week and the ex director of programming of the Cairo International Film Festival. This article was first published by Middle East Eye.
Throughout May, courts will sentence 19 Just Stop Oil supporters for their planning of and participation in protests calling for a faster transition away from fossil fuels. All of them could face years in prison if previous sentencings are anything to go by.
Between them, they have already spent 91 months in prison on remand for these charges, an equivalent of 7 years and 7 months. This is despite the fact that courts have handed not a single one of them a custodial sentence yet.
Just Stop Oil: 19 supporters facing sentencing in May for peaceful protests
The 19 Just Stop Oil supporters will attend the following sentencing hearings:
M25 Gantry Conspiracy: Two separate trial groups will be sentenced for planning the climbing of gantries on the M25 in 2022. 9 May in Southwark Crown Court: Abigail Percy-Ratcliffe (25), Ian Bates (65). 15 May in Southwark Crown Court: Phoebe Plummer (24), David Mann (53).
M25 Gantry Climbing: One group will be sentenced for climbing gantries on the M25 in 2022. 9 May in Southwark Crown Court: Amy-Rose Friel O’Donnell (22), anonymous.
Heathrow Airport Conspiracy: One group will be sentenced for a conspiracy to cause disruption at Heathrow Airport. 16 May in Isleworth Crown Court: Hannah Schafer (61), Rosa Hicks (29), Sally Davidson (37), Luke Elson (32), William Goldring (27), Sean O’Callaghan (30), Luke Watson (35), Rory Wilson (25), Adam Beard (56).</li>
Manchester Airport Conspiracy: One group will be sentenced for a conspiracy to cause disruption at Manchester Airport. 23 May in Minshull Crown Court: Margaret Reid (54), Indigo Rumbelow (31), Ella Ward (22), Daniel Knorr (23).
These sentencing hearings will be among the first to take place since Just Stop Oil hung up the high vis in March.
Lord Walney effect: jail sentences for peaceful protest
Judges have previously argued that high sentences were required to deter others from taking similar action with Just Stop Oil. However, it is now unclear who this would deterred – and from what action – in the group’s absence.
Courts will hand the 19 defendants sentences for taking entirely nonviolent actions to demand that the government accelerate their transition away from fossil fuels. In the cases of the airport conspiracies, activists didn’t even carry out the planned actions.
All 19 were convicted in the months after the disgraced ‘Lord’ Walney, the paid oil and arms industry lobbyist, called for groups such as Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action, who oppose his clients’ interests, to be silenced and jailed. Prior to Lord Walney’s report in May 2024, jail sentences for peaceful protest in Britain remained extremely unusual.
Courts are carrying out the sentencings within the wider context of a prison overcrowding crisis. Prisons are releasing thousands of inmates early to avoid catastrophic prison conditions. Currently, 31 supporters of Just Stop Oil, Palestine Action, and HS2 Rebellion find themselves in UK prisons. The UN has previously described the excessive sentencing of UK protesters as ‘not acceptable in a democracy’.
M25 Gantry Conspiracy & Climbing
The charges against the M25 Gantry Conspiracy defendants are the same as those that led to courts handing down the unprecedented custodial sentences to the Whole Truth Five in 2024.
On 7 March, the Court of Appeal ruled that those sentences were “manifestly excessive”. It reduced them to three to four years. It suggested that treating earlier Just Stop Oil cases as a precedent for sentencing risked “undesirable and unwarranted sentence inflation”.
These sentencing hearings will show what this High Court ruling means for future protest cases.
Defendants include 24-year-old Phoebe Plummer. Plummer previously received a two-year sentence for throwing soup at the glass covering Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.
Previous climbers of gantries received custodial sentences of up to two years.
Heathrow Airport and Just Stop Oil
Three of the nine defendants in the Heathrow Airport case have been in prison on remand since July 2024.
They are now potentially facing retrial after evidence emerged that jurors engaged in jury misconduct, making their guilty verdicts manifestly unsafe. Their judge also implied that the existence of a climate emergency is a matter of opinion. This provides further grounds for appeal.
However, the sentencing hearing of the Heathrow 9 will proceed despite the validity of their convictions being seriously called into question.
Manchester Airport
The four defendants in the Manchester Airport case have been held on remand since August 2024. Noah Crane (20), who spent half a year on remand on the basis of allegedly buying phones for fellow protesters, joined them during their trial. His jury unanimously found him not guilty.
The defendants include Indigo Rumbelow (31), one of the co-founders of Just Stop Oil.
Defend Our Juries spokesperson Tim Crosland said:
Labour is cutting corners wherever you look, from winter fuel payments to pensioners to disability benefits to flood protection. And yet, they somehow find the funding to imprison 19 peaceful climate protesters for almost eight years between them before they have even been sentenced. We are dreading seeing how many years will be added on top of that now that the days of their sentencing hearings have finally arrived. The courts of this country are serving the interests of the fossil fuel industry, not the interests of ordinary people who are scrambling to get by.
Once a little girl roaming the vibrant fields of an organic lettuce farm in Kealakekua, Hawai’i, Ella Kilpatrick Kotner learned how to live in harmony with the land before most kids learn how to tie their shoes. Nourishing the soils that gave her a regular supply of leafy greens was just a part of life. As was playing with the piles of compost on her family’s farm.
“Composting, for me, is a lot about community,” said Kilpatrick Kotner. “It’s about connecting people to food and soil, and it’s about learning and being engaged in the process, and meeting your neighbors, and treating this thing that many people think of as a waste as a resource to be cherished and handled with care and turned into something beautiful that we can then reuse to grow more food.”
She now leads a program at Groundwork RI, a nonprofit in Providence, Rhode Island, that does just that.
Every day, her team of three bikes throughout the city, collecting food scraps from hundreds of households, which are then brought to a community garden. There, they mix pounds of nitrogen-rich food scraps otherwise destined for landfills with carbon-rich materials, such as dry leaves and wood shavings, while sifting out pieces of plastic and even the occasional fork. In doing so, Kilpatrick Kotner is creating a menu and a habitat for the microbes that prompt the decomposition process, transforming the waste into a spongy source of life for the soil. The compost is then made available to those enrolled in the subscription-based service to use in home gardens, yards, or urban farms.
The U.S. wastes over one-third of its food supply, which contributes considerably to global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily as a result of the methane that is released when food decomposes in landfills. A decade ago, the Obama administration set a national target to cut the nation’s food waste in half by 2030. Many observers expected the first Trump administration to ignore that goal because of the implicit climate focus, so it came as a surprise when Trump doubled down on the benchmark.
Not only did Trump officials participate in the 2018 U.S. Food Waste Summit, but his first administration also launched the first interagency agreement to reduce food loss and waste. That involved formal commitments to the 50 percent food waste reduction goal from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Without any federal enforcement mechanism, though, that ambitious goal has remained out of reach. Americans still waste about 300 pounds of food per person each year, roughly as much food as they did almost a decade ago. Trump’s reasoning, anyway, had more to do with protecting economic gains — food waste costs the U.S. hundreds of billions every year — than climate benefits.
Ella Kilpatrick Kotner chops up food scraps on top of a bed of leaves and wood chips at Groundwork RI’s garden in Providence, Rhode Island, in February. Charlotte Canner / Groundwork RI
In 2023, the EPA launched the Community Change Grants Program, a congressionally authorized program to support community-based organizations addressing environmental justice challenges, which funneled in about $2 billion of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. In December, Groundwork RI was 1 of 9 organizations included in an $18.7 million community change grant awarded to the Rhode Island Food Policy Council. A portion of the three-year funding stream was intended to provide the nonprofit with the resources needed to expand its collection service to neighboring cities, build a bigger compost hub, renovate their greenhouse with its pay-what-you-can farmstand, and add composting bin systems to more local community gardens. It also would have made it possible for Kilpatrick Kotner’s team to launch a free food-scrap collection pilot with the city of Providence.
Now, in his second term, President Trump has made no secret of the fact that his administration is working to unravel climate action and justice-oriented programs across the government — and make it harder for state initiatives to pick up the slack.
Last Thursday, after months of the Trump funding freeze uncertainty, the partners involved in the Rhode Island food-waste project learned that the $18 million grant was terminated. The EPA’s official notice, shared with Grist, informed the grantees that their project was “no longer consistent” with the federal agency’s funding priorities and therefore nullified “effective immediately.”
Zealan Hoover, a former senior adviser to President Joe Biden’s EPA Administrator Michael Regan, doesn’t believe that Trump is specifically targeting food-waste initiatives, but rather environmental justice programs in their entirety.
“It’s clear to me, from the terminations that have been going out, from the statements that have been made, in court filings, and to the press, that EPA is in the process of sending termination notices to every grantee in the Office of Environmental Justice,” said Hoover, who led the agency’s implementation of the bipartisan infrastructure law.
He noted that he believes the move to be “unlawful” as the IRA funding was allocated by Congress.
“As with any change in administration, EPA has been reviewing all of its grant programs and awarded grants to ensure each is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars and to understand how those programs align with administration priorities,” an EPA spokesperson told Grist. “Maybe the Biden-Harris administration shouldn’t have forced their radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.” The spokesperson did not respond to Grist’s request for clarification about the agency’s legal authority to cancel the congressionally authorized community change grant.
Michelle Roos, executive director at the Environmental Protection Network, which is a national volunteer network of former EPA staffers, told Grist that around 400 grantees have now had their contracts terminated. The number of grants targeted was first released by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works at the end of March. A recently filed court document revealed the EPA is planning to terminate 781 grants in total.
According to Hoover, in prior administrations, it was “exceedingly rare” for the EPA to terminate grants. “This is a huge break from precedent that is pulling the rug out from underneath local communities,” he said.
Nessa Richman, executive director of the Rhode Island Food Policy Council, also questions how the administration can end the $18 million community change grant. The lead-up to the project took more than a year to develop and had garnered support from several state departments and the Department of the Navy. “It is a sinking feeling,” said Richman, “that this opportunity that we, and our partners, had worked so hard for, and that our state was so ready for, is slipping away.”
The money was set to create 27 new local jobs, provide food scrap pickup for more than 15,000 households, build 37 food scrap drop-off locations across Rhode Island, and develop nine compost processing facilities, including a larger-scale one on land owned by the naval station. What’s more, it would have launched a local supply chain for redirecting excess food from institutions like schools and restaurants to food-insecure community members instead of landfills. And it would have made Groundwork RI’s pickup collection model freely accessible to the community members they serve — not just to help fight food waste, but to also learn how to take better care of the soil as they grow their own food.
“It’s easier for folks who have a little bit of disposable income to buy that countertop composting food scrap collector, or that 5-gallon bucket, and buy a service that comes and picks up their food waste at their door. It’s easier for them than for people who are working three jobs to make ends meet to take the time to separate out that food waste,” said Richman. “The loss of the funding, in a real way, doesn’t just slow down the reduction of the food waste, but it further establishes a divide.”
Richman estimates that at the end of the three years, the project would have diverted over 11,000 tons of food waste from landfill, which in turn would have prevented more than 15,000 metric tons of emissions.
Hours after she read the notification of their grant termination, Richman met an old colleague at a local coffee shop in Rhode Island’s East Greenwich. It had been many years since they’d seen each other, and the two sat together, catching up until the shop closed.
As they talked for a while longer in the parking lot, Richman watched in frustration as one of the coffee shop’s employees carried two bags of perfectly edible pastries and threw them in the dumpster.
Mesures administratives 
Interdiction de vente d’alcool à emporter… 
(@HC98800) 
