Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on the Israeli arms and surveillance industry, says Australian protesters are “outraged” not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also by the Australian government’s “complicity”.
Loewenstein, who also spoke at the rally, told Al Jazeera that Australia has, for many years, including since the start of the war, been part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jets that Israel has been using in attacking the besieged enclave.
“A lot of Australians are aware of this,” he said. “We are deeply complicit, and people are angry that their government is doing little more than talk at this point.”
Asked about opinions within Israel, Loewenstein, who is an Australian-German and Jewish, condemned what he called a prevailing climate of “genocide mania” and also criticised the role of the mainstream media in not reporting accurate coverage of the reality in Gaza.
Organisers of the Palestine Action Group Sydney-led march across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge have said at least 100,000 people — and perhaps as many as 300,000 — took part in the biggest pro-Palestinian held in Australia. Police say more than 90,000.
Mehreen Faruqi, the New South Wales senator for the left-wing Greens party, addressed the crowd gathered at central Sydney’s Lang Park before the march, calling for the “harshest sanctions on Israel”, accusing its forces of “massacring” Palestinians.
The horrifying images of Gazans being deliberately starved is adding to the pressure on Western governments which have been enthusiastic supporters of Israel’s genocide, reports the Sydney-based Green-Left magazine.
Former US President Barack Obama has started to push for an end to Israel’s military operations. Sections of Israeli society, including five human rights organisations, now agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Media corporations, such as BBC, AFP, AP and Reuters, which have been complicit in manufacturing consent for “Israel has a right to defend itself” line, are now condemning the killing of Palestinian journalists.
These shifts reflect the scale of the horror, but also the success of the global Palestine solidarity movement.
With the exception of Ireland and Spain, Western governments have refused to describe Israel’s war as an act of genocide.
.@antloewenstein on the huge pro Palestinian Sydney Harbour bridge march and what it tells us about where people around the world are at. He goes on to draw parallels with the attitude towards apartheid South Africa in the 1980s and notes that that regime ended in 1994. pic.twitter.com/jvCsr8ZgOV
Three times this year the world has been close to nuclear catastrophe of one form or another — the India–Pakistan conflict, the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war and more recently the Israel/US–Iran “12 day war”. Here is one of the speeches at the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima Day in Sydney before the “March for Humanity” on Sydney Harbour Bridge.
COMMENTARY:By Peter Murphy
I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we are gathered and pay respect to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the Pitjantjatjara and other peoples of the APY lands who suffered the direct impact of nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.
I am standing in here for Michael Wright, the national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who was unable to take up our invitation to be here today.
The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has a very solid record for opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and really campaigned hard on this issue against Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the May federal elections.
The ETU campaigned in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and he lost his seat to Labor’s Ali France. You have to conclude that among the many reasons that Australian voters deserted the Coalition and Dutton, the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy was a big one.
Since the election, the Coalition has continued to entertain the idea of a nuclear-powered Australia, showing that they just refuse to listen to the Australian people. But they are only too happy to listen to and take the money of the fossil fuel corporations and the nuclear power companies like Westinghouse, who are the ones who benefit from government policies to foster nuclear power.
They are determined to delay the transition to renewable energy as long as possible, whatever the cost to all of us in runaway climate disasters.
The ETU’s official policy against the nuclear industry dates back to the 1950s, resulting from the shared experiences of ETU members who returned from Japan after the Second World War. In the decades since, the ETU has regularly revisited this policy to learn more about the nuclear fuel cycle, changes and advances to technologies, technical interaction with the network and economic viability.
Opposed nuclear industry
Let’s honour those long-gone ETU members who recognised the crimes that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima 80 years ago by vigorously opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons today. And let’s remember some other Australians who were there then — Tom Uren saw the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki from the copper mine where he was working as a prisoner of war; and Wilfred Burchett, the journalist, who first told the world from Hiroshima about radiation sickness.
Nuclear power stations generate radioactive waste such as spent reactor fuel, reprocessing effluents, and contaminated tools and work clothing. These materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health for tens of thousands of years.
And this is the kind of waste that comes from nuclear-powered submarines, during regular maintenance, and at the end of their life — 30 years we have been told for the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactors.
This waste will need to be trucked across the country on public roads to be disposed of in a nuclear waste facility.
But, Australia does not have a dedicated national radioactive waste facility. And the Albanese government is refusing to say where they plan to put that waste.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those at the nuclear tests sites in Nevada, the Marianas, French Polynesia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Fields, Maralinga in Australia have been living with these nuclear wastes in their environment for up to 80 years.
We don’t want this to go any further in Australia or anywhere else in the world.
Democratic failure over AUKUS
How dare the Albanese government commit future generations to somehow keep that deadly nuclear waste safe for tens of thousands of years.
The ETU stood up at the August 2023 ALP National Conference and opposed the AUKUS project, spelling out these concerns and also the democratic failure of Labor to consult the public and the Parliament before committing to the AUKUS deal.
The Albanese leadership tried very hard to make sure that AUKUS was not debated at that ALP National Conference. So it was a victory first of all to have the debate and openly discuss the big problems with AUKUS.
The pro-AUKUS case was so weak that the Defence Industry Minister at the time, Pat Conroy, defended it by accusing the critics of being like the appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s. In doing so he was saying that China is a fascist state and it is the enemy we have to fight with these hopeless submarines.
The grotesque comparison of us and of China to Nazis is ironically more appropriate for Trump and the USA, who are right now purging people of colour from the streets and workplaces of the United States and supporting a genocide in Gaza.
AUKUS is one building block in the US plan to wage war on China to remove its capacity to challenge US primacy in this region and world-wide. A conga line of US military commanders and cabinet secretaries have made this clear.
It is imperial madness writ large.
The deeper reason
And this is the deeper reason why we must oppose AUKUS, because we have to stop this deadly drive for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers. Such a war would almost certainly go nuclear, the world would go into nuclear winter, there would be no winners and huge huge casualties.
Japan, the Philippines, and Australia would be very early targets in such a war.
We remember that 200,000 people, almost all civilians, men women and children of all ages, were killed by those two nuclear bombs 80 years ago, and endless suffering has continued down to this day.
So we recommit to opposing nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry which produces them. We commit to getting Australia’s signature on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.
We commit to stopping AUKUS. We commit to stopping the active US and Australian plan for a war with China.
This is edited from Peter Murphy’s speech at the 80th anniversary Horoshima Day rally for the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition and Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition on 3 August 2025.
A former New Caledonia Congress president says there are “not enough” benefits for Kanaks in a new “draft” agreement he signed alongside pro and anti-independence stakeholders in France last month.
Roch Wamytan said that, after 10 days of deadlock discussions in Paris, he failed to secure the pro-independence mandate.
He told RNZ Pacific that he refused to sign a “final agreement”.
Instead, he said, he opted for a “draft” agreement, which is what he signed. It has been hailed as “historic” by all parties involved.
While France maintains its “neutrality”, Wamytan said that at the negotiating table it was two (France and New Caledonia’s pro-France bloc) against one (pro-Kanaky).
A main point of tension was the electoral law changes, which sparked last year’s civil unrest.
“We call on France to respect the provisions of international law, which remains our main protective shield until the process of decolonisation and emancipation is completed. Hence, our incessant interventions during negotiations on this subject [electoral law changes],” Wamytan told RNZ Pacific.
He said it was difficult to understand whether France wanted to decolonise New Caledonia or not.
Concrete measures
“We have a lot of concrete measures in this proposed agreement, but the main question is a political question. Where are you [France] going with this? Independence or integration with France?”
The document, signed in the city of Bougival, involves a series of measures and recognition by France of New Caledonia as a “State” as well as dual citizenship — French and New Caledonian — provided future New Caledonian citizens are French nationals in the first place.
But this week, New Caledonia’s oldest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), officially rejected the political agreement signed in Paris.
However, Sonia Backès, the leader of the Caledonian Republicans Party and the president of the Provincial Assembly of Southern Province, says the agreement signed in France is “final”.
“Roch Wamytan and the pro-independence delegation signed an agreement in Bougival. Since their return to New Caledonia, their political supports have been fiercely critical of the agreement,” her office said via a statement.
“As a result, radical pro-independence leaders like Roch Wamytan have chosen to renege on their commitment and withdraw their signature. This agreement is final; there is no other viable political balance outside of it.”
So why did Wamytan sign? When asked why he signed the draft agreement when he did not agree with it, he said: “After the 10 days they obliged us to sign something.”
“We told them that we [didn’t have] the mandate of our parties to sign an agreement, but only a ‘project’ or ‘draft’.
“It was important for us to return with a paper and to show, to explain, to present, to debate, for the debate of our political party. This is the stage where we are at now, but for the moment, we do not agree with that.
“We [tried] to explain to [France and pro-France bloc] that we have a problem [with electoral law change being included].
“This is our problem. So we signed only for one reason . . . that we have to return back home and to explain where we are now, after 10 days of negotiation. [Did we] achieve the objectives, the mandate given by our political parties?”
He said one thing he wanted to make clear was that what he had signed was not definitive and was now up for negotiation.
An FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) Congress meeting is set down for this weekend with the Union Calédonienne Congress meeting held a weekend prior.
Wamytan said that it was now up to the FLNKS members to have their say and decide where to next.
“They will decide if we accept this draft agreement or we reject,” he said.
“We have two options: we accept with certain conditions, for example, on the question of the right to vote on the electoral rule. Or for the question of the trajectory from here to independence, through a referendum or the framework proposed by President Macron.”
“This is an important element to discuss with France, but after this round of discussions.”
He expected further meetings with France after community consultations.
Communication problem Wamytan admitted that the pro-independence negotiators did not communicate clearly about the agreement to their supporters.
He said after signing the document, President Macron and the pro-France signatories were quick to communicate to the media and their supporters — and the messages filtered to his supporters resulting in anger and frustrations.
He said the anger has mostly been around the signing itself, with people mistaking the draft proposal as final.
“The political, pro-Kanaky party were very, very, very angry against us. We did not communicate and this I think is our problem.”
Bribery allegations Wamytan has also dismissed unconfirmed reports that negotiators were bribed to sign a historic deal in Paris.
He said he was aware of people “chucking accusations of bribery” around, but said they were false.
“It has never been in the minds of Kanak independence leaders doing such practices,” he said.
“After the signature of the Matignon Accord 37 years ago, with [FLNKS leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou] and with us after the signature of Nouméa accord in 1998, we heard about the same allegation and some rumours like this.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
But, speaking to RNZ Midday Report, Clark said New Zealand needed to come on board.
“We are watching a catastrophe unfold in Gaza. We’re watching starvation. We’re watching famine conditions for many. Many are using the word genocide,” she said.
“If New Zealand can’t act in these circumstances, when can it act?”
Elders call for recognition
“The Elders, a group of world leaders of which Clark is a part, last month issued a call for countries to recognise the state of Palestine, calling it the “beginning, not the end of a political pathway towards lasting peace”.
Clark said the government seemed to be trying avoid the ire of the United States by waiting until the peace process was well underway or nearing its end.
“That is no longer tenable,” she said.
“New Zealand really is lagging behind.”
Even before the recent commitments from France, Canada and the UK, 147 of the UN’s 193 member states had recognised the Palestinian state.
Clark said the hope was that the series of recognitions from major Western states would first shift the US position and then Israel’s.
“When the US moves, Israel eventually jumps because it owes so much to the United States for the support, financial, military and otherwise,” she said.
“At some point, Israel has to smell the coffee.”
Surprised over Peters
Clark said she was “a little surprised” that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had not been more forward-leaning given he historically had strongly advocated New Zealand’s even-handed position.
On Wednesday, New Zealand signed a joint statement with 14 other countries expressing a willingness to recognise the State of Palestine as a necessary step towards a two-state solution.
However, later speaking in Parliament, Peters said that was conditional on first seeing progress from Palestine, including representative governance, commitment to non-violence, and security guarantees for Israel.
“If we are to recognise the state of Palestine, New Zealand wants to know that what we are recognising is a legitimate, representative, viable, political entity,” Peters told MPs.
Peters also agreed with a contribution from ACT’s Simon Court that recognising the state of Palestine could be viewed as “a reward [to Hamas] for acts of terrorism” if it was done before Hamas had returned hostages or laid down arms.
Luxon earlier told RNZ New Zealand had long supported the eventual recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that the immediate focus should be on getting aid into Gaza rather than “fragmenting and talking about all sorts of other things that are distractions”.
“We need to put the pressure on Israel to get humanitarian assistance unfettered, at scale, at volume, into Gaza,” he told RNZ.
“You can talk about a whole bunch of other things, but for right now, the world needs to focus.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Protesters demonstrated outside several major US media outlets in Washington this week condemning their coverage of the genocide in Gaza, claiming they were to blame over misinformation and the worsening catastrophe.
Banging pots and pans to spotlight the starvation crisis, they accused the media of “complicity in genocide”.
Banners and placards proclaimed “Stop media complicity in genocide” and “US media manufactures consent for Israel’s crimes”, as the protesters demonstrated outside media offices that included NBC News and Fox News.
But the irony was that while the protests appeared to have been ignored or overlooked by national media in the US – and certainly in New Zealand, they were strongly reported by at least one global news agency, Turkey’s Anadolu Agensi.
The protests echoed a series of statements by various news media organisations, such as Agence France-Presse concerned about the safety of their journalists from both under fire and the risk of starvation, and media freedom advocacy groups.
The Doha-based global television news network Al Jazeera, that has been producing arguably the best and most honest news coverage of Gaza and the occupied West Bank – which earned it being banned last year by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority from reporting inside their territory — called for global action to protect Gaza’s journalists.
It said in a statement that Isael’s forced starvation of the besieged enclave that threatened Gaza’s entire population, including those “risking their lives to shed light on Israel’s atrocities”.
Death toll passes 60,000
On Tuesday this week, the world noted a grim milestone in Gaza, with the Health Ministry announcing that the death toll had surpassed 60,000 (this does not include the tens of thousands of people buried under the rubble and missing, presumed dead).
Put in perspective, that is one in every 36 people in Gaza killed, and more than 90 people on average slaughtered every day.
Also, 1157 people have been killed near the notorious Israel and US-backed Gaza “Humanitarian” Foundation food depots condemned as “death traps”, while 154 people have died from starvation, 89 of them children with the numbers rising.
Israel’s genocide – ‘Everyone in Gaza is starving’ Video: Al Jazeera
An episode of the weekly media watch programme, The Listening Post, took up the theme as well, criticising the failure of many high profile Western news services from adequately reporting the horror of Israel’s devastating and cruel policies.
“When trying to stave off starvation becomes part of the job. What it means to be a Palestinian journalist in Gaza. The stories they are determined to tell, the incredible risks they are prepared to take,” said host Richard Gizbert when introducing the programme. He wasted no time firing a few caustic shots.
Metropolitan police on watch for the pro-Palestinian protesters outside Fox News offices in Washington DC this week. Image: AA screenshot APR
“What is unfolding in Gaza now has the appearance of a final solution, orchestrated by Israel and the United States, Israel’s other ally: The transformation of parts of the Gaza strip into starvation and concentration camps, a place where famine has been turned into a weapon of war,” he said.
“Reporting on the reality of this genocide can amount to a death sentence. Palestinian journalists can easily identify with the suffering they are documenting since they too are going hungry.
“They have been targeted because for [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, like other genocidal leaders before him, starving a population is much easier to do when no one is watching.
An Al Jazeera reporter ducks for cover as bombs hit a building behind her in a live broadcast from Gaza . . . featured in The Listening Post’s starvation report. Image: AA screenshot APR
Perpetrator ‘left out’
“Across Western mainstream media, news outlets have been unable to ignore this story of mass starvation in Gaza. But in report after report, they have made a habit of leaving out a key detail – naming the perpetrators of the famine, Israel.
“The missing actors, the sanitised language, the use of the passive grammatical voice, it is all part of the playbook for far too many international news outlets and that is exactly what the few Palestinian journalists still standing are out to tell the world.”
Gizbert explained that “journalists in Gaza already have the world’s toughest assignment”:
“Job one for almost 22 months now has been survival; job two, telling heartbreaking stories; documenting a genocide while under fire.”
Hossam Shabat reports on his colleague Anas al-Sharif’s experience at Al Shifa hospital and the starvation of babies in Gaza. Image: Instagram/@hossam_shbat
Like, for example, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Anas al-Sharif who was reporting live from outside Al Shifa medical complex when a woman behind him collapsed at the hospital’s gate.
Al-Sharif, who had reported on the genocide of his own people for more than 650 days without rest or complaint, through Israeli occupation airstrikes, drone attacks, and countless “scenes resembling hell”, suddenly could not take it anymore.
He broke down: “People are falling to the ground from the severity of hunger,” al-Sharif said through his tears. “They need one sip of water. They need one loaf of bread.”
Al-Sharif has also been threatened by the Israeli military, accusing him of being a “Hamas militant”, an accusation strongly denied by Al Jazeera, denouncing what it called Tel Aviv’s “campaign of incitement” against its reporters in the Gaza Strip.
Discredited for bias
Many Western mainstream media – including BBC, CNN, Sky, ITN, and Australia’s public broadcaster ABC — have been repeatedly discredited for their “pro-Israel bias” by scores of journalists who have acted as whistleblowers about the actions of their own news organisations.
According to a Declassified UK report, for example, the journalists working for a range of outlets from across the political spectrum have “painted a consistent picture of the obstacles faced by reporters who want to humanise Palestinians or scrutinise Israeli government narratives”. The US media is also under attack and has been putting up a lame defence.
Last week, more than 100 aid groups warned of “mass starvation” throughout Gaza — predictably denied by Israeli government in the face of overwhelming evidence — with their staff severely impacted by shortages and serious implications for journalists already being threatened with targeting by the Israeli military.
Israel faces growing global pressure over the enclave’s dire humanitarian crisis, where more than two million people have endured 22 months of war. UN Security Council member France has led a group of countries announcing that they plan to recognise the Palestinian state at the UN in September, with United Kingdom, Canada, Malta and Finland among those following with the total number now almost 150 of the 193 UN member states.
A statement with 111 signatories, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam, warned that “our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away”. The groups called for an immediate negotiated ceasefire, the opening of all land crossings and the free flow of aid through UN-led mechanisms.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reported from Amman that the Israeli government had accused the UK of supporting the establishment of a “jihadi” state and of derailing efforts to reach a ceasefire.
“But really,” she said, “the Israeli media, for example, is describing this as a political tsunami, a realisation of how significant the tide is, and how improbable it is to turn it back to countries withholding recognition because Israel said it doesn’t want it.”
Calling for sanctions
She also noted how 31 high-profile Israelis, including the former speaker of the Knesset, a former attorney general, and several recipients of Israel’s highest cultural award, were calling on world governments to impose crippling sanctions on Israel to stop the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and their expulsion
“This was taboo just a few days ago and has never really been done before, certainly not at this level of prominence of the signatories,” Odeh added.
“Israel is starving Gazan journalists into silence,” says the CPJ. Image: CPJ screenshot APR
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) added its voice to the appeal by aid agencies to call for an end to Israel’s starvation of journalists and other civilians in Gaza, backing the plea for states to “save lives before there are none left to save.”
In a statement on its website, the CPJ accused Israel of “starving journalists into silence”.
“Israel is starving Gazan journalists into silence. They are not just reporters, they are frontline witnesses, abandoned as international media were pulled out and denied entry,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.
“The world must act now: protect them, feed them, and allow them to recover while other journalists step in to help report. Our response to their courageous 650 plus-days of war reporting cannot simply be to let them starve to death.”
As Israel partially eased its 11-week total blockade of Gaza that began in May, CPJ published the testimony of six journalists who described how “starvation, dizziness, brain fog, and sickness” had threatened their ability to report.
Among highlights cited by the CPJ:
• On June 20, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif — the journalist cited earlier in this article — posted online: “I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion, and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment . . . Gaza is dying. And we die with it.” • Sally Thabet, correspondent for Al-Kofiya satellite channel, told CPJ that she fainted consciousness after doing a live broadcast on July 20 because she had not eaten all day. She regained consciousness in Al-Shifa hospital, where doctors gave her an intravenous drip for rehydration and nutrition. In an online video, she described how she and her three daughters were starving. • Another Palestinian journalist, Shuruq As’ad said Thabet had been the third journalist to collapse on air from starvation that week, and posted a photograph of Thabet with the drip in her hand. • During a live broadcast on July 20, Al-Araby TV correspondent Saleh Al-Natour said: “We have no choice but to write and speak; otherwise, we will all die.”
Little of this horrendous state of affairs has made it onto the pages of newspapers, websites of the television screens in the New Zealand mainstream media which seems to have a pro-Israel slant and rarely interviews Palestinian journalists or analysts for balance.
“Stop media complicity in genocide” says the protest banner in Washington DC. Image: AA screenshot APR
Emil Bove, the nominee to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is sworn in before his confirmation hearing in the Senate on June 25, 2025, in Washington.Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s second term has so far been a constant barrage of unconstitutional actions and illegal orders. So it was thus no surprise when the Senate on Monday confirmed Trump’s former personal lawyer and Justice Department lackey, Emil Bove, to a lifetime appointment on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
That 50 Republican senators would install this fascist bootlicker to one of the most powerful judicial positions in the land for life is, as MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann put it, “a nail in the coffin” for a system of checks and balances on authoritarian presidential overreach.
There’s a risk, however, after a grave blow like this to legal, political, and constitutional norms, that liberal epitaphs to the American constitutional order will mourn the wrong thing.
Bove’s appointment confirms something worse than the Republican embrace of lawlessness. He represents the Republicans’ use and abuse of our fraught constitutional order for the purposes of enacting profound, life-denying, and long-lasting injustices to uphold a white nationalist regime.
Liberal epitaphs to the American constitutional order risk mourning the wrong thing.
Calling on the restoration of preexisting norms of law and constitutionality to reverse course will be, at best, insufficient. After all, liberal reliance on a system of order above justice helped deliver us Trump and his jurist enablers in the first place.
This is not to understate how appalling it is that Bove has been appointed a federal judge.
“It is one thing to put lab-designed Federalist Society members on courts across the country — and, to be clear, several of Trump’s nominees from his first administration went far beyond that,” wrote legal journalist Chris Geidner when Trump nominated Bove, “but it is another thing altogether to name a lawless loyalist to a federal appeals court.”
Geidner called Bove’s confirmation a “line that cannot be crossed.” It has now been crossed.
Bove is perhaps best known as the Justice Department official who dismissed corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams — a decision that led more than 10 Justice Department attorneys to resign in protest. He fired federal prosecutors who had worked on January 6 cases.
According to three Justice Department whistleblower accounts, Bove also told federal attorneys that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’” and ignore orders blocking the administration from sending immigrants to El Salvador’s gulag. Over 900 former Justice Department attorneys, identifying with both parties, wrote letters opposing Bove’s judgeship.
Yet Republican senators refused to hear whistleblower testimony and dismissed the widespread concerns about Bove as Democratic meddling. As usual, they did what the president asked.
Democrats’ Role
Bove’s new, permanent position assures more serious harms to come. Given how few cases are heard by the Supreme Court, the 3rd Circuit is most often the final voice in the law for cases from Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Bove has made unwaveringly clear that, for him, the law is the president’s will. This position is now standard in the Republican Party and all too consistently affirmed by a Supreme Court majority committed to unitary executive theory to vest authoritarian powers in Trump’s hands.
Earlier this month, Geidner posted on social media that “should Bove be confirmed — which he should not be — he should immediately be the subject of an impeachment inquiry should Dems retake Congress.”
Based on his actions at the Department of Justice, there are ample grounds to call for impeachment. Democrats should vow to do this immediately.
Senate Democrats carry significant blame for Bove’s judgeship, too.
Senate Democrats, after all, carry significant blame for Bove’s judgeship, too. His seat should have been filled by Biden nominee, Adeel Mangi, who would have been the first Muslim judge on a federal appeals court. Instead of shutting down vile, Islamophobic Republican attacks against Mangi, Senate Democrats allowed the smears to gain ground and eventually stood down on the nomination.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday said, “To confirm Mr. Bove is a sacrilegious act against our democracy.”
He did not mention that, when he was Senate majority leader, he permitted a relentless Islamophobic campaign to tank Mangi, a qualified nominee, which left the judge’s seat open for Trump’s taking.
The Democratic establishment may lament Bove’s confirmation as “a dark, dark day,” but we have no reason to think that this party leadership will bring us toward the light. Geidner’s suggestion — to pursue impeachment — would be the very least that Democrats can do. What they should already be doing is using every tool in their power to hinder Trump’s deportation machine.
Given the Democrats’ own vile embrace of harsh border rule, I am not holding my breath.
Not Our Savior
The judges who have continued to push back directly against Trump’s illegal actions, meanwhile, remain a crucial constraint on some of the administration’s worst attacks on our rights. These judges are under unprecedented attack.
On the same day Bove was confirmed, Trump’s Justice Department filed a baseless misconduct complaint against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. In March, Boasberg issued an order to block deportation flights to El Salvador under Trump’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act — the very sort of order that Bove reportedly told attorneys to say “fuck you” to.
In an obscene retaliatory escalation, the Justice Department’s complaint claims that Boasberg’s alleged comments — that the administration could trigger a “constitutional crisis” by disregarding court orders — “have undermined the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” The complaint says that the administration has “always complied with all court orders.”
The idea that it constitutes judicial misconduct to suggest otherwise, despite clear evidence of the executive’s disregard for certain unfavorable court orders, is the sort of authoritarian logic that obviates concerns about a constitutional crisis in the worst way: There can be no crisis if fascist rule silences all constitutional pushback.
Then the problem is not a constitutional order in crisis, but a fascist order without opposition.
This is not yet the state of affairs. The courts — certain courts, at least — are not yet a dead end. It should be increasingly clear, however, that they will not deliver us from fascism either.
As legal scholar Aziz Rana wrote earlier this year, the left should “strongly back litigation efforts and condemn Trump’s defiance of the courts,” but not because the courts are a terrain of liberatory struggle.
Rana is clear that “the reason to oppose Trump’s violation of court orders is not out of a general faith in judges or constitutional norms,” but because they are a tool, however limited, for protecting people and holding the administration to account.
“Fuck You” to Humanity
The affront at the heart of Bove’s confirmation is not that he does not respect the law — although that should no doubt be disqualifying for a judge. If that’s where we object, however, we risk lionizing a criminal legal system that also gives rise to racist policing and mass incarceration.
Bove’s violence lies primarily in his commitment to a form of injustice that ensures impunity for the corrupt and powerful, while the poorest and most vulnerable are treated as wholly disposable.
The infamous advice Bove allegedly gave to ignore court orders over deportations was a “fuck you” to the Constitution and the rule of law, yes, but above all it was a “fuck you” to the over 200 men who were rounded up, kidnapped, shaved, beaten, and tortured in a foreign gulag without any recourse. It was a “fuck you” to human beings.
It should go without saying that the constitutional order in and of itself has never in practice guaranteed equality and justice for all. The constitutionalization of slavery’s abolition and many basic civil rights protections took extraordinary social struggle and political work. The successful dismantling of the constitutional right to an abortion took decades of political organizing, too. Nothing in the Constitution guarantees progress.
“The great social movements of the past, from abolition to civil rights, labour to women’s suffrage, famously called for the defiance of unjust court judgments that sustained slavery, segregation and disenfranchisement, or criminalized union organizing,” Rana noted. “Considering the current right-wing control over the courts, the left may find itself in a similar place in the coming years, calling for civil disobedience of judicial authority.”
With judges like Bove in place, such action will likely be all the more necessary.
The Department of Agriculture under President Donald Trump has charted a new course — the full-scale reduction of federal funding and staffing throughout the agency. A set of the president’s early executive orders targeted climate action, environmental justice, and diversity, equity, and inclusion; the USDA has since complied with those by eliminating DEI-focused programs and grants and revoking a longstanding provision that ensured producers confronting historical discrimination have equitable access to federal support.
So, on June 17, when the USDA announced the end of $148.6 million in funding awarded by prior administrations to projects geared toward DEI, the move appeared in lockstep with the president’s priorities. The notice itself, for example, was titled “Secretary Rollins Takes Bold Action to Put American Farmers First, Cuts Millions in Woke DEI Funding.”
The press release said that “more than 145” awards would be cancelled, and it gave three anonymized examples of such projects. There was a $575,251 project “educating and engaging socially disadvantaged farmers on conservation practices”; a $192,246 project for “creating a new model for urban forestry to lead to environmental justice through more equitably distributed green spaces”; and a $2.5 million award for a project “expanding equitable access to land, capital, and market opportunities for underserved producers in the Bay Area.”
It all seemed like standard fare under the new administration — except that the USDA neither specified what awards it was scrubbing, nor did it follow the news with direct notifications to those affected.
More than a month later, no one yet seems to know whether, or to what extent, the $148 million in grants has actually been cancelled. The scraps of information provided in the release have since been mined many times over by everyone from grantees to lawmakers. This fiscal year, the USDA had a total budget of $493.9 billion, of which $144.4 billion funded award obligations. That means the $148 million represents roughly 0.001 percent of what the agency planned to spend on awards. And yet, experts say, the missing money mystery indicates a new chapter in the USDA’s playbook — and it’s harming farmers and ranchers, and those that support them, across the country.
“I just continue to think that they are motivated by the politics of saying that they cancelled a DEI-related program, and they’re not motivated by conducting thoughtful policy changes or updates, and they don’t seem to really be concerned about who’s on the other end of that policy change, and what the impact would be,” said Michael Amato, who was the USDA Communications Director during the Biden administration.
For those organizations that suspect their projects could be on the chopping block, the move is perplexing. When the team at the California-based organization Agroecology Commons saw the USDA press release, they presumed that the $2.5 million grant had to be theirs. Roughly two years beforehand, they had been awarded that very same amount through the USDA’s Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program to identify, purchase, and help develop land for up to ten “BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and landless farmers” in the Bay Area.
The nonprofit had already come to feel targeted under the new administration. They had confronted the elimination of another USDA award back in March. In June, less than two weeks before the $148 million cancellation news was shared, the organization joined two other plaintiffs in filing a lawsuit against the USDA for what they believe were unlawful grant terminations. And, according to director of partnerships Leah Atwood, they were “put on blast on the Secretary of Ag’s Instagram,” when Brooke Rollins announced the end of the group’s Community Food Projects grant in a social media video.
“All signs pointed to ‘that’s gonna be us,’” said Atwood. The revelation was nonetheless “a big blow” to her team. In response to the USDA’s announcement, they started to halt the work they were doing that was supported by the federal funds, in case they wouldn’t be able to invoice for reimbursements later. As the days and weeks passed, the team got more and more bewildered when no official termination notice hit their inbox.
Until last Tuesday, when a cancellation notice finally dropped — just not the one that they were expecting.
On July 22, more than a month following the agency’s initial termination announcement, the team finally received an email from the USDA, shared with Grist, which informed them of the end of their Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program grant, or BFRDP, amounting to nearly $600,000 that they were awarded back in 2021. First authorized by the farm bill more than two decades ago, the program provides grants to organizations in support of education, mentoring, and technical assistance for new agricultural producers. The letter stated that “the Secretary of Agriculture has determined, per the Department’s obligations to the Constitution and laws of the United States, that priority includes ensuring that the Department’s awards do not support programs that promote or take part in diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) initiatives, or any other initiatives that discriminate on the basis of immutable characteristics.”
Though she isn’t sure, Atwood believes that Agroecology Commons’ BFRDP grant cancellation must be one of the 145 or so that the USDA says it has identified for elimination. She also believes that the notice for the bigger grant is still on the horizon, and has expressed concern over two other USDA grants of theirs that have an explicit DEI-focus. As of the time of this article’s publication, the Agroecology Commons team still has not received an official cancellation notice for the $2.5 million from the federal agency.
“We’ve been in this constant state of evaluation and reevaluation and downsizing and streamlining and consolidating, and it’s impossible to do that in a clear, straightforward way when we don’t know what’s happening,” she said. “It’s just a juggling act of, like, plugging leaks and dodging waves.”
The USDA has not responded to multiple inquiries from Grist sent over the last month requesting clarity on the full list of awards included in last month’s press release, why those affected had not been issued official notices, and the criteria being used in these funding eliminations. What’s more, it isn’t clear whether the recent rescission of BFRDP grants account for any part of the $148 million, or belong to an entirely new crop of cancellations.
Grist reporting has revealed that at least three other recipients of BFRDP grants were also issued official USDA termination notices in the last week. They are the only series of DEI-adjacent grants from the USDA that have been confirmed as cancelled since the agency’s June announcement. Like Atwood, those other grantees believe the dissolution of their federal support falls within the 145 or so awards that the USDA declared. One such group is the Rhode Island Food Policy Council.
The end of the BFRDP grant didn’t come as much of a surprise to its executive director Nessa Richman. In fact, when she saw the USDA’s announcement about the $148 million funding pot, Richman had a “sinking feeling” that her group’s grant was over. Right before the USDA made the announcement, Richman noticed that their BFRDP money was suddenly unfrozen — an experience that the Food Policy Council went through when the Trump administration pulled another of their grants — before it was terminated.
When it finally arrived, the USDA’s letter singled out the Food Policy Council’s focus on DEI as the rationale for the cancellation. “Specifically, the project is targeted at beginning farmers and ranchers from Rhode Island communities defined by their immutable characteristics,” the letter said. “The award is therefore inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.”
But what surprised Richman was the way the USDA presented the news. “Normally, in a USDA announcement like that, when it’s about grant awards, in the past there’s been a link to a list of all of the grantees,” said Richman. “And it was confusing that there wasn’t one.” So she called around to see if anyone in her network had been able to find a list buried on a federal website somewhere. No one had. No one knew what programs were on that list of “more than 145.”
“My guess was that the work had been done internally at USDA to identify the grants, because it was a very specific number, but that they hadn’t done the administrative work to move forward and send out notices of termination,” said Richman. “At this point, it probably took them longer than they thought to get all of the administrative pieces in place. Why else would it take them longer?”
A Grist analysis of a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture reporting portal shows that since 2009, roughly 13 percent of all BFRDP awards have been DEI-related, and just 21 are active projects. If the USDA terminates all of the BFRDP awards with equity-associated keywords, that leaves at least 124 other grants facing potentially imminent elimination following the agency’s effort to cut “Woke DEI Funding.”
Vanessa García Polanco, government relations director at National Young Farmers Coalition, is worried about the future of the other equity-related awards. “So how are they picking and choosing these grants? Is it just the ones that have equity in the title? Do they have some equity outcomes? Or is it just literally strategic? Is there an equation, an algorithm behind it? We really don’t know,” said García Polanco. “Everything feels extremely haphazard and inconsistent.”
The federal agency’s silence has prompted urgent calls for transparency from some members of Congress. Last Tuesday, on the same day that BFRDP letters began landing in inboxes, a cohort of nine Democratic senators sent an official congressional oversight letter to Rollins, urging her to provide the missing information, including “a complete list of awards that USDA intends to terminate, including information about awardees, programs, funding amounts, and locations.” The letter also asked for further details “on why these awards intend to be cancelled, as well as the legal basis for cancelling the awards, and if the funds are being repurposed, for what they will be repurposed.”
“It’s created more uncertainty, in a sea of uncertainty,” said Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “I don’t know how it wouldn’t have a chilling effect.”
According to a former senior USDA official, who spoke to Grist on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the precedents of how the agency chooses to operate — and communicate — are changing so quickly and radically that it’s creating an environment of fear for the nation’s farmers and ranchers who could rely on federal government funds before Trump took office.
“People are just scared right now because they keep hearing the threat of these things, and they haven’t been notified. So ‘Do I continue to do work? Do I not continue to do work?’ The uncertainty is what’s getting people right now,” the official said. “You hear that from these grantees, as well as [USDA] employees, it’s hard to get people to talk about it, because they don’t know, from day to day, whether they’re going to be targeted.
If they say anything, I think most folks are going on record anonymously because they’re in fear, because you really don’t know what’s next. And if you get out there on a limb, it might get sawed off behind you.”
The New York Times repeated Israel’s baseless claim that Hamas was stealing aid nearly two dozen times before its own sources contradicted that talking point, an Intercept analysis has found, as Palestinian people suffered mass starvation and risked their lives to find food amid Israel’s blockade.
During its near-total blockade on humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas steals aid and that restricting it will help the two parties achieve a ceasefire. The U.S. and Israel pointed to that argument in May when they handed aid operations over to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a contested American nonprofit that funnels Gazans to limited aid sites where the Israeli army has repeatedly opened fire on starving civilians. At each turn, the New York Times dutifully printed the official justifications.
Then the Times published an article on Saturday reporting that there was “no proof” that Hamas was stealing aid from the United Nations, citing four anonymous Israeli sources. The story noted that the U.N. aid system, which provided the bulk of the aid to Gaza, was “largely effective,” and there was no evidence that Hamas regularly stole from the U.N., though the unnamed sources claimed that Hamas did steal from smaller organizations.
But in 61 articles related to Gaza’s hunger crisis the Times published since January, 23 included Israel’s accusations that Hamas was stealing aid. Nine of those stories did not include opposing statements refuting Israel’s claim. Twelve articles of the 61 analyzed by The Intercept cited concerns about Hamas diverting aid without an explicit accusation. At the time of publication, the Times had not added a correction or update to these stories to indicate that the claims were false.
None of the articles provided any evidence in support of the claims except for the comments of Israeli officials, who work for a government that has repeatedly spread disinformation, including in its record-breaking fatal attacks on journalists, aid workers, and children.
In a statement to The Intercept, New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said that the paper’s journalists have done “deep reporting on both Israel and Hamas’ actions and tactics during the war, and will continue to report hard and publish facts.”
“The Times has reported deeply, fairly and accurately on the war in Gaza since it began, including the hardships and food shortages faced by Gazans, and when government officials provide claims and accusations, our reporters put them in context,” Stadtlander said.
Even before the Times’s Saturday story, aid groups on the ground in Gaza had repeatedly refuted the Israeli government’s claims of aid theft.
The U.N. agency tasked with distributing aid in Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, has maintained for months that it has received no specific evidence that Hamas or other armed groups were diverting its humanitarian aid in Gaza.
“These claims are used as a pretext to justify the aid distribution system supported by the Israeli authorities and the United States of America (so called GHF), which falls far from abiding to the humanitarian principles and international humanitarian law,” an UNRWA spokesperson told The Intercept in a statement.
Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza has now subjected 500,000 people — nearly a quarter of the occupied territory’s population — to famine-like conditions, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Alert. The rest of the population is facing emergency levels of hunger, and every child under the age of 5 is at risk of acute malnutrition.
The Israeli government’s blockade and ensuing starvation has killed over 100 Palestinians, UNICEF said. Eighty percent of them are children.
UNRWA says it has thousands of trucks waiting in Jordan and Egypt that could surge aid to Palestinians and prevent fatal hunger. But instead of resuming U.S. funding for UNRWA — which President Joe Biden ended last year — President Donald Trump has opted to support GHF even as Israeli soldiers have killed hundreds of aid-seekers at its food distribution sites since late May.
As the starvation catastrophe began to draw international condemnation, Israel said that it would allow aid airdrops in Gaza — a strategy human rights groups have rebuked as ineffective and dangerous. On Sunday, Al Jazeera reported 11 Palestinians were injured after a pallet fell directly on the tents of displaced people.
Last month, the International Crisis Group published a report titled the “Gaza Starvation Experiment,” which found that while Hamas likely extracts some revenue, audits have shown less than 1 percent of assistance has been lost to theft. Aid officials and Gaza residents told the group that the Abu Shabab gang, armed by Israel, has been the “single most prolific looter” during the war on Gaza. Other reports challenging claims of Hamas diverting aid have come out in recent weeks from USAID, the EU Commission, and Israeli media.
Reuters reported last week that a USAID analysis found that out of 156 reported incidents of theft or loss of U.S.-funded supplies between October 2023 and May 2025, at least 44 were related to Israeli military actions.
Despite the mounting evidence, the Times continued to parrot Israel’s claims, including on July 10, June 26, and June 17 — after the ICG released its report. The Times also published an article on Monday that included statements by Trump claiming that Hamas was stealing aid. The article did not clarify that no evidence had been shown to prove this claim.
In April 2024, The Intercept published a report on an internal Times memo that instructed journalists to restrict use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land. The memo also instructed against using the word “Palestine” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians, despite the fact that the United Nations recognizes the areas as refugee camps, and they house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.
A quantitative analysis of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times’s coverage of the first six weeks of the conflict showed a consistent bias against Palestinians, finding that major U.S. newspapers disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7. Pro-Palestinian activists have accused major publications of pro-Israel bias and protested at the Times headquarters in Manhattan for its coverage of Gaza.
The Times and other major mainstream media outlets have often minimized top Israeli officials’ genocidal remarks calling for collective punishment of Palestinians and failed to note that using starvation as a weapon of war is a violation of international law.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned as early as October 11, 2023, that the regime “will continue to tighten the siege until the Hamas threat to Israel and the world is removed.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said a week later that “the only thing that should enter Gaza is hundreds of tons of air force explosives, not a gram of humanitarian aid.”
“No one in the world will allow us to starve two million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said last year. And last week, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said in a radio interview his government “is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” describing Palestinians as indoctrinated Nazis.
“There’s no hunger in Gaza,” Eliyahu said, dismissing reports of starvation as anti-Israel propaganda. “But we don’t need to be concerned with hunger in the Strip. Let the world worry about it.”
On Wednesday 30 July, the High Court granted permission to Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, to bring a full judicial review against the order of the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, proscribing the group as a ‘terrorist organisation’.
Palestine Action can challenge its ban
The ruling comes as a blow to Cooper, whose lawyers argued vigorously that the application should be refused, on the basis that the Terrorism Act contains a statutory process to apply for de-proscription.
Such a process can take years, however, whereas the judicial review is now due to be heard in September.
Mr Justice Martin Chamberlain rejected the Home Secretary’s position stating that:
The proscription order is likely to give rise to interference with rights guaranteed by common law and Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights …
If the legality of the proscription order can properly be raised by way of defence to criminal proceedings, that would open up the spectre of different and possibly conflicting decisions on that issue in Magistrates Courts across England & Wales or before different judges or juries in the Crown Court. That would be a recipe for chaos. To avoid it there is a strong public interest in allowing the order to be determined authoritatively as soon as possible.
He granted Huda Ammori leave to bring a full judicial review on the basis that it is arguable that:
1. The order is a disproportionate interference with Articles 10 and 11 of European Convention on Human Rights [the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly]; and that
2. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, breached the duty to consult, by failing to consult either Palestine Action or civil liberties organisations on the impact of the order, while consulting with representatives from the Israeli Government and Elbit Systems the leading supplier of weapons to the Israeli Government.
Dilemma for Met Commissioner ahead of mass protest on 9 August
It sharpens the dilemma for Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, ahead of what is expected to be a mass protest of more than 500 people planned for 9 August. It would already be a huge and costly operation for the Met to arrest so many people for holding cardboard signs, peaceful people who are motivated by horror at the genocide in Gaza and a desire to uphold democratic freedoms. The prospect of the order being ruled unlawful opens up the further possibility that all those arrested and detained will later be awarded compensation payments for unlawful arrest.
As some of his colleagues have shown around the country, police have discretion as to whether to conduct arrests or not. Police in Totnes, Derry and Kendall for example have chosen to leave peaceful protestors be. On 9 August, Sir Mark will face a stark choice – to risk his own reputation with an absurd and costly operation to arrest 500 peaceful protestors for terrorism offences, or to undermine the Home Secretary’s position by applying common sense and allowing peaceful protestors to exercise their democratic rights.
A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, the groups organising the protests, said:
Yvette Cooper has no-one to blame for this crisis but herself. She was warned by her advisers that the ban would be “novel and unprecedented”, which is Whitehall mandarin-speak for ‘mad’.
If it wasn’t the police or the intelligence agencies pushing for the ban, who was it?
One of the grounds for the High Court’s ruling today was the Home Secretary’s failure to consult appropriately. While she consulted with the Israeli government and Elbit Systems on the merits of the order (and no prizes for guessing their position) she failed to consult with those adversely affected, such as Palestine Action and civil liberties organisations.
If you only consult with those who stand to benefit from your proposal, those who are committing and supporting genocide, but not those who will be adversely affected, not those who are acting to prevent genocide, your bias is already exposed.
We are confident the High Court will soon strike down this absurd and repugnant order.
Chorus of criticism, mockery, and defiance
The ruling comes amid a crisis of credibility for the order, which has been lambasted by lawyers, politicians and the UN alike, and openly mocked and defied across the country, on the streets, in print and online, already resulting in over 200 arrests for Terrorism Act offences.
In the House of Lords last week, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Lord Hain asked: “How have we got to the point where peacefully holding up a placard about the carnage in Gaza is equated with terrorism by Al Qaeda on 9/11 or Islamic State on countless occasions. And shouldn’t the police be concentrating on real terrorism and real crime, not targeting peaceful protesters?”
Derry City and Strabane District Council ignored legal advice to pass a motion calling for the immediate overturning of the proscription, with Councillors openly wearing “We Are All Palestine Action” shirts.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, the former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, Peter Oborne, warned that Yvette Cooper’s controversial ban of Palestine Action could lead to her resignation:
If the general populace comes to the conclusion that this is a stunt by the Starmer government … this legislation won’t take, people will regard it as ridiculous … you’ll end up having thousands of people coming out in support of Palestine Action, thousands of people declared terrorists. The law will suddenly look an ass, this government will lose a great deal of political credibility and in due course the Home Secretary might have to resign.
Palestine Action ban an “impermissible restriction of rights”
Tayab Ali, a leading lawyer at Bindmans, said:
I would be extraordinarily surprised if the British Courts don’t strike [the ban] down. This is such an overreach.
After Private Eye satirised the ban with a cartoon, a retired head-teacher was arrested for displaying a copy of the cartoon, despite it being available in newsagents across the UK. The comedian, Rosie Holt, has mocked “The new face of terrorism. It’s old, it’s wrinkly, it’s elderly and it’s dangerous.”
On Friday, the UN Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk issued a press release stating:
[The ban] appears to constitute an impermissible restriction on rights [to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association] that is at odds with the UK’s obligations under international human rights law.
Previously, five UN Special Rapporteurs had written to the UK Government counselling against the use of Terrorism Act powers against Palestine Action [5B]. Amnesty International has spoken out against the ban, saying:
Government embarrassment at security breaches is no proper basis for excessive and disproportionate interferences with human rights. It is precisely this kind of unlawful government action that critics of the UK’s terrorism laws warned would come one day.
Yet on Saturday, police in Shenstone arrested a man in a wheel-chair, for wearing a T-shirt in support of Palestine Action. [6]
Home Office insinuations against Palestine Action contradicted by their own evidence
As part of the legal process, the Home Office was required to disclose the evidence available to the Home Secretary in support of proscription. It emerged that Home Office insinuations that Palestine Action is violent and funded by Iran were directly contradicted by the assessments provided to her.
The government’s Proscription Review Group (PRG) advised in March 2025 that a ban on Palestine Action would be “novel and unprecedented”, because “there was no known precedent of an organisation being proscribed… mainly due to its use or threat of action involving serious damage to property”.
The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) assessment noted: “PA media channels highly likely will only share footage, or encourage, instances of property damage. PA branded media will highly unlikely explicitly advocate for violence against persons”.
On 23 June, the day of Cooper’s statement to parliament, the Times published a report saying “Iran could be funding Palestine Action, Home Office officials claimed”. This went on to be widely reported. Yet the JTAC assessment of Palestine Action’s sources of funding makes no mention of Iran, stating that Palestine Action “is primarily funded by donations, which can be made directly through their website or via crowdfunding. Other forms of revenue include the sale of merchandise”.
The discrepancy between the Home Office press briefings and the official intelligence reports raises the prospect that a state-linked disinformation campaign was waged against Palestine Action in order to manufacture public consent for proscription.
Yvette Cooper defied warnings from advisers to push through the ban
Strikingly, the Home Secretary was warned by her own advisers that proscription risked substantiating claims of pro-Israeli bias. A Community Impact Assessment produced by the Ministry of Housing, RICU (Research, Information and Communications Unit), and NPCC (National Police Chiefs’ Council), stated:
Other reports documented Israeli embassy officials purportedly attempting to get the attorney general’s office to intervene in court cases. In the context of such reports, proscription could provide fertile ground for actors attempting to substantiate a pattern of bias.
The report goes on to say that a ban “could be seen as the partial realisation of Lord Walney’s efforts, which dissenting actors could argue were coloured by pro-Israel bias”.
In May last year, Lord Walney, published a report calling for Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil to be banned. Successive governments falsely presented Lord Walney to the public as an ‘independent’ adviser on political violence and disruption.
Lord Walney in fact has close ties to the Israeli government and is a paid lobbyist for the arms industry. On 14 February this year, following a Defend Our Juries campaign to sack him, his role was removed, although the Home Office stated, his work would “continue to inform our approach”
The University of the South Pacific (USP) is at the heart of a global legal victory with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivering a historic opinion last week affirming that states have binding legal obligations to protect the environment from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.
The case, hailed as a triumph for climate justice, was driven by a student-led movement that began within USP’s own regional classrooms.
In 2021, the government of Vanuatu took a bold step by announcing its intention to seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ on climate change. But what many may not have realised is that the inspiration behind this unprecedented move came from a group of determined young Pacific Islanders — students from USP who formed the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC).
According to the United Nations background information, these USP students led the charge, campaigning for years to bring the voices of vulnerable island nations to the highest court in the world.
Their call for accountability resonated across the globe, eventually leading to the adoption of a UN resolution in March 2023 that asked the ICJ two critical legal questions:
What obligations do states have under international law to protect the environment?
What are the legal consequences when they fail?
Students from the University of the South Pacific who formed the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC). Image: Wansolwara News
The result A sweeping opinion from the ICJ affirming that climate change treaties place binding duties on countries to prevent environmental harm.
As the ICJ President, Judge Iwasawa Yuji, stated in the official delivery the court was: “Unanimously of the opinion that the climate change treaties set forth binding obligations for States parties to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”
USP alumni lead the celebration USP alumna Cynthia Houniuhi, president of the PISFCC, shared her pride in a statement to USP’s official news that this landmark opinion must guide not only courtrooms but also global climate negotiations and policy decisions and it’s a call to action.
“The law is on our side. I’m proud to be on the right side of history.”
Her words reflect the essence of USP’s regional identity, a university built not just to educate, but to empower Pacific Islanders to lead solutions to the region’s most pressing challenges.
Why is the ICJ’s climate ruling such a big deal? Video: Almost
Students in action, backed by global leaders UN Secretary-General Antόnio Guterres, in a video message released by the UN, gave credit where it was due.
“This is a victory for our planet, for climate change and for the power of young people to make a difference. Young Pacific Islanders initiated this call for humanity to the world, and the world must respond.”
Vishal Prasad, director of PISFCC, in a video reel of the SPC (Secretariat of the Pacific Community), also credited youth activism rooted in the Pacific education system as six years ago young people from the Pacific decided to take climate change to the highest court and today the ICJ has responded.
“The ICJ has made it clear, it cemented the consensus on the science of climate change and formed the heart of all the arguments that many Pacific Island States made.”
USP’s influence is evident in the regional unity that drove this case forward showing that youth educated in the Pacific are capable of reshaping global narratives.
Residents wade through flooding caused by high ocean tides in low-lying parts of Majuro Atoll, the capital of the Marshall Islands. In 2011, the Marshall Islands warned that the clock was ticking on climate change and the world needed to act urgently to stop low-lying Pacific nations disappearing beneath the waves. Image: PHYS ORG/Wansolwara
A win for the Pacific From coastal erosion and rising sea levels to the legacy of nuclear testing, the Pacific lives with the frontline effects of climate change daily.
Coral Pasisi, SPC Director of Climate Change & Sustainability, highlighted in a video message, the long-term importance of the ruling:
“Climate change is already impacting them (Pacific people) and every increment that happens is creating more and more harm, not just for the generations now but those into the future. I think this marks a real moment for our kids.”
Additionally, as Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s Minister for Climate Change, noted to SPC, science was the cornerstone of the court’s reasoning.
“The opinion really used that science as the basis for its definitions of accountability, responsibility, and duty.”
Among the proud USP student voices is Siosiua Veikune, who told Tonga’s national broadcaster that this is not only a win for the students but for the Pacific islands also.
What now? With 91 written statements and 97 countries participating in oral proceedings, this was the largest case ever seen by the ICJ and it all began with a movement sparked at USP.
Now, the challenge moves from the courtroom to the global stage and will see how nations implement this legal opinion.
Though advisory, the ICJ ruling carries immense moral and legal weight. It will likely shape global climate negotiations, strengthen lawsuits against polluting states, and empower developing nations especially vulnerable Pacific Islands to demand justice on the international stage.
For the students who dreamed it into motion, it’s only the beginning.
“Now, we have to make sure this ruling leads to real action — in parliaments, at climate summits, and in every space where our future is at stake,” said Veikune.
Vahefonua Tupola is a second-year student journalist at University of the South Pacific’s Laucala Campus. Republshed from Wansolwara News, the USP student journalism newspaper and website in partnership with Asia Pacific Report.
On Monday, Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia, 44th judge of the Bogotá criminal court, found former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez guilty of witness bribery and procedural fraud.
The verdict concludes a 13-year judicial process fraught with political tensions, complex evidence, and heated debate over the independence of Colombia’s judiciary.
At the hearing’s start, Heredia sent a forceful message to the country: “The wait is over. We want to tell Colombia that justice has arrived.”
The judge called this one of the most significant moments in recent judicial history.
President Donald Trump appears poised to institute an abortion ban for hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs — escalating his war on reproductive health care by revoking veterans’ access to abortion.
The Office of Management and Budget concluded its review last week of a Veterans Affairs rule titled Reproductive Health Services, clearing the way to implement it at the VA.
Experts believe the rule is a reversal of a Biden-era policy of the same name which ended the agency’s ban on abortion counseling for veterans and allowed for VA providers to offer abortion services in limited circumstances, such as rape, incest, or endangerment of a pregnant person’s life or health. If the policy is overturned, hundreds of thousands of veterans in states with abortion bans could lose access to abortion care and counseling.
Sarah Baker, the digital director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the change appears to be “the first nationwide abortion ban that Trump is supporting and putting in place.”
The new rule has not yet been published, and until it is, experts can’t be certain what exactly is in it. The VA did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. But Rachel Fey, vice president of policy and strategic partnershipsatthe reproductive and sexual health advocacy organization Power to Decide, said that based on the Trump administration’s posture and explicit calls in Project 2025 to reverse the Biden policy, she expects one of two outcomes.
“We think either they would roll back the exceptions to an extremely narrow set that mimics the Hyde Amendment,” Fey said, referring to a law that bars federal funds from being used for abortion care except in cases of rape, incest, or to save a person’s life. (The Hyde Amendment does not allow exceptions to preserve a person’s health in non-fatal circumstances, as the Biden rule does.)
Or, Fey said, another possibility is “just striking [the Biden rule] entirely and saying abortion is not allowed in any circumstances at the VA.”
The Biden administration implemented the Reproductive Health Services rule for the VA in 2024, two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Though the rule only allows VA hospitals to provide abortions in extreme circumstances, it was designed to provide basic protections in states that moved quickly to institute abortion bans.
“So that’s 345,000 women veterans that live in states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion,” said Jaclyn Dean, director of congressional relations, reproductive health, at the National Partnership for Women & Families. “For many of the women veterans living in any of those 12 states with total abortion bans, the VA is the only place that they can get abortion care. So you can expect those people to lose abortion care in cases of rape, incest, in the life and health of the pregnant person.”
In that climate, Fey stressed, even narrowing the exceptions could be devastating.
“What we’ve seen in states like Texas and Idaho is women coming close to death, suffering the loss of future fertility sometimes, suffering long-term disability because they were not given the standard clinical care they needed when they needed it,” Fey said. “That’s what we’re talking about when we get to a life exception versus a health exception.”
“As a physician, I trained at the VA, where a sign at the entrance read: ‘The price of freedom is visible here.’ Our veterans sacrificed everything for this country, and in return, we promised them the best care possible,” Dexter wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “For Trump to reinstate a complete ban on abortion care and counseling at the VA – even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life or health of the mother — is an utter betrayal of that promise.”
Veterans also face unique health risks related to pregnancy, said Baker with the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“Pregnancy is just riskier for veterans,” said Baker, “because of the different health risks that they face, higher rates of sexual assault, higher rates of PTSD … and the higher [rates of] other chronic conditions.”
And restricting or cutting off access to abortion would only compound the additional barriers to accessing quality health care that veterans already face, Fey noted.
“Serving in the U.S. military is often a way out of poverty for a lot of people in this country, and because of systemic racism, a disproportionate number of the people looking for that way out are Black and brown women when they serve in the military,” said Fey. “When we talk about reproductive health care in this country, the harms don’t fall equally.”
The Trump administration has been steadily chipping away at policies put in place by President Joe Biden to protect access to reproductive health care. In June, Trump rescinded guidance from the Biden administration that directed hospitals under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in medical emergencies — including abortion care.
“It’s all part of this larger plan of extremists to ban abortion wherever they can and to interfere with people’s personal medical decisions,” said Dean. “They’re weaponizing control over veterans’ health care, instead of doing what’s actually best for our country’s veterans, which is giving them the health care that they need.”
The United States is building an unprecedented network of deportee dumping grounds, pursuing deals with around a third of the world’s nations to expel immigrants to places where they do not hold citizenship. Once exiled, these third-country nationals are sometimes detained, imprisoned, or in danger of being sent back to their country of origin — which they may have fled to escape violence, torture, or political persecution.
The nations that the Trump administration is collaborating with to accept these expelled immigrants are some of the worst human rights offenders on the planet, according to the U.S. government’s own reports.
More than 8,100 people have been expelled in this manner since January 20, and the U.S. has made arrangements to send people to at least 13 nations, so far, across the globe. Of them, 12 have been cited by the State Department for significant human rights abuses.
But the Trump administration has cast a much wider net for its third-country deportations. The U.S. has solicited 64 nations to participate in its growing global gulag for expelled immigrants. Fifty-eight of them — roughly 91 percent — were rebuked for human rights violations in the State Department’s most recent human rights reports.
America’s preferred third-country deportee dumping grounds also receive uniform low marks from outside human rights groups. Only four of the 13 countries that have agreed to accept people forcibly expelled from the U.S. — Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama — in 2025 were rated “free” by Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that advocates for democracy and human rights and gets the bulk of its funding from the U.S. government. The rest of the countries – El Salvador, Eswatini, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Mexico, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uzbekistan — were rated “partly free” or “not free.”
“It is not surprising the governments that would agree to these sketchy third-country removal arrangements would be countries with serious pre-existing human rights issues,” said Anwen Hughes, the senior director of legal strategy for refugee programs at Human Rights First. “But it is shocking that the United States would seek to remove third-country nationals to these destinations.”
The most recent additions to America’s global gulag are among the least free countries on the planet. This month, the administration expelled five men — from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen — to the Southern African kingdom of Eswatini, an absolute monarchy with a dismal human rights record. The move closely followed the U.S. deportation of eight men to violence-plagued South Sudan, one of the most repressive nations in the world. South Sudan is Freedom House’s lowest rated nation, scoring 1/100. Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, scored 17/100, worse than perennial bad actors like Egypt and Ethiopia.
“The Trump administration cares nothing for human rights and wants these deportations to third countries to be punitive,” Yael Schacher, the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, told The Intercept.
Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could resume expelling immigrants to countries other than their own without any chance to object on the grounds that they might be tortured. The court’s decision has been a boon to the administration, which has been employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller, weaker, and economically dependent nations to push them to accept expelled people. Trump cheered the court’s decision in a White House statement earlier this month.
“I say this unapologetically, we are actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at an April 30 Cabinet meeting. “We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries, and will you do that as a favor to us?’”
The Trump administration has sought or struck deals with or deported third-country nationals to Angola, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Libya, Kosovo, Malawi, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Palau, Panama, Peru, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe; these 58 were taken to task by the State Department last year for significant human rights abuses. Tuvalu and Santa Lucia were also cited in the report for having repressive laws on paper but were not found to enforce them in practice. Only four of the 64 total nations — Antigua and Barbuda, Cabo Verde, Costa Rica, and Saint Kitts and Nevis — received a clean bill of human rights health from the State Department.
With the green light from the Supreme Court, thousands of immigrants are in danger of being disappeared into this burgeoning network of pariah states. The recent budget bill, passed in Congress, will provide the Trump administration tens of billions of dollars to arrest, detain and expel immigrants. Some $14.4 billion is marked for new ICE transportation funds — a massive increase above the agency’s 2024 transportation and removal budget. “You’re going to see immigration enforcement on a level you’ve never seen it before,” said Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan, referring to the newfound largesse.
“When you’ve got countries that won’t take their nationals back, and they can’t stay here, we find another country willing to accept them,” Homan said, adding that the administration may not necessarily expel people to every country that agrees to accept third-country nationals, but wants the option on hand.
Experts say that third-country deportations are rooted in cruelty and not a lack of deportation options. Hughes, of Human Rights First, noted that Mexican nationals held in south Texas had been set to be deported to both Libya and South Sudan. (The Libya deportations were eventually blocked in court.)
“The Mexican border is right there. I’ve been doing immigration detention work for a very long time. I’ve never in my life seen Mexico refuse to take back one of its nationals, ever,” Hughes told The Intercept, noting that the administration appeared to be seeking out “really implausible destinations to send people.”
In April, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her government had already accepted roughly 6,000 non-Mexicans from the U.S. for “humanitarian reasons.” Mexico has agreed to accept “third-country removals” from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, said Thomas Giles, a longtime ICE official, during a recent federal court hearing. The Mexican government has refused to offer further information on third-country expulsions, although return receipts show spokespersons Alba Gardenia Mejía Abreu and Lourdes Fabiola Garita Arce have repeatedly read The Intercept’s questions on the subject.
While Mexico has been the largest recipient of third-country nationals in 2025, a growing number of other countries, from Latin America to Africa, have forged deals with the U.S. and accepted deportees from elsewhere.
In February, Guatemala, a country where “human rights defenders, journalists and political opponents were harassed and criminalized” last year, according to Amnesty International, announced it had struck a deal with the Trump administration to accept third-country nationals. The country has received around 110 Mexicans this year, according to data obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by a team of lawyers and academics from the Deportation Data Project.
Honduras received around 650 Venezuelans this year, while around 560 Hondurans were expelled by the U.S. to Mexico, according to data from the Deportation Data Project. The researchers also found that Canada received a small number of people from India and that Colombia has received Venezuelan deportees.
The Trump administration has expelled hundreds of African and Asian immigrants to Costa Rica and Panama, including people from Afghanistan, Cameroon, China, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
The administration also began using the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, as a foreign prison to disappear Venezuelan immigrants in March. Andry Hernández Romero, a Venezuelan make-up artist who was expelled by the United States to the offshore prison, was recently released from CECOT following a prisoner swap with Venezuela. He said he was abused, sexually assaulted, and denied food, describing his time there as “an encounter with torture and death.”
Uzbekistan received more than 100 deportees from the United States, including not only Uzbeks but citizens of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, according to an April announcement by the Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. also inked a limited agreement with Rwanda while exploring a more “durable program.” Amnesty International recently called out that East African nation over reports of forced disappearances and evidence of torture and other ill treatment in detention.
The U.S. struck a deal with Europe’s youngest country, Kosovo, in June, to accept 50 deportees from other nations. Kosovo has already made an agreement with Denmark to rent out 300 prison cells for foreign nationals convicted of crimes who will be deported from Denmark at the end of their sentences. Human Rights Watch has warned the Balkans may become “a warehouse for migrants.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. expelled eight men to the newest nation on the planet, South Sudan. The State Department’s most recent assessment of the East African nation catalogs an enormous range of serious abuses, including reports of extrajudicial killings; disappearances by or on behalf of government authorities; instances in which “security forces mutilated, tortured, beat, and harassed political opponents, journalists, and human rights activists,” including documented cases of torture and other mistreatment of those in the custody of the National Security Service, such as beatings with sticks, whips, pipes, and wires; being subjected to electric shocks; being burned with melted plastic; raped; and subjected to other forms of sexual violence.
Beyond that, South Sudan is subject to a U.N. warning about the potential for full-scale civil war and a State Department “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory. The department advises those who choose to go there to draft a will, establish a proof-of-life protocol with family members, and leave DNA samples with one’s medical provider.
The Trump administration renounced responsibility for the men it expelled to South Sudan. Asked whether they were in U.S. or South Sudanese custody, Homan lied. “They’re free,” the White House executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations told Politico. “They’re living in Sudan.” Neither part of his statement is true. The eight men have been held incommunicado in South Sudan — not Sudan — for weeks by the National Security Service. They have been unable to contact their lawyers or their families. The White House did not reply to repeated questions about Homan’s statement.
Soon after the South Sudan expulsions, on July 15, the administration expelled five men — from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen — to Eswatini. The State Department’s most recent human rights report on that kingdom refers to credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; and the incarceration of political prisoners. The five men will reportedly be held in solitary confinement for an undetermined amount of time.
The government of Eswatini said the men are considered “in transit” and will eventually be sent to their home countries. Eswatini’s assertion that the men would be sent to their homelands contradicted claims by DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who wrote on X that the deportees were “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”
The Trump administration’s third-country deportation deals are being conducted in secret, and neither the State Department nor the Department of Homeland Security will discuss them.
Lt. Gen. John W. Brennan, U.S. Africa Command’s deputy commander, told The Intercept no discussions of third-country deportations took place during his recent high-level engagements with Angola and Namibia and directed queries on the matter to DHS.
A State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to arcane departmental rules, also repeatedly insisted that “deportations are squarely in DHS’s way” and answers to The Intercept’s questions were actually “a DHS issue.” When The Intercept countered that the agreements were made by the State Department, the official asked: “Who’s the [point of contact] negotiating these agreements?” Asked if the official was admitting that the State Department had abdicated its diplomatic responsibilities to DHS, the official said: “No, I’m not. I’m not saying that. I don’t know.”
The latter refrain is common among government officials. “When we sign these agreements with all these countries, we make arrangements to make sure these countries are receiving these people and there’s opportunities for these people,” Homan claimed before admitting he was flummoxed by the agreements. “But I can’t tell if we remove somebody to Sudan — they can stay there a week and leave. I don’t know.”
The Intercept could find no corroborative information about a third-country deportation agreement with Sudan. The White House failed to respond to repeated requests for clarification.
Experts questioned the U.S. making deals with some of the world’s worst human rights offenders. “Generally speaking, there aren’t obvious reasons for a government to want to accept deportees who have no connection to their country. The countries that make these agreements are going to be the most desperate and may want concessions that they can’t obtain by other means,” said Hughes, who is also one of the lawyers representing the men exiled to South Sudan. “The U.S. government should be asking itself: ‘To what extent does it make sense to allow migration issues to run foreign policy?’ and ‘What, exactly, is the U.S. willing to bargain away for the sake of deporting a relatively small number of people?’”
“What, exactly, is the U.S. willing to bargain away for the sake of deporting a relatively small number of people?”
Due to the secret nature of agreements, it is unclear what fate awaits people expelled to these outcast nations. The question of whether they would be deported again to their nation of origin, or another unrelated nation, where they face the possibility of persecution or abuse; be allowed to remain in the third country and under what circumstances; or be held in detention or prison, as in El Salvador, remains unknown.
Some people, including those expelled to South Sudan, also appear to have been sent without identification or travel documents, potentially leaving individuals in a legal limbo.
“Removing people by putting people on military or private aircraft that the United States entirely controls and then dumping them in countries that are willing to take them, without identification? This is new and dangerous,” said Hughes. “It’s not clear that there are any consistent requirements in terms of what status people will be issued or even if the U.S. is providing clear and accurate information to the receiving country as to these people’s legal situation.”
Experts have warned that while almost all African countries and nations in the Americas are parties to the U.N. Refugee Convention, countries like Kosovo and Uzbekistan are not. If they were to expel immigrants they received as part of their deals with the Trump administration, they would have no obligation under international law to screen deportees to ensure they are not sent to a country where they may face threats to their life or freedom.
Non-refoulement — derived from a French word for return — forbids sending people to places where they are at risk of harm. It is a bedrock principle of international human rights, refugee, and customary international law, and is embedded in U.S. domestic law. The Trump administration has not only abandoned this obligation but will also look the other way regarding violations by other nations.
State Department employees were recently instructed that future installments of its human rights reports — the same type that The Intercept relied on for this reporting — should ignore whether a nation had violated its obligations not to send people to countries where they would face torture or persecution. A State Department official failed to respond to repeated questions by The Intercept concerning the role the Trump administration’s own third-country deportations played in the new directive.
Experts told The Intercept that the change in State Department policy was no coincidence, and the delay in issuing the annual reports — which are usually released in the spring — was likely tied, at least in part, to the administration’s third-country deportations and its willingness to flout international law. Trina Realmuto, the executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance and another lawyer for the men expelled to South Sudan, offered her own assessment.
“It seems that leadership,” she explained, “is trying to eliminate the State Department’s reporting on human rights violations and non-refoulement because they evidence the hypocrisy of its third country removal policy.”
Last week, the UN’s highest court issued a stinging ruling that countries have a legal obligation to limit climate change and provide restitution for harm caused, giving legal force to an idea that was hatched in a classroom in Port Vila. This is how a group of young students from Vanuatu changed the face of international law.
Vishal Prasad admitted to being nervous as he stood outside the imposing palace in the Hague, with its towering brick facade, marble interiors and crystal chandeliers.
It had taken more than six years of work to get here, where he was about to hear a decision he said could throw a “lifeline” to his home islands.
The Peace Palace, the home of the International Court of Justice, could not feel further from the Pacific.
Yet it was here in this Dutch city that Prasad and a small group of Pacific islanders in their bright shirts and shell necklaces last week gathered before the UN’s top court to witness an opinion they had dreamt up when they were at university in 2019 and managed to convince the world’s governments to pursue.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague last week . . . a landmark non-binding rulings on the climate crisis. Image: X/@CIJ_ICJ
“We’re here to be heard,” said Siosiua Veikune, who was one of those students, as he waited on the grass verge outside the court’s gates. “Everyone has been waiting for this moment, it’s been six years of campaigning.”
What they wanted to hear was that more than a moral obligation, addressing climate change was also a legal one. That countries could be held responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions — both contemporary and historic — and that they could be penalised for their failure to act.
“For me personally, [I want] clarity on the rights of future generations,” Veikune said. “What rights are owed to future generations? Frontline communities have demanded justice again and again, and this is another step towards that justice.”
And they won.
Vishal Prasad of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change group speaks to the media in front of the International Court of Justice following the conclusion last week of an advisory opinion on countries’ obligations to protect the climate. Image: Instagram/Pacific Climate Warriors
The court’s president, Judge Yuji Iwasawa, took more than two hours to deliver an unusually stinging advisory opinion from the normally restrained court, going through the minutiae of legal arguments before delivering a unanimous ruling which largely fell on the side of Pacific states.
“The protection of the environment is a precondition for the enjoyment of human rights,” he said, adding that sea-level rise, desertification, drought and natural disasters “may significantly impair certain human rights, including the right to life”.
After the opinion, the victorious students and lawyers spilled out of the palace alongside Vanuatu’s Climate Minister, Ralph Regenvanu. Their faces were beaming, if not a little shellshocked.
“The world’s smallest countries have made history,” Prasad told the world’s media from the palace’s front steps. “The ICJ’s decision brings us closer to a world where governments can no longer turn a blind eye to their legal responsibilities”.
“Young people around the world stepped up, not only as witnesses to injustice, but as architects of change”.
Vanuatu’s Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu talks to the media after the historic ICJ ruling in The Hague on Tuesday. Image: Arab News/VDP
A classroom exercise
It was 2019 when a group of law students at the University of the South Pacific’s campus in Port Vila, the harbourside capital of Vanuatu, were set a challenge in their tutorial. They had been learning about international law and, in groups, were tasked with finding ways it could address climate change.
It was a particularly acute question in Vanuatu, one of the countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis. Many of the students’ teenage years had been defined by Cyclone Pam, the category five storm that ripped through much of the country in 2015 with winds in excess of 250km/h.
It destroyed entire villages, wiped out swathes of infrastructure and crippled the country’s crops and water supplies. The storm was so significant that thousands of kilometres away, in Tuvalu, the waves it whipped up displaced 45 percent of the country’s population and washed away an entire islet.
Cyclone Pam was meant to be a once-in-a-generation storm, but Vanuatu has been struck by five more category five cyclones since then.
Foormer Solomon Islands student at USP Belyndar Rikimani . . . It was seen as obscene that the communities with the smallest carbon footprint were paying the steepest price for a crisis they had almost no hand in creating.” Image: RNZ Pacific
Among many of the students, there was a frustration that no one beyond their borders seemed to care particularly much, recalled Belyndar Rikimani, a student from Solomon Islands who was at USP in 2019. She saw it as obscene that the communities with the smallest carbon footprint were paying the steepest price for a crisis they had almost no hand in creating.
Each year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was releasing a new avalanche of data that painted an increasingly grim prognosis for the Pacific. But, Rikimani said, the people didn’t need reams of paper to tell them that, for they were already acutely aware.
On her home island of Malaita, coastal villages were being inundated with every storm, the schools of fish on which they relied were migrating further away, and crops were increasingly failing.
“We would go by the sea shore and see people’s graves had been taken out,” Rikimani recalled. “The ground they use to garden their food in, it is no longer as fertile as it has once been because of the changes in weather.”
The mechanism used by the world to address climate change is largely based around a UN framework of voluntary agreements and summits — known as COP — where countries thrash out goals they often fail to meet. But it was seen as impotent by small island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean, who accused the system of being hijacked by vested interests set on hindering any drastic cuts to emissions.
So, the students argued, what if there was a way to push back? To add some teeth to the international process and move the climate discussion beyond agreements and adaptation to those of equity and justice? To give small countries a means to nudge those seen to be dragging their heels.
“From the beginning we were aware of the failure of the climate system or climate regime and how it works,” Prasad, who in 2019 was studying at the USP campus in Fiji’s capital, Suva, told me.
“This was known to us. Obviously there needs to be something else. Why should the law be silent on this?”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the main court for international law. It adjudicates disputes between nations and issues advisory opinions on big cross-border legal issues. So, the students wondered, could an advisory opinion help? What did international law have to say about climate change?
Members of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change activist group. Image: RNZ Pacific/PISFCC
Unlike most students, who would leave such discussions in the classroom, they decided to find out. But the ICJ does not hear cases from groups or individuals; they would have to convince a government to pursue the challenge.
Together, they wrote to various Pacific governments hoping to discuss the idea. It was ambitious, they conceded, but in one of the regions most threatened by rising seas and intensifying storms, they hoped there would at least be some interest.
But rallying enough students to join their cause was the first hurdle.
“There was a lot of doubts from the beginning,” Rikimani said. “We were trying to get the students who could, you know, be a part of the movement. And it was hard, it was too big, too grand.”
In the end, 27 people gathered to form the genesis of a new organisation: Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC).
A couple of weeks went by before a response popped up in their inboxes. The government of Vanuatu was intrigued. Ralph Regenvanu, who was at that time the foreign minister, asked the students if they would like to swing by for a meeting.
“I still remember when [the] group came into my office to discuss this. And I felt solidarity with them,” Regenvanu recalled last week.
“I could empathise with where they were, what they were doing, what they were feeling. So it was almost like the time had come to actually, okay, let’s do something about it.”
The students — “dressed to the nines,” as Regenvanu recalled — gave a presentation on what they hoped to achieve. Regenvanu was convinced. Not long after the wider Vanuatu government was, too. Now it was time for them to convince other countries.
“It was just a matter of the huge diplomatic effort that needed to be done,” Regenvanu said. “We had Odi Tevi, our ambassador in New York, who did a remarkable job with his team. And the strategy we employed to get a core group of countries from all over the world to be with us.
“A landmark ruling . . . International Court of Justice sides with survivors, not polluters.” Image: 350 Pacific
“It’s interesting that, you know, some of the most important achievements of the international community originated in the Pacific,” Regenvanu said, citing efforts in the 20th century to ban nuclear testing, or support decolonisation.
“We have this unique geographic and historic position that makes us able to, as small states, have a voice that’s much louder, I think. And you saw that again in this case, that it’s the Pacific once again taking the lead to do something that is of benefit to the whole world.”
What Vanuatu needed to take the case to the ICJ was to garner a majority of the UN General Assembly — that is, a majority of every country in the world — to vote to ask the court to answer a question.
To rally support, they decided to start close to home.
Hope and disappointment The students set their sights on the Pacific Islands Forum, the region’s pre-eminent political group, which that year was holding its annual leaders’ summit in Tuvalu. A smattering of atolls along the equator which, in recent years, has become a reluctant poster child for the perils of climate change.
Tuvalu had hoped world leaders on Funafuti would see a coastline being eaten by the ocean, evidence of where the sea washes across the entire island at king tide, or saltwater bubbles up into gardens to kill crops, and that it would convince the world that time was running out.
But the 2019 Forum was a disaster. Pacific countries had pushed for a strong commitment from the region’s leaders at their retreat, but it nearly broke down when Australia’s government refused to budge on certain red lines. The then-prime minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, accused Australia and New Zealand of neo-colonialism, questioning their very role in the Forum.
“That was disappointing,” Prasad said. “The first push was, okay, let’s put it at the forum and ask leaders to endorse this idea and then they take it forward. It was put on the agenda but the leaders did not endorse it; they ‘noted’ it. The language is ‘noted’, so it didn’t go ahead.”
Another disappointment came a few months later, when Rikimani and another of the students, Solomon Yeo, travelled to Spain for the annual COP meeting, the UN process where the world’s countries agree their next targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Solomon Yeo (standing, second left) of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, with youth climate activists. Image: RNZ Pacific/PISFCC
That was an eye-opening two weeks in Madrid for Rikimani, whose initial scepticism of the system had been validated.
“It was disappointing when there’s nothing that’s been done. There is very little outcome that actually, you know, safeguards the future of the Pacific,” she said.
“But for us, it was the COP where there was interest being showed by various young leaders from around the world, seeing that this campaign could actually bring light to these climate negotiations.”
By now, Regenvanu said, that frustration was boiling over and more countries were siding with their campaign. By the end of 2019, that included some major countries from Europe and Asia, which brought financial and diplomatic heft. Other small-island countries from Africa and the Caribbean had also joined.
“Many of the Pacific states had never appeared before the ICJ before. So [we were] doing write shops with legal teams from different countries,” he said.
“We did write shops in Latin America, in the Caribbean, in the Pacific, in Africa, getting people just to be there at the court to present their stories, and then of course trying to coordinate.”
Meanwhile, Prasad was trying to spread word elsewhere. The hardest part, he said, was making it relevant to the people.
International law, The Hague, the Paris Agreement and other bureaucratic frameworks were nebulous and tedious. How could this possibly help the fisherman on Banaba struggling to haul in a catch?
To rally support, the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change decided to start close to home. Image: RNZ Pacific/PISFCC
They spent time travelling to villages and islands, sipping kava shells and sharing meals, weaving a testimony of Indigenous stories and knowledge.
In Fiji, he said, the word for land is vanua, which is also the word for life.
“It’s the source of your identity, the source of your culture. It’s this connection that the land provides the connection with the past, with the ancestors, and with a way of life and a way of doing things.”
He travelled to the village of Vunidologa where, in 2014, its people faced the rupture of having to leave their ancestral lands, as the sea had marched in too far. In the months leading up to the relocation, they held prayer circles and fasted. When the day came, the elders wailed as they made an about two kilometre move inland.
“That’s the element of injustice there. It touches on this whole idea of self-determination that was argued very strongly at the ICJ, that people’s right to self-determination is completely taken away from them because of climate change,” Prasad said.
“Some have even called it a new face of colonialism. And that’s not fair and that cannot stand in 2025.”
Preparing the case If 2019 was the year of building momentum, then a significant hurdle came in 2020, when the coronavirus shuttered much of the world. COP summits were delayed and the Pacific Islands Forum postponed. The borders of the Pacific were sealed for as long as two years.
But the students kept finding ways to gather their body of evidence.
“Everything went online, we gathered young people who would be able to take this idea forward in their own countries,” Prasad said.
On the diplomatic front, Vanuatu kept plugging away to rally countries so that by the time the Forum leaders met again — in 2022 — they were ready to ask for support again.
“It was in Fiji and we were so worried about the Australia and New Zealand presence at the Forum because we wanted an endorsement so that it would send a signal to all the other countries: ‘the Pacific’s on board, let’s get the others’,” Prasad recalled.
“We were very worried about Australia, but it was more like if Australia declines to support then the whole process falls, and we thought New Zealand might also follow.”
They didn’t. In an about-turn, Australia was now fully behind the campaign for an advisory opinion, and the New Zealand government was by now helping out too. By the end of 2022, several European powers were also involved.
Attention now turned to developing what question they wanted to actually ask the international court. And how would they write it in such a way that the majority of the world’s governments would back it.
“That was the process where it was make and break really to get the best outcome we could,” said Regenvanu.
“In the end we got a question that was like 90 percent as good as we wanted and that was very important to get that and that was a very difficult process.”
By December 2022, Vanuatu announced that it would ask the UN General Assembly to ask the International Court of Justice to weigh what, exactly, international law requires states to do about climate change, and what the consequences should be for states that harm the climate through actions or omissions.
More lobbying followed and then, in March 2023, it came to a vote and the result was unanimous. The UN assembly in New York erupted in cheers at a rare sign of consensus.
“All countries were on board,” said Regenvanu. “Even those countries that opposed it [we] were able to talk to them so they didn’t oppose it publicly.”
They were off to The Hague.
A tense wait Late last year, the court held two weeks of hearings in which countries put forth their arguments. Julian Aguon, a Chamorro lawyer from Guam who was one of the lead counsel, told the court that “these testimonies unequivocally demonstrate that climate change has already caused grievous violations of the right to self-determination of peoples across the subregion.”
Over its deliberations, the court heard from more than 100 countries and international organisations hoping to influence its opinion, the highest level of participation in the court’s history. That included the governments of low-lying islands and atolls, which were hoping the court would provide a yardstick by which to measure other countries’ actions.
They argued that climate change threatened fundamental human rights — such as life, liberty, health, and a clean environment — as well as other international laws like those of the sea, and those of self-determination.
In their testimonies, high-emitting Western countries, including Australia, the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia maintained that the current system was enough.
It’s been a tense and nervous wait for the court’s answer, but they finally got it last Wednesday.
“We were pleasantly surprised by the strength of the decision,” Regenvanu said. “The fact that it was unanimous, we weren’t expecting that.”
The court said states had clear obligations under international law, and that countries — and, by extension, individuals and companies within those countries — were required to curb emissions. It also said the environment and human rights obligations set out in international law did indeed apply to climate change, and that countries had a right to pursue restitution for loss and damage.
The opinion is legally non-binding. But even so, it carries legal and political weight.
Individuals and groups could bring lawsuits against their own countries for failing to comply with the court’s opinion, and states could also return to the ICJ to hold each other to account, something Regenvanu said Vanuatu wasn’t ruling out. But, ultimately, he hoped it wouldn’t reach that point, and the advisory opinion would be seen as a wake-up call.
“We can call upon this advisory opinion in all our negotiations, particularly when countries say they can only do so much,” Regenvanu said. “They have said very clearly [that] all states have an obligation to do everything within their means according to the best available science.
“It’s really up to all countries of the world — in good faith — to take this on, realise that these are the legal obligations under custom law. That’s very clear. There’s no denying that anymore.
“And then discharge your legal obligations. If you are in breach, fix the breach, acknowledge that you have caused harm. Help to set it right. And also don’t do it again.”
Student leader Vishal Prasad . . . “Oh, it definitely does not feel real. I don’t think it’s settled in.” Image: Instagram/Earth.org
Vishal Prasad still hadn’t quite processed the whole thing by the time we met again the next morning. In shorts, t-shirt, and jandals, he cut a much more relaxed figure as he reclined on a couch sipping a mug of coffee. His phone had been buzzing non-stop with messages from around the world.
“Oh, it definitely does not feel real. I don’t think it’s settled in,” he said. “I got, like, a flood of messages, well wishes. People say, ‘you guys have changed the world’. I think it’s gonna take a while.”
He was under no illusions that there was a long road ahead. The court’s advisory came at a time when international law and multilateralism was under particular strain.
When the urgency of the climate debate from a few years ago appears to have given way to a new enthusiasm for fossil fuel in some countries. He had no doubt the Pacific would continue to lead those battles.
“People have been messaging me that across the group chats they’re in, there’s this renewed sense of courage, strength and determination to do something because of what the ICJ has said,” he said.
“I’ve just been responding to messages and just saying thanks to people and just talking to them and I think it’s amazing to see that it’s been able to cause such a shift in the climate movement.”
Watching the advisory opinion being read out at 3am in Honiara was Belyndar Rikimani, hunched over a live stream in the dead of the night.
“What’s very special about this campaign is that it didn’t start with government experts, climate experts or policy experts. It started with students.
“And these law students are not from Harvard or Cambridge or all those big universities, but they are students from the Pacific that have seen the first-hand effects of climate change. It started with students who have the heart to see change for our islands and for our people.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
United States military veterans in the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau received increased attention during the Biden Administration after years of neglect by the US Veterans Administration.
That progress came to a halt with the incoming Trump Administration in Washington in January, when the new Veterans Administration put many programmes on hold.
Marshall Islands Foreign Minister and US military veteran Kalani Kaneko said he is hopeful of resuming the momentum for veterans living in the freely associated states.
Two key actions during the Biden administration helped to elevate interest in veterans living in the freely associated states:
The administration’s appointment of a Compact of Free Association (COFA) Committee that included the ambassadors to Washington from the three nations, including Marshall Islands Ambassador Charles Paul, and US Cabinet-level officials.
The US Congress passed legislation establishing an advisory committee for the Veterans Administration for Compact veterans.
Kalani Kaneko was appointed as chairman to a three-year term, which expires in September.
Kaneko said he submitted a report to the Veterans Administration recently on its activities and needs.
The Foreign Minister said it is now up to the current administration of the Veterans Administration to take next steps to reappoint members of the advisory committee or to name a new group.
Virtually non-existent
Kaneko pointed out that in contrast to its virtually non-existent programme in the Marshall Islands, FSM and Palau, the VA’s programme for veterans is “robust” in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Citizens of the three compact nations enlist in the US military at higher rates per capita than Americans.
But when they leave the service and return home to their islands, they have historically received none of the benefits accorded to US veterans living in the United States.
Kaneko and island leaders have been trying to change this by getting the Veterans Administration to provide on-island services and to pay for medical referrals of veterans when locally available medical services are not available.
Kaneko said the 134-page report submitted in June contained five major recommendations for improved services for veterans from the US-affiliated islands:
Establish a VA clinic in Majuro with an accredited doctor and nurse.
Authorise use of the Marshall Islands zip code for US pharmacies to mail medicines to veterans here (a practice that is currently prohibited).
If the level of healthcare in Marshall Islands cannot provide a service needed by a veteran, they should be able to be referred to hospitals in other countries.
Due to the delays in obtaining appointments at VA hospitals in the US, the report recommends allowing veterans to use the Marshall Islands referral system to the Philippines to access the US Veterans Administration clinic in Manila.
Support and prioritise the access of veterans to US Department of Agriculture Rural Development housing loans and grants.
Kaneko said he is hopeful of engagement by high-level Veterans Administration officials at an upcoming meeting to review the report and other reports related to services for Compact nation veterans.
But, he cautioned, because there was nothing about compact veterans in President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” passed recently by the US Congress, it means fiscal year 2027 — starting October 1, 2026 — would be the earliest to see any developments for veterans in the islands.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Muslims, and the global community, must rally around the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights: to exist, to return home, and to live free from occupation.
ANALYSIS:By Shadee ElMasry
In our world today, one would be hard-pressed to find a reputable, well-known scholar or group of scholars who support Israel. Of course, the keywords here are “well-known” and “reputable”, after a “misguided” delegation of European Imams travelled to Israel to placate the Israeli occupation and sponsor the genocide of the Palestinian people.
It is increasingly common to find these figures, Muslim apologists for Israel, who have breached the Islamic tenet of standing against injustice, laundering their authority to provide cover for Israel’s crimes against humanity against their brothers and sisters in Palestine and across the wider Arab world.
We live in a world of shameless opportunism, where the poisoned fruit of “normalising” relations with the Israeli occupation is weighed against moral conviction and our duty to stand with the afflicted Palestinians.
A few weeks ago, this tradeoff played out across our screens.
The delegation’s visit, which included 15 European Imams, was led by the controversial Hassen Chalghoumi (known for supporting Nicolas Sarkozy’s burqa ban) and involved meetings with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has been accused of inciting genocide.
Clearly, their consciences weren’t troubled by the catastrophic famine now gripping Gaza, a “hell on earth” where women and children are killed for scrambling to get flour, and men are killed without rhyme or reason.
I, like many companions across mosques and online feeds, was dumbfounded by the delegation’s complicity. This visit happened at a time when we as Muslims, and the global community, must rally around the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights: to exist, to return home, and to live free from occupation, especially as they face an existential threat.
Delegation swiftly denounced
The delegation was swiftly denounced. Al-Azhar University stressed that they “do not represent Islam and Muslims.” Worshippers walked out of UK mosques. A Dutch Imam was suspended.
But this isn’t just about them. We need to ask how this happened and ensure it does not repeat with us. As one scholar said, if an Imam sees the community fall into usury, then gives his Friday sermon on adultery, the Imam has betrayed his congregation.
The same is the case with Muslim apologists for Israel.
To understand their motives, we must examine three theological “traps” these figures use to justify their support for Israel, or at least the very least, their silence over Palestine. The first of which is the “Greater Good Trap”.
They claim that “speaking up against Israel will result in more harm than good”. But only the Prophet Muhammad’s silence constitutes tacit approval. Their reasoning doesn’t hold up.
A weak-willed person will always accept this reasoning because it allows them to have their proverbial cake and eat it: they gain spiritual cover for remaining silent. As we’ve seen, the scholar will say: “Yes, I can speak, but then our school will get shut down, or we’ll lose funding. For the sake of the greater good, I must remain silent.”
Israel, I’m sure, is delighted by this self-censorship. But we should also ask how it is that so many non-scholars, non-Muslims, and non-Arabs are speaking the truth about the Gaza genocide, while Islamic scholars remain silent.
It raises eyebrows, at the very least.
‘Pure theology’ trap
The second trap is the “Pure Theology” trap. Here, the scholar says: “Sound belief is the most important thing. How can we support the Palestinians when they resort to armed conflict? Their theology is flawed. I prioritise the truth, what’s wrong with that?”
But what they overlook is that falsehood has degrees. It is foolish to denounce one error while ignoring a greater one.
To attack a people’s doctrinal shortcomings while staying silent on their oppression is not principled; it is a failure to understand the fiqh of priorities.
This trap lies in misplacing truths: loudly condemning the religious mistakes of Israel’s victims while conveniently forgetting the far graver injustice of Israel itself and the violent context that brought it into being.
The final, and most sophisticated, trap that Muslim apologists for Israel use is metaphysical: they attempt to misdirect Muslims to a higher order of spiritual thought about the Divine will.
They ask what sounds like a noble question: “Why is Allah doing this to us? It must be because of our sins. Israel is merely a tool God is using to punish us or purify us.”
But the catch here is that the spiritual angle often (but not always) becomes a cover for pacifism. These figures that travelled to Israel, for instance, actively promote inaction. They showed no emotion, no voice, when witnessing the oppression of their own; only when it came to their sponsors did they find something to say.
Suffer in silence
The idea here is to suffer in silence, to clothe disengagement in the language of spiritual endurance.
In the end, this is precisely what Israel and its supporters want: to keep the spotlight off themselves. Any diversion, theological or otherwise, is welcome. As we know, the oppressor laughs at those who fixate on what is bad while ignoring what is worse. And that is the danger behind all three traps.
Yet despite these efforts, something far more powerful holds. The drive within the hearts and minds of Muslims to carry the burden of the Palestinian people, to speak their truth and fight for their freedom has not been extinguished.
It is sustained by faith, shared memory, and the belief that justice is not a slogan but a sacred duty. We ask Allah for continued guidance and protection, and the strength to continue this noble and just cause. Ameen.
Dr Shadee Elmasry has taught at several universities in the United States. Currently, he serves as scholar in residence at the New Brunswick Islamic Center in New Jersey. He is also the founder and head of Safina Society, an institution dedicated to the cause of traditional Islamic education in the West. This article was first published by The New Arab.
The Gaza Government Media Office has condemned “in the strongest terms” Israel’s storming of the Handala aid ship, calling it an act of “maritime piracy”, reports Al Jazeera.
“This blatant aggression represents a flagrant violation of international law and maritime navigation rules,” the office said in a statement.
“It reaffirms once again that the [illegal Israeli] occupation acts as a thuggish force outside the law, targeting every humanitarian initiative seeking to rescue more than 2.4 million besieged and starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
The office also called on the international community, including the United Nations and rights groups, “to take an urgent and firm stance against this aggression and to work to secure international protection for the convoys”.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement today that the Israeli navy had intercepted the Gaza-bound Handala, and it was now heading towards Israel.
“The Israeli navy has stopped the vessel Navarn from illegally entering the maritime zone of the coast of Gaza,” said the statement, using the aid ship’s original name.
“The vessel is safely making its way to the shores of Israel,” it added. “All passengers are safe.”
Freedom Flotilla slams ‘abductions’
A statement by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition accused Israel military of “abducting” the 21 crew members of the Handala, saying the ship had been “violently intercepted by the Israeli military in international waters about 40 nautical miles from Gaza.
“At 23:43 EEST Palestine time, the Occupation cut the cameras on board Handala and we have lost all communication with our ship.
“The unarmed boat was carrying life-saving supplies when it was boarded by Israeli forces, its passengers abducted, and its cargo seized.
“The interception occurred in international waters outside Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, in violation of international maritime law.”
The Handala carried a shipment of critical humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza, including baby formula, diapers, food, and medicine, the statement said.
“All cargo was non-military, civilian, and intended for direct distribution to a population facing deliberate starvation and medical collapse under Israel’s illegal blockade.”
The Handala carried 21 civilians representing 12 countries, including parliamentarians, lawyers, journalists, labour organisers, environmentalists, and other human rights defenders.
Seized crew members, journalists
The seized crew includes:
United States: Christian Smalls — Amazon Labor Union founder; Huwaida Arraf — Human rights attorney (Palestine/US); Jacob Berger — Jewish-American activist; Bob Suberi — Jewish US war veteran; Braedon Peluso — sailor and direct action activist; Dr Frank Romano — International lawyer and actor (France/US).
France: Emma Fourreau — MEP and activist (France/Sweden); Gabrielle Cathala — Parliamentarian and former humanitarian worker; Justine Kempf — nurse, Médecins du Monde; Ange Sahuquet — engineer and human rights activist.
Italy: Antonio Mazzeo — teacher, peace researcher, journalist; Antonio “Tony” La Picirella — climate and social justice organiser.
Spain: Santiago González Vallejo — economist and activist; Sergio Toribio — engineer and environmentalist.
Australia: Robert Martin — human rights activist; Tania “Tan” Safi — Journalist and organiser of Lebanese descent.
United Kingdom/France: Chloé Fiona Ludden — former UN staff and scientist.
Tunisia: Hatem Aouini — Trade unionist and internationalist activist.
The two journalists on board:
Morocco: Mohamed El Bakkali — senior journalist with Al Jazeera (based in Paris).
Iraq/United States: Waad Al Musa — cameraman and field reporter with Al Jazeera.
The attack on Handala is the third violent act by Israeli forces against Freedom Flotilla missions this year alone, said the statement.
“It follows the drone bombing of the civilian aid ship Conscience in European waters in May, which injured four people and disabled the vessel, and the illegal seizure of the Madleen in June, where Israeli forces abducted 12 civilians, including a Member of the European Parliament.
“Shortly before their abduction, the Handala‘s crew affirmed that they would be hunger-striking if detained by Israeli forces and not accepting any food from the Israeli Occupation Forces.”
Israeli officials have ignored the International Court of Justice’s binding orders that require the facilitation of humanitarian access to Gaza.
The continued attacks on peaceful civilian missions represent a grave violation of international law, said the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
“Kia Ora Gaza is a longtime member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and supports the current Handala civil mission to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza and end Israel’s campaign to wipe out the Palestinian population.
“All governments must urgently take strong effective action to stop the genocide and occupation and end all complicity with Israel. There are no Kiwis on the Handala which was intercepted under an enforced communications blackout today.”
Activists on board the Handala aid ship before leaving Italy’s Gallipoli Port on July 20, 2025. Image: Valeria Ferraro/Anadolu
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
An activist on board the Handala, a Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship carrying aid to the besieged enclave in a bid to break Israel’s blockade, says the crew are preparing themselves for the possibility of Israeli forces storming the vessel.
Jacob Berger, an actor from the US, made the comments to Al Jazeera Arabic from on board the Handala, which set sail from Gallipoli, Italy last Sunday.
The ship is currently off the coast of Egypt in international waters on its route to Gaza.
The Handala is the latest ship sent by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) in its mission to break Israel’s Gaza blockade amid the devastating starvation regime imposed on the terrotory by Israeli forces.
The FFC’s previous mission ended when its ship, the Madleen, was intercepted by the Israeli military, who boarded the vessel and arrested the activists on board illegally in international waters on June 9.
The Handala’s live location tracker shows it is nearing the area where the Madleen was intercepted by Israel.
Earlier, Al Jazeera reported that 16 Israeli military drones had been spotted flying near the vessel overnight.
In a message via Instagram, another crew member, Thiago Avila, said that the Handala mission was about to cross the location — around 110 nautical miles — “where we were intercepted one month ago with the Madleen trying to break the siege of Gaza and create a humanitarian sea corridor that could stop famine”.
Avila added that Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had already warned that he intended to “commit another war crime tonight [by] kidnapping our participants and illegally stopping a humanitarian mission heading to Gaza despite the strict prohibition from the International Court of Justice on its provisional rulings.”
The Freedom Flotilla ship Handala . . . reports 16 drones – some in pairs – flying over the aid vessel as it nears Gaza. Image: @yenisafakenglish screenshot APR
A fundraiser for young Black man William McNeil Jr from Jacksonville Florida has gone viral in response to the disgusting, but all too predictable announcement from local prosecutors to let the cops who brutalised him off the hook.
No consequences for Florida cops that brutalised William McNeil Jr
In February, Florida cops pulled over 22-year-old William McNeil Jr. He was on his way home from mentoring local youth in his community.
McNeil savvily recorded the encounter – which exposed the Florida cops’ deplorable violence towards him during the incident. In an appalling scene, the officers smash in his car window before punching him in the face and violently dragging him from the vehicle and assaulting him:
The footage clearly shows McNeil simply asking the officers their reasons for demanding he exit the car. Instead of answering, the cops quickly got violent.
But of course, the Florida force has been doing what all cops do best: lying through their teeth about the events. It was the usual claims. As the Washington Post reported:
Police wrote in a report that before he was pulled out of the car, McNeil reached for the floorboard, where an unsheathed knife was later found.
However, the outlet then noted that:
Publicly available video footage does not show him leaning down toward it.
Unsurprisingly, further police body-cam footage the Jacksonville sheriff’s office has just released also showed no such thing:
It provided further context. Officers told him they’d pulled him over for not having his headlights on – in visibly broad daylight – before savagely attacking him.
Police impunity, as ever
They arrested William McNeil Jr for possession of marijuana, resisting an officer without violence, and driving with a suspended license. McNeil pleaded guilty to the latter two, and a court served him a two-day prison sentence.
Police waving drug laws around and targeting Black communities for criminalisation? It’s obviously nothing new from the rabidly racist US police and state, as something they’ve disproportionality done for a past-time.
But police keep us safe, right?
Of course, nothing can remotely justify the cops vindictively brutalising McNeil. McNeil has described how the assault left him:
not only traumatized but also with a chipped tooth, multiple stitches in my lip, a concussion, and short-term memory loss.
Yet, according to the Jacksonville sheriff T.K. Waters, prosecutors in Florida have already said they won’t be charging the officers involved.
A violent encounter with cops comes at an unconscionable cost
In a press conference on Wednesday, William McNeil Jr spoke out for the first time about the experience:
Understandably still broken from the atrocious incident, McNeil spoke of his fear in the moment and the fact he’d done nothing wrong.
Now, people are stepping up to support him where the state won’t. McNeil has set up a fundraiser, after many asked him to do so.
Naturally, the hugely traumatising incident has had a huge ongoing impact on him in multiple unconscionable ways. He wrote on the fundraiser that:
I faced several charges that forced me to seek legal representation, which I could not afford. The incident resulted in significant medical bills, and I am unable to repair my car. The mental, emotional, and psychological distress has made it challenging for me to maintain steady employment. I am uncertain if I am mentally or physically prepared to return to college in Fall 2025, which was my intention before this incident. What should have been a typical day for me has turned into an uncertain future due to a violent encounter that should never have occurred. I am raising $10,000.00 to help cover medical expenses, auto repairs, recoup legal fees, and to support myself as I recover and work towards rebuilding my life.
Already, it has outstripped its original $10,000 goal. At the time of publication, more than 500 people have donated over $15,000 to help McNeil seek justice.
Support McNeil where the state won’t
Ultimately, the racist cops were arguably looking for any excuse to pull over and beat an unarmed Black man – and William McNeil Jr was the unlucky first to cross their paths. The scene with officers grabbing his head and pushing him to the ground could be switched out with George Floyd footage from 2020, and you’d notice no difference. And US cops murdering Black people in traffic stops has long been systemic.
In 2016, cops in Minnesota shot dead 32-year-old Philando Castile in a traffic stop. In 2021, police killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright, after pulling him over for an expired registration and an air freshener. The list goes on – and the violence never stops.
In the press conference with McNeil, a speaker on stage noted that:
it could have been a different result if he hadn’t kept his demeanor.
And he was right. But it also speaks to a lengths Black, brown, and racially minoritised people have to go to maintain the image of the perfect victim as well. When it comes down to it, the virulently white supremacy that victim-blames Black folks to uphold systemic police violence against their communities is what McNeil’s footage and story has captured in a nutshell.
The US state, and indeed Western white supremacist nations the world over, will never protect the communities their status quo is dependent on marginalising.
As ever, McNeil’s experience is a torrid tale in repulsive police impunity. But mutual aid is standing up to this abominable injustice. At the end of the day, it’s communities that keep communities safe – and we must continue to do so.
You can donate to William McNeil Jr’s fundraiser here.
Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change Adaptation, Ralph Regenvanu, has welcomed the historic International Court of Justice (ICJ) climate ruling, calling it a “milestone in the fight for climate justice”.
The ICJ has delivered a landmark advisory opinion on states’ obligations under international law to act on climate change.
The ruling marks a major shift in the global push for climate justice.
Vanuatu — one of the nations behind the campaign — has pledged to take the decision back to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to seek a resolution supporting its full implementation.
Climate Change Minister Regenvanu said in a statement: “We now have a common foundation based on the rule of law, releasing us from the limitations of individual nations’ political interests that have dominated climate action.
“This moment will drive stronger action and accountability to protect our planet and peoples.”
The ICJ confirmed that state responsibilities extend beyond voluntary commitments under the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement.
It ruled that customary international law also requires states to prevent environmental and transboundary harm, protect human rights, and cooperate to address climate change impacts.
Duties apply to all states
These duties apply to all states, whether or not they have ratified specific climate treaties.
Violations of these obligations carry legal consequences. The ICJ clarified that climate damage can be scientifically traced to specific polluter states whose actions or inaction cause harm.
As a result, those states could be required to stop harmful activities, regulate private sector emissions, end fossil fuel subsidies, and provide reparations to affected states and individuals.
“The implementation of this decision will set a new status quo and the structural change required to give our current and future generations hope for a healthy planet and sustainable future,” Minister Regenvanu added.
He said high-emitting nations, especially those with a history of emissions, must be held accountable.
Despite continued fossil fuel expansion and weakening global ambition — compounded by the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement — Regenvanu said the ICJ ruling was a powerful tool for campaigners, lawyers, and governments.
“Vanuatu is proud and honoured to have spearheaded this initiative,” he said.
‘Powerful testament’
“The number of states and civil society actors that have joined this cause is a powerful testament to the leadership of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and youth activists.”
The court’s decision follows a resolution adopted by consensus at the UNGA on 29 March 2023. That campaign was initiated by the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change and backed by the Vanuatu government, calling for greater accountability from high-emitting countries.
The ruling will now be taken to the UNGA in September and is expected to be a central topic at COP30 in Brazil this November.
Vanuatu has committed to working with other nations to turn this legal outcome into coordinated action through diplomacy, policy, litigation, and international cooperation.<
“This is just the beginning,” Regenvanu said. “Success will depend on what happens next. We look forward to working with global partners to ensure this becomes a true turning point for climate justice.”
Republished from the Vanuatu Daily Post with permission.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivers its historic climate ruling in The Hague on Tuesday. Image: VDP
In an order that reads like it was written two decades ago, an Oklahoma County judge on Wednesday denied bond for Richard Glossip, keeping him in jail while the state prepares to try him a third time for first-degree murder.
In the 18-page document, District Judge Heather Coyle underplays the significance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s February ruling that overturned Glossip’s most recent conviction. The ruling instead largely adopts the state’s theory of the crime that sent Glossip to death row — while ignoring volumes of evidence that have been discovered in the intervening years.
“Having considered the record, arguments of all parties, and the exhibits submitted by the parties, the court finds that the state has sufficiently shown by clear and convincing evidence that the presumption of the defendant’s guilt of a capital offense is great,” Coyle wrote. “Accordingly, the court finds Mr. Glossip’s request for bond should be, and is hereby, denied.”
The order comes despite last week’s revelation that, in a 2023 email exchange, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond agreed to a tentative plea deal that would have allowed Glossip to walk free.
The correspondence, first reported by The Intercept, is at the heart of a motion filed by Glossip’s defense attorneys who have asked Coyle to enforce what they describe as a legally binding agreement. The state has responded by denying that the deal was ever reached, but the judge has yet to rule on the matter.
Glossip was twice convicted of the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese inside room 102 of the rundown motel his family owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death, but insisted Glossip put him up to it. Sneed, who is currently serving a life sentence, escaped the death penalty by becoming the star witness against Glossip.
Until recently, it was clear that Sneed had been discredited as a witness — including by Drummond. After taking office in 2023, Drummond ordered an independent investigation into Glossip’s case, concluding that he had lost confidence in Glossip’s conviction.
Drummond took unprecedented steps to block Glossip’s execution and to overturn his conviction, successfully arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that Sneed — the state’s once “indispensable witness” — had lied on the witness stand.
Drummond now seems determined to go forward with trying Glossip for murder a third time using the same evidence previously used to convict him. During a June bond hearing, prosecutors offered nothing new, instead asking the judge to review the transcripts from Glossip’s 1997 preliminary hearing and his 2004 trial.
That appears to have been enough for Coyle. In her order denying Glossip bond, the judge relies heavily on Sneed’s prior testimony while suggesting there are other witnesses who could bolster the state’s case against Glossip. But for the most part, these other witnesses offered nothing more than circumstantial evidence that called into question Glossip’s behavior after Van Treese’s murder.
“Discredited Testimony”
Glossip was originally charged as an accessory after the fact for initially failing to give police information about the murder. The night Van Treese was killed, Glossip said, Sneed had woken him up around 4 a.m. by knocking on the wall of his apartment, which was adjacent to the motel’s office. Standing outside with a black eye, Sneed told Glossip he had chased off some drunks who had broken a window in one of the motel rooms.
According to Glossip, he asked Sneed about his black eye, and Sneed flippantly replied, “I killed Barry.” It wasn’t until the next morning, when no one could find Van Treese, that Glossip realized Sneed might have been serious. Still, Glossip didn’t tell the cops right away; he said his girlfriend suggested waiting until they figured out what was going on.
In her order, Coyle relies on witnesses who describe things Glossip did that suggest he covered up his knowledge of the crime — including that Glossip had helped Sneed put plexiglass over the broken window of the room where Van Treese was killed.
Coyle cited in particular the notion that Glossip was trying to steer people away from Room 102, in an apparent attempt to ensure that Van Treese’s body would not be discovered. “Multiple witnesses support that Mr. Glossip followed through with this plan,” Coyle wrote, emphasizing her point in bold.
The fact remains, however, that these accounts only look damning through the lens of Sneed’s story about Glossip being in on the murder itself. Aside from Sneed’s already discredited testimony, there is still no evidence to support this.
While prosecutors have offered nothing new to support the position that Glossip is a murderer, his defense team has spent more than a decade uncovering new evidence and new witnesses that not only point to Sneed as the sole perpetrator of the crime, but also reveal that the state hid and destroyed evidence before Glossip’s 2004 retrial.
At the bond hearing and in court briefs, Glossip’s attorneys tried to offer Coyle much of this evidence — including letters Sneed wrote expressing his desire to recant his testimony against Glossip. They also said several of the witnesses the state relied on have since died — meaning the defense would have no opportunity to cross-examine them about new and previously undisclosed evidence.
While Coyle said she would consider some of the defense’s new information, her ultimate order reflects that she didn’t consider any of it — save for a single paragraph noting that the Supreme Court had overturned Glossip’s conviction.
As for the prosecution’s star witness, “if the state had wanted the court to actually consider the testimony of Mr. Sneed in making this bond determination, it could have called him as a witness at the hearing,” Glossip’s lawyers wrote. “Its failure to do [so], and to instead ask the court to rely on thoroughly discredited testimony, speaks volumes as to their confidence in Sneed’s credibility today.”
On the same day Gaza health officials reported that at least 20 Palestinians died of malnutrition in the Strip’s hospitals over the past two days, the American official in charge of delivering food amid Israel’s restriction of aid declared his program a success.
“We’ve been filling a massive gap in a way that’s direct to the people, that prioritizes the security of the situation in this very complex environment,” said Johnnie Moore, the chair of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, on Tuesday during an event hosted by the American Jewish Congress and joinedby the World Zionist Organization. “And despite what you may read in the press and the criticism that you hear from the United Nations and other institutions, what we’re doing has actually been unbelievably effective.”
As Palestinians continue to starve to death in Gaza, Moore, an evangelical minister and former religious adviser to the Trump administration, has spent the past several weeks defending his organization’s work. He’s appeared on mainstream TV news outlets and in interviews with pro-Israel podcasts. He and his foundation have messaged in lockstep with the Israeli government, as both cast blame on Hamas officials and the international community for a famine of Israel’s creation.
Israel has blockaded humanitarian aid from entering Gaza since March, when the Israeli government acknowledged it was weaponizing hunger to pressure Hamas into total disarmament — a plan that even U.S. officials have said is untenable. When the GHF took over aid distribution in the Strip in late May, Israeli troops began routinely opening fire on starving Palestinians waiting for food. As of this week, Israeli troops have shot and killed more than 1,000 people trying to get food: 766 near GHF aid sites, and 288 near aid convoys run by the United Nations and other organizations, according to the U.N.
Moore repeatedly blamed the U.N. for choosing “politics … over the needs of these people,” during Tuesday’s event. He claimed the U..N had failed to deliver “thousands upon thousands of pallets” of aid already inside Gaza. The Israeli government has made the same argument in recent weeks, releasing video and photos of supposedly dormant stockpiles to advance a narrative that the U.N.-led system is broken.
“It’s shocking to imagine that’s being said with a straight face,” said Mara Kronenfeld, executive director of UNRWA USA, referring to Moore’s statements. “This is a narrative that does not at all match the reality and is a very cynical and dark narrative, given how bad the reality is.”
Outside of reports that rely solely on anonymous Israeli intelligence sources, such as a recent Washington Post article that alleged Hamas seized 15 percent of goods for its own use, there has been no evidence of widespread theft of aid by Hamas. An aid audit recognized Hamas had been using some aid for revenue, but showed that only 1 percent of aid had been lost to theft. While the Israeli government publicly cried foul about such theft as far back as early 2024, Israeli officials failed to provide evidence of such allegations during confidential briefings with U.S. officials.
Despite news reports like the Haaretz investigation in June that Israeli soldiers have been ordered to shoot at unarmed Palestinians waiting for aid, or the July Associated Press story revealing that American contractors guarding the GHF aid sites had fired live ammunition, stun grenades, and tear gas at aid-seeking Palestinians, GHF markets itself as a safer alternative to U.N.-run aid sites.
“We exist so people live,” Moore said during the Tuesday event, while dismissing such reports. “We don’t want a single person to be hurt and certainly not killed trying to seek food. And we do everything in our power to make sure that that doesn’t happen. But the way the world is responding to this challenge, this terrible challenge, in the middle of a war is making the situation worse rather than helping solve the issue.”
He called reports to the contrary a “flood of misinformation.” Addressing the chaotic images of desperate Palestinians frantically rushing to sift through boxes of food at its aid sites, Moore said the GHF model is “far more orderly than” that of the U.N.-led World Food Programme, and said it only appears disorderly to “the untrained eye.”
“What they are missing is these are human beings.”
“The idea that this is the way you do aid, and only a ‘trained eye’ could see that, would be true if we were talking about corralling animals into such settings,” Kronenfeld said, adding that the U.N. operated 400 aid sites throughout the Strip to broaden the reach of aid and to prevent such chaotic scenes. “What they are missing is these are human beings, and the kinds of scenes we are seeing are not fit for human beings, let alone people who’ve been suffering for 21 months.”
GHF has claimed it has delivered nearly 89 million meals in Gaza since it began operations. Moore said a new community distribution model has been “incredibly successful in getting food more deeply into the Gaza Strip.”
But in the months since GHF took over aid distribution in Gaza, hospitals in the Strip have reported sharp increases in malnutrition cases. Doctors Without Borders said among its patients with severe or moderate malnutrition include 700 pregnant and breastfeeding women and nearly 500 children. Aid workers and journalists have also begun to report experiencing severe hunger, including one photographer with Agence France-Presse who quit after he said he was too weak to work.
In a letter released Wednesday, more than 100 humanitarian aid organizations urged Israel to end the siege on Gaza and come to a ceasefire, noting that acute malnutrition is especially prevalent among children and older people.
“Illnesses like acute watery diarrhoea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration,” the letter said. It notes that about 28 trucks of aid per day are allowed into Gaza — a drop from the 600 daily that flowed into the Strip earlier this year amid the temporary ceasefire, which Israel later broke by continuing its bombing campaign.
There are “tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel” sitting inside Gaza or at border crossings, the letter argues, but the Israeli government’s restrictions have prevented them from accessing and delivering the aid.
As of Monday, Israel had deemed 87 percent of the Strip a military zone or put it under evacuation orders, severely straining movement for both aid-seeking Palestinians and aid workers. That territorial creep fits into the far-right Israeli government’s broader plans for Gaza: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans in May to evacuate Palestinians to the south into a military-controlled “sterile zone.” Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he had instructed the military to forcibly displace Gaza’s entire population of about 2 million people into a “humanitarian city,” which would be built atop the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza, according to The Times of Israel. And Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has long called for the establishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza, continued to push the idea while attending a Knesset conference with other Israeli lawmakers called “The Gaza Riviera – from vision to reality,” a riff off of U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed plan to take control of the Strip to construct “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
As the writers of the letter argue, “The UN-led humanitarian system has not failed, it has been prevented from functioning.”
However, Israel’s blockade has prevented the delivery of other aid, such as medicine, medical supplies, hygiene products, water, fuel, and other essentials. Moore said his organization is prepared to deliver such supplies when called upon, but he continued to blame the U.N. and nongovernmental organizations for their unwillingness to collaborate.
The GHF did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
Anastasia Moran, advocacy director at MedGlobal, a Chicago-based medical aid organization that has teams in Gaza and signed onto the letter, said that it has stockpiles of nutrition treatments, medicine, and other medical supplies sitting at the Gaza border that has been blocked by the Israeli government.
Like the remaining hospitals across Gaza, MedGlobal’s clinic in Gaza City has seen an increase in severe malnutrition cases, Moran said. Lacking essential supplies, their medical teams have struggled to treat patients, and many have died.
“Every single one of those deaths is preventable.”
Moran said at least five infants and toddlers had recently died of malnutrition at MedGlobal’s clinic: 3-month-old Mohammed, 4-month-old Nahed, 1.5-year-old Zein, 2-year-old Jouri, and 4.5-year-old Sewar.
“They died for the sole reason that we did not have the essential medications and IV fluids and nutrition treatments that we needed to save their lives,” Moran said. “Every single one of those deaths is preventable, every single one of those deaths is not the norm of what we’ve been seeing in Gaza.”
A court has handed four Just Stop Oil supporters conditional discharges after they pleaded guilty to “interfering with the use of key national infrastructure” by slow marching in 2023 to demand an end to new oil and gas licensing.
Just Stop Oil: sentenced for the ‘serious offence’ that is slow marching
Ben Larsen, Tabitha King, Cathy Archer, and Poppy Jabelman had joined a slow march at Hendon Way on 13 November 2023. Police did not charge them until June 2025, when they accused them of interfering with key national infrastructure under Section 7 of the Public Order Act. They pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates Court on 25 June 2025. On 23 July, a judge handed them their sentences.
In pronouncing the sentence, the judge agreed that they had committed a serious offence, but took into account the defendant’s conscientious motivation, guilty pleas, and the long delay between the offence and being charged. The judge gave all four a 12 months conditional discharge, costs of £85 each, and a victim compensation charge of £26.
Poppy Jabelman said:
Power to the people! Just Stop Oil’s demand has been met keeping 4.4 billion barrels of oil in the ground, that’s 1.3 million barrels of oil for each of our arrests. Direct action works.
Courts full of slow marchers
Over 100 people took action at Hendon Way on 13 November 2023. This was amid the third week of Just Stop Oil’s relentless autumn 2023 campaign of slow marching everyday in London. The marches overwhelmed police – who had insufficient officers and vans to arrest everyone.
Nearly two years down the line and the courts are now full of Just Stop Oil supporters who joined the slow marches.
Also taking action that day was Dr. Juliette Brown, a 53-year-old doctor from London. She appeared in Southwark Crown Court today to plead not guilty to the Section 7 charge, along with Jake Causely, Alfie Hewitt, Charlotte Omiotek and Lia Lazarus. The court has set their trial date for November 2027, four years after the action.
In 2023, Dr. Juliette Brown said:
Democracy doesn’t start and end at the ballot box. Whether it’s marching for a ceasefire in Palestine or taking action with Just Stop Oil, I feel driven to act by government policies that are threatening the lives of countless millions of ordinary people.
The repressive Public Order Act: Just Stop Oil supporters won’t be silenced
The previous Conservative government introduced the section 7 offence of interfering with key national infrastructure (such as roads, airports, and railways) in April 2023 with the Public Order Act. It specifically aimed at stopping Just Stop Oil’s slow marching tactics. The offence carries a penalty of up to 12 months imprisonment.
The Met police used it for the first time in October 2023. At the time of publication, police have charged over 250 Just Stop Oil supporters with the offence. Many of these protesters have yet to face trial.
In 2024 Just Stop Oil successfully won its original demand of ‘no new oil and gas’. As a result, on March 27 2025, Just Stop Oil announced an end to the campaign of action. However, its supporters will continue to tell the truth in court, to speak out for our political prisoners, and to help build what comes next.
More than 100 humanitarian groups are demanding action to end Israel’s siege of Gaza, warning mass starvation is spreading across the Palestinian territory.
The NGOs, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, warn, “illnesses like acute watery diarrhea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.”
Their warning came as the Palestinian Ministry of Health said the number of starvation-related deaths has climbed to at least 111 people.
This is Ghada al-Fayoumi, a displaced Palestinian mother of seven in Gaza City.
GHADA AL-FAYOUMI: “[translated] My children wake up sick every day. What do I do? I get saline solution for them. What can I do?
“There’s no food, no bread, no drinks, no rice, no sugar, no cooking oil, no bulgur, nothing. There is no kind of any food available to us at all.”
AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of antiwar protesters marched on Tuesday in Tel Aviv outside Israel’s military headquarters, demanding an end to Israel’s assault and a lifting of the Gaza siege. This is Israeli peace activist Alon-Lee Green with the group Standing Together.
ALON-LEE GREEN: “We are marching now in Tel Aviv, holding bags of flour and the pictures of these children that have been starved to death by our government and our army.
“We demand to stop the starvation in Gaza. We demand to stop the annihilation of Gaza. We demand to stop the daily killing of children and innocent people in Gaza.
“This cannot go on. We are Israelis, and this does not serve us. This only serves the Messianic people that lead us.”
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the World Health Organisation has released a video showing the Israeli military attacking WHO facilities in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah. A WHO spokesperson condemned the attack, called for the immediate release of a staff member abducted by Israeli forces.
TARIK JAŠAREVIĆ: “Male staff and family members were handcuffed, stripped, interrogated on the spot and screened at gunpoint.
“Two WHO staff and two family members were detained.”
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, health officials in Gaza say Israeli attacks over the past day killed more than 70 people, including five more people seeking food at militarised aid sites. Amid growing outrage worldwide, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday the situation in Gaza right now is a “horror show”.
UN SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: “We need look no further than the horror show in Gaza, with a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times.
“Malnourishment is soaring. Starvation is knocking on every door.”
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He is a professor of law at University of Oregon, where he leads the Food Resiliency Project.
Israel waging ‘fastest starvation campaign’ in modern history Video: Democracy Now!
Dr Michael Fakhri, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can respond to what’s happening right now, the images of dying infants starving to death, the numbers now at over 100, people dropping in the streets, reporters saying they can’t go on?
Agence France-Presse’s union talked about they have had reporters killed in conflict, they have had reporters disappeared, injured, but they have not had this situation before with their reporters starving to death.
DR MICHAEL FAKHRI: Amy, the word “horror” — I mean, we’re running out of words of what to say. And the reason it’s horrific is it was preventable. We saw this coming. We’ve seen this coming for 20 months.
Israel announced its starvation campaign back in October 2023. And then again, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced on March 1 that nothing was to enter Gaza. And that’s what happened for 78 days. No food, no water, no fuel, no medicine entered Gaza.
And then they built these militarised aid sites that are used to humiliate, weaken and kill the Palestinians. So, what makes this horrific is it has been preventable, it was predictable. And again, this is the fastest famine we’ve seen, the fastest starvation campaign we’ve seen in modern history.
AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about what needs to be done at this point and the responsibility of the occupying power? Israel is occupying Gaza right now. What it means to have to protect the population it occupies?
DR FAKHRI: The International Court of Justice outlined Israel’s duties in its decisions over the last year. So, what Israel has an obligation to do is, first, end its illegal occupation immediately. This came from the court itself.
Second, it must allow humanitarian relief to enter with no restrictions. And this hasn’t been happening. So, usually, we would turn to the Security Council to authorise peacekeepers or something similar to assist.
But predictably, again, the United States keeps vetoing anything to do with a ceasefire. When the Security Council is in a deadlock because of a veto, the General Assembly, the UN General Assembly, has the authority to call for peacekeepers to accompany humanitarian convoys to enter into Gaza and to end Israel’s starvation campaign against the Palestinian people.
AMY GOODMAN: People actually protested outside the house of UN Secretary-General António Guterres yesterday. People protested all over the world yesterday against the Palestinians being starved and bombed to death. Those in front of the UN Secretary-General’s house said they don’t dispute that he has raised this issue almost every day, but they say he can do more.
Finally, Michael Fakhri, what does the UN need to do — the US, Israel, the world?
DR FAKHRI: So, as I mentioned, first and foremost, they can authorise peacekeepers to enter to stop the starvation. But, second, they need to create consequences.
The world has a duty to prevent this starvation. The world has a duty to prevent and end this genocide. And as a result, then, what the world can do is impose sanctions.
And again, this is supported by the International Court of Justice. The world needs to impose wide-scale sanctions against the state of Israel to force it to end the starvation and genocide of civilians, of Palestinian civilians in Gaza today.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, speaking to us from Eugene, Oregon.
The United Nations’ highest court has found that countries can be held legally responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions, in a ruling highly anticipated by Pacific countries long frustrated with the pace of global action to address climate change.
In a landmark opinion delivered yesterday in The Hague, the president of the International Court of Justice, Yuji Iwasawa, said climate change was an “urgent and existential threat” that was “unequivocally” caused by human activity with consequences and effects that crossed borders.
They were frustrated at what they saw was a lack of action to address the climate crisis, and saw current mechanisms to address it as woefully inadequate.
Their idea was backed by the government of Vanuatu, which convinced the UN General Assembly to seek the court’s advisory opinion on what countries’ obligations are under international law.
The court’s 15 judges were asked to provide an opinion on two questions: What are countries obliged to do under existing international law to protect the climate and environment, and, second, what are the legal consequences for governments when their acts — or lack of action — have significantly harmed the climate and environment?
The International Court of Justice in The Hague yesterday . . . landmark non-binding rulings on the climate crisis. Image: X/@CIJ_ICJ
Overnight, reading a summary that took nearly two hours to deliver, Iwasawa said states had clear obligations under international law, and that countries — and, by extension, individuals and companies within those countries — were required to curb emissions.
Iwasawa said the environment and human rights obligations set out in international law did indeed apply to climate change.
‘Precondition for human rights’
“The protection of the environment is a precondition for the enjoyment of human rights,” he said, adding that sea-level rise, desertification, drought and natural disasters “may significantly impair certain human rights, including the right to life”.
To reach its conclusion, judges waded through tens of thousands of pages of written submissions and heard two weeks of oral arguments in what the court said was the ICJ’s largest-ever case, with more than 100 countries and international organisations providing testimony.
They also examined the entire corpus of international law — including human rights conventions, the law of the sea, the Paris climate agreement and many others — to determine whether countries have a human rights obligation to address climate change.
The president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Yuji Iwasawa, delivering the landmark rulings on climate change. Image: X/@CIJ_ICJ
Major powers and emitters, like the United States and China, had argued in their testimonies that existing UN agreements, such as the Paris climate accord, were sufficient to address climate change.
But the court found that states’ obligations extended beyond climate treaties, instead to many other areas of international law, such as human rights law, environmental law, and laws around restricting cross-border harm.
Significantly for many Pacific countries, the court also provided an opinion on what would happen if sea levels rose to such a level that some states were lost altogether.
“Once a state is established, the disappearance of one of its constituent elements would not necessarily entail the loss of its statehood.”
Significant legal weight
The ICJ’s opinion is legally non-binding. But even so, advocates say it carries significant legal and political weight that cannot be ignored, potentially opening the floodgates for climate litigation and claims for compensation or reparations for climate-related loss and damage.
Individuals and groups could bring lawsuits against their own countries for failing to comply with the court’s opinion, and states could also return to the International Court of Justice to hold each other to account.
The opinion would also be a powerful precedent for legislators and judges to call on as they tackle questions related to the climate crisis, and give small countries greater weight in negotiations over future COP agreements and other climate mechanisms.
Outside the court, several dozen climate activists, from both the Netherlands and abroad, had gathered on a square as cyclists and trams rumbled by on the summer afternoon. Among them was Siaosi Vaikune, a Tongan who was among those original students to hatch the idea for the challenge.
“Everyone has been waiting for this moment,” he said. “It’s been six years of campaigning.
“Frontline communities have demanded justice again and again,” Vaikune said. “And this is another step towards that justice.”
Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu (cenbtre) speaks to the media after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings on climate change in The Hague yesterday. Image: X/CIJ_ICJ
‘It gives hope’ Vanuatu’s Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu said the ruling was better than he expected and he was emotional about the result.
“The most pleasing aspect is [the ruling] was so strong in the current context where climate action and policy seems to be going backwards,” Regenvanu told RNZ Pacific.
“It gives such hope to the youth, because they were the ones who pushed this.
“I think it will regenerate an entire new generation of youth activists to push their governments for a better future for themselves.”
Regenvanu said the result showed the power of multilateralism.
“There was a point in time where everyone could compromise to agree to have this case heard here, and then here again, we see the court with the judges from all different countries of the world all unanimously agreeing on such a strong opinion, it gives you hope for multilateralism.”
He said the Pacific now has more leverage in climate negotiations.
“Communities on the ground, who are suffering from sea level rise, losing territory and so on, they know what they want, and we have to provide that,” Regenvanu said.
“Now we know that we can rely on international cooperation because of the obligations that have been declared here to assist them.”
The director of climate change at the Pacific Community (SPC), Coral Pasisi, also said the decision was a strong outcome for Pacific Island nations.
“The acknowledgement that the science is very clear, there is a direct clause between greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and the harm that is causing, particularly the most vulnerable countries.”
She said the health of the environment is closely linked to the health of people, which was acknowledged by the court.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Speaking on Fox News last week, a top official from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency was expanding its dragnet for arrests.
“I think we all know that criminals tend to hang out with criminals,” ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan said. “And so when we start to build a case, we’re going to be going after everyone that’s around them. Because these criminals tend to hang out with like-minded people who also happen to be criminals.”
The pledge to broaden arrests came as an immigration sweep that sowed fear across the Los Angeles area has been met by a growing protest movement to stop the raids and arrests.
“This appears to be a targeted, political attack on resistance to a military incursion on our communities.”
In addition to arresting hundreds of immigrants across Southern California, the government is targeting a mounting number of people who are responding to the raids or helping protests. Some of those targeted have provided supplies to protesters or tried to identify ICE agents conducting raids in masks and plain clothes.
The remarks from Sheahan, the ICE official, came three days after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop indiscriminate ICE raids in LA. In the order, Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong condemned the administration’s use of a person’s characteristics — like their appearance, accent, or occupation — as a basis for arrest.
“Roving patrols” operating without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers violated the Fourth and the Fifth Amendments, the judge wrote. “What the federal government would have this Court believe — in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening.”
Now, those accused of helping the anti-ICE movement are facing prosecution or investigation. Earlier this month, a federal grand jury indicted a man after he handed out face shields to people protesting ICE in Los Angeles two days after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard.
Alejandro Orellana, 29, pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to aid and abet civil disorders. According to a grand jury indictment, the face shields were “advertised as designed to protect from chemical splashes and flying debris.”
“Alejandro Orellana’s arrest for distributing supplies is an outrageous violation of civil rights and should be a wakeup call to people everywhere,” said California attorney Thomas Harvey.
“This appears to be a targeted, political attack on resistance to a military incursion on our communities,” Harvey said. “Distributing supplies to protesters is not a crime. It’s a critical role to help keep people safe — especially in the face of some of the most violent police repression I’ve seen since the Ferguson uprising.”
In Orellana’s case, an agent from the FBI made a claim similar to the one the ICE deputy would later make to Fox News — that it was assigning criminality to people based on assumptions, not on evidence.
The agent claimed in anaffidavit that wearing such gear like the face shields, designed to protect against law enforcement using pepper spray or tear gas, “is not common amongst non-violent, peaceful protesters.” Instead, he argued, the face shield was “the kind of item used by violent agitators to enable them to resist law enforcement and to engage in violence and/or vandalism during a civil disorder.”
Identifying Masked ICE Agents
As part of expanding its definitions of criminal activity to include forms of protest responding to ICE, the government ramped up its efforts to investigate people suspected of providing identifying information about ICE agents.
On July 11, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a statement condemning “anarchists and rioters” in Portland who posted flyers with identifying information about ICE agents and said the department would prosecute “those who dox ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”
Last month, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced a bill that would make identifying ICE officers a federal crime.
In another case in May, ICE agentsraided the home of a family in Irvine, California, on a criminal search warrant. They were investigating the source of flyers that had been posted around LA earlier this year with identifying information about ICE officers. The government suspected the family’s son was responsible.
Rep. Dave Min, D-Calif., issued a statement after the May raid saying he was “deeply concerned” with news of the raid and had asked federal law enforcement for more information. Min’s office did not respond to questions about whether they had yet received any such information.
Police charged protesters opposing the construction of the so-called Cop City police training facility with felonies for posting flyers in 2023, The Intercept reported. The activists had posted flyers in a neighborhood where a police officer lived, naming him and alleging that he was connected to the killing earlier that year of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. Police shot Tortuguita 57 times, killing the activist during a multiagency raid on the Atlanta Forest protest encampment.
In 2023, prosecutors brought charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law against 61 activists for their participation in organizing bail funds for Cop City protesters. Prosecutors dropped charges against three of the activists last year, and others are still awaiting trial.
In a slew of other high-profile cases, elected officials have been arrested for aiding migrants being pursued for arrest by ICE agents. Earlier this year, the FBI arrested a judge accused of helping a man use an alternate exit from a courtroom when ICE agents were waiting outside the main door.
“It should be terrifying to every person that the U.S.”
In Arizona in 2018, prosecutors famously slapped humanitarian volunteers offering food, shelter, and water to migrants in the desert with federal criminal charges. Border Patrol targeted their faith-based group as a criminal organization. In 2005, activists with the same group faced criminal charges for transporting migrants to receive medical care; the charges were later dismissed.
“It should be terrifying to every person that the U.S., which has long held political prisoners, is ramping up its oppressive tactics,” said Harvey, the California attorney. “And now, with the new funding, ICE will have more money than any policing force in U.S. history to build a gulag system filled with localized versions of ‘Alligator Alcatrazes’ to cage immigrants and political dissidents.”
Speaking on Fox News last week, a top official from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency was expanding its dragnet for arrests.
“I think we all know that criminals tend to hang out with criminals,” ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan said. “And so when we start to build a case, we’re going to be going after everyone that’s around them. Because these criminals tend to hang out with like-minded people who also happen to be criminals.”
The pledge to broaden arrests came as an immigration sweep that sowed fear across the Los Angeles area has been met by a growing protest movement to stop the raids and arrests.
“This appears to be a targeted, political attack on resistance to a military incursion on our communities.”
In addition to arresting hundreds of immigrants across Southern California, the government is targeting a mounting number of people who are responding to the raids or helping protests. Some of those targeted have provided supplies to protesters or tried to identify ICE agents conducting raids in masks and plain clothes.
The remarks from Sheahan, the ICE official, came three days after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop indiscriminate ICE raids in LA. In the order, Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong condemned the administration’s use of a person’s characteristics — like their appearance, accent, or occupation — as a basis for arrest.
“Roving patrols” operating without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers violated the Fourth and the Fifth Amendments, the judge wrote. “What the federal government would have this Court believe — in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case — is that none of this is actually happening.”
Now, those accused of helping the anti-ICE movement are facing prosecution or investigation. Earlier this month, a federal grand jury indicted a man after he handed out face shields to people protesting ICE in Los Angeles two days after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard.
Alejandro Orellana, 29, pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to aid and abet civil disorders. According to a grand jury indictment, the face shields were “advertised as designed to protect from chemical splashes and flying debris.”
“Alejandro Orellana’s arrest for distributing supplies is an outrageous violation of civil rights and should be a wakeup call to people everywhere,” said California attorney Thomas Harvey.
“This appears to be a targeted, political attack on resistance to a military incursion on our communities,” Harvey said. “Distributing supplies to protesters is not a crime. It’s a critical role to help keep people safe — especially in the face of some of the most violent police repression I’ve seen since the Ferguson uprising.”
In Orellana’s case, an agent from the FBI made a claim similar to the one the ICE deputy would later make to Fox News — that it was assigning criminality to people based on assumptions, not on evidence.
The agent claimed in anaffidavit that wearing such gear like the face shields, designed to protect against law enforcement using pepper spray or tear gas, “is not common amongst non-violent, peaceful protesters.” Instead, he argued, the face shield was “the kind of item used by violent agitators to enable them to resist law enforcement and to engage in violence and/or vandalism during a civil disorder.”
Identifying Masked ICE Agents
As part of expanding its definitions of criminal activity to include forms of protest responding to ICE, the government ramped up its efforts to investigate people suspected of providing identifying information about ICE agents.
On July 11, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a statement condemning “anarchists and rioters” in Portland who posted flyers with identifying information about ICE agents and said the department would prosecute “those who dox ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”
Last month, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced a bill that would make identifying ICE officers a federal crime.
In another case in May, ICE agentsraided the home of a family in Irvine, California, on a criminal search warrant. They were investigating the source of flyers that had been posted around LA earlier this year with identifying information about ICE officers. The government suspected the family’s son was responsible.
Rep. Dave Min, D-Calif., issued a statement after the May raid saying he was “deeply concerned” with news of the raid and had asked federal law enforcement for more information. Min’s office did not respond to questions about whether they had yet received any such information.
Police charged protesters opposing the construction of the so-called Cop City police training facility with felonies for posting flyers in 2023, The Intercept reported. The activists had posted flyers in a neighborhood where a police officer lived, naming him and alleging that he was connected to the killing earlier that year of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. Police shot Tortuguita 57 times, killing the activist during a multiagency raid on the Atlanta Forest protest encampment.
In 2023, prosecutors brought charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law against 61 activists for their participation in organizing bail funds for Cop City protesters. Prosecutors dropped charges against three of the activists last year, and others are still awaiting trial.
In a slew of other high-profile cases, elected officials have been arrested for aiding migrants being pursued for arrest by ICE agents. Earlier this year, the FBI arrested a judge accused of helping a man use an alternate exit from a courtroom when ICE agents were waiting outside the main door.
“It should be terrifying to every person that the U.S.”
In Arizona in 2018, prosecutors famously slapped humanitarian volunteers offering food, shelter, and water to migrants in the desert with federal criminal charges. Border Patrol targeted their faith-based group as a criminal organization. In 2005, activists with the same group faced criminal charges for transporting migrants to receive medical care; the charges were later dismissed.
“It should be terrifying to every person that the U.S., which has long held political prisoners, is ramping up its oppressive tactics,” said Harvey, the California attorney. “And now, with the new funding, ICE will have more money than any policing force in U.S. history to build a gulag system filled with localized versions of ‘Alligator Alcatrazes’ to cage immigrants and political dissidents.”
In 2019, a group of law students at the University of the South Pacific, frustrated at the slow pace with which the world’s governments were moving to address the climate crisis, had an idea — they would take the world’s governments to court.
They arranged a meeting with government ministers in Vanuatu and convinced them to take a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, where they would seek an opinion to clarify countries’ legal obligations under international law.
Six years after that idea was hatched in a classroom in Port Vila, the court will today (early Thursday morning NZT) deliver its verdict in the Dutch city of The Hague.
More than 100 countries – including New Zealand, Australia and all the countries of the Pacific – have testified before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alongside civil society and intergovernmental organisations. Image: UN Web TV/screengrab
If successful — and those involved are quietly confident they will be — it could have major ramifications for international law, how climate change disputes are litigated, and it could give small Pacific countries greater leverage in arguments around loss and damage.
Most significantly, the claimants argue, it could establish legal consequences for countries that have driven climate change and what they owe to people harmed.
“Six long years of campaigning have led us to this moment,” said Vishal Prasad, the president of Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change, the organisation formed out of those original students.
“For too long, international responses have fallen short. We expect a clear and authoritative declaration,” he said.
“[That] climate inaction is not just a failure of policy, but a breach of international law.”
More than 100 countries — including New Zealand, Australia and all the countries of the Pacific — have testified before the court, alongside civil society and intergovernmental organisations.
And now today they will gather in the brick palace that sits in ornate gardens in this canal-ringed city to hear if the judges of the world’s top court agree.
What is the case? The ICJ adjudicates disputes between nations and issues advisory opinions on big international legal issues.
In this case, Vanuatu asked the UN General Assembly to request the judges to weigh what exactly international law requires states to do about climate change, and what the consequences should be for states that harm the climate through actions or omissions.
That has included the governments of low-lying islands and atolls in the Pacific, which say they are paying the steepest price for a crisis they had little role in creating.
These nations have long been frustrated with the current mechanisms for addressing climate change, like the UN COP conferences, and are hoping that, ultimately, the court will provide a yardstick by which to measure other countries’ actions.
Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu . . . “This may well be the most consequential case in the history of humanity.” Image: IISD-ENB
“I choose my words carefully when I say that this may well be the most consequential case in the history of humanity,” Vanuatu’s Minister for Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu said in his statement to the court last year.
“Let us not allow future generations to look back and wonder why the cause of their doom was condoned.”
But major powers and emitters, like the United States and China, have argued in their testimonies that existing UN agreements, such as the Paris climate accord, are sufficient to address climate change.
“We expect this landmark climate ruling, grounded in binding international law, to reflect the critical legal flashpoints raised during the proceedings,” said Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the US-based Centre for International Environmental Law (which has been involved with the case).
“Among them: whether States’ climate obligations are anchored in multiple legal sources, extending far beyond the Paris Agreement; whether there is a right to remedy for climate harm; and how human rights and the precautionary principle define States’ climate obligations.”
Pacific youth climate activist at a demonstration at COP27 in November 2022 . . . “We are not drowning. We are fighting.” Image: Facebook/Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change
What could this mean? Rulings from the ICJ are non-binding, and there are myriad cases of international law being flouted by countries the world over.
Still, the court’s opinion — if it falls in Vanuatu’s favour — could still have major ramifications, bolstering the case for linking human rights and climate change in legal proceedings — both international and domestic — and potentially opening the floodgates for climate litigation, where individuals, groups, Indigenous Peoples, and even countries, sue governments or private companies for climate harm.
An advisory opinion would also be a powerful precedent for legislators and judges to call on as they tackle questions related to the climate crisis, and give small countries a powerful cudgel in negotiations over future COP agreements and other climate mechanisms.
“This would empower vulnerable nations and communities to demand accountability, strengthen legal arguments and negotiations and litigation and push for policies that prioritise prevention and redress over delay and denial,” Prasad said.
In essence, those who have taken the case have asked the court to issue an opinion on whether governments have “legal obligations” to protect people from climate hazards, but also whether a failure to meet those obligations could bring “legal consequences”.
At the Peace Palace today, they will find out from the court’s 15 judges.
“[The advisory opinion] is not just a legal milestone, it is a defining moment in the global climate justice movement and a beacon of hope for present and future generations,” said Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat in a statement ahead of the decision.
“I am hopeful for a powerful opinion from the ICJ. It could set the world on a meaningful path to accountability and action.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
He held the regional seat in the PNG national Parliament for 10 years before resigning to contest the presidency in the 2020 election.
This time around, Lera is campaigning on what he sees as faults in the approach of the Ishmael Toroama administration and told RNZ Pacific he is offering a different tack.
JOE LERA: This time, people have seen that the current government is the most corrupt. They have addressed only one side of independence, which is the political side, the other two sides, They have not done it very well.
DON WISEMAN: What do we mean by that? We can’t bandy around words like corruption. What do you mean by corruption?
JL:What they have done is huge. They are putting public funds into personal members’ accounts, like the constituency grant – 360,000 kina a year.
DW: As someone who has operated in the national parliament, you know that that is done there as well. So it’s not corrupt necessarily, is it?
JL:Well, when they go into their personal account, they use it for their own family goods, and that development, it should be development funds. The people are not seeing the tangible outcomes in the number two side, which is the development side.
All the roads are bad. The hospitals are now running out of drugs. Doctors are checking the patients, sending them to pharmaceutical shops to buy the medicine, because the hospitals have run out.
DW: These are problems that are affecting the entire country, aren’t they, and there’s a shortage of money. So how would you solve it? What would you do differently?
JL: We will try to make big changes in addressing sustainable development, in agriculture, fishing, forestry, so we can create jobs for the small people.
Instead of talking about big, billion dollar mining projects, which will take a long time, we should start with what we already have, and develop and create opportunities for the people to be engaged in nation building through sustainable development first, then we progress into the higher billion dollar projects.
Now we are going talking about mining when the people don’t have opportunity and they are getting poorer and poorer. That’s one area, the other area, to create change we will try to fix the government structure, from ABG to community governments to village assemblies, down to the chiefs.
At the moment, the policies they have have fragmented the conduit of getting the services from the top government down to to the village people.
DW: In the past, you’ve spoken out against the push for independence, suggesting I think, that Bougainville is not ready yet, and it should take its time. Where do you stand at the moment on the independence question?
JL: The independence question? We are all for it. I’m not against it, but I’m against the process. How they are going about it. I think the answer has been already given in the Bougainville Peace Agreement, which is a joint creation between the PNG and ABG government, and the process is very clear.
Now, what the current government is doing is they are going outside of the Peace Agreement, and they are trying to shortcut based on the [referendum] result.
But the Peace Agreement doe not say independence will be given to us based on the result. What it says is, after we know the result, the two governments must continue to dialogue, consult each other and find ways of how to improve the economy, the law and order issues, the development issues.
When we fix those, the nation building pillars, we can then apply for the ratification to take place.
DW: So you’re talking about something that would be quite a way further down the line than what this current government is talking about?
JL:The issue is timing. They are putting deadlines themselves, and they are trying to push the PNG government to swallow it. The PNG government is a sovereign nation already.
We should respect and honestly, in a family room situation, negotiate, talk with them, as the Peace Agreement says, and reach understanding on the timing and other related issues, but not to even take a confrontational approach, which is what they are doing now, but take a family room approach, where we sit and negotiate in the spirit of the Peace Agreement.
This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. Don Wiseman is a senior journalist with RNZ Pacific. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Groups that have declined to join the government-sponsored “harmony accord” signed yesterday by some Muslim and Jewish groups, say that the proposed new council is “misaligned” with its aims.
The signed accord was presented at Government House in Auckland.
About 70 people attended, including representatives of the New Zealand Jewish Council, His Highness the Aga Khan Council for Australia and New Zealand and the Jewish Community Security Group, reports RNZ News.
The initiative originated with government recognition that the consequences of Israel’s actions in Gaza are impacting on Jewish and Muslim communities in Aotearoa, as well as the wider community.
While agreeing with that statement of purpose, other Muslim and Jewish groups have chosen to decline the invitation, said some of the disagreeing groups in a joint statement.
They believe that the council, as formulated, is misaligned with its aims.
“Gaza is not a religious issue, and this has never been a conflict between our faiths,” Dr Abdul Monem, a co-founder of ICONZ said.
‘Horrifying humanitarian consequences’
“In Gaza we see a massive violation of international law with horrifying humanitarian consequences.
“We place Israel’s annihilating campaign against Gaza, the complicity of states and economies at the centre of our understanding — not religion.
“The first action to address the suffering in Gaza and ameliorate its effects here in Aotearoa must be government action. Our government needs to comply with international courts and act on this humanitarian calamity.
“That does not require a new council.”
The impetus for this initiative clearly linked international events with their local impacts, but the document does not mention Gaza among the council’s priorities, said the statement.
“Signatories are not required to acknowledge universal human rights, nor the courts which have ruled so decisively and created obligations for the New Zealand government. Social distress is disconnected from its immediate cause.”
The council was open to parties which did not recognise the role of international humanitarian law in Palestine, nor the full human and political rights of their fellow New Zealanders.
‘Overlooks humanitarian law’
Marilyn Garson, co-founder of Alternative Jewish Voices said: “It has broad implications to overlook our rights and international humanitarian law.
“As currently formulated, the council includes no direct Palestinian representation. That’s not good enough.
“How can there be credible discussion of Aotearoa’s ethnic safety — let alone advocacy for international action — without Palestinians?
“Law, human rights and the dignity of every person’s life are not opinions. They are human entitlements and global agreements to which Aotearoa has bound itself.
“No person in Aotearoa should have to enter a room — especially a council created under government auspices — knowing that their fundamental rights will not be upheld. No one should have to begin by asking for that which is theirs.”
The groups outside this new council said they wished to live in a harmonious society, but for them it was unclear why a new council of Jews and Muslims should represent the path to harmony.
“Advocacy that comes from faith can be a powerful force. We already work with numerous interfaith community initiatives, some formed at government initiative and waiting to really find their purpose,” said Dr Muhammad Sajjad Naqvi, president of ICONZ.
Addressing local threats
“Those existing channels include more of the parties needed to address local threats, including Christian nationalism like that of Destiny Church.
“Perhaps government should resource those rather than starting something new.”
The groups who declined to join the council said they had “warm and enduring relationships” with FIANZ and Dayenu, which would take seats at this council table.
“All of the groups share common goals, but not this path,” the statement said.
ICONZ is a national umbrella organisation for New Zealand Shia Muslims for a unified voice. It was established by Muslims who have been born in New Zealand or born to migrants who chose New Zealand to be their home.
Alternative Jewish Voices is a collective of Aotearoa Jews working for Jewish pluralism and anti-racism. It supports the work of Palestinians who seek liberation grounded in law and our equal human rights.
