Protesters staged pro-Palestinian demonstrations across Aotearoa New Zealand at the weekend, calling on the government to place sanctions on Israel for its war on Gaza.
The government announced last week it was considering whether to join other countries like France, Canada and Australia in recognising Palestinian statehood at a United Nations leader’s meeting next month.
Demonstrators took to the streets in about 20 cities and towns on Saturday in a “National Day of Protest”, waving Palestinian and other flags, holding vigils, and banging pots and pans to represent what a UN-backed food security agency has called “the worst case scenario of famine”.
They also condemned Israel’s targeted killing of journalists.
In Wellington, about 2000 protesters gathered at Te Aro Park, and formed a crowd almost a kilometre long during the march, an RNZ journalist estimated.
One demonstrator, who carried a sign which read “Palestine is in our hearts”, said the government had been “woefully silent” on what was happening in Gaza.
The Wellington Gaza protest on Saturday. Video: RNZ
It was her first protest, she said, and she intended to go to others in order to “agitate for our politicians to listen and take a stand”.
“I hope the country comes out in force today right across all of our regions, to give Palestine a voice, to show that we care, and to inspire action from our politicians — who have been woefully silent and as a result compliant in the genocide in Palestine.”
A protester’s “Palestine is in our hearts” placard at the Wellington protest. Image: Mark Papalii/RNZ News
She said she wanted to see the New Zealand government sanction Israel and take a global stand against the war in Gaza.
Another protester said the killings of four Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza this week was what had spurred him to join the crowd.
A “grow a spine Luxon!” placard at the Wellington protest in reference to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s “woeful” stance on the Israeli war on Gaza. Photo: Mark Papalii/RNZ
“You know hearing about the attack on the journalists, the way they were targeting just one purportedly but were willing to kill [others] just to get their man.
“It’s not right.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters condemn the killing of journalists by Israel and call for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador as part of nationwide demonstrations. Image: Mark Papalii/RNZ
Others in the capital carried signs showing Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif and his three Al Jazeera colleagues who were killed by an Israeli strike on a tent of reporters in Gaza.
The IDF claimed that al-Sharif was working for the Hamas resistance — something Al Jazeera has strongly denied.
Some of the demonstrators at the Wellington protest against Israel. Image: Mark Papalii/RNZ
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
This morning there is no article on the political page of The New Zealand Herald about the plight of people in Gaza, the same is the case at The Post and at RNZ. Even the 1News political page is Gaza free but what may stun you over a Sunday morning coffee is the fact that there is also no mention of Gaza on the “World Pages” of any of these so-called news organisations.
It’s not news in the world of our mainstream media journalists.
Instead, there is articles about “no deal” between Trump and Putin, 300 dead in Pakistan, Trump will meet Zelenskyy, Stone Age Humans were picky about what stones they used . . . and other things — in fact the only article in the “big ” New Zealand mainstream media “World” pages about Gaza is at Stuff and it’s a link to a three minute news video item from yesterday’s Auckland protest about Neil Finn supporting Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.
Chlöe said the evidence is pretty clear and you don’t kill journalists for no reason when Israel laughed off claims that people in Gaza were starving.
Last night, TVNZ 1News broadcast a news item that led with Neil Finn singing “Don’t Dream it’s Over” and Simon Mercep interviewing Chlöe about her stance on an apology.
The news Chlöe would be back next week at Parliament probably shocked Duncan Garner but there was precious little coverage of what was said in protest speeches because the limitations of broadcasting news concision (a sequence of soundbites) prevent the New Zealand public from hearing too much about Gaza from our own mainstream news services.
Gordon’s action list
Over on social media many people are sharing Gordon Campbell’s article around — where he details the actions you could take and points out how the people of Gaza don’t have time for symbolic stances and the kinds of actions that might help — like sanctions and UN peacekeeping intervention on the ground.
Gordon Campbell has “a go at” the stance taken by the NZ government that “it’s not a matter of if, but when” by adding “but not now” and why not now?
One reason for “but not now” pitched by Campbell is that with Todd McClay now heading over to the US to beg for a return to 10 percent tariffs, New Zealand is stalling and playing a wait and see game — watching whether Australia will be punished for backing a Palestinian state and whether tariffs will be part of the game.
G News on yesterday’s Palestine solidarity rally in Te Komititanga Square, Auckland.
A map of the nations in the world who support a Palestinian state shows most of it in green — and the holdouts in white — with New Zealand holding out in white as we recite “Not if, but when, but not now”.
The editorial at The New Zealand Herald this morning is about how Labour MPs should have shown up and performed publicly at the Covid Circus Phase 2 Royal Commission of Inquiry in the opinion of the Herald (run by Steven Joyce and cookers from The Centrist) — because an urgent Taxpayers’ Union Poll claims 53 percent say so with a giant margin for error not even mentioned — nor how the Royal Commission has all the information it needs from the previous government but it needs the same questions answered in public.
The priorities and partisanship of The NZ Herald are on show as it campaigns hard against Labour and the left bloc even while there’s an unfolding genocide taking place in the world and it’s “World” pages are empty about this — while decent people cancel their subscriptions.
Many of us are still aghast at the way senior political correspondent Audrey Young wished Chlöe would go away when all she was doing was asking National MPs to act with their conscience and Speaker Gerry Brownlee had taken offence and dished out injustice — which now has backfired at grassroots level across the nation and media starve us all of the real content in those speeches.
Chlöe has said from the start this is not about her and she was telling people this again yesterday as folks thanked her for taking an unapologetic stand.
Green Party’s Chlöe Swarbrick has said from the start this is not about her and she was telling people this again yesterday as folks thanked her for taking an unapologetic stand. Image: Stuff screenshot APR
Who controls the spotlight? Media!
We wanted to hear from Chlöe and we wanted to hear those speeches.
I personally felt I had let down the show yesterday because my cell and sound gear seized up in the bitter cold wind and rain so I missed Chlöe’s speech and some of the other messages — Hey Now Don’t Dream it’s Over — but with no umbrella, no raincoat and standing in the rain my frozen fingers took some time to come right and I sat on a ferry in cold wet clothes like a failure afterwards but it is what it is.
My apologies for not being better prepared.
It was pointed out in speeches at the rally (there has almost been 100 of them now) how NZ journalists do not support their colleagues who are being murdered for doing their jobs in Gaza and when I got home and warmed up we discussed the way Al Jazeera is a good news channel and how crap things are in New Zealand media.
Gordon Campbell and a few other notable exceptions keep the faith and his observation “but not now” has done the thinking for many of us about the spineless government who are stalling and pretending this is complex and needs to take weeks while every day more people starve to death, get shot going for food. And it all just happens as if — it’s “a mystery” – while our government names Hamas strongly but nobody else.
Criticism of State Terror is more toned down and we care more about our US relationship than anything much else it seems — putting our own interests first and not reporting much about the facts.
RNZ has finally published “Spine and Punishment: A review of Swarbrick v Brownlee” because the media spotlight was on this local issue and the history of Speakers’ rulings versus “a new decency” because Gerry was offended and overreached.
Gerry must withdraw In my opinion, Gerry has got to withdraw and apologise or step down and any more stick about this towards Chlöe is going to further the focus on National MPs who are silent and hiding behind “But not now”.
If only six of 68 National MPs voted with their conscience and not their party “but not now” instructions then we’d be actively progressing a new law to sanction Israel — and our actions would speak louder than merely words and symbolic gestures.
The unfolding genocide in Gaza seems to be going to plan as NZ news media also lack a spine and any kind of support for their dead colleagues while this one term government clings to “Not if, but when — but not now”.
Might as well carry on starving until September.
“He’s lost the plot” – “but not now”.
Because this government and its sycophantic media need more time to argue about this very “complex” issue.
Gerard Otto is a digital creator and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. Republished with permission.
A New Zealand policeman pushed over an elderly man who was doing nothing but waving a Palestinian flag at a solidarity rally in Ōtautahi yesterday.
Yes the man employed to protect the public committed a violent assault. Not a wee shove, a great big push that caused the man to fall the ground – onto hard tarmac.
It comes on top of a woman being fatally shot this week by police and her partner being shot and injured. In that case a knife was involved but it’s kind of like paper-scissors-rock, is it not?
I have experienced their brutality directly while filming their brutality. Like the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) they see journalists who film their offensive actions as the enemy.They used pepper spray against me illegally to stop me filming their perversity.
But look, it’s a hard job so they need how-not-to-be-thugs training.
Pre-trained as thugs
Some young men are already pre-trained to be thugs and they seem to be out at the front. They feel great in this mostly white gang.
I have witnessed police haul people off the pavement, beat them up, and then arrest the victims of their assaults “for assault”.
False accusations to protect themselves? Twisting the narrative completely to hide their own violence?
False arrests when they themselves should face arrest.
I think we’ve had enough.
Some of the boys in blue really really need to grow up.
They need training that teaches them that manning or womaning up (some women cops play the thug game too) doesn’t mean training to be a wanker white supremacist.
Self awareness
Good training means teaching police to be self aware, aware of thoughts and feelings, not just learning cognitive behavioural tools but applying them.
They are in the community to protect the community. They should not see people who are supporting human rights or kids attending a party as their opposition, their enemy.
These thug police need to unlearn their thuggery and learn instead, how to relate to the people. They are not defending themselves against the public. They must not view people — real human beings — as their enemy.
The thug cops are adept at dehumanising others. They need to learn to see people as individuals and this includes people attending group functions like parties or protests or club activities. People have human rights.
This includes the right to be respected and treated with dignity.
The perpetrators of violent crime are — far too often — the police. I’ve seen it happen with no provocation time and again. Too many times to count.
They don the black gloves and black sunnies and wear bullet proof vests and feel what?How do they feel when they gear up? Threatened or threatening?
Public protection
Questions need to be asked.
The public needs protection from some — not all — of our police.
And the legal system, the justice system — (I’m trying not use an ironic tone here) needs to be applied to violent crimes, including the police crims who assault members of the public.
I worry for unseen victims too. I worry for their wives and children because if they assault with no provocation on the street what do they do at home?
Do people who behave like street devils turn into angels at home?
Investigations must be held about why our police are assaulting bystanders and peaceful protesters.
Tragedy investigation
I guess there wll be an investigation into the bullets against knife tragedy. But we need other investigations too.
I know the footage of what happened to our innocent elderly protester will be posted on social media.
New footage emerges of policeman pushing partygoer (2021 1News video)
In the meantime, here’s other footage above of Christchurch police doing what they are in danger of doing best.
This footage is four years ago but this alarming, aggressive behaviour continues as demonstrated yesterday by a cop shoving to the ground an unarmed, unprotected, elderly man waving a Palestinian flag whom they then — so wrongly — charged with assault!
Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This commentary was first published on her social media.
President Donald Trump has now put troops on the District of Columbia’s streets in both of his terms. This time around, the Washington Post is less alarmed.
In addition to calling up 800 DC National Guard troops—which Trump can do because DC isn’t a state—he also seized control of DC’s police force in the name of a “crime emergency,” despite the city experiencing its lowest violent crime rate in 30 years.
With DC’s self-governance under threat, the city’s paper of record is positioned to play a critical role. Right off the bat, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher sounded the alarm about Trump’s actions, telling the New Yorker (8/11/25), “This is troops-in-the-streets, shades-of-authoritarian-rule bad.”
“Grow a spine for Palestine!” was a frequent theme among about 5000 people protesting in the heart of New Zealand’s largest city today as the protesters demanded that the coalition government should recognise the state of Palestine and stop supporting impunity for Israel.
More than 62,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza in the past 22 months and the country’s military have doubled down on their attacks on residential areas in the besieged enclave.
Several speakers, including opposition parliamentarians, spoke at the rally, strongly condemning Israel for its genocidal policies and crimes against humanity.
Many children took part in the rally at Te Komititanga Square and the return march up Queen Street in spite of the bitterly wet and cold weather. Many of them carried placards and Palestinian flags like their parents.
One young boy carried a placard declaring “Just a kid standing in front of his PM asking him to grow a heart and a spine”. The heart was illustrated as a Palestinian flag.
Other placards included slogans such as “Wanted MPs with a spine” and “Grow a spine for Palestine”, and “They try to bury us forgetting we are seeds” with the resistance watermelon symbol.
Many placards demanded sanctions and condemned Israel, saying “Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them — sanction Israel now”, “NZ government: Your silence is complicity with Israeli genocide” and “Free Palestine now”.
Disillusionment with leaders
One poster expressed disillusionment with both the coalition government and opposition Labour Party leaders, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins, denouncing “apologists for genocide”.
Another poster challenged both Hipkins and Luxon over “what values” they stood for. It said:
“Our ‘leaders’ have refused to call for a ceasefire even after 10,000+ innocent civilians have been brutally murdered in their own homes, including 4000+ CHILDREN all under the name of “Kiwi values”.
“They, like a lot of other world politicians, are apologists for genocide.”
A “Palestine forever” banner at the head of the Auckland march today as it prepares to walk up Queen Street. Image: APR
Frustration has been growing among the public with the government’s reluctance to declare support for Palestinian statehood after 96 consecutive weeks of protests organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and other groups, not just in the largest city of Auckland and the capital Wellington, but also in Christchurch and in at least 20 other towns and communities across the motu.
The “spine” theme in chants and posters followed just days after Parliament suspended Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick following a fiery speech about Gaza when she said government MPs should grow a spine and sanction Israel for its atrocities.
She had refused to apologise to the House and supporters at the rally today gave her rousing cheers in support of her defiance.
‘We need your help’
Te Pati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told the crowd: “We need you to help her put the pressure on so that we can fight together in that place [Parliament] for our people to free, free Palestine; from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
“Return our dignity Aotearoa. Stand up for what is right. There is only one side to support in genocide, only one side. And Te Pati Māori will only work with those.”
When Swarbrick spoke to the crowd, she repeated her goal to find six government MPs “with a spine” to support her bill to “sanction Israel for its war crimes”.
She also said the Palestinian people were being “starved and slaughtered by Israel” in Gaza, adding that their breath was being “stolen from them” by the IDF (Israeli “Defence” Force).
“It is our duty, all human beings with breath left in our lungs, with the freedom to chant and to move and to demand action from our politicians, to do all that we can to fight for liberation for all peoples,” she said.
Other politicians speaking were Orini Kaipara, the Te Pati Māori candidate for the Tāmaki Mākaurau byelection, and Kerrin Leoni, mayoral candidate for Tamaki.
Targeted assassinations
Earlier, the targeted assassinations of six journalists by the Israeli military last Sunday — taking the toll to 272 — was condemned by independent journalist and Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie. He also criticised the NZ media silence.
Noting that New Zealand journalists had not condemned the killings or held a vigil as the Media Alliance (MEAA) had done in Australia, he cited an Al Jazeera journalist, Hind Khoudary, whose message to the world was:
“We are being hunted and killed in Gaza while you watch in silence. For two years, your fellow journalists here have been slaughtered.
What did you do? Nothing.”
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick (left) and Te Pati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer at today’s rally in Te Komitanga Square, Auckland. Image: APR
A recent poll on whether New Zealanders want sanctions to be imposed on Israel, showed that of those who gave an opinion, 60 percent favoured sanctions.
The PSNA commissioned survey by Talbot Mills in July with 1216 respondents gave a similar result to one commissioned by Justice for Palestine a year ago.
Popular support for sanctions
PSNA co-chair John Minto said the numbers showed strong popular support for sanctions. The 60 percent overall rose to 68 percent for the 18–29 year category.
“The government is well out of step with public opinion and ignores this message at its peril. There is popular support for sanctions against Israel,” he said.
“People see that Israel is committing the worst atrocities of the 21st century with impunity. It is starving a whole population.
“It has destroyed just about every building in Gaza. It is assassinating journalists. It holds 7000 Palestinian hostages in its jails without charge. Its goal of occupying all of Gaza and ethnically cleansing its people into the Sudan desert, is all public knowledge.”
Minto said Israel’s “depraved Prime Minister” who was wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICJ) for war crimes and crimes against humanity, had boasting that if Israel was really committing genocide, “it could have killed everyone in Gaza in a single afternoon”.
“The poll shows New Zealand First supporters are most opposed to sanctions against Israel (59 percent of those who gave an opinion were opposed) so it’s little surprise Winston Peters is dragging the chain.”
“Just a kid” with his blunt message to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Image: APR
On this episode of the MintCast, hosts Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod speak with Ahmed Kaballo, the man behind the viral media outlet that the U.S. government has been trying to silence.
In September, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a speech smearing media platform African Stream as secretly funded and controlled by Vladimir Putin himself. As Blinken said:
According to the outlet’s website, ‘African Stream is’ – and I quote ‘a pan-African digital media organization based exclusively on social media platforms, focused on giving a voice to all Africans, both at home and abroad.’ In reality, the only voice it gives is to Kremlin propagandists.”
Blinken provided no evidence to support these assertions. Yet, within hours, Silicon Valley reacted and crushed Kaballo’s organization. African Stream’s YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook pages were permanently deleted, while its Twitter account was demonetized.
The word “Gaza” is taking on similar connotations to what the word “Auschwitz” meant to a previous generation. It signifies a deliberate and systematic attempt to erase an entire people from history on the basis of their ethnic identity.
On Monday night a five-year-old disabled child starved to death. Reportedly, he weighed only three kilograms when he died. Muhammad Zakaria Khudr was the 101st child among the 227 Palestinians now reported to have died from starvation.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters keep on saying that with regard to New Zealand recognising a Palestinian state, it is a matter of “Not if, but when.” Yet why is “ but not now” still their default position?
At this rate, a country that used to pride itself on its human rights record — New Zealand has never stopped bragging that this is where women won the right to vote, before they did anywhere else — will be among the last countries on earth to recognise Palestine’s right to exist.
What can we do? Some options:
Boycott all Israeli goods and services;
Engage with the local Palestinian community, and support their businesses, and cultural events;
Donate financial support to Gaza. Here’s a reliable link to directy support pregnant Gaza women and their babies;
Lobby your local MP, and Immigration Minister Erika Stanford — to prioritise the inclusion of hundreds of Gazans in our refugee programme, just as we did in the wake of the civil war in Syria, and earlier, in Sudan;
Write and phone your local MP, and urge them to support economic sanctions against Israel. These sanctions should include a sporting and cultural boycott along the lines we pursued so successfully against apartheid South Africa
Contact your KiwiSaver provider and let it be known that you will change providers if they invest in Israeli firms, or in the US, German and UK firms that supply the IDF with weapons and targeting systems. Contact the NZ Super Fund and urge them to divest along similar lines;
Identify and picket any NZ firms that supply the US/Israeli war machines directly, or indirectly;
Contact your local MP and urge him or her to support Chloe Swarbrick’s private member’s bill that would impose economic sanctions on the state of Israel for its unlawful occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Swarbrick’s Bill is modelled on the existing Russian sanctions framework.If 61 MPs pledged support for Swarbrick’s Bill, it would not have to win a private members ballot before being debated in Parliament. Currently 21 MPs (the Greens and TPM) formally support it. If and when Labour’s 34 MPs come on board, this will still require another six MPs (from across the three coalition parties) to do the right thing. Goading MPs into doing the right thing got Swarbrick into a world of trouble this week. (Those wacky Greens. They’re such idealists.);
We should all be lobbying our local MPs for a firm commitment that they will back the Swarbrick Bill. Portray it to them as being in the spirit of bi-partisanship, and as them supporting the several UN resolutions on the status of the occupied territories. And if they still baulk ask them flatly: if not, why not?
Email/phone/write to the PM’s office, and ask him to call in the Israeli ambassador and personally express New Zealand’s repugnance at Israel’s inhumane actions in Gaza and on the West Bank. The PM should also be communicating in person New Zealand’s opposition to the recently announced Israeli plans for the annexation of Gaza City, and expansion of the war in Gaza.
Write to your MP, to the PM, and to Foreign Minister Winston Peters urging them to recognise Palestinian statehood right now. Inquire as to what further information they may need before making that decision, and offer to supply it. We need to learn how to share our outrage; and
Learn about the history of this issue, so that you convince friends and family to take similar actions.
This map showing (in white) the countries that are yet to recognise Palestinian statehood speaks volumes:
Those holdout nations in white tend to have been the chief enablers of Israel’s founding in 1948, a gesture of atonement driven by European guilt over the Holocaust.
This “homeland” for the Jews already had residents known to have had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet since 1948 the people of Palestine have been made to bear all of the bad consequences of the West’s purging of its collective guilt.
Conditional justice The same indifference to the lives of Palestinians is evident in the belated steps towards supporting the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Even the recognition promised by the UK, Canada, France and Australia next month is decked out with further conditions that the Palestinians are being told they need to meet. No equivalent demands are being made of Israel, despite the atrocities it is committing in Gaza.
There’s nothing new about this. Historically, all of the concessions have been made by the Palestinians, starting with their original displacement. Some 30 years ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formally recognised Israel’s right to exist. In response, Israel immediately expanded its settlements on Palestinian land, a flagrant breach of the commitments it made in the Oslo Accords, and in the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.
In a 1993 exchange of letters, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chairman, Yasir Arafat, recognized the “right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and committed the PLO to peaceful negotiations, renouncing terrorism and amending the Palestinian charter to reflect these commitments. In return, Israel would merely recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people — and only “in light of” Mr Arafat’s commitments. Palestinian sovereignty remained remote; Israeli occupation continued apace.
This double standard persists:
This fundamental unfairness has informed every diplomatic effort since. The rump Palestinian government built the limited institutions it was permitted under the Oslo Accords, co-operated with Israeli security forces and voiced support for a peace process that had long been undermined by Israel. Led by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s statehood campaign in the 2000s was entirely based on playing the game according to rules set by Israel and the Western-dominated international community. Yet recognition remained stalled, the United States blocked Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations — and still, no conditions were placed on the occupying power.
That’s where we’re still at. Luxon, Peters and David Seymour are demanding more concessions from the Palestinians. They keep strongly denouncing the Hamas October 7 atrocities — which is valid — while weakly urging Israel to abide by the international laws and conventions that Israel repeatedly breaches.
When a state deploys famine as a strategic weapon, doesn’t it deserve to be condemned, up front and personal?
Instead, the language that New Zealand uses to address Israel’s crimes is almost invariably, and selectively, passive. Terrible things are “happening” in Gaza and they must “stop.” Children, mysteriously, are “starving.” This is “intolerable.”
It is as if there is no human agent, and no state power responsible for these outcomes. Things are just somehow “happening” and they must somehow “cease.” Enough is enough, cries Peters, while carefully choosing not to name names, beyond Hamas.
As mentioned, Israel is publicly discussing its plans for Gaza’s “voluntary emigration” and for the permanent annexation of the West Bank. Even when urged to do so by Christopher Luxon, it seems that Israel is not actually complying with international law, and is not fulfilling its legal obligations as an occupying power. Has anyone told Luxon about this yet?
Two state fantasy, one state reality At one level, continuing to call for a “two state” solution is absurd, given that the Knesset formally rejected the proposal a year ago. More than once, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly denounced it while also laying Israel’s claim to all of the land west of Jordan, which would include the West Bank and Gaza.
Evidently, the slogan “ from the river to sea” is only a terrorist slogan when Hamas uses it. Yet the phrase originated as a Likud slogan.Moreover, the West evidently thinks it is quite OK for Netanyahu to publicly call for Israeli hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Basic rule of diplomacy: bad is what they do, good is what we do, and we have always been on Team Israel.
Over the course of the three decades since the Oslo Accords were signed, the West has kept on advocating for a two state solution, while acting as if only one of those states has a right to exist. On what land do Luxon and Peters think that a viable Palestinian state can be built?
One pre-condition for Palestinian statehood that Luxon cited to RNZ last week required Israel to be “not undermining the territorial integrity that would then undermine the two state solution.” Really? Does Luxon not realise that this is exactly what Israel has been doing for the past 30 years?
Talking of which . . . are Luxon and Peters genuinely expecting Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders? That land was agreed at Oslo and mandated by the UN as the territory needed for a viable Palestinian state. Yet on the relatively small area of the West Bank alone, 3.4 million Palestinians currently subsist on disconnected patches of land under occupation amid extreme settler violence, while contending with 614 Israeli checkpoints and other administrative obstacles impeding their free movement.
Here’s what the land left to the Palestinians looks like today:
A brief backgrounder on Areas A, B and C and how they operate can be found here. Obviously, this situation cannot be the template for a viable Palestinian state.
What is the point? You might well ask . . . in the light of the above, what is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? Given the realities on the ground, it can only be a symbolic gesture. The reversion to the 1967 borders (a necessary step towards a Palestinian state) can happen only if the US agreed to push Israel in that direction by withholding funds and weaponry.
That’s very hard to imagine. The hypocrisy of the Western nations on this issue is breath-taking. The US and Germany continue to be Israel’s main foreign suppliers of weapons and targeting systems. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership as well, the UK sales of military equipment to Israel have sharply increased.
New export licensing figures show that the UK approved licenses for £127.6 million worth of military equipment to Israel in single issue licenses between October to December 2024. This is a massive increase, with the figure in this three-month period totaling more than 2020-2023 combined.
Thanks to an explicitly enacted legal exemption, the UK also continues to supply parts for Israel’s F-35 jets.
UK industry makes 15% of every F-35 in contracts [estimated] to be worth at least £500 million since 2016, and [this] is the most significant part of the UK arms industry [relationship]with Israel . . . at least 79 companies [are] involved in manufacturing components.
These are the same F-35 war planes that the IDF has used to drop 2000 pound bombs on densely populated residential neighbourhoods in Gaza. Starmer cannot credibly pose as a man of peace.
So again . . . what exactly is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? No doubt, it would boost Palestinian morale if some major Western powers finally conceded that Palestine has a right to exist. In that narrow sense, recognition would correct a historical injustice.
There is also optimistic talk that formal Palestinian statehood would isolate the US on the Security Council (Trump would probably wear that as a badge of honour) and would make Israel more accountable under humanitarian law. As if.
Theoretically, a recognition of statehood would also enable people in New Zealand and elsewhere to apply pressure to their governments to forthrightly condemn and sanction Israel for its crimes against a fellow UN member state. None of this, however, is likely to change the reality on the ground, or prevent the calls for Israel’s “accountability” and for its “compliance with international law” from ringing hollow.
As the NYT also says:
After almost two years of severe access restrictions and the dismantling of the UN-led aid system in favour of a militarised food distribution that has left more than 1300 Palestinians dead, [now 1838 dead at these “aid centres” since late May, as of yesterday] . . . The 15 nations [at a UN meeting in late July that signed a declaration on Gaza] still would not collectively say “Israel is responsible for starvation in Gaza”. If they cannot name the problem, they can hardly hope to resolve it.
In sum . . . the world may talk the talk of Palestinian statehood being a matter of “not if, but when” and witter on about the “irreversible steps” being taken toward statehood, and finally — somewhere over the rainbow — towards a two state solution. Faint chance:
“For those who are starving today, the only irreversible step is death. Until statehood recognition brings action — arms embargoes, sanctions, enforcement of international law — it will remain a largely empty promise that serves primarily to distract from Western complicity in Gaza’s destruction.
Exactly. Behind the words of concern are the actions of complicity. The people of Gaza do not have time to wait for symbolic actions, or for sanctions to weaken Israel’s appetite for genocide. Consider this option: would New Zealand support an intervention in Gaza by a UN-led international force to save Gaza’s dwindling population, and to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected, however belatedly?
Would we be willing to commit troops to such a force if asked to do so by the UN Secretary-General? That is what is now needed.
Footnote One: On Gaza, the Luxon government has a high tolerance for double standards and Catch 22 conditions. We are insisting that the Palestinians must release the remaining hostages unconditionally, lay down their arms and de-militarise the occupied territories. Yet we are applying no similar pre-conditions on Israel to withdraw, de-militarise the same space, release all their Palestinian prisoners, allow the unrestricted distribution of food and medical supplies, and negotiate a sustainable peace.
Understandably, Hamas has tied the release of the remaining hostages to the Israeli cessation of their onslaught, to unfettered aid distribution, and to a long-term commitment to Palestinian self-rule. Otherwise, once the Israeli hostages are home, there would be nothing to stop Israel from renewing the genocide.
We are also demanding that Hamas be excluded from any future governing arrangement in Gaza, but – simultaneously – Peters told the House recently that this governing arrangement must also be “representative.” Catch 22. “Representative” democracy it seems, means voting for the people pre-selected by the West. Again, no matching demands have been made of Israel with respect to its role in the future governance of Gaza, or about its obligation to rebuild what it has criminally destroyed.
Footnote Two: There is only one rational explanation for why New Zealand is currently holding back from joining the UK, Canada, France and Australia in voting next month to recognise Palestine as a full UN member state. It seems we are cravenly hoping that Australia’s stance will be viewed with such disfavour by Donald Trump that he will punish Canberra by lifting its tariff rate from 10%, thereby erasing the 5% advantage that Australia currently enjoys oven us in the US market.
At least this tells us what the selling price is for our “independent” foreign policy. We’re prepared to sell it out to the Americans – and sell out the Palestinians in the process – if, by sitting on the fence for now, we can engineer parity for our exports with Australia in US markets. ANZAC mates, forever.
In a time of polarized politics, independent community media plays an increasingly important role. Big media are owned and controlled by large corporations. Their salient interest? To make as much profit as possible for their shareholders. That is its political economy. Given that acute limitation, it makes it difficult for most people to get information that challenges mainstream perspectives. By featuring diverse voices and views that are largely excluded, community-based media provide an alternative to corporate McNews.
This content originally appeared on AlternativeRadio and was authored by info@alternativeradio.org.
Union members of Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) have made a video honouring the 242 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed by the Israeli military since October 2023 — many of them targeted.
The death toll has been reported by the Gaza Media Office since the latest killing of six media workers last Sunday, four of them from the Qatar-based global television channel Al Jazeera.
This figure is higher than the 180 deaths recorded by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and other media freedom agencies.
“While international media remains locked out of Gaza, Palestinian journalists work under fire, starvation and sickness to report the reality on the ground,” says the MEAA.
“Targeting journalists is a war crime.
“As colleagues, we remember them.”
In this video, MEAA members say the names of many Gazan journalists who have been killed by the Israeli military.
Music in the MEAA “Stop Killing Journalists” video is composed by Connor D’Netto and performed by Jayson Gillham. The video is edited by Jack Fisher and (A)manda Parkinson for MEAA and was released on YouTube yesterday.
Stop Killing Journalists Video: MEAA
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Netanyahu’s mass ethnic cleansing strategy pulls the rug out from under the West’s cherished pretext for supporting Israeli criminality: the fabled two-state solution.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
If you thought Western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel’s engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed.
As ever, events have moved on — even if the extreme hunger and malnourishment of the two million people of Gaza have not abated.
Western leaders are now expressing “outrage”, as the media call it, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “take full control” of Gaza and “occupy” it.
At some point in the future, Israel is apparently ready to hand the enclave over to outside forces unconnected to the Palestinian people.
The Israeli cabinet agreed last Friday on the first step: a takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are huddled in the ruins, being starved to death. The city will be encircled, systematically depopulated and destroyed, with survivors presumably herded southwards to a “humanitarian city” — Israel’s new term for a concentration camp — where they will be penned up, awaiting death or expulsion.
At the weekend, foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and other Western nations issued a joint statement decrying the move, warning it would “aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians”.
Germany, Israel’s most fervent backer in Europe and its second-biggest arms supplier, is apparently so dismayed that it has vowed to “suspend” — that is, delay — weapons shipments that have helped Israel to murder and maim hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the past 22 months.
Netanyahu is not likely to be too perturbed. Doubtless, Washington will step in and pick up any slack for its main client state in the oil-rich Middle East.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has once again shifted the West’s all-too-belated focus on the indisputable proof of Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions — evidenced by Gaza’s skeletal children — to an entirely different story.
Now, the front pages are all about the Israeli prime minister’s strategy in launching another “ground operation”, how much pushback he is getting from his military commanders, what the implications will be for the Israelis still held captive in the enclave, whether the Israeli army is now overstretched, and whether Hamas can ever be “defeated” and the enclave “demilitarised”.
We are returning once again to logistical analyses of the genocide — analyses whose premises ignore the genocide itself. Might that not be integral to Netanyahu’s strategy?
Life and death It ought to be shocking that Germany has been provoked into stopping its arming of Israel — assuming it follows through — not because of months of images of Gaza’s skin-and-bones children that echo those from Auschwitz, but only because Israel has declared that it wants to “take control” of Gaza.
It should be noted, of course, that Israel never stopped controlling Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories — in contravention of the fundamentals of international law, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled last year. Israel has had absolute control over the lives and deaths of Gaza’s people every day — bar one — since its occupation of the tiny coastal enclave many decades ago.
On 7 October 2023, thousands of Palestinian fighters briefly broke out of the besieged prison camp they and their families had endured after Israel momentarily dropped its guard.
Gaza has long been a prison that the Israeli military illegally controlled by land, sea and air, determining who could enter and leave. It kept Gaza’s economy throttled, and put the enclave’s population “on a diet” that saw rocketing malnourishment among its children long before the current starvation campaign.
Trapped behind a highly militarised fence since the early 1990s, unable to access their own coastal waters, and with Israeli drones constantly surveilling them and raining down death from the air, the people of Gaza viewed it more as a modernised concentration camp.
But Germany and the rest of the West were fine supporting all that. They have continued selling Israel arms, providing it with special trading status, and offering diplomatic cover.
Only as Israel carries through to a logical conclusion its settler-colonial agenda of replacing the native Palestinian people with Jews, is it apparently time for the West to vent its rhetorical “outrage”.
Two-state trickery Why the pushback now? In part, it is because Netanyahu is pulling the rug out from under their cherished, decades-long pretext for supporting Israel’s ever-greater criminality: the fabled two-state solution.
Israel conspired in that trickery with the signing of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s.
The goal was never the realisation of a two-state solution. Rather, Oslo created a “diplomatic horizon” for “final status issues” — which, like the physical horizon, always remained equally distant, however much ostensible movement there was on the ground.
Lisa Nandy, Britain’s Culture Secretary, peddled precisely this same deceit last week as she extolled the virtues of the two-state solution. She told Sky News: “Our message to the Palestinian people is very, very clear: There is hope on the horizon.”
UK Government Minister Lisa Nandy:
‘Our message to the Palestinian people is very clear. There is hope on the horizon.’
Palestinians are expected to believe words of ‘hope’ from a Minister of a government that has aided and supported Israel’s genocide against them pic.twitter.com/appizVm0QY
Every Palestinian understood her real message, which could be paraphrased as: “We’ve lied to you about a Palestinian state for decades, and we’ve allowed a genocide to unfold before the world’s eyes for the past two years. But hey, trust us this time. We’re on your side.”
In truth, the promise of Palestinian statehood was always treated by the West as little more than a threat — and one directed at Palestinian leaders. Palestinian officials must be more obedient, quieter. They had to first prove their willingness to police Israel’s occupation on Israel’s behalf by repressing their own people.
Hamas, of course, failed that test in Gaza. But Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank, bent over backwards to reassure his examiners, casting as “sacred” his lightly armed security forces’ so-called “cooperation” with Israel. In reality, they are there to do its dirty work.
Nonetheless, despite the PA’s endless good behaviour, Israel has continued to expel ordinary Palestinians from their land, then steal that land — which was supposed to form the basis of a Palestinian state — and hand it over to extremist Jewish settlers backed by the Israeli army.
Former US President Barack Obama briefly and feebly tried to halt what the West misleadingly calls Jewish “settlement expansion” — in reality, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — but rolled over at the first sign of intransigence from Netanyahu.
Israel has stepped up the process of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank even more aggressively over the past two years, while global attention has been on Gaza — with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretzwarning this week that settlers have been given “free rein”.
A small window into the impunity granted to settlers as they wage their campaign of violence to depopulate Palestinian communities was highlighted at the weekend, when B’Tselem released footage of a Palestinian activist, Awdah Hathaleen, inadvertently filming his own killing.
Extremist settler Yinon Levi was released on grounds of self-defence, even though the video shows him singling out Hathaleen from afar, taking aim and shooting.
Alibi gone It is noticeable that, having stopped making reference to Palestinian statehood for many years, Western leaders have revived their interest only now — as Israel is making a two-state solution unrealisable.
That was graphically illustrated by footage broadcast this month by ITV. Shot from an aid plane, it showed the wholesale destruction of Gaza — its homes, schools, hospitals, universities, bakeries, shops, mosques and churches gone.
Apocalyptic scenes in Gaza Video: ITV News
Gaza is in ruins. Its reconstruction will take decades. Occupied East Jerusalem and its holy sites were long ago seized and Judaised by Israel, with Western assent.
Suddenly, Western capitals are noticing that the last remnants of the proposed Palestinian state are about to be swallowed whole by Israel, too. Germany recently warned Israel that it must not take “any further steps toward annexing the West Bank”.
US President Donald Trump is on his own path. But this is the moment when other major Western powers — led by France, Britain and Canada — have started threatening to recognise a Palestinian state, even as the possibility of such a state has been obliterated by Israel.
Australia announced it would join them this week after its foreign minister, a few days earlier, said the quiet part out loud, warning: “There is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise if the international community don’t move to create that pathway to a two-state solution.”
That is something they dare not countenance, because with it goes their alibi for supporting all these years the apartheid state of Israel, now deep into the final stages of a genocide in Gaza.
That was why British Prime Minister Keir Starmer desperately switched tack recently. Instead of dangling recognition of Palestinian statehood as a carrot encouraging Palestinians to be more obedient — British policy for decades — he wielded it as a threat, and a largely hollow one, against Israel.
He would recognise a Palestinian state if Israel refused to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and proceeded with the West Bank’s annexation. In other words, Starmer backed recognising a state of Palestine – after Israel has gone ahead with its complete erasure.
Extracting concessions Still, France and Britain’s recognition threat is not simply too late. It serves two other purposes.
Firstly, it provides a new alibi for inaction. There are plenty of far more effective ways for the West to halt Israel’s genocide. Western capitals could embargo arms sales, stop intelligence sharing, impose economic sanctions, sever ties with Israeli institutions, expel Israeli ambassadors, and downgrade diplomatic relations. They are choosing to do none of those things.
And secondly, recognition is designed to extract from the Palestinians “concessions” that will make them even more vulnerable to Israeli violence.
According to France’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot: “Recognising a State of Palestine today means standing with the Palestinians who have chosen non-violence, who have renounced terrorism, and are prepared to recognise Israel.”
In other words, in the West’s view, the “good Palestinians” are those who recognise and lay down before the state committing genocide against them.
Western leaders have long envisioned a Palestinian state only on condition that it is demilitarised. Recognition this time is premised on Hamas agreeing to disarm and its departure from Gaza, leaving Abbas to take on the enclave and presumably continue the “sacred” mission of “cooperating” with a genocidal Israeli army.
As part of the price for recognition, all 22 members of the Arab League publicly condemned Hamas and demanded its removal from Gaza.
Boot on Gaza’s neck How does all of this fit with Netanyahu’s “ground offensive”? Israel isn’t “taking over” Gaza, as he claims. Its boot has been on the enclave’s neck for decades.
While Western capitals contemplate a two-state solution, Israel is preparing a final mass ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.
Starmer’s government, for one, knew this was coming. Flight data shows that the UK has been constantly operating surveillance missions over Gaza on Israel’s behalf from the Royal Air Force base Akrotiri on Cyprus. Downing Street has been following the enclave’s erasure step by step.
Netanyahu’s plan is to encircle, besiege and bomb the last remaining populated areas in northern and central Gaza, and drive Palestinians towards a giant holding pen — misnamed a “humanitarian city” — alongside the enclave’s short border with Egypt. Israel will then probably employ the same contractors it has been using elsewhere in Gaza to go street to street to bulldoze or blow up any surviving buildings.
The next stage, given the trajectory of the last two years, is not difficult to predict. Locked up in their dystopian “humanitarian city”, the people of Gaza will continue to be starved and bombed whenever Israel claims it has identified a Hamas fighter in their midst, until Egypt or other Arab states can be persuaded to take them in, as a further “humanitarian” gesture.
Then, the only matter to be settled will be what happens to the real estate: build some version of Trump’s gleaming “Riviera” scheme, or construct another tawdry patchwork of Jewish settlements of the kind envisioned by Netanyahu’s openly fascist allies, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.
There is a well-established template to be drawn on, one that was used in 1948 during Israel’s violent creation. Palestinians were driven from their cities and villages, in what was then called Palestine, across the borders into neighbouring states. The new state of Israel, backed by Western powers, then set about methodically destroying every home in those hundreds of villages.
Over subsequent years, they were landscaped either with forests or exclusive Jewish communities, often engaged in farming, to make Palestinian return impossible and stifle any memory of Israel’s crimes. Generations of Western politicians, intellectuals and cultural figures have celebrated all of this.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Austrian President Heinz Fischer are among those who went to Israel in their youth to work on these farming communities. Most came back as emissaries for a Jewish state built on the ruins of a Palestinian homeland.
An emptied Gaza can be similarly re-landscaped. But it is much harder to imagine that this time the world will forget or forgive the crimes committed by Israel — or those who enabled them.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published Middle East Eye and republished from the author’s blog with permission.
Anas al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, last Sunday has triggered protests around the world, including journalists in Israel. He left behind a powerful farewell message — his final testament to his people, his family, and the world.
Palestine Chronicle staff
Palestinian journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqea were killed last Sunday in an Israeli bombardment that struck a journalists’ tent near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
Cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal also died in the attack, which was carried out by an Israeli drone. The Israeli army admitted targeting al-Sharif shortly after the strike.
Al-Sharif, 28, from Jabaliya refugee camp, was an award-winning journalist who became a leading global voice from Gaza during the war. He inspired thousands.
Protest and vigils have been held around the world from South Africa’s Cape Town to Manila in the Philippines and London in the UK to honour al-Sharif and his colleagues in condemnation of this targeted murder.
Less than two weeks ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists had warned that his life was in “acute” danger due to repeated threats from an Israeli military spokesperson.
Before his death, al-Sharif prepared a farewell message to be shared if he was killed. His family and colleagues posted it to his social media accounts after the news of his death.
Below is the full English translation of that message.
Anas al-Sharif’s final message “This is my will and my final message.
“If my words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.
“First, peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessings.
“God knows I gave all I had — strength and effort — to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys of Jabaliya refugee camp. My hope was to live long enough to return with my family and loved ones to our original town, Asqalan (al-Majdal), now under occupation.
هذه وصيّتي، ورسالتي الأخيرة.
إن وصلَتكم كلماتي هذه، فاعلموا أن إسرائيل قد نجحت في قتلي وإسكات صوتي.
بداية السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
يعلم الله أنني بذلت كل ما أملك من جهدٍ وقوة، لأكون سندًا وصوتًا لأبناء شعبي، مذ فتحت عيني على الحياة في أزقّة وحارات مخيّم جباليا للاجئين،…
— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) August 10, 2025
“But God’s will came first, and His decree is final.
“I have lived pain in all its details and tasted loss many times. Yet I never stopped telling the truth as it is, without falsification or distortion — so that God may bear witness over those who stayed silent, accepted our killing, and did nothing to stop the massacre our people have endured for more than a year and a half.
“I entrust you with Palestine — the jewel of the Muslim crown and the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people and children, whose pure bodies have been crushed under Israeli bombs and missiles.
Australian journalists protest over the killings. Video: MEAA
“Do not let chains silence you or borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.
“I entrust you with my family: my beloved daughter Sham; my dear son Salah; my mother, whose prayers were my fortress; and my steadfast wife Bayan (Umm Salah), who carried the responsibility in my absence with strength and faith. Stand by them after God.
Two more journalists, Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qaryaq, have been killed in Gaza. These brilliant young reporters were known for their courage and powerful commitment to the truth.
Israel’s strategy is clear: silence the truth by murdering those who report it. They accuse… pic.twitter.com/G0I3xny1IV
“If I die, I die steadfast in my principles. I bear witness that I am content with God’s decree, certain of our meeting, and convinced that what is with God is better and everlasting.
“O God, accept me among the martyrs, forgive me my sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people. Forgive me if I fell short, and pray for me with mercy, for I have kept my pledge and never changed.
“Do not forget Gaza… and do not forget me in your prayers.”
Anas Jamal al-Sharif
April 6, 2025
Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif with his daughter Sham and his son Salah. Image: via social media
On November 9, 2023, just over one month into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a group of U.S.-based journalists published an open letter. “We stand with our colleagues in Gaza and herald their brave efforts at reporting in the midst of carnage and destruction,” the letter’s authors wrote. “We also hold Western newsrooms accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing…
New York, 13 August 13, 2025—In four years, the Taliban have annihilated Afghanistan’s independent media sector and supplanted it with their own propaganda empire and sophisticated digital bots that flood social media with pro-Taliban content.
CPJ interviewed 10 Afghan journalists, inside and outside the country, who said that independent media, which used to reach millions of people, have largely beenbanned,suspended, orshuttered while key outlets have beentaken over by the Taliban. None would publish their names, citing fear of reprisals.
The Taliban now run about 15 major television and radio stations, newspapers, and digital platforms, including onYouTube,X, andTelegram — tightly aligned with their radical Islamist ideology.
“The ruling authority enforces a monolithic media policy, rejecting any news, narrative, or voice that deviates from what they deem the truth. Even personal opinions expressed on platforms like Facebook are treated as propaganda andpunished accordingly,” Ahmad Quraishi, director of the exiled Afghanistan Journalists Center, told CPJ.
Exiled journalists offer one of thelast remaining sources of independent information broadcast into Afghanistan. But even they facesafety concerns and hardships, as well as job losses and potential forced return due to theU.S. funding cuts to the Congress-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) outlets.
Turning fearful journalists into spies
In September 2020, a year before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, a radio presenter reads the news during a broadcast at the Merman radio station in Kandahar. Women journalists have been largely sidelined by the Taliban. (Photo: AFP/ Wakil Kohsar)
As Afghanistan marks the fourth anniversary of the Taliban’s August 15, 2021, takeover, most journalists who spoke with CPJ said they were fearful, and either jobless or heavily censored. Several described the relentless surveillance,control, andintimidation as living under a “media police state.”
“Taliban intelligence agents have launched a policing system where every journalist is expected to spy on others,” a media executive who led a TV station in eastern Afghanistan told CPJ.
“They demand complete personal information on all staff: names, fathers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, WhatsApp numbers … We must report everything.”
Intelligence agentsmonitor and detain reporters over their social media content, while the morality policearrest those who violate their stringent interpretation of Sharia law, which includes a ban on music, soap operas, and programs co-hosted by male and female presenters.
Two media owners from northern and eastern Afghanistan told CPJ that they had been subjected to invasive revenue audits and administrative delays because they were perceived as insufficiently compliant.
“Taliban agents reach out to journalists privately, pressuring them to spy on their colleagues or push specific narratives,” one of the owners said. “If someone refuses, they call the media manager and demand the journalist be fired. We comply, or we face licensing issues from the Ministry of Information and Culture or financial penalties from the Ministry of Finance.”
In May, a spokesperson for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said it had held over1,000 meetings with the media over the last year to “coordinate in promoting Islamic Sharia values” — a term understood locally to mean morality police enforcement meetings.
Two female journalists from western Afghanistan said they were each summoned over 10 times in the past two years.
“Once they interrogated me for three hours in the office of the Directorate of Virtue and Vice, asking why I worked instead of staying home,” one woman told CPJ, referring to the ministry’s provincial office.
“They said that if I were found working with exiled media, it would be wajib al-qatl [permissible to kill me]. One official said, ‘We forgive you this time, you thank God for this. But under Sharia, we could bring any calamity upon you.’ Another time, they said they could detain me for a week just to extract a confession, and no one would even know.”
Inside the Taliban’s media empire
The Taliban flag flutters over a provincial branch building of National Radio Television of Takhar (RTA) in Taloqan, in northeastern Takhar province in 2024. (Photo: AFP)
Three active, independent Kabul-based journalists explained the Taliban’s new media landscape to CPJ:
With over 500 staff nationwide and a budget of about 600 million Afghanis (US$8.8 million), RTA reports often promote Taliban achievements, such as supportingrefugees anddiplomacy.
Bakhtar News Agency, founded in 1939, employs around 60 staff in Kabul and four reporters in each of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Run by the information ministry, it is the Taliban’s official news source and publishes ineight languages, includingMandarin andTurkish.
The information ministry also runs several daily newspapers, including Dari-languageAnis, Pashto-languageHewad, and English-languageThe Kabul Times in print and online. These newspapers werefounded severaldecades ago.
The three journalists said security agencies operate three radio stations:
Hurriyat Radio has awebsite,YouTube channel, and localradio stations that areexpanding across the provinces, broadcasting in multiple languages, with 26 Kabul staff plus provincial correspondents.
Hurriyat Radio was launched in 2022 by the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) — the Taliban’s notorious intelligence agency behind a series of media crackdowns — and is managed by the agency’s directorate of media and publications.
Radio Omid, started in 2023 by the defense ministry, employs 45 staff in Kabul and provincial reporters, andreports on the ministry’sachievements. The radio station is managed by the office of spokesperson of the defense ministry.
Radio Police,relaunched in 2021 by the interior ministry, broadcasts news about police activities across key provinces like Kabul and southern Kandahar.
The Taliban has four news sites, at least three of which are run by the intelligence agency:
The flagship project is the multi-lingualAl Mirsad news site, launched in 2023 tochallenge IS-K narratives. Itdownplays the group’s presence in Afghanistan while reporting Taliban successes, using multiplesocial media channels, includingYouTube.
It is funded and operated by the GDI’s directorate of media and publications and its senior managers are linked to the interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani.
YouTube-basedMaihan discredits the Taliban’sopponents, with 12 staff, led by Jawad Sargar, former deputy director of the GDI’s directorate of media and publication.
When contacted via messaging app, Sargar asked CPJ to stop contacting him, adding, “These matters are not related to you.”
The multi-lingualAlemarah news site, activebefore 2021, is the Taliban’s official outlet, run by Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid.
Disinformation campaign
Intelligence officials have four offices from which they direct disinformation campaigns. Dozens of creators are paid 6,000 to 10,000 Afghanis (US$88 to 146) a month to run fake social media accounts that troll critics, smear activists, and simulate grassroots support, two Afghan journalists told CPJ.
The project is led by senior GDI figures like deputy director of media and publication, Jabir Nomani, former GDI spokespeople Jawad Amin and Sargar – who runs Maihan – and Kabul-based political analyst Fazlur Rahman Orya, the journalists said.
Orya, who is also director of the Sahar Discourse Center, which advises the Taliban on policy, denied that he was involved in disinformation, telling CPJ via messaging app, “You make a big mistake about me.”
Nomani did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment via messaging app.
Qais Alamdar, exiled founder of the open source investigative platformIntelFocus, hasdocumented the activities of these bots, which often post near-identical tweets within minutes of each other to bolster the government’s legitimacy or prevent internet users finding other news, such as an attack on the Taliban.
“Only someone with consistent access to electricity, internet, and time could maintain that kind of operation in Afghanistan,” he told CPJ.
Traffic accidents are only news allowed
A destroyed bus is lifted after it plunged off a road north of Kabul in 2010. (Photo: Reuters/stringer)
As a result of these repressive measures, many media outlets have shut down or have been banned entirely.
In the northeastern Panjshir Valley, once the heart of resistance to the Taliban, no media outlets remain active, Ahmad Hanayesh, who used to own two radio stations in the province, told CPJ fromexile.
Four journalists from Herat, Nangarhar, Faryab, and Bamiyan told CPJ that aside from education and health stories, the only serious news they were permitted to cover was traffic accidents. Even crime reporting was banned.
GDI’s media and publications director Khalil Hamraz and Taliban spokesperson Mujahid did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment via messaging app.
The founder of Hong Kong’s now shuttered Apple Daily newspaper, Lai, 77, who is also a British citizen, has been in jail since December 2020.
Lai is currently standing trial for “collusion with foreign forces” under Hong Kong’s National Security Law.
Jimmy Lai’s son Sebastien has warned that “time is running out” for his father’s health, and called on Britain and the United States to push for his release.
Human rights groups say Lai’s trial is a “sham” and part of a broad crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.
The hearings are scheduled to last eight days.
Jimmy Lai walks through the Stanley prison in Hong Kong, on July 28, 2023.(Louise Delmotte/AP)Jimmy Lai, owner of the Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, poses next to dry runs of a soon to be launched Taiwanese newspaper taped to his office wall, April 7, 2003, in Taipei.(Jerome Favre/AP)This photo taken on Feb. 7, 2011, shows Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai outside his company’s headquarters in Hong Kong.(Mike Clarke/AFP)Media tycoon Jimmy Lai, attends a pro-democracy protesters march in Admiralty on Aug. 31, 2019 in Hong Kong.(Billy H.C. Kwok/Getty Images)Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai poses during an interview at the Next Digital offices in Hong Kong, June 16, 2020.(Anthony Wallace/AFP)Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai and a copy of Apple Daily’s July 1, 2020, edition during an interview in Hong Kong, July 1, 2020.(Vincent Yu/AP)Hong Kong police officers block the entrance to Apple Daily newspaper on Aug. 10, 2020.(Apple Daily via Getty Images)Hong Kong police officers search the office of Apple Daily newspaper on Aug. 10, 2020.(Apple Daily via Getty Images)Hong Kong police officers search the office of Apple Daily newspaper on Aug. 10, 2020.(Apple Daily via Getty Images)Jimmy Lai is escorted by Hong Kong police officers as they search the office of Apple Daily newspaper on Aug. 10, 2020.(Apple Daily via Getty Images)Hong Kong media tycoon and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai is escorted by the police for evidence collection on Aug. 11, 2020 in Hong Kong.(Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)Copies of the Apple Daily newspaper, with front pages featuring Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, are displayed for sale at a newsstand in Hong Kong, Aug. 11, 2020.(Kin Cheung/AP)Jimmy Lai, center, who founded the Apple Daily tabloid, is escorted by Correctional Services officers to get on a prison van before appearing in a court, in Hong Kong on Dec. 12, 2020.(Kin Cheung/AP)Copies of the last issue of Apple Daily arrive at a newspaper booth in Hong Kong on June 24, 2021.(Vincent Yu/AP)In this image provided by The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, an artist projection by Robin Bell protests China’s crackdown on dissidents ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in Washington, Jan. 31, 2022.(Andre Chung/Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong via AP)
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Global condemnation is mounting over Israel’s assassination of one of the most prominent journalists in Gaza, the Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, along with four of his colleagues at the network and another freelance journalist.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for an independent investigation after the five Al Jazeera journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli strike outside Al-Shifa Hospital in a tent clearly marked in Gaza City. European Union officials and international press freedom groups have also denounced the assassinations.
The sixth journalist, freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khalidi, was also killed in the same strike. Minutes before the strike, al-Sharif posted to X, “If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.”
On Monday, crowds of mourners gathered for a funeral procession for al-Sharif and his colleagues, marching from Al-Shifa to Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in central Gaza, carrying the journalists’ bodies wrapped in white sheets.
A dark blue flak press jacket and a Palestinian flag were placed on al-Sharif’s remains. People embraced as they decried Israel’s relentless targeting of journalists in Gaza.
Meanwhile, at rallies and vigils worldwide, people are demanding accountability for the attack on journalists, including in Tunisia, Belfast, Dublin, Berlin, London, Oslo, Stockholm and Washington, DC.
For more, we go to Geneva, Switzerland, where we’re joined by Irene Khan, UN special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. She served as secretary-general of Amnesty International from 2001 to 2009.
Irene Khan, welcome back to Democracy Now! In late July, you publicly denounced Israel’s threats against Anas al-Sharif. Can you talk about what you understood at that time, and then this young 28-year-old reporter’s response to your press statement?
IRENE KHAN: Yes, well, Anas actually contacted me, and Al Jazeera contacted me to tell me of this impending threat on his head. They had seen it before. He’s not the first one, as you know.
There are some — anything between 26 to 30 journalists — who have been targeted in this campaign of assassination. And Anas wanted me to go public, he wanted others to go public, to stop what Israel was doing.
But at the same time, he thanked me for my support, and then he said nothing would stop him from speaking the truth. And in a way, he signed his own death warrant by that, because, as you know, he and the others, Al Jazeera’s entire team in northern Gaza, were killed, murdered, just as Israel ramps up its military action on the city, Gaza City.
So, there is a clear pattern here of killing journalists to clear the path, to silence voices, to stop the international, global opinion from being informed of the genocide in Gaza.
Assassination: Israel’s killing of Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif Video: Democracy Now!
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Irene Khan, the number of journalists — so, more than 200 have been killed in Gaza. That’s more than all the journalists killed in World War I, World War II, Korea, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Afghanistan War combined.
Your sense of the Israeli impunity here in being able to basically kill the corps of journalists that are still able to report from Gaza?
IRENE KHAN: Well, you also have to take into account that Israel has refused to give access to international media. So these are all local Gazan journalists who are putting their lives on the line to keep the world informed. Many of them — you named some 200 — many of them, of course, have been killed in the intensity of the battle. Many of them have been killed while asleep in their own apartments. But these cases, the cases of Anas now, and his colleagues, and a number of other cases of targeted killing, is really murder.
It is not killing in the context of war. It is a deliberate strategy to stop independent voices reporting. So it’s as much a threat to independent journalism as it is to the journalists themselves, as well as a blatant attempt by the Israelis to stop the world witnessing what they are doing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And these killings also came as the Israeli government announced they’re unleashing a new operation in the area of Gaza. Who will be left to document this operation now?
IRENE KHAN: Well, absolutely. And that is why Anas got in touch with me, because he realised what was happening. You know, from his message on LinkedIn and from his message that he has sent to me and to others, it was very, very clear.
He has been there on the ground since October 2023. He could see the pattern. He could see what was happening. He knew they were coming for him.
And that is why it is incumbent on all of us now not to just condemn, but actually to act, before independent media is totally obliterated from Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Irene Khan, I want to ask what you’re calling for, and the significance of Netanyahu holding this news conference on Sunday and saying — he has now said that the Israeli military can bring in journalists, but they’re most concerned about protecting their safety.
A few hours later is when Israel assassinated these six journalists. Now, it is the first time, NPR reports, since October 2023 that Israel so quickly took responsibility for their assassination.
You know, compare it to Shireen Abu Akleh, May 11, 2022, when Israel said it was not clear, and then, you know, so many studies were done, but it became very clear. Talk about what you are calling for at this point.
IRENE KHAN: It’s not actually an admission of taking responsibility, because there is no accountability in it. It’s actually a brazen attempt to show the world that the Israeli army can work as it wishes, regardless of international humanitarian law that protects journalists as civilians.
Now, what I’m calling for is, of course, independent investigation, truly independent investigation. But I’m also calling for protection of journalists on the ground and for access to international journalists.
Israel always covers these assassinations and murders with allegations and smear campaigns — the journalists are simply agents of Hamas or members of Hamas — and that kind of gives Israel a veil of impunity.
It’s important for international journalists to be on the ground so they can actually investigate and expose this false story and the string of assassinations that Israel is carrying out.
And I think we need to remember the message that Israel’s action is sending to the rest of the world, because there are other spots, other conflict areas, where also others are learning that you need to be just brazen and go ahead and kill journalists, and you can get away with it.
AMY GOODMAN: Irene Khan, we’re speaking to you in Geneva, Switzerland — Geneva, the Geneva Conventions. Can you talk about how the conventions specifically protect journalists?
IRENE KHAN: Well, the convention gives journalists civilian status, which means that, like all other civilians, they should not be targeted during the war.
The problem is the journalists are not just civilians. They are the kind of civilians that have to go to the frontline and not run away somewhere else. You know, they are not like women and children, who can move and seek shelter elsewhere.
They have to be where the fighting is. And that exposes them. They are much more like humanitarian workers. And journalists need to be recognised as humanitarian workers. There needs to be — I believe there needs to be additional protection given to them, because it shows how vulnerable they are, on the one hand, to attacks, and, on the other hand, how important their work is to the rest of the world, to any peace process, to any attempt to have accountability and justice for the victims.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Last month, the union representing reporters at the French press agency AFP warned that the agency staff were in danger of starving to death, and they issued an open letter condemning what Israel was doing in terms of denying food, not just to the population in general, but also to journalists, as well.
Your response?
IRENE KHAN: Well, absolutely. These journalists are local journalists, as I said, so they have faced all the problems that the population is facing. They’ve had their own families killed. They have to hunt for food, even as they hunt for news.
So, they have been put in a terrible situation. And that’s why Israel has to open the gates, not under military protection, but allow journalists independently to come and investigate. It has to stop the starvation, the blockade. It has to allow humanitarian assistance to come in. And it has to agree to a ceasefire and, of course, stop the genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with the words of Anas al-Sharif himself. Anticipating his own murder by Israeli forces, he wrote a preprepared message that was posted on his X account after his death. Al Jazeera read part of his message on air.
AL JAZEERA REPORTER: “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice, I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification, so that God may bear witness against those who stayed silent and accepted our killing.”
He ends, “Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.”
AMY GOODMAN: The words of Anas al-Sharif, posted after he was killed by the Israeli military along with five other journalists. Five of them were with Al Jazeera.
Irene Khan, I want to thank you so much for being with us, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, speaking to us from Geneva, Switzerland. To see our interview with the managing editor of Al Jazeera, go to democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Nicole Salazar, Sara Nasser, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Safwat Nazzal. Our executive director is Julie Crosby.
I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!
New Zealand’s Prime Minister says the war in Gaza is “utterly appalling” and Israeil Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost the plot”.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s comments came on a tense day in Parliament today, where the Green Party’s co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was “named” for refusing to leave the House following a heated debate on the government’s plan to consider recognising Palestinian statehood.
Speaking to media, Luxon said Netanyahu had “gone too far”.
“I think he has lost the plot and I think that what we’re seeing overnight — the attack on Gaza City — is utterly, utterly unacceptable,” he said.
Luxon said Israel had consistently ignored pleas from the international community for humanitarian aid to be delivered “unfettered” and the situation was driving more human catastrophe across Gaza.
“We are a small country a long way away, with very limited trade with Israel. We have very little connection with the country, but we have stood up for values, and we keep articulating them very consistently, and what you have seen is Israel not listening to the global community at all,” Luxon said.
“We have said a forcible displacement of people and an annexation of Gaza would be a breach of international law. We have called these things out consistently time and time again.
“You’ve seen New Zealand join many of our friends and partners around the world to make these statements, and he’s just not listening,” the Prime Minister said.
Considering statehood
The government is considering whether it will join other countries like France, Canada and Australia in recognising Palestinian statehood at a UN Leader’s Meeting next month.
Luxon said recent attacks could “extinguish a pathway” to a two-state solution.
“I’m telling you what my personal view is, as a human being, looking at the situation, that’s how I feel about,” he said.
“She’s used the words ‘unfolding genocide’, and yes, I do agree with that. That’s a good description of the situation at the moment.”
Hipkins said calling it an “unfolding genocide” meant that New Zealand was not “appointing ourselves judge and jury” because there was still a case to be heard before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“Recognising that there is an unfolding genocide in Gaza is an important part of the world community standing up and saying, we’re not going to tolerate it.
“We should recognise that there is now a growing acknowledgement around the world that there is an unfolding genocide in Gaza, and I think we should call that for what it is, and the world community needs to react to that to prevent it from happening,” Hipkins said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Letter from rights groups says RedBird Capital’s proposed takeover threatens media pluralism and transparency
A group of nine human rights and freedom of expression organisations have called on the culture secretary to halt RedBird Capital’s proposed £500m takeover of the Telegraph and investigate the US private equity company’s ties to China.
The international non-governmental organisations, which include Index on Censorship, Reporters Without Borders and Article 19, have written to Lisa Nandy arguing that RedBird Capital’s links with China “threaten media pluralism, transparency and information integrity in the UK”.
Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance has condemned the continued targeted killing of media workers in Gaza and the baseless smearing of working journalists as “terrorists”, following the deaths of five Al Jazeera staff over the weekend.
Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and assistant Moamen Aliwa were killed on Sunday when Israel bombed a tent housing journalists in Gaza City, near Al-Shifa Hospital.
Shockingly, the Israeli military confirmed the targeted killing on social media, with a post to X accompanied by a target emoji.
The latest deaths come after Israel had conducted a long smear campaign of unsubstantiated allegations against Al Sharif and other journalists, labelling them “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists”, which the International Federation of Journalists has condemned.
As Al Jazeera has said, this was a “dangerous attempt to justify the targeting of journalists in the field”.
“The targeting of journalists is a blatant attack on press freedom, and it is also a war crime.
“It must stop.”
Call for ‘unfettered coverage’
MEAA also said the Israeli ban preventing the world’s media from accessing the region and providing unfettered coverage of the worsening humanitarian crisis must stop.
The silencing of Palestinian journalists via a rising death toll that the Gaza Media Office puts at 242 must also stop, the union said.
“In his final words, Al-Sharif said he never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is — without distortion or falsification,” said MEAA
“His reports brought to the world the reality of the horrors being inflicted by the Israeli government on the civilians in Gaza.
“He asked the world to not forget Gaza and to not forget him.”
MEAA said it stood up against attacks on press freedom around the world.
Pacific Media Watch says there has been no equivalent condemnation by New Zealand journalists, who have mostly remained silent during the 22 months of Israel’s war on Gaza.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the Israeli military’s “disgraceful tactic” to cover up war crimes in the wake of the killing of six journalists in Gaza on Sunday.
It has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to stop the massacre of journalists, RSF said in a statement.
The August 10 Israeli strike killed six media professionals in Gaza, five of whom currently work or formerly worked for the Qatari television network Al Jazeera and one freelance journalist.
The strike, which has been claimed by the Israeli army, targeted Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, whom it accused, without providing solid evidence, of “terrorist affiliation”.
RSF said the military had repeatedly used this tactic against journalists to cover up war crimes, while the army has already killed more than 200 media professionals.
“RSF strongly condemns the killing of six media professionals by the Israeli army, once again carried out under the guise of terrorism charges against a journalist,” said RSF’s director-general Thibaut Bruttin.
“One of the most famous journalists in the Gaza Strip, Anas al-Sharif, was among those killed.
“The Israeli army has killed more than 200 journalists since the start of the war. This massacre and Israel’s media blackout strategy, designed to conceal the crimes committed by its army for more than 21 months in the besieged and starving Palestinian enclave, must be stopped immediately.
“The international community can no longer turn a blind eye and must react and put an end to this impunity.
“RSF calls on the UN Security Council to meet urgently on the basis of Resolution 2222 of 2015 on the protection of journalists in times of armed conflict in order to stop this carnage.”
Targeted strike on tent
The Israeli army killed Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif in a targeted strike on a tent housing a group of journalists near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
The strike, claimed by Israeli authorities, also killed five other media professionals, including four working or having worked for Al Jazeera — correspondent Mohammed Qraiqea, video reporter Ibrahim al-Thaher, Mohamed Nofal, assistant cameraman and driver that day, and Moamen Aliwa, a freelance journalist who worked with Al Jazeera — as well as another freelance journalist, Mohammed al-Khaldi, creator of a YouTube news channel.
The attack also wounded freelance reporters Mohammed Sobh, Mohammed Qita, and Ahmed al-Harazine.
This attack, claimed by the Israeli army, replicates a tactic previously used against Al Jazeera journalists. On 31 July 2024, the Israeli army killed reportersIsmail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi in a targeted strike, following a smear campaign against the former, who, like Anas al-Sharif, was accused of “terrorist affiliation”.
Hamza al-Dahdouh, Mustafa Thuraya and Hossam Shabat, who also worked for the Qatari media outlet, are among the victims of this method denounced by RSF.
As early as October 2024, RSF warned of an imminent attack on Anas al-Sharif following accusations by the Israeli army.
The international community, led by the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, ignored these warnings.
Under Resolution 2222 of 2015 on the protection of journalists in armed conflict, the UN Security Council has a duty to convene urgently in response to this latest extrajudicial killing by the Israeli army.
Since October 2023, RSF has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) requesting investigations into what it describes as war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists in Gaza.
The New Zealand-based Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
In recent weeks, a motley crew of writers has found common cause in attacking Nicaragua’s Sandinista government: Jaden Hong, a high-school student from Sammamish, Washington, who has never visited the country; Jared O. Bell, a former USAID Foreign Service Officer; Barb Arland-Fye, editor of a Catholic newspaper in Iowa; and Gioconda Belli, a 76-year-old Nicaraguan novelist in self-exile. Writing in outlets ranging from The Teen Magazine to the New York Times, they have produced a string of biased, ill-informed pieces that repeat the same well-worn falsehoods about Nicaragua’s elected government.
Their attacks on Nicaragua’s revolution reflect Washington’s talking points as it pursues its regime-change agenda.
In recent weeks, a motley crew of writers has found common cause in attacking Nicaragua’s Sandinista government: Jaden Hong, a high-school student from Sammamish, Washington, who has never visited the country; Jared O. Bell, a former USAID Foreign Service Officer; Barb Arland-Fye, editor of a Catholic newspaper in Iowa; and Gioconda Belli, a 76-year-old Nicaraguan novelist in self-exile. Writing in outlets ranging from The Teen Magazine to the New York Times, they have produced a string of biased, ill-informed pieces that repeat the same well-worn falsehoods about Nicaragua’s elected government.
Their attacks on Nicaragua’s revolution reflect Washington’s talking points as it pursues its regime-change agenda.Jaden Hong tells “Gen Z” in The Teen Magazine that Nicaragua’s democracy is fading. Jared O. Bell, who lost his USAID job in Managua when Trump shuttered the agency, complains in Peace Voice about the country’s “stolen democracy.” Barb Arland-Fye, in The Catholic Messenger, writes glowingly about a key organizer of the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. Novelist Gioconda Belli is given a guest essay in the New York Times to lament her “country’s dictator.”
Belli, born in Nicaragua but living abroad since the 1980s, has been a critic of the Sandinista government since it first regained power through the ballot box in 2007. Her status as a novelist ensures that the NYT, the Guardian, Spain’s El Pais and other mainstream outlets give her space to vent her anger against a revolution which she supported initially but has since labeled a “farse.”
Many of Nicaragua’s liberal intellectuals opposed the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s, but their commitment faded as the initial glamour of the revolution turned into the hard work of tackling the needs of the country’s poor and working people. As ordinary Nicaraguans were given greater voice, and taxes were raised to pay for new schools and hospitals (60% of the country’s budget goes to social programs), they maligned people’s power as an emerging “dictatorship.”
The list of privileged critics of the Sandinista government, whose status gives them access to the New York Times and other corporate outlets, include Belli and her brother Humberto, along with Sergio Ramirez (a “novelist betrayed by the revolution”), journalist Carlos Chamorro and many more. Some work directly for mainstream media, such as Wilfredo Miranda (El Pais) and Gabriela Selser (Reuters). Supposedly revolutionary in their youth, they are now part of Washington’s soft power apparatus and help feed its imperialist agenda.
Of the lies in Belli’s recent NYT article, one stands out: that “peaceful protesters were shot” during the coup attempt against Nicaragua’s elected government in 2018. This falsehood is repeated in the other three articles. Bell says that “student-led protests… were met with brutal, deadly repression.” Hong says that “lethal force” led to “355 dead and hundreds injured.” For Arland-Fye, it was a “deadly crackdown.” That the protestors were far from “peaceful” is obvious from the fact that 22 police officers were killed and over 400 injured in attacks launched from the hundreds of roadblocks erected by the coup-mongers throughout the country.
Arland-Fye’s sycophantic piece is about opposition figureBishop Silvio José Báez Ortega. The cleric had called the coup roadblocks “a wonderful idea” and said he hoped to see President Daniel Ortega in front of a firing squad. The Iowa bishopric, for which Arland-Fye writes, has just awarded Baez a “peace prize.”
The suggestion that Trump is following an Ortega “playbook” appears in two of the articles: it could hardly be more absurd. Unlike Ortega, Trump is not building public hospitals, he’s dismantling Medicare. Also unlike Ortega, he isn’t presiding over a country which is championing the shift to renewable energy; nor is he building 7,000 affordable homes each year. Trump, instead, is drastically cutting federal spending for social needs.
Rather than following a Nicaraguan “playbook” of peaceful cooperation with its neighbors, both Trump administrations (and Biden’s, both echoing Reagan in 1985) have incredulously declared Nicaragua an “extraordinary threat to the national security” of the US. But it is Nicaragua’s remarkable battle against poverty, unmentioned in the articles, that is seen by Washington as the real “threat,” because it challenges the neoliberal order.
The article by Bell, a former USAID worker, is perhaps unintentionally the most revealing. Prior to the 2018 coup attempt, USAID spent millions of dollars creating Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista media apparatus. After the coup attempt failed, the Sandinista government justifiably closed NGOs and media outlets funded by USAID or its auxiliary body, the National Endowment for Democracy. They did so based on legislation patterned after the US’s Foreign Agents Registration Act. Nevertheless this funding continues – going to anti-Sandinista outfits in Costa Rica and in the US itself.
USAID had maintained a Nicaraguan presence by having staffers like Bell in the US embassy in Managua. Their role, as his article makes clear, was not to assist the government in fighting poverty but to engage with “exiled civil society leaders and independent [sic] journalists” opposed to the revolution. The ”independence” of US government-funded journalists goes unquestioned.
Meanwhile, the USAID, while formally independent, now operates under the direction of the State Department. But its clandestine work assuredly continues.
The saddest of the four articles is by teenager Jaden Hong. If he were to visit Nicaragua, he would see for himself how young people have free, good quality education right through to university level and beyond. He would see how the government has addressed malnutrition in youngsters by providing all of them with free school meals. He would note that parks, playgrounds and sports facilities have sprung up around the country.
Above all, if he took part in one of the frequent mass demonstrations in support of the government, he might wonder at the fact that most of those around him are other young people. Unlike Gioconda Belli, they are too young to recall the revolutionary years of the 1980s. But they are old enough to recognize the revolution’s achievements and to be determined to protect them from Washington’s attacks.
In recent weeks, a motley crew of writers has found common cause in attacking Nicaragua’s Sandinista government: Jaden Hong, a high-school student from Sammamish, Washington, who has never visited the country; Jared O. Bell, a former USAID Foreign Service Officer; Barb Arland-Fye, editor of a Catholic newspaper in Iowa; and Gioconda Belli, a 76-year-old Nicaraguan novelist in self-exile. Writing in outlets ranging from The Teen Magazine to the New York Times, they have produced a string of biased, ill-informed pieces that repeat the same well-worn falsehoods about Nicaragua’s elected government.
Their attacks on Nicaragua’s revolution reflect Washington’s talking points as it pursues its regime-change agenda.Jaden Hong tells “Gen Z” in The Teen Magazine that Nicaragua’s democracy is fading. Jared O. Bell, who lost his USAID job in Managua when Trump shuttered the agency, complains in Peace Voice about the country’s “stolen democracy.” Barb Arland-Fye, in The Catholic Messenger, writes glowingly about a key organizer of the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. Novelist Gioconda Belli is given a guest essay in the New York Times to lament her “country’s dictator.”
Belli, born in Nicaragua but living abroad since the 1980s, has been a critic of the Sandinista government since it first regained power through the ballot box in 2007. Her status as a novelist ensures that the NYT, the Guardian, Spain’s El Pais and other mainstream outlets give her space to vent her anger against a revolution which she supported initially but has since labeled a “farse.”
Many of Nicaragua’s liberal intellectuals opposed the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s, but their commitment faded as the initial glamour of the revolution turned into the hard work of tackling the needs of the country’s poor and working people. As ordinary Nicaraguans were given greater voice, and taxes were raised to pay for new schools and hospitals (60% of the country’s budget goes to social programs), they maligned people’s power as an emerging “dictatorship.”
The list of privileged critics of the Sandinista government, whose status gives them access to the New York Times and other corporate outlets, include Belli and her brother Humberto, along with Sergio Ramirez (a “novelist betrayed by the revolution”), journalist Carlos Chamorro and many more. Some work directly for mainstream media, such as Wilfredo Miranda (El Pais) and Gabriela Selser (Reuters). Supposedly revolutionary in their youth, they are now part of Washington’s soft power apparatus and help feed its imperialist agenda.
Of the lies in Belli’s recent NYT article, one stands out: that “peaceful protesters were shot” during the coup attempt against Nicaragua’s elected government in 2018. This falsehood is repeated in the other three articles. Bell says that “student-led protests… were met with brutal, deadly repression.” Hong says that “lethal force” led to “355 dead and hundreds injured.” For Arland-Fye, it was a “deadly crackdown.” That the protestors were far from “peaceful” is obvious from the fact that 22 police officers were killed and over 400 injured in attacks launched from the hundreds of roadblocks erected by the coup-mongers throughout the country.
Arland-Fye’s sycophantic piece is about opposition figureBishop Silvio José Báez Ortega. The cleric had called the coup roadblocks “a wonderful idea” and said he hoped to see President Daniel Ortega in front of a firing squad. The Iowa bishopric, for which Arland-Fye writes, has just awarded Baez a “peace prize.”
The suggestion that Trump is following an Ortega “playbook” appears in two of the articles: it could hardly be more absurd. Unlike Ortega, Trump is not building public hospitals, he’s dismantling Medicare. Also unlike Ortega, he isn’t presiding over a country which is championing the shift to renewable energy; nor is he building 7,000 affordable homes each year. Trump, instead, is drastically cutting federal spending for social needs.
Rather than following a Nicaraguan “playbook” of peaceful cooperation with its neighbors, both Trump administrations (and Biden’s, both echoing Reagan in 1985) have incredulously declared Nicaragua an “extraordinary threat to the national security” of the US. But it is Nicaragua’s remarkable battle against poverty, unmentioned in the articles, that is seen by Washington as the real “threat,” because it challenges the neoliberal order.
The article by Bell, a former USAID worker, is perhaps unintentionally the most revealing. Prior to the 2018 coup attempt, USAID spent millions of dollars creating Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista media apparatus. After the coup attempt failed, the Sandinista government justifiably closed NGOs and media outlets funded by USAID or its auxiliary body, the National Endowment for Democracy. They did so based on legislation patterned after the US’s Foreign Agents Registration Act. Nevertheless this funding continues – going to anti-Sandinista outfits in Costa Rica and in the US itself.
USAID had maintained a Nicaraguan presence by having staffers like Bell in the US embassy in Managua. Their role, as his article makes clear, was not to assist the government in fighting poverty but to engage with “exiled civil society leaders and independent [sic] journalists” opposed to the revolution. The ”independence” of US government-funded journalists goes unquestioned.
Meanwhile, the USAID, while formally independent, now operates under the direction of the State Department. But its clandestine work assuredly continues.
The saddest of the four articles is by teenager Jaden Hong. If he were to visit Nicaragua, he would see for himself how young people have free, good quality education right through to university level and beyond. He would see how the government has addressed malnutrition in youngsters by providing all of them with free school meals. He would note that parks, playgrounds and sports facilities have sprung up around the country.
Above all, if he took part in one of the frequent mass demonstrations in support of the government, he might wonder at the fact that most of those around him are other young people. Unlike Gioconda Belli, they are too young to recall the revolutionary years of the 1980s. But they are old enough to recognize the revolution’s achievements and to be determined to protect them from Washington’s attacks.
I never knew Anas al-Sharif personally. But somehow he seemed to be part of our whānau.
We watched so many of his reports from Gaza that it just appeared he would be always around keeping us up-to-date on the horrifying events in the besieged enclave.
Although he actually worked for Al Jazeera Arabic, the 28-year-old was probably the best known Palestinian journalist in the Strip and many of his stories were translated into English.
It is yet another despicable act by the Israeli military to assassinate him and four of his colleagues on the eve of launching their new mass crime to seize and demolish Gaza City with a population of about one million as part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to occupy the whole of Gaza.
In many ways the bravery of al-Sharif — he had warned several times that he was being targeted — was the embodiment of the Palestinian courage under fire when UNESCO awarded the 2024 World Press Freedom Award collectively to the Gazan journalists.
But it wasn’t enough just to “murder” him and his colleagues — as the Al Jazeera channel proclaimed in red banner television headlines — Israel attempted unsuccessfully to try to smear him in death as a “Hamas platoon leader” without a shred of evidence.
The drone attack late on Sunday night hit a journalists’ work tent near the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, killing seven people. Among those killed beside al-Sharif were fellow Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Noufal.
Call for UNSC emergency session
Al Jazeera later said a sixth journalist, freelancer Mohammad al-Khaldi, was also killed in the strike. Reporters Without Borders said three more journalists had been wounded and called for a UN Security Council emergency session to discuss journalist safety.
Al Jazeera condemns the assassination of its journalists by Israeli occupation forces
Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the targeted assassination of its correspondents Anas Al Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqea, along with photographers Ibrahim Al Thaher, and… pic.twitter.com/0otP6IYIgC
In a statement, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network condemned in “the strongest terms” the killing of its media staff in “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”, noting that the Israeli occupation force had “admitted to their crimes”.
“This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities,” Al Jazeera said.
“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people.”
Five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza by Israel’s “psychopathic liar” — Marwan Bishara Video: Al Jazeera
“In fact, we have decided, and I’ve ordered, directed the military, to bring in foreign journalists, more foreign journalists,” Netanyahu told a news conference in Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities have in the past barred any foreign media from entering the Gaza Strip, while it has been deliberately targeting and killing local Palestinian journalists.
Other attacks on Al Jazeera
The deadly strike on Anas al-Sharif and his four colleagues is not the first attack on Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza since the start of Israel’s current war on the Palestinian territory in October 2023
Israeli forces have previously killed five Al Jazeera journalists: Samer Abudaqa, Ismael al-Ghoul, Ahmed al-Louh, Hossam Shabat and Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, as well as many of the family members of Al Jazeera journalists.
The Israeli military has been systematically killing journalists, photographers and local media workers in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war in an attempt to silence their reports.
But some media freedom groups put the casualty figure even higher. The Government Media Office in Gaza, for example, reports that 242 journalists have been killed.
The Israeli military have frequently accused journalists of being “terrorists” without evidence.
‘Enormous influence’
“He’s held enormous influence there, and that’s precisely why Israel murdered him.
Shehada told Al Jazeera he had “looked into the allegations” that Israel produced, trying to smear him as a Hamas militant, adding that “the allegations were completely contradictory.” He added:
“There’s zero evidence that al-Sharif took part in any hostilities, in any armed actions, aided or abetted any kind of these hostilities. None at all. His entire daily routine was standing in front of a camera from morning to evening.”
An early Instagram report of the killing of the Gazan journalists . . . later updated to five Al Jazeera staff and a sixth journalist. Image: AJ
It had been alleged by Israel that Anas al-Sharif was a member of the military wing of Hamas, and the army claimed that it had found documents in Gaza that proved their point.
“It includes some links to content that anyone could have printed,” she said. “This has been going on for a few weeks, ever since Anas started reporting on the starvation in Gaza, and he had such a huge impact on the Arab world.
“Immediately after, a spokesman for the Israeli army in Arabic… posted a video on social media, accusing al-Sharif of being a Hamas member and threatening him.”
‘Knew he was at serious risk’
Abdel-Hamid said she had been going through his X feed.
“He knew his life was at serious risk, and he repeatedly wrote that he was just a journalist, and he wanted his message to be spread widely, because he thought that was a way to protect him.”
Posted on his X account in case he was killed was his “last will” and final message. He wrote in part:
“I entrust you with Palestine — the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace.
“Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.
“I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland . . . “
This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings.
Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my…
— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) August 10, 2025
Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said that last October Israel had accused al-Sharif and “a number of other journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof”.
“We warned back then that this felt to us like a precursor to justify assassination, and, of course, last month… we saw again, a repeated smear campaign”, she told Al Jazeera.
“This is not solely about Anas al-Sharif, this is part of a pattern that we have seen from Israel… going back decades, in which it kills journalists.”
Accusations repeated
Al-Sharif had warned last month about the starvation facing journalists — “and we saw then the accusations repeated.
“Of course, now we are seeing a new offensive, plans for a new offensive, in Gaza, the kind of thing that Anas has been reporting on for the best part of three years.”
“The [Israeli] occupation is preparing for a major massacre in Gaza, but this time without sound or image,” Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya told Turkiye’s Anadolu news agency.
“It wants to kill and displace the largest number of Palestinians in Gaza City but this time in the absence of the voice of Anas, Mohamed, Al Jazeera and all satellite channels.”
Assassinated Gazan journalist Anas al-Sharif . . . “killed to prevent coverage of atrocities” Israel intends to carry out in its Gaza City seizure. Image: AJ screenshot APR
‘Fabrications don’t wash’
Al Jazeera’s senior analyst Marwan Bishara warned that “Israel’s lies” about al-Sharif endangered journalists everywhere, saying that the “best response to the killing of our colleagues is by continuing to do what we do”.
“I want to correct one thing [about Western media reports], and I need our viewers and readers around the world to pay attention:
“It doesn’t matter whether what Israel said about al-Sharif is correct or not.
“It’s an absolute fabrication. It’s wrong. But it doesn’t matter.
“Because if every American journalist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been killed because there’s a suspicion that they worked for the CIA; if every French and British journalist would be killed because they work for the MI5 or something like that, then I think there will be no Western journalists working in the Middle East.
“It’s not OK to kill a journalist in a tent of journalists because you accuse him of something.
“If you accuse him of something, you take him to court, you make a complaint, you follow certain procedures, with the network, with the [International Federation of Journalists], and so on and so forth.
“You don’t kill a journalist who has been doing their job for months on, day in, day out, night and day, and claim later that they work for Hamas.
“That doesn’t wash.
“It’s wrong, it’s a lie, it’s a fabrication as usual, but this psychopathic liar should not get away with killing a journalist and simply attaching an accusation to it.
“It doesn’t wash, because otherwise, every single Western journalist covering a war that a Western government is involved in is going to be a target.
I wrote that it was time for journalists to take a moral stand for truth and justice, and although I expected a strong response, the feedback was merely tepid. It was as if Western journalists did not comprehend the enormity of the Gaza crisis facing the world.
It is shameful that New Zealand journalists and media groups have not come out in the past 22 months with strong denunciations of Israel’s war on both journalists and truth – and the genocide against Palestinians.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has made a statement today that it is appalled to learn of the killing of an Al Jazeera media crew of five, including journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The journalists were killed in an attack on a tent used by media near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during a targeted Israeli bombardment, according to Al Jazeera which has described the killings as “murders”.
In a statement announcing the killing of Al-Sharif, Israel’s military accused the journalist of heading a Hamas cell and of “advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and [Israeli] troops”.
Israel has a longstanding, documented pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof.
“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.
“Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted. Those responsible for these killings must be held accountable.”
Al-Sharif had been one of Al Jazeera’s best-known reporters in Gaza since the start of the war and one of several journalists whom Israel had previously alleged were members of Hamas without providing evidence.
Reported on starvation
Most recently, Al-Sharif had reported on the starvation that he and his colleagues were experiencing because of Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient food aid into Gaza.
In a July 24 video, Avichay Adraee, an Israel Defence Forces spokesperson, accused Al-Sharif of having been a member of Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam, since 2013 and working during the war “for the most criminal and offensive channel”, apparently referring to Al Jazeera Arabic.
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. https://t.co/f5TlGRMjIH
Al-Sharif told CPJ in July: “Adraee’s campaign is not only a media threat or an image destruction — it is a real-life threat.”
He said: “All of this is happening because my coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip harms them and damages their image in the world.
“They accuse me of being a terrorist because the occupation wants to assassinate me morally.”
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Irene Khan, said she was “deeply alarmed by repeated threats and accusations of the Israeli army” against al-Sharif.
Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7, 2023, CPJ has documented 186 journalists having been killed. At least 178 of those journalists are Palestinians killed by Israel.
After reaching an agreement with President Trump, David Ellison—the son of the second-richest man in the world, Larry Ellison—has acquired Paramount Global, the media giant that owns CBS News.
Larry Ellison, the largest private funder of the Israel Defense Forces, is deeply tied to the Israeli national security state and counts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu among his closest friends.
David has already announced significant changes at CBS, promising “unbiased” news coverage and “varied ideological perspectives,” which are widely understood to signal a shift toward right-wing, pro-Trump coverage. Worse still, Bari Weiss, a journalist with a long history of zealous pro-Israel advocacy, is being considered as the network’s new ombudsman, shaping its political direction, precisely because of her “pro-Israel stance.”
As Israel prepares for a full occupation of Gaza, foreign journalists have renewed calls to be allowed into the besieged strip.
More than 600 journalists and media organizations have signed a petition released Monday by Freedom to Report (FTR) demanding “immediate, unsupervised foreign press access” to Gaza, which they said is “the worst press blackout in modern conflict.”
“This is not a call to be heard,” said the renowned war photographer André Liohn, FTR’s founder. “We demand that independent, professional journalists be allowed into Gaza. What’s happening today is not only a humanitarian blackout but also an information blackout, and it must end.”
Critics say Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr is ignoring legal precedent as the FCC moves to eliminate rules that effectively limit the number of local TV stations that corporate media conglomerates can own and operate. The FCC controls local TV and radio licenses, and while the telecom regulator is independent and overseen by Congress, advocates say Carr…
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City.