A community-based Asia-Pacific network of academics, journalists and activists has now gone online with an umbrella website for its publications, current affairs and research.
“The APMN is addressing a gap in the region for independent media commentary and providing a network for journalists and academics,” said director Dr Heather Devere.
“Our network aims to protect the free dissemination of information that might challenge political elites, exposing discrimination and corruption, as well as analysing more traditional media outlets.”
Pacific Journalism Review editor Dr Philip Cass said: “For 30 years, PJR has been the only journal focusing exclusively on media and journalism in the Pacific region.”
APMN has members in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Indonesia and the Philippines and has links to the Manila-based AMIC, Asia-Pacific’s largest communication research centre.
Deputy director and founding editor of PJR, Dr David Robie, was awarded the 2015 AMIC Asia Communication Award for his services to education, research, institution building and journalism.
Conference partner
The new website publishes news, newsletters, submissions, and research, and the network is a partner in the forthcoming international Pacific Media Conference being hosted by the University of the South Pacific on July 4-6.
More than 133 people were killed and over 100 injured in last month’s brazen attack on concertgoers just before a performance by a Soviet-era rock band at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall.
Eleven people have been detained, including four people directly involved in the armed assault.
ISIL’s Afghan branch – also known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) – claimed responsibility for the March 22 attack and United States officials have confirmed the authenticity of that claim.
In the wake of the incident, a series of rumors emerged online, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and official Russian media outlets claiming that Ukraine and the U.S. had a hand in orchestrating the incident.
In China, the country’s official media outlets and social media influencers repeated similar narratives, making accusations against Western leaders that they turned blind eyes on the incident.
But such claims are either misleading or false. Below is what AFCL found.
Did Western leaders ignore the casualties of the attack?
Chen Weihua, EU Bureau Chief of China Daily, a Chinese state-run English daily, claimed in an X post on March 23 that the U.S. and other Western leaders remained silent on the Moscow attack.
“The fact that U.S. and other Western leaders have said nothing about the horrible terrorist attack in Moscow yesterday exposed their total disregard for innocent civilian lives. Maybe they see those terrorists as allies?” the post reads.
Chen Weihua claimed that the U.S. and other Western leaders were silent about the attack. (Screenshot/X)
But his claim is false.
The U.S. State Department released a statement on March 23, expressing condolences for the victims of the shooting.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also condemned the attack on the same day in an X post.
Separate statements released by the U.S. State Department’s official website (top) and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s official Twitter account (bottom)on March 23 both expressed condolences to the victims of the attack. (Screenshot/U.S. State Department & X)
In addition, the Community Notes attached to Chun’s post read: “The US and other Western countries have condemned the attack and sent their condolences.”
With X’s Community Notes function, users who meet eligibility criteria can rate and write notes. X does not control what shows up.
According to the Community Notes on Chun’s post, which cited Al Jazeera and The Moscow Times, various officials from Western countries spoke out to condemn the terror attack and mourn the victims.
Leaders from various Western countries such as the UK (top) and organizations such as the EU (bottom) and other leaders speak out to condemn the terror attack and mourn the victims. (Screenshot/X)
Did Obama admit that the U.S. trained ISIS?
A Chinese social media influencer on X called “Brother Lei” claimed in a post on March 24 that former U.S. President Barack Obama had previously admitted the U.S. helped train ISIS, attaching a clip of him speaking at a news conference as evidence.
A Chinese influencer on X account claimed that Obama admitted the U.S. “helped train ISIS.” (Screenshot/X)
The claim is misleading.
A combination of image and keyword search on Google found the clip was taken from Obama’s U.S. Department of Defense news conference held on July 6, 2015, and the full video published by the Pentagon.
At the five-minute and 40-second mark of the full video, Obama can be heard saying, “We are speeding up training of ISIL forces.”
However, a full verbatim transcript of the speech published by the White House made a correction, which indicated that Obama intended to say, “the U.S. was accelerating the training of ‘Iraqi’ forces” rather than ISIL.
The full text of Obama’s speech in July 2015 with the slip of the tongue corrected. (Screenshot/ White House website)
The key message of the news conference was the emphasis on the necessity of international collaboration to effectively tackle ISIS. Obama consistently highlighted the U.S.’s pivotal role in leading the efforts against the terrorist group.
Ukrainian involvement?
Following the incident, both Russian and Chinese official media outlets claimed that Ukraine played a role in orchestrating the attack.
Such claims are currently unsupported by public evidence and both the White House and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have denied any connection.
Separately, a Chinese YouTube “Dr. Cai” claimed that one of the four arrested suspects named Rustam Azhyiev “is a Ukrainian citizen and joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2022.”
A Chinese social media influencer on X claims that one of the suspected perpetrators of the terrorist attack is a Ukrainian citizen. (Screenshot/X)
But this claim is unsupported by the currently known list of identified suspects.
Seven of the 11 suspects in custody have been identified, while the remaining four suspects remain unknown. Rustam Azhyiev is not among them, nor are any Ukrainian citizens.
A report by the Russian state-owned news agency TASS published on March 25 names three members of a single family accused of being involved in the terrorist attack, a father named Isroil Islomov and two brothers named Aminchon and Dilovar.
All of the Islomovs were born in Dushanbe, the capital of the former Central Asian Soviet republic and now independent nation of Tajikistan. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan and is part of ISKP’s claimed area of its activities.
The father holds Tajik citizenship while the two brothers are Russian citizens.
Reports by the Associated Press further identified the four known suspected gunmen arrested by Russia as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni, and Mukhammadsobir Faizov. All four are also Tajik citizens.
Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang and Matt Reed.
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Rita Cheng for Asia Fact Check Lab.
ANALYSIS:By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report
On my office wall hangs a framed portrait of Shireen Abu Akleh, the inspiring and celebrated American-Palestinian journalist known across the Middle East to watchers of Al Jazeera Arabic, who was assassinated by an Israeli military sniper with impunity.
State murder.
She was gunned down in full blue “press” kit almost two years ago while reporting on a raid in the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, clearly targeted for her influence as a media witness to Israeli atrocities.
As in the case of all 22 journalists who had been killed by Israeli military until that day, 11 May 2022, nobody was charged.
Now, six months into the catastrophic and genocidal Israeli War on Gaza, some 137 Palestinian journalists have been killed — murdered – by Israeli snipers, or targeted bombs demolishing their homes, and even their families.
Also in my office is pasted a red poster with a bird-of-paradise shaped pen in chains and the legend “Open access for journalists – Free press in West Papua.”
The poster was from a 2017 World Media Freedom Day conference in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, which I attended as a speaker and wrote about. Until this day, there is still no open door for international journalists
Harassed, beaten
Although only one killing of a Papuan journalist is recorded, there have been many instances when local news reporters have been harassed, beaten and threatened – beyond the reach of international media.
Ardiansyah Matra was savagely beaten and his body dumped in the Maro River, Merauke. A spokesperson for the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), Victor Mambor, said at the time: “‘It’s highly likely that his murder is connected with the terror situation for journalists which was occurring at the time of Ardiansyah’s death.”
Dr David Robie . . . author and advocate. Image: Café Pacific
Frequently harassed himself, Mambor, founder and publisher of Jubi Media, was apparently the target of a suspected bomb attack, or warning, on 23 January 2023, when Jayapura police investigated a blast outside his home in Angkasapura Village.
At first glance, it may seem strange that comparisons are being made between the War on Gaza in the Middle East and the long-smouldering West Papuan human rights crisis in the Asia-Pacific region almost 11,000 km away. But there are several factors at play.
Melanesian and Pacific activists frequently mention both the Palestinian and West Papuan struggles in the same breath. A figure of up to 500,000 deaths among Papuans is often cited as the toll from 1969 when Indonesia annexed the formerly Dutch colony in controversial circumstances under the flawed Act of Free Choice, characterised by critics as the Act of “No” Choice.
The death toll in Gaza after the six-month war on the besieged enclave by Israel is already almost 33,000 (in reality far higher if the unknown number of casualties buried under the rubble is added). Most of the deaths are women and children.
The Palestinian and West Papuan flags flying high at a New Zealand protest against the Gaza genocide in central Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
Ethnic cleansing
But there are mounting fears that Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Gazans has no end in sight and the lives of 2.3 million people are at stake.
Both Palestinians and West Papuans see themselves as the victims of violent settler colonial projects that have been stealing their land and destroying their culture under the world’s noses — in the case of Palestine since the Nakba of 1948, and in West Papua since Indonesian paratroopers landed in a botched invasion in 1963.
They see themselves as both confronting genocidal leaders; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose popularity at home sinks by the day with growing protests, and Indonesia’s new President-elect Prabowo Subianto who has an atrocious human rights reputation in both Timor-Leste and West Papua.
And both peoples feel betrayed by a world that has stood by as genocides have been taking place — in the case of Palestine in real time on social media and television screens, and in the case of West Papua slowly over six decades.
Indonesian politicians such as Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi have been quick to condemn Israel, including at the International Court of Justice, but Papuan independence leaders find this hypocritical.
“We have full sympathy for the struggle for justice in Palestine and call for the restoration of peace,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda.
Pacific protesters for a Free Palestine in New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
‘Where’s Indonesian outrage?’
“But what about West Papua? Where was Indonesia’s outrage after Bloody Paniai [2014], or the Wamena massacre in February?
“Indonesia is claiming to oppose genocide in Gaza while committing their own genocide in West Papua.”
“Over 60 years of genocidal colonial rule, over 500,000 West Papuans have been killed by Indonesian forces.”
Wenda said genocide in West Papua was implemented slowly and steadily through a series of massacres, assassinations and policies, such as the killings of the chair of the Papuan Council Theys Eluay in 2001; Mako Tabuni (2012); and cultural curator and artist Arnold Ap (1984).
In the South Pacific, Indonesia is widely seen among civil society, university and community groups as a ruthless aggressor with little or no respect for the Papuan culture.
Jakarta is engaged in an intensive diplomacy campaign in an attempt to counter this perception.
Unarmed Palestinians killed in Gaza – revealing Israel’s “kill zones”. Video: Al Jazeera
Israel’s ‘rogue’ status
But if Indonesia is unpopular in the Pacific over its brutal colonial policies, it is nothing compared to the global “rogue” status of Israel.
In the past few weeks, as atrocity after atrocity pile up and the country’s disregard for international law and United Nations resolutions increasingly shock, supporters appear to be shrinking to its long-term ally the United States and its Five Eyes partners with New Zealand’s coalition government failing to condemn Israel’s war crimes.
On Good Friday — Day 174 of the war – Israel bombed Gaza, Syria and Lebanon on the same day, killing civilians in all three countries.
In the past week, the Israeli military racheted up its attacks on the Gaza Strip in defiance of the UN Security Council’s order for an immediate ceasefire, expanded its savage attacks on neighbouring states, and finally withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital after a bloody two-week siege, leaving it totally destroyed with at least 350 patients, staff and displaced people dead.
Fourteen votes against the lone US abstention after Washington had earlier vetoed three previous resolutions produced the decisive ceasefire vote, but the Israeli objective is clearly to raze Gaza and make it uninhabitable.
As The Guardian described the vote, “When Gilad Erdan, the Israeli envoy to the UN, sat before the Security Council to rail against the ceasefire resolution it had just passed, he cut a lonelier figure than ever in the cavernous chamber.”
The newspaper added that the message was clear.
‘Time was up’
“Time was up on the Israeli offensive, and the Biden administration was no longer prepared to let the US’s credibility on the world stage bleed away by defending an Israeli government which paid little, if any, heed to its appeals to stop the bombing of civilian areas and open the gates to substantial food deliveries.”
Al Jazeera interviewed Norwegian physician Dr Mads Gilbert, who has spent long periods working in Gaza, including at al-Shifa Hospital. He was visibly distressed in his reaction, lamenting that the Israeli attack had “destroyed” the 78-year legacy of the Strip’s largest and flagship hospital.
Speaking from Tromso, Norway, he said: “This is such a sad day, I’ve been weeping all morning.”
Dr Gilbert said he did not know the fate of the 107 critical patients who had been moved two days earlier to an older building in the complex.
“The maggots that are creeping out of the corpses in al-Shifa Hospital now,” he said, “are really maggots coming out of the eyes of President Biden and the European Union leaders doing nothing to stop this horrible, horrible genocide.”
Australia-based Antony Loewenstein, the author of The Palestine Laboratory, who has been reporting on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for two decades, described Israel’s attack on the hospital as the “actions of a rogue state”.
Gaza health officials said Israel was targeting all the hospitals and systematically destroying the medical infrastructure. Only five out of a total of 37 hospitals still had some limited services operating.
Indonesian soldiers gag journalists in West Papua – the cartoon could easily be referring to Gaza where attacks on Palestinian journalists have been systemic with 137 killed so far, by far the biggest journalist death toll in any conflict. Image: David Robie/APR
Strike on journalists’ tent
Yesterday, four people were killed and journalists were wounded in an Israeli air strike on a tent in the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
The Israeli military claimed the strike was aimed at a “command centre” operated by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed group, but footage screened by Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary clearly showed it was a tent where displaced people were sheltering and journalists and photographers were working.
The Israeli military have killed another photojournalist and editor, Abdel Wahab Awni, when they bombed his home in the Maghazi refugee camp. This took the number of journalists killed since the start of the war to 137, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.
Al Jazeera has revealed that Israel was using “kill zones” for certain combat areas in Gaza. Anybody crossing the “invisible” lines into these zones was shot on sight as a “terrorist”, even if they were unarmed civilians.
The chilling practice was exposed when footage was screened of two unarmed civilians carrying white flags being apparently gunned down and then buried by bulldozer under rubble. A US-based civil rights group described the killings as a “heinous crime”.
The kill zones were confirmed at the weekend by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which said the military had claimed to have killed 9000 “terrorists”, but officials admitted that many of the dead were often civilians who had “crossed the line” of fire.
Call for sanctions
The Israeli peace advocacy group Gush Shalom sent an open letter to all the embassies credited to Israel calling for immediate sanctions against the Israeli government, saying Netanyahu was “flagrantly refusing” to comply with the ceasefire resolution.
“We, citizens of Israel,” said the letter, “are calling on your government to initiate a further meeting of the Security Council, aiming to pass a resolution which would set effective sanctions on Israel — in order to bring about an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip until the end of Ramadan and beyond it.”
A Palestinian-American professor of law Dr Noura Erakat, of Rutgers University, recently told a BBC interviewer that Israel had made its end game very clear from the beginning of the war.
“Israel has made its intent clear. Its war cabinet had made its intent clear. From the very beginning, in the first week of October 7, it told us its goal was to depopulate Gaza.
“They have equated the decimation of Hamas, which they cannot achieve militarily, with the depopulation of the entire Gaza strip.”
A parallel with Indonesia’s fundamentally flawed policies in West Papua. Failing violent settler colonialism.
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a war by Israelis against the Palestinian population for more than 75 years has become a global war against the Jews.
“The Global War on the Jews, Anti-Semitism surges, even in the West, which shows why Israel exists,“ by The Editorial Board WSJ, Oct. 30, 2023.
The disturbing fact of the past month is that Jews are under attack not only in Israel and not only by Hamas. The weeks since the barbaric Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel have witnessed physical assaults on Jews the world over, including in the U.S. and Europe. This most modern of pogroms—global, televised, politicized—demonstrates exactly what is at stake as Israel ramps up its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.
The Islamist group and its Western enablers are pursuing or justifying a genocidal war against Jews, not merely a territorial dispute with Israel. And since Western governments too often seem unable to protect the Jewish minorities in their midst, Israel must defend itself as the only safe home for the Jewish people.
To make the WSJ report official, we have the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Recording a “Dramatic Increase in U.S. Antisemitic Incidents Following Oct. 7 Hamas Massacre.”
ADL recorded a total of 312 anti-Semitic incidents between Oct. 7-23, 2023, 190 of which were directly linked to the war in Israel and Gaza.
When conflict erupts in Israel, antisemitic incidents soon follow in the U.S. and globally,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “From white supremacists in California displaying antisemitic banners on highway overpasses to radical anti-Zionists harassing Jewish people because of their real or perceived support for the Jewish state, we are witnessing a disturbing rise in antisemitic activity here while the war rages overseas.
Here is a sampling of incidents reported across the country, a few of which are rigorously confirmed:
On Oct. 8 in Clifton, NJ: A car with individuals holding Palestinian flags appeared to intentionally swerve out of its lane, nearly hitting a visibly Jewish family.
On Oct. 9 in Detroit, MI: A Jewish student was harassed, shoved and called “Fucking Zionist” while painting a free speech rock with an Israeli flag on the campus of Wayne State University.
On Oct. 10 in Los Angeles, CA: An individual shouted “I am Hamas” and made death threats to Jewish individuals standing by a Kosher restaurant.
On Oct. 12 in Indianapolis, IN: A man carrying an Israeli flag was allegedly assaulted by a pro-Palestinian protestor.
On Oct. 15 in New York, NY: An individual allegedly punched a Jewish woman in the face at Grand Central Terminal. When she asked why, he responded: “You are Jewish.”
On Oct. 15 in Walnut Creek, CA: White Lives Matter California, a white supremacist group, held a rally on a highway overpass and displayed signs stating: “Save Gaza,” “No More Wars for I$rael” and “Watch Europa the Last Battle.”
On Oct. 18 in New York, NY: A group of Israeli individuals were harassed and at least one assaulted by a pro-Palestinian protestor in Times Square.
Tens of Palestinians are murdered and hundreds are wounded each day, whole families slaughtered, 70% of housing destroyed, people forced to wander on meager diets, some starving, hospitals demolished and no place to treat the wounded, and those happening are not important to the WSJ, the ADL, the U.S. government and most of the U.S. media ─ important is that a few Jews (who support the genocide) have been harassed. The latter is the extent of the global war against the Jews, for which WSJ blames Hamas. Is this a valid description of our world from a responsible newspaper or is this a story from The Onion? I cannot believe that America’s foremost financial journal published this article. Next, we might read in the WSJ that “Stage Coaches are the next great growth prospect, expected to overtake Tesla in energy-efficient vehicles.”
Put the incidents into numbers:
The ADL reports 312 incidents (????) of anti-Semitism in the United States, none resulting in death (one death accidentally happened in California when a pro-Israeli demonstrator engaged pro-Palestinian demonstrators) or serious injuries.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said it “received 3,578 complaints during the last three months of 2023, amid what it called ‘an ongoing wave of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate.’ Complaints of employment discrimination led the list with 662 instances; hate crimes and hate incidents were reported 472 times; and education discrimination 448 times.” These complaints are only from the last three months of 2023 and are ten times the charges (???) of anti-Semitism. Included in the incidents were “a November shooting in Vermont where three students of Palestinian descent were shot and the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American child in Illinois in October.”
On March 26, the Palestinian Health Ministry cited that “at least 32,414 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since last October. A ministry statement said that 74,787 other Palestinians have also been injured in the onslaught. Many people are still trapped under rubble and on the roads and rescuers are unable to reach them.” According to the UN, “85% of Gaza’s population is internally displaced with acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.”
Wonder if the Jews involved in the global war against the Jews will be willing to exchange places with the Gazans who are out strolling every day in the open air, cooking in rustic fireplaces, camping out in the evenings along the beautiful beaches, and just having a wonderful time.
Ooh, wait a second, could it be a coincidence that the PBS News Hour had an extensive report on the Russian imprisonment of one of Wall Street Journal reporters, Evan Gershkovich, whom they mention as being “the son of Russian Jewish immigrants?” Why the Jewish identification? If Evan was Catholic, would PBS mention his parents were Catholic?
Haven’t seen any PBS programs on Americans detained at Ben Gurion airport, languishing in Israeli prisons, killed by Israeli forces, and reporters killed by Israeli snipers. Two American brothers were detained in Gaza by Israeli forces during February and are being held in Ashkelon prison. A U.S. citizen, Samaher Esmail, who lives in New Orleans, “is being held in detention by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank over alleged ‘incitement on social media.’” Not much coverage of their plights.
While on the topic of how the Zionists influence the worldwide media —internet, newspapers, radio, television, comic books, cinema, theater, magazines, books, educational tools, Quora, Facebook, X, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, permit me to touch on an encounter I had with Senator Joseph Lieberman, my namesake, who recently died.
Joe arranged an evening meeting with his Connecticut constituency, which I was interested in attending to learn how Senators approach their votes and how voters approach their Senators. Among the “voters” were AIPAC representatives who set up a table recruiting for AIPAC. The discussion and questions were a pep rally for Israel, which to Joe’s credit, he toned down. I don’t remember if there was any recruiting for the Israeli Offense Force but if it ran short of manpower, they knew where to go.
Just to show the tentacles of the Zionists, appraise the use of the discussion group Quora for the most insidious and disgusting propaganda. A question that will receive an answer that defames the Palestinians and elevates the Israelis is posed:
Why are there many fancy cars and big houses in Gaza if it is so poor?
An answer is offered.
Good question!
The answer will not be so good: there are many things in Gaza that not every decent European country (for example, Estonia or Lithuania) has, because the whole world supports Gaza in gratitude for terrorism against Israel. To find out the number of holders of Gaza, just look at the list of countries voting pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli declarations and UN resolutions – all these legal entities are holders (pimps) of Gaza. New buildings on the seashore, where the foot of the Israeli military does not set foot, as well as reporters (just in case of information leakage), so all the pictures are from “private collections”! And this is not Israel, this is definitely Gaza – there are no Israeli flags anywhere, but we have them everywhere. Just don’t ask if there are rockets or rocket factories hidden in the basements of these buildings – I don’t know.
When someone comments that Palestinians are well educated, resourceful, and resilient and Israel engages in apartheid, the fangs come out.
Are you a goat enjoying terrorists up your arse, or just a useful idiot repeating whatever you hear? Israel has millions of Israeli Arabs, who are mostly those Palestinians that didn’t move away when Arab league told them to (planning to destroy Israel the next day after its independence was proclaimed). Israeli Arabs are in IDF, media, parliament, court etc. Now, in contrast, how about any Jew in Palestine or any of the surrounding countries? Apartheid much?
I answered the mendacious and crass comment with this authoritative reply and the comment was initially deleted.
Vulgar replies indicate the person knows nothing and therefore reverts to distractions. Almost the entire world and respected agencies cite Israel as an Apartheid state; I guess only you know better. Yes, Israeli Arabs cannot purchase property, cannot get loans, cannot obtain government housing, cannot live to live where they want, and cannot marry a Jew in Israel. Go to Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians and get the scoop. I trust Amnesty before trusting you.
Quora eventually reinstated my comment but does nothing about the myriad of comments from Israel’s supporters that violate platform policy for hate speech, harassment, bullying, and plain nonsense.
German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, displayed, to an unbelievable extent, the manipulation of minds by a remark she made during her first visit to Israel after Hamas’ October attack. “In these days we are all Israelis,” which means. “We are all genocidal killers.” What relation do contemporary Germans have with World War II happenings and what do those happenings have to do with allowing the genocide of an innocent people? What is she talking about? Oh, I understand ─ Germans have the GG, the Genocide Gene, and support genocide whenever and wherever.
Almost all news dispatches use the words, “the Jewish state of Israel, and “the terrorist state of Iran.” How do so many news agencies manage to use the same description, and why? The more correct words are, “the terrorist state of Israel,” and “the Islamic state of Iran.”
Inability to counter the Zionist influence in the thought process is the major problem for those who recognize the genocide. Suppression of campus protests against the genocide and replacement of the protests by those favoring the genocide with a fraudulent anti-Semitism demonstrates that the world is callous to the extensive damage done by manipulation of the mindset — fiction replaces reality, cruelty replaces humanity, a few evil dictate over masses of good, corruption replaces dedication, and destruction replacements construction. Israel and its cohorts are leading the world to an abyss. Although there are myriads of well-directed activities and hard-working and dedicated persons, nobody has implemented an effective plan to stop the descent into the inferno and gathered unified forces that react to the alarm and offer hints of salvation.
Nationalist USA permits a foreign nation to control its government.
Free Media USA permits a foreign government to control its media.
Democratic USA together with the United Kingdom, and Germany permits Israel to commit genocide.
The Jewish people permit the new Sicarri to bring them tragedy and they await their ultimate fate.
Meta, the giant social media corporation, has “unpublished” Green Left’s longstanding Facebook page, which had tens of thousands of followers.
We had been regularly posting stories, videos and photographs on the page from our consistent reporting of the news and views that seldom get into the mainstream media.
But our recent interviews with veteran Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled have resulted in what appears to be a 10-year ban, imposed without warning, nor an avenue of appeal.
Khaled, 79, is a member of the Palestinian Council (Palestine’s parliament) and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. She lives in political exile in Jordan.
She is recognised as the Che Guevara of Palestine; she has enormous respect from Palestinians and millions of progressive people around the world.
The Facebook banning came shortly after Zionist organisations combined with right-wing media (SkyNews and the Murdoch media) to pressure Labor to say it would prevent Khaled from addressing Ecosocialism 2024 — a conference GL is co-hosting in Boorloo/Perth in June — by not only denying her a visa, but even banning her from speaking by video link.
Multiple visits
As GLreported, the excuse for such political censorship is, as the Executive Council of Australian Jewry alleged in its letter to Labor, that allowing Khaled to speak “would be likely to have the effect of inciting, promoting or advocating terrorism”.
This is nonsense.
Khaled has visited Britain on multiple occasions over the past few years. Israel issued her a visa to visit the West Bank in 1996.
She has visited Sweden and South Africa and, on one of her multiple visits, met Nelson Mandela (once also labelled a “terrorist” by the West), who warmly welcomed her.
A growing number of human rights activists, academics, journalists and community leaders have protested against this blatant political censorship. Their statements are here and we urge you to join in by sending us a short statement.
Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled . . . “Kurds have a national identity just as we have our identity as Palestinians.” Image: Green Left/ANF
Khaled told GL the real reason for this censorship is to “make us shut up about what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank today”.
Meta has been exposed for carrying out “systematic online censorship”, particularly of Palestinian voices.
Suppression of content
In December 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented “over 1050 takedowns and other suppression of content on Instagram and Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses”.
Meta did not apply the same censorship to pro-Zionist posts that incited hate and violence against Palestinians.
HRW noted that “of the 1050 cases reviewed for this report, 1049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel”.
Other studies have described the systematic “shadow banning” of pro-Palestinian posts on Facebook and Instagram.
AccessNow, which defends the “digital rights of people and communities at risk” reports that Meta is “systematically silencing the voices of both Palestinians and those advocating for Palestinians’ rights” through arbitrary content removals, suspension of prominent Palestinian and Palestine-related accounts, restrictions on pro-Palestinian users and content, shadow-banning, discriminatory content moderation policies, inconsistent and discriminatory rule enforcement.
Social media corporations, such as Meta and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), exercise a lot of power to manipulate people’s social and political views. This power has grown exponentially as more people access their news, views and information online.
Break this power
The search for ways to break this power will go on.
In the meantime there is one way readers can break the social media bans and restrictions on GL’s voice-for-the-resistance journalism: become a supporter and get GL delivered to you.
It has always been a struggle to keep people-power media projects alive. But GL has been going since 1991 and, with your help, we will not let the giant social media corporations silence us.
Since the atrocious footage of the suffering of an indigenous Papuan man reverberates in the heart of Puncak by the brute force of Indonesia’s army in early February, shocking tactics deployed by those in power to silence critics has been unfolding.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the plight of the leaders of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), Markus Haluk and Menase Tabuni. Their unwavering resolve in condemning the situation has faced targeted harassment and discrimination.
The leaders of the ULMWP have become targets of a state campaign aimed at silencing them.
Menase Tabuni, serving as the executive council president of the ULMWP, along with Markus Haluk, the executive secretary, have recently taken on the responsibility of leading political discourse directly from within West Papua.
This decision follows the ULMWP’s second high-level summit in Port Vila in August 2023, where the movement reaffirmed its commitment to advocating for the rights and freedoms of the people of West Papua.
On March 23, the ULMWP leadership released a media statement in which Tabuni condemned the abhorrent racist slurs and torture depicted in the video of a fellow Papuan at the hands of Indonesia’s security forces.
Tabuni called for an immediate international investigation to be conducted by the UN Commissioner of the Human Rights Office.
Since UU ITE took effect in November 2016, it has been viewed as the state’s weapon against critics, as shown during the widespread anti-racism protests across West Papua in mid-August of 2019.
Harassment and intimidation . . . ULMWP leaders (from left) Menase Tabuni (executive council president), Markus Haluk (executive council secretary), Apolos Sroyer (judicial council chairperson), and Willem Rumase (legislative council chairperson). Image: ULMWP
The website SemuaBisaKena, dedicated to documenting UU ITE cases, recorded 768 cases in West Papua between 2016 and 2020.
The limited information on laws to protect individuals exercising their freedom of speech, including human rights defenders, political activist leaders, journalists, and civil society representatives, makes the situation worse.
Threats and hate speech on his social media accounts are frequent. His Twitter account was hacked and deleted in 2022 after he posted a video showing Indonesian security forces abusing a disabled civilian.
Systematic intimidation
The systematic nature of this intimidation in West Papua cannot be understated.
It is a well-coordinated effort designed to suffocate dissent and silence the voice of resistance.
The barrage of messages and missed calls to both Tabuni and Haluk creates a psychological warfare waged with callous indifference, leaving scars that run deep. It creates an atmosphere of perpetual unease, leaving wondering when the next onslaught will happen.
The inundation of their phones with messages filled with discriminatory slurs in Bahasa serves as crude reminders of the lengths to which state entities will go in abuse of the law.
Translated into English, these insults such as “Hey asshole I stale you” or “You smell like shit” not only denigrate the ULMWP political leaders but also serve as threats, such as “We are not afraid” or “What do you want”, which underscore calculated malice behind the attacks.
This incident highlights a systemic issue, laying bare the fragility of democratic ideals in the face of entrenched power and exposing the hollowness of promises made by those who claim to uphold the rule of law.
Disinformation grandstanding In the wake of the Indonesian government’s response to the video footage, which may outwardly appear as a willingness to address the issue publicly, there is a stark contrast in the treatment of Papuan political leaders and activists behind closed doors.
While an apology from the Indonesian military commander in Papua through a media conference earlier this week may seem like a step in the right direction, it merely scratches the surface of a deeper issue.
Firstly, the government’s call for firm action against individual soldiers depicted in the video, which has proven to be military personnel, cannot be served as a distraction from addressing broader systemic human rights abuses in West Papua.
A thorough and impartial investigation into all reports of harassment, intimidation and reprisals against human rights defenders ensures that all perpetrators are brought to justice, and if convicted, punished with penalties commensurate with the seriousness of the offence.
However, by focusing solely on potential disciplinary measures against a handful of soldiers, the government fails to acknowledge the larger pattern of abuse and oppression prevailing in the region.
Also the statement from the Presidential Staff Office could be viewed as a performative gesture aimed at neutralising international critics rather than instigating genuine reforms.
Without concrete efforts to address the root causes of human rights abuses in West Papua, such statements risk being perceived as empty rhetoric that fails to bring about tangible change for the Papuan people.
Enduring struggle Historically, West Papua has been marked by a long-standing struggle for independence and self-determination, always met with resistance from Indonesian authorities.
Activists advocating for West Papua’s rights and freedoms become targets of threats and harassment as they challenge entrenched power structures and seek to bring international attention to their cause.
The lack of accountability and impunity enjoyed by the state and its security forces of such acts further emboldens those who seek to silence dissent through intimidation and coercion. Thus, the threats and harassment experienced by the ULMWP leaders and West Papua activists are not only a reflection of the struggle for self-determination but also symptomatic of broader systemic injustices.
In navigating the turbulent waters ahead, let us draw strength from the unwavering resolve of Markus Haluk, Menase Tabuni and many Papuans who refuse to be silenced.
The leaders of the ULMWP and all those who stand alongside them in the fight for justice and freedom serve as a testament to the enduring power of the human spirit.
It is incumbent upon us all to stand in solidarity with those who face intimidation and harassment, to lend our voices to their cause and to shine a light on the darkness that seeks to envelop them.
For in the end, it is only through collective action and unwavering resolve that we can overcome the forces of tyranny and usher in a future where freedom reigns freely.
Ronny Kareni is a Canberra-based Free West Papua activist, musician, trained-diplomat, youth vocational specialist and human rights defender. He graduated in diplomacy studies at the Australian National University. He is committed to and passionate about working with First Nations, Pacific and the nonprofit sector to support social, cultural and legal justice for the most vulnerable target groups. Special report for Asia Pacific Report.
America’s Lawyer E91: Tyson Foods has been facing calls for boycotts after they announced that they want to hire 40,000 migrants to replace American workers at their factories. An online group is preying on children and blackmailing them into committing acts of self harm – we’ll tell you what’s happening. And a new study has […]
The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan.
Following the opening of two centres in Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s large-scale invasion of the country in 2022, this initiative by RSF underlines the organisation’s ongoing commitment to helping information professionals meet the specific challenges they face.
Equipped with internet access, the Beirut centre, a regional hub for the media in the Middle East, will welcome journalists to work there if they wish.
RSF and its local partners will offer training in physical and digital security, particularly for those wishing to travel to Palestine.
Bullet-proof vests
Access to psychological support and legal assistance will also be provided, as well as protective equipment to cover dangerous areas (bullet-proof vests, helmets, first-aid kits, etc.).
“There is a clear and urgent need to support Palestinian journalism and the right to information throughout the Middle East, particularly the parts of the region most affected by the war in Gaza,” said RSF campaign director Rebecca Vincent.
“Drawing on our experience in Ukraine, where we opened two press freedom centres during the war, RSF is launching a regional centre in Beirut dedicated to supporting journalists.
“The centre will provide a crucial space, and essential services to reinforce the safety of journalists working in the region, and to defend press freedom.”
Both corporate media and social media companies are hoping for big pay days during this year’s campaign cycle, and they’ve spent millions lobbying Washington lawmakers to make it easier to hide where the money is coming from. Plus, a federal judge has tossed a lawsuit by drug companies who claimed that the new Medicare drug […]
Amnesty International Indonesia is calling for an evaluation of the placement of TNI (Indonesian military) in Papua after a video of a Papuan man being tortured by several soldiers at the Gome Post in Puncak regency, Central Papua, went viral on social media.
“This incident was a [case of] cruel and inhuman torture that really damages our sense of justice,” said Amnesty International executive director Usman Hamid in a statement.
“It tramples over humanitarian values that are just and civilised. To the families of the victim, we expressed our deep sorrow.”
“Sadists!” . . . An Indonesian newspaper graphic of the torture video that went viral. Image: IndoLeft News
Hamid said that no one in this world, including in Papua, should be treated inhumanely and their dignity demeaned — let alone to the point of causing the loss of life.
“The statements by senior TNI officials and other government officials about a humanitarian approach and prosperity [in Papua] are totally meaningless.
“It is ignored by the [military] on the ground,” he said.
Hamid said that such incidents were able to be repeated because until now there had been no punishment for TNI members proven to have committed crimes of kidnapping, torture and the loss of life.
Call for fact-finding team
Hamid said Amnesty International was calling for a joint fact-finding team to be formed to investigate the abuse, including urging that an evaluation be carried on to the deployment of TNI soldiers in the land of Papua.
“There must be a sharp reflection on the placement of security forces in the land of Papua which has given rise to people falling victim, both indigenous Papuans, non-Papuans, including the security forces themselves”, he said.
Earlier, a short video containing an act of torture by TNI members went viral on social media. It shows a civilian who has been placed in an oil drum filled with water being tortured by members of the TNI.
TNI Information Centre director (kapuspen) Major-General Nugraha Gumilar has revealed the identity of the person being tortured by the soldiers as allegedly being a member of a pro-independence resistance group — described by Indonesia as an “armed criminal group (KKB)” — named Definus Kogoya.
“The rogue TNI soldiers committed acts of violence against a prisoner, a KKB member by the name of Definus Kogoya at the Gome Post in Puncak Regency, Papua,” he said when sought for confirmation on Saturday.
Despite this, General Gumilar has still has not revealed any further information about the identity of the TNI members who committed the torture. He confirmed only that more than one member was involved in the abuse.
He said an “intensive examination” was still being conducted and he pledged it would be transparent and act firmly against all of the accused torturers.
“Later I will convey [more information] after the investigation is finished, what is clear is that it was more than one person if you see from the video”, he said.
Note: The video (warning: contains graphic, violent content and viewer discretion is advised) of the Papuan man being tortured by TNI soldiers can be viewed on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJgAHYdLgVo (requires registration)
Journalist Maiki Sherman (Ngāpuhi/Whakatōhea) has been appointed Television New Zealand’s political editor, the first wahine Māori to lead the 1News political team in the channel’s history, reports Whakaata Māori’s Te Ao Māori News.
“This is a huge milestone for me and one I’ve worked hard for. I’m proud to be the first wahine Māori appointed as the political editor of a mainstream broadcast newsroom,” she said.
The New Zealand Herald’s Katie Harris reports that Sherman said her background meant she would be able to bring a unique perspective to the role, alongside an unwavering commitment to holding political decision-makers to account.
“People want strong, fair, and impartial journalism. That’s something I’m committed to providing across the political divide,” Sherman said.
TVNZ executive editor Phil O’Sullivan said Sherman had been impressive in her role as deputy political editor for TVNZ during a turbulent time in New Zealand politics impacted on by the covid pandemic, events of national significance and highly charged general elections.
‘Calm leadership’
“Her calm leadership and strong coverage of important political issues, particularly demonstrated during her moderation of our Kaupapa Māori Debate last year, made her a natural pick for the role.”
Sherman takes over from Jessica Mutch McKay, who concluded her tenure earlier this year.
Mutch McKay resigned to become head of government relations and corporate responsibility at ANZ Bank.
1News said in a statement that Sherman first joined the press gallery in 2012, serving as a political reporter for both Whakaata Māori and Newshub before rejoining 1News.
Sherman began her broadcasting career with the state broadcaster’s Te Karere show 16 years ago.
She has also served as chair of New Zealand’s parliamentary press gallery for the past three years.
Pacific Media Watch with Te Ao Maori News and The New Zealand Herald.
It’s hard to imagine a time when you couldn’t just open Netflix and have access to hundreds of movies, sitcoms, drama series, and hard-hitting documentaries. But actually, the streaming site has only really been a big part of our lives since the early 2010s. Weird, right? It started as a DVD service in the late 1990s, before pivoting to streaming in 2007, three years later it launched its first stream-only plan. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Now, Netflix is such a big part of our day-to-day lives that it can influence everything from what songs we listen to (queue Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill) to what clothes we wear (thanks Bridgerton for the Regency revival) to which issues we care about. The global streaming giant is packed with impactful climate crisis-, diet-, and animal welfare-related content, and it’s had a big effect on how many of us see the world.
In fact, we would go so far as to say that Netflix—which boasts more than 80 million subscribers in the US and Canada alone—has played (and still is playing) a key role in making plant-based diets and ethical consumerism mainstream.
Over the last 10 years, it has hosted some of the most hard-hitting exposés on the food industry (Cowspiracy and What the Health are just two examples) and helped to inspire many people around the world (including famous names) to change their eating habits for good. It has also changed how countless people see animals in the entertainment industry (looking at you, Blackfish) and made more of us want to reach for plant-based, whole foods over processed products (Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zonesis just one recent example).
To help demonstrate just how much Netflix has helped turn us all into more conscious consumers over the last decade, we put together a timeline of some of its biggest releases to date and unpacked the impact each has had (and continues to have) on viewers around the world.
Netflix
2013: Blackfish exposes Seaworld, causes profits to plummet
Thanks to Netflix, now, when millions of people think of SeaWorld they also think of Blackfish, the harrowing documentary that tells the tragic story of Tilikum, the former orca star of SeaWorld’s Shamu shows, and the people that he killed, including his trainer Dawn Brancheau. The film lifts the veil behind the marine entertainment industry to show the suffering and torment of captive animals in the industry and the catastrophic consequences it can have.
As a result of the film’s release, SeaWorld’s stock prices plummeted, ticket sales fell, and major travel companies pulled their partnerships with the theme park. Eighteen orcas still remain at three of SeaWorld’s parks, but the company announced an end to its orca breeding program in 2015 following relentless campaigning from animal-rights activists.
Netflix
2015: Cowspiracy showcases shocking truths about animal agriculture’s environmental impact
In 2014, we named Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret—which demonstrates animal agriculture’s detrimental impact on the environment—as our movie of the year, and the following year, it made it to Netflix. At the time, we called the film “as enlightening as An Inconvenient Truth and as impactful as Blackfish,” and noted that it “clearly demonstrates why you are not truly an environmentalist if you still consume meat and dairy products.”
Since then, the documentary has encouraged countless individuals to reexamine their dietary habits (including actor Richa Moorjani—find our interview with her here!). In early 2024, a global survey from the vegan dating app Veggly revealed that Cowspiracy remains one of the most effective vegan documentaries to date.
2016: Forks Over Knives discloses link between diet and disease
Forks Over Knives has been on and off Netflix for quite a few years now, but some records show that after it was released in 2011, it was re-added to the platform in 2016. Before 2018’s What the Health (more on that momentarily), the provocative and controversial film moved the science-backed link between animal-heavy diets and chronic disease closer to the mainstream conversation on health for the first time.
“Forks Over Knives introduced the general public to the idea that food wasn’t just some modest force,” Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Neal Barnard, MD, who features in the film, said in a statement. “It wasn’t just going to bring your cholesterol down a little bit or something like that. It was something revolutionary that could empower you to change your life dramatically.”
Spring, 2017: What the Health inspires another new wave of vegans
In 2017, the vegan movement was really starting to pick up some speed. It was even capturing the attention of celebrities, and that was largely down to What the Health’s arrival on Netflix. Like Forks Over Knives, the film—backed by vegan actor Joaquin Phoenix—dives deep into the reality of the link between animal-heavy diets and disease, as well as the relationship between the billion-dollar health, pharmaceutical, and meat industries.
Celebrities who Tweeted about the film at the time included Ne-Yo, Moby, Shay Mitchell, and Nathalie Emmanuel. In fact, the film arguably changed Lewis Hamilton’s life. The Formula One star is now a vocal vegan and ethical investor, and What the Health was a big part of his journey. “Going to watch What the Health tonight,” he wrote on Snapchat back in 2017. “I’m on a mission to go vegan, people. Animal cruelty, global warming, and our personal health is at stake.”
Netflix
Summer, 2017: Okja breaks hearts everywhere, Google searches for ‘vegan’ surge
Okja follows the heart-breaking (fictional) story of a young girl named Mija and a super pig named Okja. In simple terms, the film—which draws comparisons with the real-life meat industry—follows Mija as she fights for Okja to be returned home after he is taken by a giant corporation for the meat industry.
The Netflix movie pulled on heartstrings all over the world and encouraged many to give up meat for good. Jon Ronson, who co-wrote the movie with Bong Joon-ho (who also turned vegan during production), told GQ back in 2018: “Oh, [there were] so many people [who were impacted]. So many stories. I remember getting an email right before the film came out saying, ‘There are people all around the world who don’t realize they’re about to become vegetarians.’”
“I read that Google searches for ‘vegan’ went up 58 percent after Okja,” he added (GQ clarified it was 65 percent). “I have no f***ing idea if they carried on that lifestyle, but the impact is definitely there.”
Netflix
2019: The Game Changers proves that meat isn’t essential for muscle
In 2019, The Game Changers became one of the most talked-about shows on Netflix. The groundbreaking documentary followed Special Forces trainer James Wilks and the stories of several elite athletes who were at peak fitness and performance, all on a plant-based diet.
Hamilton featured in the film, alongside martial arts star Jackie Chan, NBA player Chris Paul, tennis champion Novak Djokovic, and former professional bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film inspired many to rethink their relationship with meat, including Roger Whiteside, CEO of British bakery chain Greggs (famed, in part, for its vegan sausage roll, top bodybuilder Kai Greene, cyclist Chris Froome, and actor Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson.
Damian Soong, CEO and co-founder of vegan nutrition Form Nutrition, believes that TheGame Changers—a film that positioned plant-based nutrition as optimal for performance—was the natural next step in the vegan documentary world. “The previous documentaries in some ways paved the way for this. There is now a greater acceptance and awareness of climate change, and the impact of industrial farming, and the press around meat means it’s very much in the public consciousness,” he told the Telegraph in 2019.
Netflix
Spring, 2021:Seaspiracy lifts the veil on the industrialized fishing industry, brands make big changes
Until 2021, most of Netflix’s hard-hitting exposés had focused on animal agriculture on land, but Seapiracy took us into the water and unveiled some of the horrors going on in the world’s oceans. The film documented the industrialized fishing industry and the harm that the world’s appetite for mass-produced fish is doing to marine life and the planet.
The impact was significant. After its release, one Hong Kong store announced it would phase out fish products, and Dutch food brand Schouten announced it was launching vegan fish sticks in response to growing demand for more fish-free products. “We have noticed that the Netflix documentary Seaspiracy has made a big impression on people and has contributed to a growing awareness of the importance of plant-based alternatives to fish,” Schouten Product Manager Annemiek Vervoort said at the time. “This will further increase the demand for fish substitutes.”
Netflix
Summer, 2023: Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones encourages people to eat more plants for a longer life
Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, a four-part series that follows explorer Dan Buettner around the world’s longevity hotspots (or Blue Zones), hit Netflix last August. The series demonstrated that people in Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, Ikaria, Greece, Nicoya, Costa Rica, and Loma Linda, California all seem to live longer, healthier lives than people in the US, and they have much in common, including that they eat a predominantly plant-based diet.
The series was one of the most talked-about series of the fall, gripping social media and dominating headlines for weeks after its release. According to the Daily Mail, several viewers “vowed to overhaul their lives” after watching.
Netflix
Winter, 2023: Chicken Run: The Dawn of the Nugget shines a light on fast-food cruelty
Two decades after the first Chicken Run, Chicken Run: The Dawn of the Nugget was released on Netflix. It follows the same group of chickens as the first film, as they attempt to break into a factory farm to save their fellow birds from becoming nuggets for the fast food industry.
The film—watched nearly 12 million times in its first week of release—was intended to make people think. “We want the film to be engaging and entertaining and a great ride, mostly,” director Sam Fell, who reportedly went vegan during filming, said. “But yes, if you come away and you think a little bit more like a chicken by the end of it, then that’s not a bad thing.”
Netflix
2024:You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment champions a whole food, plant-based diet
Netflix kicked off 2024 with yet another plant-based hit. You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment followed a groundbreaking twin study from Stanford Medicine, which seemed to offer up the closest to definitive proof we have so far that a whole food, plant-based diet really is the best for our health.
The series—which also delved into the realities of the meat industry’s environmental and animal welfare impact—inspired multiple headlines, debates, reviews, and TikTok videos, some of which boast hundreds of thousands of views. It is eye-opening, at times jaw-dropping, and without a doubt, inspiring. You can find our biggest takeaways from the film here.
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
Larry David, the lead character on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, bringing his own eggs to the country club is a recent plot of the “Disgruntled” episode of the 12th and final season of the series.
Why? David (both the character and real-life person) has an issue with places like the country club not offering breakfast past 11am. Plus, he wants to make sure his eggs are organic. “I brought my own eggs,” David says in the episode as he hands over several brown eggs, which he pulled from his hat, to the bewildered waitress. “Can you give these to the chef?”
HBO
“They’re organic,” David says. “The ones you have are full of antibiotics.” His girlfriend Irma (Tracey Ullman) concurs, stating that traditional eggs “give men breasts … Larry can grow breasts.”
As the episode progresses, David brings his eggs to the club again, this time before 11am, and with his own bread. When his food arrives, David complains that the eggs do not taste like the eggs that he brought and accuses the waitress of having a “breakfast grudge” before being confronted by club owner Mr. Takahashi (Dana Lee).
Takahashi asks David to stop bringing his own eggs to which he replies “eggs are not eggs,” before the club owner asks if David is “disgruntled”—a reference to the anonymous signatory of a complaint letter Takahashi found about the club.
The bad eggs
David is right about one thing. Not all eggs are created equal, and chickens are some of the most abused and least protected animals on factory farms.
Seeking organic eggs is one step in the right direction as the USDA requires that these eggs come from chickens who are not given antibiotics or hormones and are fed organic feed made without additives such as animal by-products, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or chemicals.
Unsplash
Chickens who lay organic eggs must also be given access to the outdoors. However, because the egg industry ultimately treats hens as commodities, producers often cut that access down to small concrete porches to maximize profits.
This means that while the potential for animal welfare might be highest for organic labels, in practice, the label does not certify humane treatment.
Bring these eggs to the club
Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David (the character) is often modeled after his real-life namesake, which happens to be the case with this egg storyline, the show’s executive producer Jeff Schaffer confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
As it turns out, the real David has been known to bring his own eggs (and bread) to the country club. If in addition to avoiding antibiotics and hormones, avoiding animal welfare issues is also a concern for David, there are exciting vegan eggs that he can bring to the club instead.
Eat Just
1Just Egg
Just Egg is already approved by J.B. Smoove—who plays Leon Black on Curb Your Enthusiasm and voiced “Really Good Eggs,” Just Egg’s first television commercial in 2021.
And Eat Just, the company behind the mung-bean-based eggs, recently hit a major milestone. Since its introduction in 2019, Just Egg has now sold an equivalent of more than half a billion traditional eggs.
In addition to being free from antibiotics, hormones, and cholesterol, the environmental impacts of Just Egg are significantly lower than traditional eggs. In hitting its milestone and making eggs from plants instead of using animals, the company avoided approximately 87 million kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions; conserved more than 18.3 billion gallons of water, and spared around 26,900 acres from agricultural use for soy and corn cultivation needed for poultry feed.
Recognized for its low allergenic and cholesterol-free properties, the mung bean has been identified by The Good Food Institute in a 2023 study as a largely overlooked crop with significant potential within the alternative protein sector.
“We started with a hope that one of the many tens of thousands of plants we looked at would be able to scramble like an egg. And a team made up of scientists, engineers, and chefs from across the world turned that hope into one of the most innovative and impactful products in the market,” Josh Tetrick, the CEO and co-founder of JUST Egg, said in a statement.
“We’re 500 million steps closer to a more sustainable food system, but we’ve got a long way to go,” Tetrick said.
If David wants to bring Just Egg to the club, he can now get it at more than 48,000 grocery outlets or, for a sit-down meal, he can try Just Egg at 3,300 dining establishments across the United States and Canada. The vegan liquid egg now comes in an even more environmentally friendly paper carton and its frozen folded version can also travel well.
While Just Egg holds more than 99 percent of the vegan egg market share, it’s not the only option for David to bring to the club.
Yo! Egg
2Yo Egg
If David is looking for a runny yolk for his post-11am breakfast, Yo Egg is an excellent contender.
Yo Egg, a Los Angeles startup, designed its products to closely mimic the texture and appearance of traditional sunny-side-up and poached eggs. This innovation is underpinned by a combination of soy and chickpea proteins, sunflower oil, and a “runny” yolk encapsulated by an alginate film.
“We’re bringing a ‘whole egg’ experience, complete with a perfect egg white and runny yolk, using two distinct technologies,” Yo Egg CEO Eran Groner toldAgFunderNews.
“One is our specialized egg white system, which allows us to deliver the right texture for each format. It can be fried, poached, or boiled,” he said. “It’s all about the phasing, timing, and temperatures, not just the recipe, so it would be very hard to reverse engineer it.”
The other part of the system is for scaling the egg yolk manufacturing per machine to 50,000 yolks per day to compete with chicken eggs. “In a room that’s 200 square feet, we can have four such machines, so that’s 200,000 yolks per day, which if you do the math is already a scaled egg farm in the United States if you have 200,000 birds laying eggs,” Groner said.
By simulating the entire egg experience without involving animals, Yo Egg addresses both health concerns associated with cholesterol and saturated fats and the ethical dilemmas posed by the conventional egg industry.
The vegan eggs will soon be available in four-packs in the freezer sections of select Los Angeles area supermarkets. Yo Egg aims for broader accessibility with a pricing strategy that starts at $6.99, with hopes to reduce the cost to $5.99 in the future.
Crafty Counter
3WunderEggs
If a whole egg—perhaps for a Cobb salad from a previous episode—is in David’s breakfast future, Crafty Counter’s WunderEggs delivers. This Texas-based brand has carved a niche in the plant-based food scene by introducing a vegan hard-boiled egg that remarkably mimics the traditional egg experience without the use of animal products.
Crafted with a base of nuts, including cashews and almonds, along with coconut milk and agar—a seaweed-based gelatin substitute—these eggs are colored and flavored with turmeric and nutritional yeast to replicate the familiar look and taste of hard-boiled eggs.
The inspiration behind WunderEggs stemmed from a critical observation by Crafty Counter Founder and CEO, Hema Reddy, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Witnessing the strain on the country’s food systems and contemplating the environmental impact of intensive factory farming, Reddy saw an urgent need for sustainable, plant-based alternatives.
“My inspiration for WunderEggs came during the first two weeks of COVID when our country’s food systems began to break down,” Reddy states on the brand’s website. “We are so excited to bring this vegan revolution to all the plant-based food lovers [who] haven’t eaten a boiled egg in a long time. They no longer have to miss out on a breakfast or snack favorite.”
And for people concerned about missing out on breakfast (ahem, David), these vegan eggs are available at Whole Foods—way past 11am—and are easily transported to the club in a hat.
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
Organisers say the deadline is fast approaching for registration in less than two weeks.
Many major key challenges and core problems facing Pacific media are up for discussion at the conference in Suva, Fiji, on July 4-6 hosted by The University of the South Pacific (USP).
“Interest in the conference is very encouraging, both from our partners and from presenters — who are academics, professional practitioners and others who work in the fields of media and society,” conference chair Associate Professor Shailendra Singh of USP told Asia Pacific Report.
“Some very interesting abstracts have been received, and we’re looking forward to more in the coming days and weeks.”
“There’s a lot to discuss — not only is this the first Pacific media conference of its kind in 20 years, there has been a lot of changes in the Pacific media sector, just as in the media sectors of just about every country in the world.
Media sector shaken
“Our region hasn’t escaped the calamitous impacts of the two biggest events that have shaken the media sector — digital disruption and the covid-19 pandemic.”
Both events had posed major challenges for the news media organisations and journalists — “to the point of even being an existential threat to the news media industry as we know it”.
“This isn’t very well known or understood outside the news media industry,” Dr Singh said.
The trends needed to be examined in order to “respond appropriately”.
“That is one of the main purposes of this conference — to generate research, discussion and debate on Pacific media, and understand the problems better.”
Dr Singh said the conference was planning a stimulating line-up of guest speakers from the Asia-Pacific region.
Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister and Communications Minister Manoa Kamikamica . . . chief guest for the 2024 Pacific Media Conference. Image: MFAT
Chief guest
Chief guest is Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica, who is also Communications and Technology Minister.
The abstracts deadline is April 5, panel proposals are due by May 5, and July 4 is the date for final full papers.
Key themes include:
Media, Democracy, Human Rights and Governance
Media and Geopolitics
Digital Disruption and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Media Law and Ethics
Media, Climate Change and Environmental Journalism
Indigenous and Vernacular Media
Social Cohesion, Peace-building and Conflict-prevention
The Supreme Court handed down a ruling last week in a pair of cases dealing with public officials blocking users on social media. According to the ruling, public officials can NOT block users if they use the account for official announcements. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, […]
Editorial staff at Australia’s public broadcaster ABC have again registered a vote of no confidence in managing director David Anderson and senior managers over the handling of complaints by Israeli lobbyists.
At a national meeting of members of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance this week, staff passed a resolution of no confidence in Anderson and all ABC managers involved in the decision to unfairly dismiss freelance broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf, MEAA said in a statement.
The meeting was held in response to the Fair Work Commission hearings to determine Lattouf’s unfair dismissal claim after she had been sacked from her temporary job as host of ABC Sydney radio’s morning show in December.
Staff have also called for ABC’s head of content, Chris Oliver-Taylor, to step down immediately for his role as the ultimate decisionmaker in the dismissal of Lattouf.
“The mishandling of Antoinette Lattouf’s employment has done enormous damage to the integrity and reputation of the ABC,” said MEAA media director Cassie Derrick.
“Evidence provided in the Fair Work Commission hearing about the involvement of David Anderson and Chris Oliver-Taylor in her dismissal has further undermined the confidence of staff in the managing director and his senior managers to be able to protect the independence of the ABC.
ABC union staff call for the resignation of content chief Chris Oliver-Taylor over the dismissal of journalist Antoinette Lattouf. Image: Middle East Eye screenshot APR
“The Lattouf case continues a pattern of ABC journalists, particularly those from culturally diverse backgrounds, lacking support from management when they face criticism from lobby groups, business organisations and politicians.
“For these reasons, Chris Oliver-Taylor should be stood down immediately, while Mr Anderson must demonstrate he is taking the concerns of staff seriously to begin to restore confidence in his leadership.”
Lattouf co-founded Media Diversity Australia (MDA) in 2017, a nonprofit agency which seeks to increase cultural and linguistic diversity in Australia’s news media.
Her parents arrived in Australia as refugees from Lebanon in the 1970s.
Lattouf was born in 1983 in Auburn, New South Wales. She attended various public schools in Western Sydney and studied communications (social inquiry) at the University of Technology Sydney.
Union-led ABC staff call for the resignation of the Australian @ABCNews chief content officer after court documents revealed his role in journalist Antoinette Lattouf’s dismissal for an accurate social media post about Israel’s starvation strategy.https://t.co/eQ8fLBiQL6
The full motion passed by ABC MEAA members on Wednesday:
“We, MEAA members at the ABC, are outraged by the revelations of how ABC executives have disregarded the independence of the ABC, damaged the public’s trust in our capacity to report without fear or favour, and mistreated our colleague Antoinette Lattouf.
“Staff reaffirm our lack of confidence in managing director David Anderson, and in all ABC managers involved in the decision to unfairly dismiss Antoinette Lattouf.
“Chris Oliver-Taylor has undermined the integrity of the entire ABC through his mismanagement, and should step down from his role as Head of the Content Division immediately.
“We call on ABC management to stop wasting public funds on defending the unfair dismissal case against Antoinette Lattouf, provide her and the public a full apology and reinstate her to ABC airwaves.
“We demand that ABC management implement staff calls for a fair and clear social media policy, robust and transparent complaints process and an audit to address the gender and race pay gap.”
An earlier statement expressing loss of confidence in the ABC managing director David Anderson for “failing to defend the integrity” of the broadcaster and its staff over attacks related to the War on Gaza on 22 January 2024. Image: MEAA screenshot APR
New York, March 20, 2024—Bangladesh authorities must immediately drop all charges against journalist Md Shofiuzzaman Rana and investigate the harassment of five journalists in northern Lalmonirhat district, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
Rana was held in jail for a week after police arrested the journalist on March 5. Rana, who works for the Bangla-language newspaper Desh Rupantor, was arrested at a local government office in the northern Sherpur district after he filed a right to information (RTI) application regarding a government-run development program, according to newsreports, the local press freedom group Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media, and Mustafa Mamun, acting editor of Desh Rupantor.
Later that day, an assistant land commissioner, who is also an executive magistrate, sentenced the journalist to six months in prison on charges of disobeying an order by a public servant and insulting the modesty of a woman. The action was taken through a mobile court, which is empowered to try offenses instantly.
Mohammad Ali Arafat, state minister for information and broadcasting, stated that the country’s information commission would investigate the incident and told CPJ that he would receive a copy of the commission’s investigative report on Monday, March 18.
Arafat did not immediately respond to CPJ’s subsequent requests for comment on the report’s findings. Mamun told CPJ that as of Wednesday, he had not received a copy of the report.
Separately, at around 12 p.m. on March 14, employees at an assistant land commissioner’s office in Lalmonirhat held Mahfuz Sazu, a correspondent for the broadcaster mytv and the newspaper The Daily Observer, after the journalist filmed a land dispute hearing allegedly conducted by an unauthorized official, according to newsreports, Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media, and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ.
Twenty minutes later, four members of the Lalmonirhat Press Club arrived to help Sazu and were also confined within the premises. After a district revenue commissioner arrived at the scene, the five journalists were released around 12:50 p.m.
“CPJ welcomes a government investigation into the retaliatory jailing of Bangladeshi journalist Md Shofiuzzaman Rana. Journalists should not face reprisal merely for seeking information,,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should launch a transparent probe into the confinement of five correspondents in a government office in Lalmonirhat and ensure that journalists are not harassed with impunity.”
Rana’s arrest unfolded after an office assistant refused to provide the journalist with a receipt for his RTI application. Rana then called the Sherpur deputy commissioner, or district magistrate, to resolve the issue, Mamun told CPJ, citing Rana. The chief of the local government office arrived at the scene and shouted at Rana, saying, “You are a broker journalist” (an insult used to refer to a media member who makes money through one-sided stories).
Police then arrived at the scene, arrested the journalist, and seized his two mobile phones. Rana was held for one week in Sherpur District Jail and released on bail on March 12. A local magistrate court is scheduled to hear Rana’s appeal against the verdict on April 16.
Separately, Sazu told CPJ that after filming the land dispute hearing, he interviewed three people connected to the case in the corridor of the assistant land commissioner’s office when an official unsuccessfully attempted to confiscate his phone.
The official then called the assistant land commissioner. At the same time, the office staff escorted the three people he interviewed out of the building and locked the entrance, leaving the journalist confined within the premises, Sazu said.
Sazu told CPJ that the journalist’s four colleagues later entered the building with the assistance of a local ward councilor but were also locked inside the premises. The journalists were:
Mazharul Islam Bipu, a correspondent for the broadcaster Independent Television
SK Sahed, a correspondent for the newspaper Daily Kalbela
Neon Dulal, a correspondent for the broadcaster Asian TV
Liakat Ali, a correspondent for the newspaper Daily Nabochatona
The assistant land commissioner then arrived at the scene and shouted at the journalists, calling them “brokers” and threatening to send them to jail via a mobile court, Sazu said, adding that the journalists also heard him telling an unidentified individual on the phone that he would file legal cases against them.
Later that day, the divisional commissioner of Rangpur, which encompasses Lalmonirhat, issued an order transferring the assistant land commissioner to another locality. As of Wednesday, the order had not been executed, and no further legal or administrative action had been taken, Sazu told CPJ.
Arafat did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment on the incident in Lalmonirhat.
The past five months have been clarifying. What was supposed to be hidden has been thrust into the light. What was supposed to be obscured has come sharply into focus.
Liberal democracy is not what it seems.
It has always defined itself in contrast to what it says it is not. Where other regimes are savage, it is humanitarian. Where others are authoritarian, it is open and tolerant. Where others are criminal, it is law-abiding. When others are belligerent, it seeks peace. Or so the manuals of liberal democracy argue.
But how to keep the faith when the world’s leading liberal democracies – invariably referred to as “the West” – are complicit in the crime of crimes: genocide?
Not just law-breaking or a misdemeanour, but the extermination of a people. And not just quickly, before the mind has time to absorb and weigh the gravity and extent of the crime, but in slow motion, day after day, week after week, month after month.
What kind of system of values can allow for five months the crushing of children under rubble, the detonation of fragile bodies, the wasting away of babies, while still claiming to be humanitarian, tolerant, peace-seeking?
And not just allow all this, but actively assist in it. Supply the bombs that blow those children to pieces or bring houses down on them, and sever ties to the only aid agency that can hope to keep them alive.
The answer, it seems, is the West’s system of values.
The mask has not just slipped, it has been ripped off. What lies beneath is ugly indeed.
Depravity on show
The West is desperately trying to cope. When Western depravity is fully on show, the public’s gaze has to be firmly directed elsewhere: to the truly evil ones.
They are given a name. It is Russia. It is Al Qaeda, and Islamic State. It is China. And right now, it is Hamas.
There must be an enemy. But this time, the West’s own evil is so hard to disguise, and the enemy so paltry – a few thousand fighters underground inside a prison besieged for 17 years – that the asymmetry is difficult to ignore. The excuses are hard to swallow.
Is Hamas really so evil, so cunning, so much of a threat that it requires mass slaughter? Does the West really believe that the attack of 7 October warrants the killing, maiming and orphaning of many, many tens of thousands of children as a response?
To stamp out such thoughts, Western elites have had to do two things. First, they have tried to persuade their publics that the acts they collude in are not as bad as they look. And then that the evil perpetrated by the enemy is so exceptional, so unconscionable it justifies a response in kind.
Which is exactly the role Western media has played over the past five months.
Starved by Israel
To understand how Western publics are being manipulated, just look to the coverage – especially from those outlets most closely aligned not with the right but with supposedly liberal values.
How have the media dealt with the 2.3 million Palestinians of Gaza being gradually starved to death by an Israeli aid blockade, an action that lacks any obvious military purpose beyond inflicting a savage vengeance on Palestinian civilians? After all, Hamas fighters will outlast the young, the sick and the elderly in any mediaeval-style, attritional war denying Gaza food, water and medicines.
A headline in the New York Times, for example, told readers last month, “Starvation is stalking Gaza’s children”, as if this were a famine in Africa – a natural disaster, or an unexpected humanitarian catastrophe – rather than a policy declared in advance and carefully orchestrated by Israel’s top echelons.
No, NYT, starvation isn't stalking Gaza's children, like some weird, abstract predator. Israel is choosing to starve Gaza's children by blocking aid.
The Financial Times offered the same perverse framing: “Starvation stalks children of northern Gaza”.
But starvation is not an actor in Gaza. Israel is. Israel is choosing to starve Gaza’s children. It renews that policy each day afresh, fully aware of the terrible price being inflicted on the population.
As the head of Medical Aid for Palestinians warned of developments in Gaza: “Children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen.”
Last week Unicef, the United Nations children’s emergency fund, declared that a third of children aged under two in northern Gaza were acutely malnourished. Its executive director, Catherine Russell, was clear: “An immediate humanitarian cease-fire continues to provide the only chance to save children’s lives and end their suffering.”
Were it really starvation doing the stalking, rather than Israel imposing starvation, the West’s powerlessness would be more understandable. Which is what the media presumably want their readers to infer.
But the West isn’t powerless. It is enabling this crime against humanity – day after day, week after week – by refusing to exert its power to punish Israel, or even to threaten to punish it, for blocking aid.
Not only that, but the US and Europe have helped Israel starve Gaza’s children by denying funding to the UN refugee agency, UNRWA, the main humanitarian lifeline in the enclave.
All of this is obscured – meant to be obscured – by headlines that transfer the agency for starving children to an abstract noun rather than a country with a large, vengeful army.
Attack on aid convoy
Such misdirection is everywhere – and it is entirely intentional. It is a playbook being used by every single Western media outlet. It was all too visible when an aid convoy last month reached Gaza City, where levels of Israeli-induced famine are most extreme.
In what has come to be known by Palestinians as the “Flour Massacre”, Israel shot into large crowds desperately trying to get food parcels from a rare aid convoy to feed their starving families. More than 100 Palestinians were killed by the gunfire, or crushed by Israeli tanks or hit by trucks fleeing the scene. Many hundreds more were seriously wounded.
It was an Israeli war crime – shooting on civilians – that came on top of an Israeli crime against humanity – starving two million civilians to death.
The Israeli attack on those waiting for aid was not a one-off. It has been repeated several times, though you would barely know it, given the paucity of coverage.
The depravity of using aid convoys as traps to lure Palestinians to their deaths is almost too much to grasp.
But that is not the reason the headlines that greeted this horrifying incident so uniformly obscured or soft-soaped Israel’s crime.
For any journalist, the headline should have written itself: “Israel accused of killing over 100 as crowd waits for Gaza aid.” Or: “Israel fires into food aid crowd. Hundreds killed and injured”
But that would have accurately transferred agency to Israel – Gaza’s occupier for more than half a century, and its besieger for the last 17 years – in the deaths of those it has been occupying and besieging. Something inconceivable for the Western media.
So the focus had to be shifted elsewhere.
BBC contortions
The Guardian’s contortions were particularly spectacular: “Biden says Gaza food aid-related deaths complicate ceasefire talks”.
The massacre by Israel was disappeared as mysterious “food aid-related deaths”, which in turn became secondary to the Guardian’s focus on the diplomatic fallout.
Readers were steered by the headline into assuming that the true victims were not the hundreds of Palestinians killed and maimed by Israel but the Israeli hostages whose chances of being freed had been “complicated” by “food aid-related deaths”.
The headline on a BBC analysis of the same war crime – now reframed as an author-less “tragedy” – repeated the New York Times’ trick: “Aid convoy tragedy shows fear of starvation haunts Gaza”.
Another favourite manoeuvre, again pioneered by the Guardian, was to cloud responsibility for a clear-cut war crime. Its front-page headline read: “More than 100 Palestinians die in chaos surrounding Gaza aid convoy”.
Once again, Israel was removed from the crime scene. In fact, worse, the crime scene was removed too. Palestinians “died” apparently because of poor aid management. Maybe UNRWA was to blame.
Chaos and confusion became useful refrains for media outlets keener to shroud culpability. The Washington Post declared: “Chaotic aid delivery turns deadly as Israeli, Gazan officials trade blame”. CNN took the same line, downgrading a war crime to a “chaotic incident”.
But even these failings were better than the media’s rapidly waning interest as Israel’s massacres of Palestinians seeking aid became routine – and therefore harder to mystify.
A few days after the Flour Massacre, an Israeli air strike on an aid truck in Deir al-Balah killed at least nine Palestinians, while last week more than 20 hungry Palestinians were killed by Israeli helicopter gunfire as they waited for aid.
“Food aid-related” massacres – which had quickly become as normalised as Israel’s invasions of hospitals – no longer merited serious attention. A search suggests the BBC managed to avoid giving significant coverage to either incident online.
Food-drop theatrics
Meanwhile, the media has ably assisted Washington in its various deflections from the collaborative crime against humanity of Israel imposing a famine on Gaza compounded by the US and Europe de-funding UNRWA, the only agency that could mitigate that famine.
British and US broadcasters excitedly joined air crews as their militaries flew big-bellied planes over Gaza’s beaches, at great expense, to drop one-off ready-made meals to a few of the starving Palestinians below.
Given that many hundreds of truckloads of aid a day are needed just to stop Gaza sliding deeper into famine, the drops were no more than theatrics. Each delivered at best a solitary truckload of aid – and then only if the palettes didn’t end up falling into the sea, or killing the Palestinians they were meant to benefit.
The operation deserved little more than ridicule.
Instead, dramatic visuals of heroic airmen, interspersed with expressions of concern about the difficulties of addressing the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, usefully distracted viewers’ attention not only from the operations’ futility but from the fact that, were the West really determined to help, it could strong-arm Israel into letting in far more plentiful aid by land at a moment’s notice.
The media were equally swept up by the Biden administration’s second, even more outlandish scheme to help starving Palestinians. The US is to build a temporary floating pier off Gaza’s coast so that aid shipments can be delivered from Cyprus.
The plot holes were gaping. The pier will take two months or more to construct, when the aid is needed now. In Cyprus, as at the land crossings into Gaza, Israel will be in charge of inspections – the main cause of hold-ups.
And if the US now thinks Gaza needs a port, why not also get to work on a more permanent one?
The answer, of course, might remind audiences of the situation before 7 October, when Gaza was under a stifling 17-year siege by Israel – the context for Hamas’ attack that the Western media never quite finds the space to mention.
For decades, Israel has denied Gaza any connections to the outside world it cannot control, including preventing a sea port from being built and bombing the enclave’s only airport way back in 2001, shortly after it was opened.
And yet, at the same time, Israel’s insistence that it no longer occupies Gaza – just because it has done so at arm’s length since 2005 – is accepted unquestioningly in media coverage.
Again, the US has decisive leverage over Israel, its client state, should it decide to exercise it – not least billions in aid and the diplomatic veto it wields so regularly on Israel’s behalf.
The question that needs asking by the media on every piece about “starvation stalking Gaza” is why is the US not using that leverage.
In a typical breathless piece titled “How the US military plans to construct a pier and get food into Gaza”, the BBC ignored the big picture to drill down enthusiastically on the details of “huge logistical” and “security challenges” facing Biden’s project.
The article revisited precedents from disaster relief operations in Somalia and Haiti to the D-Day Normandy landings in the Second World War.
Credulous journalists
In support of these diversionary tactics, the media have also had to accentuate the atrocities of Hamas’ 7 October attack – and the need to condemn the group at every turn – to contrast those crimes from what might otherwise appear even worse atrocities committed by Israel on the Palestinians.
That has required an unusually large dose of credulousness from journalists who more usually present as hard-bitten sceptics.
Babies being beheaded, or put in ovens, or hung out on clothes lines. No invented outrage by Hamas has been too improbable to have been denied front-page treatment, only to be quietly dropped later when each has turned out to be just as fabricated as it should have sounded to any reporter familiar with the way propagandists exploit the fog of war.
Similarly, the entire Western press corps has studiously ignored months of Israeli media revelations that have gradually shifted responsibility for some of the the most gruesome incidents of 7 October – such as the burning of hundreds of bodies – off Hamas’ shoulders and on to Israel’s.
Though Western media outlets failed to note the significance of his remarks, Israeli spokesman Mark Regev admitted that Israel’s numbering of its dead from 7 October had to be reduced by 200 because many of the badly charred remains turned out to be Hamas fighters.
Testimonies from Israeli commanders and officials show that, blindsided by the Hamas attack, Israeli forces struck out wildly with tank shells and Hellfire missiles, incinerating Hamas fighters and their Israeli captives indiscriminately. The burnt cars piled up as a visual signifier of Hamas’ sadism are, in fact, evidence of, at best, Israel’s incompetence and, at worst, its savagery.
The secret military protocol that directed Israel’s scorched-earth policy on 7 October – the notorious Hannibal procedure to stop any Israeli being taken captive – appears not to have merited mention by either the Guardian or the BBC in their acres of 7 October coverage.
Despite their endless revisiting of the 7 October events, neither has seen fit to report on the growing demands from Israeli families for an investigation into whether their loved ones were killed under Israel’s Hannibal procedure.
Nor have either the BBC or the Guardian reported on the comments of the Israeli military’s ethics chief, Prof Asa Kasher, bewailing the army’s resort to the Hannibal procedure on 7 October as “horrifying” and “unlawful”.
Claims of bestiality
Instead, liberal Western media outlets have repeatedly revisited claims that they have seen evidence – evidence they seem unwilling to share – that Hamas ordered rape to be used systematically by its fighters as a weapon of war. The barely veiled implication is that such depths of depravity explain, and possibly justify, the scale and savagery of Israel’s response.
Note that this claim is quite different from the argument that there may have been instances of rape on 7 October.
That is for good reason: There are plenty of indications that Israeli soldiers regularly use rape and sexual violence against Palestinians. A UN report in February addressing allegations that Israeli solders and officials had weaponised sexual violence against Palestinian women and girls since 7 October elicited none of the headlines and outrage from the Western media directed at Hamas.
To make a plausible case that Hamas changed the rules of war that day, much greater deviance and sinfulness has been required. And the liberal Western media have willingly played their part by recycling claims of mass, systematic rape by Hamas, combined with lurid claims of necrophilic perversions – while suggesting anyone who asks for evidence is condoning such bestiality.
But the liberal media’s claims of Hamas “mass rapes” – initiated by an agenda-setting piece by the New York Times and closely echoed by the Guardian weeks later – have crumbled on closer inspection.
Independent outlets such as Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, the Grayzone and others have gradually pulled apart the Hamas mass rape narrative.
But perhaps most damaging of all has been an investigation by the Intercept that revealed it was senior Times editors who recruited a novice Israeli journalist – a former Israeli intelligence official with a history of supporting genocidal statements against the people of Gaza – to do the field work.
More shocking still, it was the paper’s editors who then pressured her to find the story. In violation of investigative norms, the narrative was reverse engineered: imposed from the top, not found through on-the-ground reporting.
‘Conspiracy of silence’
The New York Times’ story appeared in late December under the headline “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7”. The Guardian’s follow-up in mid-January draws so closely on the Times’ reporting that the paper has been accused of plagiarism. Its headline was: “Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attacks”.
That is for good reason: There are plenty of indications that Israeli soldiers regularly use rape and sexual violence against Palestinians. A UN report in February addressing allegations that Israeli solders and officials had weaponised sexual violence against Palestinian women and girls since 7 October elicited none of the headlines and outrage from the Western media directed at Hamas.
To make a plausible case that Hamas changed the rules of war that day, much greater deviance and sinfulness has been required. And the liberal Western media have willingly played their part by recycling claims of mass, systematic rape by Hamas, combined with lurid claims of necrophilic perversions – while suggesting anyone who asks for evidence is condoning such bestiality.
But the liberal media’s claims of Hamas “mass rapes” – initiated by an agenda-setting piece by the New York Times and closely echoed by the Guardian weeks later – have crumbled on closer inspection.
Independent outlets such as Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, the Grayzone and others have gradually pulled apart the Hamas mass rape narrative.
But perhaps most damaging of all has been an investigation by the Intercept that revealed it was senior Times editors who recruited a novice Israeli journalist – a former Israeli intelligence official with a history of supporting genocidal statements against the people of Gaza – to do the field work.
More shocking still, it was the paper’s editors who then pressured her to find the story. In violation of investigative norms, the narrative was reverse engineered: imposed from the top, not found through on-the-ground reporting.
‘Conspiracy of silence’
The New York Times’ story appeared in late December under the headline “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7”. The Guardian’s follow-up in mid-January draws so closely on the Times’ reporting that the paper has been accused of plagiarism. Its headline was: “Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attacks”.
However, under questioning from the Intercept, a spokesperson for the New York Times readily walked back the paper’s original certainty, conceding instead that “there may have been systematic use of sexual assault.” [emphasis added] Even that appears too strong a conclusion.
Holes in the Times’ reporting quickly proved so glaring that its popular daily podcast pulled the plug on an episode dedicated to the story after its own fact check.
The rookie reporter assigned to the task, Anat Schwartz, has admitted that despite scouring the relevant institutions in Israel – from medical institutions to rape crisis centres – she found no one who could confirm a single example of sexual assault that day. She was also unable to find any forensic corroboration.
She later told a podcast with Israel’s Channel 12 that she viewed the lack of evidence to be proof of “a conspiracy of silence”.
Instead, Schwartz’s reporting relied on a handful of testimonies from witnesses whose other easily disprovable assertions should have called into question their credibility. Worse, their accounts of instances of sexual assault failed to tally with the known facts.
One paramedic, for example, claimed two teenage girls had been raped and killed at Kibbutz Nahal Oz. When it became clear nobody fitted the description there, he changed the crime scene to Kibbutz Beeri. None of the dead there fitted the description either.
Nonetheless, Schwartz believed she finally had her story. She told Channel 12: “One person saw it happen in Be’eri, so it can’t be just one person, because it’s two girls. It’s sisters. It’s in the room. Something about it is systematic, something about it feels to me that it’s not random.”
Schwartz got further confirmation from Zaka, a private ultra-Orthodox rescue organisation, whose officials were already known to have fabricated Hamas atrocities on 7 October, including the various claims of depraved acts against babies.
No forensic evidence
Interestingly, though the main claims of Hamas rape have focused on the Nova music festival attacked by Hamas, Schwartz was initially sceptical – and for good reason – that it was the site of any sexual violence.
As Israeli reporting has revealed, the festival quickly turned into a battlefield, with Israeli security guards and Hamas exchanging gunfire and Israeli attack helicopters circling overhead firing at anything that moved.
Schwartz concluded: “Everyone I spoke to among the survivors told me about a chase, a race, like, about moving from place to place. How would they [have had the time] to mess with a woman, like – it is impossible. Either you hide, or you – or you die. Also it’s public, the Nova … such an open space.”
But Schwartz dropped her scepticism as soon as Raz Cohen, a veteran of Israel’s special forces, agreed to speak to her. He had already claimed in earlier interviews a few days after 7 October that he had witnessed multiple rapes at Nova, including corpses being raped.
But when he spoke to Schwartz he could only recall one incident – a horrific attack that involved raping a woman and then knifing her to death. Undermining the New York Times’ central claim, he attributed the rape not to Hamas but to five civilians, Palestinians who poured into Israel after Hamas fighters broke through the fence around Gaza.
Notably, Schwartz admitted to Channel 12 that none of the other four people hiding in the bush with Cohen saw the attack. “Everyone else is looking in a different direction,” she said.
And yet in the Times’ story, Cohen’s account is corroborated by Shoam Gueta, a friend who has since deployed to Gaza where, as the Intercept notes, he has been posting videos of himself rummaging through destroyed Palestinian homes.
Another witness, identified only as Sapir, is quoted by Schwartz as witnessing a woman being raped at Nova at the same time as her breast is amputated with a box cutter. That account became central to the Guardian’s follow-up report in January.
Yet, no forensic evidence has been produced to support this account.
But the most damning criticism of the Times’ reporting came from the family of Gal Abdush, the headline victim in the “Screams without Words” story. Her parents and brother accused the New York Times of inventing the story that she had been raped at the Nova festival.
Moments before she was killed by a grenade, Abdush had messaged her family and made no mention of a rape or even a direct attack on her group. The family had heard no suggestion that rape was a factor in Abdush’s death.
A woman who had given the paper access to photos and video of Abdush taken that day said Schwartz had pressured her to do so on the grounds it would help “Israeli hasbara” – a term meaning propaganda designed to sway foreign audiences.
Schwartz cited the Israeli welfare ministry as claiming there were four survivors of sexual assault from 7 October, though no more details have been forthcoming from the ministry.
Back in early December, before the Times story, Israeli officials promised they had “gathered ‘tens of thousands’ of testimonies of sexual violence committed by Hamas”. None of those testimonies has materialised.
None ever will, according to Schwartz’s conversation with Channel 12. “There is nothing. There was no collection of evidence from the scene,” she said.
Nonetheless, Israeli officials continue to use the reports by the New York Times, the Guardian and others to try to bully major human rights bodies into agreeing that Hamas used sexual violence systematically.
Which may explain why the media eagerly seized on the chance to resurrect its threadbare narrative when UN official Pramila Patten, its special representative on sexual violence in conflict, echoed some of their discredited claims in a report published this month.
The media happily ignored the fact that Patten had no investigative mandate and that she heads what is in effect an advocacy group inside the UN. While Israel has obstructed UN bodies that do have such investigative powers, it welcomed Patten, presumably on the assumption that she would be more pliable.
In fact, she did little more than repeat the same unevidenced claims from Israel that formed the basis of the Times and Guardian’s discredited reporting.
Statements retracted
Even so, Patten included important caveats in the small print of her report that the media were keen to overlook.
At a press conference, she reiterated that she had seen no evidence of a pattern of behaviour by Hamas, or of the use of rape as a weapon of war – the very claims the Western media had been stressing for weeks.
She concluded in the report that she was unable to “establish the prevalence of sexual violence”. And further, she conceded it was not clear if any sexual violence occurring on 7 October was the responsibility of Hamas, or other groups or individuals.
All of that was ignored by the media. In typical fashion, a Guardian article on her report asserted wrongly in its headline: “UN finds ‘convincing information’ that Hamas raped and tortured Israeli hostages”.
Patten’s primary source of information, she conceded, were Israeli “national institutions” – state officials who had every incentive to mislead her in the furtherance of the country’s war aims, as they had earlier done with a compliant media.
As the US Jewish scholar Normal Finkelstein has pointed out, Patten also relied on open-source material: 5,000 photos and 50 hours of video footage from bodycams, dashcams, cellphones, CCTV and traffic surveillance cameras. And yet that visual evidence yielded not a single image of sexual violence. Or as Patten phrased it: “No tangible indications of rape could be identified.”
She admitted she had seen no forensic evidence of sexual violence, and had not met a single survivor of rape or sexual assault.
And she noted that the witnesses and sources her team spoke to – the same individuals the media had relied on – proved unreliable. They “adopted over time an increasingly cautious and circumspect approach regarding past accounts, including in some cases retracting statements made previously”.
Collusion in genocide
If anything has been found to be systematic, it is the failings in the Western media’s coverage of a plausible genocide unfolding in Gaza.
Last week a computational analysis of the New York Times’ reporting revealed it continued to focus heavily on Israeli perspectives, even as the death-toll ratio showed that 30 times as many Palestinians had been killed by Israel in Gaza than Hamas had killed Israelis on 7 October.
The paper quoted Israelis and Americans many times more regularly than they did Palestinians, and when Palestinians were referred to it was invariably in the passive voice.
In Britain, the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring has analysed nearly 177,000 clips from TV broadcasts covering the first month after the 7 October attack. It found Israeli perspectives were three times more common than Palestinian ones.
A similar study by the Glasgow Media Group found that journalists regularly used condemnatory language for the killing of Israelis – “murderous”, “mass murder”, “brutal murder” and “merciless murder” – but never when Palestinians were being killed by Israel. “Massacres”, “atrocities” and “slaughter” were only ever carried out against Israelis, not against Palestinians.
Faced with a plausible case of genocide – one being televised for months on end – even the liberal elements of the Western media have shown they have no serious commitment to the liberal democratic values they are supposedly there to uphold.
They are not a watchdog on power, either the power of the Israeli military or Western states colluding in Israel’s slaughter. Rather the media are central to making the collusion possible. They are there to disguise and whitewash it, to make it look acceptable.
Indeed, the truth is that, without that help, Israel’s allies would long ago have been shamed into action, into stopping the slaughter and starvation. The Western media’s hands are stained in Gaza’s blood.
Twenty-four weeks of city marches and a five-week vigil outside the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s electoral office in Marrickville have taken pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war on Gaza to an unprecedented level.
In a new development, hundreds of protesters joined in a street theatre performance outside Albanese’s electorate office on Friday evening to highlight their horror at massacres of Palestinian citizens by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in Gaza.
Over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, including many shot by the IDF while seeking care in hospitals, food from aid trucks or fleeing IDF bombing.
Senator Mehreen Faruqi (right) at the protest . . . Image: Wendy Bacon
The street theatre protest was part of an ongoing 24-hour-a-day peaceful vigil that has been going now for five weeks. There is no shortage of volunteers. A minimum of 6 people are present at any one time with around 200 people visiting each day.
When City Hub attended twice last week, frequent toots from passing cars indicated plenty of public support.
At 6.30 pm on Friday, sirens and rumblings could be heard along Marrickville Road sending a signal to scores of protesters dressed in white to lie down on the pavement. They were then sprinkled with red liquid.
As the sirens quietened, a woman’s voice rang out: “War criminals, that is what our government is. They are not representing the people . . . We will not stop until our government ends every single tie with Israeli apartheid.
‘We’ll not stop . . .’
“We will not stop until the ethnic cleansing has ended. Palestinian voices need to be heard. Palestinian voices must be amplified.”
Greens Deputy Leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi attended the action. Before the “die-in”, she responded to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s announcement earlier in the day that Australia will resume funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Last week, Senator Faruqi called on Wong urgently to restore the funding. “It has been 43 days since the morally corrupt government made the inexcusable decision to suspend aid funding to UNRWA despite the minister admitting she hadn’t seen a shred of evidence,” she tweeted.
Along with some other Western governments, the Albanese government suspended UNRWA funding when Israel circulated a reportedly “explosive” but secret dossier outlining alleged links between Hamas and UNRWA staff. This happened shortly after the International Court of Justice found that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide.
The dossier alleged that UNRWA members were involved in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023. After analysing the documents, Britain’s Channel 4 concluded that the dossier provided “no evidence to support the explosive claim that UN staff were involved in terror attacks”.
Recently, UNRWA accused Israel of torturing UNRWA staff to get admissions. On Friday, the European Union’s top humanitarian official Janez Lenarcic said that neither he nor anyone at the EU had been shown any evidence.
In “unpausing” the aid, Wong provided no evidence about what the government knew when it suspended aid and what it now claims to know about the allegations. Speaking at Friday’s protest, Senator Faruqi said she welcomed the restoration of funding but, “just as they restored the funding, they paused the visas of Palestinians en route to Australia while they were mid-air. How cruel and how inhumane can this Labor government get? Just as you think that there are no further depths that they can get to, they show us that they can.” (Late on Sunday, there were reports that the visa decision may be reversed.)
Unprecedented protest
While protests outside Prime Minister’s offices are not unusual, a 24-hour protest for more than a month has never happened before.
Given the length of the protest, it is remarkable that there has been almost no media mainstream coverage. City Hub conducted a Dow Jones Factiva search which revealed one report on SBS and a mention in The Guardian. (The search engine does not cover commercial radio.)
The weeks long, 24 x 7 protest in the heart of the Prime Minister’s own electorate has remained hidden from most of the Australian public and international audiences.
Prime Minister Albanese has not responded to requests for meetings with organisers who include Palestinian families who have been his constituents for many years. City Hub has spoken to protest organisers who say that despite repeated requests, they have received no response from the Prime Minister. The office is now closed to the public which means people are unable to deliver letters or make inquiries.
Protesters sit down in Market Street
The ongoing 24-hour sit-down Marrickville protest. Image: Wendy Bacon
The ongoing 24-hour sit-down Marrickville protest is an extension of the broader protest movement in which thousands of protesters marched on Sunday for the 24th week in a row. Similar protests have been happening in Melbourne and other cities. Again, although there have been bigger protests at times, the regularity of protests attended by thousands each week is unprecedented in Australian history.
Protests on this scale did not happen even during the Vietnam War era in the 1970s.
Last week, protesters marched from Hyde Park down Market Street completely filling several blocks of Sydney’s busiest shopping area. Their chant “Ceasefire Now’ reverberated around the streets. It was accompanied by drummers, some of them children.
Some protesters briefly took their demonstration to a new level by staging a brief sit-down in Market Street. The area was filled with Sunday shoppers who watched as protesters chanted, “While you’re shopping, bombs are dropping.”
The Prime Minister’s office has been contacted for comment. When a response is received, this article will be updated.
Wendy Bacon was previously professor of journalism at the University of Technology (UTS). She spoke at the rally about the lack of media coverage of pro Palestinian protests. She will write about this in a future article.
New Zealand’s media and communications minister is defending pulling out of pre-booked interviews about her portfolio, saying they would have been “boring” for the interviewers.
Lee is set to take a paper to cabinet soon, setting out her plans for the portfolio. She has been consulting with coalition partners before she takes the paper to cabinet committee.
Yesterday, she said that given the confidentiality of the process, there was nothing more she could say in the one-on-one interviews.
“I have actually talked about what my plans are, but not in detail. And I think talking about the same thing over and over, just seemed, like, you know . . . ”
Lee said she received advice from the prime minister’s office, but the decision to pull out was ultimately hers.
‘A lot of interviews’
“I’ve been doing quite a lot of interviews, and I couldn’t sort of elaborate more on the paper and the work that I’m actually doing until a decision has actually been made, and I felt that it would be boring for him to sit there for me to tell him, ‘No, no, I can’t really elaborate, you’re going to have to wait until the decision’s made’,” she said.
It is believed Lee was referring to either the NZ Herald’s Shayne Currie or RNZ’s Colin Peacock.
Asked whether it was up to her to decide what was boring or not, Lee repeated she had done a lot of interviews.
“I didn’t think it was fair for me to sit down with someone on a one-to-one to say the same thing over to them,” she said.
Lee said her diary had been fairly full, due to commitments with her other portfolios.
The prime minister said his office’s advice to Lee was that she may want to wait until she got feedback from the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill process, which was still going through select committee.
‘The logical time’
“Our advice from my office, as I understand it, was, ‘Look, you’re gonna have more to say after we get through the digital bargaining bill, and that’s the logical time to sit down for a long-format interview,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said.
Labour broadcasting spokesperson Willie Jackson said he believed the prime minister’s office was trying to protect Lee from scrutiny.
“There’s absolutely no doubt she’s struggling. If you look at her first response when she fronted media, she had quite a cold response,” he said.
“That’s changed, of course now she’s giving all her aroha to everyone. So they’ve been working on her, and so they should, because the media deserve better and the public deserve better.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New York, March 19, 2024—Nepali authorities must swiftly and impartially investigate the attack on journalist Padam Prasad Pokhrel and hold the perpetrators to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
On the evening of February 28, up to 15 police officers attacked Pokhrel, editor-in-chief of the news website Pranmancha, while the journalist was filming officers allegedly displacing street vendors by force in the Sundhara area of the capital Kathmandu, according to local advocacy groups Media Action Nepal and Freedom Forum, as well as a statement by the Working Journalists Association of Nepal, reviewed by CPJ.
Pokhrel was filming a baton charge by the Kathmandu metropolitan police when the officers surrounded him, beat him with batons, and kicked him for around ten minutes, he told CPJ, adding that he shouted that he was a journalist and displayed his press identification card. The journalist told CPJ that officers confiscated his phone, camera, and laptop, along with other items worth around 11,000 rupees (US $82) that he purchased earlier that day.
Pokhrel said officers then dragged him into a vehicle and continued to beat him for around 15 minutes until they reached a local police station, where he was left outside and later taken to the hospital by officers with the Nepal central police force. Pokhrel said he was treated at the National Trauma Center for a torn ligament in his right leg and significant bruising and muscle pain throughout his body.
“Nepali authorities must complete a credible and transparent investigation into the assault on journalist Padam Prasad Pokhrel and return any items seized during the attack,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “The public has a right to be informed about police violence in their communities, and journalists must be able to cover such incidents without fear of reprisal.”
Following protests by local journalists, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City administration appointed an investigative committee to probe the incident and told the journalist that the findings would be revealed on Friday, March 22, Pokhrel said.
Authorities returned Pokhrel’s phone on Monday but said they were unaware of the location of his other items, the journalist told CPJ.
CPJ called and messaged Bhim Prasad Dhakal, spokesperson of the Nepal Police; Dinesh Mainali, spokesperson of the Kathmandu metropolitan police; and Pradip Pariyar, chief administrative officer of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City administration, but did not receive a response.
Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded.
“The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us for about 12 hours from the early morning to the afternoon, until the arrival of Israeli military intelligence units,” he said, according to reports by Al Jazeera.
“They interrogated the journalists that work at this location. We were left in the room we were kept in, where we stayed for several hours, in cold conditions, naked and blindfolded.”
Al-Ghoul, who was also reported as having been “severely beaten”, said he had heard that some of his colleagues had been released but he did not have enough information on their whereabouts.
The journalists were seized in a fresh attack on al-Shifa hospital after the medical facility had been previously targeted last November. The hospital has been sheltering thousands of Gazans taking cover from the five-month war.
“Journalists play an essential role in a war. They are the eyes and the ears that we need to document what’s happening and with every journalist killed, with every journalist arrested, our ability to understand what’s happening in Gaza diminishes significantly,” said Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive officer of the CPJ.
Replying to questions from Al Jazeera correspondent Biesan Abu Kwaik, Haq said: “We stand against any harassment of journalists anywhere in the world. And certainly we do so in this instance.
“Our sympathies go to your colleague as well as to all the other journalists who suffered from any violence during the course of this incident.”
The Plight of Palestinian Prisoners –– documentary. Video: Al Jazeera
Another Al Jazeera Arabic journalist, Usaid Siddiqui, said Ismail al-Ghoul was just one of many journalists in Gaza targeted by Israel
“After speaking to him, I can say he is doing fine,” Siddiqui said.
How Al Jazeera reported the Israeli arrest of journalist Ismail al-Ghoul at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. Image: AJ screenshot APR
“He had been blindfolded and handcuffed for 12 hours [by Israeli forces] and was taken away for interrogation.
“Journalists are one of the main focuses of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
“Ismail has been reporting on Israeli attacks in Gaza since day one of the fighting.
“He has been able to continue reporting despite all the ongoing efforts by the Israeli military to silence the narrative of Palestinians around the world.”
Stormed at dawn
When interviewed by Al Jazeera after his release, al-Ghoul said Israeli forces had stormed al-Shifa Hospital at dawn during intense fighting.
“They started by destroying media equipment and arresting journalists gathered in a room used by media teams,” he said.
“The journalists were stripped of their clothes and were arrested and placed in a room inside the medical compound. They were forced to lie on their stomachs as they were blindfolded and their hands tied.”
Al-Ghoul said Israeli soldiers would open fire to “scare us if there was any movement”.
After about 12 hours, they were taken for interrogation.
Following waiting in line for investigation, an elderly man had been released from inside the hospital and he needed help to leave the compound.
The journalist said he had volunteered to help the man and was able to accompany him until they both got out the compound and he was free.
Al-Ghoul later heard that some of his colleagues had been released but said he did not have enough information about where they were.
ComGen @UNLazzarini: the highest number of people ever recorded as facing human-made famine, along with mass killings, constant harm & creation of conditions that gut life of humanity has a name: Genocide.
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) March 18, 2024
Israel wants ‘no truth-tellers’ Meanwhile, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories said Israeli authorities were preventing entry of a top UN official into the Gaza Strip to “hide their violations of international law”.
“The highest number of people ever recorded as facing human-made famine, along with mass killings, constant harm and creation of conditions that gut life of humanity has a name: Genocide,” Francesca Albanese said in a post on X.
“Israel wants no witnesses, no truth-tellers,” she said, referencing Israel’s blocking of Phillipe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, from entering Gaza.
Pacific Media Watch has compiled this media freedom report from Al Jazeera and other news services.
Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region.
David talks about the struggle to raise awareness of critical Pacific issues such as West Papuan self-determination and the fight for an independent “Pacific voice” in New Zealand media.
He outlines some of the challenges in the region and what motivated him to work on Pacific issues.
Listen to the Earthwise interview on Plains FM 96.9 radio.
Interviewee: Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and a semiretired professor of Pacific journalism. He founded Pacific Journalism Review and the Pacific Media Centre.
Interviewers: Lois and Martin Griffiths, Earthwise programme
The Committee to Protect Journalists and seven other international press freedom organizations have called on Slovakian authorities to immediately withdraw a draft law which would effectively end the public broadcaster’s independence.
The Slovak Television and Radio bill would dissolve the state-owned Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS) and replace it with a new, politically controlled body.
The eight organizations called on the European Union to urgently address this grave threat to press freedom, which contradicts its recently voted Media Freedom Act, warning that the bill could become law before elections to the European Parliament in June.
The future of Aotearoa New Zealand television news and current affairs is in the balance at the two biggest TV broadcasters — both desperate to cut costs as their revenue falls.
The government says it is now preparing policy to modernise the media, but they do not want to talk about what that might be — or when it might happen.
On Monday, TVNZ’s 1News was reporting — again — on the crisis of cuts to news and current affairs in its own newsroom.
In fact, it rocked the entire media industry because only one week earlier the US-based owners of Newshub had announced a plan to close that completely by mid year.
No-one was completely shocked by either development given the financial strife the local industry is known to be in.
But it seems no-one had foreseen that within weeks only Television New Zealand and Whakaata Māori would be offering national news to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who still tune in at 6pm or later on demand.
Likewise the prospect of no TV current affairs shows (save for those on Whakaata Māori) and no consumer affairs watchdog programme Fair Go, three years shy of a half century as one of NZ most popular local TV shows of all time.
Yvonne Tahana’s report for 1News on Monday pointed out Fair Go staff were actually working on the next episode when that staff meeting was held on Monday.
All this raised the question — what is a “fair go” according to the government, given TVNZ is state-owned?
Media-shy media minister? After the shock announcements last week and the week before, Minister of Media and Communications Melissa Lee seemed not keen to talk to the media about it.
The minister did give some brief comments to political reporters confronting her in the corridors in Parliament after the Newshub news broke. But a week went by before she spoke to RNZ’s Checkpoint about it — and revealed that in spite of a 24-hour heads-up from Newhub’s offshore owner — Warner Bros Discovery — Lee did not know they were planning to shut the whole thing.
By the time the media minister was on NewstalkZB’s Drive show just one hour later that same day, the news was out that TVNZ news staff had been told to “watch their inboxes” the next morning.
In spite of the ‘no surprises’ convention, the minister said she was out of the loop on that too.
After that, it was TV and radio silence again from the minister in the days that followed.
“National didn’t have a broadcasting policy. We’re still not sure what they’re looking at. She needs to basically scrub up on what she’s going to be saying on any given day and get her head around her own portfolio, because at the moment she’s not looking that great,” The New Zealand Herald’s political editor Claire Trevett told RNZ’s Morning Report at the end of the week.
By then the minister’s office had told Mediawatch she would speak with us on Thursday. Good news — at the time.
Lee has long been the National Party’s spokesperson on media and broadcasting and Mediawatch has been asking for a chat since last December.
Last Sunday, TVNZ’s Q+A show told viewers Lee had declined to be interviewed for three weeks running.
Frustration on social media
At Newshub — where staff have the threat of closure hanging over them — The AM Show host Lloyd Burr took to social media with his frustration.
“There’s a broadcasting industry crisis and the broadcasting minister is MIA. We’ve tried for 10 days to get her on the show to talk about the state of it, and she’s either refused or not responded. She doesn’t even have a press secretary. What a shambles . . . ”
A switch of acting press secretaries mid-crisis did seem to be a part of the problem.
But one was in place by last Monday, who got in touch in the morning to arrange Mediawatch’s interview later in the week.
But by 6pm that day, they had changed their minds, because “the minister will soon be taking a paper to cabinet on her plan for the media portfolio”.
“We feel it would better serve your listeners if the minister came on at a time when she could discuss in depth about the details of her plan for the future of media, as opposed to the limited information she will be able to provide this Thursday,” the statement said.
“When the cabinet process has been completed, the minister is able to say more. That time is not now.”
The minister’s office also pointed out Lee had done TV and broadcast interviews over the past week in which she had “essentially traversed as much ground as possible right now”.
What clues can we glean from those?
Hints of policy plans Even though this government is breaking records for changes made under urgency, it seems nothing will happen in a hurry for the media.
“I have been working with my officials to understand and bring the concerns from the sector forward, to have a discussion with my officials to work with me to understand what the levers are that the government can pull to help the sector,” Lee told TVNZ Breakfast last Monday.
Communication and Media Minister Melissa Lee on plans for the ailing industry. Video: 1News
A slump in commercial revenue is a big part of broadcasters’ problems. TVNZ’s Anna Burns Francis asked the minister if the government might make TVNZ — or some of its channels — commercial-free.
“I think we are working through many options as to what could potentially help the sector rather than specifically TVNZ,” Lee replied.
One detail Lee did reveal was that the Broadcasting Act 1989 was in play — something the previous government also said was on its to do list but did not get around to between 2017 and 2023.
It is a pretty broad piece of legislation which sets out the broadcasting standards regime and complaints processes, electoral broadcasting and the remit of the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air.
But it is not obvious what reform of that Act could really do for news media sustainability.
Longstanding prohibitions
The minister also referred to longstanding prohibitions on TV advertising on Sunday mornings and two public holidays. Commercial broadcasters have long called for these to be dumped.
But a few more slots for whiteware and road safety ads is not going to save news and current affairs, especially in this economy.
That issue also came up in a 22-minute-long chat with The Platform, which the minister did have time for on Wednesday.
In it, host Sean Plunket urged the minister not to do much to ease the financial pain of the mainstream media, which he said were acting out of self-interest.
He was alarmed when Lee told him the playing field needed to be leveled by extending regulation applied to TV and radio to online streamers as well — possibly through Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.
“Are you seriously considering the government imposing tax on certain large companies and paying that money directly to your chosen media companies that are asking for it?” Plunket asked.
“I have actually said that I oppose the bill but what you have to do as the minister is listen to the sector. They might have some good ideas.”
When Plunket suggested Lee should let the market forces play out, Lee said that was not desirable.
Some of The Platform’s listeners were not keen on that, getting in touch to say they feared Lee would bail the media out because she had “gone woke”.
That made the minister laugh out loud.
“I’m so far from woke,” she assured Sean Plunket.
A free-to-air and free-to-all future? At the moment, TVNZ is obliged to provide easily accessible services for free to New Zealanders.
TVNZ’s Breakfast show asked if that could change to allow TVNZ to charge for its most popular or premium stuff?
The response was confusing:
“Well ready accessibility would actually mean that it is free, right? Or it could be behind a paywall — but it could still be available because they have connectivity,” Lee replied.
“A paywall would imply that you have to pay for it — so that wouldn’t be accessible to all New Zealanders, would it?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked.
“For a majority, yes — but free to air is something I support.”
When Lee fronted up on The AM Show for 10 minutes she said she was unaware they had been chasing a chat with her for 10 days.
Host Melissa Chan-Green bridled when the minister referred to the long-term decline of linear real time TV broadcast as a reason for the cuts now being proposed.
“To think that Newshub is a linear TV business is to misunderstand what Newshub is, because we have a website, we have an app, we have streaming services, we’ve done radio, we’ve done podcasts — so how much more multimedia do you think businesses need to be to survive?
“I’m not just talking about that but there are elements of the Broadcasting Act which are not a fair playing field for everyone. For example, there are advertising restrictions on broadcasters where there are none on streamers,” she said.
Where will the public’s money go? On both Breakfast and The AM Show, Lee repeated the point that the effectiveness of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money for broadcasting is at stake — and at risk if the broadcasters that carry the content are cut back to just a commercial core.
“The government actually puts in close to I think $300 million a year,” Lee said.
“Should that funding be extended to include the client of current affairs programs are getting cut?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked her.
“I have my own views as to what could be done but even NZ on Air operates at arm’s length from me as Minister of Media and Communications,” she replied.
It is only in recent years that NZ On Air has been in the business of allocating public money to news and journalism on a contestable basis.
When the system was set up in 35 years ago that was out of bounds for the organisation, because broadcasters becoming dependent on the public purse was thought to be something to avoid — because of the potential for political interference through either editorial meddling or turning off the tap.
That began to break down when TV broadcasters stopped funding programs about politics which did not pull a commercial crowd — and NZ started picking up the tab from a fund for so-called special interest shows which would not be made or screened in a wholly-commercial environment.
Online projects with a public interest purpose have also been funded by in recent years in addition to programmes for established broadcasters — as NZ on Air declared itself “platform agnostic”.
Public Interest Journalism Fund
In 2020, NZ on Air was given the job of handing out $55 million over three years right across the media from the Public Interest Journalism Fund.
That was done at arm’s length from government, but in opposition National aggressively opposed the fund set up by the previous Labour government.
Senior MPs — including Lee — claimed the money might make the media compliant — and even silent — on anything that might make the then-Labour government look bad.
It would be a big surprise if Lee’s policy plan for cabinet includes direct funding for the news and current affairs programmes which could vanish from our TV screens and on-demand apps within weeks.
This week, NZ on Air chief executive Cameron Harland responded to the crisis with a statement.
“We are in active discussions with the broadcasters and the wider sector to understand what the implications of their cost cutting might be.
“This is a complex and developing situation and whilst we acknowledge the uncertainty, we will be doing what we can to ensure our funding is utilised in the best possible ways to serve local audiences.“
They too are in a holding pattern waiting for the government to reveal its plans.
But as the minister herself said this week, the annual public funding for media was substantial — and getting bigger all the time as the revenues of commercial media companies shrivelled.
And whatever levers the minister and her officials are thinking of pulling, they need to do decisively — and soon.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New legislation is working its way through Congress that could result in the popular social media app TikTok being BANNED in the United States. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
The Elders chair Mary Robinson has highlighted the unique leverage that the United States has with Israel and called on the Biden administration to stop giving it military assistance for its assault on the Gaza Strip.
Robinson, the former president of Ireland, conducted an on-camera interview with Irish public broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann just before her country’s Prime Minister, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, was due to meet US President Joe Biden on Friday at the White House.
“Yes the humanitarian situation is utterly catastrophic and dire, reducing a people to famine, undermining all our values, but the message I want to deliver on behalf of the Elders is a direct message to our Taoiseach Leo Varadkar,” Robinson said.
“We need a ceasefire and we need the opening up of Gaza with every avenue . . . for aid to get in.”
In his meeting with Biden, Varadkar “should not spend too much time on the dire humanitarian situation, and the ships, and the rest of it,” she said.
“He has the opportunity to deliver a political message in a very direct way. The United States can influence Israel by not continuing to provide arms. It has provided a lot of the arms . . . that have been used on the Palestinian people.”
Elders’ Chair Mary Robinson says President Biden should not continue to provide arms to Israel.
“The United States can influence Israel by not continuing to provide arms… The Government of Prime Minister Netanyahu is on the wrong side of history, completely. It’s making the… pic.twitter.com/fN3ptMjktz
More than 31,490 killed
Since Israel declared war in response to the Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces have killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza — including people seeking food aid — and wounded another 73,439. The assault has also devastated civilian infrastructure, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques, and displaced the vast majority of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents.
Israel is also restricting desperately needed humanitarian aid into the Hamas-governed territory, and Palestinians have begun starving to death — which people around the world point to as further proof that the Israeli government is defying an International Court of Justice (ICJ) order to prevent genocidal acts as the South Africa-led case moves forward at The Hague.
The United States gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid, and since October 7, Biden — who faces a genocide complicity case in federal court — has fought for another $14.3 billion while his administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress to arm Israeli forces.
Critics, including some lawmakers, argue that continuing to send weapons to Israel violates US law.
The far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is on the wrong side of history, completely — is making the United States complicit in reducing a people to famine, making the world complicit,” Robinson told RTÉ. “We’re all watching. It is absolutely horrific what is happening.”
“So Leo Varadkar has access today to President Biden,” she said. “He must use this completely politically at all levels with the speaker of the House, with everyone, to make it clear that Israel depends on the United States for military aid and for money. That’s what will change everything.”
“We need a ceasefire and we need the opening up of Gaza with every avenue . . . for aid to get in, because the situation’s so bad, and we need the political way forward, which is the two-state solution,” she added.
‘Only US can put pressure’
“So we need an Israeli government agreeing to that, and only the United States can put the pressure [on Israel].”
Robinson, who spent five years as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights after her presidency ended in 1997, has been part of the Elders since Nelson Mandela, the late anti-apartheid South African president, announced the group in 2007.
She has made multiple statements during the five-month Israeli assault on Gaza, including calling on Israel to comply with the ICJ’s January ruling and warning Biden the previous month that his “support for Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza is losing him respect all over the world.”
“The US is increasingly isolated, with allies like Australia, Canada, India, Japan, and Poland switching their votes in the UN General Assembly to support an immediate humanitarian cease-fire,” she said in December.
“The destruction of Gaza is making Israel less safe. President Biden’s continuing support for Israel’s actions is also making the world less safe, the Security Council less effective, and US leadership less respected. It is time to stop the killing.”
Speaking to press at the Oval Office alongside Biden on Friday, Varadkar said that he was “keen to talk about the situation in Gaza,” and noted his view “that we need to have a ceasefire as soon as possible to get food and medicine in” to the besieged territory.
“On Sunday, the taoiseach will also gift Mr Biden a bowl of shamrock as part of an annual tradition to mark St Patrick’s Day,” RTÉ reported. “Mr Varadkar started the trip on Monday, and since then has spoken several times . . . about how he will use the special platform of the St Patrick’s Day visit to press Mr Biden to back a ceasefire in the Gaza, while also thanking the US for leadership in support for Ukraine.”
Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and writer for Common Dreams, an independent progressive nonprofit news service. Republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) licence.
“So one of the big challenges facing the broadcast sector here and around the world is trying to get people to switch off radios and to switch on computers so that everything can be done down the broadband lines, which would be significantly cheaper.”
Katavake-McGrath says shifting to a streaming or digital service could even the playing field for services like Radio Apna, Whakaata Māori, Coconet and Tagata Pasifika Plus.
‘A massive buffet’
“Today, as people use YouTube and Facebook a lot more, where they’ve got just a plethora of things that they can click in and out of, our news world might become more like that as well, where there’s just a massive buffet, and on that buffet, PMN sits with exactly the same prominence as TV1 news.”
More than 3.3 million people listen to commercial radio each week, with Pacific audiences making up 8 percent of that audience.
Speaking at last year’s Pacific Media Fono, veteran Tagata Pasifika executive producer John Utanga said: “We make content for us, and we put the faces, voices and issues of Pacific people on screens made by Pacific people for Pacific people.”
Pacific Media Network (PMN) chief executive Don Mann says media entities must be “brave and courageous” in their decision making.
“The worst thing we can do is just trundle along, doing the same old, same old, and end up just being an irrelevant organisation where our community are elsewhere, while we’re still sitting in an old way of doing things.”
Regional matters Last week, ABC hosted the inaugural Pacific Australia Media Leaders Meeting. Mann was there, and says that on top of changing audience consumption and loss of revenue, Pacific media are facing a whole different level of concerns.
“We heard from an executive, I won’t name them for privacy reasons, who was talking about just the right to exist as a media entity and the threats and the pressure that they were under from the country’s military and political leaders,” he says.
“For other Pacific leaders, they were discussing the impact of foreign countries competing in their space and trying to act as a media agency in the middle of two major entities that are vying for power in their space.”
Mann says there were many layers of discussions, from trying to get working laptops, possibilities around subscription-based platforms, and AI content.
Local and long term plan Closer to home, Mann says the government needs to have a long term strategy for how media is created for all the various communities in Aotearoa.
“What is the future government policy, irrespective of who’s in power . . . whether it’s Māori media or ethnic media or right across the board, what’s the coherent government policy on funded content moving forward?”
Disclaimer: Pacific Media Network is operated by a charitable trust and uses a mixed funding model with revenue coming from both public entities as well as commercial sources.
Khalia Strong is a Pacific Media Network senior reporter. This article was first published by PMN and is republished here with permission.
Acclaimed journalist Mehdi Hasan joins Democracy Now! to discuss US media coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza and how the war is a genocide being abetted by the United States.
Hasan says US media is overwhelmingly pro-Israel and fails to convey the truth to audiences.
“Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict,” he says.
Hasan has just launched a new media company, Zeteo, which he started after the end of his weekly news programme on MSNBC earlier this year.
Zeteo . . . soft launch.
Hasan’s interviews routinely led to viral segments, including his tough questioning of Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev, but the cable network announced it was canceling his show in November.
The move drew considerable outrage, with critics slamming MSNBC for effectively silencing one of the most prominent Muslim voices in US media.
Rafah invasion threat
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to threaten a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, which human rights groups warn would be a massacre.
President Biden has said such an escalation is a “red line” for him, but Netanyahu has vowed to push ahead anyway.
“Where is the outcry here in the West?” asks Hasan of reports of Israeli war crimes, including the killing of more than 100 journalists in the past five months in Gaza and the blockade of aid from the region.
“It’s a stain on [Biden’s] record, on America’s conscience.”
Transcript:
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The death toll in Gaza has topped 31,300. At least five people were killed on Wednesday when Israel bombed an UNRWA aid distribution center in Rafah — one of the UN agency’s last remaining aid sites in Gaza. The head of UNRWA called the attack a “blatant disregard [of] international humanitarian law”.
This comes as much of Gaza is on the brink of famine as Israel continues to limit the amount of aid allowed into the besieged territory. At least 27 Palestinians have died of starvation, including 23 children.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has reported six Palestinians were killed in Gaza City when Israeli forces opened fire again on crowds waiting for food aid. More than 80 people were injured.
In other news from Gaza, Politicoreports the Biden administration has privately told Israel that the US would support Israel attacking Rafah as long as it did not carry out a large-scale invasion.
AMY GOODMAN:Well, we begin today’s show looking at how the US media is covering Israel’s assault on Gaza with the acclaimed TV broadcaster Mehdi Hasan. In January, he announced he was leaving MSNBC after his shows were cancelled. Mehdi was one of the most prominent Muslim voices on American television.
In October, the news outlet Semafor reported MSNBC had reduced the roles of Hasan and two other Muslim broadcasters on the network, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi, following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
US Media fails on Gaza, fascism. Video: Democracy Now!
Then, in November, MSNBC announced it was cancelling Hasan’s show shortly after he conducted this interview with Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is an excerpt:
MEHDI HASAN: You say Hamas’s numbers — I should point out, just pull up on the screen, in the last two major Gaza conflicts, 2009 and 2014, the Israeli military’s death tolls matched Hamas’s Health Ministry death tolls, so — and the UN, human rights groups all agree that those numbers are credible. But look, your wider point is true.
MARK REGEV: Can I challenge that?
MEHDI HASAN: We shouldn’t —
MARK REGEV: Will you allow me —
MEHDI HASAN: We shouldn’t —
MARK REGEV: — to challenge that, please? Can I just challenge that?
MEHDI HASAN: Briefly, if you can.
MARK REGEV: I’d like to challenge that.
MEHDI HASAN: Briefly.
MARK REGEV: I’ll try to be as brief as you are, sir. Those numbers are provided by Hamas. There’s no independent verification. And secondly, more importantly, you have no idea how many of them are Hamas terrorists, combatants, and how many are civilians. Hamas would have you believe that they’re all civilians, that they’re all children.
And here we have to say something that isn’t said enough. Hamas, until now, we’re destroying their military machine, and with that, we’re eroding their control.
But up until now, they’ve been in control of the Gaza Strip. And as a result, they control all the images coming out of Gaza. Have you seen one picture of a single dead Hamas terrorist in the fighting in Gaza? Not one.
MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, but I have —
MARK REGEV: Is that by accident, or is that —
MEHDI HASAN: But I have, Mark —
MARK REGEV: — because Hamas can control — Hamas can control the information coming out of Gaza?
MEHDI HASAN: Mark, but you asked me a question, and you said you would be brief. I haven’t. You’re right. But I have seen lots of children with my own lying eyes being pulled from the rubble. So —
MARK REGEV: Now, because they’re the pictures Hamas wants you to see. Exactly my point, Mehdi.
MEHDI HASAN: And also because they’re dead, Mark. Also —
MARK REGEV: They’re the pictures Hamas wants — no.
MEHDI HASAN: But they’re also people your government has killed. You accept that, right? You’ve killed children? Or do you deny that?
MARK REGEV: No, I do not. I do not. I do not. First of all, you don’t know how those people died, those children.
MEHDI HASAN: Oh wow.
AMY GOODMAN: “Oh wow,” Mehdi Hasan responded, interviewing Netanyahu adviser Mark Regev on MSNBC. Soon after, MSNBC announced that he was losing his shows. Since leaving the network, Mehdi Hasan has launched a new digital media company named Zeteo.
Mehdi, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. I want to start with that interview you did with Regev. After, you lost your two shows, soon after. Do you think that’s the reason those shows were cancelled? Interviews like that?
MEHDI HASAN: You would have to ask MSNBC, Amy. And, Amy and Nermeen, thank you for having me on. It’s great to be back here after a few years away. Look, the advantage of not being at MSNBC anymore is I get to come on shows like this and talk to you all. You should get someone from MSNBC on and ask them why they cancelled the shows, because I can’t answer that question. I wish I knew. But there we go.
The shows were cancelled at the end of November. I quit at the beginning of January, because I wanted to have a platform of my own. I couldn’t really spend 2024, one of the most important news years of our lives — genocide in Gaza, fascism at the door here in America with elections — couldn’t really spend that being a guest anchor and a political analyst, which is what I was offered at MSNBC while I was staying there. I wanted to leave. I wanted to get my voice back.
And that’s why I launched my own media company, as you mentioned, called Zeteo, which we’ve done a soft launch on and we’re going to launch properly next month. But I’m excited about all the opportunities ahead, the opportunity to do more interviews like the one I did with Mark Regev.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:So, Mehdi, could you explain Zeteo? First of all, what does it mean? And what is the gap in the US media landscape that you hope to fill? You’ve been extremely critical of the US media’s coverage of Gaza, saying, quite correctly, that the coverage has not been as consistent or clear as the last time we saw an invasion of this kind, though far less brutal, which was the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, on Zeteo, it’s an ancient Greek word, going back to Socrates and Plato, which means to seek out, to search, to inquire for the truth. And at a time when we live in a, some would say, post-truth society — or people on the right are attempting to turn it into a post-truth society — I thought that was an important endeavor to embark upon as a journalist, to go back to our roots.
In terms of why I launch it and the media space, look, there is a gap in the market, first of all, on the left for a company like this one. Not many progressives have pulled off a for-profit, subscription-based business, media business. We’ve seen it on the right, Nermeen, with, you know, Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire and Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, and even Tucker Carlson has launched his own subscription-based platform since leaving Fox.
And on the progressive space, we haven’t really done it. Now, of course, there are wonderful shows like Democracy Now! which are doing important, invaluable journalism on subjects like Gaza, on subjects like the climate. But across the media industry as a whole, sadly, in the US, the massive gap is there are not enough — I don’t know how to put it — bluntly, truth tellers, people who are willing to say — and when I say “truth tellers,” I don’t just mean, you know, truth in a conventional sense of saying what is true and what is false; I’m saying the language in which we talk about what is happening in the world today.
Too many of my colleagues in the media, unfortunately, hide behind lazy euphemisms, a both-sides journalism, the idea that you can’t say Donald Trump is racist because you don’t know what’s in his heart; you can’t say the Republican Party is going full fascist, even as they proclaim that they don’t believe in democracy as we conventionally understand it; we can’t say there’s a genocide in Gaza, even though the International Court of Justice says such a thing is plausible.
You know, we run away from very blunt terms which help us understand world. And I want to treat American consumers of news, global consumers of news — it’s a global news organisation which I’m founding — with some respect. Stop patronising them. Tell them what is happening in the world, in a blunt way.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, talk about this. I mean, in your criticism of the US media’s coverage, in particular, of Israel’s assault on Gaza — I mean, of course, you have condemned what happened, the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. You’ve also situated the attack in a broader historical frame, and you’ve received criticism for doing that.
And in response, you’ve said, “Context is not causation,” and “Context is not justification.” So, could you explain why you think context, history, is so important, and the way in which this question is kind of elided in US media coverage, not just of the Gaza crisis, but especially so now?
MEHDI HASAN: So, I did an interview with Piers Morgan this week. And if you watch Piers Morgan’s shows, he always asks his pro-Palestinian guests or anyone criticising Israel, you know, “Condemn what happened on October 7.” It’s all about October the 7th. And what happened on October 7 was barbarism. It was a tragedy. It was a terror attack. Civilians were killed. War crimes were carried out. Hostages were taken. And we should condemn it. Of course we should, as human beings, if nothing else.
But the world did not begin on October 7. The idea that the entire Middle East conflict, Israel-Palestine, the occupation, apartheid, can be reduced to October 7 is madness. And it’s not just me saying that.
You talk to, you know, leading Israeli peace campaigners, even some leading Israeli generals, people like Shlomo Brom, who talk about having to understand the root causes of a people under occupation fighting for freedom. And it’s absurd to me that in our media industry people should try and run away from context.
My former colleagues Ali Velshi and Ayman Mohyeldin, who Amy mentioned in the introduction, they were on air on October 7 as news was coming in of the attacks, and they provided context, because they’re two anchors who really understand that part of the world.
Ayman Mohyeldin is perhaps the only US anchor who’s ever lived in Gaza. And they came under attack online from certain pro-Israel people for providing context. This idea that we should be embarrassed or ashamed or apologetic as journalists for providing context on one of the biggest stories in the world is madness.
You cannot understand what is happening in the world unless we, unless you and I, unless journalists, broadcasters, are explaining to our viewers and our listeners and our readers why things are happening, where forces are coming from, why people are behaving the way they do. And I know America is a country of amnesiacs, but we cannot keep acting as if the world just began yesterday.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about a piece in The Intercept — you also used to report for The Intercept — the headline, “In internal meeting, Christiane Amanpour confronts CNN brass about ‘double standards’ on Israel coverage”. It’s a really interesting piece. They were confronting the executives, and “One issue that came up,” says The Intercept, “repeatedly is CNN’s longtime process for routing almost all coverage relating to Israel and Palestine through the network’s Jerusalem bureau.
As The Interceptreported in January, “the protocol — which has existed for years but was expanded and rebranded as SecondEyes last summer — slows down reporting on Gaza and filters news about the war through journalists in Jerusalem who operate under the shadow of Israel’s military censor.”
And then it quotes Christiane Amanpour, identified in a recording of that meeting. She said, “You’ve heard from me, you’ve heard my, you know, real distress with SecondEyes — changing copy, double standards, and all the rest,” Amanpour said. The significance of this and what we see, Mehdi? You know, I’m not talking Fox right now. On MSNBC . . .
MEHDI HASAN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: . . . and on CNN, you rarely see Palestinians interviewed in extended discussions.
MEHDI HASAN: So, I think there’s a few issues there, Amy. Number one, first of all, we should recognise that Christiane Amanpour has done some very excellent coverage of Gaza for CNN in this conflict. She’s had some very powerful interviews and very important guests on. So, credit to Christiane during this conflict. Number two . . .
AMY GOODMAN:International . . .
MEHDI HASAN: . . . I think US media organisations . . .
AMY GOODMAN: . . . I just wanted to say, particularly on CNN International, which is often not seen . . .
MEHDI HASAN: Very good point.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On CNN domestic.
MEHDI HASAN: Very good — very good point, Amy. Touché.
The second point, I would say, is US media organisations, as a whole, are engaging in journalistic malpractice by not informing viewers, listeners, readers that a lot of their coverage out of Israel and the Occupied Territories is coming under the shadow of an Israeli military censor.
How many Americans understand or even know about the Israeli military censor, about how much information is controlled? We barely understand that Western journalists are kept out of Gaza, or if when they go in, they’re embedded with Israeli military forces and limited to what they can say and do.
So I think we should talk about that in a country which kind of prides itself on the First Amendment and free speech and a free press. We should understand the way in which information comes out of the Occupied Territories, in particular from Gaza.
And the third point, I would say, is, yeah, Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict. When we talk about why the media is structurally biased towards one party in this conflict, the more powerful party, the occupier, we have to remember that this is one of the reasons.
Why are Palestinians dehumanised in our media? This is one of the reasons. We don’t let people speak. That’s what leads to dehumanisation. That’s what leads to bias.
We understand it at home when it comes to, for example, Black voices. In recent years, media organisations have tried to take steps to improve diversity on air, when it comes to on-air talent, when it comes to on-air guests, when it comes to balancing panels. We get that we need underrepresented communities to be able to speak. But when it comes to foreign conflicts, we still don’t seem to have made that calculation.
There was a study done a few years ago of op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post on the subject of Israel-Palestine from 1970 to, I think it was, 2000-and-something, and it was like 2 percent of all op-eds in the Times and 1 percent in the Post were written by Palestinians, which is a shocking statistic.
We deny these people a voice, and then we wonder why people don’t sympathise with their plight or don’t — aren’t, you know, marching in the street — well, they are marching in the streets — but in bigger numbers. Why America is OK and kind of, you know, blind to the fact that we are complicit in a genocide of these people? Because we don’t hear from these people.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Mehdi, I mean, explain why that’s especially relevant in this instance, because journalists have not been permitted access to Gaza, so there is no reporting going on on the ground that’s being shown here. I mean, dozens and dozens of journalists have signed a letter asking Israel and Egypt to allow journalists access into Gaza. So, if you could talk about that, why it’s especially important to hear from Palestinian voices here?
MEHDI HASAN: Well, for a start, Nermeen, much of the imagery we see on our screens here or in our newspapers are sanitised images. We don’t see the full level of the destruction. And when we try and understand, well, why are young people — why is there such a generational gap when it comes to the polling on Gaza, on ceasefire, why are young people so much more antiwar than their elder peers, part of the reason is that young people are on TikTok or Instagram and seeing a much less sanitised version of this war, of Israel’s bombardment.
They are seeing babies being pulled from the rubble, limbs missing. They are seeing hospitals being — you know, hospitals carrying out procedures without anesthetic. They are seeing just absolute brutality, the kind of stuff that UN humanitarian chiefs are saying we haven’t seen in this world for 50 years.
And that’s the problem, right? If we’re sanitising the coverage, Americans aren’t being told, really, aren’t being informed, are, again, missing context on what is happening on the ground. And, of course, Israel, by keeping Western journalists out, makes it even easier for those images to be blocked, and therefore you have Palestinian — brave Palestinian journalists on the ground trying to film, trying to document their own genocide, streaming it to our phones.
And we’ve seen over a hundred of them killed over the last five months. That is not an accident. That is not a coincidence. Israel wants to stamp out independent voices, stamp out any kind of coverage of its own genocidal behavior.
And therefore, again, you’re able to have a debate in this country where the political debate is completely disconnected to the public debate, and the public debate is completely misinformed. I’m amazed, Nermeen, when you look at the polling, that there’s a majority in favor of a ceasefire, that half of all Democrats say this is a genocide. Americans are saying that to pollsters despite not even getting the full picture. Can you imagine what those numbers would look like if they actually saw what was happening on the ground?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to go to what is unfolding right now in Gaza. You said in a recent interview that in the past Israel was, quote, “mowing the lawn,” but now the Netanyahu government’s intention is to erase the population of Gaza. So let’s go to what Prime Minister Netanyahu said about the invasion of Rafah, saying it would go ahead and would last weeks, not months. He was speaking to Politico on Sunday.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: We’re not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7th doesn’t happen again, never happens again. And to do that, we have to complete the destruction of the Hamas terrorist army. … We’re very close to victory. It’s close at hand.
We’ve destroyed three-quarters of Hamas fighting terrorist battalions, and we’re close to finishing the last part in Rafah, and we’re not going to give it up. … Once we begin the intense action of eradicating the Hamas terrorist battalions in Rafah, it’s a matter of weeks and not months.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, your response to what Netanyahu said and what the Israelis have proposed as a safe place for Gazans to go — namely, humanitarian islands?
MEHDI HASAN: So, number one, when you hear Netanyahu speak, Nermeen, doesn’t it remind you of George Bush in kind of 2002, 2003? It’s very — you know, invoking 9/11 to justify every atrocity, claiming that you’re trying to protect the country, when you, yourself, your idiocy and your incompetency, is what led to the attacks. You know, George Bush was unable to prevent 9/11, and then used 9/11 to justify every atrocity, even though his incompetence helped allow 9/11 to happen.
And I feel the same way: Netanyahu allowed the worst terror attack, the worst massacre in Israel to happen on his watch. Many of his own, you know, generals, many of his own people blame him for this. And so, it’s rich to hear him saying, “My aim is to stop this from happening again.” Well, you couldn’t stop it from happening the first time, and now you’re killing innocent Palestinians under the pretence that this is national security.
Number two, again George Bush-like, claiming that the war is nearly done, mission is nearly accomplished, that’s nonsense. No serious observer believes that Hamas is finished or that Israel has won some total victory. A member of Netanyahu’s own war cabinet said recently, “Anyone who says you can absolutely defeat Hamas is telling tall tales, is lying.” That was a colleague of Netanyahu’s, in government, who said that.
And number three, the red line on Rafah that Biden suppposedly set down and that Netanyahu is now mocking, saying, “My own red line is to do the opposite,” what on Earth is Joe Biden doing in allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to humiliate him in this way with this invasion of Rafah, even after he said he opposes it? I mean, it’s one thing to leak stuff . . .
AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi . . .
MEHDI HASAN: . . . over a few months . . .
AMY GOODMAN: . . . let’s go to Biden speaking on MSNBC. He’s being interviewed by your former colleague Jonathan Capehart, as he was being questioned about Benjamin Netanyahu and saying he’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: He has a right to defend Israel, a right to continue to pursue Hamas. But he must, he must, he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.
He’s hurting — in my view, he’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world — it’s contrary to what Israel stands for. And I think it’s a big mistake. So I want to see a ceasefire.
AMY GOODMAN: And he talked about a, well, kind of a red line. If you can address what Biden is saying and what he proposed in the State of the Union, this pier, to get more aid in, and also the dropping — the airdropping of food, which recently killed five Palestinians because it crushed them to death, and the humanitarian groups, United Nations saying these airdrops, the pier come nowhere near being able to provide the aid that’s needed, at the same time, and the reason they’re doing all of this, is because Israel is using US bombs and artillery to attack the Palestinians and these aid trucks?
MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, it’s just so bizarre, the idea that you could drop bombs, on the one hand, and then drop aid, on the other, and you’re paying for both, and then your aid ends up killing people, too. It’s like some kind of dark Onion headline. It’s just beyond parody. It’s beyond belief.
And as for the pier, as you say, it does not come anywhere near to adequately addressing the needs of the Palestinian people, in terms of the sheer scale of the suffering, half a million people on the brink of famine, over a million people displaced. Four out of five of the hungriest people in the world, according to the World Food Programme, are in Gaza right now.
The idea that this pier would, A, address the scale of the suffering, and, B, in time — I mean, it’s going to take time to do this. What happens to the Palestinians who literally starve to death, including children, while this pier is being built?
Finally, I would say, there’s reporting in the Israeli press, Amy, that I’ve seen that suggests that the pier idea comes from Netanyahu, that the Israeli government are totally fine with this pier, because it allows them still to control land and air access into Gaza, which is what they’ve always controlled and which in this war they’ve monopolised.
The idea that the United States of America, the world’s only superpower, cannot tell its ally, “You know what? We’re going to put aid into Gaza because we want to, and you’re not going to stop us, especially since we’re the ones arming you,” is bizarre.
It’s something I think Biden will never be able to get past or live down. It’s a stain on his record, on America’s conscience. The idea that we’re arming a country that’s engaged in a “plausible genocide,” to quote the ICJ, is bad enough. That we can’t even get our own aid in, while they’re bombing with our bombs, is just madness.
And by the way, it’s also illegal. Under US law, you cannot provide weaponry to a country which is blocking US aid. And by the way, it’s not me saying they’re blocking US aid. US government officials have said, “Yes, the Israeli government blocked us from sending flour in,” for example.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, let’s go to the regional response to this assault on Gaza that’s been unfolding with the kind of violence and tens of thousands of deaths of Palestinians, as we’ve reported. Now, what has — how has the Arab and Muslim world responded to what’s going on? Egypt, of course, has repeatedly said that it does not want displaced Palestinians crossing its border. The most powerful Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates, if you can talk about how they’ve responded? And then the Axis — the so-called Axis of Resistance — Houthis, Hezbollah, etc. — how they have been trying to disrupt this war, or at least make the backers of Israel pay a price for it?
MEHDI HASAN: So, I hear people saying, “Oh, we’re disappointed in the response from the Arab countries.” The problem with the word “disappointment” is it implies you had any expectations to begin with. I certainly didn’t. Arab countries have never had the Palestinians’ backs.
The Arab — quote-unquote, “Arab street” has always been very pro-Palestinian. But the autocratic, the despotic, the dictatorial rulers of much of the Arab world have never really had the interests of the Palestinian people at their heart, going back right to 1948, when, you know, Arab countries attacked Israel to push it into the sea, but, actually, as we know from historians like Avi Shlaim, were not doing that at all, and that some of them, like Jordan, had done deals with Israel behind the scenes.
So, look, Arab countries have never really prioritised the Palestinian people or their needs or their freedom. And so, when you see some of these statements that come out of the Arab world at times like this, you know, you have to take them with a shovel of salt, not just a grain.
Also, I would point out the hypocrisy here on all sides in the region. You have countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which were involved in a brutal assault on Yemen for many years, carried out very similar acts to Israel in Gaza in terms of blockades, starvation, malnourishment of the Yemeni children, in terms of bombing of refugee camps and hospitals and kids and school buses. That all happened in Yemen.
Arab countries did that, let’s just be clear about that, things that they criticise Israel for doing now. And, of course, Iran, which sets itself up as a champion of the Palestinan people, when Bashar al-Assad was killing many of his own people, including Palestinian refugees, in places like the al-Yarmouk refugee camp, Iran and Russia, by the way, were both perfectly happy to help arm and support Assad as he did that.
So, you know, spare me some of the grandiose statements from Middle East countries, from Arab nations to Iran, on all of it. There’s a lot of hypocrisy to go around.
Very few countries in the world, especially in that region, actually have Palestinian interests at heart. If they did, we would have a very different geopolitical scene. There is reporting, Nermeen, that a lot of these governments, like Saudi Arabia, privately are telling Israel, “Finish the job. Get rid of them. We don’t like Hamas, either. Get rid of them,” and that Saudis actually want to do a deal with Israel once this war is over, just as they were on course to do, apparently, according to the Biden administration.
We know that other Arab countries already signed the, quote-unquote, “Abraham Accords” with Israel on Trump’s watch.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the number of dead Palestinian journalists and also the new UN investigation that just accused Israel of breaking international law over the killing of the Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon. On October 13, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and a group of other journalists. He had just set up a live stream on the border in southern Lebanon, so that all his colleagues at Reuters and others saw him blown up.
The report stated, quote, “The firing at civilians, in this instance clearly identifiable journalists, constitutes a violation of . . . international law.” And it’s not just Issam in southern Lebanon. Well over 100 Palestinian journalists in Gaza have died. We’ve never seen anything like the concentration of numbers of journalists killed in any other conflict or conflicts combined recently. Can you talk about the lack of outrage of other major news organisations and what Israel is doing here? Do you think they’re being directly targeted, one after another, wearing those well-known “press” flak jackets? It looks like we just lost audio to Mehdi Hasan.
MEHDI HASAN: Amy, I can — I can hear you, Amy, very faintly.
AMY GOODMAN:Oh, OK. So . . .
MEHDI HASAN: I’m going to answer your question, if you can still hear me.
AMY GOODMAN: Great. We can hear you perfectly.
MEHDI HASAN: So, you’re very faint to me. So, while I speak, if someone wants to fix the volume in my ear. Let me answer your question about journalists.
It is an absolute tragedy and a scandal, what has happened to journalists in Gaza, that we have seen so many deaths in Gaza. And the real scandal, Amy, is that Western media, a lot of my colleagues here in the US media, have not sounded the alarm, have not called out Israel for what it’s done. It’s outrageous that so many of our fellow colleagues can be killed in Gaza while reporting, while at home, losing family members, and yet there’s not a huge global outcry.
When Wael al-Dahdouh, who we just saw on the screen, from Al Jazeera, loses his immediate family members and carries on reporting for Al Jazeera Arabic, why is he not on every front page in the world? Why is he not a hero? Why is he not sitting down with Oprah Winfrey?
I feel like, you know, when Evan Gershkovich from The Wall Street Journal is wrongly imprisoned in Russia, we all campaign for Evan to be released. When Ukrainian journalists are killed, we all speak out and are angry about it. But when Palestinian journalists are killed on a level we’ve never seen before, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, where is the outcry here in the West over the killing of them?
We claim to care about a free press. We claim to oppose countries that crack down on a free press, on journalism. We say journalism is not a crime. But then I don’t hear the outrage from my colleagues here at this barbarism in Gaza, where journalists are being killed in record numbers.
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