Israel and Iran are unique for starkly different reasons — Israel has less of a right to exist than any other country, while Iran is the only country that has stood up against the assault on international law by the US, Israel and their allies.

That is according to Craig Mokhiber’s comments on The Electronic Intifada Livestream.

Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience. He served as director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights until he resigned in October 2023 over the world body’s failure to act against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

• READ MORE: Why Israel has no right to exist, with Craig Mokhiber
• Other War on Iran reports

“This action of self-defence taken by Iran is the first truly consequential action by a member state,” Mokhiber said of Iran’s response to the US and Israeli aggression it has been facing.

Mokhiber also pointed to resistance by “students on their college campuses, by flotillas, by people’s tribunals, by demonstrations, by the resistance in Palestine, the resistance in Lebanon, by Ansarullah in Yemen”.

‘A formidable state’
“But this is a state,” he said of Iran. “This is a formidable state with real military, diplomatic and political capacities that has stood up and said: ‘No more.’”

By contrast, Mokhiber said, every other country had either been directly complicit or looked away while the US, Israel and their allies committed serial aggression, livestreamed genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Contributing editor Jon Elmer reports on several days’ worth of Iranian attacks on US military assets in the region during the previous week, which caused extensive damage.

Republished from The Electronic Intifada with permission.

Why Israel has no right to exist.         Video: The Electronic Intifada

Many of you have seen on social media globally what happened in Gaza this week.

Why has the world remained silent? Why have the mainstream media remained silent?

We, the people on social media, are the ones posting about it across different platforms.

• READ MORE: Gaza holds mass funeral for 112 people killed in Israel’s 2023 Sabra attack
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Thousands of people gathered in Gaza City for the mass funeral of 112 people killed in the Sabra massacre by Israel in 2023 while the world watched in silence.

The dead were members of two families — Al-Hasayneh and Abu Sharia — whose remains were pulled from the rubble of homes destroyed earlier by Israeli airstrikes.

The funeral came during one of the deadliest stretches of Israeli bombardment in recent days, proof that the Gaza genocide‌ has not ended despite ceasefire and deal announcements.

Israel’s plan has not changed since 1948 — the mass expulsion of Palestinians and the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Recovered bodies
Rescue teams recently recovered the bodies of the two families from the site of the Israeli attack in the Sabra neighbourhood on 22 November 2023.

The attack killed 308 members of the two families, including 40 children, 30 women and seven people with disabilities.

The bodies were wrapped in white shrouds. Mourners wept in grief and sorrow while the world looked on without taking action.

So I ask: does US President Donald Trump know about this? Has he been informed?

If he does know, and still doesn’t care, then what is the difference between this and the actions he has accused other countries of committing?

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for some Israeli leaders, yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still traveling to different countries, including the US, and continues to be seen alongside world leaders.

There have been no strong sanctions, and the international pressure has not been as great as many expected.

Heartbreaking world
I cannot describe the kind of world we are living in.

The world is silent. The media are silent. World leaders are silent.

Does this mean the world is unable to do anything to stop leaders accused of committing atrocities?

Where is the international community when it is needed most?

What is the purpose of international law if it is applied only against the weak?

It is truly heartbreaking.

A citizen journalist’s response to the Gaza mass funeral republished from Presstv.ir.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJP) of the Philippines calls it “outrageous” for the Vice- President to insult the work of Philippine news organisations

The NUJP criticised Vice-President Sara Duterte over remarks she made on July 30 and released by her office a day later, saying she denigrated Philippine news organisations and promoted social media as an alternative.

Duterte said Philippine news organisations fell short of international standards and accused them of “worshipping money”.

• READ MORE: Congress wants to regulate social media. Here is what’s on the table
• How Congress is looking to regulate deepfakes
• Other Philippines reports

“Unfortunately, kung gagawin talaga natin araw-araw na Diyos ang pera, wala talagang pagbabago na mangyayari sa ating bansa. Sa journalism man, sa mainstream media man o sa iba’t ibang aspeto ng ating bayan,” Duterte said.

(Unfortunately, if we continue worshipping money, there won’t be any real change happening in our country. Whether in journalism, in mainstream media, or in other aspects of our country.)

Duterte also praised social media and its use as an alternative platform for helping people see “the truth”. Disinformation has continued to thrive on various social media platforms.

‘Dictator’s tactics’
In the statement, the NUJP said that by denigrating the media, “Sara is unleashing one of tactics straight out of a dictator’s playbook: controlling information and demonising the independent press and weaponising social media for her propaganda”.

The NUJP recalled that the Philippine media had borne the attacks of Duterte-era leadership, and a number of them garnered awards and recognition from the international community because of their reporting.

It also pointed out that social media was far from being a “platform for truth” as misinformation and disinformation was prioritised by social media algorithms, and lies, as a result, spread faster than truth.

Republished from Rappler with permission.

The West Papua National Committee (KNPB) says it will stage another round of coordinated demonstrations next week to mark the anniversary of the New York Agreement.

Protests are planned across all 36 of the organisation’s regional commands throughout the Land of Papua.

KNPB spokesperson Ogram Wanimbo announced the plan following the group’s “Papua: Military and Humanitarian Emergency” rally in Jayapura City on Monday.

• READ MORE: Indonesian forces hunt West Papuan militants who killed construction workers
• Five workers killed by insurgents in Highland Papua, manhunt ongoing
• Other West Papua reports

The New York Agreement, signed by Indonesia and the Netherlands at the United Nations headquarters on 15 August 1962, provided for the transfer of the then-Netherlands New Guinea (West Irian/Papua) to the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA) before administration was handed over to Indonesia.

Wanimbo said Monday’s nationwide protest served as an initial mobilisation ahead of the larger coordinated demonstrations planned for August 15.

He also referred to the ongoing armed conflict between the West Papua National Liberation Army–Free Papua Movement (TPNPB-OPM) and Indonesian security forces.

Reports say Indonesia’s security forces have launched a joint operation to pursue TPNPB-OPM fighters who are alleged to have killed five “road construction workers” in Papua’s Highland province on Sunday.

Civilian casualties
According to Wanimbo, civilian casualties would continue if there was no ceasefire between the two sides.

“As a people’s movement, KNPB will continue to organise public demonstrations calling for mediation. We also urge the Indonesian government to withdraw military forces from conflict-affected areas,” he said.

He said KNPB was also calling on the Indonesian government to pursue a concrete peace process by bringing representatives of the Indonesian government and TPNPB-OPM to the negotiating table.

Wanimbo argued that if the armed conflict continued and civilians continued to bear the consequences, Papuans would continue to resist through armed groups, political movements, Indigenous communities, and supporters.

“Respect the Indigenous people who live on this land. Every piece of land from Sorong to Merauke has its customary owners. Do not use military force to suppress the people, kill civilians, and then take control of customary land,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jayapura City Police Chief Senior Commissioner Fredrickus Maclarimboen said authorities had deployed 1432 joint personnel from Jayapura City Police and the Papua Regional Police to secure Monday’s KNPB demonstration within the city’s jurisdiction.

“Today we saw that public activities, including schools and health services, were disrupted. However, the overall security and public order situation remained stable and under control,” Maclarimboen said.

Republished from Jubi Media with permission.

The BBC recently interviewed an Israeli settler who said that all the Palestinians in four surrounding villages should be exterminated to avenge an Israeli who was killed while terrorising a Palestinian village last month, adding that just a single Jewish life is worth 10 million Palestinian lives.

“I think now after they kill one Israeli people, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” lawyer Yehuda Shimon told the BBC.

“It sounds like you’re saying one Jewish life is worth hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives,” replied the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in the interview.

• LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley

“Million,” Shimon corrected her. “One Jewish life, it’s 10 million, okay?”

“That just sounds racist,” Williamson responded, to which Shimon replied, “Yes, I know, I know. But this is the truth.”

The interaction has been going viral on social media as people react to the blatant display of the extremist ideology held by the settlers who are working to gradually squeeze Palestinians off their land in the West Bank.

And while it is true that Shimon’s comments are extremely evil and racist, that’s not what I personally found interesting about the interview. What I found interesting was Williamson’s response.

I mean, it is a bit rich watching a BBC reporter act shocked and offended by somebody saying they think Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives. After all, the premise that Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives has coloured every aspect of Western news media reporting on Israel and Palestine for generations.

That’s why the Western press expressed disproportionately more shock and horror at October 7 than the far more egregious Israeli abuses which led up to it and the far more egregious Israeli abuses which followed.

It’s why you saw howling outrage at the Bondi shooting in Sydney last year when the same number of Palestinians getting killed on any given day in Gaza never even makes a blip in the news.

On 26 March 2025, 15 Palestinians were killed by the IDF during a ceasefire in Gaza. On the December 14 that same year, 15 people were killed at Bondi Beach in Sydney in a mass shooting by ISIS members directed at Jewish Australians.

All mainstream Western institutions view Palestinian lives as worthless   Video: Caitlin Johnstone

Two instances of mass murder. Same exact number of victims. But you only heard about one of them.

Why did you only hear about one of them? Because only one of them made the news.

The mainstream press spent weeks urgently reporting on the Bondi shooting, frenetically working to falsely associate an ISIS terrorist attack with pro-Palestine demonstrations by uniformly repeating the line “This is what globalise the intifada looks like” in news outlets throughout the Western world.

Report after report after report was published about how Jews are being attacked, how Jews are feeling unsafe, and what new laws and free speech restrictions must be rolled out in order to stomp out pro-Palestine sentiment to protect the Jews.

Nothing remotely similar happened on the 26 March 2025. As far as the Western press were concerned, 15 Palestinians getting killed in Gaza was just another Wednesday.

This is because all mainstream Western media outlets hold the same racist opinions about Palestinians as those that were voiced by Yehuda Shimon.

So do all mainstream Western political parties. So do all other mainstream Western institutions. So do all supporters of the state of Israel. They all believe Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives, as evidenced by the policies they support and the news stories they pay attention to.

The BBC has a well-documented history of extensive pro-Israel bias, with its own reporters complaining that they’ve been performing PR for the Israeli government and its own editor losing a libel lawsuit against a journalist who exposed his pro-Israel slant.

They spent years running cover for an active genocide with “Hamas-run health ministry says” headlines and passive-language verbal gymnastics to protect Israeli information interests, so you know that when Lucy Williamson objects “That sounds racist!” to an Israeli settler claiming Jewish lives are worth far more than Palestinian lives, she’s not actually upset at his belief system.

She just knows you’re not supposed to say such things out loud.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

COMMENTARY: By John Hobbs

A friend who lives in Gaza, just posted the following:

“From the sea of Gaza, I do not look out . . . I stand on the edge of the world, shouting in a direction that does not hear, and I know that between me and them there is not just a sea, but a silence that is skilled at betrayal.”

The New Zealand government has remained silent on the issue of genocide by Israel against the peoples of Gaza, despite numerous other countries publicly condemning Israel’s actions as genocide.

From time to time, the government might call for a “two-state solution”, join allies to issue protestations that the harm inflicted on the Palestinian people must stop, demand a ceasefire, or take part in various resolutions at the United Nations calling for an end to atrocities.

But all the while, the Israeli government rapidly expands its illegal settlements and continues to allow settlers to kill Palestinians under the watch of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Israel is doing everything it can to drive the remaining Palestinian people out of their villages and cities in Occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The gap between the government’s insincere words and its willingness to take real action mirrors the coalition’s approach to Māori. Here at home, it claims to uphold, honour, and respect the Treaty relationship, all while rolling out policies to dismantle the rights owed to Māori as Treaty partners.

Just as it’s important to hold the government to account for domestic policy, it’s equally important to hold it to account for foreign policy. It’s erroneous to think that the two aren’t intimately connected.

Disgraceful foreign policy
The government’s disgraceful foreign policy approach to Gaza and Palestine was shown up recently during a visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territories by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark and the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson.

The women were there on behalf of “The Elders,” an independent group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela, working for peace, justice, human rights, and a sustainable planet. They stated: “We believe that the policies of the current Israeli government are leading to Palestine disappearing in plain sight.”

STATEMENT | “Palestine must not disappear.”

Following their visit to the Middle East, Mary Robinson, Graça Machel, @HelenClarkNZ and Hina Jilani call on leaders to act now to stop the disappearance of Palestine at the hands of the Israeli government.

Read the full statement… pic.twitter.com/3crFe2bFnk

— The Elders (@TheElders) July 17, 2026

The evidence for this comes from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In its Humanitarian Situation Report of June 19, 2026, it noted:

“6200 Palestinians, including more than 3000 children, have been forcibly displaced because of settler attacks and related access restrictions across 119 communities. Of these, more than 3,600 people were displaced from 46 communities that have effectively been erased, meaning they were completely emptied of their residents. In 2026 alone, as of mid-June, Israeli citizens, armed and backed by the army, have expelled 2200 Palestinians.”

This is what the person living in Gaza describes as the “silence that is skilled at betrayal”.

Just as it does with Māori, New Zealand uses laudable language to give the appearance of care and decency, but it is a veneer that masks deep insincerity and an unwillingness to take concrete steps to actively protect rights.

There is no doubt the coalition government has “betrayed” the Palestinian people of Gaza, the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. But in fact they’ve done worse. They have potentially made New Zealand complicit in the act of genocide.

Not fulfilled obligations
It is likely that New Zealand has not fulfilled its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948, which requires that “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”

Chris Sidoti is an international human rights lawyer, an expert on national human rights institutions, and a member of The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In a recent address in Wellington, he argued that, in addition to not committing genocide, states had an obligation to prevent it.

“States shall act to prevent the commission of genocide and shall punish the commission of genocide. New Zealand has an international legal obligation to act to prevent the commission of genocide.

“That does not require that genocide actually occur. My prime minister, from Australia, is very keen on saying we can’t say whether this is genocide or not. We’re waiting for the International Court of Justice to decide that issue, which may be in the next five or 10 years.

“That’s not the obligation. The obligation is to act to prevent genocide. It is a prior obligation, and it’s an obligation that is designed to ensure that genocide never exists. So it is an obligation in advance.

“In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued what are called provisional measures, which is like an injunction under your law and ours. And in issuing provisional measures, the Court said that there is a risk that the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention are being or will be infringed. Now, you cannot get a more authoritative case. As of January 2024, all parties to the Genocide Convention have been under an obligation to act to prevent. And the question therefore is, what have you done?”

I recently sought access, through the Official Information Act, to the advice received by the government on New Zealand’s complicity under the Genocide Convention. The government’s decision to withhold the information was reviewed by the Office of the Ombudsman, which in turn supported the government’s right to withhold the advice under legal privilege, as in their view it was not outweighed by the public interest in releasing that information.

How could it not be in the public interest to understand New Zealand’s obligation to act, or otherwise, to prevent genocide?

Labour’s principled stance
Recently, Labour’s foreign policy spokesperson, Vanushi Walters, visited Canberra and met with Noura Saleh, Chargé d’Affaires for the State of Palestine. She is the Palestinian ambassador responsible for the diplomatic relationship between Palestine and Australia and New Zealand.

The last time New Zealand had one-to-one diplomatic engagement with the Canberra-based Palestinian Authority ambassador to New Zealand and Australia was in 2022, when Izzat Salah Abdulhadi visited Wellington at the invitation of former foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta.

That the current government has had no engagement with the ambassador speaks volumes. It’s another example of silence, and silencing.

Sure, New Zealand engages diplomatically at the UN and through its ambassadors in Türkiye and Egypt, but this is all done behind closed doors. The absence of any effort to build a relationship with the Palestinian Authority closer to home is another dimension of betrayal.

What is particularly important as a result of Vanushi Walters’ engagement with Noura Saleh is that she articulated the Labour Party position on Palestine heading into the 2026 election.

Walters stated that Labour was clear about what it would have done if in government now: “We would have recognised Palestine. We would have sanctioned Israel. We would have looked to join South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ. We would have ensured that New Zealand complies with the ICJ opinion on the Occupied Territories.”

This is similar to the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori positions. Both parties have consistently called out Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, and criticised the government for failing to prohibit New Zealand entities from engaging with illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Illegal engagement
Such engagement is illegal under international law, as reflected in a UN Security Council resolution (UNSC 2334), which New Zealand co-sponsored in 2016. The resolution states that nations must cease engagement with settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Successive New Zealand governments have ignored this requirement and continue to do so.

Last year, the Green Party championed a private member’s bill, which sought to apply sanctions against Israel for its illegal occupation and rapid expansion of settlements in the Palestinian territories. The bill, modelled on the Russia Sanctions Act 2022, which imposed sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine, was supported by Labour and Te Pāti Māori, but the coalition government opposed it.

It is time to support those political parties that more accurately reflect the values of compassion, kindness, and human decency, as expressed through tikanga Māori.

John Hobbs has been a career public servant, working for various government departments and ministers. He has a Master of Commerce (Hons) in Economics from the University of Auckland and a Master of Arts (Thesis) with Distinction in Peace and Conflict Studies, from the University of Otago. He is currently undertaking a PhD at Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa, The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies — Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, Otago University.

This article was first published by E-Tangata and is republished with the author’s permission.

Television New Zealand outdid itself last week.

For decades it has been a direct funnel for Israeli propaganda into our living rooms and last week TVNZ news editors managed to turn an Israeli pogrom against a Palestinian community into the need for Israel to launch a “major counter-terrorism operation” against Palestinians.

• READ MORE: Israel kills 19 in Gaza as attacks escalate despite latest Trump plan
• Other Palestinian resistance reports
• Other John Minto reports

Here is the complaint we have lodged with TVNZ:

Complaint Re 1News 6pm news bulletin on Saturday, 25 July 2026, under the free to air broadcasting standard #6 related to accuracy.

Context
The context in which this news item was presented to viewers is that Israeli settlers, backed by the Israeli military, have been conducting violent attacks on Palestinian communities across the Occupied West Bank over many years, but most intensively over the past three years.

These attacks have been labelled pogroms where Palestinians have been killed, their houses and cars torched, their property destroyed, their livestock stolen and no redress available from the Israeli state.

This situation has been documented exhaustively by the United Nations, human rights groups in Israel and internationally — including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

There are thousands of videos online recorded these attacks as well as numerous in-depth analyses showing this is a central strategy of the Israeli state to steal Palestinian land and dispossess the Palestinian people.

The New Zealand government has a public list of the most notorious of these settlers who it refuses to let enter New Zealand.

All this would have been known to 1News editors even if 1News has chosen not to inform the wider public in any significant manner in its news bulletins.

1News report on Saturday, 25 July, 6pm
The news report included some indeterminate footage with the 1News presenter saying:

“Israel has launched a major counterterrorism offensive in the Occupied West Bank following a deadly clash between Palestinian residents and Israeli settlers and security forces.

“Four Palestinians and two Israelis including a security guard and a soldier were killed in the incident in a village south of Nablus. Several others from both groups were injured.
Palestinians say settlers targeted their homes. Israel says a group of Israeli hikers were attacked.”

Our complaint
1News framed the report in Israeli propaganda terms by stating “Israel has launched a major counterterrorism offensive”.

1News failed to attribute its description of a “counterterrorism offensive” to whatever Israeli sources it was relying on to frame it in such a way.

A “counterterrorism offensive” is an Israeli government claim. 1News has reported it as a fact, that Israel is responding and not initiating action, and that the nature of that action is “counterterrorism”.

The 1News claim is similar to the non-attribution of a statement made by ThreeNews, for which the BSA upheld a complaint, on 22 April 2025-081, when the reporter stated that “Israel chose to respond to … ceasefire violations”.

In the July 25 instance, viewers are told by 1News that Israel was responding to a terrorist attack, or attacks, of some sort.

However, it was blatantly clear to anyone who had read any online reports that the recent violence started as a co-ordinated settler pogrom against a Palestinian community with the Israeli government endorsed aim of ethnic cleansing.

The 1News framing editorially points the finger at Palestinians as the attackers/aggressors and Israelis as the victims — the inverse of the truth.

1News’ presentation of Israel’s justification for its “counterterrorism offensive” is a response to “an attack on Israeli hikers”.

This Israeli explanation would have been ignored or pointed out as not true, if it had been subjected to basic journalistic scrutiny.

In the context of the incident described above it was so implausible as to be laughable.

Hikers don’t set fire to vehicles, destroy property and terrorise Palestinian families. There was plenty of evidence available for 1News to ignore or dismiss Israel’s explanation.

Alongside the lead-in to the story, the 1News description of a “deadly clash”’ is an assumption of it being Palestinians who were in the wrong.

The 1News report helps give political cover to Israel to continue its ethnic cleansing policies against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

It encourages viewers to see Palestinians as the problem. Such framing of events gives Israel impunity in its war crimes (ethnic cleansing is a war crime).

It is literally a deadly framing for Palestinians.

This 1News report, like the majority of Western agency reporting on the Middle East, centres Israeli narratives, Israeli explanations and Israeli justifications with barely a passing nod to Palestinians.

The report amounts to a lie.

John Minto is national campaign coordinator of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). Republished from PSNA with permission.

Failing To Report for Duty

I’m feeling guilty at not writing down
all the speeches: the speeches by people
whose voices I recorded, the speeches by
people whose notes I photographed, like
the speech by Mark the impassioned unionist,
who pointed out that the bastards on the top
floor are still meeting behind closed doors,
or
the speech by Josephine the impassioned
professor who pointed out that the leaders
who don’t listen to the people are pushing
the people towards a revolution.
or
the speech by Claire who spoke about
the doctor in Gaza who has been imprisoned
and tortured for treating the victims shot in the
chest and between the eyes, little children,
a doctor who kept on trying to save the
children after his own child died. Imprisoned
now. What was his crime?

I’m feeling guilty about not getting it all
down, not writing each speech into a story,
for a news stream that would reach everyone
that would lead to the biggest change ever –
one story that would topple the tyrants and
change the world.

Like one of those stories I thought I would write
when I wanted to become a journalist and then
I became a journalist and I tried to write down
all the speeches and nothing
changed nothing
at all.
— Saige England

Okay, so that’s the poem. And though it sounds a tad hopeless we did have a success last week. So I do have hope. It’s a struggle but we must unite and not give up.

We spoke truth to power and the powerful folded.

Thanks to rallies
Organised by NZDE – New Zealanders for A Democratic Economy, the protesters continue to protest against the attempted privatisation of assets including the port, and the erosion of democracy modelled by the Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CHCHL).

Fortunately some other journalists did manage to write up a report on the protest on Friday outside the CHCHL building.

And thanks to Dr David Robie who published my report about DP World for Asia Pacific Report:

Thanks to Dr Josephine Varghese who lectures in languages and political studies at the University of Canterbury, who rallies time and again for the people who are oppressed.

Thanks to Claire Coveney from Amnesty International, who rallies for the oppressed.

And thanks to Maritime Transport Union’s Lyttelton branch secretary Mark Wilson and Maritime Union Lyttelton branch secretary Gerard Loader who rally for the people.

I learned the lesson a long time ago that people need to join together for change. It’s a great catch cry and it is a cry that has been uttered over and again. As people rise up against wrong:

The people united will never be defeated.

Boosting your spirits
So here are some SONGS to boost your spirits. (I will long remember seeing Palestinian men dancing when Destiny Church members challenged them with racist hatred. The Palestinian men danced against hate. Kicked up their legs and danced).

In similar spirit, here’s a clip when thousands of people of the “Sardines Movement” in Italy rose up against rightwing parties and sang Bella Ciao.

Thousands of people sing Bella Ciao in Turin, Italy.   Video: Luca Dibattista

Breaking unions is a way to break the people. Here’s a clip of the old hit song (banned by the British government at the time) that rings true today (though I would add “woman” into the lyrics, because I’m a staunch union-supporting woman)

A big shout out to all healthcare workers — support the nurses!

Strawbs — part of the union.                 Video: Top 40 1973

Thanks to Sara Campbell and Marney Ainsworth and John Minto and Keep Our Assets (Murray Horton) who rally for a fair deal for the people and the environment, and thanks to Harry Robson and other members of NZDE.

Thanks to all the people who protest against oppression and who stand with the oppressed. Free free Palestine!

Toitū Tiriti!

And thanks to all the journalists, here, there, and everywhere, who risk their livelihoods or their lives to report the truth.

Everyone who does something. Every reporter, every petitioner and protester and letter writer, every poet, every one who rallies for community with community, we do see you!

Saige England is a humanitarian journalist and activist for community and the environment. She was present at the Lyttelton public meeting last week in support of community action. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

During the ongoing Israeli genocide of Gaza, Palestinian journalists have been courageously reporting under Israel’s bombs, drones and snipers. More than 260 journalists have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023 alone.

Reporting on Israeli bombardments and firing continues to be extremely dangerous for Palestinian journalists, who are completely cut off from the world.

It is at this point which media giant Al Jazeera reportedly abruptly ended the contracts of 24 journalists in Gaza it had employed, breaking earlier alleged promises of job security with the channel.

• READ MORE: The essential role of journalists in Gaza and the West Bank — UN
• 60%–75% of surviving journalists in Gaza have lost their homes or been forcibly displaced
• Other Gaza journalists reports

Al Jazeera in Gaza is dismissing some of the most important and prominent journalists who carried the responsibility of delivering the truth throughout the months of war, in a humiliating way that does not reflect the sacrifices they made.

These journalists stood on the front…

— Tamer Nahed (@Tamer_Alnoaizy) July 26, 2026

According to reports from Gaza, the journalists’ “salaries were stopped and they were referred to a private company identified as “Media,” where they would be paid on a piecework basis without permanent contracts, insurance or clear employment protections.”

This is after many of the terminated journalists had for years risked their lives reporting and filming Israel’s crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.

In fact, without their footage and reports, Al Jazeera could not have produced and financially gained from its own breaking reports.

One of these journalists is cameraman Mahmoud Shalha, who was the cameraman for well-known and beloved journalist Anas al-Sharif. Together, they courageously covered relentless Israeli bombardments in northern Gaza.

Murdered journalists
Sharif and five other journalists were murdered when Israel attacked the Al Jazeera journalists’ tent at Shifa hospital on August 10, 2025.

Shalha was called away from the site by an uncle just a few hours before the Israeli airstrike, he said, noting he had worked alongside Anas and the other journalists daily throughout the genocide.

أهذا حقًّا ما كان ينتظرني؟

في أي لحظة، كان من الممكن أن أكون شهيدًا وأنا أنقل المشهد والصورة، وأحاول إيصال الحقيقة إلى العالم. لكنني اليوم أجد نفسي، بكل أسف، مفصولًا من قناة الجزيرة دون سابق إنذار.

أنا الناجي الوحيد من استهداف خيمة قناة الجزيرة عند بوابة مستشفى الشفاء، والذي…

— Mahmoud.b.shalha محمود شلحة (@Mahmoudshalh) July 25, 2026

He wrote about his abrupt termination by Al Jazeera:

“At any moment, I could have been a martyr while transporting the scene and the images, trying to convey the truth to the world. But today, I find myself, with all due regret, severed from Al Jazeera channel without any prior warning.

“Since the beginning of the war, I worked as a cameraman with Al Jazeera’s martyred correspondent Anas al-Sharif, then with the two martyrs Anas al-Sharif and Muhammad Qurayqea after our colleague Fadi al-Wahidi was injured, and I continued my work with the channel after their martyrdom, despite the risks and harsh conditions.”

His post goes on to highlight that this work was his mission which he believed in, and was the sole source of income to support his family.

’15 second call’
“But a phone call that didn’t exceed fifteen seconds was enough to end it all. Al Jazeera’s management informed me of the termination of my employment, without explaining any reason, or giving prior notice, or paying my dues, and even without a single word of thanks.”

Al Jazeera exploited Palestinian journalists from Gaza, using their heroism and courage under Israeli fire—reporting during the worst of Israeli atrocities against Palestinian civilians and journalists and still reporting now—and now has abruptly ended the contracts of 24…

— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) July 27, 2026

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate reported at the end of June that 60 percent–75 percent of the surviving journalists in Gaza have lost their homes or have been forcibly displaced, reporting that, “journalists in Gaza have been subjected to an unprecedented campaign targeting their lives, workplaces, and homes, in the context of a war that has sought not only to silence their voices but also to uproot the very environment in which journalism is practised.”

Journalists in Gaza upload their work from tents or wherever of the sparse locations there is an internet connection. These are impossible conditions for most people, but Palestinian journalists deal with it in order to keep conveying their reality to an outside world that has seemingly lost interest after a so-called ceasefire in October 2025.

NO CEASEFIRE, ISRAEL CONTINUES TO GENOCIDE GAZA

The Cradle reported on July 27 that since the 11 October 2025 “ceasefire,” 1203 Palestinians have been killed, 3900 wounded. These murders are due to Israeli attacks which continue near-daily in Gaza, far from most news headlines now.

The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate has called on Al Jazeera to reconsider the termination of the journalists and contracted staff working with Al Jazeera Mubasher (Live) in the Gaza Strip.

It said it had received a complaint from affected journalists and employees who objected to the termination of their contracts and their transfer to a private media company. “Media organisations, regardless of their stature, have a professional and ethical responsibility to honour their commitments to employees and to handle contractual or administrative changes in a fair and transparent manner.”

Prominent journalists dismissed
As other Palestinians in Gaza pointed out, “Al Jazeera in Gaza is dismissing some of the most important and prominent journalists who carried the responsibility of delivering the truth throughout the months of war, in a humiliating way that does not reflect the sacrifices they made.

“…These journalists lived through every detail of the war, faced threats, had their photos placed on wanted lists, and were separated from their families and children out of fear of being targeted yet they chose to remain in the field and continue telling the truth, no matter the cost. These journalists do not deserve for years of courage and sacrifice to be reduced to this. They deserved recognition, loyalty, and respect not humiliation and an ending that ignores everything they gave.”

On July 26, The non-profit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor published a statement calling for urgent international efforts, “to lift the media blackout in the Gaza Strip, protect journalists, enable the immediate entry of independent international media, and ensure access to protective gear and press equipment, as journalists continue to be targeted for over 1000 days during the ongoing genocide in the enclave.”

It notes that since October 2023 alone, “more than 262 journalists have been killed in the Gaza Strip, with hundreds more injured or arrested, according to local and international press and human rights institutions, marking the highest toll recorded against media workers in any contemporary conflict.”

I’ve shared any of reports of what Palestinian journalists put their lives on the line for — and indeed paid for with the lives — to share their reality of Palestinians being hunted and massacred in Israel’s still ongoing genocide of Gaza.

If Al Jazeera does not reverse its unjust decision, then it is grossly unjust on these courageous journalists whose footage and reporting Al Jazeera wouldn’t have had without them.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian activist and freelance journalist who has lived in Gaza for three years. This article had no response from Al Jazeera.

Trump’s Iran “deal” isn’t a deal. It’s hos third retreat in four months.

April 2026: 48-hour ultimatum, then a two-week delay.

July: “13 straight days of strikes,” then a pause “to give peace talks some space.”

August 1: a fresh wave of attacks cancelled — the one he had just threatened — citing “the perimeters of a deal”.

• READ MORE: Trump cancels planned attacks on Iran, calls for a deal to be made rapidly
• Other Lim Tean articles

The pattern never changes. Maximalist threat first, loud and absolute. Then an unsigned framework — no enforcement, no timeline, no verification.

Hormuz is still not open. Iran’s IRGC hit tankers under US “aerial escort” the Friday before this latest climbdown.

This is the Paper Shield exposed in real time. ABC’s own sourcing flags depleting Patriot interceptor stocks as a live constraint on further strikes.

Riyadh called Trump directly to caution against escalating. That’s not strength — that’s a president being managed by his own logistics tail.

Bluster works once. By cycle three, Tehran and Riyadh have both priced it in.

Iran will keep hitting tankers for exactly as long as it costs Washington nothing but words.

Malaysia stands firm
Meanwhile, Malaysia has just shown the world something rare — a government that won’t be bought.

An Israeli-American dual national was found at a tech retreat in Johor. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s answer was immediate: the dual nationality Israeli was asked to leave. Malaysia does not recognise Israel — full stop.

Washington’s response? The US summoned Malaysia’s ambassador. Eight members of Congress gave Kuala Lumpur 15 days to reverse course or lose military education funding.

Anwar’s answer: “That will not deter us.”

This is what I call the Legitimacy Principle in action — a government’s strength isn’t measured by how much force it can project, but by whether its people, and the wider world, believe it’s doing the right thing.

Anwar has just bet that standing firm on Palestine is worth more than Washington’s money.

Watch closely: this is the same logic that slowly made apartheid South Africa unsustainable — not one act, but the accumulation of states refusing to pay the price of complicity.

Small states rarely get to write the rules. Every so often, one gets to show what happens when it refuses to be governed by them.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

As +972 Magazine’s audience engagement manager, social media is a huge part of my job. I use it daily — not only to promote the magazine’s articles, but also to gauge audience reactions, opinions, and ideas regarding our work.

We simply cannot escape using social media: Most of our readers are there, and it is where millions of people around the world get their news and analysis.

But doing this work also puts me in the position of seeing how social media reacts to our content. I don’t mean the people there; I mean the hidden hand that is the platforms’ algorithms and policies.

• READ MORE: +972 Magazine independent journalism from Israel-Palestine

In other words, I see how some posts remain hidden from much of our audience, while others spread far and wide.

Among Palestinians, and those who write and report on Palestine, it has been common knowledge for years that social media platforms are not neutral, and have in fact actively fought against Palestine-related content — even to the point of limiting posts that merely contain the word Palestine in Arabic.

Palestinians and Arabs alike have responded to this by trying to trick the system: misspelling the word Palestine, or hiding the word shaheed (martyr) by inserting periods and commas.

For the most part, this suppression has remained anecdotal. No one knew exactly how these systems work or what the algorithms prioritise. People could describe the censorship they were experiencing, but evidence of a formal policy was difficult to come by.

Thanks to an extensive new Palestinian-led investigation into Meta, however, that is no longer the case.

Five years of deliberate erasure
7amleh (pronounced “Hamleh”), the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, gathered more than 3500 documented cases of Meta restricting Palestinian content over the past five years, on platforms including Facebook and Instagram. They gave this phenomenon a name, “platformicide,” describing the deliberate erasure of Palestinian existence and narratives in the digital sphere.

On the latest episode of The +972 Podcast, I spoke to 7amleh’s executive director, Nadim Nashif, about what exactly they discovered — and how we can fight back.

Meta is censoring Palestinian content, and now we have proof

The consequences, especially in Gaza, have been life or death. Social media is one of a few avenues for Gazans to document attacks, issue warnings, and communicate information that can determine whether others survive.

Yet Meta has repeatedly restricted their accounts, blocked them from live-streaming, and removed footage under policies related to violence or dangerous organisations, even when the material was clearly journalistic.

Although facing an uphill battle, 7amleh’s work shows that these policies can and should be challenged. To do so, Nashif argues, civil society must develop methods of holding technology companies accountable — methods grounded not in anecdote, but in evidence.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Nadim Nashif, and subscribe to The +972 Podcast wherever you listen.

Republished from +972 magazine.

The Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand was typically restrained, dignified but crystal clear when he responded to Foreign Minister Winston Peter’s racist outburst in Parliament this week.

Wang Xiaolong said on X: “We have absolutely no interest in being dragged into the domestic politics of other countries. Suffice it to say, sometimes, a statement says more about the person that makes it than anything or anybody else.” Boom.

On Wednesday, Green Party MP Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan heckled the Foreign Minister about his vaccination status during a debate in Parliament. The notoriously thin-skinned Peters shouted: “I know you just came here five minutes ago. Go back where you come from, you loud mouth!”

• READ MORE: ‘There’s a game going on here’: Luxon asks for votes in response to Peters’ immigrant comments
• Winston Peters ‘inviting a sacking’ with attack on Chinese-born MP, says Helen Clark

We have absolutely no interest in being dragged into the domestic politics of other countries. Suffice it to say, sometimes, a statement says more about the person that makes it than anything or anybody else.

— Wang Xiaolong (@AmbChina2NZ) July 29, 2026

For the record Dr Xu-Nan, born in Tianjin, China, arrived in New Zealand as a child in the 1990s. He is the Green Party’s first Chinese MP and says he “hopes to create bridges across various tauiwi [ethnically diverse] communities and bring together the collective wisdom of these communities to find solutions to the bigger challenges facing Aotearoa [New Zealand].” Exemplary.

In contrast, in the space of 30 seconds, the undiplomatic Foreign Minister racially insulted a fellow MP, derided the Chinese government, cast slurs on immigrants and rehearsed talking points better suited to a MAGA rally in Eastern Kentucky than the New Zealand Parliament.

In response to criticism, including from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, the Foreign Minister doubled down, flaming the Chinese system of government.

“We live in a democracy that includes free speech and rights — those two values that certain other countries not only limit, but do so with force. If that offends the pearl clutchers and the communist shills labelling it as ‘dangerous’ — welcome to New Zealand,” the country’s top diplomat said.

The Chinese Ambassador’s comments have just proven the point I made in the House yesterday.

No amount of pearl clutching and faux outrage is going to change it.

We live in a democracy that includes free speech and rights – those two values that other certain countries not…

— Winston Peters (@winstonpeters) July 30, 2026

Revealing US poll
It is worth pointing out that, according to polling, as reported by the conservative US outlet Newsweek, the overwhelming majority of people living in China (83 percent) say they live in a democracy whereas only 43 percent of people in the United States say the US is a democracy.

Why a Foreign Minister would do this is baffling. News outlets across Asia, including The Straits Times and South China Morning Post, carried news of the slurs against China dished out by the New Zealand minister. It made news in France and as far away as Kenya.

Peters likes using spicy language but his insult to the ambassador and the Chinese system of government is gratuitous and will not be welcome in Beijing where New Zealand’s share price has been dropping sharply since the Luxon government ramped up both anti-China rhetoric and moved rapidly to more deeply integrate with the US military. Ludicrously, the PM simultaneously says he wants to double trade with China!

Bianca Ranson of Anti War Aotearoa, which advocates for a more respectful engagement with China, said Peter’s comments were deliberately insulting to China and the Chinese people.

“He’s not fit to be foreign minister. At a time when tensions are heightened around immigrants and racism, we have Winston Peters reaching for the far-right playbook, emboldening racists and giving them an example of how to treat others. New Zealand’s support for Israel has already damaged our standing in the world and this just underlines that something has gone seriously wrong.”

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which New Zealand ratified in 1972, says that signatory states and their officials commit “to engage in no act or practice of racial discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions and to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions, national and local, shall act in conformity with this obligation.”

Dog-whistling to his base
Peters was clearly dog-whistling to his primary base — those older white New Zealanders who lean into rather than away from anti-Māori, anti-immigrant, and anti-Chinese invective. With elections coming up in November, the Foreign Minister would rather damage relations with both China (our greatest trading partner) and the hundreds of thousands of New Zealand citizens of Chinese ethnicity in order to pull in a few extra votes.

His New Zealand First Party regularly race-baits, with one MP telling non-white MPs to “show some gratitude” and talking about a “butter chicken tsunami” at the time of the recent visit to New Zealand of India’s PM Narendra Modi.

“We have a PM who is so weak that he fails to show any kind of leadership in protecting our most important trading partnership,” Bianca Ranson says.

“He allows the minister of foreign affairs to insult other nations and peoples. It’s actually quite weird to have a foreign minister trotting out this old white boy racist stuff like this. If Luxon doesn’t act, that too will speak volumes.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He also contributes to Asia Pacific Report and he hosts solidarity.co.nz

“When you’re speaking in Parliament you may think you have a hat on as NZ1st leader but….offshore you are going to be seen as foreign minister. The statements you make will either give credit to your country or they won’t. We know what the case is here.” https://t.co/Tyw5t3Zjdy

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) July 31, 2026

The people won. The environment won. The Lyttelton port remains in public hands. For now.

Please join the protest tomorrow. There is more on the table. And the battle for the port is far from over.

The DP World deal being dropped can be attributed to rousing support and brilliant speakers who moved hearts and minds at a public meeting in Lyttelton two weeks ago. Thanks to these people and organisations the proposed deal with DP World (yes, that predator company with a shocking track record) has been turned down.

• READ MORE: Christchurch City Holdings rejects DP World-backed proposal to take over Lyttelton Port
• Capitalism. Colonialism. Why the DP World money trail leads to destruction — Saige England
• A tale of power being taken from the people and handed to predator companies
• Other Lyttelton Port reports

The people united and they were not defeated!

One of the public meeting speakers, environmental campaigner Sara Campbell, says: “While this is a win in the fight for public control of public assets … the fight is far from over.”

A protest outside CCHL offices tomorrow will go ahead as planned. At those offices, the CCHL will be deciding on LPC’s $800 million proposal to expand the port, which includes further land reclamation.

“We are demanding that LPC-CCHL does not proceed without full public scrutiny, consultation and partnership with mana whenua,” says Campbell.

The official ‘back down’
This is the official press release from the Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CCHL) backing down from the proposed DP World deal:

“Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CCHL) have declined to proceed with a proposal to lease operations at the port.

“The unsolicited proposal from Tōnui Consortium, representing DP World and three Runanga: Ngāti Wheke, Ngāi Tūāhuriri, and Te Taumutu, was received by CCHL in June.

“The consortium proposed acquiring a majority interest in a long-term lease of the operating entity of LPC.

“CCHL Chair, Bryan Pearson, acknowledged the effort by the Tōnui Consortium in considering the future of Lyttelton Port and preparing the proposal. ‘Lyttelton Port is a strategic asset for the city and region, and there are diverse groups within our community with interests in its future,’ says Bryan Pearson.

“’Our assessment of the proposal, as presented, is it does not meet the threshold for ongoing consideration and is not sufficiently compelling to warrant further detailed investigation by CCHL, or additional consultation with Council given its Letter of Expectation.’

“CCHL is mindful of the LPC workforce and the breadth of community interest in the port’s operation.Christchurch City Council’s 2026/2027 Letter of Expectation to CCHL is explicit in its direction, which does not support leasing the port and encourages retention of a directly employed workforce.

“CCHL reached its conclusion specifically considering LPC’s improving operational and financial performance, as well as input provided by LPC on the resilience of its infrastructure and the leadership required to maintain a culture of safety and efficiency.

“Bryan Pearson says ‘CCHL maintains full confidence in the LPC board and management and their operation of the port, and continues to work closely with LPC in considering the port’s long-term development and associated investment.'”

My view on this is that this is one victory and full credit goes those who spoke against this deal, who rallied and organised and spoke against the devious bid: NZDE — New Zealanders for a Democratic Economy; the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) Lyttelton branch secretary Gerard Loader; the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) Lyttelton Port branch secretary Mark Wilson; environmental campaigner Sara Campbell; human rights and Keep Our Assets campaigner John Minto; Marney Ainsworth and the Māori people who spoke up — and all the people who signed the petition against this potential travesty.

In these times when there seems to be few gains — when so much is taken out of public hands — it is great to see people move change.

The change came because the people spoke out. They used their hearts and minds.
The people won but it is a temporary win.

This was a close call. Too close. Predator companies still loom large and secret meetings are still being held behind closed doors.

It’s not the end. The battle continues. We need to keep our port clean and safe for the people and the environment.

KOA welcomes ‘victory’
Keep Our Assets convenor Murray Horton said KOA was pleased that Christchurch City Holdings Ltd (CCHL) had rejected the unsolicited proposal from the Tōnui Consortium (comprising DP World and three runanga) to acquire a long term lease of Lyttelton Port Company’s (LPC) operations.

“This is a victory for common sense. Lyttelton Port is a vital strategic asset for Christchurch, Canterbury, the South Island and, indeed, the whole country. So, it is vital that it remains in public ownership and control, subject to democratic accountability through the elected Christchurch City Council,” he said.

”KOA congratulates the port unions and grassroots community groups who have successfully campaigned to keep our port public.

“It would have been particularly egregious if DP World, 100 percent state-owned by the United Arab Emirates, had got its sticky fingers on Lyttelton’s revenue stream. The UAE is a highly dodgy state indeed.

“We savour the victory but know that we can’t relax our vigilance. Lyttelton is an attractive target for transnational corporations and their local allies. This is not the first time a move has been made on our port. Twenty years ago a similar unsuccessful bid was made, involving a Hong Kong corporation. There well be another ‘unsolicited offer’ in the future.”

And KOA was fully aware that, behind closed doors, CCHL was conducting a review of Enable, the broadband company, and another of CCHL’s portfolio of publicly-owned companies. There remained a threat to sell that, said Horton.

“Time and again the people of Christchurch have made it very clear that they want the city’s publicly-owned assets to remain exactly that. This decision by CCHL recognises that reality.”

And the last word goes to MUNZ’s Gerard Loader: “We thank the people of Lyttelton and greater Christchurch getting in behind this campaign as it was all for our next generations and what we leave for them.

“From the bottom of our hearts.

“Now we have crossed the DP World hurdle our focus now turns to keeping ‘Enable’ in the hands of future generations, so the fight continues.’

“See you all at the march tomorrow.”

In solidarity.

Saige England is a humanitarian journalist and activist for community and the environment. She was present at the Lyttelton public meeting last week in support of community action. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

• Tomorrow’s protest rally outside the CCHL offices 8-10am

Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CCHL) has declined to proceed with a controversial proposal to lease operations at the port, the company announced today after recent public meetings denounced the proposal.

The unsolicited proposal from Tōnui Consortium, representing DP World and three Runanga: Ngāti Wheke, Ngāi Tūāhuriri, and Te Taumutu, was received by CCHL in June, said CCHL in a statement.

The consortium proposed acquiring a majority interest in a long-term lease of the operating entity of LPC.

• READ MORE: Capitalism. Colonialism. Why the DP World money trail leads to destruction — Saige England
• A tale of power being taken from the people and handed to predator companies
• Other Lyttelton Port reports

CCHL chair Bryan Pearson acknowledged the effort by the Tōnui Consortium in considering the future of Lyttelton Port and preparing the proposal.

“Lyttelton Port is a strategic asset for the city and region, and there are diverse groups within our community with interests in its future,” said Pearson in the statement.

“Our assessment of the proposal, as presented, is it does not meet the threshold for ongoing consideration and is not sufficiently compelling to warrant further detailed investigation by CCHL, or additional consultation with council given its Letter of Expectation.”

CCHL was mindful of the LPC workforce and the breadth of community interest in the port’s operation, the statement said.

Explicit direction
Christchurch City Council’s 2026/2027 Letter of Expectation to CCHL was explicit in its direction, which did not support leasing the port and encouraged retention of a directly employed workforce.

CCHL reached its conclusion specifically considering LPC’s improving operational and financial performance, as well as input provided by LPC on the resilience of its infrastructure and the leadership required to maintain a culture of safety and efficiency.

Pearson said: “CCHL maintains full confidence in the LPC board and management and their operation of the port, and continues to work closely with LPC in considering the port’s long-term development and associated investment.”

A packed public meeting in Lyttelton earlier this month opposed the takeover attempt by DP World of Lyttelton Port.

The meeting was organised by New Zealanders for A Democratic Economy.

Wednesday: The United States signs a civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. A “decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership,” Washington calls it.

Thursday: The President Trump logs onto social media and reneges — unilaterally slapping on a new condition that was never part of the deal he just signed.

The condition is that Saudi Arabia must sign on to the Abraham Accords and recognise Israel.

• READ MORE: Is the US-Saudi nuclear deal on, or in limbo?
• Other Lim Tean articles

No phone call to Riyadh first. No consultation. Just a Truth Social post, blindsiding the very partner he’d shaken hands with 24 hours earlier.

And here’s the part Washington seems not to grasp: this precondition is dead on arrival.

MBS has said it again and again, most recently as an official rejection just weeks ago — no normalisation with Israel without an independent Palestinian state, East Jerusalem as its capital, full stop.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry has called it “non-negotiable”. Trump is demanding surrender to a position Riyadh has never once wavered from.

Not statecraft
This is not statecraft. This is not deterrence. This is a superpower treating a sovereign signature as a rough draft — and then attaching a condition it knows, or should know, will never be met.

Ask Kyiv. Ask Tehran. Ask now Riyadh: what is an American signature actually worth?

The Legitimacy Principle is simple — power without consistency is not strength, it is liability.

A state that cannot honour its own agreements within a day, and cannot read its own partner’s red lines, cannot lead a rules-based order. It can only bully one, until the world stops showing up to sign.

Washington is agreement incapable.

Trump’s undercutting of the nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia shortly after it was signed by adding the requirement that the Saudis recognize Israel (they won’t) signals everyone including the Iranians that you can’t trust a deal with Trump. https://t.co/8QoDnZdBNF

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 26, 2026

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

A leading Palestine solidarity group in New Zealand has challenged Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to explain why his government has not revealed how the country voted at the International Criminal Court over the ouster of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan after intense Israeli and US lobbying.

Khan has been under attack from Israel and the US because he successfully filed arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said Israel and the US had “intensified their lobbying and diplomatic bullying” after an ICC Judicial Panel established to examine the evidence on claims of sexual abuse against Khan declared they were “unanimously of the opinion that the factual findings by OIOS (the ICC evidence collecting body) do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant legal framework”.

• READ MORE: Israel accused of ‘buying Pacific votes’ over plan to open Nauru embassy in Jerusalem
• Former UN oversight chief says ICC prosecutor Karim Khan is ‘victim of massive stitch-up’
• ‘Humiliating as a New Zealander’: Helen Clark slams decision to abstain on UN vote
• How Volker Turk won new UN rights chief term despite US, Israel opposition
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Israel and the US rejected the ICC legal ruling and demanded a vote of all member states of the ICC to remove Khan. That vote was held on Friday and Khan was removed from office.

“The key question for Mr Luxon is ‘Did we capitulate to Israel/US pressure, or did we stand up for the ICC’s legal processes?” Tamimi said in a statement.

“We are not able to make any judgment on the allegations against Mr Khan, but New Zealand should have voted against his expulsion and insisted a proper judicial process be followed.

“Did we?” asked Tamimi.

“In October last year, Foreign Minister Winston Peters issued a formal statement, with Nordic ministers in Stockholm, to ‘reaffirm our unwavering support for the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court’.”

“Mr Peters, did we waver on Friday?”

Khan’s removal lines up neatly with the fight to neutralise Netanyahu’s arrest warrant. Coincidence is a luxury intl law can no longer afford.

This proves that justice DOES threaten Apartheid Israel & Co. So if the ICC is paralysed, lawyers and judges worldwide must do more. https://t.co/wQEoPEoiIF

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) July 25, 2026

“New Zealand has already failed numerous times to uphold international law in the face of Israeli/US pressure. We want an assurance the Coalition [government] didn’t throw in the towel again.”

Controversy over NZ abstention
Meanwhile, there is also controversy over New Zealand’s abstention over the vote extending Volker Türk as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has strongly criticised the decision by New Zealand to abstain, saying the vote put the country in “very bad company” and made her “feel humiliated to be a New Zealander.”

New Zealand was one of just 13 countries to abstain in the UN General Assembly vote to reappoint Türk for another four years.

The General Assembly voted 144 in favour, 10 against with 13 abstentions to renew Türk’s four-year term from 12 October 2026 until 11 October 2030.

Astonished to see #NZ Govt vote against reappointment of @volker_turk as UN High Commissioner for #HumanRights. NZ was 1 of 13 abstentions; there were 144 Yes, 10 No. This demands a “please explain” from NZG as to why it didn’t support @antonioguterres recommendation to reappoint https://t.co/tkYvds42uL

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) July 25, 2026

The abstention placed New Zealand outside the overwhelming majority of UN member states that supported Secretary-General António Guterres’ recommendation to reappoint the Austrian diplomat, while also stopping short of joining the ten countries that opposed the appointment.

Turk, who has served in the role since 2022, will become the first person to serve two full terms as the UN rights chief since the position was created in 1993.

The role of UN human rights chief is inherently controversial because it requires public criticism of governments of UN members for alleged rights violations.

Turk’s outspoken criticism of policies in Israel, Russia and the US has put him at odds with all three countries.

Turk has repeatedly criticised Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, its deadly assault on Lebanon, and a “shameful” lack of accountability for its rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

In a secret vote on July 24, the member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) voted to remove Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan.

This was far more than a vote about the alleged serious misconduct of one powerful man. It represents an unprecedented institutional crisis for both the ICC and the entire system of international justice on which the Palestinian and other suffering people of the Global South still place hope.

The Western governments who led the campaign to oust Khan secured 82 votes, comfortably surpassing the required absolute majority of 63. Thirteen states voted against removal, 15 abstained.

• READ MORE: ICC prosecutor Karim Khan removed over ‘political’ sex abuse claims
• The Malaysian lawyer at the heart of the ICC crisis
• NZ called on to back international law in ICC vote – ‘don’t throw in towel’
• Other ICC reports

For the reasons outlined below, the vote in all likelihood is a statement of the West’s coercive power rather than a credible determination of Khan’s guilt.

Khan’s chief lawyer, Tayab Ali, expressed “regret” that the assembly of member states disregarded concerns about due process by more than 180 rights groups and legal experts.

“The decision is unsupported by any lawful or properly reasoned finding that Mr Khan KC committed…

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) July 25, 2026

On the surface, the member states voted on Khan’s fitness for office given the serious allegations of sexual misconduct levelled against him.

Two women charge that Khan used his position of power to sexually pressure them: “Sarah”, a Malaysian lawyer who served as his special assistant at the ICC and alleges he repeatedly subjected her to non-consensual sexual acts, and “Patricia”, who alleges he groped and harassed her as his unpaid intern in 2009, when he was a leading defence lawyer at the court.

On the other hand, the vote was the climax of a high-pressure Israeli and Western effort to unseat Khan after he submitted charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Back in March, a panel of judges tasked with reviewing the charges against Khan unanimously cleared the prosecutor of wrongdoing. In reporting to the ICC’s oversight body — the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) — the panel found that allegations against Khan did not establish Karim Khan’s misconduct or breach of duty under relevant framework.

In the normal course of affairs, this would have been a final determination.

Political vote
In an unprecedented manoeuvre, the Executive Bureau of the ASP decided to push ahead with Khan’s ouster by setting aside the legal process and turning it into a political vote by the member states.

As I reported earlier this week, more than 180 Palestinian civil society organisations and rights groups argued the disciplinary process “has been reduced to a political referendum following the national interests of individual States Parties”.

The Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Council (PHROC), the largest coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations, decried the Karim Khan disciplinary process saying it had “failed all parties” and is “corroding” the court’s independence.

In their statement, PHROC said: “Notably, the Bureau, as a political body composed of diplomats, does not have the independence, impartiality or legal expertise to make assessments on the legal characterisation of conduct, nor did it enjoy the same timeframe as the ad hoc Panel to independently examine the two reports and 5000 pages of evidence.”

Let’s be clear: if these states actually cared about justice for victims of sexual violence and the coercion of vulnerable women, men and children to the predation of powerful men, we would have seen the following:

They would have condemned Israel following the 2025 release of the United Nations “Report of the Commission of Inquiry: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023”.

Earlier this month I met Chris Sidoti, a distinguished Australian human rights lawyer. He is a member of the UN Commission which recently released its report, “The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023.

Children targeted
“There was the direct targeting of children by snipers and quadcopters, and here the evidence that we collected, subject to all those rigorous tests that we applied, left us in no doubt that children were being explicitly and deliberately targeted,” Sidoti said.

I have written about the sexual depravity committed against Palestinian prisoners at Sde Teiman prison by Israeli forces, including rape-murder. It was brought to the world’s attention by none other than Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the IDF’s Military Advocate General (Israel’s top military lawyer/prosecutor).

To date she is the only person who has been punished in relation to these sordid events; her crime was to secretly release the footage of Palestinian prisoners being sodomised with metal implements.

Netanyahu referred to the rapists as “our heroic soldiers”. As with all these examples, New Zealand, Australia, UK and all the Usual Suspects mumbled and averted their gaze.

Tearing down the pillars of international law is now a full-on Western project. Just this week, the US Secretary of State declared that Washington will lead a “whole-of-government response” to neutralise the court’s jurisdiction.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Marco Rubio said: “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary.”

One should never forget that Karim Khan’s predecessor as Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, was sanctioned, had her US assets frozen, and tormented by the Americans for having prepared a case against US forces for murder, torture and other war crimes in Afghanistan.

Western impunity
The case never went ahead; Western impunity was preserved.

Impunity is embedded in US law: the “Hague Invasion Act” is the informal name for the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA), a United States federal law passed in 2002. It authorises military action if any US military personnel or government officials face prosecution by the ICC at The Hague, Netherlands.

ICC judges from UK, Peru, France, Benin, Fiji, Slovenia, Georgia and Canada have had their credit cards blocked, their funds seized and their freedom of movement restricted through sanctions imposed by the US and supported by financial institutions, digital platforms and European governments.

Imagine that: judges unable to even pay for a meal in a restaurant because they committed the crime of fulfilling their duties under international law to prosecute war crimes. And the response from the Western governments? Silence.

Professor Yusra Suedi, international law scholar at the University of Manchester, told Pascal Lottaz this week: “I think that the International Criminal Court is a necessary idea. I think the history of geopolitics has indicated that something like this was needed in the world. The ICC’s institutional structure is an important source of hope for many people, especially during these difficult times.”

Lottaz, Associate Professor at Kyoto University, is the host of Neutrality Studies. He makes a very good point about the political value of the international courts: “In an imperfect world, they are a venue and a way to build political pressure.”

All victims of sexual violence should see the predators face justice. A court of law, not a political kangaroo court, is the appropriate venue to determine Karim Khan’s guilt or innocence.

I just wish that the US servicemen who recently killed the 165 schoolgirls and staff in Minab, Iran, would face justice. I wish that the US servicemen who raped and murdered hundreds of Vietnamese girls and women at My Lai faced justice.

I wish the rapists at Abu Ghraib and all the US black sites faced justice. I wish the thousands of Palestinian hostages suffering today through the living hell of the Israeli gulags could one day be free and see their tormentors face a reckoning before the law.

For the moment, thanks to New Zealand, Australia, the UK, US and all the other state sponsors of criminality, we do not live in such a world. May that day come soon.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He also contributes to Asia Pacific Report and he hosts solidarity.co.nz

A New Zealand national solidarity group for Palestine has condemned plans by Nauru to open an embassy in Jerusalem as an “alarming indication” of Israel diplomacy consolidating illegal occupation of Palestinian Territory and “buying Pacific votes” at the United Nations.

“Nearly half of the countries with embassies in Jerusalem are from the Pacific and this clearly shows the effort and dollars Israel is putting into the region,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) spokesperson Rinad Tamimi.

She said in a statement Israel was “unashamedly” using Pacific countries to undermine the international consensus that Israel’s claims over all of Jerusalem were not legally valid.

• READ MORE: Nauru’s government announces plans for embassy in Israel
• Pro-Palestinian activists plan protest against ‘Israeli pond’ diplomacy push in Pacific
• Fiji opens embassy in Jerusalem
• Let peace govern security – A pastoral message from the Pacific Conference of Churches
• Other Pacific and Israeli diplomacy reports

Israel and the government of Nauru announced this week that Nauru would open an embassy in Jerusalem, following news in January that Samoa would locate its embassy there.

Papua New Guinea and Fiji have already established their embassies in Jerusalem, along with the US, Paraguay, Honduras, Guatemala and Kosovo.

All other countries have their embassies in Tel Aviv to avoid inferring approval of Israeli sovereignty claims over Jerusalem.

“Tuvalu, with a population of 12,000, has only five diplomatic posts in the entire world — and suddenly its government finds a need to have another one in Jerusalem,” Tamimi said.

Pacific votes at UN
“The other concerning aspect is the Pacific votes in the United Nations.

“In 2024, there was a landmark vote in the United Nations to instruct Israel that it had 12 months to get out of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“New Zealand voted in favour, along with 123 other countries. But seven Pacific nations voted against upholding this statement of international law. That was half of the 14 countries who voted against,” Tamimi said.

“Obviously we are in favour of Pacific countries being independent and making their own choices. But PSNA is speaking out to support of indigenous groups in those countries who see Israel as a highly aggressive modern colonial venture which should not be permitted by their governments to manipulate the Pacific for its interests against international law.

“New Zealand’s government is critical when it believes other countries are increasing their interests in the Pacific. It’s time Wellington made the same statements about Israel.”

Basically we’ve got two choices: we either aggressively denormalise Israel or we watch our society become more and more Israeli.

We either collectively reject Israel, or we watch Western militaries fuse inseparably with the IDF.

We either turn support for Israel into political campaign poison, or we watch politicians obliterate our right to criticise Israel while backing increasingly evil Israeli military agendas.

We either ferociously oppose our government’s involvement in Middle Eastern wars, or we watch Israeli leaders grow more and more ecstatic as more and more Western blood and treasure flows into the war machine.

We either normalise viewing Israel as a freakish abomination, or we sit passively watching authoritarian Zionist operations like Palantir get inseparably interwoven into every level of western power institutions.

We either stand together to oppose Israel for the racist apartheid state that it is, or we watch our Muslim neighbors suffer increasing discrimination and abuse at home while our governments help massacre our Muslim brothers and sisters using high-tech war machinery abroad.

The West’s growing collective rejection of Israel is the growth of the Western conscience. The burgeoning pro-Palestine movement. The disgust with the Iran war. Young people’s cultural cringe around all things Israeli. The increasingly unapologetic eye-rolling every time “antisemitism” is used as an excuse to shut down criticism of Israel.

These are signs that we are growing morally healthier.

That’s a good thing. The more we unite around a red hot “NO” to Israel and Zionism, the harder it will be for those in power to normalise the increasing Israelification of our society.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

In this interview with Reza Nazar Ahari, the Iranian Ambassador to Wellington, we discussed the war, the state of diplomacy with the West, issues of sovereignty, defence and the internal politics of Iran.

He provided some fascinating analysis into why the Western strategy on Iran has been so disastrously flawed.

• READ MORE: Trump insists Tehran wants deal; Israeli army, settler attacks in West Bank
• Other War on Iran reports

The US has stated many objectives, many reasons for launching the war. For Iran, what is at stake?

The Americans have come to take control of all things in Iran — not just the oil of Iran and the land of Iran, but to take control of Iranians’ own identity, our independence and our way of life.

President Trump said once during the war, “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”. In spite of having suffered enormous damage and paid a heavy price, Iran has to defend itself because otherwise there will be no Iran.

Especially in the West, the way to eliminate your enemy is not only by hard power, by artillery, by guns. There are many other means: by the media, by demonising, by culturally attacking a country, by imposing sanctions. In the last decades we have been under all of these types of attacks. We are one of the best in the world in knowing how to counter all of these attacks.

What we’re seeing from Iran is you are very powerfully standing up for Iranian sovereignty in the face of an astonishing assault.

National identity is the main asset of any nation and it should be studied first. When President Trump said, “Iran must unconditionally surrender”, it suggests he has not read the history of this nation. Surrender is the worst thing for us. It’s the same with calling for zero enrichment, giving up our missiles and our allies – they don’t understand the identity of the Iranian people.

We fought against Saddam Hussein for 8 years to ensure we did not lose a centimetre of our land. When you don’t understand things like that, it can cause many mistakes, as we have seen.

This brings us to the important role that diplomats and analysts should play in helping foreign states understand the unique culture, political dynamics, and so on, of a country.

When you look back a century, when the British Empire wanted to have influence in our region, they sent their scholars, their scientists, their researchers to our countries. They lived with us, and understood the identity of the people. I’m not arguing about bad decisions or good decisions, but the decisions were always made through that very close study.

Today “expert” Americans just sit at their desks looking at the internet without knowing what happens in the heart of Iranians, in the mind of Iranians.

What you are suggesting is that an at-distance unfamiliarity with Iranian culture has led to strategic blunders that have hurt not just Iranians but Americans and the West.

Exactly. Americans started their war against Iran on the basis of what they did in Venezuela, and also what they were told by Israelis — “You target this, you kill these people, and all the people will come out to change their government.” It was very simplistic, very superficial, which helps explain why they failed.

Another mistake by Americans is that they think they can solve their problems with guns and missiles. They think that solves all problems, without the need to rethink, to analyse and to take a more profound approach.

How should the war launched by the US and Israel on February 28 be viewed through the lens of the United Nations Charter and its core principles, for example, the prohibition on the use of force and the respect for the territorial integrity of states?

There are obvious positions stated in the Charter of the United Nations that when a country is attacked or invaded by any country, it is the responsibility of other countries to condemn the attack and to help to stop that.

New Zealand did so in the Russia–Ukraine case. It immediately condemned Russia and imposed sanctions. However, when it came to Iran, there was no condemnation of the United States or the Israeli regime, nor were any sanctions imposed on them.

In the case of Iran, some countries even expressed positions in support of the aggressor rather than the country that had been attacked.

The West loves to talk about the international rules-based order, but as you said, we seem to be moving to the rule of the gun which is a tragedy for all of us. What would your advice be to medium-sized powers like New Zealand? How should they respond to that situation?

It is strange if a country — any country — makes their policies exactly like a country on the other side of the world just because they are allied nations. I believe each country should live according to their identity, not according to their alliances.

Each country has a unique identity, has unique geography, has unique capabilities, unique history, and according to them they should identify their unique foreign policy.

When we looked back in time at New Zealand, we found a sense of independence, making your own identity. In the past, for example, I think New Zealand very correctly believed that no nuclearisation should happen around its waters from both an environmental and from an international political point of view.

What is your rapport with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

Actually, it was strange to me, because after the US broke the ceasefire, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called me in. When the United States attacked Iran, they didn’t call in the American ambassador; they called me in! But it was an opportunity for me to explain the reason for the recent developments in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

Your posting here may finish at the end of this year. Any regrets? Any final impressions?

I actually love New Zealand because it gave a very peaceful experience for me and my family. Definitely when I leave New Zealand, I will miss this country and its very good people. I have one regret in regard to my time in New Zealand. I tried but I failed to encourage a think tank in international and political affairs, a space for very serious but informal dialogue with scholars focusing on the Middle East region, diplomats, foreign policy people.

This is called Track Two Diplomacy — it is very active in many countries, including Iran. I would encourage something like this in the field of international relations and diplomacy with Iran.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz

The Palestine Forum of New Zealand has condemned the latest Israeli assault on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, where thousands of illegal Israeli settlers stormed one of Islam’s holiest sites in a “deliberate act of provocation and religious aggression”.

The settlers were escorted by heavily armed occupation forces and led by the extremist Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“New Zealand must not remain silent,” said the Palestine Forum in a statement today.

• READ MORE: Arab and Muslim countries condemn Israeli storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque
• Eight Muslim countries condemn mass Israeli raid on Al-Aqsa
• Other Al-Aqsa reports

Eight Arab and Muslim-majority countries — Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and the United Arab Emirates — have strongly condemned the storming of the mosque compound by far-right groups and thousands of settlers.

The Palestine Forum said these actions were “neither isolated incidents nor spontaneous events”.

“They form part of a long-standing Israeli policy aimed at asserting control over occupied East Jerusalem, erasing Palestinian identity, and fundamentally altering the historic and legal status quo of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” the statement said.

The repeated military raids, restrictions on Palestinian worshippers, and intimidation of Islamic religious authorities constituted grave violations of international law, international humanitarian law, and the fundamental right to freedom of religion.

“The Palestine Forum of New Zealand is deeply alarmed by the continued silence and inaction of much of the international community,” the statement said.

‘Every failure fuels instability’
“Every failure to hold Israel accountable emboldens further violations, fuels instability, and undermines the very international legal order that democratic nations claim to uphold.”

New Zealand had long presented itself as a principled defender of international law and human rights. That commitment needed to be extended to Palestine.

“The New Zealand government cannot continue to issue generic statements of concern while Israel systematically violates international law with complete impunity.

“Silence in the face of injustice is not neutrality, it is acquiescence.”

The Palestine Forum called on the New Zealand government to:

• Publicly and unequivocally condemn the Israeli government’s escalating violations at Al-Aqsa Mosque;
• Reaffirm that East Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory and reject any attempt to alter its legal or historical status;
• Demand an immediate end to Israeli military incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the ongoing restrictions imposed on Palestinian worshippers;
• Support meaningful international accountability measures, including investigations into violations of international law and international humanitarian law; and
• Work with like-minded nations to ensure the protection of Palestinian civilians, religious sites, and cultural heritage under occupation.

‘Cultural heritage of humanity’
The targeting of Al-Aqsa Mosque was not merely an attack on a place of worship, said the Palestine Forum.

“It is an attack on the religious freedoms of millions of Palestinians, on the cultural heritage of humanity, and on the international legal framework governing occupied territory.”

The repeated incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque, the denial of access to Palestinian worshippers, and attempts to impose a new reality by force directly challenged decades of international consensus and numerous United Nations resolutions.

“If the international community continues to tolerate these violations without consequence, it sends a dangerous message that international law is optional and that powerful states may act with impunity.”

The Palestine Forum of New Zealand said it stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Jerusalem and throughout occupied Palestine.

“We call upon political leaders, faith communities, civil society organisations, and all people of conscience across New Zealand to speak out against these grave violations and to demand accountability,” the statement said.

“The protection of Al-Aqsa Mosque is not solely a Palestinian or Muslim issue. It is a universal issue of justice, human dignity, religious freedom, and respect for international law.

“New Zealand has a proud history of standing on the right side of history. The time has come to do so again.”

“If we can’t sell oil, we will make sure you can’t too.”

That is the message Iran’s parliamentary Speaker has just sent to the entire Gulf — and to US President Donald Trump.

The Speaker, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, has delivered the starkest ultimatum of this war.

Responding to Trump’s threat to destroy one Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, Ghalibaf didn’t blink. He went further.

• READ MORE: Trump weighs ‘massive attack’ as Iran’s FM blasts ‘mindless aggression’
• The illegal US war on Iran – and now the economic consequences shock
• Other Lim Tean articles

“The equation of this war is clear: either all or none. In a region where we do not sell oil, no one will sell oil. If our security is not ensured, no infrastructure will be safe,” he said.

“The security of the Strait lies in the absence of American forces. The situation of the Strait will not return to pre-war conditions.”

Read that carefully. This is not a threat to close Hormuz. It is something more sophisticated — and more dangerous. Iran is saying it will hold the entire Gulf’s oil exports hostage to its own.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar — all of them — become collateral in a dispute that is not theirs.

The Strait of Hormuz carries 20 to 21 million barrels a day — a fifth of global oil consumption. Bab el-Mandeb carries another 6 to 9 million. Between them, roughly a third of the world’s seaborne oil now sits under the shadow of a single Iranian sentence.

“They wanted to punish Iran. Punished themselves with triple-digit oil instead. 10/10 strategy,” Iran’s chief negotiator and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a post on X.

Live updates: https://t.co/kGUykdVSBy pic.twitter.com/73aiqzxNcu

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 23, 2026

Surged past $100 a barrel
Brent has already responded — surging past $100 a barrel, a six-week high.

This is the Legitimacy Principle playing out in real time. When the dominant naval power — the United States — can no longer guarantee safe passage, the question of who actually controls the Strait stops being theoretical.

Iran is answering it by force of statement, before it even needs to answer it by force of arms.

Will Trump escalate further, or is this the moment Washington starts looking for an off-ramp? Either way, the Gulf states now have every incentive to start talking to Tehran directly — because Washington just showed it cannot protect them from the consequences of its own war.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

America’s entire emergency oil reserve now covers 16 days. Sixteen.

The world spent 40 years building a shock absorber for exactly this war — and burned it down in five months.

What comes next isn’t just a higher petrol price. It’s a bill mailed to every fragile economy on earth, at the worst possible moment to receive one.

• READ MORE: US bombs Iran as IRGC and Houthis claim attacks on ships in Hormuz, Red Sea
• Lim Tean: You cannot bomb a strait open – Hormuz, Chabahar and the coming battle for Bab el-Mandeb
• Other Lim Tean articles

The economic consequences of war
In 1919, Keynes wrote his famous polemic — The Economic Consequences of the Peace — a warning that the true cost of the Treaty of Versailles would not be paid at the signing table, but for years afterward, by economies nobody had bothered to examine while the ink dried.

The world was so consumed by the drama of the settlement that it missed the mechanism that would define the following decade.

We are making the same mistake now, in reverse. Everyone is watching the war. Almost no one is watching the buffer.

The numbers that matter
Since February, the world has been drawing down oil reserves it spent four decades accumulating. International Energy Agency (IEA) member states held 4.1 billion barrels in strategic reserves in 2004. By 2026, that figure has fallen to 1.8 billion.

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve — 414 million barrels at the war’s outset — had fallen to roughly 316–320 million by mid-July, its lowest level since 1983. American crude inventories overall, reserve included, are at their lowest since 1984.

Put that in terms people can actually feel: at America’s total daily consumption of just over 20 million barrels a day, today’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve alone covers barely 16 days. Sixteen days. That is the entire emergency margin behind the world’s largest economy — before commercial stockpiles and ordinary imports, which normally do the heavy lifting, have to carry the load on their own.

This is not incidental. It is the entire reason the war has felt, to most people, survivable.
Governments made a deliberate choice: burn the buffer, keep prices tolerable, buy time for diplomacy.

in March, the IEA itself coordinated the largest emergency release in its history — 400 million barrels. It worked. Prices that could have spiralled were instead managed.

The US bombs Iran for the 12th consecutive night.

Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araghchi, says Tehran’s defence doctrine is an “eye for an eye”.

Follow our LIVE coverage: https://t.co/kGUykdVSBy pic.twitter.com/rvYFPnzhph

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 23, 2026

But a reserve is not a subsidy. It is a loan against the future, and the bill is now due. The IEA estimates that refilling what has been drawn down will require an extra one million barrels a day of supply, sustained, for three years — a claim on the market running through 2029.

That is not a wartime cost. That is a peacetime cost, arriving after the guns fall silent, exactly as Keynes argued the costs of Versailles would.

The collision nobody is pricing
Here is the trap. The refill has to happen at scale, which means sustained buying pressure on oil for the rest of the decade. At the same time, markets are expecting a return to surplus once the war ends. Cheap oil and an aggressive refill bid cannot coexist for long — every government rushing to rebuild its stockpile at once will bid up the very barrels it is trying to buy cheaply.

The floor under oil prices for the next three years is being set in storage tanks, not on a trading screen.

What I see from the insurance market
I spent three and a half decades in marine war risk and P&I before any of this made headlines, and the insurance data tells the sharpest version of this story. Before the war, hull war-risk cover for a Hormuz transit cost roughly 0.1–0.15 percent of a vessel’s value — background noise.

During the worst weeks, that spiked as high as 4 percent for seven days of cover on some routings — a 4000-fold multiple on a single VLCC transit, turning a $150,000 cost into $5–7 million.

Rates eased when the US-Iran MoU was signed in June. Then three vessels were attacked in Omani waters this month, two UAE supertankers were struck in the strait itself, and rates snapped back to roughly 5 percent as the new market norm.

That volatility is not a shipping story. It is a leading indicator. War risk premiums move days before oil prices catch up, because underwriters are pricing the war in real time, with their own capital, before anyone else has to.

Right now they are telling you the ceasefire architecture is fragile and the reserve cushion behind it is nearly gone.

What this means for the price of everything
This is where the story stops being about oil and starts being about you. A three-year refill bid of a million extra barrels a day, colliding with markets that expected relief once the shooting stopped, does not stay in the energy pages. It moves into diesel, into freight, into fertiliser, into the price of the food on the shelf and the electricity bill in the post.

Every supply chain on earth still runs, in the end, on the price of a barrel of crude.

And it is landing on an economy that had no slack to begin with. Global growth going into this war was already sluggish — most major economies limping along on thin margins, high debt loads, and a decade of accumulated fragility. Layer a multi-year oil-price floor and a cost-of-living shock on top of that, and the honest question is no longer whether we are heading for a mild recession.

It is whether the world has the reserves — financial as much as physical — to stop a downturn like this becoming something considerably deeper. I do not say that to be alarmist. I say it because the people who priced the 4000-fold jump in war-risk insurance premiums were not being alarmist either. They were simply the first to see what was coming.

The peace will not be peace
When the war ends — and it will end — the headlines will move on. They always do. But the refill bid doesn’t end with the war. The insurance market’s memory doesn’t reset with a ceasefire. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s physical withdrawal infrastructure, built in the 1970s for a 25-year lifespan and now pushed well past it, doesn’t repair itself.

Keynes’s argument was never really about Versailles. It was about the danger of a world that mistakes the signing of an agreement for the resolution of its underlying economics.

We are about to make exactly that mistake again — celebrating a ceasefire while the real invoice, three years long and running through 2029, quietly gets mailed to every economy that depends on oil.

The war will end. The economic consequences of the war will not.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

COMMENTARY: By Saige England

Auckland rejected DP World.

Environmental campaigners and campaigners for protecting assets, and campaigners for workers rights, believe Christchurch needs to do the same.

This updated commentary on an important local, regional, national and international issue, includes environmental campaigner, Sara Campbell’s full speech. It also gives more background to the company toying with the port of Lyttelton.

• READ MORE: A tale of power being taken from the people and handed to predator companies — Saige England
• DP World back story: From ports to proxy armies – tracing the UAE’s regional footprint in Sudan, Yemen and the Horn
• ‘He is one of us’: Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged conversations with Emirati billionaire
• Epstein flipped Israel’s Gaza-tested biometric scanners into Nigeria ports deal for UAE
• Dubai-based DP World replaces chief named in Epstein files
• Sultan took peep at Auckland Ports

Back in 2009 (a year after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted), when he was still mates with the convicted sexual abuser and human trafficker, DP World’s head, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, was nosying around the port of Auckland.

A few years later, the former DP World Group chairman and CEO, Sultan Bin Sulayem, and by then, convicted sex offender Epstein, got down to some buddy boy business with the Zionist state of Israel.

“I am in Berlin with the Israeli defence minister, I have told him about you and Sheik Mohamed,” Bin Sulayem wrote to Epstein in March 2012. “He would like to meet you both.”

And in another email Epstein told Sultan bin Sulayem (DP World chairman and chief executive up until February this year) that he “loved the torture videos”.

Parasitic corporations
Corporations like this are parasites. These sharks circle and you don’t see their fins until it is too late.

Let their comms people and lawyers (on their mega pay scale) argue as much as they like, removing one person does not clean up this corporation’s reputation.

DP World has a poor history in Africa, and Queensland, so while it might make the right initial noises it will not in the long-term pay heed to Te Tiriti O Waitangi.

The Sultan resigned from the company in February 2026. But if this was a clean company it would not have a dirty history.

All these deals to take over public assets are dirty aren’t they? Deals to take over public assets take from the people, they don’t give to the people.

They represent short-term gain (for those at the top) for long-term pain.

Who will benefit in the long run? Not the people. Not the port. Not the whenua. Not the moana.

Spin propaganda
Big corporations pay huge salaries to communications people to spin propaganda. I could have worked in that field myself, could have earned a big salary spinning dirty stories and making them seem good.

I refuse to be bought because I believe that the only way to save our environment is to keep our assets in public ownership — owned by the people for the people.

We need legislation that removes the ability of any company to take control of the port.

We need legislation that removes the ability of any company to own our public assets.

Capitalism. Colonialism. The money trail leads to destruction.

This takeover bid by DP World for the Lyttelton Port was engineered when one of the worst players in the world, Epstein’s torture-loving mate, was at the company’s helm.

And the company promoted that man all the way to the top. It can’t possibly claim it did not have a clue.

Exploiting people
The company, like colonial companies of the past, controls ports, takes resources. This international company will argue that it does not, but it does exploit people.

Not the people at the top — of course not — it exploits the people on the ground. It pushes them out.

If this company comes to town people will be replaced by AI. It will claim that will make the workplace safer, because of automation. Goodbye jobs.

And as it avoids taxes by investing offshore in tax havens the public carries the burden of costs . . . hello rate hikes.

This is a local, regional, national, and international issue.

Here is Lyttelton local and environmental campaigner Sara Campbell speaking about the environmental risks of privatising our port.

“I don’t think I have a lot to add; the fundamentals of private ownership and DP World’s track record have already been covered . . . and the same system that treats workers as disposable — with low wages, unsafe conditions, and no say — is the same system that treats our water, our forests, and our air as disposable,” she says.

Aggressive profit-seeking
“It’s a system that puts aggressive profit-seeking ahead of the wellbeing of communities, workers, and the environment.”

Saige England: A tale of power being taken from the people and handed to predator companies

DP World has an appalling environmental record.

“For example, according to reports by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, the UAE — specifically the emirate of Dubai, the home base of DP World — acts as a major global transit corridor and hotspot for environmental crimes. It serves as a massive hub for illegal wildlife and flora trafficking.”

She points out that the drive to maximise shareholder profit strips away the ability of the public to lead healthy lives.

“The cost of living keeps climbing while oil companies, power companies, supermarkets, and banks make record profits. Often price-gouging in a crisis.”

Most of the profits are sent offshore to shareholders, she says.

”We spend a lot of time in politics asking how we break up duopolies and oligopolies that take so much from us.

Monopoly asset
“Well, our port is a monopoly asset. There’s no other port in our region this size. It’s not feasible to build another just to keep freight prices down.

“So if DP World takes over operations, their first priority will be shareholder profit.

”That means our freight prices go up. And when freight goes up, the price of almost everything goes up too.”

Campbell says easing the port isn’t just about one contract. It’s a gateway to even more privatisation.

“DP World’s own strategy is to acquire the whole supply chain. They call it ‘an end-to-end service’.”

But the reality is a privately owned foreign company seizing profit and control across our entire logistics network.

“By the time the lease is up, they’ll be so entrenched it’ll be almost impossible to operate without them. And that gives them even more power to lobby for the next contract.

Promises mean little
“Whatever promises DP World puts in the first contract don’t mean much to me,’ says Campbell.

“They’re far better resourced than we are to fight in court and once given a foothold their lobbying power increases over time.”

There will never be an easier time to stop DP World becoming entrenched in our country than now, Campbell says.

Like other speakers at the public meeting in Lyttelton organised by New Zealanders for a Democratic Economy, she expressed anger at the port management LPC and CCHL, saying: “who the hell do they think they are?”

“Can someone please remind them we own the port, not them. How dare they proceed with a seven-hectare land reclamation without our consent. A decision that has significant, negative impacts on the ecological health of our harbour. We couldn’t even hold our elected councillors accountable, because the decision didn’t cross the council table.

“Now, LPC is proposing a $800 million expansion with further land reclamation and I fear we will shut out of that decision too.”

She pointed out that the world is rapidly warming, that the last 11 years have been the hottest on record, and Aotearoa now has the highest proportion of threatened species in the world.

Immense pressure
“And right here in Whakaraupō, the ecology is under immense pressure. This harbour is home to our nationally vulnerable Hector’s dolphins.”

The people need to have the right to demonstrate their priorities.

“Priorities for our community, for our workers, and for the ecosystem — not for a corporate balance sheet.”

Campbell says she believes the Lyttelton deal can be stopped but it does not stop there.

“I believe we can change how the port is run. To a model where we’re actually at the table.

“Where mana whenua and the unions are strategic partners in decision making.”

Saige England is a humanitarian journalist and activist for community and the environment. She was present at the Lyttelton public meeting last week in support of community action. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Yesterday Marnie Ainsworth (from Keep Our Assets) and others made submissions to the Christchurch City Council.

• More action is being organised by New Zealanders for a Democratic Economy and Keep Our Assets

Israel’s Environment Ministry has removed the protected status of Nile crocodiles to allow them to be used in a moat guarding the country’s largest detainment camp, a move requested by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The story has been widely covered by Israel’s English-language press, alternative media worldwide, and news sites in non-English-speaking countries.

But, in the Anglosphere, there is a virtual news blackout.

• READ MORE: Israel strips crocodiles of protected status to pave way for crocodile-infested moat — Democracy Now!
• Israel plans ‘alligator Alcatraz’ for Palestinian prisoners
• Other Israeli prison reports

Searching within New Zealand and Australian internet domains yields nothing. In the UK, only The Telegraph has reported the story; the BBC and The Guardian do not deem it newsworthy.

In the US, the only report I have seen was by the progressive independent outlet Democracy Now!

It feels nigh on impossible that a similar event in Putin’s Russia, Iran, or any number of dictatorships would go unreported by the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Age, The New Zealand Herald, or the English-language newswires.

Democracy Now’s headline — ”Israel strips crocodiles of protected status to pave way for crocodile-infested moat“ — is about as clickbaity as hard news gets.

Barbarism as state policy
Veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz: “National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is taking Israel to the next stage in its development: barbarism as a legal and explicit state policy.”

“Sadism is no longer just for deviants; it is the new political correctness,” he continued.

“After years in which barbarity and sadism toward Palestinians were hidden as something shameful and repressed — and mainly as the exception to the rule — Ben-Gvir is moving them to centre stage to great applause from some of the crowd and silence from the rest.”

A relative in Israel messaged me asking whether I had seen the crocodile story — the “true reality in Israel”. She included this translated snippet from the breaking news story.

“Exclusive: The Crocodile Snatch: The Nature and Parks Authority opposed the establishment of Ben-Gvir’s crocodile prison, but Environmental Minister Silman amended the law, paving the way for the transfer of the animals. Among other things, Silman determined that the Nile crocodile is a ‘cultivated wild animal’ that can be raised within a security entity.”

That Ben-Gvir is monstrous is not news. The Australian and New Zealand governments, along with those of the UK and Canada, have banned him from entering their countries for inciting pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank and promoting the expansion of illegal settlements.

But the monstrousness of Israel’s gulags is newsworthy — if underreported.

18,500 Palestinians detained
In March, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese released a report stating: “Since October 2023, more than 18,500 Palestinians have been detained across the occupied Palestinian territory, including at least 1500 children. Thousands remain in detention without charge or trial. Many have been forcibly disappeared. Nearly 100 detainees have died in custody.

“Detainees have been abused in unfathomable ways, including rape with bottles, metal rods and knives, starvation, breaking of bones and teeth, burning, being spat upon, and being attacked and urinated upon by dogs.”

Albanese said: “A system that has long been used to dominate, degrade and break Palestinians has evolved and hardened into state doctrine.

“It is defended by politicians, rationalised by legal institutions, sanitised by media narrative and tolerated by governments that continue to arm and shield Israel.”

The name of Ketziot Prison, where the crocodiles are to be deployed, will be familiar to some from news reports of the abuse of Freedom Flotilla volunteers held there earlier this year.

News of their mistreatment and images of Ben-Gvir abusing them cut through the Western media fog and prompted rare condemnations from Western governments.

Israel’s ambassadors in Wellington and Canberra were called in for ritual reprimands.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong described the images as “shocking and unacceptable”.

Unacceptable face
Similar statements and actions were made by the US, the UK, France, Italy, and Canada. Ben-Gvir is the unacceptable face of an apartheid regime that all those countries accept and, to differing degrees, abet.

The detained Flotilla activists repeatedly pointed out that their treatment — as appalling as it was — was minor compared with what Palestinian prisoners endure daily.

There was nothing like the same reaction from Western governments when a video of Ben-Gvir taunting imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti emerged in August last year.

Following the visit, Ben-Gvir reportedly said: “We entered Marwan Barghouti’s cell and he was crying in terror. I told the jailers to keep treating them like that,” adding, “When we enter Israel’s prisons, the Palestinian prisoners piss their pants when they see us, they piss themselves out of fear.”

The video was reported by mainstream media outlets but not as prominently as the one showing the abuse of the international activists.

Ben-Gvir is not just a comic-book villain; he is a high-ranking member of the Israeli cabinet. He has a picture of Baruch Goldstein, the convicted terrorist who killed 29 Palestinians, hanging in his Knesset office, and he himself acts as a state terrorist, marshalling the full force of Israel’s prison system and police in his campaign against Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

Supporters of Israel argue that the country attracts a disproportionate amount of bad publicity.

‘Great negativity’
Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, told the Australian Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that the ABC’s coverage of Gaza “created an impression of great negativity about Israel.”

Segal claimed there had been a “disproportionate” number of critical stories.

“They could run positive stories about other things Israel is doing,” she said. “The amazing startup nation, things like that. They very rarely do that. There is no attempt at that part of the agenda.”

The Jerusalem Post reported last week that Israeli defence-tech start-ups working with the Defence Ministry raised nearly US$3 billion in the first six months of 2026 — three times the amount raised in all of 2025.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Lebanon, and its bombing and assassination campaigns in the war on Iran have been a boon for the self-described startup nation.

Gaza is history’s first AI-assisted genocide, and our media are paying it too little attention, not too much.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. He has a Substack: Towards Democracy.

Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Melvin Matibag says the agency is still in the process of investigating the identity of the alleged hitman whom Vice-President Sara Duterte hired to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Taking the witness stand of the impeachment court yesterday, Matibag said the NBI had “persons of interest” who could help lead them to the actual assassin whom the Vice-President allegedly spoke with.

Duterte first said during her infamous virtual press conference on November 23, 2024, that she had reached out to an assassin to kill Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos, and former speaker Martin Romualdez, if something bad were to happen to her.

• READ MORE: Special Rappler coverage of the Sara Duterte impeachment trial
• Other impeachment reports

“I cannot disclose the identity of our persons of interest because… this is a continuing and open investigation,” Matibag said. “Our investigation will be compromised, and it will endanger our informants on the ground who can provide human intel.”

Lead prosecutor Jinky Luistro conducted the direct examination of Matibag, who said that the agency was treating Duterte’s statement not as a threat, but as a “plan” to kill the chief executive.

The prosecution’s line of questioning led Matibag to link Duterte’s November 2024 statement with two other statements related to an implied beheading of the President:

• On October 18, 2024, Duterte said she had fantasies to decapitate the President.
• On April 12, 2026, Duterte’s brother, Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte, told a political gathering of the RAGE Coalition that it wanted Marcos’ head.

The prosecution also played the video of Duterte punching a sheriff when she was Davao City mayor in 2011, and let Matibag read an affidavit of self-confessed Davao Death Squad hitman Arturo Lascañas that implicated the Vice-President in the extrajudicial killings in Davao City.

The pieces of evidence are meant to establish Duterte’s pattern of violence.

Republished from Rappler with permission.

The strongest sign that the International Criminal Court (ICC) still has teeth is that the most powerful administration in the world is trying to pull them out.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared this week that the Trump administration would use “all the tools at our government’s disposal” to “dismantle” the ICC, calling it a body run by “smug globalists” and “hostile Third World governments” whose investigations into US officials would mean “the death of the US as a sovereign and independent nation”.

Analysts and legal observers say the real motivation may have less to do with protecting American soldiers and more to do with protecting the people currently in power.

• READ MORE: Trump administration vows to ‘disable’ International Criminal Court
• NZ called on to back international law in ICC vote – ‘don’t throw in towel’
• Mamdani: Netanyahu is a war criminal, but New York cannot arrest him
• Other ICC reports

The ICC, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, was established in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. The US has never ratified the Rome Statute, meaning the court does not have automatic jurisdiction over American officials.

Congress reinforced that position the same year by passing the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, which prohibits cooperation with ICC investigations and authorises the president to use military force to free any American detained by the court — a provision widely known as the “Hague Invasion Act”.

What has shifted is the scale of potential exposure. Trump launched a war against Iran that legal scholars describe as illegal under international law.

A missile strike on the first day of the war on February 28 killed more than 100 children at a school in Minab in the southeastern Iran, with a preliminary military investigation concluding the US was likely responsible.

Mamdani: Netanyahu is a war criminal, but New York cannot arrest him https://t.co/8rHXkij1xH via @AJEnglish

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) July 22, 2026

Trump has also repeatedly threatened to bomb civilian infrastructure, and in April told Iran that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” unless the Strait of Hormuz reopened, language legal experts say could constitute incitement to genocide under international law.

At home, the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Trump v United States granted presidents “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for official acts, closing the domestic accountability door.

The ICC remains one of the few avenues where accountability could still theoretically apply.

Rubio’s campaign to dismantle it is, in that context, less a defence of American sovereignty than a bid for permanent impunity.

Republished from BP Daily under Creative Commons.

Ten nights of bombing. Zero endgame. And now a second chokepoint just slammed shut.

This is what happens when you resume a war without a strategy.

Tuesday brought the clearest proof yet that what we are watching in the Gulf is not a series of isolated flare-ups, but a coordinated strategic encirclement — one I have been calling the “security belt” thesis since Iran’s Quds Force commander first used that exact phrase in June.

• READ MORE: Iran attacks Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan; says 2 tankers in Hormuz ablaze
• Lim Tean: You cannot bomb a strait open – Hormuz, Chabahar and the coming battle for Bab el-Mandeb
• Other War on Iran reports

What happened today?
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps struck US radar and air-defence installations across the Gulf, claiming the destruction of a missile-defence radar and an F-15 sheltered in Jordan, and hitting Amazon’s data infrastructure in Bahrain.

Senior Hamas official Khaled Meshaal has congratulated Khalil al-Hayya on being named as the head of Hamas’s political bureau.

LIVE updates https://t.co/LRy6Ugekjx

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 21, 2026

This is now the 10th consecutive night of US strikes on Iran, launched at the direction of President Donald Trump, with CENTCOM confirming further attacks on Iranian air defence, radar, missile and drone sites.

But the more consequential news is at sea. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Navy intercepted and stopped two tankers in the Strait of Hormuz it labelled “non-compliant” — language that should alarm every shipowner and P&I underwriter reading this.

Iran is no longer simply harassing traffic through Hormuz. It is asserting a compliance and inspection regime over the strait — a direct challenge to the transit passage rights guaranteed under UNCLOS.

Hormuz is now estimated at roughly 89 percent interdiction under Iranian naval enforcement.

And now, the second door has closed

Yemen’s Houthis announced on Monday a full maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait — the 29km chokepoint linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, carrying roughly 12 percent of global trade and a quarter of the world’s container traffic.

The Houthis frame it as retaliation for the Saudi blockade of Yemen and a strike on Sanaa airport. But the timing is what matters strategically: Saudi Arabia had spent the last four months rerouting the bulk of its crude exports westward through the East-West pipeline to Red Sea terminals — precisely because Hormuz was already closed.

That escape valve is now being shut too.

For the first time in this conflict, Saudi Arabia sits trapped between two blocked corridors. Brent crude has surged roughly 30 percent off its July lows, trading near US$88 a barrel.

The Legitimacy Principle at work
This is the Dual Hegemony thesis made visible: Iran holding the eastern gate at Hormuz, its aligned Houthi forces holding the western gate at Bab al-Mandeb — two actors, one strategic architecture, squeezing the Arabian Peninsula from both flanks regardless of how tightly Tehran and Sanaa formally coordinate operations.

Whether or not the two theatres are directly commanded in tandem, the effect is the same: nearly a quarter of the world’s oil and gas supply now sits hostage to a war that shows no sign of a negotiated off-ramp.

For the war-risk and P&I markets, the signal is unmistakable. This is no longer a single-chokepoint risk to be hedged and rerouted around. It is a dual-corridor structural crisis, and premiums, routing, and insurer exposure will need to be repriced accordingly.

The question now is not whether the world absorbs a Hormuz shock. It is whether it can absorb both at once.

Washington’s self-inflicted trap
But there is a second story here, and it is arguably the more damning one: what this does to Trump’s position.

Trump did not have to resume this war. A Memorandum of Understanding was on the table only weeks ago — his own administration’s negotiated off-ramp. It collapsed because Iran acted to defend the one asset that actually matters to it, control of Hormuz, and Trump’s team, led by Vance’s negotiators, signed language loose enough for Tehran to exploit.

Trump himself complained this week that Iran “always breaks” agreements — an extraordinary line from a president whose own record of walking out on international agreements is well known. He chose escalation. Nobody forced his hand.

BREAKING:

President Trump says Iran always breaks agreements, so the U.S. will strike them hard. pic.twitter.com/waWiTxZW08

— Litest (@Litest) July 13, 2026

Ten consecutive nights of strikes later, American service members have already been killed in Iraq and Jordan, and reporting from inside Washington describes an administration that still cannot articulate what victory looks like.

Trump told Americans in a primetime address that the US is “winning big” without once explaining what winning means or how the war ends. There is no regime-change theory of the case. There is no ceasefire architecture on the table. There is only the tempo of the bombing.

Now Washington’s strategic dilemma has just deepened, whether or not that was the intent. Every American strike that fails to reopen Hormuz makes the war look more like a stalemate Trump cannot afford politically. Every escalation invites further retaliation against the very Gulf infrastructure and shipping lanes the US campaign is supposedly designed to protect.

And a US president who staked his credibility on ending wars quickly now finds himself presiding over a widening one, with rising body counts, a global oil market absorbing repeated shocks, and no visible theory of how any of this concludes.

This is the cost of resuming a war without first answering the most basic question any commander is supposed to answer: what does the end state look like?

Months ago, Trump promised this war would last “four to five weeks at most.” It has now dragged on far longer, and the strategic picture is worse, not better, than when he started.

That is not an accident of geography. That is the price of impulse dressed up as resolve.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) wrote to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today urging the New Zealand government to vote against the removal of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan.

Instead, said PSNA, Luxon should insist that proper judicial process be followed regarding allegations made against him.

“This is a pivotal moment for the International Criminal Court and New Zealand must stand up for our values and our support for international law,” PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in a statement.

• READ MORE: Former UN oversight chief says ICC prosecutor Karim Khan is ‘victim of massive stitch-up’
• Why ICC prosecutor Karim Khan was suspended — and what could happen next
• Other ICC arrest warrant reports

“We are not making any judgement on the allegations against Mr Khan, but New Zealand must insist a proper judicial process be followed.”

Middle East Eye reports that a former United Nations investigations chief has accused the ICC’s executive body of subjecting Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan to a “stitch-up” in their decision to suspend him from office over misconduct allegations.

Ben Swanson, a former UN assistant secretary-general and deputy head of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), has previously served as director of the OIOS Investigations Division.

Over the past year, he has submitted four expert’s opinions commissioned by Khan’s legal team criticising the investigation.

Doubt over justice
Swanson wrote: “I am of the opinion that the Prosecutor is the victim of a massive ‘stitch-up’ and given what has happened since the release of the Panel’s Report I doubt whether justice will be done or seen to be done.”

The president of the ICC’s oversight body, the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), Finnish diplomat Paivi Kaukoranta, wrote to member states last week to confirm that no retaliation allegations made against Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan had been established by members of the executive bureau.

When allegations were made against Khan, the OIOS was asked by the president of the ASP to gather evidence from the alleged victims.

Between November 2024 and December 2025 more than 5000 pages of evidence was gathered, noted the PSNA in a statement.

The ICC then established a Judicial Panel, comprising three eminent judges selected by the Bureau of the ASP, to analyse the evidence.

After doing so, this Judicial Panel declared it was “unanimously of the opinion that the factual findings by OIOS do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant legal framework”.

Tamimi said that now Israel and the US were rejecting the Judicial Panel findings.

‘Blatantly lobbying’
“They are blatantly lobbying to remove Karim Khan because he sought arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for ‘war crimes and crimes against humanity’.”

This “intensive Israel-US diplomatic bullying” had succeeded in having the Judicial Panel findings set aside in favour of a decision to remove Karim Khan being made by the full Assembly of State Parties (ASP) in which New Zealand will vote.

“Karim Khan’s position must be decided through a legal process, not a political process dictated by Israeli-US lobbying,” Tamimi said.

“New Zealand has already failed numerous times to uphold international law in the face of Israeli-US pressure.

“They must not throw in the towel again.”

“In October last year, Foreign Minister Winston Peters issued a formal statement with Nordic ministers in Stockholm to ‘reaffirm our unwavering support for the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court’.”

“You can’t pick and choose when you will support international law, and when you can disregard it,” said Tamimi.

“New Zealand must do the right thing at the ICC this week.”

New Zealand journalist and video story teller Cole Martin has given a heartfelt and challenging personal account of what it is like living in Palestine under siege.

At a recent public kōrero hosted by the Whānau Community Centre and Hub in Auckland’s Mt Roskill, he described the challenges and highlights of several extended visits to Palestine bearing witness as a Christian — the most recent trip for six months last year.

Since returning to Aotearoa New Zealand he has been giving kōrero at public meetings and church groups, talking to news media, and exhibiting collections of his photographic evidence.

• READ MORE: Improvements in Pacific media freedom, but a shameful silence on Gaza ‘death trap’ — Pacific Media Watch
• Other Talanoa TV reports

He spoke to hosts Nik Naidu and David Robie of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) for Talanoa TV’s Community Lens programme.

“I’ve been to Palestine a number of times over the last few years, mostly recently I was living there for six months in 2025,” he says.

“I first got became aware of what was happening and got involved when I travelled there in 2019 and I kind of saw the tip of the iceberg of how bad things were.

“And I was really shocked and when I came back to Aotearoa and hearing some of the narratives going on and the ignorance of what was happening on the ground — particularly narratives within my own Christian faith community.

“People were making the assumption that the modern state of Israel was a continuation of the ancient land of the Israelites, and a lot of other harmful narratives that go with that.”

Journalist Cole Martin on Palestine                 Video: Talanoa TV

• Sky TV Channel 83 Face TV : Community Lens Show
• Episode 05 – Palestine with Cole Martin, Rotuman Language Week 2026 Hula Fit, Kite Festival — as seen on TV

Community Lens is a programme “celebrating local events in our communities and conversations with leaders and residents”

It is a TV show that highlights what’s happening in our local communities.

We explore the stories, events, people, and grassroots initiatives that are shaping our neighbourhoods. And we help amplify the voices of community leaders, organisers, and residents.

Through celebrating and better understanding our diverse communities, Community Lens aims to improve social cohesion and help build a better future for all people and our beautiful nation.

Featuring and appreciation to :
Cole Martin
Dr David Robie
Asia Pacific Media Network
Niki Maro & the Hula Fit Team
NZ Rotuman Community Centre
Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group
Auckland Kite Show
and all other participants and interviewees

PRODUCER
The Whānau Community Trust

PRODUCTION MANAGERS
Ernestina Bonsu-Maro and Rachael Mario

Hosted by Nik Naidu, Ernestina Bonsu-Maro and Rachael Mario

A Talanoa TV Production with Face TV Sky Channel 83

Broadcast on 1 July 2026.

Strip away the communiqués about the embattled Strait of Hormuz and look at the data, because in maritime commerce the data never lies.

Before the war began in late February, roughly 130 vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz every day. It is the aorta of the global energy system — a fifth of the world’s oil, a third of its seaborne LNG.

Then came the American campaign, announced in March with a simple promise: bombing would reopen the strait.

• READ MORE: Ship ablaze in Hormuz Strait after attack – crew rescued
• Two US soldiers dead in Jordan – Trump’s ego has restarted a war he cannot win
• Other War on Iran reports

The verdict of the tankers
Consider what four months of that promise has produced. Over the three days of July 10–12, a total of 73 vessels crossed– fewer than 25 a day.

On July 12, the day CENTCOM completed its fourth strike wave in a single week, transits collapsed to 11. By last Thursday and Friday, shipping data showed just three commodity vessels crossing in 24 hours, with not a single VLCC or LNG carrier transiting for two consecutive days.

Lloyd’s List Intelligence reports that no vessel above 10,000 deadweight tonnes has used the Oman-side “Southern Highway” — the very corridor the Americans coordinate and champion — with its transponder on since July 7.

Read that sequence again. More bombs, fewer ships. Every single escalation wave since March has deepened the shutdown. The strikes are not failing to achieve their objective. They are producing its opposite — measurably, in Kpler and Lloyd’s List data, week after week.

The tanker market has voted with its keels.

Chabahar and the CENTCOM confession
Last week the campaign reached Chabahar, where American forces destroyed the maritime control tower at the Shahid Kalantari port. The stated rationale: the tower was an IRGC surveillance node, and its destruction “protects freedom of navigation”.

Examine that claim on the map before you examine it in law. Chabahar sits on the Gulf of Oman — outside the Strait of Hormuz entirely. It is Iran’s only deep-water port with direct access to the Indian Ocean, the one Iranian harbour whose traffic never touches Hormuz at all.

It is also the port India has spent a decade and hundreds of millions developing as its corridor to Afghanistan and the North-South Transport Corridor. Striking it does nothing to reopen Hormuz. It does, however, tell New Delhi exactly how much its equities weigh in Washington’s calculus.

And a port’s traffic control tower is the classic dual-use facility. Whatever surveillance function it may have served, it is also the instrument that sequences civilian shipping safely in and out of a harbour.

Destroying it does not enhance safe navigation in those waters; it degrades it. Iranian maritime domain awareness, meanwhile, rests on coastal radar, drones, dhows and AIS itself. One tower blinds no one.

But the deepest problem is in CENTCOM’s own language. The strike, we are told, protects freedom of navigation “for all vessels, except for ships attempting to violate the ongoing US naval blockade against Iran.”

CENTCOM: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TOWER DIRECTLY DEGRADES IRGC’S ABILITY TO COORDINATE ATTACKS ON INNOCENT CIVILIAN CREW MEMBERS. FURTHERMORE, THE STRIKE PROTECTS FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION IN REGIONAL WATERS FOR ALL VESSELS, EXCEPT FOR SHIPS ATTEMPTING TO VIOLATE THE ONGOING U.S. NAVAL…

— First Squawk (@FirstSquawk) July 17, 2026

I have practised in the law of the sea for more than 35 years, and I can tell you that sentence is a confession. Freedom of navigation under UNCLOS is not selective. It cannot be granted to some flags and withdrawn from others at the discretion of one navy.

A blockade is not the protection of free navigation — it is its suspension. What the United States is defending in Hormuz is not the principle of open seas. It is a claim to decide who sails. That is not freedom of navigation. That is contested control, dressed in the vocabulary of the thing it replaced.

This is the Legitimacy Principle in its purest form: a rule becomes real only at the point of enforcement. Washington says the strait is open. The point of enforcement is the strait itself — and at the point of enforcement, three ships crossed in a day.

What the underwriters know
Here is what no CENTCOM statement will ever change, and it is the lesson of a career spent in war risk and P&I.

Straits are not opened by admirals. They are opened by underwriters.

A shipowner does not ask whether the US Navy has declared a corridor safe. He asks what his war risk premium is, whether his P&I cover survives the transit, whether his crew will sail, and whether his charterer will pay.

War risk premiums respond to kinetic activity in the area — full stop. It does not matter whose ordnance is falling or whose infrastructure is burning. Every strike, on either side’s assets, keeps the Strait of Hormuz uninsurable at commercial rates. And an uninsurable strait is a closed strait, whatever the press releases say.

This is why the bombing cannot work even on its own terms. The campaign’s theory is that destroying Iranian capabilities restores confidence. But the underwriter does not price Iranian capabilities. The pricing is based on violence — and the campaign itself is the violence.

The second chokepoint
And now the war has done what escalation always does: it has multiplied the battlefield.

On July 16, Reuters reported — from three sources — that Iran has instructed the Houthis to stand ready to close Bab el-Mandeb if the United States strikes Iranian power infrastructure, as Trump threatened on July 14.

JUST IN:

Iran has reportedly told the Houthis to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait if the United States attacks power plants.

– Reuters pic.twitter.com/j171TCvR6q

— China pulse (@Eng_china5) July 16, 2026

A source close to the Houthis says the missiles and drones are already deployed in the highlands overlooking Hodeidah and the Gulf of Aden, awaiting the order. And the trigger is not in Sana’a: IRGC representatives already inside Yemen will decide when the gate closes.

Understand what this means. Bab el-Mandeb — the “Gate of Tears” — carries 10 to 15 percent of global maritime trade and a significant share of Europe’s energy imports. Since Hormuz shut, the Red Sea route has been precisely the alternative on which Gulf exporters and the entire architecture of workarounds has depended.

Close it, and the Middle East’s two great oil gates are shut simultaneously. Every laden vessel between Asia and Europe rounds the Cape of Good Hope, adding two to three weeks and rewriting freight economics overnight. South African ports are already running heavy.

The Americans set out to open one chokepoint by force. They are on the verge of closing two.

The loaded gun
Let me be rigorous rather than merely alarmed, because the counter-argument deserves its hearing.

There is a serious school of thought — well argued this month by Yemeni analysts — that Tehran will never actually pull this trigger. A proxy’s value lies in the threat, not the execution.

The Houthis’ leverage over Hodeidah, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea terminals, the risk of dragging Egypt and the Gulf states into open confrontation: three concentric circles of deterrence all counsel restraint. The loaded gun on the table, in this view, is worth more than the fired one.

In a stable environment, I would agree. But this is not a stable environment. It is an escalation spiral in which each side has repeatedly done the thing the analysts said was too costly to do. Iran was not supposed to close Hormuz. The United States was not supposed to blockade a nation of ninety million people. Chabahar was not supposed to be struck. The power grid was not supposed to be threatened.

Deterrence logic assumes rational actors husbanding their leverage — but four months of this war have shown both capitals converting leverage into rubble at every juncture. The gun stays holstered only until someone’s escalation makes the holster untenable. Trump’s power-grid ultimatum may be exactly that.

The reckoning
Machiavelli warned that wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please. Washington began this campaign believing that firepower could substitute for the one thing that actually opens sea lanes: the confidence of the men and women who insure, crew and charter the world’s ships.

Four months on, the strait is emptier than ever, a second chokepoint is mined with intent, and the phrase “freedom of navigation” has been bent into its own negation — freedom for all vessels, except.

The rule is only real at the point of enforcement. At the point of enforcement, the sea is empty.

You cannot bomb a strait open. You can only bomb it shut.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

Fiji has become the 65th country to establish an “Israel Allies” parliamentary caucus, joining a global network of lawmakers aimed at strengthening political and diplomatic ties with Israel, reports FBC News.

The announcement was made by Israel Allies Foundation president Josh Reinstein, who said the newly launched Fiji-Israel Allies Caucus marked another milestone in the country’s growing relationship with Israel.

Speaking alongside Deputy Prime Minister and caucus chair Viliame Gavoka, Reinstein said the Israel Allies Foundation coordinated the activities of pro-Israel caucuses in parliaments and legislatures around the world.

• READ MORE: Fiji and Israel sign cybersecurity pact
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• Other Israel in Pacific reports

“This is the 65th caucus to be launched. We’re active on six continents. We have 65 caucuses in 65 countries with over 1600 legislators.”

He said the foundation promoted what it described as “faith-based diplomacy”, encouraging legislators to translate their biblical support for Israel into political engagement.

Reinstein praised Fiji for what he described as its strong support for Israel, particularly following the country’s decision to establish an embassy in Jerusalem.

According to Reinstein, Fiji’s entry into the international network strengthened links between the country’s parliamentarians and legislators from dozens of other nations.

Platform for cooperation
He said the parliamentary caucus would provide a platform for cooperation between lawmakers while reinforcing diplomatic and economic ties between Fiji and Israel.

Reinstein also thanked Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Deputy Prime Minister Gavoka for supporting the establishment of the caucus, describing Fiji’s actions as demonstrating “courage” and “moral clarity.”

The Fiji-Israel Allies Caucus was officially launched last week, with Gavoka serving as its inaugural chair.

Meanwhile, Pacific Media Watch reports civil society groups in Fiji have stepped up their criticism of the country’s closer ties with “genocidal” Israel.

The Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (Fijians4Palestine) has highlighted last month’s announcement of the signing of a Declaration of Intent (DOI) in the field of national security targeting modern training methodologies and law enforcement capacity building as “shameful news”.

It has also criticised Fiji’s MOU on diplomatic cooperation and training, and a plan to provide security cooperation with the Fiji police.

Israel has reopened its embassy in Fiji after 30 years and Fiji has established an embassy in Jerusalem in a move widely believed to be illegal.

Two American service members are dead. Another is missing. Four more were medically evacuated after Iranian ballistic missiles and drones struck a US base in Jordan on Friday night.

The American death toll in this war now stands at 16, with more than 430 wounded.

And none of it needed to happen.

• READ MORE: US hits Iran nuclear site; Kuwait desalination plant on fire after attack
• US launches new Iran strikes after two soldiers killed: What’s the latest?
• Other War on Iran reports

The off-ramp Trump threw away
Five weeks ago, Donald Trump had in his hands something no American president has held since 1979: a signed memorandum of understanding with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Islamabad Memorandum, mediated by Pakistan, gave him everything he claimed to want — a cessation of hostilities, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and a 60-day window to negotiate a comprehensive settlement.

“Ships of the World, start your engines,” he crowed on social media. “Let the oil flow!”

President Trump:

The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships… pic.twitter.com/hhZnbVm5tg

— World Source News (@Worldsource24) June 14, 2026

He could have walked away a peacemaker. He could have claimed — with some justification — that he had achieved his military objectives and brought Iran to the table. History hands few leaders such a clean exit from a war of their own making.

Instead, the criticisms got to him. The commentators who called the MOU a “capitulation”. The hawks who said he had let Tehran off the hook. The whispers that he had blinked.

A more disciplined statesman would have ignored the noise and banked the win. Trump could not. His ego demanded vindication, and so — seizing on alleged violations that both sides traded in equal measure — he declared the ceasefire “over” and unleashed eight consecutive days of bombardment on Iran.

Yesterday, Tehran formally suspended its commitments under the interim deal. The statement read out on Iranian state television called Trump’s signature “worthless and invalid.” Asked about it, Trump said he “couldn’t care less”.

He should care. Because the memorandum was the only off-ramp he had. And he has just burned it.

Napolean, Hitler, and the fatal arithmetic of ego
I have written before about what happens when leaders substitute ego for strategy. Napoleon crossed the Niemen in 1812, not because Russia threatened France, but because his pride could not tolerate a Tsar who defied the Continental System.

Six months later, the Grande Armée — the finest fighting force in Europe — had been reduced to a frozen remnant staggering back across the Berezina.

Hitler launched the Ardennes offensive in December 1944 against the unanimous advice of his generals, gambling his last armoured reserves on a fantasy of splitting the Allies. Within a month, the Wehrmacht had lost the men and machines it needed to defend Germany itself.

The pattern is always the same. The leader mistakes an adversary’s restraint for weakness. He confuses the opening phase of a war with its outcome. And he doubles down at precisely the moment when a wiser man would consolidate and withdraw.

Trump is now running the same script. After eight days of renewed bombardment, Iran has not capitulated. It has hit back — hard. Four separate Iranian missile attacks struck US bases in Jordan in the past week alone, wounding dozens and destroying helicopters, before Friday’s strike killed two soldiers.

Iranian drones and missiles have forced air defences into action across Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan simultaneously. This is not a defeated adversary. This is a state executing precisely the forward-defence doctrine it has spent 40 years building.

The arithmetic of attrition
Remember what happened in the first phase of this war. America’s stockpiles of interceptors and precision munitions were drawn down at a rate that alarmed the Pentagon’s own planners. Defending fixed bases against waves of cheap drones and ballistic missiles is the most expensive proposition in modern warfare: you exchange million-dollar interceptors for hundred-thousand-dollar projectiles, night after night.

Iran manufactures its weapons at home. America must ship its own across two oceans — through waters Iran is actively contesting.

The longer this drags on, the worse that arithmetic becomes. And it will drag on, because Iran’s strategy does not require it to defeat the United States. It requires only that it endure — bleeding American forces, closing the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, and letting war-risk premiums and blockade economics do the rest.

As someone who spent three decades in marine insurance and war risk, I can tell you: the market is already pricing what the White House will not admit. A fifth of the world’s seaborne crude ran through Hormuz. It is not flowing now.

The second checkpoint: Bab al-Mander
And now Tehran has placed its next card on the table. Reuters reports that Iran has instructed the Houthis to close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait — the gateway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden — if Trump follows through on his threat to strike Iran’s power grid.

This is not posturing. Houthi missiles and drones are already deployed near the strait, awaiting an order that Revolutionary Guard representatives inside Yemen will control. The IRGC has stated its doctrine in a single sentence: the region’s energy exports will be “either for everyone or for no one”.

Understand what this means. With Hormuz shut, the Red Sea became the world’s escape valve — the Saudis have been rerouting crude across their east-west pipeline to Yanbu, and roughly seven percent of global oil output squeezed through the Bab al-Mandeb last month, alongside some 12 percent of all global trade bound for the Suez Canal. Close that strait, and both of the Middle East’s export arteries are severed simultaneously. A quarter of the world’s energy supply — blocked at both ends.

There is no third route. There is no pipeline capacity that can absorb it. Ali Akbar Velayati put it plainly: the Resistance has the capability to lock both waterways.

The global economy is already careening towards crisis on the closure of one chokepoint. The closure of two is not a crisis. It is a convulsion — fuel rationing, freight rates at wartime levels, insurance markets in seizure, inflation surging through every economy on earth. And the trigger for it now sits not in Washington but in Sanaa, in the hands of a militia that answers to Tehran.

Trump’s own escalation has handed Iran a weapon aimed at the wallet of every household in the Western world.

No way out
Here is the difference between this round and the last. In June, Pakistan could mediate because both sides retained something to trade. Today, Iran has declared Trump’s signature “worthless”. What Iranian leader can now sign a document bearing that signature and survive politically? What mediator can broker a deal when one party has publicly established that the other’s word means nothing?

Iran’s Supreme Leader says US breaches show Trump’s signature is ‘worthless’ https://t.co/U1boWrA4ct https://t.co/U1boWrA4ct

— Reuters (@Reuters) July 18, 2026

Trump has manoeuvred himself into the one position a great power must never occupy: a war he cannot win, cannot afford, and can no longer end.

Napoleon at least had Moscow to march towards. Trump is bombing a country of 90 million people with no defined objective beyond his own vindication, while his soldiers die defending bases that exist only to sustain the war that endangers them.

Sixteen Americans are dead. More will follow.

And every one of them is the price of a president who was handed peace and could not bear to keep it.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

“This is the last time you’ll see me… they brought me here to kill me.”

These chilling words by detained and tortured Palestinian paediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya were cited by an Amnesty International advocate today at an Auckland rally denouncing the failure of New Zealand media to highlight his plight.

Dr Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, told his lawyer this while on a visit earlier this month, explained Amnesty International’s people power manager Margaret Taylor.

Amnesty international is one of the many global human rights watchdogs and medical organisations that have been campaigning and demanding his release.

• READ MORE: Israel has stepped up its persecution of Dr Abu Safiya
• Gaza genocide – how many UN findings will the West ignore?
• ‘The essence of childhood has been destroyed’

Speaking to pro-Palestinian activists and supporters in the 145th consecutive week of protests since the genocidal Israeli attacks were unleashed on the besieged Gaza enclave, Taylor described Dr Safiya’s plight.

Taylor said lawyer Nasser Odeh had stated that since Dr Abu Safiya’s transfer to the notorious underground detention facility Rakevet, he had faced daily beatings, threats and abuse.

“Nasser observed fresh bruises and torture marks on Dr Abu Safiya’s head and across his body, leaving him barely recognisable,” she said.

“He also said that Dr Abu Safiya arrived at their meeting with his hands and feet shackled, and on the verge of losing consciousness.”

Question the ‘crime’
Taylor challenged the protesters to question the alleged crime — he has never been charged with any offence — that Israel had used as a pretext to “treat him so badly”.

“Is it because Dr Abu Safiya refused to abandon his patients even when the IDF bombed his hospital among many other hospitals in Gaza into inoperability?” she asked.

“Is it because he was one of the most prominent voices denouncing the devastation of Gaza’s healthcare system, the targeting of ambulances and the killing of fellow medical practitioners?

“Is it because Dr Abu Safiya — this specialist in child healthcare — could bear witness to Israel’s deliberate targeting, injuring and killing of Palestinian children?”

Sadly, said Taylor, since Dr Abu Safiya’s detention in December 2024 in increasingly more inhumane conditions, “we don’t need his evidence”.

“Most recently we’ve heard from [Australian expert on international human rights law] Chris Sidoti, talking [in New Zealand] to the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory’s most recent report,” Taylor said.

“Unequivocally, the commission found that Israeli security forces are perpetuating its genocide by deliberately targeting and killing Palestinian children.

“More than 20,000 Palestinian kids killed, more than 50,000 Palestinian kids injured and all children living in a dystopian world of fear, death and inadequate access to all but the most basic food, healthcare, housing and education.”

‘Irrefutably documented’
Taylor explained how Amnesty International continued to “irrefutably document” that Israel had and was continuing to commit genocide in Gaza, apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

“All those crimes against humanity have also been witnessed by health practitioners like Dr Abu Safiya who have valiantly sought to repair and heal the innocents caught up in targeted attacks by an IDF armed and funded by Western governments.

“Dr Abu Safiya is guilty of no crime — yet he has been held without charge or trial for more than 18 months.

“He has been tortured and ill treated — including severe physical and psychological abuse and prolonged solitary confinement.”

Growing calls to release Dr Abu Safiya     Video: CBC News

Dr Abu Safiya had been denied adequate medical care and access to independent monitors, including the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC).

“Not only must the Red Cross have access to Dr Abu Safiya — but they must also be granted access to all other Palestinians detainees.

“One of Dr Abu Safiya’s sons was killed in a drone attack on Kamal Adwan hospital. Ibrahim was just 15 and despite that tragedy Dr Abu Safiya kept working.

Bravely speaking out
“His second son Elias continues to bravely speak out for his father’s release.

“Elias has urged us all to intervene before it is too late — ‘The world’s silence today could mean the loss of an innocent human life,’ he has said.

“It is that silence — in the face of Israel’s overwhelming brutality to this good man and to countless innocent Palestinians — that we all have been challenging month on month. And we must continue to do so.

“Don’t be silent — talk about the amazing Dr Hussam to your friends and whānau.”

Criticising the media for its failure to cover this story, she called on the public to write letters to the editor, spread news on social media — “or submit your own articles”.

Last night I attended a packed meeting in Lyttelton against the takeover attempt by DP World of the Lyttelton Port. This is a local, regional, national, and international issue.

The meeting was organised by New Zealanders for A Democratic Economy. It was chaired by John Minto, a long time campaigner for human rights.

Think evil predator company with a track record in taking over international ports — sackings, enviro hazards and links to Epstein…  and you have DP World in a nutshell.

• READ MORE:  Community, unions meet over Lyttelton Port takeover bid, as decision looms
• Dubai-based DP World replaces chief named in Epstein files
• Top Canadian pension fund halts deals with UAE firm over Epstein ties
• Bribery allegations threaten DP World’s expansion plans in India
• Major multinational port operator paid zero tax in Australia while raking in billions
• Other DP World reports

I have researched the history of DP World and it is accused of being corrupt — and good at keeping the corruption out of sight — but that’s the way with these tax-evading companies.

Who pays for their profits? The people, the taxpayers through rate-hikes and workers, through redundancies. DP World loves replacing people with AI.

Predator companies like this start on the port and move into other areas because ports are a gateway to transport and other industries.

This is a local, regional, national and international issue about power and control.

It is about power being taken out of the hands of people and placed in the hands of predator companies.

Workers made redundant
Last night heard from workers who have been made redundant water side. Men who cared about community.

We heard from Gerard Loader, secretary at the Lyttelton branch of the Maritime Union of New Zealand and who is also the national vice-president of the union.

Loader presented as a union official, and also as a boy who grew up, married, had children and works in Lyttelton. He recalled the days when Lyttelton was a hive of activity, a harbour full of ships, trucks, trains, seafarers and “wharfies”.

He gave relevant background to the development of the takeover.

In 2023, the Lyttelton Port Company (LPC) appointed a new CEO in Graeme Sumner and chair of the board Barry Bragg.

“Not long after that we started hearing rumours of plans to privatise city assets, with DP world being mentioned more than once,” said Loader.

“So with the support of the greater community we lobbied council and demonstrated at the CCHL AGM achieving our goal of keeping our assets in public control, albeit with a lot of contorted right-leaning faces looking on in disappointment.”

Battle won, but war continues
That battle was won, but the war is far from over, he said.

“Since early 2024 we have been challenging or asking all LPC management, board members, councillors etc about the persistent rumours of DP World wanting to lease the port operations as a way to get around the mandate of keeping the port in public ownership, and to a man they have all denied or deflected the issue saying they know nothing or it is out of their hands, or we cannot interupt the process as we have to follow due diligence etcetera.

“Then to hear the announcement in June of Tonui (3 runanga and DP World) putting in an unsolicited bid to CCHL for the leasing out of port operations for a 30-year contract was a slap in the face to not only the employees at LPC but the people and ratepayers of Christchurch who have basically been lied to for the last two years by everyone, as DP World and Tonui have been negotiating behind closed doors on this, and in the words of LPC CEO Graeme Sumner, the worst kept secret in Canterbury.”

Barry Bragg is chair of LPC board, was on the Ngāi Tahu Property board for seven years, and is the deputy chair of Stevensons Limited who specialise in concrete and construction.”

Loader said the fact that Bragg claimed he “knew nothing about it”, when asked directly at the Christchurch City Council meeting on June 3, raises more questions than it answers.

Whether the powers that be had full knowledge, or they truly knew nothing while a deal of this magnitude was being discussed, as a ratepayer was “deeply concerning”, Loader said.

“Whose interests do they have at heart?”

End of people’s control
He added that if this “deal” proceeds it would be the end of the port being controlled by the people in the interests of Christchurch city and all profits going back to the Canterbury region.

Rather, the port would be controlled by a huge foreign monopoly which would only have their profit margin at the heart of the operation.

His words were sobering. There is no illusion that control has already slipped and deals are being made behind the scenes.

That is typical of Dubai-based DP World.

The broligarchy is alive and kicking and it does not care about the Tangata or the Whenua or the Moana.

We heard from researcher Edward Miller, of the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability (CICTAR) who has investigated DP World’s control of Australian ports.

This company evades tax and so rates rise. Rise and rise. The burden on tax payers is massive because the company is all about profit and not about sharing or caring for community.

The port is the first point of take over and not the last.

Need to stop this
We need to stop this. We need to stop this asset sale and others.

We need to ensure our community is heard and heeded, and not made redundant.
Councils and the government work for us. It is not the other way around.

We heard from poet Gary McCormick who said we, the people, have power. We have the power to stop this. We are the voice.

We heard from Māori women who talked about the generations to come. We heard form Māori women who talked about the terrible effect this would have on the environment. A greedy parasite controlling the port.

We heard from Sara Campbell who spoke eloquently and passionately about the toll this will take on our environment.

“We’re living in a rapidly warming world. The last 11 years have been the hottest on record.

“Aotearoa now has the highest proportion of threatened species in the world.

“And right here in Whakaraupō, the ecology is under immense pressure. This harbour is home to our nationally vulnerable Hector’s dolphins.”

And yet:

“I truly believe we can stop DP World,” she said.

And the crowd cheered.

“And I believe we can change how the port is run. To a model where we’re actually at the table. Where mana whenua and the unions are strategic partners in decision making.”

No media present
As for me, I will try to publish articles in the media on this but the news media was not there. The newspapers were not present. Radio was not present.

Once the port mattered to media. Now, where is it?

We need to notice this. We need to draw attention to it, we need to join the protest against it. Or it will be too late. And what then?

As Gerard Loader said: “When my grandson asks what I did to stop it, I want to be able to tell him I did everything I could.”

Community for community. Rise people, rise.

Saige England is a humanitarian journalist and activist for community and the environment. She was present in support of community action. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

• Sign the petition Keep Our Port Public to show there is no public mandate for privatisation
• More information on Our Port Public website

INVESTIGATION: By Wendy Bacon and Stephanie Tran

A Zionist doctor has claimed that the Australian health regulator CEO Justin Untersteiner “was forced into a massive capitulation with IHRA”.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Authority (AHPRA) recently introduced the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism which puts healthcare workers at risk for criticising Israel.

The Zionist doctor, psychiatrist Dr Doron Samuell, alleges that he was part of a campaign that “exerted intolerable political pressure” on AHPRA to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

• READ MORE: Antisemitic, really? Jewish leader speaks out on Australia’s Royal Commission hypocrisy
• Saige England: Call out the Zionist hypocrisy – genociders are settler colonialists on steroids
• Antisemitism envoy Segal slams ABC, SBS ‘Israel bias’, wants to vet media
• Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

Resisted IHRA for two years
AHPRA, which regulates the conduct of 900,000 Australian healthcare workers, had resisted pressure to adopt the IHRA definition for two years.

However, on June 17, the health regulator shifted its position unexpectedly and without consultation when CEO Justin Untersteiner issued a joint statement with the federal government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, announcing the adoption of the definition and that Segal’s guidance handbook would be used as a tool in handling complaints.

Thousands of health care workers, and many organisations including the Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation, NSW Civil Liberties Council and Medical Association for Prevention of War have called for AHPRA to reverse its decision and continue to rely on its existing framework in dealing with complaints of racism, including antisemitism.

In response, Israel’s Foreign Ministry pressured the Australian government to “confront antisemitism in healthcare” in a post on X on Sunday.

This investigation paints a deeply troubling picture and should serve as a wake-up call.

We call upon The Australian government to confront antisemitism forcefully.

Every reluctance, every excuse, and every failure to act sends extremists the same message: they can keep pushing…

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) July 12, 2026

AHPRA subjected to ‘intolerable pressure’ from Israel lobby
The “intolerable pressure” claims were made by “Aba Shesh”, a social media pseudonym linked to the Facebook account used by Dr Doron Samuell, a member of the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance (AZHA).

Dr Samuell’s comments were made in response to a post on “Jews of Melbourne” (JOM) Facebook page drawing members’ attention to a Civil Liberties Defence Centre (CLDC) webinar presented by its chairperson, lawyer Nick Hanna. The webinar was an educational briefing for healthcare workers on the implications of AHPRA’s adoption of the IHRA definition .

A member of the Jews Of Melbourne group predicted there would be

lots of “antisemitism” at the webinar which members could monitor and report to AHPRA.

In response, “Aba Shesh” described Untersteiner as an “unthinking bureaucrat” who “repeatedly minimised the problem until his hand was forced”.

Samuell lamented that Untersteiner “said the right things and even visited a shule but AHPRA sat on their hands, receiving vexatious complaints for two years until we exerted intolerable political pressure on them to act.”

Samuell stated that Untersteiner “was forced into a massive capitulation with IHRA”.

Last year, Samuell claimed he was responsible for the cancellation of a staff forum on Children and War at the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Michael West Media sent detailed questions to Untersteiner and provided him with an opportunity to respond to the comments. Instead of specific answers, AHPRA provided us with a general statement. AHPRA’s full response is below.

MWM also contacted Samuell for comment, he did not provide a response.

APHRA CEO ‘under pressure’
Several healthcare professionals who opposed the change said they met with senior AHPRA officials, including Untersteiner, earlier this year to argue against adopting the IHRA definition.

One doctor, who requested anonymity because of concerns of professional repercussions, said senior leadership were presented with medical evidence of the genocide and concerns that the IHRA definition would be used to silence doctors.

“As well as presenting the overwhelming amount of medical evidence of genocide and the silencing of healthcare workers as an apparatus of genocide, we also focused on the concern of the IHRA definition being used to silence doctors who openly support human rights,” they said.

Jerusalem Definition preferred
The doctor said they proposed the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism as an alternate definition.

“We provided an alternative definition on antisemitism, the Jerusalem Definition, should it be necessary to single out one group for a separate definition on discrimination.”

The doctor said Untersteiner told them he had publicly rejected the IHRA definition and discussed pressure the regulator was facing from Israel lobby groups.

“Untersteiner said he has publicly rejected the IHRA definition but when pressed to provide this in writing later, AHPRA did not,” the doctor said.

“[Untersteiner] also expressed some of the personal stress he was under due to the Zionist groups and in particular from doctors like Doron Samuell. It appeared to be genuine and heartfelt.”

MWM put those claims to Untersteiner, who declined to comment.

The doctor expressed concern that AHPRA’s decision to adopt IHRA would encourage vexatious complaints against practitioners, an anxiety shared by thousands of other healthcare workers.

“AHPRA’s statement on the IHRA definition will embolden the Zionists to ramp up their vexatious complaint campaign,” they said.

Path to capitulation
Samuell told the Facebook group that “with my pressure, the Minister issued a directive for Justin to remedy the situation and gave him 6 months to do it” yet, “when he reported back 7+ months later, he was still refusing to define antisemitism”.

In September 2025, health ministers directed APHRA to provide a six monthly report on “Improving the health practitioner response to racism and discrimination, including antisemitism”. AHPRA established a Racism and Discrimination Committee to provide an action plan.

Minister for Health Mark Butler did not respond to questions on the matter.

In February 2026, Untersteiner was pressured by Senator Andrew Bragg in Senate Estimates to adopt the IHRA definition.

“I’m wondering why you haven’t decided to adopt a clear definition of antisemitism. We’ve just had a religious massacre in Australia where antisemitism was a key driver. So I’m wondering why you haven’t adopted one,” Senator Bragg asked.

In response, Untersteiner said the issue was a “live discussion”. However, “the vast majority of practitioners do the right thing and they comply with our codes of conduct” and “in the very few cases where they don’t, we do believe that we’ve got the tools to be able to deal with that effectively.”

The Segal meetings
When pressed further to explain why he had not adopted the IHRA definition, Untersteiner said he had been meeting with Jillian Segal “on a regular basis”.

“I’ve been meeting with the special envoy on a regular basis. I think we’ve been able to work quite well together,” Untersteiner told the Committee.

On 13 April 2026, AHPRA’s Race and Discrimination Committee submitted its report responding to the Ministerial directive. In his posts, Samuell objected to the composition of the committee because it

included a Jewish person who had been critical of Israel.

The report stated that “the National Code of Conduct sets out clear expectations that registered health practitioners will deliver care that is culturally safe and free from discriminatory behaviours.” There was an action plan for strengthening AHPRA’s anti-racism approach but no mention of the IHRA definition.

On April 24, Special Envoy Segal released the Understanding Antisemitism in Australia handbook.

On May 1, the Health Ministers accepted AHPRA’s report and it was published on AHPRA’s website.

APHRA’s usual practice is to publish communiques on its Board meetings shortly after they occur. Communiques have not been published for the May and June meetings.

Call for Untersteiner sacking
AHPRA declined to supply us with copies of those communiques so it is unclear whether the Board approved the use of the IHRA definition in these meetings.

On May 6, Samuell expressed his frustration with AHPRA in a podcast episode published by “The Israel Connexion”.

During the interview, Samuell said that AZHA had called for Untersteiner’s sacking in its submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

“AHPRA has dropped the ball. Now we’re making a submission to the Royal Commission, calling on the Health Minister to sack Justin Untersteiner for the role that he has played in this,” he said.

‘Antagonistic to Israel’
“We’ve outlined in our submission a large number of failures. For example, there are governance problems in AHPRA. There are board members in AHPRA who are on the public record as being antagonistic to Israel,” Samuell said.

“I know from their own staff, many of whom have been in private communications with me, that they are not taking this matter seriously at all. They’ve breached their social contract with us. [Untersteiner] is not the person that can fix this situation.”

Samuell told Israel Connexion that AZHA had encouraged “practitioners and patients in the health sector to make submissions to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism through [AZHA] website” and was “synthesising the submissions into a discussion paper for the Royal Commission” by applying the IHRA definition.

The result is a “whole of sector submission” developed by applying “social theories about what is going on and what should happen to remedy it.”

MWM is not asserting that any of the public allegations against AHPRA are true. In the absence of responses from AHRPA or Samuell on these matters, we are reporting them in the interests of transparency.

Zionist Healthcare Alliance attacks on AHPRA
Samuell is one of several Zionist health workers who represent the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance (AZHA).

The AZHA was launched in October last year. It describes itself as “Australia’s first dedicated Zionist healthcare advocacy organisation”.

AZHA’s most vocal member is public affairs officer Sharon Stoliar who helped found AZHA last year.

Ten days after the IHRA definition announcement, on June 27, Stoliar was featured in a major report by The Australian titled “How did hospitals become the front line in the antisemitic onslaught?”.

The report accused AHPRA of ignoring an “unprecedented explosion of antisemitism” and said Australian health care workers were amplifying anti-Jewish hate speech” and deliberating neglecting or harming Jewish patients.

Royal Commission hearsay
Stoliar told The Australian that she hoped to give evidence at the Royal Commission.

Stoliar is quoted describing an incident in which a woman in a Sydney hospital was “left to lie in a pool of blood with no pain relief” while her baby screamed in its cot alongside hers.

She has also claimed that an antisemitic health care worker caused a Jewish person to have a “forced abortion”.

No evidence is provided to support these hearsay claims which Stoliar has repeated in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12.

The Australian article has taken on a life of its own being regurgitated in various forms in Australian and Israeli media. The Channel 12 broadcast was reposted on Facebook and Instagram by the Zionist Federation of Australia.

Collectively these posts have triggered a large amount of hate against Australian health workers and precipitated the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs tweet this week.

AHPRA’s response
Rather than responding to our questions, AHPRA supplied MWM with a statement similar to one it has sent to thousands of healthcare workers who signed letters expressing opposition to its adoption of the IHRA definition.

AHPRA appears keen to allay the concerns of its registered health care workers. It emphasises that ”there is no place for racism or discrimination in healthcare”, and that it will deal with complaints on an individual basis. An AHPRA spokesperson provided the following explanation for the sudden change:

“Ahpra had initially not adopted the IHRA definition, as we felt there was insufficient clarity between legitimate commentary and debate regarding the policies and actions of the state of Israel and its elected leaders, and antisemitism. However, the Special Envoy on Antisemitism’s handbook is designed to support use of the definition by distinguishing ‘between antisemitism and legitimate political debate, including on the topic of Israel’.

“It is on that basis that Ahpra will use the IHRA definition as a reference tool where relevant, supported by the ASECA handbook, when considering regulatory responses. As a reference tool, the definition is not legally binding. There are no changes to the National Codes or the guidance that supports them.”

AHPRA’s explanation is surprising. The handbook itself exacerbates concerns with the IHRA definition. For example, Segal’s examples suggest that it is antisemitic to say that Israel is a “racist project” or that Israel is “committing genocide”, views that are widely held by numerous international law experts and humanitarian organisations.

The Gaza genocide continues
Daily, the genocide continues. Israel has murdered thousands of healthcare workers in Gaza and devastated its healthcare system.

Last week, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel demanded that Israel release Gaza paediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya who has been imprisoned without charge and tortured by Israel for over 18 months.

Australian health care workers are mobilising and have formed a new national coalition. Yesterday, the Australian Healthcare Alliance 4 Palestine, encompassing hundreds of thousands of registered doctors, nurses and dentists, wrote a letter to AHPRA asking it to “provide full transparency regarding the governance, consultation and decision-making processes” that led to the decision to adopt the IHRA definition.

The Alliance said that health practitioners have “an ethical responsibility to advocate for our patients, our colleagues and the healthcare system” and called on AHPRA to rescind its decision.

Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.

Stephanie Tran is a journalist with a background in both law and journalism. She has worked at The Guardian and as a paralegal, where she assisted Crikey’s defence team in the high-profile defamation case brought by Lachlan Murdoch. Her reporting has been recognised nationally, earning her the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award.

This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.

One of the oldest tropes in journalism is that it should be balanced; that journalists have a responsibility to present all sides of a given issue with equal weight. This view also holds that appearing to be critical of one side and sympathetic to another amounts to “bias”.

That notion of balance sounds ideal. After all, journalists should be neutral observers who favour nobody, so if anybody feels as though their side is not presented with equal measure, the journalist has somehow failed.

That failure was what Jillian Segal accused the ABC of in her evidence to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion last week. In her evidence, the antisemitism envoy lamented that the ABC’s reporting on Gaza “created an impression of great negativity about Israel”.

• READ MORE: Antisemitism envoy Segal slams ABC, SBS ‘Israel bias’, wants to vet media
• The problem of false balance when reporting on science
• Other Gaza media coverage reports

“It’s the perception of the Jewish community feeling constantly that they are being faced with reporting about the Middle East, about Gaza, and about Israel in a way that paints Israel constantly in a negative light,” she said.

For the country’s supporters, that is understandable. As Segal went on to point out, there has been a “disproportionate” number of stories critical of Israel.

And Liberal MP and prominent member of the Jewish community Julian Leeser told ABC Radio National:

I think the public broadcasters actually have to be prepared to address systemic bias against Israel in their reporting, and I think they need to subject themselves to greater transparency mechanisms as outlined by the envoy.

But the term “balance” implies finding equivalence between the two competing positions. Sometimes journalists cover stories where achieving balance amounts to a serious distortion of what is actually taking place.

Jillian Segal wants ‘independent group’ to examine ABC’s Israel coverage  Video: Guardian Australia

The pitfalls of both-sideism
A standard, if lazy, tactic for avoiding accusations of bias is to give equal space to opponents in an issue, presenting them as equally valid.

If you give five minutes to a vaccine researcher, you must give the same time to a sceptic. It is something journalists sometimes dub “both-sideism”.

The media grappled with that challenge in covering climate change. In the early heated stages of the debate, news organisations would often place a climate sceptic next to a climate scientist in the name of “balance”.

By 2018, the BBC’s news director Fran Unsworth had had enough. She circulated a briefing note that acknowledged, “Climate change has been a difficult subject for the BBC, and we get coverage of it wrong too often”.

The briefing went on to say, “Manmade climate change exists: if the science proves it we should report it.” And in a section on balance, the note said:

to achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken.“

As journalism academic Jonathan Foster of Sheffield University used to tell his students, “If someone tells you it’s raining and another tells you it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out the f—ing window and find out which is true.”

Who has the power?
The conflicts between Israel and its neighbours (in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran) are not football matches, and journalists are not referees.

But any journalist thinking about how to fairly cover the crises is likely to spend far more time looking at the human cost of Israeli bombs and tanks, than the impact on Israeli civilians.

That is simply because the greater impact of the conflict is felt outside Israel’s borders.

Any reporting that suggests an equivalence of experience between Israelis suffering Hamas rockets, and the Palestinians in Gaza bearing the weight of the Israeli military assault would be plainly disingenuous. Hardliners on both sides are calling for annihilation of the other, but only one side has tanks, fighter jets and control of food, water and medical supplies over the border.

That raises another journalistic cliche: “holding power to account”. It is rooted in the idea that the media’s job is to expose the impact of power on those who have none.

Israel has indisputably been projecting its might well beyond its borders, and correspondents in the region who failed to cover the consequences on ordinary civilians would be rightly criticised.

None of this is to suggest the experience of Israelis or the government’s arguments should be ignored.

But in a world of competing perspectives, the job of journalists is not to make everyone happy. Their job is to accurately and fairly represent the views of everyone involved and on that score, the ABC has been succeeding.

Imperfect, but largely accurate
The national broadcaster has not been perfect of course. The ombudsman found five breaches of editorial standards (out of more than seven thousand complaints).

Its own editorial director Gavin Fang acknowledged they were far too slow to correct a United Nations report that falsely claimed 14,000 children could die of starvation in Gaza within two days.

In her testimony to the Royal Commission, Jillian Segal conceded the government’s broadcast regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, had not “found a great deal of inaccuracy” in the ABC’s reporting.

But she argued she’s trying to achieve “the more complex, nuanced issues of prioritisation, impartiality and objectivity and balance”.

“They could run positive stories about other things Israel is doing,” she said. “The amazing startup nation, things like that. They very rarely do that. There is no attempt at that part of the agenda.”

Perhaps she is right. But positive stories explicitly designed to cancel out the negative start to look like propaganda. And that is something journalists should never accept.

Peter Greste is professor of journalism at Macquarie University and the executive director for the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He also serves as an independent journalist on the Australian Press Council. This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished under Creative Commons.

The most important response to Trump’s Hormuz announcement did not come from Beijing, Brussels or the United Nations. It came from Tehran, and it was four words long. “POTUS is absolutely right.”

That was Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, replying to the President’s declaration that the United States would henceforth be “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT” and would be “reimbursed” at the rate of 20 percent on all cargo transiting the waterway. Araghchi agreed that whoever secured the Strait deserved compensation — adding only that Iran had always been its “true guardian”, and that 20 percent was too much.

Iran, he said, “will be fair.”

• READ MORE: Lim Tean: The Hormuz ‘guardian’ turns pirate – 20% for tribute
• US carrying out new attacks on Iran after Trump’s threats
• Other Lim Tean articles

Understand what just happened. The two states now fighting for control of the world’s most important oil artery are no longer arguing about whether ships must pay tribute to pass. They are haggling over the rate.

For 75 years, the entire edifice of the “freedom of the seas” rested on the opposite principle. Yesterday, its chief architect demolished it in a single post.

POTUS is absolutely right. Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service.

Iran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER.

20% is of course too much. We will be fair

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) July 13, 2026

What the law actually says
I practised shipping law for more than three decades, and I want readers to grasp how radical this announcement is in legal terms.

The regime governing straits like Hormuz is called transit passage, codified in Part III of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Its roots go back further, to the International Court of Justice’s very first case — Corfu Channel (1949) — where the court held that warships and merchant vessels alike enjoyed a right of passage through international straits that coastal states may not obstruct in peacetime.

Two pillars hold up this regime:

First, transit passage cannot be suspended. Not by the coastal state, not by anyone. Article 44 of UNCLOS is explicit.

Second — and this is the provision every reader should remember — passage cannot be taxed. Article 26 permits charges upon foreign ships only for specific services rendered to that ship, such as pilotage or towage. A general levy for the privilege of passing is flatly prohibited.

Even for coastal states.

Now consider the American position. The United States has no coastline on the Strait of Hormuz. It is not even a party to UNCLOS — for four decades Washington has insisted that transit passage binds Iran as customary international law, enforced by the US Navy on behalf of all nations.

Oman and Iran, the actual littoral states, could not lawfully charge a single dollar for mere passage. The United States has now proposed to charge 20 percent of cargo value — from 10,000 km away — as a matter of what the President calls “FAIRNESS.” (A laden VLCC carrying two million barrels of crude at today’s prices approaches US$30 million per transit).

That is not the enforcement of the international waterway doctrine. It is its replacement by tribute.

The trap Tehran sprang
Here is where Araghchi’s four words become lethal.

Customary international law — the only legal basis America has ever had in Hormuz, since it never ratified UNCLOS — is formed by two elements: the consistent practice of states, and the belief that such practice is legally required (opinio juris).

When Iran instituted its permit-and-fee regime for the Strait earlier this year, Washington’s legal position was simple: no state may condition or charge for transit passage. Iran’s regime was unlawful per se.

That position is now dead. Killed not by Iranian missiles, but by an American post. If the “guardian” of the Strait may lawfully charge 20 percent for security services, then a fortiori the coastal state — with genuine sovereignty over the waters in question — may charge for the same service.

Araghchi grasped this instantly. His reply conceded nothing and captured everything: you have adopted our legal theory; we now dispute only the price.

The United States has spent decades building the customary law of the sea through its own state practice. It is now dismantling that law by the same mechanism. Every future tribunal, every future crisis, every future power that wishes to tax a chokepoint — the Bosphorus, Malacca, Bab-el-Mandeb, the Panama approaches — will cite July 2026 as the moment the precedent was set by Washington itself.

However, President Trump has since backed away from the 20 percent charge, confirming that he was changing the “maritime security fee into historic multi-billion-dollar investment”.

He combined military strength with economic leverage, “securing major investment commitments instead of collecting fees”.

UPDATE: President Trump confirms the conversion of the proposed 20% maritime security fee into historic multi-billion-dollar investment.

President Trump combined military strength with economic leverage, securing major investment commitments instead of collecting fees.

This… pic.twitter.com/Y8LElvI6dZ

— Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial (@TruthTrumpPost) July 15, 2026

A blockade without a war — the underwriter’s nightmare
There is a second legal absurdity buried in the announcement that only those of us from the maritime world will fully appreciate.

The President declared the reinstatement of “THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE” — stopping not only Iran’s ships but Iran’s customers. Blockade, in the law of naval warfare, is a belligerent right. It exists only in a state of armed conflict, it must be formally declared and notified, and it must be effective and impartial.

The San Remo Manual sets out these requirements precisely.

Yet Washington simultaneously insists it is not at war with Iran.

Consider the position of a shipowner, a P&I club, or a war risk underwriter today. A “blockade” that is not a blockade, imposed by a state that is not a belligerent, targeting “customers” of Iran — an undefined class that could sweep in any tanker that has ever lifted Iranian crude.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority has declared passage “currently unfeasible” and maintains that its own permit system is the sole lawful route through the Strait.

Two sovereigns. Two permitting regimes. One body of water. Every vessel in the Gulf now sails under competing assertions of authority, each of which the other deems an act of war.

War risk premiums do not price legal theory — they price uncertainty. And there has never been uncertainty like this.

The guardian and the protection racket
Readers of this page know my argument: the “rules-based international order” has not been destroyed by its challengers. It is being liquidated by its author — sold off, asset by asset, for cash.

The freedom of the seas was the crown jewel of that order. It was the one rule America enforced with genuine consistency, because it was the rule from which American power flowed. The Royal Navy built the doctrine in the 19th century; the US Navy inherited it in the 20th.

Its moral force rested on a single proposition: the guardian takes nothing for itself. The seas were policed disinterestedly, and that disinterest was the legitimacy.

“Guardian” is an old word. In the waters I have worked in for 30 years, everyone understands what it means when an armed party offers you “safety and security” in exchange for a percentage of your cargo. It is the oldest business model on the sea. We did not used to call its practitioners guardians.

The Strait of Hormuz will remain open or it will close; the ceasefire will be rebuilt or it will collapse. But the doctrine — the idea that the world’s waterways belong to the community of nations and may not be farmed for revenue — died this week.

Not because Iran closed the Strait. Because America opened a toll booth.

The rules were never the order. Power was the order. The rules were its receipts.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

Once again, the Strait of Hormuz is at the centre of the latest escalation in the war between Iran, the United States and their allies, reports Al Jazeera’s media watchdog The Listening Post.

The ceasefire collapsed just days after millions of Iranians took to the streets last week to pay homage to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hundreds of foreign reporters and social media influencers were granted rare access to Iran to cover the funeral, signalling just how carefully Tehran has been calibrating its media messaging.

• READ MORE: How Iran used Ali Khamenei’s funeral as a political and diplomatic tool
• Tehran teemed with Khamenei mourners, but divisions – and demands for change – remain
• Other war on Iran reports

Listening Post presenter Richard Gizbert says what began as a week of mourning in Iran has “turned into the latest flare-up in the war in the Middle East with US President Donald Trump effectively calling the ceasefire dead”.

His programme explores the spectacle and symbolism of Khamenei’s funeral and how coverage of the supreme leader’s funeral exposed the limits of familiar Western narratives about Iran.

Contributors:
HA Hellyer – senior fellow, Royal United Services Institute
Samira Mohyeddin – host, On The Line Media
Negar Mortazavi – host, The Iran Podcast
Alex Vatanka – senior fellow, Middle East Institute

Khamenei’s funeral                          Video: AJ The Listening Post

On our radar
Türkiye has just hosted the NATO summit, and the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the US president Trump, used the event to project an image of unity and strength between Ankara and Washington.

Elettra Scrivo looks at the images, the messaging and how the coverage has shaped this story.

How Big Food sells ultraprocessed food
Ultraprocessed food is a major part of diets worldwide. These industrially formulated foods are often marketed as nutritious despite growing concerns that these products are contributing to a global health crisis.

The Listening Post’s Nicholas Muirhead looks at how Big Food is shaping the way we see and consume ultraprocessed food.

Featuring:
Marion Nestle – professor, New York University
Christopher Snowdon – head of lifestyle economics, Institute of Economic Affairs
Arun Gupta – doctor and nutritionist

COMMENTARY: By Jeffrey Loewenstein

Sarah Schwartz, co-founder of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion last week.

I venture to suggest that it will come to be seen that Schwartz gave seminal evidence which the Commissioner is going to find hard to ignore when she is writing her report; evidence supported yesterday by the compelling testimony of Jewish university peace activist Yasmine Johnson.

Until Schwartz gave her evidence, we had seen testimonies given by members of the Jewish community — some of which can only be described as very troubling in terms of evidence — which sometimes bordered on hysterical.

• READ MORE: Saige England: Call out the Zionist hypocrisy – genociders are settler colonialists on steroids
• Antisemitism envoy Segal slams ABC, SBS ‘Israel bias’, wants to vet media
• Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

But, the elephant in the room?

Were the “attacks” described really attacks of an antisemitic nature,

or were they people venting their anger and outrage at Jews seen to be rusted-on, unquestioning supporters of Israel’s egregious actions in Gaza?

Take the example of a university student in Canberra who just yesterday was reported in the Nine media thus: ”Liat told the Commission she had felt “very physically unsafe” during the long encampment at her university campus … when people would laugh and leer at me and say, ‘Look at the baby killer, look at the genocide supporter’”.

No, that is not pleasant, but the fact is — a fact unchallenged aside from the state of Israel itself and the likes of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) — that more than 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed by the state of Israel and more than 44,000 injured since October 2023.

Why the rise in antisemitism?
What was more than significant, is that many of those who gave evidence of alleged antisemitism demonstrated absolutely no introspection. Why had there been a rise in anti-semitism since October 7?

Not because Hamas attacked Israel. No, it was, in many cases people showing their anger, yes, in some instances in a totally misguided way, at Israel’s actions in Gaza. Why did some 300,000 people from all walks of life and all ages, march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a foul, wet and windy day?

The palpable anger by a significant part of the Australian community, including many Jews, at what Israel did in Gaza, and continues to do to this day, is reflected in the sober evidence given at the Royal Commission yesterday by Yasmine Johnson, a co-convener for Students for Palestine and a protest organiser.

Following her evidence, Johnson, who is Jewish, told the media

the idea that campus protests “create a dangerous atmosphere, fear for people, is farcical”.

Antisemitism, anti-genocide conflation
“What we’ve heard,” she said “so far is day after day after day of evidence which conflates legitimate anti-genocide, pro-Palestine activism with genuine antisemitism which exists in our society.”

The earlier mentioned witness Liat, and others like her, may feel uncomfortable about what is being shouted out at her as much as she probably sees posters like “Free Palestine” as confronting and antisemitic, but has Liat — who acts as a  spokesperson for the Australasian Union of Jewish Students — either personally or on behalf of her organisation ever publicly accused Israel of being responsible for war crimes in Gaza, even if not genocide? Almost certainly, not!

And that is the rub.

Might this alleged antisemitism just have had something to do with Jews so visibly parading around with Israeli flags draped across their shoulders, waving Israelis flags at solidarity rallies for Israel, Jewish communal leaders excoriating those who called out Israel for engaging in genocide or starving children, and welcoming the Israeli President as their “national leader”?

Really? I thought we were Australians.

The “average” person could be forgiven for concluding that members of the Jewish community were demonstrating that they identified with and supported Israel.

The question to be asked here is why it is that criticising Israel by Jews is said to make the speaker a self-hating Jew, a “kapo” a “Judenrat” or, as in the case of Schwartz, to even be accused on ABC Radio National as being “anti-Jewish?”

They are shameful, offensive and disgraceful epithets. They are intended to be so.

Not to be ignored in the above is that the likes of a Mark Leibler, the ECAJ, AIJAC, the Zionist Federation of Australia and similar groups see Jews who criticise Israel as a no-go area even if they, falsely, assert that Jews are free to openly express their views about Israel.

It’s simply untrue!

There is the expectation from these quarters that all Jews will, as a matter of solidarity, support Israel as the Zionist/Jewish homeland. With this forked-tongue and double-speak it is no wonder that the sort of slurs and insults which Schwartz described at the Royal Commission are rife in the Jewish community.

A climate of fear
Conversely, those in the Jewish community who might otherwise speak out against Israel fear that they will be subjected to all manner of insults and even the break-down of family relationships.

Given the airing of Schwartz’s evidence, one has to also wonder why there has been total silence from the usually vocal Jewish organisations. Should they not be publicly calling out vilification of fellow-Jews, calling for vilification to be stopped and asking for respect for those Jews who are not Zionists, strident or not.

Proof of the “attitude” in the Jewish community to those who are not at one with supporting Israel is clearly demonstrated by the Australian Jewish News which, just last week, pulled a story attacking those in the Jewish community who attacked their fellow Jews with the the sort of offensive epithets directed at Sarah Schwartz.

My Israel question
I can speak personally to how the Jewish community reacts when Israel or the Israel Lobby comes under scrutiny. Back in 2006, Melbourne University Press published my son Antony Loewenstein’s book My Israel Question. The book flew off the shelves.

The response from the so-called powers-that be in the Jewish community — including a Jewish Federal member of  Parliament in Parliament, even exhorting people not to buy the book — bordered on feral.

Even putting aside the death threats to my son and his then partner, as an example of hate mail — which Schwartz has so clearly shown in her evidence — one early so-called correspondent wrote that he hoped that when the Nazis came to Australia that he and his parents would be the first to be marched into the gas chambers.

Unhinged? Yes!

But as Schwartz spelt out in her evidence at the Royal Commission many in the Jewish community see attacking those who do not support Israel 100 percent as legitimate. And if that extends to thuggery, look no further than the Jewish group the Lions of Zion and their “activities” — an organisation supported by the powers that be in the Jewish community.

Thankfully the JCA has provided an ever-growing forum and voice for Jews who will not remain silent given Israel’s genocide in Gaza and breaches of multiple international laws and conventions.

Let’s not forget, while Israel denies what a slew of scholars, human rights organisations and aid and medical agencies have found — including those learned on genocide, some of whom even live in Israel itself — the facts on the ground speak volumes. We have all seen and read about it.

Israel clearly stands guilty as charged!

The United States went to war to stop Iran charging tolls in the Strait of Hormuz. It has now imposed a toll 15 times larger. Where is the “international waterway” chorus now?

For five months, we were treated to a sermon. Foreign ministries from Brussels to Tokyo to the Gulf capitals lined up to recite the catechism: the Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway. Freedom of navigation is sacrosanct.

No state may impose charges on innocent transit. Iran’s proposal to levy a passage fee was denounced as extortion, as hostage-taking of the global economy, as a violation of the law of the sea so grave that it justified war.

• READ MORE: US carrying out new attacks on Iran after Trump’s threats
• Other Lim Tean articles

On Monday, the President of the United States announced that America will henceforth be known as “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT” — and that as guardian, it will be reimbursed at the rate of 20 percent of the value of all cargo passing through the waterway. Effective immediately.

Let us do the arithmetic the hymn-singers will not do. Iran was reportedly seeking something in the region of US$2 million per vessel — a figure the United States declared intolerable, a casus belli. A 20 percent ad valorem charge on a laden VLCC carrying two million barrels of crude at today’s prices approaches US$30 million per transit.

BREAKING: The UAE says two national tankers were hit by Iranian cruise missiles in the Strait of Hormuz, killing one crew member and injuring eight others. Authorities say the fires have been contained. pic.twitter.com/xfMDH2EHgn

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) July 13, 2026

The United States bombed Iran over a toll, and has replaced it with a toll 15 times greater — collected not by the coastal state whose territorial sea the shipping lanes actually pass through, but by a power projecting force from half a world away.

There is a word for demanding a percentage of cargo value from merchant vessels under threat of naval interdiction. The word is not “guardianship.” Every shipping lawyer knows the word. Every P&I club knows the word. The Barbary corsairs knew the word, and they at least had the honesty to use it.

The law they invoked now condemns them
I have spent more than three decades in shipping law, and I want readers to understand precisely what has been done to the legal order these governments claimed to defend.

Article 38 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) guarantees the right of transit passage through straits used for international navigation. That right is absolute in a way few rights in international law are: it cannot be suspended, and it cannot be conditioned on payment — not to the coastal state, and certainly not to a third power that has appointed itself gatekeeper.

Article 42 permits bordering states to regulate certain matters, but expressly forbids any regulation that has the practical effect of denying, hampering or impairing transit. Article 26, governing territorial seas, states the principle in terms a child could understand: no charge may be levied upon foreign ships by reason only of their passage.

When Iran floated its toll, every chancellery in the Western world could recite these provisions from memory. Legal advisers produced learned memoranda. Editorial boards thundered. Now the United States — which, let us remember, has never even ratified UNCLOS — imposes a charge an order of magnitude larger, on a strait whose shipping lanes run through Iranian and Omani territorial waters, and the chancelleries have discovered the virtue of silence.

The US military says it has begun a third night of strikes against Iran, hours ahead of a planned reinstatement of a naval blockade on Iran announced by President Donald Trump. https://t.co/UrU0tRWO2A

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 13, 2026

The historical parallel is exact, and it is damning. For four centuries, Denmark extracted the Sound Dues from every vessel passing between the North Sea and the Baltic — a percentage of cargo value, paid under the guns of Kronborg Castle. The maritime powers spent generations denouncing this as a relic of feudal extortion incompatible with the freedom of the seas, and finally abolished it by treaty in 1857.

The principal architect of that abolition — the state that refused on principle to pay tribute for passage through an international strait — was the United States of America.

And there is an older irony still. The founding myth of the American navy is the refusal to pay the Barbary states for safe passage in the Mediterranean: millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute. Two and a quarter centuries later, America has not merely agreed to tribute. It has become the party collecting it.

The hymn sheet, revisited
So let us now address the chorus. Where are all the governments now — the ones who spent the spring singing from the hymn sheet of the “international waterway”?

You told us this was about principle. You told us that the freedom of navigation through international straits was a pillar of the rules-based order, that small trading nations above all depended upon it, that Iran’s toll was piracy dressed in the language of sovereignty.

Very well. The test of a principle is whether you will state it against your friends. Iran’s proposed charge was a rounding error compared to what Washington has just decreed. If US$2 million was piracy, what is US$30 million? If Iran holding the world economy hostage justified war, what does the “Guardian of the Hormuz Strait” holding it hostage justify — a strongly worded communiqué? An awkward pause at the next summit?

The silence answers the question. The principle was never the freedom of the seas. The principle was that the patron does not pay; the patron collects. The rules-based order, as I have argued at length in these pages, was never a body of rules at all. It was a hierarchy wearing the costume of law, and the costume has now been removed in public.

Consider what Gulf producers are being asked to accept. They cheered — some openly, some through gritted teeth — as American ordnance fell on Iran in the name of keeping the strait free.

Their reward is a levy on their own exports larger than anything Tehran ever contemplated, imposed unilaterally, with no treaty, no consent, no sunset clause, and no forum in which to contest it. They have exchanged a neighbour’s toll booth for an emperor’s tax farm, and they are expected to call it protection.

Seems like Trump just made a pitch for the Iranian toll system.

Because the Iranians were going to charge $1mn per ship, which would amount to 1-2% of the value of the cargo of an oil tanker.

But Trump is going to charge 20%! pic.twitter.com/m2lpNbxd0W

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) July 13, 2026

What the underwriters will decide
Here is the dimension the political commentary will miss, and it is the one that will actually determine events. The Strait of Hormuz now has two rival authorities, each asserting control, each attaching conditions to passage. Iran’s Strait Authority has declared passage unfeasible until calm is restored and speaks of permits and designated corridors.

Washington declares the strait open, promises convoys, and demands its 20 percent.

For the war risk underwriter in London or Oslo, this is not a geopolitical abstraction. It is an impossible risk matrix. Compliance with one authority is defiance of the other. A master who joins an American convoy has identified his vessel with a belligerent; a master who hugs the Iranian corridor and pays Tehran invites interdiction by the self-appointed guardian.

Either course may void cover or trigger exclusions. Add a 20 percent cargo levy to war risk premia already at extraordinary levels, and the commercial mathematics of the strait collapse entirely. The blockade of Hormuz will be completed not by mines or missiles but by the quiet refusal of underwriters to write the risk — a mechanism I have described in the past, when the enforcement power of marine insurance was still treated as an exotic footnote.

The reckoning
Every empire that turned its guarantees into revenue streams discovered the same thing: protection that must be purchased is indistinguishable from the threat it purports to guard against, and clients who are billed like subjects begin, quietly, to shop for alternatives. The two corridors of the New World Order — the ones I have written about since earlier this year — just became three: Iran’s, America’s, and the growing routes that avoid both.

To the governments who sang from the hymn sheet: you were not defending the freedom of the seas. You were defending the exclusive right of your patron to price it. Now the invoice has arrived, addressed to you, at 20 percent of everything you own that floats.

How does it feel?

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

Following the passing of Qatar’s Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani at 74 on Sunday, his solidarity with the Palestinian people remains one of the defining legacies of his leadership.

He is being remembered not only as a regional statesman, but also as a steadfast ally of the Palestinian people and the only Arab leader to physically break the crippling siege on the Gaza Strip.

In October 2012, Sheikh Hamad visited the embattled Gaza Strip, six years after Israel imposed its crippling international blockade on the territory, following the 2006 Palestinian elections.

• READ MORE: How Sheikh Hamad revolutionised Arab media through Al Jazeera

Accompanied by his wife, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, and a high-level delegation, the emir bypassed the political isolation imposed on the enclave by Western powers and regional actors, leading to a massive official and popular reception.

The head of Hamas’s diaspora office, Khaled Meshaal, told Al Jazeera that the visit to the Strip meant that “Jerusalem, Gaza and Palestine mourn him”.

“He was the first Arab and Muslim leader to visit Gaza, standing by its side with chivalry and magnanimity, as if officially announcing the breaking of the siege in its darkest circumstances,” Meshaal told Al Jazeera.

“He was intelligent, brave and a man of principles.”

‘Special love for Palestine’
Ahmed al-Sheikh, a senior journalist, Arab affairs commentator and former news director at Al Jazeera Arabic Channel, said the Father Emir had ”a special kind of love for Palestine”.

“Has any other leader in the Arab world done that [visit to Gaza], except Hamad bin Khalifa?” al-Sheikh reflected in a recent interview.

”Why did he go to Gaza? It’s because he saw that everyone around Gaza is neglecting it”, he added.

During that landmark visit, Sheikh Hamad announced an increase in Qatar’s reconstruction grant to the enclave from $254 million to $400 million, laying the foundation for vital housing, infrastructure and healthcare projects that benefited thousands of Palestinians.

His commitment to the Palestinian cause predated the blockade on Gaza. In 1999, Sheikh Hamad became the first Gulf leader to visit the Palestinian territories since 1967, meeting with the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat during a critical political impasse.

According to al-Sheikh, the emir viewed the Palestinian struggle through a deeply personal lens. When former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon besieged Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, the emir was profoundly pained. He told his aides that when Sharon attacked the Muqata’a, it felt as though he was attacking Qatar itself.

His connection to Palestine was coupled with a regret that he had never visited Jerusalem before its occupation in 1967, According to al-Sheikh, that prompted him to commission an extensive three-hour documentary on the holy city to capture its history and identity.

Rather than relying solely on international intervention, he believed in the agency of the Palestinian people and that they were the essential spearhead of their movement.

“You will do the primary action and without this action there can be no liberation,” the emir once told al-Sheikh.

Defying regional consensus
This stance put him frequently at odds with the regional consensus. During Israel’s devastating 2008–2009 war on Gaza, deep divisions emerged among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members over how to respond to the crisis.

Sheikh Hamad called for an emergency Arab summit in Doha, proposing a $250 million reconstruction fund and a maritime corridor to bypass the blockade. He famously expressed his disappointment on live television about the lack of an Arab quorum for the emergency meeting.

“God is sufficient for us and he is the best disposer of affairs.”

Some of Gaza’s most vital infrastructure projects before the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023 were the result of financial pledges made by Sheikh Hamad.

Qatar funded the rehabilitation of vital highways and the flagship Sheikh Hamad City in Khan Younis — a $58 million  public housing project with 53 modern apartment buildings for thousands of low-income families.

Additionally, the Sheikh Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, which officially opened in April 2019, became the territory’s premier facility for amputees and children with hearing impairments.

Israel erased infrastructure
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has systematically erased much of the infrastructure Qatar helped finance during Sheikh Hamad’s leadership. Satellite imagery from May this year confirmed that Hamad City and other areas in southern Gaza have been wiped from the map.

The Sheikh Hamad Hospital managed to resume its vital services last December, despite suffering direct attacks, severe shortages and the broader collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. Operating the only CT scanner in northern Gaza, the hospital has even opened a new branch in the south to cope with a 225 percent increase in amputation cases.

Sheikh Hamad Hospital’s continued operations during the ongoing genocide in Gaza remain a tangible remnant of the late emir’s unprecedented efforts in the besieged enclave. His support for Gaza will remain for generations to come.

Mohammad Mansour is a senior journalist of Al Jazeera with a particular focus on Gaza, Palestine and Israel. Before joining Al Jazeera, he held editorial positions at A News in Istanbul, Turkey; TRT World; and TRT Arabic in Gaza. Mansour won the 2016 Media Freedom Award for Best TV Report in Gaza, Palestine.

I loathe hypocrisy. I am sure you do too. So let’s state this plainly. The genociders have employed hypocrisy as a defence.

It is the weakest of all defences. It is the wall that crumbles.

It is NOT antisemitic to stand against the state of supremacy and genocide, the Zionist state. It is not anti-semitic to state that the state should be dismantled.

• READ MORE: Antisemitic, really? Jewish leader speaks out on Royal Commission hypocrisy
• Saige England: Praise for Australia’s Jewish Council but NZ’s council is a hasbara propaganda campaign
• Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

It is not antisemitic to state that every single massacre of Palestinians — their forced exile and the attempted extermination of all Palestinians, is wrong.

It is not antisemitic to demand a different state, one where all Palestinians have the right of return and where the land — from the river to the sea — can be shared.

The vast majority of Zionists in the world are not Jewish, they are born-mad-again people who identify as Christian and who have adopted a violent notion that violence is fine as long as it is directed against Palestinians.

Settler colonialism on steroids. Again.

Starving Indigenous people
Like the history of colonialism everywhere — an Empire killing and starving Indigenous people. In Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the US, Australia, New Zealand — the Palestinians have been ground down and cast into dust.

The only sensible stance is to stand against the carnage and to say never again means never again for everyone.

I know many Jews who stand against the fascism of Zionism. The Bund was a whole movement of Jews who stood for this.

Once again, and again and again, I call down my Jewish ancestors in standing with them and with all humanitarians who support the rights of Palestinians to live on the land, from the river, to the sea, free of apartheid, free of exile, free of the fear of snipers and bombs.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

The only positive thing about the Iran war heating up again is that Lindsey Graham won’t be around to enjoy it.

The bloodthirsty South Carolina senator breathed his last on Saturday, succumbing to what his office describes as “a brief and sudden illness” after a political career dedicated to promoting wars, airstrikes and proxy conflicts at every possible opportunity.

People have long poked fun at the hypocrisy of Lindsey Graham living as an obvious closeted gay man in a political party with a virulently anti-LGBTQ platform. I personally have always found Graham’s sexual attraction to men a lot less interesting than his sexual attraction to acts of mass military slaughter.

• LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley

Ever since the death of Graham’s dear friend John McCain, nobody on Capitol Hill has been able to match his gleeful enthusiasm for the shredding of human bodies using high-priced war machinery.

Wherever there was any debate about dropping bombs, launching missiles, toppling foreign governments, arming proxy forces, or imposing starvation sanctions, you could always count on Lindsey Graham to be the first and loudest voice arguing in favour of more death and destruction.

Graham has personally taken credit for persuading President Trump to begin the war with Iran. In the months leading up to his unexpected demise, the senator had advocated for direct US military interventionism in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Yemen, Nigeria, Lebanon, and Palestine, and had just returned from a trip to Kyiv promoting the US proxy war against Russia.

He was literally pushing for more war and military expansionism until the very end of his life.

All the world’s worst people are publicly expressing their grief about the loss of their beloved war slut, from Trump to Benjamin Netanyahu to Itamar Ben-Gvir to Tom Cotton to Mike Huckabee. Meanwhile, everyone who’s not a warmongering psychopath is having a splendid day.

Well, at least Lindsey Graham is dead                   Video/audio: Caitlin Johnstone

Of course we’re seeing imperial narrative managers like Piers Morgan wagging their fingers and chiding their audiences not to speak ill of the dead, but the hell with them. We’re not doing that.

JUST IN – Lindsey Graham and Trump pose together with a “Make Iran Great Again” hat, signed by Trump. pic.twitter.com/656ctZp52M

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 5, 2026

Politeness is not more important than Lindsey Graham’s victims. The liberal desire for propriety and nice feelings does not outweigh the importance of naming and shaming Graham’s frenetic scramble to murder as many human beings as he possibly could throughout his evil, miserable life.

Sara and I grieve with the American people over the loss of our dear friend, Senator Lindsey Graham.

In our recent meeting, I said, “Lindsey is a great friend of Israel and a cherished friend of mine. We have no better friend than Lindsey.”

Lindsey understood that the security… pic.twitter.com/JG2mUUAfFT

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) July 12, 2026

Lindsey Graham is dead, and it is good that he is dead. May his omnicidal ideology soon join him in the arms of the cold, cold ground. May the insane, insatiable god he worshipped cease to gain recognition on this planet.

Lindsey Graham is dead. At least that’s one good thing. No matter what else happens today, they can’t take that away from us.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.