Pro-Palestine activists made strong pleas for stronger boycotts of Israeli products today and again demanded that the New Zealand government sanction Tel Aviv over its Gaza genocide.

In the 153rd week of continuous protests, the activists themed the global BDS – boycott-divestment-sanctions — campaign with local targets such as the Auckland Council and other investment funds.

Speakers included activists Leeann Wahanui-Peters, Neil Scott, Kathy Ross, Achmat Esau and Anna Lee.

• READ MORE: Israel must protect West Bank’s Palestinians amid settler pogroms, says US envoy
• Other Gaza, Palestine reports

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) campaigner Neil Scott gave a blistering indictment of the current coalition government’s weak response to what he called Israeli crimes against humanity.

He also called on the government to end the “visa free” policy for anybody who is in the Israeli military.

“That’s [those] in the current military, or the military reserves — and they are in reserves until the age of 40,” he said. “These people should not be coming to Aotearoa when they are in a genocidal terrorist entity for the Israeli Defence Forces [IDF].

“That should be ended,” Scott added, and he was greeted with loud cheers and applause.

Compared with South Africa
Speakers also compared the BDS campaign with the successful anti-apartheid campaigns against white minority-ruled South Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Now South Africa is spearheading the legal fight against Israel in the world’s top judiciary, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in The Hague. Last week it filed a new legal dossier highlighting the genocidal state’s non-compliance with binding provisional measures.

Another PSNA activist, Anna Lee, also called on protesters to support the BDS movement and do all they could to “damage the Israeli Zionist regime and its ability to continue the genocide”.

“We can financially damage the Israeli economy just as we did when there was an international boycott on apartheid South Africa,” she said.

“We need to target goods, services and any investments that aid the Zionist economy and assist it to do ‘business as usual’ with its apartheid and murderous activities.”

Lee reminded the crowd that boycotts did work.

“They were very successful in hitting the apartheid regime in South Africa and they are already damaging the Israeli economy.

“In fact, they are so successful that Israeli-sponsored Zionist groups in the USA are pressuring Republican state governments to persecute any state employee or contractor who admits to taking part in the boycott of Israel.”

Israeli regime ‘hurting’
The Israeli regime was “hurting” which was why it was working hard on small nations around the world to get more economic collaboration.

“This is why very recently the NZ Israeli Innovation Hub sales promotion was held here in Tāmaki Makaurau [Auckland].

“This shameful event was aimed at increasing NZ economic collaboration with Israeli companies. And it was attended by officials from the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).”

Lee said the boycott movement did not just include Israeli-owned companies but included international businesses which had invested in Israel to take advantage of financial incentives and the opportunity to “profit from exploitation of the Palestinian workers in the ‘occupied territories’”.

“It’s not hard to identify these companies today. We can’t rely on the ‘made in’ labels on the packages because these businesses, like the Zionists, are devious.

“But we do have phone apps like ‘No Thanks’ which you can install on your phone.”

Lee said all people needed to do was “scan the barcode” and they would immediately get an answer.

“If the product is on the boycott list you can then make one more ‘click’ and read why. If it is OK the app will say so.”

The app was developed by a Palestinian software engineer from Gaza — “and it is a powerful tool to use to hit the Zionist regime and support Palestinian freedom”.

Activists from the PSNA and other Palestinian solidarity groups around New Zealand held meetings this week to plan actions for the Global March for Palestine on October 10. New Zealand will be the first country in the world to kick off that march.

Support groups include Banners for Palestine, the Palestine Car Convoy, and Stand With Palestine Waiheke Group.

The Auckland event is scheduled to start at 2pm in Te Komititanga Square/Britomart on that day and march up Queen Street to Albert Park.

Also, a solidarity “kite day” event at Coyle Park, Point Chevalier, is planned for next Saturday after the 2pm CBD rally.

Nobody ready to push back
Meanwhile, a prominent Israeli peace activist has warned that no one in Israel’s government was prepared to push back against the extremist policies of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Alon-Lee Green, co-director and founder of the Palestinian-Jewish activist group Standing Together, told Al Jazeera that Israeli politicians were “all fighting against each other over who is more extreme and who is winning more of the right-wing voters”.

Many opposition figures would not represent a departure from current anti-Palestine policies, the activist said, but instead sought to contest “the right wing in power over the question of who’s more right wing”.

Ben-Gvir was “trying to promise us that with more death, and more blood, and more abuse”, Israeli Jews will gain security, Green added.

“He’s lying. We will only get more violence out of it,” he said.

Tēnā koe, Te Rangatira

Matua Pita Tipene, I’ve met you several times over the years and have always respected you. You have struck me as thoughtful, considered and serious about rangatiratanga with a genuine concern for the people you serve. I have seen you as an island of calmness surrounded by a sea of madness.

That is why I struggle with the fact that you are in Israel right now.

I know you have said that you want to see for yourself what is happening rather than rely only on the media. I also know that you have spoken about paying homage to our tūpuna of the 28th Māori Battalion who fought and died in that part of the world.

• READ MORE: US rejects Israeli suggestions of removing Palestinians from Gaza
• Israeli police kill Palestinian in Jerusalem as army blocks aid for Qusra
• Other Gaza genocide reports

But I have to be honest, Pita: I do not understand either of those reasons for being there at this particular moment. Whatever the intention, I struggle to see how travelling to Israel now is the right thing to do, given what is happening in Gaza.

This is not an ordinary time to visit Israel. A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in real time.

Hamas must be condemned. I condemn the attacks of October 7, the killing of Israeli civilians and the taking of hostages. Nothing justifies those actions. But condemning Hamas does not require us to suspend our moral judgment about Israel’s response.

Nothing that happened on October 7 justifies the killing of Palestinian civilians, the destruction of homes and essential infrastructure, the displacement of communities or the denial of basic necessities.

I’m not really a stats man but here is one that we must collectively mourn upon nearly 22,000 Palestinian children killed from October 7th 2023 to February 2026.

By God’s mercy alone, the death threat has slowed down but hear this Matua since your arrival in Israel 12 children have died

As Māori, our history should make us particularly sensitive to what happens when a powerful state exercises authority over another people. We know dispossession, the loss of whenua and the experience of having our history contested or told by those with greater political and military power.

That is why I think about Ngāti Hine. Your people have a proud history of standing with those seeking self-determination — from Ireland and South Africa to Kanaky.

Nelson Mandela understood that principle clearly. He recognised that South Africa’s freedom was incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians. His position was not a rejection of Jewish people or Israel’s security; it was a recognition that opposition to oppression must be applied consistently.

Many Māori see something familiar in the Palestinian experience. That does not mean supporting Hamas, excusing the killing of Israeli civilians or disregarding the safety of Jewish people. We can condemn all of those things while still insisting that Palestinian lives and rights matter equally.

Pita, you have copped a lot of online abuse. I understand people’s outrage, but I’m not going to add to it. I believe you are a reasonable person, and I believe these are issues we should be able to sit down and talk through. I would much rather have that conversation than contribute to the abuse being directed at you.

But I also think you need to be prepared for what happens when you come home. Your absence and your actions have upset a lot of people, including people within your own community, and many will be deeply disappointed.

People will also want to know whether the trip was privately funded and, if so, by whom. The reality is that, as a leader, you face a great level of scrutiny.

Seeing for yourself matters. But so does what we do with what we see.

For me, the principle is simple: nothing justifies the killing of civilians, wherever they live and whoever they are. Palestinian lives are not worth less than Israeli lives, and the security of one people cannot be built on the suffering of another.

You have always seemed to me to be a thoughtful man, Pita. That is why I hope you will reflect deeply on what you have seen, what you have heard and what our whakapapa asks of us.

Shane te Pou is a political commentator and Māori broadcaster and he writes a political analysis column for The Daily Blog. This article is republished from TDB with permission.

Amid an escalating sovereignty and maritime boundary dispute with France, Vanuatu has now filed an “application” at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against France.

Vanuatu is seeking international recognition of sovereignty over two small islands in its far south.

The islands are known on charts by their European names Matthew and Hunter islands, but in Vanuatu they are called Umaenupne and Umaeneg with claims of long standing cultural and religious ties to the islands.

• READ MORE: Umaenupne and Umaeneg – isles of the Resting God — Ben Bohane
• Other Ben Bohane articles

From the early 1900s Vanuatu was jointly administered by France and the UK under a condominium regime.

In 1962, Australian planter and aviation pioneer Bob Paul, along with his aviator friend Henri Martinet applied to the Joint Court of New Hebrides to claim the islands, but their claim was rejected when France claimed the islands as part of New Caledonia.

Vanuatu has initiated proceedings at the ICJ following the collapse of negotiations between the two countries in Paris in July, and decades of unsuccessful attempts over the years since Vanuatu’s independence in 1980.

President Emmanuel Macron had offered to resolve the dispute when he visited Vanuatu in 2023 and meetings have since taken place in Port Vila last November and in Paris this past July. But the negotiations failed to deliver an agreed outcome.

Legal precedent risk
French analysts are concerned about the legal precedent of conceding the islands to Vanuatu, worried it will re-energise similar territorial disputes France has with other nations over remote islands, such as Clipperton atoll, which Mexico wants back.

The French rightwing have also applied pressure to the issue, with Marie Le Pen warning after the meeting in Port Vila last November that the two islands were “not [Macron’s] to give away.”

The ICJ is the world’s highest judicial body, and could provide a final, legal determination on the dispute. Vanuatu is banking on France supporting their application for a ruling.

At the most recent Davos meeting in January, President Macron affirmed France’s commitment to international law and even warned against a world in which “the law of the strongest” prevails.

Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Jotham Napat told The Sydney Morning Herald:

“Umaenupne (Matthew) and Umaeneg (Hunter) Islands have always belonged, and will always belong, to the people of Vanuatu. Vanuatu is a strong supporter of the international rules-based order and of the peaceful resolution of disputes through international law.

“Seeking recognition of Vanuatu’s sovereignty over these islands is not an act of confrontation; it is an exercise of our rights through the legal processes of that international order. It is about addressing an unresolved colonial legacy with dignity, determination and confidence in international law.”

Sovereignty dispute
Stephen Webb, an Australian lawyer acting for the Vanuatu government — who also acted for Timor-Leste in its maritime boundary dispute with Australia — said:

“This is fundamentally a legal dispute over sovereignty, and the ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, specifically established to resolve disputes between States in accordance with international law. For Vanuatu, bringing this matter before the ICJ is about finding a definitive, peaceful and legally binding resolution.”

In recent years, Vanuatu won global support for leading the initiative for an advisory opinion from the ICJ clarifying obligations and consequences of causing harm to the climate.

This initiative was endorsed unanimously by the UN General Assembly, including by France who co-sponsored the resolution.

With the ICJ confirming receipt of Vanuatu’s application, attention turns to France’s response. The court can only determine the dispute with France’s acceptance, so France now needs to decide whether it will submit the questions of sovereignty over the islands to judicial determination.

China outright rejected the ICJ’s decision in favour of the Philippines in its 2016 case against China’s claims over the South China Sea.

Given France’s vocal championing of international law, it may be more difficult for France to take the same position.

Pacific decolonisation
If France rejects Vanuatu’s case, it also risks putting itself offside with a Pacific region committed to decolonisation and further unrest in New Caledonia.

Indigenous Kanak chiefs in New Caledonia, including the leader of the pro-independence FLNKS movement Christian Tein, have all backed Vanuatu’s claims, stating Kanaks never had links to the two islands and they belong to Vanuatu.

Kanak chiefs have told Vanuatu’s leaders that when New Caledonia becomes independent, it will return the two islands to Vanuatu.

The coming months will reveal whether this dispute has any chance of being resolved before the world’s highest court.

Ben Bohane is Vanuatu-based Australian journalist and policy analyst who has reported the Pacific for nearly 30 years. This article was first published by The Sydney Morning Herald and is republished with the author’s permission.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

The British state rigged the trial of Tony Greenstein, a secular Jewish socialist and peace activist, to get him locked up for as much as 14 years — supposedly for “inviting support for Hamas”.

Fearful that the judge would punish his barrister for delivering a closing speech that properly defended him, Greenstein instead spoke directly to the jury.

For half an hour, he picked apart sham charges relating to three social media posts and a blog article he wrote against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

• READ MORE: Other Gaza genocide reports

In doing so, he exposed the proceedings as a political show trial — one of a growing number, designed to silence opposition both to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and to the British state’s complicity in it.

In summing up, Judge Sarah Plaschkes said she had considered referring Greenstein for contempt of court. But instead she dismissed his eloquent, damning address to the jury as a “rambling speech delivered by an old man”.

At that point, presumably, she had no idea what impact Greenstein’s words would have on the jury.

In a stinging rebuke to the judge, the jury members unanimously acquitted him after just two hours of deliberation. As it turned out, it was not Greenstein on trial; it was British justice.

Hearing all the facts
Once given a chance to hear all the facts, not just the ones curated by the Crown, the jury accepted Greenstein’s arguments, including his accusation that the judiciary were readily conniving in the growing authoritarianism unleashed by the UK state’s complicity in genocide.

Which may explain why Greenstein’s landmark victory in a case with huge implications for free speech — and the right to speak out on the British state’s partnership in Israel’s genocide — was almost entirely ignored by the establishment media.

Had the jury found against him, you can be sure that same media would have covered the matter extensively, playing its part in sending a message to audiences that they should keep their heads down and avoid showing any solidarity with the Palestinian people or risk sharing Greenstein’s fate.

His acquittal, and the British state’s humiliation, was not a message the state — or the billionaire-owned media — wanted publicised.

What Greenstein’s closing speech managed to do was introduce something the British state and its judiciary have been carefully trying to strip out of the current wave of show trials of anti-genocide activists: important context.

Greenstein had to dismiss his barrister for the closing speech because, had the barrister spoken to the jury as Greenstein himself did, he would have most likely shared the fate of another distinguished lawyer, Rajiv Menon KC.

Menon is facing contempt of court proceedings over his masterful closing speech in the trial of six Palestine Action defendants, who were charged with multiple and serious crimes over their efforts to destroy killer-drones produced at a factory in Bristol operated by Israel’s biggest arms maker, Elbit Systems.

Refusal to convict
As a result of Menon’s speech — you can read the most important passages here — the jury refused to convict any of the defendants of any of the offences for which the state had put them on trial.

The judge in that case, Jeremy Johnson, was so eager to make an example of Menon — and intimidate other lawyers so they would be dissuaded from giving other Palestine solidarity activists a proper defence — that he managed to abuse the established legal procedure specifically designed for contempt of court referrals.

The Court of Appeal had to overturn his decision, though it allowed him to reapply for contempt proceedings against Menon, this time using the proper channels. Johnson did so.

The point is that judges like Johnson and Plaschkes — faithful servants not of justice but of the British state — know that no jury will convict activists trying to to stop a genocide if it is framed in those terms. So these judges must rig these trials to keep the jury as ignorant as possible of the relevant context: that the British state is persecuting peace activists for embarrassing it over its collusion in genocide.

That fact was, once again, only too evident during Greenstein’s trial.

Plaschkes was angry throughout the proceedings at Greenstein’s efforts to introduce context to the case. For the prosecution to succeed, she needed the jury to ignore many relevant things about Greenstein’s supposedly “Hamas-supporting” comment about a “ghetto uprising” in Gaza:

• the context that the one-day breakout from Gaza on 7 October 2023 was a direct response to Israel’s preceding 16-year blockade of Gaza, denying its 2.3 million-strong population the essentials of life and turning the enclave effectively into a concentration camp;
• the context that, following the October 2023 breakout, Israel immediately launched a genocidal campaign of destruction against the enclave’s infrastructure and its civilian population;
• the context that, as a secular socialist, Greenstein has been a long-time critic of Hamas, as proven by a stream of articles he has written over more than a decade and that he cited to the jury;
• the context that, as the son of Holocaust survivors, he is deeply opposed to one people systematically oppressing another – all the more so given that Jewish Zionists have exploited their people’s historic victimhood to justify Israel committing contemporary crimes against Palestinians;
• the context of international law, which states that a people under occupation, the Palestinians, have a right to resist their oppression by Israel, including through the use of violence;
• the context that Greenstein had not even mentioned Hamas in posts that were the focus of the trial, or indicated any support for it – only his support for the right in law for Palestinians to resist Israeli crimes;
• the context that the British government proscribed the political wing of Hamas under the UK’s terrorism laws only in 2021, not based any new “terror” behaviour – in fact, four years earlier Hamas had rewritten its charter, showing a strong willingness to make concessions to Israel. No, the purpose of proscription was specifically to advance Israel’s goal of intimidating popular, international solidarity with the people of Gaza;
• the context that, in prosecuting Greenstein, the British government is destroying the very basis of the right to free speech, all to advance the interests of the demonstrably genocidal state of Israel;
• the context that the British state is not some dispassionate arbiter of justice in these prosecutions: it is aggressively colluding in Israel’s crimes. Its huge conflict of interest in silencing critics is the elephant in the room.

Greenstein told the jury:

Your [verdict] will not stay in this room. If these three posts are terrorism, then the word has a new meaning for everyone in this country. Every student who shares an article. Every pensioner who retweets the wrong opinion. Every writer, every blogger, every one of your neighbours with a social media account and a view about a war.

Can it really be the law of England that any of them – that any of you – will be condemned to 14 years of prison for a tweet? You have the power, today, to answer that question. Whatever your answer is, it will be remembered long after this trial is forgotten.

Masterclass speech
The whole speech is a masterclass in how to speak over the head of a complicit judiciary and prick the conscience of people who still have a moral backbone. I recommend you read it in full here.

The British government desperately wanted the scalp of a Jewish activist to show that no one is safe from the state’s long arm of persecution. It failed, which should be cause for relief and celebration among every person who opposes authoritarianism.

The defeats being handed to the British state by juries who hear the actual evidence are adding to the pressures on officials to find new ways to bypass the ancient right of trial by jury.

The government of Keir Starmer was determined to establish the precedent of scrapping jury trials. Faced with the unpopularity of such a move, his successor Andy Burnham has sounded hesitant about advancing the measure. But pledges he made while seeking the Labour leadership — and prime ministership — are proving to be worth little now that he is in office.

Meanwhile, courtier-judges like Johnson are finding ways to get around the reluctance of juries to convict anti-genocide activists of serious crimes.

Juries that convict activists of a relatively minor charge of criminal damage for smashing up killer-drones, assuming the defendants will get a few months in prison, are learning that they are thereby handing judges in these trials unlimited powers, in violation of the most basic principles of justice.

After the verdict, judges like Johnson are choosing to rewrite the charge sheet, adding retrospectively what they are bogusly calling a “terrorism connection”. That means they can sentence the defendants as “terrorists”, leading to far longer jail sentences and destroying the defendants’ lives in perpetuity.

Mark of a justice system
This is the mark of a justice system that no longer cares about evidence, fairness or jury verdicts. It cares only about visible punishment, about spreading terror through the courtroom.

We can fight back. Juries appear to be growing increasingly wary of these highly politicised trials the British state is staging to exonerate itself of its criminal activities and lock up its critics. As judges increasingly abuse the justice system to get the jail sentences demanded by the state, juries are likely to become much less willing to serve as an alibi for state repression.

This is no longer a struggle simply for the Palestinian people’s survival. It is a struggle for ourselves, for our right to have a voice, to have some say in how our societies are run and for whose benefit. It is a struggle to keep the forces of darkness at bay a little while longer.

And it is a battle none of us can afford to lose.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article is republished from the author’s Substack with permission.

New Zealand signed an international letter criticising Israel which foreshadows sanctions but a pro-Palestine advocacy group has rapped the government over its “haphazard” and “mixed messages” West Asia policy.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) cited a “hint of future economic sanctions” against Israel in a statement of concern issued jointly by New Zealand, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Canada just over a week ago.

However, New Zealand did not put its name to another second and stronger statement of condemnation against Israel constructing the highly strategic E1 illegal settlement on the Occupied West Bank.

• READ MORE: ‘Not sorry’ – will international pressure mean justice for Zomi Frankcom?
• PSNA slams NZ’s ‘uncaring’ lack of signature on global Israeli settlements censure
• Why Israeli tenders for illegal E1 West Bank settlement prompted outrage
• Other Gaza, Palestine reports

The second statement was issued at the same time, and had been signed by 22 Western countries.

All the countries who signed the second letter, except New Zealand and Germany, also signed the first one.

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in a statement that ether New Zealand was deliberately identifying and aligning with Germany — which is Israel’s third largest arms supplier — or “outsourcing” its foreign policy,

“More likely, it’s National outsourcing its foreign policy to New Zealand First, whose leader is blatantly pro-Israel. That haphazard arrangement results in mixed and ambiguous messages for the world and for New Zealanders,” Tamimi said.

Warning over tenders
She said there was a suggestion of economic sanctions in the second statement which did have New Zealand’s signature.

The statement stated “businesses should not consider bidding for construction tenders.

“They should be aware of legal and reputational consequences, including the risk of involving themselves in various breaches of international law.”

Tamimi said this warning was presumably to local companies in each country. It was a notice that the governments of the signatory countries could bring legal proceedings or amend legislation to thwart these companies.

“If governments follow this through, this is hugely important for investment funds in New Zealand which operate under Acts of Parliament, such as the Super Fund, ACC and KiwiSavers,” she said.

“The Super Fund lost a court case earlier this year, due to its attempts to keep investing in companies profiting from Israeli West Bank settlements. The writing is on the wall for other investors in Israel.

“Investment in genocide and apartheid Israel is neither a prudent nor moral choice for anyone.”

Pacific Islands Forum leaders are being urged to strengthen regional unity and ensure the Forum remains firmly Pacific-led as member countries work to deliver the goals of the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

Outgoing Forum Chair Solomon Islands and incoming Chair Palau, at the opening ceremony of the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, both emphasised that collective action — particularly on climate change, ocean protection and economic resilience — will be critical to turning regional commitments into tangible results for Pacific communities.

Speaking on behalf of Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale, Foreign Minister Rick Hou described the Forum chairmanship as a responsibility shared among members rather than belonging to a single country.

• READ MORE: US pushes critical minerals agenda in Cook Islands with Penrhyn ‘lifeline’
• Peters blasts Solomon Islands cabinet ministers for move against PM Wale
• Solomon Islands ‘dangles over the edge of political instability’ as three ministers quit
• Missing leaders won’t derail Pacific Islands Forum outcomes, says secretariat
• Vanuatu Special Envoy calls for PIF to ‘reopen’ issue of Pacific access to West Papua
• Solomon Islands PM Wale rushes home from Palau after confidence challenge launched
• Other PIF reports
• Other West Papua reports

“In our Pacific way, the chair is rather like a paddle passed from hand to hand — no one owns it,” Hou said, describing how each country took its turn before passing responsibility to the next.

He said the achievements during Solomon Islands’ chairmanship were the result of collective regional effort, including the establishment of the Pacific Resilience Facility, endorsement of the Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration and progress on regional labor mobility.

“These were not achievements of one chair or one country. They were the work of the Forum family,” Hou said.

Hou said Solomon Islands had sought to maintain that collective approach during its tenure, including through the Forum Troika’s work on regional architecture, the Suva Agreement, capitalisation of the Pacific Resilience Facility and preparations for the next UN climate conference.

He also stressed the importance of protecting the Forum as the region’s political home amid growing strategic competition.

Political home for ‘honesty’
“At such moments, the Forum must remain the political home where Pacific leaders speak honestly, listen carefully, and decide our own course,” Hou said.

Accepting the chairmanship for Palau, President Surangel Whipps Jr also called for members to work as a single Pacific family while recognising their different national circumstances.

“Not separate delegations working in parallel, but one Pacific family moving together,” Whipps said.

He said the collective aspirations of the region and the vision set out in the 2050 Strategy depended on solidarity among Forum members.

“The achievement of our collective aspirations and our leaders’ vision for 2050 rests on our unity and solidarity as a Forum family,” Whipps said.

Whipps said unity did not mean that countries must have identical interests or positions. Instead, it required members to listen to one another, maintain trust and find common ground through constructive dialogue.

The Palau president placed climate change at the centre of the Forum’s collective agenda, calling it the greatest threat to Pacific peoples’ security and well-being.

Unified target push
He urged the region to maintain a unified push to keep the 1.5-degree Celsius temperature target within reach, improve access to climate finance and recognize the ocean as part of the climate solution.

Whipps also linked climate action with economic security, pointing to the vulnerability created by high fuel, freight and food costs and dependence on imported diesel. A regional shift toward renewable energy, he said, could strengthen both climate resilience and Pacific economic sovereignty.

Whipps also emphasised the need for sustainable ocean management, resilient food systems and financing that matches the scale of the challenges facing Pacific island countries.

The transition from Solomon Islands to Palau places the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and its members at the centre of continuing that collective work.

Both leaders stressed that outside partners remain welcome but should support, rather than determine, Pacific priorities.

For the Forum, the challenge now is to translate the 2050 Strategy from a shared vision into coordinated action — ensuring that climate commitments, ocean stewardship and economic resilience deliver measurable benefits for Pacific people.

Republished from the Island Times.

The Free Palestine Party was presented at a solidarity rally at the weekend as the new political group contesting the New Zealand general election in November.

But the plea was “don’t vote for us” — instead, use the party as a platform pressure the government to honour its obligations under international law over Palestine.

Organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), the rally — staged on the 152nd consecutive week since Israel launched its genocide on the besieged Gaza enclave in October 2023 — activist Anna Lee “unofficially” explained the party’s stance.

• READ MORE: New Zealand’s Free Palestine Party aims to turn solidarity movement into political force
• Palestine Free From the River to the Sea Party
• Global March for Palestine

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In an interview with Türkiye’s Anadolu news agency in July, party leader Paul Hopkinson declared: “The Palestinian issue has disappeared from public space. We will make sure that the Palestinian issue is front and centre in this election.”

Formally registered as a NZ political party on August 5, Free Palestine states on its website that it is “committed to justice, international law, and a democratic state with equal rights for all citizens”.

“My understanding is we don’t want you to vote for the Palestine Free from the River to the Sea Party,” said Lee, a PSNA organiser and a party member.

“The aim is to change public opinion and put sustained parliamentary pressure on the New Zealand government to uphold its obligations under international law with respect to Palestine.”

The party is centred on the Nakba — “the catastrophe”, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine — as the historical root of the ongoing crisis, directly challenging Western narratives that deny or minimise Palestinian evictions.

Anna Lee outlined the party’s aims — building a broad, democratic party that unites supporters of Palestine from all traditions, allowing different ideas and perspectives to be discussed in an environment of tolerance and respect.

It also seeks to pressure the NZ government to support the prosecution of war crimes and genocide, uphold UN resolutions, and exercise its independent voice in international forums.

The idea is to build links in solidarity with all those resisting inequality and injustice around the world, recognising that Palestinian liberation is bound up with the broader struggle against imperialism.

Lee also stressed the party’s founding principles. The first two are as follows and the full list is here.

• A just peace in Palestine depends upon the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the dismantling of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel, recognising that the further partitioning of Palestine in order to create the so-called Two State Solution would only lead to further injustice and suffering.
• Acceptance of the primacy of international law and the United Nations resolutions as the basis for the ending of military occupation and all forms of ethnic discrimination in Israel.

The PSNA invited nine political parties and independent candidates to its “Make genocide an election issue” rally and public forum last Saturday in Auckland.

However, none of the three government coalition parties responded, nor did the fast-growing Opportunities Party (TOP).

Four opposition parties — Free Palestine Party, Green Party, Labour Party, Te Pāti Māori, and Dr Timoti Te Moke (independent candidate for Māngere) — agreed to take part.

Free Palestine Party seeks electoral voice in New Zealand    Video: Anadolu

Their presentations were reported by Asia Pacific Report here.

PSNA’s Neil Scott summarised a few of the government’s “positive” steps:

• Condemned illegal settlements: The government has stated Israeli settlements in the West Bank violate international law
• Sanctioned 3 extremist settlers: Travel bans were imposed on Itamar Yehuda Levi, Harel David Libi, and Eliav Libi for violence and expanding illegal settlements
• Supported two-state solution: Officially backs a negotiated two-state outcome (but does not recognise Palestine?)
• Called for ceasefire: Peters has publicly called for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian access to Gaza
• Voted for UN resolution: NZ voted for a UN resolution demanding Israel end its unlawful presence in occupied Palestinian territory within 12 months.

But Scott also read out a long list of NZ government “negatives”:

• The coalition government had the chance to recognise Palestine alongside Australia, the UK, and Canada — but it refused. The government said recognition was a matter of “when, not if,’ but then chose not to act.
• Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick’s bill to sanction Israel has been blocked by this coalition government — denied even a first reading.
• Does not support the South African government’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
• Refuses to ban NZ holiday visas for members of the IDF: ”New Zealand’s Working Holiday Scheme arrangement with Israel was agreed to in 2010 in the spirit of promoting closer cooperation between Israel and New Zealand. We are not looking to alter this arrangement currently.”
• PSNA raised concerns with Judith Collins in November 2024 re Rocket Lab complicity in the war on Gaza. She refused to investigate.
• New Zealand continues joint military drills with Israel under RIMPAC – NZDF sent the largest contingent in a decade to RIMPAC 2026, alongside Israel and US.
• Under current coalition Holocaust education passed to become part of the NZ curriculum.

“PSNA supports including Holocaust education in the compulsory curriculum,” said Scott.

“But this education must be delivered in the broader context of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the other components of customary international law.

“It is simply not appropriate for the curriculum to centre genocide of Europeans while bypassing the numerous genocides of people of colour throughout colonial history, including in Aotearoa New Zealand, and up to the present day.”

PSNA – along with other groups – is now organising its part in a major Hīkoi for Palestine: International Day of Action on October 10. New Zealand will be the first country in the world participating in this event for the people of Palestine.

An exiled West Papuan leader living in Australia is calling on Oceania leaders at the Pacific Island Forum meeting in Palau this week to condemn growing military violence in the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian region.

Paula Makabory, an executive member of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), has also appealed to Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders to do the same and to call for an immediate end to the violence in civilian areas and to address the environment crisis in West Papua.

Her call is being supported by several Pacific-based organisations.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu special envoy calls for PIF to ‘reopen’ issue of Pacific access to West Papua
• Missing leaders won’t derail Pacific Islands Forum outcomes, says secretariat
• Other PIF reports
• Other West Papua reports

“The letter sent today to Pacific leaders calls for immediate action because the humanitarian situation has reached a critical juncture, underscored by devastating casualties reported in recent weeks,” Makabory said in a statement.

She cited the following recent incidents as examples of many since mid-2025 until now which showed an escalation of extrajudicial killings and the use of drones and land mines by the Indonesian military in civilian areas:

• Thursday, 18 June 2026: A drone strike in Intan Jaya. At about 1pm local time, an elderly Papuan woman was killed, and two other women were severely injured in an attack involving explosive materials deployed by Indonesian military drones. Local sources indicate an alarming escalation in military tactics, including the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and landmines placed along civilian footpaths.
• Wednesday, 17 June 2026: A fatal shooting in Dekai, Yahukimo. At 4.05 pm local time, a young Papuan man was shot and killed in Yahukimo Regency, Papua Pegunungan. Eyewitness accounts from the victim’s family directly implicated members of the Indonesian Marine Task Force.
• Thursday, 2 July 2026: American pilot Nicholas F. Gosselin of Associated Mission Aviation (AMA) was killed after landing in Yahukimo. The West Papua Liberation Army (TPNPB) claimed responsibility, alleging the aircraft was supporting Indonesian military operations, while Indonesian authorities claimed it was conducting a civilian humanitarian mission.

‘Urgent need for international monitoring’
“Regardless of the competing accounts, this tragic [pilot] incident demonstrates the urgent need for independent international monitoring, transparent investigations, and renewed efforts to de-escalate the conflict and promote human rights,” Makabory said,

“Under the internationally recognised doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the global community — and neighbouring sovereign states in particular — has a duty to step in when a state fails to protect its population from systematic human rights violations.”

She said the continuous deployment of heavy tactical forces had turned residential areas into active conflict zones, where indigenous Papuans were treated with inherent suspicion and lethal force.

There had been 24 extrajudicial killings so far during 2026.

“Severe human rights violations are rarely met with independent investigations or genuine justice, leaving civilian populations entirely defenceless and more than 125,00 people displaced and homeless in the Highlands,” she said.

Makabory said the Indigenous people of West Papua were an integral part of the Melanesian family.

“Their ongoing suffering directly weakens the security and solidarity of the entire Pacific region,” she said.

Collective diplomatic action
Makabory urged Pacific Island Forum leaders to “break the silence” and take collective diplomatic action by issuing a formal condemnation of recent killings in Intan Jaya and Yahukimo, issue a collective call an immediate cessation of military operations in civilian areas, and demand unimpeded United Nations access to investigate human rights abuses.

She also called for condemnation of drone strikes, the establishment of a humanitarian corridor for aid for displaced people in the Highlands, a moratorium on mega projects in West Papua and an independent evaluation of Special Autonomy in terms of pathways to indigenous West Papuan self-determination.

“The report also calls on the PIF leadership to challenge the crushing of peaceful dissent and the widespread destruction of Indigenous land with resulting acceleration of deforestation and regional climate change risks.”

Catherine Delahunty, spokesperson for West Papua Action Aotearoa (WPAA), said the New Zealand and Australian governments were “failing in their critical leadership roles” by their silence on all of these issues.

“The Pacific Islands Forum has called or years for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to be granted immediate, unrestricted access to West Papua to conduct an independent investigation, but this has been ignored and the PIF needs to ensure Indonesia can’t expect status at Pacific meetings while ignoring the PIF requests,” she said.

Makabory said the PIF Special Envoys, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape, needed to negotiate a firm timeline for a UN fact-finding mission with Indonesia.

“The PIF and MSG must bring the West Papuan human rights crisis and land crisis to the forefront of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and relevant international human rights forums to ensure global oversight,” she said.

“The survival of our Melanesian brothers and sisters depends on leaders who are willing to champion human rights and regional stability over political convenience.”

The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) should revisit a proposal for an independent regional delegation to visit West Papua and assess reported human rights concerns, says Vanuatu Special Envoy on Decolonisation and Maritime Boundaries Delimitation Joe Natuman.

With the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting (PIFLM) opening today, Natuman said Pacific leaders would have an opportunity to reconsider the issue and determine how the region could respond to continuing concerns about human rights and the wellbeing of the people of West Papua.

Natuman, a former prime minister, said the Forum had previously proposed sending a delegation to West Papua to assess the human rights situation directly.

• READ MORE: Solomon Islands PM Wale rushes home from Palau after confidence challenge launched
• Other PIF reports
• Other West Papua reports

However, he said the Forum had written to the Indonesian government regarding the proposed visit but had not received a response.

Natuman said direct access remained important if Pacific leaders were to develop a clearer understanding of the situation and consider reports of human rights concerns raised at regional and international levels.

The proposed visit could provide a fact-finding mechanism for Pacific countries, allowing representatives to engage with relevant stakeholders and assess conditions before reporting their findings to the Forum.

Natuman said the issue also extended to the participation of West Papuan representatives in regional and international forums, where he claimed their involvement had faced obstacles.

Similar challenges
He pointed to similar challenges within the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and said there would be no West Papuan delegation attending the upcoming PIF.

Natuman also referred to discussions surrounding West Papua at United Nations human rights mechanisms in Geneva, arguing that Indonesia’s position within international institutions had presented additional challenges for those seeking greater access to the territory.

With the Forum meeting in Palau, Natuman said Pacific leaders should reconsider West Papua.

Republished from the Vanuatu Daily Post with permission.

A national pro-Palestine advocacy group has criticised the “absence of signature” by the New Zealand government on a 22-member joint statement condemning the E1 Israeli settlement in the Occupied West Bank as a “moral collapse” in foreign policy.

The recent joint statement was issued by the foreign ministers of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Commission.

The statement condemned the decision by the Israeli Higher Planning Committee to approve plans for settlement construction in the E1 area, East of Jerusalem, as “unacceptable and a violation of international law”.

• READ MORE: NZ left parties condemn Luxon govt on lack of humanity, ‘complicity’ over Gaza genocide
• Palestinians, UK condemn Israel’s ‘destructive’ E1 settlement plan
• PM Christopher Luxon condemns Israel’s E1 settlement plan
• Other Palestine reports

The E1 settlement would divide the Occupied West Bank into two regions — northern and southern — and seriously damage the prospect of a Palestine state.

However, the status of New Zealand’s position on the joint protest was confusing with an Australian government statement not listing New Zealand while the UK version did.

RNZ National reports that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had condemned Israel’s E1 settlement plan in spite of New Zealand “not signing a joint statement”.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) spokesperson Rinad Tamimi condemned the New Zealand’s government’s “absence from the statement” in the context of the specific citing of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, describing the settlements as a “flagrant breach of international law.”

“The Key/English National Party government co-sponsored this resolution at the UN Security Council in 2016,” she said in a statement.

Israel’s E1 Settlement Plan Sparks International Condemnation   Video: Al Jazeera

“But the Luxon National Party, even after the genocide in Gaza in the past three years, can’t even bother to put its name to this recent condemnation,” Tamimi said.

Israel’s ‘favourable note’ on NZ
“In the nuanced world of international diplomacy, Israel will be taking favourable note of New Zealand’s slide into not caring what atrocities Israel is committing.

“Without taking any other action, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has always made of point of saying he often ‘made his concerns known’ to Israel. Now he’s even given up on that.”

Tamimi also criticised the lack of specific policies by New Zealand’s political parties to support Palestine in their election manifestos.

However, Te Pāti Māori publicly presented a strong 10-point pro-Palestine policy platform by co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer at a PSNA “make genocide an election issue” rally in Auckland on Saturday. Labour Party and Green Party spokespeople also made key statements over Palestine at the rally.

Tamimi said Israel’s genocide in Gaza was the worst atrocity of the 21st century.

“While there is meant to be a functioning ceasefire, the latest news from Gaza is that Israel has reoccupied more than 70 percent of Gaza, Israeli forces have resumed their assault because children in Gaza were flying kites,” she said in the statement.

“And on the Occupied West Bank Israeli settlers are openly beating up foreign network journalists with impunity.”

Practical, significant leverage
She said New Zealand had practical and significant symbolic leverage against Israel which it had “deliberately decided not to use”.

“As you would expect, all three coalition parties, pretend there is no such thing as foreign policy.”

“Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori have expressed support for Palestine, including imposing sanctions.

“But they need to clearly state what type and level of sanctions. Even the present government can say its immigration bans on West Bank terrorist settlers constitutes a sanction.

Tamimi said it was just “election rhetoric”, without announcing specific and meaningful sanctions in all areas — trade, investment, diplomatic, military and immigration.

“Without sanctions, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the Greater Israel project, are all still licensed for Israel to action,” she said.

Four opposition party spokespeople today condemned the New Zealand coalition government’s Palestine policies and called on voters to oust it and elect parties pledging “humanitarian” policies.

The spokespeople accused the Christopher Luxon-led government of turning a “blind eye to a full-blown genocide” and being complicit in crimes against humanity.

Speaking at the 152nd consecutive week of pro-Palestine protests in Te Komititanga Square in downtown Auckland, speakers for the fledgling Free Palestine Party, Green Party, Labour Party, Te Pāti Māori and an independent candidate for Mangere, Dr Timoti Te Moke, delivered stinging criticisms of the government to loud cheers and cries of “shame”.

• READ MORE: Iran says it will stand firm over ‘unjust’ US sanctions, settlers besiege West Bank’s Qusr
• Palestine Action activists face ‘terror’ charges over Trump golf resort spray-painting
• Other Palestine reports

Organisers invited nine political parties and independent candidates to take part in today’s rally and forum. Only five agreed. But FPP and TPM were unable to attend and sent statements.

“As a party we have marched beside and for our Palestinian whānau, we have pleaded with our government to do more, do better — speeches, written questions, letters,” Te Pāti Māori coleader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said in a statement presented by Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa’s Leeann Wahanui-Peters.

“We called for ceasefires, to sanction Israel, expel the Israeli ambassador, recognise the State of Palestine, pushed for humanitarian pathways, called to end to NZ participation in military occupation.

“But this is no big feat. This should’ve been the norm in the face of such atrocity.”
Ngarewa-Packer’s statement said: “We have watched as the people of Palestine have lost their homes, their land, their whānau — grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, children — whole generations.

‘Experiencing loss after loss’
“Injuries unseen, unprecedented. No food, food blocked. They pick up, rebuild, and are moved again. Experiencing loss after loss.

“We have heard the misleading narratives, we have heard the ceasefires where the fires have not ceased, the ‘war’ references as a blind eye gets turned to a full-blown genocide and not only have we had to witness this overseas, but our own government . . . has refused to take any meaningful action and will always sit complicit in this genocide.

“We as Māori understand too well the effects of colonisation, the shared experience of indigenous across the world and stand in solidarity with our Palestinian whanau.

“We understand the historical context that creates environments where greed becomes more important than lives.”

The statement said the party’s 2026 foreign affairs policy committed Aotearoa to an “independent, militarily neutral foreign policy grounded in peace, mana motuhake, indigenous solidarity and international human rights”.

It also “explicitly commits us to sanctioning states involved in illegal wars and cutting diplomatic relations with governments actively committing war crimes”.

Wahanui-Peters read out a list of 10 commitments, including recognising Palestine and expelling the Israeli ambassador.

‘Free Palestine’ an election issue
PSNA’s Anna Lee read a statement on behalf of the FFP, pointing out that the party “isn’t for voting” but to raise “genocide as an election issue”.

It will provide information over what is going on in Palestine.

The party is committed to contesting parliamentary elections as an independent party and building a mass democratic movement for justice in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally.

“We aim to change public opinion and put sustained parliamentary pressure on the New Zealand government to uphold its obligations under international law with respect to Palestine.”

“When [voters] go to the ballot box look for the parties that have made an ethical stand and support for the Palestinians and against the genocide that is happening,” Lee said. “So remember, this is a party, that we do not vote for.”

The Green Party’s Ricardo Menéndez March reminded the Palestine supporters of his party’s long solidarity with the free Palestinian movement.

“From years ago when [co-leader] Marama Davidson joined the Freedom Flotilla towards Gaza, we have taken action in Parliament against the genocide.

Time to sanction Israel
“This is why as we are heading to the election it is very clear. It is time to sanction Israel and it is time to expel the Israeli ambassador.” Loud cheers greeted this statement.

“Anyone who comes from a Muslim majority country will know that when you are applying for a visa, you are more likely to face delays, discrimination and scrutiny on national security grounds.

“Yet people who come from Israel and from the IDF are more likely to have been involved in war crimes, and this has not been rightfully applied

“I myself have called within the Green Party throughout this term to make sure that we have humanitarian visas for Palestinians to be reunited with their families. And this needs to be part of a broader package of humanitarian response to genocide of free passage.”

Phil Twyford, Labour Party MP for Te Atātu, also gave a strong statement on his party’s stance supporting Palestine, saying that foreign affairs spokesperson Vanushi Walters would present “official” policy at Parliament this week.

He said the activist movement supporting Palestine liberation had done an “amazing job” over the last few years, “keeping the issue alive – not just here, but all over New Zealand.

Twyford also acknowledged Menéndez March and the Green Party for “leading on this issue” in Parliament.

‘We acted with courage’
“Our country has done best over the years when we have acted with courage and on principle – and we have done it on multiple occasions. The New Zealand government responded to activists on the anti-apartheid struggle.

“It was a Labour government that responded to the peace movement, which demanded that we go nuclear free. And we did. We led the world.

“It was Helen Clark government that refused to go along with the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq. It was the right thing to do.”

Dr Timoci Te Moke, an independent candidate for Māngere, said: “The reason why I have such passion for the people of Palestine is because what’s happening to them happened to my people.

“The destruction of their people happened to my people. The colonisation of the Palestinians happened to my people.”

About the future with the “needed” change of government, Dr Te Moke said: “We need to recognise Palestine and we need to have a Palestinian embassy here. And internationally, we need to kick out [Foreign Minister] Winston Peters and put someone in who will recognise Palestine.”

Twice arrested
During question time with “open mic”, a man spoke who said he had just come from the United Kingdom and he had been twice arrested for his support for the Palestine Action group that had been unjustly proscribed by the British government, and has also just been banned by the US government as well.

The man, Jeremy Watson, said his case was due to come up in court in October “along with 500 other people — they can’t just put us all in jail”.

He urged the New Zealand activists today to carry on their protests. He warned against state efforts, such as in the UK and United States, to “silence speaking out for Palestine” and protect Israel’s genocide.

He said it was pensioners, retired people, invalids and other vulnerable people who were being unjustly arrested for supporting Palestine Action.

Several speakers said how vital it was to hold an incoming new government to their Palestine promises.

The New Zealand general election is on November 7.

What Te Pati Maori Party pledges:

1. Recognise Palestine: Aotearoa should formally recognise the State of Palestine and support Palestinian self-determination and full international recognition.

2. Sanction Israel: Impose meaningful sanctions against the Israeli state and those responsible for war crimes, occupation, illegal settlements and the destruction of Gaza.

3. End military complicity: No New Zealand participation in, procurement from, intelligence support for, or military cooperation that contributes to Israel’s war against Palestinians. We oppose purchasing Israeli weapons and military technology while Palestinians are being killed with the same military-industrial system.

4. Use diplomatic consequences: Where a government is actively committing war crimes, our policy allows for diplomatic relations to be severed. We have called for the Israeli Ambassador to be expelled or recalled and for New Zealand to withdraw diplomatic legitimacy from Israel’s conduct.

5. Demand an end to the siege of Gaza: Open the crossings. Allow unrestricted humanitarian assistance, food, water, medicine, fuel and reconstruction materials into Gaza. Starvation cannot be used as a weapon of war.

6. Demand a real and permanent ceasefire: Not temporary pauses while bombardment, blockade, displacement and occupation continue. There must be an enduring cessation of violence accompanied by accountability and Palestinian freedom.

7. Uphold international law and accountability: Support international investigations and accountability through institutions, including the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. War crimes must have consequences regardless of which country commits them.

8. End economic support for occupation and apartheid: Support divestment and economic measures against institutions, companies and products directly sustaining illegal settlements, occupation or military violence against Palestinians.

9. Protect humanitarian workers and peaceful solidarity: Aotearoa must defend humanitarian workers, including New Zealanders attempting to deliver aid to Gaza, and unequivocally protect peaceful Palestinian solidarity and protest.

10. Confront antisemitism and Islamophobia without silencing Palestine: We condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism. Opposition to the actions of the Israeli Government, Zionism, occupation or genocide must not be falsely characterised as hatred of Jewish people.

Palestine Action activists accused of vandalising a Scottish golf course owned by United States President Donald Trump have been accused of “terrorism” offences, reports Al Jazeera.

The potential use of “terror-scale” sentencing was reported by The Guardian and The New York Times on Friday.

The seven activists, who spray-painted messages in support of Gaza and dug up turf at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Ayrshire last year, have been charged with malicious damage “having a terrorist connection,” the newspapers reported.

• READ MORE: Palestine Action activists will not be sentenced as terrorists, judge rules
• Other Palestine Action reports

An initial hearing on the cases is due to open at the High Court in Glasgow on Monday.

The charges stem from a March 8, 2025, protest targeting the resort over Trump’s stance on Gaza. Activists from the British group sprayed red paint across the clubhouse, damaged turf and sprinklers, applied weedkiller to the greens, and painted “Gaza is not 4 sale” across the property.

All seven defendants were charged under ordinary criminal law for malicious property damage. However, the prosecution’s 16-page indictment asserts the acts were “aggravated by reason of having a terrorist connection”.

Palestine Action has been locked in a legal battle with the United Kingdom since the British government proscribed it as a “terrorist” group last year.

‘Protests to save lives’
Cofounder Huda Ammori said that the charges against those involved in the protest at Turnberry made it clear that prosecutors were trying to appease Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We used direct action protests to save lives — the opposite of terrorism — by disrupting the flow of arms being used to murder Palestinians,” she said in a statement.

“By hitting the profits of arms companies and by daring to spray paint on the golf course owned by the demagogue who has enabled Netanyahu’s crimes, we made powerful enemies. The British government chose to appease them by criminalising us as ‘terrorists’,” she added.

Earlier this week, the United States imposed sanctions on Palestine Action and the pro-Palestine international movement Masar Badil, as the administration of President Donald Trump intensifies a global crackdown on critics of Israel.

The US Department of the Treasury also imposed financial penalties on Wednesday against Autistici Inventati, an Italian group that provides digital services to left-wing organisations, including pro-Palestine groups.

John McDonnell, a Labour member of the British parliament and former shadow chancellor of the exchequer, criticised the potential “terror” link in the charges.

“The news that the protesters who allegedly sprayed red paint on Trump’s golf course could face terrorist sentencing, coupled with Trump himself now announcing that he is following Britain’s lead by proscribing Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist’ group, is profoundly embarrassing for Britain,” he said.

“Andy Burnham has inherited this mess from the previous government.

“This must be the wake-up call to drop this absurdly authoritarian ban, before Starmer’s blueprint is adopted by repressive governments around the world to criminalise protest and suppress political dissent.”

According to the rights group Defend our Juries, more than 3500 people — many over the age of 60 — have been arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action after it was proscribed by politicians in July 2025, placing it on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

The far-left clampdown Rubio announced in Washington last month is manifesting as an anti-Palestine solidarity witch hunt hiding behind the language of counter-terrorism.

— CAGE International (@CAGEintl) August 28, 2026

US ‘anti-Palestine witch hunt’, says rights group
Meanwhile, the human rights organisation Cage International has condemned the US move to designate Palestine Action as a “terror” group, saying Washington is using the “language of counter-terrorism” as a cover to go after people using “lawful direct action” to protest against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“Palestine Action has now been proscribed as a terrorist organisation on both sides of the Atlantic — first by Britain in 2025, now by Washington,” said Cage International in a statement.

“What unites them is the shared logic that disrupting the supply chain of arms for a genocide passes the ever expanding threshold for terrorism.”

The campaign leaves “no legitimate channel through which Palestinians or their allies are permitted to act”, added the statement.

Anas Mustapha, head of advocacy at Cage, said the US and UK sanctions were part of a “full-spectrum crackdown on Palestine solidarity globally”.

“The UK and US are upending centuries of hard won rights to protect a genocidal state they’re both complicit with,” said Mustapha.

I saw a clip going around from the Netflix series “1899” where a woman discovers a crack in the screen of what she had taken to be her world, causing her entire understanding of reality to crumble before her eyes.

Someone had captioned the clip, “Every awakening begins with a fracture in the lie.”

Yeah. It does tend to happen like that.

• LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley

You start pulling on one thread and then the whole thing unravels. Maybe you start with the Iraq war lies. Maybe 9/11. These days for a lot of folks it’s Palestine.

https://youtube.com/shorts/NcCwpbaCW24

You keep pulling on that thread, uncovering more and more uncomfortable truths, until eventually you discover that pretty much everything you’ve been taught about your world was a lie.

Every war. Everything about how your government really operates. Everything you’ve been told about nations and how they work. Everything about capitalism and communism and how your society is structured. It was all lies, fed to you by parents, teachers, preachers, pundits, politicians and news men from the moment you were old enough to process complex thought.

It can feel scary. It can feel like the end of your world, because in a sense that’s exactly what it is. Your sincere pursuit of the truth leads to the unraveling of everything you thought you knew, and you find yourself plunging into a great abyss of uncertainty about what’s real.

And a lot of people do get lost at this juncture. They plunge down too many rabbit holes with too much paranoia and not enough critical thinking, and they wind up replacing all their old indoctrinated belief systems with new beliefs that are just as crazy and power-serving as the first ones. There’s often a gap between letting go of your old worldview and assembling a new one where it’s easy to get confused and misled.

But if you remain sincere, careful, relentlessly self-honest and dedicated to the truth while ensuring your critical thinking faculties remain operating at full power, you eventually emerge from this chrysalis phase with the wings of a truth-based worldview. You can now not only see through the old lies, but can understand what’s really going on in the world.

And what’s really going on in the world is a lot less pleasant than the fictions you were fed as a schoolchild. You can see that we are ruled by a transnational alliance of plutocrats and government agencies who manipulate world affairs to maximise their power and profits at the expense of ordinary working people around the globe, and you can see that those same powerful abusers are responsible for constructing the fictional power-serving worldview you just freed yourself from.

And when you see how unpleasant the truth is and how hard you had to work to realise it, you understand why relatively few people have awakened to it. From the perspective of the ego, it’s a whole lot of effort and discomfort without much in the way of payoff. Forming a truth-based worldview is something you do for its own sake, and if you’re not the sort of person who views truth as its own reward, then you’re not the sort of person who’s likely to pursue it.

But more and more people are choosing truth. More and more people are spotting a loose thread labeled “Gaza” or “Epstein” or what have you, and giving it a curious tug. Despite the discomfort, despite the required effort, and despite the great cost of having to sacrifice the world they thought they knew, they’re pulling that thread, and they keep on pulling. We’re seeing it more and more every year.

And that gives me hope. I don’t know where this is headed or whether we win in the end, but I’m seeing enough movement in human consciousness at mass scale to continue holding out hope for a better world.

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 Andrew Brown

On Sunday morning, before the sun is over Sydney Heads, up to 40 current and former soldiers of the Israel “Defence” Forces (IDF) will jog across the Sydney Harbour Bridge with numbers pinned to their chests and a cheer squad waiting at the Opera House.

On Thursday night in Perth, a stage will be empty.

Bassem Youssef will not be on it. Home Affairs wanted an FBI clearance and a criminal record from Egypt, whose generals forced him into exile in 2014. His passport had lapsed.

Cairo took its time. The tour is gone.

Youssef performed here in 2023 and 2015 without a police certificate. He did not change. The lobby did.

In June, Peter Wertheim of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry told The Sydney Morning Herald his organisation had gone to Home Affairs to have Youssef kept out.

His stated principle was that anyone with a record of “debased generalisations about entire national or religious communities” should never be granted a visa. Hold that sentence. We will come back to it.

Home Affairs will not say what it did with Wertheim’s request. The paperwork did the job a refusal would have done, and no minister had to sign it.

Now the IDF runners in the Sydney Marathon.

Their trip is paid for by the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council and the Zionist Council of NSW, which calls them a “peace delegation”. They run for the Israeli charity Shalva, and Shalva has published their profiles.

IDF war crimes suspects
Meet First Lieutenant Roy Oryon. Shalva’s profile says he served as deputy commander of Company B, 13th Battalion, Golani Brigade, through what Israel calls the Swords of Iron War.

He led his men on October 7. Company B lost 18 soldiers that day and he wears 18 flowers tattooed on his skin for them.

The profile does not say where Company B went next. Golani’s 13th Battalion went into Gaza. It is the brigade whose reconnaissance battalion, before dawn on 23 March 2025, fired on a convoy of ambulances outside Rafah for more than five minutes, killed 15 medics and rescue workers, then bulldozed the bodies and the crushed vehicles into the sand for eight days.

The IDF’s own inquiry admitted its deputy commander fired on the convoy himself and filed a false report. He was sacked. Nobody was charged.

Meet Oryan Omer. His LinkedIn lists five years in Israeli Military Intelligence to 2020.

Meet Yael Zafarti. Her LinkedIn shows six years in Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence arm, and the title Head of Cyber Security Analysis from April 2024 to January 2026.

Unit 8200 is the unit that +972 Magazine and The Guardian identified as the builder of the artificial intelligence systems that generated Gaza’s kill lists. It is also the unit a Western security source told Reuters helped develop the booby-trapped pagers that exploded across Lebanon on 17-18 September 2024, blinding and maiming more than 3000 people and killing at least 37, two of them children.

Zafarti was running cyber analysis for the unit at the time. She now works as a product manager in Tel Aviv.

These are the people the Zionist Council of NSW is inviting Sydney to applaud over drinks.

IDF soldiers, including Golani Brigade ex-Gaza, to compete in Sydney Marathon#whatsthescam #auspol https://t.co/MDISUlp8nT

— Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) August 25, 2026

Tony Burke MIA
The International Court of Justice found the genocide case against Israel plausible in January 2024. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister.

In September 2025, the UN Commission of Inquiry, with Australian barrister Chris Sidoti on the panel, found Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Sidoti has said Israeli personnel who served there should be interrogated wherever they land.

They are landing here. And nobody is asking them anything.

Section 501 of the Migration Act says a person fails the character test where there is reason to conclude they were involved in genocide, a crime against humanity or a war crime. No conviction is required. Families for Palestine put that section to Tony Burke on Tuesday.

He has not replied.

His department has the mechanism. In December 2024, two Israeli siblings were sent a 13-page military service form asking whether they had abused detainees or taken part in war crimes. Home Affairs called it routine. So here is the question.

The question
Was that routine form sent to 40 soldiers arriving together, with a sponsor, a promoter and a Facebook page? If yes, say so.

If no, explain why a comedian needed clearances from two governments to tell jokes, while a Golani lieutenant needed nothing but a bib.

Burke is not squeamish about the power. He cancelled Simcha Rothman’s visa a year ago and refused Ayelet Shaked and Hillel Fuld. Each time, the lobby howled that Jews were being punished for opinions.

Now go back to Wertheim’s sentence.

Debased generalisations about entire national communities. He wrote it on behalf of an organisation that has spent two years defending an army whose commanders are wanted by the ICC and whose conduct a UN inquiry has called genocide.

He asked the government to ban a comedian for words. His movement is importing a Golani officer and a Unit 8200 department head for a party.

That is not a double standard. It is a single standard, applied with total consistency.

Israelis are protected. Their critics are processed.

The runners cross the Bridge at dawn. Youssef will reapply from Los Angeles. MWM has asked Home Affairs whether any of the delegation was sent the military service form and whether AIJAC or the ECAJ lobbied for them.

We will print the answer. We are not expecting one.

Last week, JWire reported that my book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, had been “removed” from the Waverley public library in Sydney, Australia.

In covering the ban, some Australian media allowed pro-Israel propagandists to casually libel me as antisemitic, a false charge that is completely divorced from the content of the book, which is nuanced and fair and takes on universal themes of human dignity and opposition to colonialism and racism.

My first instinct was to merely post on social media about the banning, noting how absurd and racist the book ban defenders’ logic was, and move on with my life.

• READ MORE: How to Sell a Genocide has been removed from a library near Bondi – but libraries represent freedom of thought
• Waverley Council removes controversial Gaza book after Bondi survivor speaks out
• Other Israeli censorship reports

After all, my book is not the story — nor, if it were, would this be a particular interesting one. On the list of free speech suppressions and libel in the past three years over Palestine, this wouldn’t crack the top 10,000.

But news of the ban was subsequently picked up by The Guardian Australia, The Independent in the UK and the largest newspaper in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald. And given how poor the coverage of the banning has been, namely by the latter two outlets, I thought this episode could be a good object lesson in how the smearing of Palestine and its defenders operates in mainstream Anglosphere media.

The fact that you can sling around libel without evidence in the largest newspapers in Australia gives us a window into how discussion of basic Palestinian rights is shut down using the most sectarian framing possible.

Let’s break down three tropes featured in the coverage of my book banning that I also detail in the book itself. Forgive me if this is meta — and a touch self-indulgent — but there’s a reason there are striking similarities, and it’s because the Israel lobby and its aggressive PR apparatus more or less use the same script for every act of smearing, censoring, and intimidation.

So they’re worth taking this opportunity to unpack.

1. Feigned credulity: Taking pro-Israel crybully organisations at their word, rounding up to the most sectarian framing possible, and flattening Jewish identity and Zionist ideological activity.

The Independent and Sydney Morning Herald largely embrace the pro-Israel lobby’s framing that the removal of my book was prompted entirely by, or at least largely by, a “complaint from a Bondi attack survivor”. The Independent’s Stuti Mishra would adopt this framing in its headline: “Australian library pulls book on Gaza from shelves after complaint from Bondi attack survivor,” the article announces.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Melanie Kembrey would also accept this framing at face value in her reporting, writing that, “the move follows a report by Jewish news service JWire last week that a survivor of the Bondi Beach massacre had posted on Facebook that she was distressed to see the book displayed on the new-release ‘What’s Hot’ shelf of Waverley Library.”

What’s important to emphasise here is: we have no way of knowing that this is what caused, or even sparked, the removal of the book. This is just an assertion made by those seeking to ban it.

JWire reported, citing an alleged Facebook comment by the survivor in question, that her complaint is what prompted the book’s removal. But The Guardian reports that they were “unable to locate the Facebook post” in question.

More importantly, both Sydney Morning Herald and The Independent seemingly contradict, or at least undermine, this simplistic narrative, by mentioning elsewhere in their articles that, as The Independent noted, the library council “has received multiple complaints about [the book]”.

So was the book banned because a Bondi attack survivor complained, or was it due to the “multiple complaints”? Or was it both? If it was both, do we know which came first: the Bondi survivor complaint or the “multiple” other complaints from, presumably, unrelated parties?

The timeline is important because it suggests a fairly bog standard pro-Israel propaganda technique of front-loading censorship — and other oppressive and illiberal actions — in the most sympathetic and humane language possible. Obviously, “Pro-Israel Organisations Successfully Ban Book on Gaza” hits differently than “Library pulls book on Gaza from shelves after complaint from Bondi attack survivor.”

After all, what kind of heartless monster would want to upset a Bondi attack survivor?

Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive officer of the pro-Israel lobbying organisation ECAJ, was eager to praise my book’s removal from the library, telling The Sydney Morning Herald, “A book of this sort has no place on the shelves of a library, especially one within minutes of where Australians were slaughtered in large part due to the dehumanisation of Jews precisely through this sort of libel.

“I commend the individual who spotted the book, herself a survivor of the massacre, and acted to have it removed.”

Was Ryvchin one of the other “multiple” parties that demanded my book be removed? If so, was it prior to the aforementioned Bondi survivor’s complaint? Did The Herald inquire about his involvement in the campaign to remove the book? Did The Herald ask him to specify examples or provide any evidence of me “dehumanising” Jewish people, a false and libelous accusation?

They did not. He is simply presented as a neutral observer with no involvement in the censorship campaign.

I sent a request for comment to the Waverley library last week, to try and pin down the timeline of the “complaints”. They replied this morning but ignored the question, instead objecting to my use of the word “ban” but not denying it was, indeed, banned.

“Contrary to some media reporting,” the library’s manager informed me via email, “the council has not ‘banned’ the book. It remains a part of our collection; however, it is currently unable to be borrowed pending completion of a review.”

Ah, ok, it wasn’t banned, it’s just “currently unavailable to be borrowed”. Well never mind then. Hopefully this “review” goes my way! A group of organisers in Australia have started a petition calling on the library to restore the book and “protect the public’s right to read”.

But, again, it’s important to make clear that my book being “removed” from one public library isn’t the story. The story is that this is only one part of a broader censorship and bully regime that is rapidly escalating in the West.

This story comes in the context of a massive crackdown on Free Speech in Australia, in particular, which is overwhelmingly targeting pro-Palestine speech and being done in the name of “combating antisemitism”. As Jacob Mchangama and Samantha Barbas noted for MSNOW in January, “what began as a moment of national mourning [in the wake of the Bondi attack] has rapidly turned into one of the most sweeping expansions of hate speech laws and protest restriction powers in the country’s modern history.

Intended as an urgent response to antisemitism, new federal and state measures threaten to reach far beyond violence or direct incitement — reshaping how speech, protest and political dissent are regulated in the wake of terrorism.”

As I detail in said book, namely Chapter 8, “‘Antisemitism’ show trials and the smearing of campus protests,” framing suppression of Israel-critical speech in terms of sensitivity, anti-racism, and “fighting hate” is a textbook pro-Israel bully tactic.

Using liberalism against itself is a consistent and well-documented strategy from Zionist organisations to delegitimise, stigmatise, and brand as hateful those who are meaningfully critical of Israel and its regime of violence against Palestinians.

It’s useful here to distinguish The Guardian’s coverage from that of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Independent. The Guardian’s framing was mostly sceptical and fair. They sought comment from me, my publisher, and other critics of the book ban, and did not overly indulge the “Bondi survivor”.

I should also note that Sydney Morning Herald’s Kembrey did reach out to me for comment, but did so at 12:41 am central time and published her article a couple hours later. So alas, not being awake in the middle of the night costs me an original comment in The Herald. Though I doubt it would have mattered much in the overall credulous and uncritical orientation of the article.

The framing of the ban on my book as the ah shucks, entirely organic result of a “Bondi survivor,” without any interrogation of the source of these “multiple” other complaints, is doing 90 percent of the heavy lifting for the Zionist censorship lobby that was eager to not only praise the decision in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, but frame it in purely sectarian terms. That Sydney Morning Herald and The Independent ran with the simplistic and manipulative “Bondi survivor complained” framing, without an ounce of scepticism, shows how these Israel advocacy organisations score major PR victories before the text of the article or any reporting is even done.

2. Reducing claims of genocide in Gaza to a fringe, subjective opinion by a “self-described radical publisher” while omitting it is the overwhelming consensus of human rights and humanitarian organizations, as well as genocide scholars.

The reduction of mainstream opposition to Israel as an unserious or fringe position — while ignoring how widespread and obvious it is outside the corridors of beltway elite circles — is a trope I detailed in Chapter 9 of my book specially under the section, “The Atlantic And The Importance Of Policing Seriousness.”

All three articles framed the fact that Israel committed genocide in Gaza as a mere opinion of mine, without noting it is the broad consensus in the humanitarian and human rights world, as well as that of scholars tasked with studying and determining such matters.

While all three quoted me making this point, they did not report on the fact of this consensus. This isn’t just a vague feeling from a partisan leftwing media critic — it’s the majority academic assessment. They ought to have noted, as I detailed in my unpublished full comment to The Guardian, that genocide in Gaza is the determination of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights — Israel, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, as well as Omer Bartov, Israeli-American professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University; Amos Goldberg, Israeli professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Raz Segal, Israeli historian and associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University, among dozens of other prominent Israeli and American scholars.

Instead of mentioning any of these liberal validators, that would have shown how fringe the book ban advocates’ position is and how mainstream my headline was, it is presented as a mere claim by the book’s author and we are then served up pat denials from Israel.

“Israel has repeatedly denied committing genocide in Gaza,” notes The Independent (though it does link to an article detailing UN’s claims of genocide). The Guardian writes that “Israel has repeatedly denied that it has committed genocide in Gaza” without highlighting the major humanitarian and human rights groups arguing otherwise.

The fact of Israel committing genocide in Gaza is overwhelming consensus among those tasked with documenting and determining such matters. Presenting this objective reality as my opinion, without citing the underlying evidence supporting it, is playing into the idea the “genocide” label is a fringe or emotionally charged label when it is anything but.

3. Casually conflating Palestine solidarity with antisemitism and ISIS-inspired violence.

The whole point of focusing on the Bondi survivor complainant is, of course, to conflate solidarity with Palestine with the Bondi attack, which was an ISIS-inspired massacre last December that killed 15 Australians (14 of whom were Jewish) and had absolutely zero to do with Palestine, Palestinians, or Gaza.

Indeed, the only major player in Palestine with significant links to ISIS is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Israeli outlet Haaretz reported last year has been arming ISIS-linked gangs in Gaza to undermine Hamas and steal aid, a fact publicly confirmed by Netanyahu’s former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Despite it having no factual basis, conflation of Palestinian militants, civil society and advocacy with “ISIS,” as I note in Chapter 1 of my book, “‘40 beheaded babies,’ the ISIS-ification of Hamas, and how to prime the American public for revenge,” was crucial to propagandising Western audiences and using the blunt instrument of Islamophobia to build sympathy for the cause of open-ended Israeli violence.

None of the above outlets felt it necessary to note that there has been no proven link between the Bondi Attack and Palestine solidarity. The Australian government has spent millions attempting to find such a connection, but alas has come up empty.

Why should pro-Israel advocates be permitted to casually make such a conflation without any reporters noting these two things are wholly unrelated? Why is this conflation of ISIS and Palestine solidarity permitted to be repeated without any attempt to correct this misconception? Perceptions on the part of a handful of motivated actors is not sufficient reason to indulge their delusions.

Nevertheless, racist conspiracy theories conflating Gaza advocacy with violence inspired by a movement and cause that has zero to do with Palestinians, and is largely backed by Israel’s regional allies, is permitted without any pushback because these two things, in the Western, orientalist mind, feel vaguely related.

These are subtle interventions by the above outlets and, as I mention, far from the biggest crimes in Western media related to Palestine. I am not a free speech martyr, as some have alleged, nor do I seek to be. But I think it is useful to note how, when reporting on the banning of a book about media propaganda, we saw at least three of the very tropes detailed in the book being banned.

These subtle framings, while seemingly minor in isolation, add up. They go, before one even notices, from lazy tropes, credulous reporting, and racist assumptions to a narrative, a story. Just like that, the banning of a perfectly sober, rigorous, and nuanced book is framed as a small act of kindness for a terrorism victim.

And the author, who went out of his way to be nonsectarian, to examine universal humanitarian themes, and to highlight Jewish anti-Zionist activism, is accused of horrific dehumanisation in Sydney’s largest newspaper without any pushback or deeper reporting.

The overt suppression of free speech in Australia is another major escalation, and embracing this grimy, misleading, and libelous framing without much thought or scepticism — as The Independent and Sydney Morning Herald did — is yet another example of Western media’s role in selling genocide.

Adam Johnson is a media analyst and co-host of the podcast Citations Needed. His writing has been featured in The Nation, In These Times, The Intercept, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. Republished from the substack The Column under Creative Commons.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

Justice Desmond Fagan’s Supreme Court decision in the State of New South Wales v Farhat wrecks the architecture designed by Antisemitism Special Envoy Jillian Segal, adopted by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and enforced across Australia.

Australians have been instructed that hostility towards Israel is hostility towards Jews. The lobby never won that argument. It changed the dictionary instead.

Albanese supplied the imprimatur. NSW Premier Chris Minns supplied the muscle. David Crisafulli criminalised protest slogans. Peter Malinauskas carried the doctrine into the South Australian Parliament.

• READ MORE: NSW ‘seeking urgent advice’ on controversial court ruling that found anti-Israel vandalism was not antisemitic
• A judgment that challenges the IHRA definition of antisemitism
• Other Australia antisemitism reports

Different parties. Different states. The same obedient genuflection.

The vandal who wasn’t an antisemite
Mohommed Farhat was a vandal for hire. He caused more than $110,000 in damage, torched a vehicle and painted “Fuk Israel” across Woollahra.

Justice Fagan found Farhat was recruited and did not know what some slogans meant. Yet the State wanted him branded an antisemite and shackled with 55 terrorism supervision restrictions.

Fagan refused. His judgment is an autopsy of how propaganda becomes administrative fact. Police, prosecutors, the Crown Solicitor and the Director of Public Prosecutions repeated an unexamined claim until repetition replaced proof.

The label was false and “injustice to the defendant” followed.

Then he turned to the definition. The IHRA formulation promoted by Segal and embraced by Canberra was, he found, “verbose and imprecise” and “detached from the reality of common usage”.

Promoting it sought to change the settled meaning of “a word that has been in use in the English language for 150 years” and to “graft” onto the community’s abhorrence of antisemitism ”a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel”.

Fagan cited Pew polling showing 74 percent of Australians unfavourable towards Israel, rising to 79 percent this year, and inferred a “humanitarian reaction to Israel’s genocide of the Gazans”.

A definition that tars four in five Australians is not detecting hatred.

It is outlawing majority opinion.

Antisemitism, Fagan said, is simply “hostility to Jews for their Jewishness”. It is real, repugnant and must be confronted. Israel is a foreign state. Zionism is a political ideology. Neither is entitled to immunity from condemnation.

Protecting Jewish Australians is essential. Protecting a foreign government from criticism is not.

The lobbyist who wrote the law
Segal became Special Envoy after leading the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, whose published mission includes defending Israel, encouraging Zionism and lobbying governments for positions favourable to Israel.

The referee was recruited from one team’s front office.

She may hold those views. She may not launder them through the Commonwealth and receive them back as law.

Albanese outsourced the dictionary to a protagonist, then adopted her every recommendation despite warnings from Jewish and civil liberties groups that it would punish lawful advocacy for Palestine.

Not consultation. Capitulation, formalised in a press release.

The government’s response commits the Commonwealth, states and territories to implementing Segal’s programme. National machinery of compliance, and the premiers queued up to install it.

Minns, Crisafulli, Malinauskas
Minns expanded police powers and created new speech offences. Crisafulli criminalised two protest slogans, with two years in prison where words might reasonably cause somebody to feel menaced, harassed or offended.

Offended. The decay of liberal democracy, compressed into one word.

Malinauskas backed IHRA through the South Australian Parliament, then pressed Adelaide Writers’ Week to dump Palestinian Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah. David Gonski, whose name once meant needs based schooling, now fronts an Antisemitism Education Taskforce with Segal at his side.

The Australian Public Service Commission says IHRA applies in federal workplaces. AHPRA adopted it across 16 professions and more than 960,000 practitioners. A reference tool held over a doctor’s registration is not a dictionary but a threat to a livelihood.

Fear is the cheapest police force ever deployed.

Executive policy cannot rewrite ordinary language. A circular cannot create law. Parliament never enacted IHRA, so the court gave it no force. Not a High Court ruling, but a preview.

Eighteen police, one shirt
I have been the test case.

On 3 November 2024, NSW Police arrested me at Bondi for wearing “Fuck Israel, Fuck Zionism”. I threatened nobody and damaged nothing. I was handcuffed, held six hours, fingerprinted and DNA tested by force over my objection.

Three charges followed, with bail conditions that ran more than a year. At one point I was banned from the eastern suburbs. My home in Surry Hills sat 400 metres from the boundary. One wrong walk meant arrest and up to 12 months in a cell awaiting a hearing.

For a shirt.

All three charges collapsed in December 2025 once my lawyers raised the implied freedom of political communication.

On April 6 this year, as many as 18 officers surrounded me at Bondi over the same shirt, among them Odin squad taskforce officers and two senior officers from area command. Overhead, a drone and a helicopter. On standby, an ambulance and two caged wagons.

Odin is a tactical unit for crowd management, high visibility policing and high risk operations. The high risk operation that morning was a shirt. I took it off. They arrested the shirt. A penalty notice arrived a week later.

Fagan has not decided my remaining matter, but he has demolished its pretence. He found the sprayed “Fuk Israel” was “crude political expression of contempt” for a foreign state, not hatred of Jews. If those words stayed political when painted during a crime spree, they cannot become Jew hatred worn peacefully on cotton.

The obscenity was never the shirt. It was the state power assembled around it.

Segal supplied the language. Albanese supplied the authority. Gonski took the classroom, AHPRA the professions, Minns the handcuffs, Crisafulli the statute book, Malinauskas the Parliament and the festival stage.

Justice Fagan supplied something none of them could survive: the law.

• Editor’s Note: the NSW Government is considering appealing Justice Fagan’s decision.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned and highlighted recent attacks and obstructions committed by the Israeli military against Palestinian journalists reporting from the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, RSF says this targeted violence is aimed at preventing media professionals from doing their jobs.

It also condemned the documented violence by extremist Jewish settlers against the Palestinian population.

• READ MORE:  The Gaza doctrine – Israeli ‘journacide’ and the muted NZ media response
• Other Palestinian journalist reports

“RSF condemns the Israeli army’s attacks on journalists and calls on Israel’s allied governments to pressure the country’s authorities to put an end to these actions,” said Martin Roux, head of RSF’s Crisis Desk.

“Amidst documented violence by extremist Jewish settlers against the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers are targeting journalists, thereby preventing information from emerging from this territory, which is increasingly cut off from the rest of the world.

Against the backdrop of intensified repression of Palestinian journalists since 7 October 2023, RSF has documented key incidents over the past three months:

11 May: Violence at Qalandiya camp
Israeli armed forces targeted a group of journalists with tear gas and stun grenades while they were covering a raid on the Qalandiya camp, located between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, both territories under Israeli occupation. The attack specifically targeted a crew from the Qatari channel Al Araby.

16 May: Access to Jenin camp barred
Israeli armed forces barred journalists from entering the Jenin camp in the northern occupied West Bank while military and demolition operations were underway. According to reporters on the scene, Israeli soldiers had sealed off the area.

27 May: Journalist prevented from visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound
Saif Al-Qawasmi, a 25-year-old freelance journalist who works for the Qatari news channel Al Jazeera Mubasher, among others, was detained by police while heading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem on assignment. He was subsequently questioned about his work by law enforcement and Israeli intelligence for several hours. He was banned from accessing the site (initially for one week, and later for six months) on arbitrary grounds. This punitive access ban is frequently used by Israeli authorities against Palestinian journalists, a practice that predates the crackdown following 7 October 2023.

7 June: Live fire in Balata camp
A group of journalists went to the Balata camp, east of Nablus, to cover a large-scale raid by the Israeli army. Among them were Majdi Mohammed Shteih, a photographer for the US news agency Associated Press, and freelance journalist Sidqi Ayoub Rayyan, who works for the news site Noon Post. According to their accounts to RSF, the Israeli army fired stun grenades in their direction and then opened fire while they were attempting to cover the military operation.

16 June: Targeted attacks in Nablus and Deir Abu Mashaal
In the early hours of the night, while protecting a convoy of extremist Jewish settlers (not necessarily Israeli citizens) who had illegally entered Palestinian territory en route to Joseph’s Tomb, east of Nablus, the Israeli army forced out about 10 journalists reporting in the area (including crews from the Qatari channel Al Jazeera and the Jordanian channel Roya News) using stun grenades, thereby preventing media coverage of the event.

That same day, Motassem Saqf Al-Hayt, a correspondent for the independent news site Quds News Network, was injured after the Israeli army fired tear gas grenades while he was reporting from Deir Abu Mashaal, a village west of Ramallah where other settlers were attempting to establish an outpost.

22 July: Haaretz team obstructed south of Nablus
The Israeli army blocked a vehicle belonging to a team from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz south of Nablus. Soldiers claimed that the move was intended to prevent clashes with settlers established in the area.

On 10 August, the same Haaretz team was blocked and attacked by other settlers near a neighbouring village. This time, Israeli soldiers present at the scene refused to intervene and to protect the journalists, according to accounts.

19 journalists detained
Alongside these attacks against Palestinian journalists covering events, the number of journalist arrests in the occupied West Bank has surged since 7 October 2023. Of the 19 Palestinian journalists from the West Bank detained by Israeli authorities, 15 were arrested after that date.

Most recently, on the morning of 12 August 2026, Israeli armed forces arrested freelance journalist Mohammed Awad, who has notably contributed video work to Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Qatari channel Al Jazeera, at his home in the village of Beitunia, west of Ramallah, on charges of “terrorism”. When contacted by RSF, the army had not, as of this writing, provided information to substantiate this accusation.

Foreign journalists also targeted
This crackdown on local journalists is compounded by obstacles facing international press correspondents. French journalist Alice Froussard, a contributor to Radio France Internationale (RFI), was deported upon her arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on June 10. This followed entry bans issued against journalists Queralt Castillo, Khadija Toufik, and Alessandro Stefanelli.

RSF, with the support of its Palestinian partner Watan Academy, continues its commitment to journalist safety. In August, the organisation conducted Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT), tailored to the local context, for 20 Palestinian journalists.

• Read the full report at Reporters Without Borders.

ANJALI KAMAT: This is Democracy Now!, I’m Anjali Kamat.

We turn to the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlers are continuing to lay siege on homes in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. The siege has attracted international attention, in part because one of the homes is owned by a Palestinian American.

The US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, surprised many when he recently described the siege as a, “horrific act of terror” being committed by, “Israeli terrorists”.

Loui Ridi, who lives in Ohio, spoke to Reuters before he flew from the United States to the West Bank to protect his home there.

• READ MORE: Qusra is where Israel’s lies about settler violence hit a wall
• Palestinian victims of Israeli settler attacks face battle for justice
• Qusra siege by Israeli settler ‘terrorists’ in West Bank persists despite global outcry
• Other occupied West Bank reports

LOUI RIDI: I have a lot of emotion in Qusra. I was born and raised in Qusra. My mother, 83 years old, still in Qusra, my sisters, my brothers, my nieces, my nephews, my cousins, my friends.

ANJALI KAMAT: Shortly after Loui Ridi landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, he received a video showing Israeli soldiers shaking the hands of the Israeli settlers laying siege to his home.

LOUI RIDI: When I landed, my brother sent me this video. That’s terrifying. That just happened like an hour ago. And they’re near the soldierS. They’re shaking hands with the soldiers. That’s just happening today.

I’m going to stay in this house tonight. So, I’m terrified. I’m asking the US officials, the embassy, to provide me protection and to remove the settlers permanently from our village and my area.

ANJALI KAMAT: Then, after Loui Ridi arrived back in the village of Qusra and reunited with his brother and other relatives, he raised an American flag on the roof of his home.

LOUI RIDI: I came here to be present with him. I left my luxury home in America. I left my luxury vehicles in America. I left my wife, my two daughters. I left my business and decided to be here at my home to protect it from the settlers [trying] to steal it, and raising the American flag to send the message to the American Embassy and the US officials that I am currently under siege and I need a protection.

ANJALI KAMAT: Despite Loui Ridi’s return, settlers have continued to confront the family. In this video, a settler is seen approaching and harassing Ridi on his own property.

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: You are a terrorist settler. You know that?

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: You are a terrorist settler. It’s garbage.

You know what that means? You stink. You stink. Move. Move. Don’t touch me.

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: Don’t touch me.

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: Terrorist. You are a terrorist.

ANJALI KAMAT: We go now to Qusra, where we’re joined by Loui Ridi.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Loui. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing right now? Describe the scene. Do you still have settlers coming into your property?

LOUI RIDI: Thank you for having me.

Day four in Qusra
Yes, this is my fourth day here in Qusra, in my house, that is still under siege by the IDF and the settlers. The settlers still manage every day to pass by my house. And the IDF are present and not doing anything to them.

They’re not arresting them whatsoever.

ANJALI KAMAT: Your reaction, Loui, to the comments by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee describing the settlers as “Israeli terrorists”?

LOUI RIDI: Well, again, I appreciate Mike Huckabee condemned it, called them terrorists. But I’ve been in contact with the embassy, that nothing has been done on the ground. And actually, I asked the US Embassy to send me a team to see themselves what’s going on here in my own house, so [they] can see what’s going on.

ANJALI KAMAT: And what kind of protection have you got?

LOUI RIDI: None. I’m not getting no protection here. I’m still [in] fear for my life. I still fear for my family’s life here. The IDF not even making it better here. They’re not allowing us to leave the house. They’re not allowing anyone to come to my house freely. If we need to bring food, we have to do coordination through the mayor of Qusra, and then he has to call the Palestinian Authority, and then they have to call the Israeli authority. It takes hours, if not days.

ANJALI KAMAT: Loui, this area of Qusra has been under siege for months, and your home specifically for at least a week, if not longer. And you’ve had — when you reach out to the US Embassy, I mean, you have the ambassador to Israel speaking out about this. You are an — what are they saying in response when you reach out for help? You have an American flag on your home.

Meet Loui Ridi – the Palestinian American returns home      Video: Democracy Now!

Under attack since January
LOUI RIDI: That’s right. This house has been under attack by Israeli settlers since January this year. It’s been under siege for 13 days. We have reached the US member of Congress local office. I have reached multiple times the US Embassy that I need help. Yes, I raised the American flag to send my message to the American people and to the government of the United States that there is an American under siege by the Israeli settlers, needs help.

ANJALI KAMAT: I want to bring into the conversation Oren Ziv in Tel Aviv. He’s a reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine and the independent Israeli local news site Local Call. His most recent article is headlined “Qusra is where Israel’s lies about settler violence hit a wall.”

Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what are these lies? What did you see in Qusra?

OREN ZIV: Yeah, thank you for having me.

I’ve been to Qusra twice in the recent week. First, a week ago on Friday, with — a group of activists [who] tried to march to Ridi’s house to bring food and water and medicine, and were blocked by the Israeli army and border police, the same army and police who allow for months the settlers to attack, to murder there, to injure. Israeli human rights activists were severely injured there a few months ago. Houses were attacked and vandalised.

Amir Odeh, a young Palestinian, was shot there during the war against Iran. And this is all happening, of course, with the active support of the army and the police. So, the first time, I was there on Friday, and we were blocked as journalists, also the activists that were coming bringing the food.

And the police and the army just let the activists leave the food near a few meters from the house. And later, local MK, parliament member, Ofer Cassif managed to bring it in.

Authorities do nothing
And the second time, I actually managed to go in, after waiting for a long time outside and talking to the army. And what I could see is the same reality that Loui is describing. Despite all the international attention, the media attention, the Americans speaking about it, the Israeli army and authorities are doing barely nothing to control the situation.

The house is still under siege. Settlers are roaming around. And, you know, myself as a journalist and many people are asking: Does the army — does the army [not] want to do anything, or under the political current situation in Israel, they can’t do anything? They don’t control the situation in the West Bank.

And, you know, I think it’s a hard question, but either way, the situation on the ground is that the house is under siege. You know, the army cannot deal with the 20, 30, 40 settlers that are acting violently, attacking this property and others.

And I think this is happening because of, of course, the support from the Israeli extreme government, but because of the perception that any settler, 10 years old, 15 years old, 20 years old, can do anything that he wants in the West Bank, putting up outposts, putting a siege, killing, attacking, going to all these tours or trips and harassing Palestinians.

And soldiers are just not – they don’t think about the option to put a limit to that. And even though that the chief-of-staff talks about it and the commander of the West Bank, and I think the story gained a lot of attention because it shows the current situation of the Israeli army, that they cannot deal with five or 10 settlers.

But this kind of perception that settlers can do whatever they want and the army just has to support it is very, very strong.

ANJALI KAMAT: Oren, can you talk about this argument that, you know, Bibi Netanyahu is making, also, to some extent, Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, that there’s some sort of distinction between the settlers here — I believe Mike Huckabee called them “unsettlers” — and the vast majority of other settlers? And there also seems to be a distinction, you know, so, sort of “good settlers” and “bad settlers”.

‘Group of troubled youth’
OREN ZIV: Exactly. This is something Netanyahu — so, Netanyahu doesn’t give interviews to local media. He talks in American media. And when he’s asked about this, he always says, “This is a group of troubled youth.”

You know, sometimes he says 70, 150. But it’s very, very clear: They can act like this because of the active support from the Israeli government that gives them weapons, gives them ATVs, like the ones they raided Ridi’s house in Qusra and other houses, because of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, the establishment of more and more outposts that are kind of front bases for these terror attacks.

And they could not stay one day without the active support of the police that is completely controlled by Ben-Gvir, by the army that is controlled by the settlers and by the extreme government.

We did a story a few months ago about how the settlers, after — since October 7, they managed to ethnically cleanse dozens of Palestinian communities in Area C, mostly farming and herding communities. They just moved on.

And they say it openly, to Area — they say it openly, to Area A, to Area B of the West Bank, besieging houses, villages and town, and taking them over. And according to our investigation a few months ago, they already took over tens of thousands of hectares inside Area B and A that, according to the Oslo Accord and even according to official Israel, are under Palestinian control.

So, all this is happening with — like, this example, it’s happening in hundreds of other locations in the West Bank. The thing is, here — because even next to Abu Ridi’s house, in Jalud, the same tactic from the same violent outpost happened a month ago, that the Tubasi family was forced out.

‘Brave family’ slowed settlers
And the only difference here is that this brave family managed to slow down the process a bit with their decision not to leave, even [though] they had barely any food and water, with the violent attacks, the fact they’re under siege. They insisted on staying. He came from the US and managed to get media attention, including mainstream media, even local mainstream media, that have barely covered [the issue].

ANJALI KAMAT: Oren, I just want to go back to Loui Ridi, the Palestinian American whose home in Qusra is under siege by settlers. Loui, why did you return from Ohio to your home in Qusra?

LOUI RIDI: Well, I’d been watching all the attacks on my house, on my brother and his son, on the — live [feed] on my security cameras. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I have to stay up all night. And the situation became dangerous way when they completely blocked him off from food on August 9.

And I was talking to my brother, and I told him, “You know what? I’m going to come, and I will do whatever it takes to provide you food and supplies and end the siege, and trying to protect you.”

ANJALI KAMAT: Loui Ridi, thank you for joining us. We will continue to follow the settler siege on your home in Qusra. Thank you also to Oren Ziv of +972 Magazine. We will link to your new piece, “Qusra is where Israel’s lies about settler violence hit a wall.”

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

Still drawing international censure for his genocidal call to kill dozens of Gazans daily, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has faced fresh condemnation after visiting the construction site of a gallows where Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis are set to be hanged to death, with select Israelis gathering as spectators.

Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, posted a video to social media in which he gloats about the construction of gallows, which is being built in an undisclosed location in central Israel.

“I promised to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons — we kept it,” Ben-Gvir says in the video. “I promised to pass the Death Penalty for Terrorists law — we did.

• READ MORE: Israel builds execution chamber for Palestinians convicted of murder
• Other Israeli execution reports

“And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”

The law to which Ben-Gvir referred was passed in March by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and took effect the following month. The legislation changes the rules governing Israeli military courts in the illegally occupied West Bank so that the death penalty effectively applies only to Palestinians who kill Israelis.

Far-right Knesset members, including Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to show their support for the legislation.

Ben-Gvir also handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading.

WATCH: National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announce expansion of newly approved death row facilities, including observation booths.

‘Terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging’ pic.twitter.com/MRKJoSVD9q

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) August 18, 2026

Viewing booths
Ben-Gvir said the execution site would include viewing booths where victims’ families could watch executions, describing this as something customary in various countries and specifically citing the United States as an example.

“Terrorists deserve only one thing — death by hanging,” said Ben-Gvir, who in 2007 was convicted by an Israeli court of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organisation, whose leader he has openly honoured.

Abdullah al-Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, urged “effective international action” in response to Ben-Gvir’s comments. Al-Zaghari told Anadolu news agency that the minister’s visit to the gallows site was part of the “continued determination of the Israeli occupation system” to codify incitement against Palestinians.

Leftist Israeli Knesset lawmaker Ofer Cassif excoriated Ben-Gvir’s actions.

“This criminal thug — a sympathiser of murderers of Palestinians, a supporter of terror, and a pathological racist — is also hopelessly infantile,” Cassif told The New Arab. “Soon we will oust him from the government, and next, throw him behind bars.”

European Parliament Vice-President Pina Picierno accused Ben-Gvir of staging “a horrific spectacle that turns the death penalty into a show”.

The liberal US pro-Israel group J Street asked on X, “Are we supposed to believe, as some in the Jewish establishment would like us to, that Ben-Gvir’s words somehow tell us nothing about the country he helps govern?”

Jewish extremists excluded
“He is Israel’s National Security Minister, and he is now celebrating a facility built to execute Palestinians while Jewish extremists are excluded from the law,” the group added.

“As the old saying goes: When someone tells you who they are, believe them. When a government gives someone this much power, we have to reckon honestly with the agenda they are pushing.”

Ben-Gvir — who is under sanctions and banned from countries including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank — was still being denounced on Wednesday for advocating the daily mass killing of Palestinians, including civilians, in Gaza amid a nearly three-year war that United Nations experts, human rights groups, a South Africa-led case currently before the International Court of Justice, and many others call a genocide.

Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said on Wednesday — which was World Humanitarian Day — that Ben-Gvir’s “remarks are appalling, they’re outrageous, they’re dehumanising, they’re dangerous, and we condemn them unequivocally.”

A spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Wednesday in Berlin that Merz “strongly condemns Minister Ben-Gvir’s inhumane statements, which violate international law — they are unacceptable.”

“As the occupying power, Israel must treat Palestinians with dignity, protect their property, and ensure public administration and humanitarian aid,” the spokesperson added.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called Ben-Gvir’s remarks “unbearable and inhumane,” adding that “further sanctions could be imposed, and all options are on the table.”

In the United States, actor and activist Mark Ruffalo said Thursday on Bluesky that “Ben-Gvir is a bloodthirsty psychopath, war criminal, and one of Israel’s beloved genocidal leaders.”

“America and the world should be sanctioning, divesting, and boycotting Israel in every way until this apartheid regime falls,” he added.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams. This article was first published by Common Dreams and is republished under Creative Commons.

The IDF’s decision not to open a criminal investigation into the deaths of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen, including an Australian citizen, drew strong condemnation.

But for Palestinians, this has simply become the norm.

Four years ago, when I arrived from Palestine to study for my Master’s degree in Melbourne, Australia, I had a hard time finalising some paperwork related to government services, simply because I could not create an account. The problem was that my country, at the time, wasn’t listed within the governmental system.

• READ MORE: Palestinian theologian warns against trusting Israel over Hind, medics killings probe
• What did Al Jazeera’s investigation into Israeli war crimes in Gaza reveal?
• Who was Hind Rajab and why is Israel investigating her killing?
• Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of 5-year-old and paramedics
• Other Gaza genocide reports

There was no “Palestine” or “West Bank” and not even a slot for “Occupied Palestinian Territories”. At another interaction with local bureaucracy, the worker who received my passport commented that it was the first time he had seen a Palestinian one.

“I am sorry,” he said politely, “but I can’t even see it on the map.”

By the time we left Melbourne in 2024 and returned to our home in Ramallah, a lot had changed. For many months, hundreds of thousands of people gathered every Sunday in the city centre, raising Palestinian flags and calling to end Israel’s war in Gaza.

Watching these protests develop and gather steam, I came to realise that they were taking place not because Australia had become as “pro-Palestinian” as some of the media coverage had suggested, but rather because Israel’s image had badly deteriorated.

Australian opinion shifted
In September of 2025, the shifts in Australian public opinion regarding Israel and the occupation found their way into the country’s official policies, when the government in Canberra recognised Palestine. Australia was one of several influential countries to do so in recent years.

One of the most influential turning points in Australian public views of Israel came in April 2024 when an Israeli airstrike on Deir al-Balah killed seven aid workers from the humanitarian organisation World Central Kitchen, among them Zomi Frankcom, a 43-year-old woman from Melbourne.

For many Australians watching the horrors in Gaza from afar, that was the moment the war became personal.

This week, an internal inquiry by the Israeli military determined there was no criminal wrongdoing by any of the officers or soldiers involved in the fatal incident. Two years after the aid workers had been killed, Israel made clear it had no intention to punish anyone for their deaths, or even allow a proper independent investigation.

In Australia, this decision has been received with a mixture of anger and disappointment. The Australian Foreign Minister summoned the Israeli ambassador in protest.

I was following the headlines in Australia’s leading news websites from my home in Ramallah and realised how different my expectations as a Palestinian are from Israel, compared to those of many Australians. For me, there was nothing surprising about the Israeli military shielding soldiers from accountability.

Adla Alnazer is a public policy consultant and former adviser to the Palestinian government. This article was first published by Haaretz.

Palestinian Christian theologian Reverend Munther Isaac, the director of the Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice, has questioned the Israeli military’s announcement that it will investigate the killing of Hind Rajab and other Palestinians in the Gaza genocide.

After two years of denial, Israel has officially admitted firing on the 5-year-old’s car on on 29 January 2024. But her family and others don’t expect justice.

Reverend Munther asked in a post on X: “Can we, in any seriousness, trust the Israeli military to investigate itself?”

• READ MORE: Who was Hind Rajab and why is Israel investigating her killing?
• Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of 5-year-old and paramedics
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“And let us not forget: There are thousands of Hinds in Gaza — thousands of children killed, each with a name, a family, a story, and a future stolen from them,” he said.

“Justice must prevail. Justice will prevail.”

Can we, in any seriousness, trust the Israeli military to investigate itself?

And let us not forget: There are thousands of Hinds in Gaza—thousands of children killed, each with a name, a family, a story, and a future stolen from them.

Justice must prevail. Justice will… pic.twitter.com/f2eecJejXJ

— Munther Isaac منذر اسحق (@MuntherIsaac) August 19, 2026

Rajab’s mother, Wissam Hamada, continues to travel to several cities globally to speak out about the unimaginable impact of Israel’s war on children, even though she is unable to watch the critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated docudrama, The Voice of Hind Rajab, about her daughter’s death because hearing Rajab’s voice remains too painful.

More than 20,000 children have been killed by the Israeli military in the war on Gaza with a total death toll of more than 73,000 Palestinians.

In the killing of the paramedics that is also being investigated, Israeli troops fired on an ambulance driving to retrieve casualties from an Israeli offensive in the southern city of Rafah. They then fired on other emergency vehicles that came looking for the first one, according to phone footage and the sole survivor of the shootings.

Fifteen medics and emergency responders from the Red Crescent and Gaza’s Civil Defence were killed.

Australia summons Israeli envoy over ‘outrage’
Meanwhile, Australia has summoned Israel’s ambassador to express “outrage” over the Israeli military’s decision not to pursue criminal proceedings against those responsible for a 2024 drone attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza.

The victims included 43-year-old Australian citizen Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom.

The Israeli military announced that an extensive internal review found no “reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct” to justify opening criminal investigations into the April 2024 attack.

Israeli authorities previously cited operational errors, misidentification, and procedural failures for the strike on the clearly marked aid convoy.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Canberra learned of the decision moments before its public release on World Humanitarian Day, calling the timing “especially insulting” to Frankcom’s family, humanitarians globally and all Australians.

“This decision falls far short of the accountability we expect,” Wong said in a statement.

“The Australian government will not stop pressing Israel for justice for Zomi and her colleagues.”

Wong summoned Ambassador Hillel Newman in Canberra, and instructed Australia’s envoy in Tel Aviv to lodge formal objections directly with Israeli officials.

The Australian government reiterated that disciplinary measures alone were insufficient for an alleged mistake of this magnitude and stated it would continue to press Israel for justice, full transparency, and formal criminal accountability.

For more than a week, Israeli settlers have besieged three Palestinian families in their homes in Qusra, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, cutting them off from basic supplies and emergency services.

Settlers used the same tactic just last month to force the al-Tubassi family from their home in Jalud. This time, however, with one of the besieged Qusra homes belonging to a Palestinian-American, the siege has become front-page news.

The United Nations, France, Spain and the United Kingdom have issued condemnations, and the White House was reported to be pressing Netanyahu to publicly denounce settler violence.

• READ MORE: Qusra mayor: Besieged families face imminent food, medicine shortages
• Why can’t Israel be held accountable for its genocide in Gaza? It’s the media
• Other Gaza, West Bank reports

US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a staunch settlement supporter, broke publicly with the Israeli government to call the besieging settlers “Israeli terrorists”.

On August 13, Israeli forces ordered the families to evacuate, saying the homes would be seized “to protect” them, and converted 16 homes in the town into military barracks.

Soldiers entered Qusra that day. Israeli forces briefly detained one Israeli suspect during a later overnight operation dismantling nearby outpost structures, but no other arrests of settlers have been reported.

Amnesty International’s Erika Guevara Rosas said the siege reflected “an accelerating and well-documented pattern of coordinated and strategic settler terror, enabled, backed and funded by the State of Israel”.

15 Palestinians trapped
For a second week, 15 Palestinians, including two children, remain trapped in their homes.

Soldiers spent two days dismantling the settlers’ tent, only to put up their own in the same spot, effectively continuing the closure.

Municipal crews eventually restored electricity and water, but the families say they have been told they cannot leave their homes.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim reports that the settlers have been continuing their intimidation of Palestinians by threatening them.

“Even though they are not here at the moment, they are showing that they can come at any time and make their lives a living hell. That’s the term that one of the family members uses to describe their lives lately,” she said.

“These settlers arrived here seven months ago. Yes, the siege started last week, and we’re entering the second week now, but the harassment by settlers has been ongoing for the past months since these settlers decided to erect a new illegal outpost close to these houses.

‘Silk glove versus iron fist’
“One of the family members has two daughters — one is two and a half, the other is four. They are always scared, clinging to their parents because of the nature of the trauma that they are living under, the continued threats.

The Israeli soldiers that had been occupying these three homes continued to be there.

“According to what we understand happened, they might have told settlers to leave, but it’s seen here that the Israeli forces are treating settlers with a silk glove versus the iron fist with which they treat Palestinians.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera the same day, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese called Qusra the “climax” of Israel’s “decades-long rule of impunity”, saying Israeli officials “appear to be collaborating with settlers rather than restraining them”.

Nonetheless, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli military to prepare a plan for transferring responsibility for civilian law enforcement to the Israeli police — a move critics questioned as impractical and warned could further advance Israel’s de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Illegal settlers uncowed
Rather than being encumbered by the global outcry, settlers have carried out similar sieges — with soldiers again standing by or actively assisting.

On August 16, in Beit Imrin, north of Nablus — a village nominally under full Palestinian civil and security control — settlers besieged a home for more than three hours, blocking residents and ambulances from reaching those inside.

Israeli forces then raided the house themselves, arrested all nine people inside, and withdrew. Soldiers separately blocked Palestine Red Crescent crews from the area and confiscated their ambulance keys.

For years, the legal architecture of West Bank dispossession — including firing-zone designations, “state land” declarations and a permit regime that effectively criminalises Palestinian construction — has operated overwhelmingly in Area C, the area of the West Bank under full Israeli control.

It has fallen hardest on Bedouin and herding communities who have experienced massive forcible displacement as a result.

Occupation toolkit becomes clear
Beit Imrin has none of that legal exposure. But as the Qusra siege leads settlers to widen such tactics, the week’s developments suggest that where the traditional legal toolkit of the occupation does not reach — like the areas of the West Bank under nominal Palestinian control — the pattern is becoming clear:

• settlers establish a tent adjacent to homes and are not removed;
• Palestinians’ homes are besieged, with water, power, supplies and medical services cut off; and
• soldiers arrive not to remove the settlers, but increasingly to remove the family — through arrest or ostensibly for their “protection”.

On August 16, settlers also pitched tents for a new outpost near Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, which, the Wafa news agency reported, brings the number of outposts surrounding Umm Safa and neighbouring Burqa to six; settlers have already seized most of Umm Safa’s and Burqa’s surrounding lands.

As new outposts were built without authorisation, Israeli forces demolished homes in Qalandiya, north of Jerusalem; Masara, south of Bethlehem; and Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, according to pictures and videos shared among local activists.

Israeli authorities also forced Sami Abu Rahma to demolish his own farm in al-Mughayyir, days after his son was shot by settlers working the same land.

The Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission told Wafa that Israeli authorities carried out 80 demolitions in July alone, hitting 165 structures, with 34 further notices issued.

Gaza’s trajectory hangs in the balance
A Board of Peace official told Al Jazeera on Monday that the body had agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel did not need to withdraw its forces from Gaza until Hamas disarmed — including both light and heavy weapons, and the dismantling of its tunnel network.

That comes after Netanyahu had publicly rejected the disarmament agreement announced by US President Donald Trump last month. The deal had initially envisaged a phased withdrawal occurring alongside a phased disarmament.

The US administration’s latest diplomatic push on Gaza, led by Jared Kushner’s meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, appears to have yielded no major breakthrough.

Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said Netanyahu would “give the appearance of getting along” with Kushner but “won’t really go along with the plan” for Gaza.

“I mean, he’s not going to be able to actually say a flat no to Trump. What he’s going to do, and what he’s done, in fact, is he announced the making of these two committees in order to show that there is some form of progress without really committing to any real movement on the 15-point plan,” Bishara said.

Bishara said Netanyahu’s announcement of two committees to discuss the plan was a tactic to “bury the issue”, noting that “when you want to bury an issue, make a committee for it”.

Kill ’30 or 40′ people a night
In a podcast with former Israeli captive Rom Braslavski, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Israeli forces should kill “30 or 40” people in Gaza every night, going beyond those who pose an immediate threat.

The far-right minister said he opposed Netanyahu’s decision to scale back strikes under the current truce, called for encouraging Palestinians to leave Gaza permanently alongside new Israeli settlement of the Strip, and offered to help arrange for Braslavski to personally execute prisoners under Israel’s newly enacted death-penalty law for Palestinians.

Ben-Gvir holds no formal authority to order military strikes but sits on Israel’s security cabinet.

It is against that tension — between US pressure to advance the ceasefire and demands from Israel’s far right for intensified attacks — that Israeli strikes this week resumed, though still at a pace markedly lower than two weeks earlier.

On August 12, a strike on a motorised rickshaw in Beit Lahiya killed municipal worker Mohanad Saada, returning from repairing a war-damaged well — Israel’s first air strike in Gaza in more than a week.

On August 13, a drone fired three missiles at a four-wheel drive vehicle in Gaza City, killing Colonel Jamal Abu Kamil, the city’s civil police chief; the Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas commander, a claim Gaza’s police and Interior Ministry rejected.

More attacks were reported in the following days.

Israel forces destroying evidence
Beneath the week’s violence, a report from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that Israel is crushing and trucking rubble out of the Strip — more than 10 million tonnes have already been removed.

The group says the process erases property boundaries and risks destroying evidence relevant to the International Court of Justice’s genocide case against Israel.

Meanwhile, vital supplies continue to be severely restricted from entering Gaza; on August 15, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said only 12 of the Strip’s 34 oxygen-generating stations remained functional, with no spare parts entering the territory, according to Wafa.

Doctors said that cancer patients are dying at two to three times the pre-war rate after Israel destroyed the Strip’s only specialised cancer hospital.

Alongside 21 additional bodies recovered in Khan Younis underneath the rubble, the Palestine Red Crescent also recovered the body of 14-year-old Suhail Masoud Shalouf on August 16, after he was shot the previous evening near the so-called “Yellow Line” in an area rescuers had been unable to reach.

By August 17, Gaza’s Ministry of Health had counted 1,265 Palestinians killed since the October “ceasefire” — and 73,399 killed since October 7, 2023.

This report has been compiled from Al Jazeera updates for the past week under the occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.

In a Double Down News (DDN) video report, British filmmaker Richard Sanders begins a summary of a “horrific new [United Nations] report” with a listing of three atrocities committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian children.

Sanders tells of an infant who was shot in the head while breastfeeding in his mother’s arms, a 16-year-old boy whose body was mutilated by an Israeli tank, and teenage boys deliberately shot by Israeli soldiers in a game of “target practice”.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry released the report on June 23.

• READ MORE: Western media coverage of Gaza erases Palestinians from the story
• How Netanyahu govt media reforms risk deepening Israeli press bias
• Other Gaza media reports

Titled “The Essence of Childhood Has Been Destroyed,” it was the first to focus on crimes and violations against Palestinian children in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Vijay Prashad at CounterPunch called it an “accusation of extraordinary gravity.” In 100-pages, the investigation documents Israeli security forces’ direct killing, degrading, and inhumane treatment of Palestinian children, including sexual and gender-based violence and torture.

The report also documents the destruction of schools and civilian infrastructure and amounts to a gruesome compendium of how Israel is destroying Palestinian childhood and denying the Palestinian people a future and self-determination.

As the human rights lawyer Srinivasan Muralidhar, who chaired the UN commission and led the press conference that announced its findings, bluntly summarised, “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist.” This is genocide.

Trump’s Board of Peace claims contradicted
The UN report flatly contradicted the claims made by President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace that conditions in Gaza were improving.

The UN report stated that the amount of available aid is woefully inadequate to meet the needs of hungry, wounded people, living in appalling conditions, who are being squeezed into 30 percent of what was once the Gaza Strip.

The UN report further noted the admission of one Israeli soldier: “It feels like a game. You can sit in some basement of a house, safe, with your helmet off, scratching your balls, half-dressed, and kill Palestinians.”

The new report sits atop an ever-expanding mass of documentation of Israeli war crimes committed since October 7, 2023. This trove consists of journalistic documentation, investigations compiled by the UN and other aid agencies, and by human rights lawyers who have corroborated the testimonies of victims of sexual torture with forensic evidence of their broken bodies.

It includes damning evidence from Israeli soldiers themselves, who have recorded their crimes as they committed them and subsequently posted those recordings online. The combined record of evidence includes visuals of massacres, satellite footage, and audio recordings of specific events such as the January 2024 killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab, as documented by Forensic Architecture.

Journalists bear witness, with corroborating evidence, to seeing their colleagues killed by targeted Israeli strikes. Compilations of detailed refutations of falsified Israeli “pseudo-evidence” produced to deny its crimes must also be considered a significant part of this trove. In short, as many have observed, the genocide in Gaza is the most well-documented in history.

The most well-documented but contested genocide in history
And yet, in the face of all the evidence, Israel’s genocide remains the most contested in history. Israel simply denies what it’s doing.

As Ramzy Baroud wrote, Israel’s enemy is not merely its armed adversaries; “it is the judge, the independent human rights observer, and the UN investigator whose sole mandate is to document violations of international law.”

Israel relentlessly claims that all these agencies are lying to make Israel look bad, and that all criticism of the state of Israel is based on antisemitism.

A look at The New York Times coverage of the UN’s June 23 report illustrates how the media amplify Israeli denials by dutifully replicating them. Amid details of the carefully documented horrors that lie within the report, The New York Times announced that Israel’s UN mission in Geneva dismissed it as a “libelous sham” and condemned the UN commission as a “fundamentally flawed mechanism whose very purpose is to single out and vilify Israel”.

Another quote from the Israeli Foreign Ministry sandwiched in the article claimed that the UN report “completely erases Israeli children who were brutally murdered, kidnapped, and targeted by Hamas, while ignoring Hamas’ cynical use of Palestinian children as human shields and pawns of war.”

The Times let this statement stand without qualification, even though most of it is false.

The UN report does include incidents of Hamas killing Israeli children during and since the October 7 attacks — which it also noted were the focus of two prior reports, made to the Human Rights Council in June 2024 and the General Assembly in October 2024 — though they pale by comparison to Israel’s subsequent atrocities.

Israel has killed 20,000+ children
Hamas killed one infant on October 7, 2023. In the two years since then, Israel has killed more than 20,000 children, including 440 newborn babies.

But US media have never fully covered what actually happened on October 7. Israeli civilians and children were killed that day by Israeli security forces who were ordered to fire on everyone, employing the Hannibal Directive, to prevent hostages from being taken.

Additionally, the claim that Hamas used “human shields” during the genocide was always a fabrication. In a May 2025 article titled “One Side Routinely Uses Human Shields in Gaza — But Not the Side That’s Usually Blamed,” FAIR’s Gregory Shupak wrote that Israel and its backers “have completely distorted this concept, in an apparent attempt to give their massacres in Gaza a veneer of legality.”

Scholars Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon are cited to explain how the human shield discourse has been misapplied in Gaza: “Israel has cited Hamas’s underground tunnel system to cast every square inch of Gaza as a human shield.”

This misdirection “has functioned to erase the possibility of Palestinian civilianness altogether.” Shupak added that the “corruption of the meaning of ‘human shields’ has distorted much of the corporate media coverage of the Gaza genocide”.

Another example from the commission’s report describes BBC reporting of a CCTV videotape of soldiers shooting a boy, then standing around for 45 minutes watching him bleed to death. They shot at his mother to stop her from coming to his aid. They also blocked two Palestinian ambulances from reaching him, and they were seen planting a rock next to him as “evidence” that Israeli security forces had acted in “self-defence”.

Although Israel has provided no evidence to contest the videotape, corporate news outlets, such as The New York Times, have given the Israeli military opportunities to claim the boy was “a terrorist” who “attempted to attack soldiers”.

Not a shred of evidence
Without the Israeli government having produced a shred of evidence to support its accusations, the establishment press has allowed Israeli officials to cast doubt on a well-documented case of murder. For almost three years, this cycle of denial has dominated corporate coverage, making this the most contested genocide in history, despite the troves of evidence to the contrary.

This is ironic given that, even as Israeli officials deny these claims when talking to news media, statements admitting and celebrating their crimes circulate widely on internet platforms. In the DDN video, Richard Sanders shows footage of the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Nissim Vaturi, saying, “Erase Gaza … do not leave a child there. Expel all the remaining ones at the end so that they will not have a resurrection … Every child born there is already a terrorist, from the moment of his birth.”

This announcement of intent to continue a genocide to its conclusion could not be made clearer. Indeed, though there are long lists of statements by Israeli officials that constitute incitement to genocide, they are ignored by corporate media frames of denial. Israelis are demanding the right to commit genocide, even as they deny they are doing so.

The UN commission recognised and condemned Israel’s ongoing determination to expand territorially, saying that such long-term goals violate international law.

Spending millions on public relations and failing
The UN’s latest report comes at a time of crisis for the Israeli state, as global citizens are registering their revulsion at Israel’s seemingly endless violence. Israel’s approval ratings are plummeting in the United States and globally.

As of May 2026, only 16 percent of Americans support unconditional aid to Israel, and in June 2026, historic progress was made in the House of Representatives, with seventy-three cosponsors for the Block the Bombs bill to impose a partial embargo against sending any more US weapons to Israel.

Global outrage, anti-genocide disgust, and solidarity with the Palestinian struggle have shifted the global paradigm and dramatically changed the political landscape. Reporting on the Second Anti-Zionist Jewish Congress held in Dublin, Ireland, Ramzy Baroud argued that the shift in global perceptions over the past two years has been driven by independent journalism and Palestinians themselves reclaiming their own narrative.

In response, Israel is investing millions of dollars to revive its image. In one initiative, Israeli propagandists have abandoned calling ethnic cleansing “voluntary migration,” a term repeated frequently in establishment media. A new initiative will refer to it as “a plan of free movement.”

As Caitlin Johnstone writes, “They never say ‘It’s time to stop doing the things that cause people to hate us,’ they just say ‘It’s time for a rebrand.’” Despite millions of dollars spent on hasbara, Israel’s PR campaigns are failing. Dr Baroud argues that “the damage Israel has done to itself through its barbaric practices in occupied Palestine is simply impossible to overcome.”

As Dr Baroud has aptly noted, “Corporate media exist to serve corporate interests.”

Government and corporate elites and states can continue to support Israel militarily and economically only as long as establishment media continue to rehearse the lies, falsifications, and denials of its genocide in Gaza. Through propaganda and strategic alliances, Israel seeks to evade any accountability for genocide. That evasion would be impossible without the complicity of the corporate media.

Palestinian storytellers fundamentally reshaping the global conversation
Western newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post have not changed their editorial approach throughout this genocide, but Omar Zahzah, author of Terms of Servitude, argues that independent media, social media platforms, and Palestinian storytellers are not only fundamentally reshaping the global conversation but are also being censored for it. And that is true.

Sadly, however, the establishment press steadfastly continues to provide the Israeli state the cover it needs to deny its crimes against humanity and bury its genocide. It’s long past time for legacy media to stop allowing Israel to hide behind its own journalistic malpractice.

The fact that newsrooms still allow a foreign military — one that is openly censoring Western media and content posted to Big Tech platforms, committing genocide, and murdering journalists — to dominate the language of US journalism must come to an end. It has become far too obvious to the rest of the world.

This was first published by Project Censored and is republished from CounterPunch under Creative Commons.

Dr Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University. She is an award-winning author of a dozen single and co-authored books. Her most recent book is The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Andersen’s work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others.

In yet another remark that triggered alarm around the world, President Donald Trump has said that he planned to declare the Strait of Hormuz — which Iran has blockaded for much of the past five months over his and Israel’s illegal war — a US territory.

Just two days after the latest inflation figures demonstrated, in the words of one expert, “Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement of our economy,” the President ignored the economic fallout from his war, which led Iran to restrict ship traffic through the strait, driving up fuel prices worldwide.

“We’re bringing the prices way down,” he told a Long Island crowd. Trump also said that “after we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon, I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.”

That’s not a thing. He has not defeated Iran. This is literally the definition of forever war. It won’t be his kids sailing thousands of miles from home to secure his new territory. https://t.co/xoNg4ODNpq

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) August 14, 2026

Some critics have responded to clips of the comments on X by mocking Trump — an infamous liar. Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) quipped, “Awesome! And the Easter Bunny is real.”

Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, said that “this jingoism rings a bit hollow when most of the US bases near the strait have been essentially abandoned due to danger from Iranian missiles and drones.”

Progressive political commentator Kyle Kulinski declared that “he absolutely needs to be impeached, removed, and locked up. He’s a completely unhinged lunatic, and he’s a sadistic violent menace to the world.”

After high initial claims about lower prices, Trump admitted that gasoline has soared due to his war, but said: “For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a — a country, really it’s the No. 1 state sponsor of terror in the world — we don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon.

“So, remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4, it’s OK. I’ll never apologise. I did the right thing.”

Trump’s threat over the strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman came just before a month long ceasefire between the US and Iran is set to expire on Monday.

‘Reckless game of chicken’
A senior White House official told Politico that the situation is “static.”

“It doesn’t matter how close or how far we are,” said the official, who has heard no mention of a potential extension of the ceasefire. “What matters is if Iran wants to come to the table and agree to a deal. Right now, they haven’t done that.”

The Associated Press reported on Friday that “the Trump administration appeared to be reaching out to a broader swathe of countries that might be able to help pressure Tehran.”

Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, told the news agency that “everyone is just urging both sides to stop this reckless game of chicken”.

BREAKING: ‘Strait of Hormuz cannot be seized by tweet’: Iran’s Gharibabadi responds to Trump’s threat to declare Hormuz ‘US territory’

LIVE updates: https://t.co/tMYugbholt pic.twitter.com/UlJBzUU7jw

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) August 14, 2026

in Tehran, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi ridiculed President Trump’s threat to declare the strait a US territory, stressing that the strategic waterway could only be opened or closed under Iran’s command.

Tasnim News reports that Gharibabadi dismissed the claim, saying the waterway could not be seized through social media posts, an aircraft carrier, an executive order or an election speech.

‘Cannnot be seized by tweet’
“The Strait of Hormuz cannot be seized by a tweet, nor by an aircraft carrier, neither by issuing an order nor by an election speech,” he wrote.

“Iran is neither afraid of threats nor intimidated by displays of power,” the Iranian diplomat added.

In addition to launching an illegal war on Iran on February 28, and invading Venezuela in January to abduct its president, Trump has made threats against various other nations during his second term — including Canada, Cuba, Colombia, Greenland, and Mexico.

He has also threatened to seize the Panama Canal and killed hundreds of people by blowing up boats allegedly smuggling drugs.

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams. This article is republished under Creative Commons.

A country currently indicted for genocide has no business training our teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand on the topic of genocide. The notion is ludicrous.

Under this National policy Kiwi teachers are going to be trained about genocide by Israelis.

It is intended that some Kiwi teachers will be sent to Israel for indoctrination tours.

• READ MORE: Holocaust education now part of the NZ curriculum
• Israel has no business teaching anyone’s children about the systematic dehumanisation of others — Marilyn Garson
• When truth in protest is under attack, don’t give disinformation a platform

Kiwi teachers will be able to meet happy Palestinians in Israel. That is what South Africa’s apartheid government used to do — come meet the happy Blacks in Johannesburg. Soweto? Where’s that?

Israel is currently indicted for genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has an arrest warrant out for him issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) — for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The ICJ declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory to be unlawful on 19 July 2024.

Any and all Israeli presence in Palestinian territory is unlawful. Notwithstanding that, Israel carries on its slaughter as though the law itself does not exist.

It is beyond belief that a New Zealand government could have come up with a policy so ludicrous and so deeply offensive.

Tracy-Moana Campbell is an employment relations advocate based in Masterton and an activist on Palestinian human rights. She had a commercial orange grove in Lebanon 10km from the Israeli border in 2005-2011. Israel bombed her oranges in 2006. It is a war crime to destroy civilian food sources. This commentary was originally a social media post but has been republished with the author’s permission.

Palestine protesters in Aotearoa New Zealand celebrated an unprecedented 150 weeks of continuous Gaza genocide rallies in the heart of Auckland today and were told by a human rights advocate they were the “rainbow people — offering hope”.

Kathy Voyles, who describes herself as a global citizen dividing her time between New Zealand and The Netherlands, said Gaza was “standing at a knife’s edge” and sometimes hope seemed far away.

“And then I remember the late, great Susi Newborn, who said, ‘You can’t sink a rainbow.’

• READ MORE: Resident in Israeli-besieged Qusra home in Palestine says food and water running low
• Other Gaza protest reports

“We are that rainbow people. We are that hope.”

She warned that the Israeli leaders would face justice for their horrendous crimes and atrocities, and spoke of a former head of state who had eventually paid a price.

“I will never forget that day in June 2001 when the former Serbian leader, Slobodan Milošević, who was responsible for so many deaths in the former Yugoslavia who came to The Hague to be put in prison.”

Voyles remembered so many people who had worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

“The ICC, ICTY and other tribunals have tried 200 people from all around the world. The Serbian government got him to The Hague despite his followers objecting.”

Breached Genocide Convention
Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006 before the genocide trial could conclude, but the ICC separately found him guilty of breaching the Genocide Convention.

Another former leader, ex-Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, is currently in The Hague awaiting trial for crimes against humanity or murder and attempted murder over mass killings during the eight-year so-called “war on drugs”.

The ICC also wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on arrest warrants for the alleged war crimes of starvation, and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

“Now we know that Israel and the US are doing their best to close down the ICC — and that must not happen,” said Voyles.

“They are doing that because they are scared.

“One thing that I did learn while working in that field in The Hague is that national governments hate to be shamed and embarrassed, no matter how strong they think they are.

“We have signed up to various [human rights] conventions even though our government is doing its best to forget that.

“So let’s keep reminding them.”

Message of hope
Voyles reminded the protesters of her initial message today of hope.

“So I say there is hope. And for our own mental health we must continue to do what we do.

“Every week until there is a rainbow and hope for the people left in Gaza and the Occupied Territories, for Sudan, for the Congo, for Yemen, for West Papua, for the people of Myanmar and so many others.

“We cannot forget them ever.”

One way of taking action was to get everyone enrolled to vote in New Zealand and “then we change this inept government”.

“Out with Chris Luxon, Winston Peters and David Seymour. We want leaders who are us, not the I.”

Honour to speak
Voyles said it was an honour to speak for the people of Palestine – Gaza and the Occupied Territories. At least 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in the genocide and more than 1200 people since the so-called “ceasefire” declared in October 2025.

She challenged the crowd to keep “endlessly, ceaselessly talking, tweeting and emailing about it.”

The kaikōrero for the rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square, Lamees Elthiny, paid tribute to the crowd for their resilient 150 weeks of protest.

Everyone had been “fighting the battle of Palestine in their own way”, she said.

“Everyone is standing for humanity, but doing it differently. And we decided to keep coming over and over again here to Britomart and our voices will be heard until Palestine is free.”

Adnan Swaid, a Nakba victim, son of Palestinian refugee parents and freedom activist who had lived for 50 years as a stateless human being, spoke of Israel’s ever-growing Zionist crimes.

“Since the establishment of the Zionist idea in the 18th century, the Zionist lying machine was established as well for producing and spreading of Zionist lies,” he said.

Compelling poems
Jacqueline “Jax” Taylor of the Stand With Palestine Waiheke community group recited two compelling poems.

“All the world’s best poets have a little drinkie to help when the words won’t flow,” she said introducing one of her poems that she had compiled in dedication to the ‘150 Weeks’!”

Ihumatao and Rocket Lab protester Brendan Corbett praised a Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa-backed lawsuit that was filed in the High Court at Wellington this week seeking a judicial review of the New Zealand government approval for the launching of BlackRock spy satellites that are alleged to be complicit with the Gaza genocide.

“The lawsuit is charging that our Ministers of Space, Judith Collins, and the latest one, Chris Penk, and now Paul Goldsmith, who is yet to be selected, but he has got the job,” Corbett said.

“These people had signed a launch certificate to allow Rocket Lab to launch BlackSky satellites that have a contract to act with the IDF to target across Israel, across Palestine.

“The research after months and months has resulted in the lawyers being super confident that they can get a conviction — so well done to these lawyers.”

By Ibrahim Othman

New Zealand’s government is facing a historic lawsuit before the High Court at Wellington, with activists and lawyers seeking to overturn judicial reviews and licences granted by the Ministry of Space to US geospatial intelligence company BlackSky, alleging that its technologies have been used by the Israeli military during its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

The lawsuit, which was filed yesterday, has three plaintiffs: Palestinian-New Zealand engineer Yasser Abdel Aal, information technology expert Maher Nazzal, and Māori-Tongan doctor Timoti Te Moki.

According to the statement of claim, a copy of which was obtained by The New Arab, the lawsuit is based on the plaintiffs’ direct harm from Israel’s genocidal war.

• READ MORE: Palestinian Kiwis, Māori doctor file claim against NZ govt over Gaza spy satellites
• Justice For Palestine welcomes legal challenge to govt approval of BlackSky spy satellite launches from NZ
• Other Rocket Lab reports

Abdel Aal lost more than 85 members of his extended family due to Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. His two sisters and their families are currently living in tents lacking the most basic humanitarian necessities in the Al-Mawasi area of the Strip.

Maher Nazzal, head of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand and one of the plaintiffs, told TNA that he was taking part in the case because he believed that “New Zealand bears a moral and legal responsibility for what is happening, and it is not acceptable to ignore the possibility that technology launched from our territory is being used to support military operations that lead to more suffering and killing of Palestinians”.

“I have seen the suffering of Palestinians myself, including members of my family who were displaced during the 1967 Naksa. What is happening today in Gaza and the West Bank is not something we can stand by and do nothing about,” he said.

“This case is not about opposing the space or technology sector but about holding the government accountable for its decisions and its duty to ensure that what is launched from New Zealand is not used to provide information or capabilities that could help target Palestinians.

“We are not asking our government to do the impossible. We are asking it to assume its responsibility, act in accordance with New Zealand’s obligations under international law, and put the protection of human rights above commercial or political interests.

“I am proud to be part of this legal action, and I hope this case will lead to greater transparency and accountability and send a clear message that New Zealand will not turn a blind eye when there is a possibility that its capabilities or territory could be used to support serious violations against the Palestinian people,” he said.

“Silence is not a neutral position when people’s lives and rights are at stake.”

Allegations of ‘deliberate disregard’
The legal action is supported by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), which had formally raised its concerns with former Space Minister Judith Collins in November 2024 over Israel’s use of data from these satellites.

The network’s spokeswoman, Rinad Tamimi, described the ministry’s position as “deliberate disregard”, stressing that the minister and officials at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) raised no questions about whether Israel was an end user of the services when the permits were granted in December 2023.

“All the minister had to do was pick up the phone and ask whether the Israelis were part of the deal, but they feared getting an answer they did not want,” Tamimi added in a statement.

These concerns are supported by reports published by French magazine Intelligence Online in July 2024, which revealed the existence of a secret $150 million contract under which Israel was the “main foreign client” of BlackSky, providing it with high-resolution and frequently updated images and analysis of the Gaza Strip.

International obligations, national interest
On the legal side, Sam Vincent, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement on Tuesday that the case against the former minister and the government centred on the failure to consider New Zealand’s obligations under the Genocide Convention and international human rights law when approving the launch of those space payloads through Rocket Lab from the New Zealand launch site at Mahia.

“It is no secret that Israel systematically relies on geospatial intelligence to identify its military targets, and there is a strong possibility that it has used and continues to use these satellites for this purpose,” he added.

Lawyer Ruby Hazin, for her part, cited reports by the independent UN Commission of Inquiry and international organisations such as Amnesty International, all of which concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

“Since January 2024, the International Court of Justice has formally notified all states of their duty to act to prevent genocide, and New Zealand is legally bound to meet this obligation,” she added.

Pattern ‘unravelling’
Groups supporting the case linked the legal action to a recent ruling by the Federal Court of Australia that ordered the Australian defence minister to disclose information on arms exports and F35 aircraft spare parts to Israel.

Commenting on the linking, Rinad Tamimi said, “There is a general pattern of secrecy surrounding Western arms exports and military services to Israel, but this pattern is now unravelling; complicity has been exposed, and our government is unfortunately part of this systematic deception“.

Through the case, the plaintiffs are seeking a historic court ruling that would reshape the standards for granting space licences in New Zealand and force authorities to review and scrutinise the end-user lists of technology companies to ensure that New Zealand territory is not used as a launch point to facilitate the commission of international war crimes.

This article was first published by The New Arab and is translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari.

Lawyers for two Palestinian advocates with strong family ties to the Nakba in Gaza and a Māori medical doctor critical of the “colonial violence” in the occupied territories have filed a lawsuit today against New Zealand government support for BlackSky spy satellite launchings from the Rocket Lab site in Māhia.

Their lawsuit seeks a judicial review of government policy, arguing that the satellites risk supplying Israeli military forces with targeting data in attacks on the population of the besieged Gaza Strip.

New Zealand-founded space company Rocket Lab is BlackSky’s primary launch provider, says a statement by the Palestine Solidarity Media Network (PSNA) that is supporting the lawsuit filed at the Wellington High Court.

• READ MORE:  Justice For Palestine welcomes legal challenge to govt approval of BlackSky spy satellite launches from NZ
• Other Rocket Lab reports

Rocket Lab launched a BlackSky satellite from Māhia in March, with further launches recently approved by the Minister for Space.

The three plaintiffs bringing the lawsuit are New Zealanders — Christchurch engineer Yasser Abdulaal; Auckland-based information technology professional Maher Nazzal; and Dr Timoti Te Moke (Ngāti Rangitihi, Tapuika and Tonga), a medical doctor.

Abdulaal’s family sought refuge in Gaza when Zionist militia inflicted the Nakba (the “Catastrophe”) in 1948 and have suffered the devastation of Israel’s air strikes on Gaza since October 2023.

“More than 85 of my extended family have been killed in multiple air strikes by Israel, Abdulaal said. “My two sisters have had to live in terrible conditions with their families in tents in the Al Mawasi area for more than two years now.

Israel still bombing, killing
“Israel is still bombing and killing in Gaza. We hope that we will stop these satellite launches.”

Nazzal’s parents were displaced from their homes during the 1967 Naksa (the “Setback”), when Israel occupied the West Bank.

“I have seen firsthand the struggles Palestinians face, including members of my own family,” he said.

“They continue to endure severe oppression and displacement in the West Bank and Gaza.

“I am proud to be part of this legal action. We are asking our government to take meaningful action in support of Palestinian rights and to uphold its obligations under international law.”

Dr Te Moke said he was joining this case because he felt a strong affiliation with the Palestinian people.

“Tangata whenua and Palestinians have both suffered colonial violence and so have a powerful connection with each other,” he said.

Independent candidate
He is an independent candidate in the Māngere electorate for the 2026 general election in November.

The lawsuit, laid under the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Act 2017, challenges former Space Minister Judith Collins’ approval of four launches, in spite of protests at BlackSky’s links to Israel.

The proceedings are also filed against new Space Minister Chris Penk, who in April approved 26 more satellite launches, which the plaintiffs hope to halt.

The pleadings note that former Space Minister Collins and MBIE knew, when they approved the launch of BlackSky’s spy satellites in late 2023, that BlackSky’s satellites had been used by Israel.

At the time, air strikes by Israel over Gaza had killed nearly 20,000 people. To total has since risen to more than 73,000 killed — mostly women and children — and at least 173,000 wounded.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa raised its concern over Israeli military use for BlackSky satellites with Collins in November 2024.

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in a statement the result was “wilful ignorance”.

No questions on Israel
“Neither Collins nor MBIE questioned, when they were deciding to grant BlackSky’s payload permit in December 2023, whether the Israeli military was a current end-user of the satellites.

“All Collins or her ministry needed to do was pick up the phone and ask whether the Israelis were part of the deal. But it’s most likely they feared they would get an answer they didn’t want.”

Collins refused all PSNA requests to reconsider her approval of the satellite launches.

France-based publication Intelligence Online reported in July 2024 that Israel was BlackSky’s “main foreign customer” with a secret US$150 million contract.

A recent Federal Court outcome in Australia requires the Australian Defence Minister to release information on Australian arms exports to Israel.

Australia-based Palestine advocacy organisations say they sought the information so they could assess whether these exports, such as F35 aircraft spare parts, could be used to commit human rights abuses, or were contrary to Australia’s international obligations or commitments.

“Right throughout the Western world there is a pattern of secrecy about arms exports to Israel. It’s now unravelling,” Tamimi said

Complicity exposed
“Complicity with genocide is being exposed. Our government is part of that duplicity and now exposure.”

Sam Vincent, one of the lawyers acting for the plaintiffs, said BlackSky was well known for the sophistication of its geospatial data.

“It is no secret that Israel has systematically relied on geospatial intelligence, such as BlackSky provides, for its targeting.

“The case against the former space minister is that she did not take into consideration New Zealand’s obligations under the Genocide Convention nor broader international human rights law when she approved these satellite launches,” he said.

“This was despite the likelihood that Israel was using these satellites, and would continue to use them for military targeting.

“Against protestations, the four BlackSky satellites Judith Collins approved are now in space.”

“There are 26 more BlackSky satellites now approved for launch by the new minister — while Israel continues to strike Gaza. We are seeking an order that will quash the minister’s approval and direct that he inquire into BlackSky’s likely supply of data to Israel.”

UN commission found genocide
Another of the lawyers acting for the plaintiffs, Ruby Haazen, said the UN’s independent commission of inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel had found Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

“Many scholars, such as Omar Bartov, and international organisations such as Amnesty International, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have also found Israel has committed genocide in Gaza,” Haazen said.

“In January 2024, the International Court of Justice found it plausible that Israel’s military operations in Gaza risked irreparable harm to Palestinians rights under the Genocide Convention, putting all states on notice of their duty to act to prevent genocide.

“New Zealand is obliged to live up to that duty.”

How Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese built an unelected censorship apparatus for Jillian Segal without a vote, a bill or a debate, while the Coalition demanded more was covered in Part One. It ended with a question polite Australia refuses to ask. Today, in Part Two is the answer. Andrew Brown reports for Michael West Media.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

The architecture would be scandal enough on paper. It did not stay there. Antisemitism Commissioner Jillian Segal took an oath at a Royal Commission.

Segal conceded regulators had found little inaccuracy in ABC and SBS reporting on Israel and Gaza. The journalism was true.

Her objection was that the truth made Israel look bad. Her remedy was another oversight body and more positive stories about the amazing startup nation

• READ MORE: The Segal State 1 – the public office Australia never voted for
• The Segal State 2 – the mask, the children, the money and the answer

A taxpayer-funded official told a Royal Commission, under oath, that accurate reporting is a problem the state should fix with pressure for flattering coverage.

Under oath, the mask came off
Show the starving children of Gaza if you insist, then cut to a cheerful Israeli tech segment for balance.

There are countries where officials talk like that. None of them are democracies. And the Prime Minister kept her in office anyway.

Then she reached for the children

University students, Segal observed, are relatively fixed in their ideas. Younger children are more open. Education, she said, is a tool for building ideas, cohesion and culture.

An advocate surveyed the population, identified the audience least capable of arguing back, and proposed to begin there.

She unveiled a National Centre for Education Against Antisemitism to train government, business and police at scale and capture the hearts and minds of Australians. Her phrase.

The Gonski taskforce runs from early childhood to university. Something in the curriculum, Segal mused, might have to come out.

Jewish history and the Holocaust belong in every classroom. So do Islamophobia, anti Palestinian racism, the frontier massacres and the stolen generations.

A curriculum organised around one contested political definition does not teach children to think. It teaches them which conclusions are safe. Australians have a name for a state programme built to capture the hearts and minds of other people’s children. It is not education.

The $50,000 question
Twelve days before Segal’s appointment, Henroth Investments, directed by her husband, gave $50,000 to Advance Australia. The same Advance that torched the Indigenous Voice for being too much power for one group of Australians.

Segal denies involvement. The Klaxon documented the couple’s record of joint donations, down to a photograph beside a plaque naming both as donors.

Perhaps she knew nothing of a $50,000 gift from her own household’s company on the eve of her elevation. Any other appointment, this donation triggers an inquiry by Friday. This one drew a shrug. Albanese is not neutral. He benefits from the question never being asked.

The answer
Now the question you carried overnight. Why one form of racism and not the others?

In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody delivered 339 recommendations. Both parties let them rot for three decades while the death toll passed 590 First Nations people. No envoy. No machinery.

In 2025, Segal delivered 49 actions. The Commonwealth adopted every one within months, put her in charge, and stood a $130 million Royal Commission behind her. Muslim Australians, mosques attacked, got an envoy for show.

Palestinian Australians burying entire families got lectures about tone.

So ask the questions underneath. Which cause has a professional, funded, decades old lobby behind it, and which buried its peak body by Act of Parliament? Which flatters the US alliance, and which indicts the Crown? Which form of justice costs the Treasury nothing, and which costs it the continent?

And that lobby did not merely ask. After October 2023, it campaigned, through ECAJ, AIJAC and the Murdoch press behind them, and Anthony Albanese capitulated.

Then he kept capitulating.

He adopted the plan entire. He kept Segal in office after her testimony. He will not touch the donation. For this Prime Minister, capitulation is not a moment. It is a method.

Follow those questions to the end and you reach the ugliest truth in Australian public life. This state does not fight racism. It prices it.

The cheap kind gets a ministry. The expensive kind gets an anniversary. That hierarchy of harm is now official Commonwealth policy. Nobody voted for it. Nobody was asked. It was imposed. And Segal is that policy made flesh.

The lobby’s president turned the nation’s umpire.

Minns, the enforcer
The state tier belongs to Chris Minns. His government rammed hate speech and protest laws through Parliament, with Coalition votes, while the Dural caravan was waved at a frightened public. Police then established the plot was a fabricated criminal con. A premier who legislates on a hoax and keeps the laws when it collapses has told you what they were for.

Segal’s definition, Minns’s truncheon, opposition applause. A pincer on political expression, built in 18 months, and not one voter asked.Tear it out

This is Australia in 2026. Speech graded in Canberra. Protest policed in Sydney. Children next. An open society has one rule that cannot bend. No unelected hand on the levers of speech. Segal’s office breaks it by existing.

Albanese built this office, hid its costs, ignored the donation on its doorstep and shielded its occupant. Every excess is his. So is the precedent. The apparatus does not dissolve when Segal departs. It sits waiting for the next government, and the Coalition is not planning to dismantle it. It is waiting for the keys.

End Segal’s appointment. Abolish the office.

Repeal the NSW laws passed on a hoax. Open a parliamentary inquiry into its creation, its costs and its occupant’s household donations. Replace the wreckage with one national rights framework protecting every Australian from every form of racial and religious hatred, equally.

No envoys. No favourites. No exceptions.

So make it the question of the next election. Put it to every candidate, of every party, at every doorstop, until they answer. Will you vote to abolish the Segal State? Watch who squirms. Vote accordingly.

Australia needs protection from racism.

All of it, for all of us, or it is not protection. It is patronage. And Australia does not need the Segal State.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

When is it possible to declare that a society has moved from liberal democracy, however imperfectly realised, to authoritarian rule?

Is there a moment when it is suddenly obvious the change has occurred? Does authoritarianism announce its arrival?

Or is it a process that gradually unfolds, where restraints on executive power are dismantled piece by piece until the tide cannot be reversed?

• READ MORE: Other Jonathan Cook articles
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Is the turn to authoritarianism something that can only be understood after the event, when all opportunities to halt the slide have been missed?

And how do we admit to ourselves that we have been stripped of our most basic and cherished freedoms — of speech, assembly and protest — when we are no longer free to speak, meet or protest?

The unpalatable truth is that Britain is already far down this path. And if you are unaware of the earthquake that has been taking place, that may be because — just as you might expect when authoritarianism comes calling — the very first to be smothered are the voices sounding the alarm.

A media owned by billionaires and the state — the parties that, in an age of growing popular discontent, have most to gain from the accretion of executive power and the silencing of dissent — have no reason to illuminate the encroaching darkness.

Foot work for authoritarianism
An ostensible Labour government under the outgoing Keir Starmer has done much of the foot work to usher in the new, ominous political climate.

It was precisely Starmer’s credentials as a human rights lawyer that provided the British state with the cover story it needed for an unprecedented assault on the freedoms fought for by earlier generations.

There are few signs that his successors, whether it be a new figurehead in the genocide-supporting Labour Party or Nigel Farage’s immigrant-bashing Reform, will change direction.

The logic driving Britain’s slide towards authoritarianism is being set not just by politicians, but by a British establishment that needs to sell its collusion in genocide and illegal wars abroad and to find easy scapegoats — immigrants — to blame for its failures at home.

The job of the main political parties, reliant on billionaire donors who also own the corporate media, is to shore up these narratives.

It was Starmer’s Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who incautiously gave the clearest expression to the British state’s vision of our future.

In a speech in January she laid out her ambition to harness new developments in AI to create an all-powerful, all-seeing “Big Brother” surveillance state of the kind foretold by George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984.

‘Panopticon’, the perfect prison
Mahmood even compared this future to the “panopticon” — a reference to 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s perfect prison: a central watchtower (the state) surrounded by a circle of windowed cells where the inmates (the public) would be visible at all times.

Bentham understood that this was not just about physical control. As he observed, the sense of being constantly observed would be a “new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind”. The inmates would police their own behaviour to avoid punishment.

Starmer’s successor, Andy Burnham, is reportedly keen to keep Mahmood a key figure in his government. But this isn’t about a single government minister.

Mahmood is the symptom of a deeper malaise, not its cause. The architecture of the new systems of control, as well as the erosion of freedoms and the cultural traditions that supported them, were already well advanced when she was appointed to the Home Office.

Whoever holds the reins of power in the months and years to come will be able to exploit these existing powers to the maximum, and then extend them further.

Once the spirit of authoritarianism takes hold, it becomes ever harder to stuff it back into the box. Only concerted mass protest can remind the state where ultimate power resides. And it is precisely this kind of protest that is being demonised and criminalised one step at a time.

If it is possible to identify a single moment when the new authoritarianism moved out of the shadows, it was some 15 years ago. That was the moment the state launched its protracted campaign against Julian Assange to vilify and incarcerate him.

Incensed US over war crimes
The founder of the whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks had incensed the United States and its loyal British sidekick by publishing details of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq both wanted to be kept secret.

It was probably no coincidence that, at the time, Starmer was head of the Crown Prosecution Service and making repeated trips to meet Washington’s most senior law officers. Contrary to protocols, records of these discussions were destroyed by his officials.

We will never know what instructions Starmer was given by the US regarding Assange. But a possible clue survived the further, and highly irregular, destruction by Starmer’s department of related correspondence between UK and Swedish prosecutors from that time.

One of the few surviving emails is revealing. It shows that Sweden was considering dropping an investigation into Assange for lack of evidence, as he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fearful of what lay in store.

Starmer’s staff, who were supposed to be neutral arbiters between Sweden and Assange’s legal team, angrily told the Swedes: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

In another email, the same CPS official told Swedish counterparts: “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another extradition.”

Later, with the active connivance of the UK and its courts, the US showed its true hand. Washington began extradition proceedings on the preposterous grounds that Assange had committed “espionage” by publishing details of its war crimes.

Caged in prison
Assange was caged in a high-security prison in London for years, often unable to meet his lawyers, his health failing, on a trumped-up, nakedly political charge.

This was a terrifying, unprecedented assault on the right of journalists to publish evidence of state wrongdoing in the public interest. And yet the billionaire-owned media could barely stifle their yawns.

There was a two-fold gain from Assange’s decade-long abuse and the trampling of his legal rights.

First, it established a very visible precedent in which the rule of law was turned on its head. The roles of victim and victimiser were reversed.

Assange, who had published incontrovertible evidence of US and British war crimes, was the one behind bars. British officials who approved and hid those crimes not only evaded justice but were free to hound and smear Assange.

This has been the theme ever since, as the British state has intensified its curbs on speech and protest, with Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians often serving as the testing ground for authorising this new crackdown.

In the second half of the 2010s, Jeremy Corbyn — Starmer’s predecessor as Labour leader — found himself and his supporters roundly vilified as “antisemites”.

Forewarning of the future
Why? Because they tried to bring attention to Israel’s criminal actions — a forewarning of what was to come, as Israel unleashed what legal experts, Holocaust scholars, human rights groups and United Nations investigators have all concluded is a genocide in Gaza.

In a properly functioning democracy, those who smeared Corbyn and other critics of Israel would have been permanently discredited.

Instead, UK officials — the same officials colluding in Israel’s current crimes by shipping arms to Israel, by carrying out surveillance flights to guide Israel’s bombing campaigns against Gaza’s civilians, and by offering diplomatic cover — simply stepped up the demonisation campaign.

As millions of Britons took to the streets, the Starmer government — and the British state behind it — not only labelled them as antisemites but radically rewrote the statute books to criminalise opposition to Israel’s genocide.

Direct action group Palestine Action, which had been targeting Israeli arms factories operating on UK soil, was proscribed as a “terrorist” group equivalent to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Holding placards protesting the genocide, as thousands of respectable British citizens did, became “support for terrorism”, risking a jail term of up to 14 years.

Reality was once again inverted.

UK supports state terrorism
Britain continues to actively support Israeli state terrorism.

But it was those ringing the alarm — those trying to stop these shipments, those opposed to British collusion in Israeli state terrorism, or those simply appalled by the undermining of basic rights to protest — who were arrested and charged as “terrorists”.

Meanwhile, documents show Elbit Systems continues to enjoy unrestricted access to British government officials.

Second, in stigmatising and isolating Assange for publishing details of US and UK war crimes, the British state was able to draw its own fake distinction between “good” and “bad” journalism — a distinction the billionaire-owned media was only too happy to embrace.

Assange, whose independent platform WikiLeaks had held Washington and London’s feet to the fire for committing war crimes, had in the process shamed the establishment media for their unwillingness to do likewise.

He exposed the extent to which corporate journalists, dependent on access to the rich and powerful for stories, conspire in the covert, unaccountable ways power is exercised by the state.

The media are not watchdogs; they are lap dogs, representing the interests of the billionaire class.

Independent media not tolerated
The British state — and its security services — made clear they would not tolerate truly independent or critical media that could expose their hypocrisies or bring them to book.

In response, the billionaire-owned media not only hung Assange out to dry. It joined the government in a chorus of claims that independent outlets were either peddling “fake news” or serving as “Kremlin assets” spreading “disinformation“.

It amplified the pressure from politicians on social media platforms, the billionaires’ new plaything, to tighten their algorithms to hide independent journalists, and stymie these dangerous new competitors in the battle for truth.

Similarly, corporate media cheerled the government’s decision to ban Russia Today, the Russian state’s news channel. It quickly became all but impossible for UK audiences to hear Russia’s version of events in the mainstream media, as Britain and European states built the case for permanent confrontation with Moscow.

The European Union imposed an even more draconian ban — upheld last month by the EU’s Court of Justice — that makes it a criminal offence to repeat any information reported by RT, and other banned outlets, even if demonstrably true. The law’s purpose is to supposedly “protect public order and safety”.

In recent weeks, two prominent US commentators, Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, have been denied entry to the UK over their criticisms of Israel. Uygur was due to speak at an Oxford University debate.

In this new authoritarian climate, truth is defined as whatever the state wants their citizens to know. Meanwhile, disinformation — “Russian propaganda” or “antisemitism” — is whatever those same states insist their citizenry must not hear.

Brazen reversal of Enlightenment
This is a brazen reversal of 350 years of the Western Enlightenment, with its professed belief both in the primacy of reason and that ideas must be tested through debate and critical scrutiny.

Now it matters not what is being said, but only who is saying it.

And unsurprisingly, the billionaire-owned, Western media has endorsed this new regime. After all, its voice — representing the interests of the super-rich — is guaranteed a hearing.

No surprise, then, that this same privileged media corps has continued to meekly accept its exclusion from Gaza by Israel as the biggest crime in modern history unfolds — even now, in the midst of a supposed ceasefire that Israel keeps breaking.

Because what matters is who is allowed to speak: Israel, not Gaza’s Palestinians, whether what Israel says is true or, as invariably turns out to be the case, a lie.

In line with this precept, the billionaire-owned media has barely raised a murmur as Israel has slaughtered Gaza’s journalists in unprecedented numbers — killing more of them than in two world wars, Vietnam, the Yugoslav wars and Afghanistan combined.

The lives of Palestinian journalists — like the reporting they have had to do alone under Israeli bombardment — count for nothing in the Western media because of who they are.

Genocide ‘erased as a crime’
Genocide — the what — has been erased as a crime because it is we — the West — who are helping to carry it out.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, reportedly facing a political and donor backlash, scrapped last year its annual Global Impunity Index — which measured where journalists are murdered with impunity — after it became clear Israel would top the rankings.

Now the same committee is being accused of caving in to these pressures by raising doubts about who counts as a journalist in Gaza — doubts that will serve to embolden Israel, which claims that Palestinian journalists, indeed all Palestinians, are terrorists in disguise.

The who has to be rewritten because the what cannot be denied.

The same story is unfolding in the UK, where independent British journalists have been detained at the airport or had their homes raided at dawn by counterterrorism police for “wrong-think” about the Gaza genocide and British complicity in it. They too face up to 14 years in jail.

That has sent a chilling message to other journalists, those that lack the protection of a billionaire patron or the state, about what can be said.

None of this is, or will be, confined to Gaza. The upending of Enlightenment values, as should be clear by now, is part of a much bigger political project to normalise and entrench this creeping authoritarianism.

Hard to reverse precedent
The proscription of Palestine Action and placard-holding has paved the way for the British state to designate any opponent — challenging its lawbreaking or contesting its right to dictate truth — as a criminal or a supporter of terrorism. A precedent has been set, and now approved by the UK courts, that will be hard to reverse.

The state has many tools at its disposal, some of which it is already wielding, again to no protest from billionaire-owned media “watchdogs”.

A particularly powerful one is “debanking”: forcing individuals or groups who disrupt the narrative of Western state moral and legal authority out of the financial system, driving them into a kind of purdah that makes it near-impossible for them to function in the modern, Western world.

Notably again, Assange and WikiLeaks were an early victim of the use of debanking as a political weapon. Washington imposed sanctions in late 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks exposed US and British war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, cutting off almost all of its donor revenue.

Sanctions — what some describe as a “financial death penalty” — have already been imposed on several judges and staff of the International Criminal Court over the issuing of an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for committing crimes against humanity in Gaza.

UN legal expert Francesca Albanese, at the forefront of highlighting Western complicity in Israel’s genocide, has also been debanked.

In Britain, Palestinian and Islamic-run charities have long faced harsh restrictions on their ability to operate financially, usually on the basis of claims that they may be funnelling donations to proscribed groups.

But this has gradually expanded to mainstream Palestine solidarity organisations and to individuals caught up in the ban on Palestine Action.

The Canary debanked
In an even more disturbing, if predictable, development, Lloyds Bank has now debanked The Canary, a leftwing publication whose criticisms of Labour’s capture by Big Business have long proved a thorn in the party bureacracy’s side. The Canary can no longer pay staff, and its news operation is in jeopardy.

This is the same Canary that the Labour Together project led by Morgan McSweeney — who propelled Starmer to power on behalf of the billionaire-friendly, pro-genocide Labour right — identified early on as a threat. His mantra was reportedly: “Destroy The Canary or The Canary destroys us.”

As investigative journalist Paul Holden sets out in his book The Fraud, which documents Labour Together’s covert, law-breaking operations, McSweeney almost succeeded in destroying The Canary. He created an astroturf group, Stop Funding Fake News, that lobbied advertisers to boycott the publication.

Labour Together under McSweeney’s successor, Josh Simons, would then launch a smear campaign on Holden and refer him to British security services as a supposed Kremlin asset.

Like a bad penny, Simons has turned up again, this time giving up his Makerfield seat for Andy Burnham to return to Westminster. Simons is now one of Burnham’s political advisers.

This systematic assault on the right to scrutinise the British state’s actions has been extended to the legal profession too.

Last month, Dan Kovalik, a respected US human rights lawyer and professor, was detained at Liverpool airport by counterterrorism police and questioned over his criticisms of Western foreign policy in Gaza and Iran.

Detained by police
Fahad Ansari, a British human rights lawyer, was detained by police last year on return to the UK from a family holiday in Ireland under Schedule 7 of the draconian Terrorism Act of 2000.

Both men had their electronic devices seized, despite protests that this was unlawful and violated their privileged lawyer-client communications.

Ansari’s detention appears to be a blatant act of political retaliation and intimidation. He had made legal representations challenging a Home Office decision in 2021 to expand the proscription of Hamas to its political wing. Hamas has never launched a military operation in Britain.

For the submission, Ansari had assembled a group of experts to argue that the expanded proscription — long desired by Israel — was having a profoundly chilling effect on the work of lawyers, scholars, human rights groups and journalists in documenting and discussing Israeli crimes in Gaza.

Five UN legal experts wrote protesting the abuse of Ansari’s rights as a lawyer, warning that “such measures threaten to criminalise, stigmatise and have chilling effects against lawyers and legal associations carrying out lawful work in national security and counter-terrorism matters”.

That seems to be precisely the point. Harassing lawyers is a feature, not a bug, of Britain’s new authoritarianism.

An even more visible victim of this new assault on the legal profession is the highly respected barrister Rajiv Menon.

Key human rights cases
He has worked on some of the most important human rights cases of modern times, challenging failures and abuses of power by the state in relation to the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, the deaths of nearly 100 Liverpool football fans at Hillsborough, and the 72 victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

He is currently facing contempt of court proceedings after making a closing speech in January that persuaded a jury not to convict six Palestine Action defendants of any of the charges brought by the British state against them. In 2024, the six had targeted an Elbit factory.

It is believed to be the first time that a lawyer has been prosecuted for contempt of court over a closing speech. Garden Court Chambers, where Menon has practised for three decades, said the proceedings had sent “shock waves through the legal profession”.

It warned of a severe chilling effect on barristers, who might be more reluctant to mount a strong defence, especially in politically charged trials, for fear of reprisals.

All of this should be seen in the context of the government’s equally unprecedented moves to erode the cornerstone legal principle of the right to trial by jury.

Authoritarian states permit no meaningful restraints on their ability to impose their will. Independent-minded lawyers and juries are just such a brake.

But perhaps the most sustained assault by the British state has been on the rights to protest and assembly, making it increasingly dangerous to express a view in the public space.

2 million in street power
Since some two million people took to the streets to oppose Britain’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, new ways have been sought to restrict the ability of ordinary citizens to raise their voice against the abuse of governmental and state power.

Recent legislation allows police to ban protests because they are “too noisy” or cause “serious unease”. Disruption has been redefined to now include hindrance to any daily activity. Protests can be barred if they have a “cumulative” impact.

These are all inherent features of protest. The mass demonstrations against Britain’s illegal attack on Iraq were noisy, disruptive and repeated — as have been the marches against Britain’s collusion in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

By judging the legality of protest according to these selective and largely subjective criteria, the state has given the police huge latitude to decide which protests should be criminalised and which allowed. It is hardly surprising then that the police are currently concentrating their efforts on the anti-genocide marches, which highlight British collusion in Israel’s crimes.

Facial recogition technology — pioneered by Israel against Palestinians — is being rolled out too, normalising the Panopticon state so beloved by Mahmood.

Where is all of this leading? The answer is to a new piece of legislation that was hurried through Parliament by the Home Secretary.

The National Security (State Threats) Act gives the state unprecedented powers to proscribe groups, as it did with Palestine Action, but now without having to claim to have evidence of a terrorist threat.

Claiming a ‘hostlle’ group
The Home Secretary can make such a designation unilaterally, without any parliamentary oversight, simply because he or she claims the group is a “hostile” foreign state actor that poses a threat to national security or public safety.

Mahmood has already done so with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), effectively Iran’s military.

Further, anyone who works with or receives a “material benefit” — defined to include “information” — from a proscribed group can be jailed for up to 14 years. That includes expressing support for the group or sharing information it has provided.

Simply hosting an event where someone expresses support for the group could open one to prosecution, as could posting something on social media that the British state claims is a hostile foreign state “talking point” — whether or not the information is true.

Once again, this is an assault on the most fundamental of Enlightenment values.

In the National Security Act, it matters only who is passing on the information, not what the information is, or whether it is truthful. There is no public interest defence, such as exposure of criminality by the British state or its allies.

There is no exemption for journalists, lawyers, scholars or human rights groups. It will be impossible for them to do the most essential part of their job: digging out information, testing claims from one side against the other’s, and allowing audiences to determine the truth.

Baring of journalists
Assuming Hamas is declared a hostile foreign actor, as seems all but certain, journalists will be barred from collecting details of Palestinian casualties from Gaza’s Health Ministry or speak to doctors there. Why? Because the Hamas government runs the Health Ministry and hospitals.

Worse, it would be impossible for journalists to visit Gaza to investigate Israeli crimes — something that will delight Israel — because such a visit would need to be organised through the Hamas government. To do so would risk 14 years in jail.

The same will be true for reporting from Iran or Russia, if the Home Secretary so decides.

The only apparent carve-out will be for journalists who get approval from the British government beforehand.

That should ensure that only the most compliant, access-driven journalists, belonging to state and billionaire-owned media, will be able to engage with “hostile” foreign actors — in ways the British state can be sure will best represent its interests.

Under this new law, the search for truth, and potentially the truth itself, will be criminalised.

The National Security Act systematises all the other developments we noted earlier. It gives the state carte blanche to criminalise anyone who scrutinises or challenges its moral or legal authority.

Search for the truth
Who should be in uproar over this monstrous legislative assault on the right to search for truth, to hold the state accountable, to act as a watchdog on the abuse of power?

If the billionaire-owned media did any of the above, news outlets would be leading the pushback. As it is, they are mostly silent — because they do none of these things.

It will be independent journalists, commentators, lawyers and human rights activists who will be picked off one by one, sending a message to everyone else to keep their heads down.

Starved of real information and critical scrutiny of the British state’s actions, the public, so it is hoped, will become more ignorant, more docile, more passive as their rights are steadily stripped away.

As the climate crisis intensifies, as resource wars accelerate, as austerity at home bites deeper, the finger will be pointed not at the real culprits — the super-rich, their media and the captured state — but at earlier victims of the West: those fleeing from the wars we initiated, from an increasingly unstable climate our inflated consumption provoked, and from a paucity of resources following centuries of colonial theft.

While we are encouraged to blame “the immigrants”, or “the Muslims”, or “the left”, or “the Israel haters”, the state is in a race to erect a scaffolding of control to protect itself before we wake up to the deception.

Time is running out on all fronts. The lack of urgency to address these crises is not because the crises don’t exist, but because our passivity has been engineered. The truth is we are already in the Panopticon, and our minds are already deeply fashioned for obedience.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published by Middle East Eye and republished from the author’s Substack with permission.

The environmental and human rights documentary Pesta Babi (Pig Feast): Colonialism in Our Time has been awarded both the 2026 Udin and Tasrif Awards from Indonesia’s Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) during the organisation’s 32nd anniversary celebration at the Press Council Hall in Jakarta.

The Udin Award was presented to director Dandhy Dwi Laksono and the production
team behind Pesta Babi — which premiered in New Zealand in March — while the Tasrif Award went to the documentary’s production team.

Producer Victor C. Mambor, publisher of Jubi Media, who accepted the awards on behalf of the team, said they were dedicated to Papuans who had experienced discrimination and been denied their rights.

• READ MORE: West Papuan doco Pig Feast exposes oligarchs, food security crisis and ecocide under noses of military
• Read other Pesta Babi documentary reports

“These awards are also for the journalists, particularly the Pig Feast team, for their
consistency in producing this film,” he said.

“The team faced many challenges during production, and some of those problems continue today. But we’re happy because being an AJI member has always meant being no stranger to problems.”

He said journalists must continue to speak out about issues that needed to be brought
to public attention and stand alongside people experiencing oppression.

Anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Cypri Jehan Paju Dale, who accepted the Tasrif Award on behalf of the team, said receiving the two awards was an honour and an opportunity to affirm shared values.

‘Destruction of ecosystems’
“A major injustice is still taking place in Papua. Land appropriation, the destruction of
ecosystems and military operations have continued for more than 60 years and are
now occurring on a scale we have not seen before,” Paju Dale said.

He said Papua was experiencing extractive mining, while thousands of people had been displaced from their villages by military operations and mining concessions.

Paju Dale said the film’s screenings had helped encourage communities to speak out and that the awards should be understood as recognition of Papuan communities and their right to resist.

“Resistance by Papuan Indigenous communities is legitimate,” he said.

He cited the opening paragraph of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, which states that independence is the right of all nations and that colonialism must be abolished because it is inconsistent with humanity and justice.

“We also dedicate this award to AJI. Journalists are on the front lines of exposing practices of ecocide and genocide in Papua, while reminding us that the Constitution states that colonialism must be abolished,” he said.

AJI Indonesia secretary-general Bayu Wardhana said the decision to award Pesta Babi was made independently by the respective juries and was not subject to intervention from AJI.

‘The right choice’
“We believe the juries made the right choice. It reflects Indonesia’s current situation, and the position journalism must take: standing with those who cannot speak for themselves—the voiceless,” Bayu told ABC Indonesia.

The Udin Award itself is one of AJI’s highest recognitions for individuals or groups
that contribute to the struggle for press freedom, civil liberties, democratic development and human values.

The award is named after Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin, known as Udin, a journalist
with the Bernas daily in Yogyakarta who was killed on 16 August 1996 after reporting
on corruption in Bantul.

Udin became a symbol of the fight against corruption and journalists’ resilience in the
face of threats and attacks from those accused of crimes against humanity.

The Tasrif Award is named after Suardi Tasrif, a prominent Indonesian journalist regarded as the “Father of Indonesia’s Journalistic Code of Ethics”.

During his lifetime, Tasrif was a prominent advocate for press freedom and freedom
of expression, which he regarded as fundamental human rights.

AJI Indonesia first presented the award in 1998 to Munir, then coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS). It has since been awarded regularly to individuals and groups that consistently defend freedom of expression and press freedom.

The 2026 Udin Award jury comprised Arif Maulana, deputy chair of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI); Almas Sjafrina of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW);
and Masduki, an AJI official and representative of PR2Media.

The Tasrif Award jury consisted of Gema Gita Persada of the Legal Aid Institute for
the Press (LBH Pers), Daniel Awigra of the Human Rights Working Group (HRWG),
and Ignatius Haryanto of Multimedia Nusantara University (UMN).

Republished from Jubi News/West Papua Daily in collaboration.

When you hear “Iran” and “Strait of Hormuz” in the same sentence, what comes to mind?

Tensions? Threats? Chaos? …That’s exactly what the MSM news media want you to think with their headlines.

• READ MORE: Trump says US only ‘semi-negotiating’ with Iran; Israel rejects Gaza plan
• Oil prices climb as Iranian demands cloud outlook for Strait of Hormuz
• Other War on Iran reports

But here’s what they don’t tell you:

Iran let the world sail through that waterway for free for more than 40 years — no tolls, no fees. No questions asked.

Meanwhile, other nations have been charging billions from ships using their strategic routes and nobody bats an eye.

So why the sudden outrage against Tehran? And more importantly, what changed?

Cashing in big time
Meanwhile, what about other nations? They’re cashing in big time:

Suez Canal — billions in fees yearly
Panama Canal — charges for ships of up to $1 million per passage
Turkish Straits — toll booths are alive and well

So when Western powers point fingers at Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has one simple question:

“Why are we the only ones painted as the ‘bad guys’ when we’ve been the most generous?”

He’s not denying tensions. He’s not dodging responsibility.

He’s just asking for a fair debate, not a one-sided blame game.

Iran didn’t just wake up one day and decide to flex its muscles.

Weakening a nation
The United States has:

• Attacked Iran illegally and without justification;
• Imposed crippling sanctions;
• Sent warships to their doorstep;
• Tried to cut off their oil lifeline; and
• Worked to shrink Iran’s influence in the region.

When you spend 47 years trying to weaken a nation, don’t be surprised when they use what they have to push back.

Every sanction, every threat, every military move — the hostile campaign didn’t break Iran.

It reminded the country of 93 million people how powerful their position really is.

The Strait of Hormuz isn’t just water.

It’s 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passing through daily (before that US-Israel attack on Iran on February 28). And when you corner a country that controls Hormuz,
it will start charging politically, not just financially.

Iran isn’t collecting tolls because they want to. They’re collecting because the US gave them leverage by trying to break them.

If you spent years poking a lion, why are you shocked when it roars and starts charging admission?

There are some conversations a nation keeps postponing because they are uncomfortable. Changing Fiji’s flag is one of them.

We came close to having that conversation in 2015 and 2016. A nationwide design competition was launched, thousands of submissions poured in, opinions were fierce, and for a brief moment it felt as though Fiji was genuinely asking itself who it wanted to be. Then the conversation stalled.

After Fiji’s historic victory in rugby sevens at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the government announced that the flag would remain unchanged. Since then, the issue has largely disappeared from public debate.

• READ MORE: Two dates, one wound: What Girmit Day means for Fiji’s future
• Other Fiji flag reports

But postponing a conversation does not resolve it. If anything, it only leaves unfinished business for another generation. I believe that generation is ours.

I say this not because I dislike our current flag. Quite the opposite. Like millions of Fijians, I have watched it rise at schools, sporting events, military ceremonies and international competitions. I have sung the national anthem beneath it. I have seen athletes wrap themselves in it with tears streaming down their faces.

Those memories are real and meaningful. But memories belong to people, not pieces of cloth. Our love for Fiji does not live inside the Union Jack stitched into the corner of our flag. It lives in us.

The truth is simple. Fiji has been an independent nation since 1970 and a republic since 1987. For almost four decades we have chosen our own governments, written our own laws and determined our own future.

Someone else’s empire
Yet our national flag still carries the most recognisable symbol of the British Empire. I often ask myself a question that has never left me: If we truly believe we stand proudly as an independent republic, why does the first thing the world see on our flag belong to someone else’s empire?

For me, this question is deeply personal.

I am the descendant of girmitiya. My ancestors did not come to Fiji as tourists searching for opportunity. They came under the indenture system established by the British colonial administration after the abolition of slavery.

Between 1879 and 1916, more than 60,000 Indians were transported to Fiji under contracts that promised hope, but too often delivered exploitation, broken families, harsh labour and lives shaped by extraordinary sacrifice.

Many never saw India again. They built roads, cleared fields, harvested sugar cane and helped lay the foundations of the country we now call home. Their suffering was not an accident of history. It happened under the authority of the very empire represented by the Union Jack.

Every Girmit Day, May 14, Fiji rightly remembers those sacrifices. We honour resilience. We celebrate survival. We tell our children that our ancestors endured unimaginable hardship so future generations could stand taller than they ever could.

Yet we continue to fly a flag that still carries the emblem of the colonial power responsible for creating that very system. I have struggled to reconcile those two truths. Pride and pain cannot occupy the same symbol forever.

History never felt distant
Growing up in Kashmir, Lautoka, history never felt distant. It lived in conversations with elders, in temple gatherings, in stories shared over cups of tea, in the Fiji Hindi that flowed so naturally through our home.

I did not fully understand the scale of girmit as a child, but I understood sacrifice. I saw grandparents who measured wealth not by money, but by education. I watched parents work tirelessly because they believed their children deserved opportunities they never had.

Looking back now, I realise those values were inherited from people who had every reason to give up, but refused to. When I see the Union Jack on our flag today, I do not think first of constitutional history or Commonwealth ties. I think of those ancestors. I think of what they endured. And I wonder why their descendants should still carry the symbol of the empire that once denied them dignity.

Some people argue that the Union Jack no longer represents colonialism. They say it now represents history, friendship or tradition. I understand that perspective.

History cannot and should not be erased. Britain’s influence on Fiji is undeniable. Our legal institutions, parliamentary traditions and many aspects of our public administration evolved through that relationship. The Commonwealth continues to play an important role in Fiji’s international engagement.

None of that changes because a flag changes. Britain remains part of our history whether or not its flag appears on ours.

That is precisely the point.

Not about rejecting history
Changing the flag is not about rejecting history. It is about placing history where it belongs — in our museums, our classrooms, our books and our collective memory — not at the centre of our national identity. Mature nations are capable of acknowledging every chapter of their past without allowing one chapter to define them forever.

My own life has only strengthened that belief. I was born in Fiji. I migrated to Auckland in December 2011. Since then I have lived and taught in New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and now Japan. Every country has reminded me of where I come from.

Whenever someone asks me where home is, my answer is still Fiji. Not because I have lived there continuously, but because identity is built from childhood. It is the taste of chicken chop suey from Don’s Restaurant after family outings. It is buying futaa barfi for 20 cents. It is listening to Navtarang’s Top 100 Countdown while polishing black Bata school shoes.

It is Children’s Park in Lautoka, Ram Samy Reddy Rd, laughter with cousins, temple bells, tropical rain and neighbours who somehow knew everyone else’s business. None of those memories have anything to do with an empire. They belong entirely to Fiji.

Our flag should too.

I also reject the false choice that often dominates this conversation. Supporting a new flag does not mean disrespecting those who served beneath the current one. Soldiers who defended peacekeeping missions, athletes who won Olympic gold, teachers who stood before classrooms, nurses who cared for patients and ordinary citizens who loved Fiji under this flag deserve nothing, but gratitude.

Their achievements are not diminished because a future generation chooses a different symbol. The courage belonged to them, not to the fabric they carried.

Learn from the mistakes
If we do revisit this conversation, we must also learn from the mistakes of the last attempt. Too many people felt the process became about selecting attractive designs rather than discussing national identity.

A flag cannot simply be beautiful. It must be meaningful. It should emerge from genuine consultation with iTaukei communities, Indo-Fijians, Rotumans, Banabans, descendants of Pacific Islanders, Chinese-Fijians and every community that calls Fiji home.

It must reflect our ocean, our resilience, our cultures, our environment and our future — not because we want to erase difference, but because we want every child to recognise themselves within it.

I often think about the children I teach. One of the greatest privileges of being an educator is watching young people ask questions adults are often afraid to ask. They understand instinctively that symbols matter. School emblems matter. Family names matter.

National flags matter. They tell stories before anyone speaks a word. What story do we want Fiji’s flag to tell the next generation? That we are still defined by colonial inheritance? Or that we honour our history while confidently writing the next chapter ourselves?

Some will accuse people like me of reopening old wounds. I would argue the opposite. Healing begins when we acknowledge why certain symbols continue to hurt. As the descendant of indentured labourers, I cannot look at the Union Jack without remembering the empire that uprooted my ancestors from India and placed them into a system built on coercion and exploitation.

That history shaped my family. It shaped my language. It shaped my existence. I refuse to pretend that symbol is emotionally neutral simply because time has passed.

Fiji bigger than powers
Fiji has always been bigger than the powers that once ruled it. Bigger than coups. Bigger than politics. Bigger than race. Bigger than the labels that have too often divided us. We are the children of chiefs and farmers, of girmitiya and sailors, of island communities stretching across hundreds of islands, of people who chose Fiji and people whose ancestors had no choice.

Somehow, through hardship and hope, we built one nation together.

Our flag should finally reflect that truth.

Changing it will not solve poverty. It will not lower food prices, improve schools overnight or fix every political disagreement. Symbols alone never transform nations. But symbols tell nations who they believe themselves to be. After nearly 40 years as a republic, Fiji has earned the right to carry a flag that speaks first and foremost of itself.

Not because we reject our past.

But because we are finally confident enough to stand on our own.

Ashneel Jaynesh Prasad is a Fiji-born New Zealand citizen working as a teacher in Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan. This article was first published by The Fiji Times and is republished with permission.

United States unilateral sanctions, the kind being imposed on Cuba today, are deadlier for children than war according to a major piece of research published in The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal.

Totally ignored by the mainstream media, the report has bombshell findings that should call into question the use of sanctions to impose punishments on entire populations for the actions of their governments.

A staggering 500,000 civilians die annually due to US and EU unilateral sanctions that many Western countries help enforce.

• READ MORE: ‘To play God’: How US pressure has shattered Cuba’s healthcare
• Other sanctions reports

Sanctions are ‘more tremendous than war’
The report by Professor Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón and Mark Weisbrot vividly underscores US President Woodrow Wilson’s comment that sanctions were “something more tremendous than war.”

“Effects of international sanctions on age-specific mortality: a cross-national panel data analysis” data-mined major studies covering the years 1971-2021. Its primary source was the Global Sanctions Database (GSDB), internationally the most comprehensive aggregator of global datasets on sanctions.

Analysing research covering the years 1971-2021 across 152 countries, the researchers found that unilateral sanctions (such as those imposed on Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Yemen and Iraq) were “associated with an annual toll of 564,258 deaths, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.” Imagine that: every year, for decades, sanctions (primarily US and EU sanctions) have taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians — and that rate has accelerated, not declined, because American use of sanctions has exploded in recent years.

According to the Global Sanctions Database (GSDB), 25 percent of all countries have been put under US, EU, or UN sanctions in the 2010–22 period! That’s a massive leap from 8 percent in the 1960s. For this short article I will focus on Cuba but the same lessons apply to whatever countries are targeted for unilateral sanctions.

Saving the babies of Cuba
Professor Francisco Rodriguez, an economist at Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies is the lead author of the study. He says: “Our findings reveal that unilateral and economic sanctions, particularly those imposed by the USA, lead to substantial increases in mortality, disproportionately affecting children younger than 5 years.”

Some Americans are fighting every day to save the babies of Cuba. Others, like the President and the Secretary of State, are doing everything they can to kill Cuban babies and thousands of others of the most vulnerable citizens of the besieged Caribbean island.

This is not hyperbole; it is policy that is playing out on our watch.

Medea Benjamin, the great American activist from the CodePink peace organisation, recently visited Cuba to bring medicines and medical supplies to Cuba’s pediatric hospitals.

She is now under investigation for doing so — for breaking US unilateral sanctions.

“Basically, we want to help save babies, and that, according to Trump, is something that must be investigated. Because ‘How dare we want to help the Cuban people? How dare we love the Cuban people?’ If indeed the charge is that we love the Cuban people — ‘Guilty!’ I want my government to leave the Cuban people alone, not to be strangling them by keeping oil from the island, by sanctions that are so brutal. I want them to stop threatening to invade Cuba. I want them to listen to the global world opinion that every single year at the United Nations overwhelmingly says: lift the blockade.”

Sanctions: the modern ‘Siege Engine’
Why the silence from the mainstream media about the report’s findings? Why did they choose to ignore what in a sane and decent world would have been earth-shaking revelations?

Dr Josephine Varghese of the University of Canterbury suggests this is because the West puts great effort into burying inconvenient truths. She specialises in the intersections of colonialism, capitalism and structural violence and told me this week: “The United States has openly admitted that the purpose of the sanctions is to create conditions so bad that the people in Cuba will turn against their own government.”

Cuba’s entire electricity grid collapsed last week, driving millions of Cubans to the brink — just what the US wants.

“At the ground level, sanctions have a deadly impact,” Dr Varghese says. “Cuba had such impressive achievements in health, for example, in lowering infant mortality.

“The current sanctions and punishments are targeting this. We are seeing nurses and doctors having to manually operate ventilators and incubators for premature babies.”

Luis Ernesto Morejón Rodríguez, Cuba’s ambassador to Wellington, New Zealand, reinforced this message when he told me of the human impact of the blockade:

“I think about children fighting cancer whose chances of survival have been devastated because the chemotherapy drugs and other essential medicines they need are simply not available.

“Years ago, around 65 percent of these children could expect to survive. Today, because treatments are interrupted or cannot be provided at all, that figure has been tragically reversed: as many as 85 percent may not survive.

“I think about the parents waiting for a phone call that never comes because more than 100,000 Cubans — including over 12,000 children — are still waiting for surgery.

“Cuba once had one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the Americas. Today that rate has more than doubled, rising from around four to more than nine deaths per thousand live births.

“These are not just numbers. They are children who should still be alive, families carrying unbearable pain, and healthcare professionals forced to make impossible choices every day.

“Political differences should never be settled at the expense of ordinary people, and certainly never at the expense of children.”

Now that we know that sanctions have effects on the health and mortality of civilian populations similar in magnitude to those of armed conflict, what should we do about it? Will we continue to shrug and look the other way out of fear of the US or indifference to human suffering?

Will we have the courage to at last recognise the inconvenient truth that the US and the EU have killed civilians on a scale, albeit at a slower pace, greater than the German government of the 1940s?

Isn’t it time to find the courage to oppose this? The reform of the entire sanctions framework must be a global priority. Unilateral secondary sanctions (forcing other countries to implement sanctions) is already illegal under international law.

Such is the power of the US and the EU — controlling as they do a large portion of the levers of international trade and finance — that most countries bow down and comply. For the sake of children suffering now and millions more not yet born, that must end and a new era which restrains and reforms the use of sanctions must be ushered in.

As the great Brazilian educator Paulo Freire said: “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

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

Of late, Australia’s public broadcaster ABC has been altering the way it sees the world around it. Bound by a national charter, but modified from within after years of ideological, technical, and operational transfer, the organisation is failing in its duty to inform Australians.

This is occurring at a time of great uncertainty, when it is needed to function healthily, truthfully, the most.

The ABC’s subjective and selective journalism jolts through a country in flux, emblematic of a broader act of censorship that goes on to form the body of a foreign influenced effort to moderate the country’s resting state to entertain the previously unthinkable.

• READ MORE: Other media credibility reports

In a world at boiling point, in a nation being led down the garden path by powerful small interests working in concert to shape public perception and limit the range of acceptable debate, the decline of the ABC has been felt by many Australians.

With pandemics, bushfires, floods, wars and a live streamed genocide still unravelling unabated, the elite power structures that have controlled our country’s destiny have revealed themselves to be nothing short of diabolical — propped up by a corporate media apparatus that works directly in lockstep with the interests of the billionaires and powermongers of Australia’s shallow rooted elite.

In this time of power and consolidation, the ABC has been commandeered and realigned through a concerted effort carried out by a network of former commercial media executives and political appointees who have steadily replaced the organisation’s independent traditions with a more compliant, establishment-friendly outlook.

Ten years under the Coalition, squeezed from above, the ABC has been augmented from root to branch in a process of attrition. A decade of siloing and compartmentalising the old guard, replacing board members with former corporate media hatchetmen, and replacing outgoing ABC stalwarts and custodians with new-wave stenographers who kicked off their trade weaving in the dark arts of Murdoch, has left the ABC almost unrecognisable.

Sinophobic news specials
Barrie Cassidy got replaced by David Speers, ABC people get replaced by non-ABC people — and sooner rather than later we have Sinophobic news specials with moody music, too much airtime wasted on Hughsey, Sandilands and Stefanovic, and a repellent tabloid MSG-like shimmer can be seen on the once mighty public broadcaster.

The ABC once had a star factory within the organisation, with an organic workplace ethos, that produced inhouse some of the better journalists in the world. People like Mark Colvin, Caroline Jones and Kerry O’Brien defined the standard at the ABC by living it and bleeding it into the fabric of the organisation.

Now, as the old guard are washed out, they are replaced by former Murdoch heavies and corporate news executives.

These days, David Speers (News Corp), Patricia Karvelas (News Corp) and Clare Armstrong (News Corp), partner with CEO Kim Williams (News Corp, Foxtel) and a constellation of former corporate suits. A new ethos seeps into the organisation.

People like former Nine CEO Hugh Marks (current ABC managing director), see fit to continue the cultural transfer, employing former News Corp finance reporter Alex Turner-Cohen, and hiring London-based writer-at-large for The Nightly Latika Bourke.

Bourke is one of the most hawkish journalists in the country, enjoying her plum job co-presenting the ABC’s Global Roaming programme on Radio National while continuing to write articles for Kerry Stokes that look like they’re proofread by the military industrial complex.

The Shot’s editor Dave Milner recently covered a Pine Gap landback demonstration in the Northern Territory, where a powerful gathering of local Arrernte Indigenous families laid down four demands for land back, closure of the base, reparations, and compensation for the families in Gaza impacted by the base’s opaque operations.

The ABC told what resembled a story, waltzing around the glaring demands reflecting a national groundswell, and reducing the story to an ambiguous, if not futile, demonstration on an empty red desert highway.

Proof the ABC erased Gaza from its Pine Gap coverage         Video: The Sunday Shot

Israeli govt talking points
On the ABC, this is the way things are done now. And it looks like Patricia Karvelas positing Israeli government talking points almost three years into a UN-declared genocide in the name of balance, or a vibe coded report on the virtues of the Ukraine war with a comic book analysis from Matt Bevan, or it’s a rude and misguided gotcha themed interview from Sara Ferguson.

And just as seen outside Pine Gap, the national broadcaster is gaslighting the shit out of us on a raft of crucial issues. So where is the public interest at the ABC?

Is it in the public interest to frame Iran as some form of equal aggressor in the Netanyahu-Trump led conflict in West Asia? Is the community better off entertaining future wars with China with ideologically conflicted journalists who have no idea? Is it objective to run positive narratives on the inevitability of AUKUS, or speak for the Ukrainian and Russian people on their appetite for war, or omit the clear demands of the Arrernte people for the immediate closure of Pine Gap?

Is it in the public interest to move heaven and earth to engineer a curated and macabre middle ground on an open-cut UN declared genocide, in the name of “balance”?

The new ABC hosts private weapons industry investor and former-general Mick Ryan flogging off his drones in one hand while gesticulating towards the need for more endless drone wars with the other. It gives regular airtime to daggy-dad militarist Dr Malcolm Davis spinning his love for movies like Red Dawn into real life fantasies that involve unrealistic military scenarios that have terrible human consequences.

And it provides a runway to Epstein friend and former Israeli PM Ehud Barak to put a spin on his country’s genocide as the Epstein files loom with his name all over them.

Encroaching authoritarianism, sovereign transfer, foreign interference; these are all things good journalists should be working towards unpacking. But not in Australia, where a convergence between the media, business and political classes has morphed our press into subjective stenographers rather than objective truth tellers.

Joining the national decline
It’s devastating to see the national broadcaster, stacked with its corporate media heavies, joining in the national decline, rather than tirelessly working to uncover it and prevent it.

At a time of crisis and uncertainty, with clear power differentials impacting the sovereign independent trajectory of the country, the absence of quality ABC analysis, with conscious critical thinking applied, has hyperaccelerated the demise of the reasonable in the country — giving up sacred ground in the Australian discourse and ceding it to the foreign influenced dark forces that conjure a new image of what this country should look like.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 states within it that it is the responsibility of the ABC to provide innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard within Australia.

Within the ABC Code of Practice, accuracy, impartiality, and fair and honest dealing are listed as key principles. But in 2026, with the country in the state that it is, Australians feel that they are missing an independent national broadcaster to balance the droning hum of misinformation and political dishonesty.

Bringing back the old theme song and changing the blue tint and the classic ABC font won’t cut it. Latika Bourke isn’t George Negus. David Speers’ Sky News prestige doesn’t cut through to the high brow hard politics junkies in Australians who mourn for the lost tones of Barrie Cassidy and Kerry O’Brien and gravitate like husks in the places their voices used to be.

This is why the ABC is failing. It’s been run into the ground by the very people who longed for its demise, the same people who pipe a new paradigm on reluctant ABC consumers and loyal ABC staff that wonder what is going on, and stick around out of habit hoping the revisionists will go away one day.

By accepting orthodoxies from Washington, Tel Aviv, and people linked to the arms trade, we now have the ABC promoting war in Europe, entertaining tensions with China, and accepting the morbid orthodoxies that see military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel in its horrific genocidal sojourns throughout West Asia.

Journalists sacked, staff cautioned
Journalists that highlight that fact are sacked, staff that seek to expand those details are cautioned, exhausted into leaving, or guided into paddocks until they retire and their role can be handed to another wolf in sheep’s clothing from the corporate kennel.

In the process of remodelling the national broadcaster, those responsible have flogged the essence of the ABC. They now flog partial stories Australians need to hear in full, and flog the narratives of the elite and the dangerous at the expense of the truth. Whether it is a gotcha interview on 7.30, the omission of vital public interest information, or a corporate decree that silences staff inside the building itself, the ABC has fallen dramatically and may never get up again.

The abdication of the ABC away from the people and into the arms of the narratives of power is a tragedy for Australia during such consequential times.

For decades the ABC acted as a guardrail, ignored the haters, and fearlessly drove the standard of journalism in Australia. Now, it contributes to the mess, sitting in the pig-sty with the commercial media, so much so it’s hard to tell which is which, such is the stench.

Republished by Pacific Media Watch from The Shot under Creative Commons.

“Triple-tap” attacks by Israeli and US forces against Palestine, Iran and Lebanon were condemned today at a Stop Wars Aotearoa rally against the atrocities in the Middle East in Auckland’s Aotea Square.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters was also criticised in satirical theatre over accusations of racism and insults against immigrants.

Thanking people for showing their support and solidarity with the people of Iran — “who have had American and Israeli missiles raining down on them for five months” — a New Zealand Afghan speaker said this “new wave of aggression” had started on February 28 with a demonic US attack on Minab elementary girls’ school in southeastern Iran.

• READ MORE:  ‘High-level’ approval still pending from Iran on Oman Hormuz deal
• Winston Peters refuses to apologise for ‘racist’ comments after meeting with PM
• We must name racism when it happens
• Other Stop Wars and Gaza reports

“A triple-tap attack against children in their classrooms,” said Bibi Amena of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). Rescue officials reported 175 people had been killed — most of them young schoolgirls, with 32 of the victims recently being buried in a mass funeral.

“A triple-tap attack is a tactic used to ensure there are no survivors, and to kill anyone responding to the initial attack, in particular it aims to kill any rescue workers and journalists who arrive at the scene after the first strike,” she said.

This was the same tactic used by the “demonic Israeli Occupation Forces in Palestine”.

In August 2025, Israeli forces carried out a triple-tap attack on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing 22 civilians, including 3 journalists who arrived minutes after the initial attack.

Shameful Hind Rajab killing
Amena also highlighted the shameful killing of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, along with 6 other family members, as they fled in a car from Israeli bombs in northern Gaza.

“They were all shot, 335 times by Israeli occupation forces. Two paramedics were sent to rescue Hind. A double tap attack followed, deliberately timed to kill the paramedics,” she said.

The shocking tragedy was told in a documentary, The Voice of Hind Rajab, featuring the actual sound track of Hind’s pleas for her life as she lay wounded and talked to rescue dispatchers.

This film was screened to packed cinemas for the third — and final time in Auckland — at the 2026 NZ International Film Festival yesterday.

A Palestinian community and justice advocate, Maher Nazzal, posted on social media this week the following response:

“It is heartbreaking beyond words.
“If you are a human being with even the smallest sense of compassion, this film will change you. After watching it, life can never, ever absolutely never go back to ‘life as usual’.”

“We all know her name and her story,” said Amena. “we all know the story of Gaza, and the story of Palestine. And we also know the story of Iran.

“Because their stories are not new to us. We have been witnessing Israeli and American political violence, aggression, torture, terrorism and illegal wars for most of our lives.”

‘Illegal, immoral war’
She said the months-long attack in Iran had been an “illegal, illegitimate, immoral and senseless war, started by the world’s biggest aggressors, America and Israel”.

Over the past 5 months, Iran has had its schools, hospitals, power plants, bridges and other civilian infrastructure deliberately targeted and destroyed.

Amena said this was not new.

The Islamic Republic of Iran had been facing American and Israeli aggression since their Islamic Revolution of 1979.

For 47 years, Iran had been “relentlessly threatened, sanctioned and violently attacked by the American and Israeli regimes”.

“Why? Because the Islamic Republic of Iran fought for sovereignty and independence, and broke free from the clutches of Western imperialism.”

Ironically, as she spoke a counter-protest of Iranian monarchists and supporters who back the claim of dissident and Zionist US-exiled former crown prince Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, tried to drown out the speakers at the Stop War protest.

392 military interventions
Between 1776 and 2019, the US carried out over 392 military interventions worldwide.

“From my home country Afghanistan, to Cuba, to Korea, to the Philippines, Venezuela, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Vietnam, Iraq and beyond.”

Currently, America had more than 600 military bases in at least 63 countries worldwide, Amena said.

“And these are conservative figures, others estimate over 1000 military bases and installations in over 150 countries,” she said.

“Many of us here in Aotearoa who are immigrants, are here because of America’s military interventions in our home countries. And as much as I love Aotearoa, which has been the only home I know for most of my life, no one wants to be a refugee.

“It is not a life of luxury, to leave your home, your ancestral lands, your whānau, your hapu and iwi. No one wants to risk their lives to get on a boat, and travel in inhumane conditions, to a foreign land where they are stripped from all that’s familiar to them, and all that’s sacred to them.

“No, they immigrate because they are escaping American and Israeli bombs. They are escaping poverty caused directly by America’s economic terrorism.”

‘Educate yourself’ on immigration
Amena appealed to people in Aotearoa who had a problem with immigrants and refugees, “please educate yourself as to why and how we came to be here”.

“We are reliant on immigrants to sustain our economy and our public services.

“As a healthcare worker, I can tell you from first hand experience that our healthcare system is falling apart because we don’t have enough healthcare workers.”

The protesters also held a mock trial of an effigy character representing Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his anti-immigrant and racist statements inside and outside Parliament over recent weeks and failure to take a stand over the Gaza genocide.

The crowd acted as the “jury” and delivered a resounding “guilty” verdict on his “shameful” behaviour.

Among several other speakers at the rally was Iranian Kiwi Seyed Derhamy, who also spoke about the Minab schoolgirls atrocity and the injustice of the unjustified war on Iran, saying that Iranians were essentially peace loving people who did not like war.

As he spoke, he held aloft photographs in memory of two of the Minab schoolgirls “brutally killed” in the US-Israel attack — 10-year-olds Maryam Bazarak and Asra Zahari.

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 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.