A pro-Palestine national advocacy and protest group has accused New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as being “derelict in its duties” if it is unable to identify and ban products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) made this statement today following announcements by the United Kingdom, France and Canada that they would ban imports of products which originated from the settlements. Nine other countries have pledged to follow up.

MFAT is reported to have stated a ban “would be complex and require a full policy process” and so New Zealand could not do this — at least until after the general election on November 7.

• READ MORE: Palestine Forum condemns NZ for talk, no ‘meaningful action’ over illegal Israeli settlements
• NZ joins call to end Israeli settlement expansion, but not import ban
• UK, France, Canada to ban imports from Israeli settlements — NZ critical but stops short of joining
• UK bans goods from Israeli West Bank settlements in ‘comprehensive reset’: What that really means
• Other Gaza, Palestine reports

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in the statement Palestinian support groups had been urging the government to identify imports from the occupied Palestinian Territory for more than 20 years, on the basis that settlement goods were falsely labelled as a “Product of Israel”.

“Then in July 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that UN members must ‘distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967’, as a means of ending the occupation,” she said.

“That’s plenty of time for MFAT to work out how to deliver a trade ban.”

Tamimi said there was ample precedent for import bans.

“The sanctions New Zealand imposes on Russia include oil, gas, coal and gold. Other Russian imports are prohibitively tariffed.

“There were comprehensive import bans on apartheid South Africa.

“So statements, like those made by ACT Leader David Seymour, that New Zealand is ‘a trading nation — we don’t generally use trade bans to make political points’, is quite untrue.”

Tamimi said MFAT was also falsely claiming that New Zealand was sending a clear signal to Israel that New Zealand condemned settler violence, and the Israeli government must control it, and it must not expand settlements.

“The government has banned a small bunch of rabid settlers from entering New Zealand, along with two ministers,” she said.

“But it also sent a clear message at the same time, in June last year, by stating that that it was just two ministers, and the ban was specifically not ‘designed to sanction the wider Israeli government’.”

“Yes, the message is clear to Israel — the New Zealand criticism is meaningless hot air.”

The Palestine Forum of New Zealand has called on the New Zealand government to follow France, the UK, Canada and nine other countries to impose restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Twelve countries have now announced measures targeting trade connected to Israeli settlements, signalling growing international concern over the continued expansion of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

However, both Australia and New Zealand failed to join the 12 countries in their ban.

• READ MORE: NZ joins call to end Israeli settlement expansion, but not import ban
• UK, France, Canada to ban imports from Israeli settlements — NZ critical but stops short of joining
• UK bans goods from Israeli West Bank settlements in ‘comprehensive reset’: What that really means
• Other Gaza, Palestine reports

“Where is New Zealand?” asked Maher Nazza, chair of the Palestine Forum, “Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank have expanded for decades, involving the transfer of Israeli civilians into occupied territory and the development of homes, businesses and infrastructure on land claimed by Palestinians.

“Settlement activity is not simply a political issue. It has significant economic dimensions. Goods produced in settlements enter international markets, while businesses and institutions can become connected to, and benefit from, settlement activity.”

Maher said in a statement New Zealand should not be importing or supporting an economic system that contributed to the entrenchment of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

“If the government is serious about international law, human rights and Palestinian self-determination, it must move from statements to action.”

Palestine Forum of New Zealand has called on the government to:

• Ban imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank;
• Prevent New Zealand companies and institutions from supporting or profiting from settlement activity;
• Review government procurement, investment and trade relationships linked to settlements; and
• Join international efforts to impose meaningful economic measures against the settlement enterprise.

Israel furious over new UK sanctions          Video: Novara Media

Nazzal said the question for the New Zealand government was straightforward: “If France, the United Kingdom, Canada and other governments are prepared to take action, why isn’t New Zealand?

“New Zealand should not wait for others to act.”

He said that if 12 countries could take action, New Zealand could too.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories were a violation of international law and expanding those settlements undermined prospects for a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict.

“New Zealand strongly condemns violence by settlers against Palestinian civilians and calls for accountability for those responsible.”

The UK has announced sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements and says Palestinians face ‘ethnic cleansing’ in parts of the occupied West Bank. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese calls it a ‘seismic shift’ after years of UK ‘complicity’, but says it is only the beginning. pic.twitter.com/b4Vh9e2vhx

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) September 8, 2026

In Australia, independent Senator David Pocock said it was really disappointing Australia had not joined the UK, France, Canada and others in expanding sanctions on the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

“The UK PM was clear: this is about the unacceptable actions of the Israeli government, not the Israeli people and about refusing to just stand by and watch the horrors being perpetrated against Palestinians,” he said.

“Australia should show the same courage and stand for international law, Palestinian rights and a secure future for both peoples.”

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese praised the UK  government for announcing the sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements and saying Palestinians faced “ethnic cleansing” in parts of the occupied West Bank.

She described it as a “seismic shift” after years of UK “complicity”, but added it was only the beginning.

For more than a decade, the world has been trying to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

That’s no longer possible, according to a new United Nations report. We will likely pass 1.5°C in 2030. That’s not good news for anyone, least of all Australia and New Zealand’s Pacific Island neighbours who face rapidly rising seas.

In response to the report, Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr said:

It is hard to overstate the depth of emotion for those of us living on the frontline after having fought so hard to put the 1.5 degree limit at the heart of the Paris Agreement […] calls for greater ambition are no longer enough — we need to see an urgent and unprecedented increase in political will and investment in a climate safe future

READ MORE:

The small silver lining is that it’s still possible for this to be a temporary overshoot of the target. If nations redouble their efforts to phase out fossil fuels and reduce other sources of emissions, they could limit peak warming to 1.8°C and then use carbon removal methods to bring temperatures back to 1.5°C or below this century.

In 2026, the world is already about 1.4°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, and the damage and death toll from climate-boosted disasters is ramping up.

The United Kingdom is warning of possible food shortages amid a historic drought. Wildfires hit new areas in France and Spain, while glaciers are melting rapidly and the oceans are at their hottest level on record. The enormous El Niño event emerging in the Pacific is likely to bring major disruption.

Every fraction of a degree makes things worse.

There are no good outcomes if we remain above 1.5°C. Urgent cuts to emissions and efforts to protect the most vulnerable are our best remaining options. Failure to do so risks irreversible harm.

Why does 1.5°C matter so much?
The 2015 Paris Agreement established a shared goal for the world: keep the rise in global average temperatures above pre-industrial levels “well below” 2°C and “pursue efforts” to hold warming to 1.5°C.

This goal was set based on expert scientific assessments that warming of more than 2°C would be dangerous and that limiting warming to 1.5°C was necessary to minimise climate risks.

Pacific nations fought hard to include 1.5°C in the agreement, arguing it was essential for their communities to “stay alive” in the face of rising sea levels and other climate-fuelled threats.

Last year, the world’s top court — the International Court of Justice — ruled that 1.5°C is the primary temperature limit nations have committed to work towards.

This ruling means that if governments fail to act as ambitiously as they can, they could be sued in international courts.

In May this year, a majority of nations voted in the UN General Assembly to endorse the court’s ruling and urge action to keep to 1.5°C.

It’s not time to give up
Warming of 1.5°C will be bad. But 1.6°C will be worse, and 1.7°C worse again. Every increase will bring more extreme weather, more loss of nature, more loss of land to the sea and more harm to humans.

If we stay over 1.5°C, we risk triggering climate tipping points — sudden shifts which cannot be undone on human timescales. These include the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting, the collapse of crucial heat-distributing currents in the Atlantic Ocean or the Amazon rainforest becoming a source of emissions.

Overshooting 1.5°C doesn’t mean it’s time to throw out the Paris Agreement. It is not working fast enough, but it is working.

Solar power and electric vehicles have boomed and electrification has accelerated. Nations have cut emissions enough to avoid the worst climate futures of a 3°C rise or even higher.

According to the Climate Action Tracker, the Paris Agreement has averted the equivalent of 1°C of warming. Rather than hitting 3.6°C by 2100, the world is on track for 2.6°C.

While this is progress, it is not enough. Global emissions are plateauing, but have still not begun to fall in earnest.

As damage from climate change mounts, leaders must do the work and begin rapidly cutting emissions to keep the goal of net-zero by 2050 alive.

To get temperatures back under 1.5°C, we will also need to pull gigatonnes of carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere using tree planting and nature restoration. We may also need technological approaches such as rock weathering or ocean alkalinity enhancement, though these are not proven at scale and can come with other risks.

We are all in this together
It may seem as if climate action faces impossible headwinds, as populism surges and the current United States administration doubles down on fossil fuels.

It is worth looking beyond these headlines. It took almost 70 years for the world to install a terawatt of solar power, but then just two years for the second and another two for the third terawatt. In ten years, that figure will likely have tripled. Developing nations are moving rapidly to take up non-polluting electric transport.

Climate change can no longer be ignored. As damage mounts, nations will have to cooperate to cut emissions as rapidly as possible and figure out how to safely and equitably pull carbon back out of the atmosphere.

Action depends on strong political will, inclusive governance, and finance to help developing countries cut emissions and adapt.

In November, Australia will lead negotiations at the next international climate summit, COP31, in Turkey. Leaders and diplomats will work to keep 1.5°C in reach — even after overshoot. Australia can point to its own rapid clean energy transition and urge others to set clear pathways to go electric — and wean themselves off the production and use of fossil fuels.

Climate change has been described as a super wicked problem — big, complex and impossible to solve simply. The solution is to see the urgency of the issue and act cooperatively to tackle it.

If we make it a problem for the next generation, there may be no way back to a safe climate.

Dr Jacqueline Peel is professor of law, The University of Melbourne; Dr Wesley Morgan is research associate, Institute for Climate Risk and Response, University of New South Wales. Republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons.

A national pro-Palestine solidarity movement has condemned a spate of “radicalised” tyre slashing vandalism and other violent attacks by Israeli supporters.

The most recent pro-Israel vandalism is in Christchurch and Wellington alongside a violent attack on a supporter in Auckland, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) says in a statement.

In Christchurch, a prominent Palestine supporter had a car tyre slashed in his driveway. In Wellington, another supporter of Palestinian rights had a solidarity sticker scraped off their car and a swastika scrawled on the vehicle, the statement said.

• READ MORE: Eight-year-old Gaza girl killed by Israel on first day of school
• Other PSNA protest reports

Earlier in the year, a New Plymouth couple had their car tyres slashed outside their property and graffiti attacks on five separate occasions. Police could not find the perpetrator.

Other Palestine supporters had their tyres slashed in Raglan. In this case, the details of the offender, a prominent Auckland businessman in the pro-Israel lobby, were provided to police who “refused to prosecute”, the statement said.

At the same time, Israelis, including serving Israeli Defence Force personnel, and former Israelis, have physically attacked people at demonstrations, including outside the Israeli Embassy in Wellington.

PSNA national spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said these violent acts would be “described as terrorism” if they had been carried out against the Israeli lobby in New Zealand.

‘Lead to accident, death’
“A flat tyre can lead to an accident and death or injury. Lives have been put at risk,” she said.

“There is no question who the targets are — it’s the supporters of Palestinian rights protesting against a genocide.”

Tamimi blamed what she called “radicalised Zionists”.

“They are likely to believe in the most extreme demands and threats made from within the Israeli government. They feel they are entitled to assault people who call out Israeli terror.”

Tamimi said she did not know if any of the 50 New Zealanders who had served in the IDF (Israeli military) might be responsible for any of the attacks in New Zealand.

“But we do know that threats are coming more frequently from New Zealand fans of Israel. It seems they are frustrated that Israel is at last being revealed for the genocidal and apartheid state that it is, and they want to take it out on someone.”

Tamimi said PSNA had met senior police earlier this year to express its concerns.

“We also wanted to raise these attacks and threats against us with the Human Rights Commissioner, Stephen Rainbow,” she said.

“But we have just been informed that Dr Rainbow is too busy and other commissioners are not available till late October”

The PSNA statement said there was a “disturbing pattern of official disinterest” in sharp contrast with their energy and action when the pro-Israel lobby is attacked.

There is a deeply painful connection between Aotearoa New Zealand and the Gaza War Cemetery that deserves to be remembered.

Long before the current destruction of Gaza, New Zealand soldiers fought and died in the Palestine campaign of the First World War. Some never made it home. Their final resting place is Gaza.

Among those buried at the Gaza War Cemetery are Private Kamati and Private Tutavake, two soldiers associated with the New Zealand Māori Pioneer Battalion’s Rarotongan contingent. New Zealand historical reporting has described them as members of the Māori Battalion.

• READ MORE: Other Gaza war graves desecration reports

They are not simply names on a distant memorial.

They were young men from the Pacific who travelled thousands of kilometres from their homes to serve in a war that brought them to Palestine. They became part of the history of Aotearoa, the Pacific and the Middle East — and Gaza became their final resting place.

Today, that cemetery itself has been caught up in another war.

A cemetery caught in the destruction of Gaza
The Gaza War Cemetery contains more than 3000 Commonwealth graves from the First World War, together with graves from the Second World War and other conflicts. The New Zealand War Graves Project records 32 New Zealand casualties at the cemetery, including Kamati and Tutavake.

In February 2026, reports emerged that sections of the cemetery had been bulldozed and damaged.

The New Zealand Herald reported that the destroyed section contained 20 New Zealand and two Rarotongan soldiers. Satellite imagery showed parts of the cemetery’s previously green grounds turned into churned earth.

The damage was serious enough for the New Zealand government to publicly express its concern.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said New Zealand was “deeply concerned” about damage to the Gaza War Cemetery and the nearby Deir el-Balah War Cemetery, describing them as the final resting places of New Zealanders who died in the two world wars.

New Zealand’s ambassador to Israel raised the matter directly with the Israeli government, conveying New Zealand’s expectation that the graves of New Zealand, Pacific and Commonwealth service personnel be treated with the utmost respect.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has committed to restoring the cemeteries when it is safe and practical to do so.

Their story is bigger than a cemetery
There is something profoundly symbolic about this.

These Pacific soldiers left their islands and travelled to a part of the world they had never known. They fought and died in Palestine more than a century ago.

Their graves subsequently became part of Gaza’s landscape.

For generations, the cemetery was cared for by Palestinian caretakers. New Zealanders visiting Gaza on Anzac Day came to remember their countrymen. A 2014 New Zealand Herald account described the cemetery as a place where New Zealanders came to honour the fallen.

And then Gaza became a battlefield again.

The people living around the cemetery today are experiencing a war of their own — while the men buried beneath the ground have, once again, been caught in the violence of a conflict in Palestine.

That is the tragedy of Gaza’s war graves.

Aotearoa should remember them
For New Zealanders, this should not be an abstract international story.

The men buried there were part of our history.

They represented New Zealand and the Pacific at a time when Māori and Pacific soldiers made enormous sacrifices during the First World War.

The story of Kamati and Tutavake also reminds us that the history of New Zealand’s military service is not exclusively a European story. It includes Māori, Cook Islanders and other Pacific peoples whose contribution and sacrifice helped shape the history of Aotearoa.

Their graves in Gaza are physical links between Aotearoa, the Pacific and Palestine.

And that makes their treatment today especially painful.

Whatever one’s position on the present conflict, the principle should be straightforward:

Respect for the war graves
War graves must be respected. The dead should not become casualties of the wars of the living.

More than a century after these soldiers died, their final resting place should be a place of peace.

Kamati and Tutavake deserve to be remembered not only as soldiers who died in Palestine, but as Pacific men whose lives became part of the shared history of Aotearoa, the Pacific and Gaza.

Their names remain.

Their graves remain.

And their story should not be forgotten.

Maher Nazzal is chair of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand.

The 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting in Koror, Palau, last week has pushed West Papua back to the centre of Pacific diplomacy.

At an Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) caucus held on the margins of the Forum, leaders reaffirmed their longstanding call for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to visit the West Papuan provinces.

They urged Jakarta to facilitate the visit before 31 December 2026, the end of Indonesia’s term as president of the UN Human Rights Council.

• READ MORE: UN human rights commissioner visit to West Papua on track, says Indonesia
• Other West Papua reports

Crucially, the MSG said that if the requested steps were not undertaken, Indonesia’s associate member status would be reviewed at the 2027 MSG Summit.

The question is whether Jakarta is willing to allow independent international observers to see, hear, and assess conditions in West Papua?

Sovereignty cannot be the end of the conversation
For decades, Indonesia has relied heavily on sovereignty and territorial integrity when responding to international criticism of West Papua.

Jakarta maintains that Papua is an integral part of Indonesia and that its political status was settled through the international arrangements culminating in the 1969 Act of Free Choice.

From this perspective, calls for international intervention can be portrayed as challenges to Indonesia’s territorial integrity and interference in its domestic affairs.

But sovereignty and accountability are not mutually exclusive. Recognition of territorial sovereignty does not eliminate a state’s responsibility for human rights. Nor does it prevent international organisations from seeking access to investigate allegations of abuses.

The unresolved legacy of 1969
Indonesia’s sovereignty argument also rests heavily on history. Under the 1962 New York Agreement between Indonesia and the Netherlands, administration of West New Guinea was temporarily transferred to the United Nations before being transferred to Indonesia.

The agreement envisaged an act of self-determination before the end of 1969.

Rather than a territory-wide referendum involving universal and direct participation by the adult population, the process involved representative councils. UN records state that 1026 members of the enlarged representative councils were asked to express the population’s choice, and all chose continued association with Indonesia.

The UN General Assembly subsequently adopted Resolution 2504, taking note of the Secretary-General’s report and the agreement concerning West New Guinea.

The dispute, therefore, is not whether the 1969 process occurred. It clearly did. The deeper question is whether it represented a genuinely free expression of the political will of West Papuans.

This historical disagreement remains politically powerful because the competing narratives have never been reconciled.

For Jakarta, 1969 closed the question of sovereignty. For many West Papuans, it remains evidence that their political aspirations were never freely tested.

But contemporary Pacific diplomacy should not become trapped entirely in this historical dispute. Even if one accepts Indonesia’s present sovereignty over Papua, contemporary human rights questions remain legitimate.

Indonesia’s anti-colonial rhetoric
There is also an uncomfortable contradiction in Indonesia’s international rhetoric.

Indonesia has historically presented itself as an anti-colonial state and a supporter of the principle that peoples should be free from colonial domination.

At the UN Pacific Regional Seminar on Decolonisation in Bali in 2023, then-Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi stated that “independence is the inalienable right of all nations” and argued that colonialism must be abolished.

Indonesia’s response is that West Papua is not a colonial territory and that its political status was settled through an internationally recognised process.

That is a legitimate position for Indonesia to defend. But the political question remains: if self-determination is a universal principle, how should it be applied when Indigenous Papuans continue to challenge the political circumstances under which integration occurred?

Jakarta’s ‘right path’ needs a destination
Indonesia has responded by insisting that the proposed UN visit is progressing and is “on the right path.” Yet the phrase raises more questions than it answers.

What does “the right path” actually mean?

When will the visit occur?

Will UN officials have freedom of movement?

Will they be able to speak privately with Indigenous communities?

Will they meet civil-society organisations, church leaders, victims, local officials and political representatives?

Will they be able to visit areas affected by military operations and displacement?

And will their findings be published without political interference?

These are not unreasonable demands. They are the minimum conditions necessary for an assessment to have credibility.

If Jakarta is confident that conditions in Papua have improved, an independent UN assessment could actually strengthen Indonesia’s position.

Transparency is not necessarily a threat to sovereignty. In fact, it can reinforce legitimacy.

Why the MSG decision matters
The MSG is uniquely placed in this debate because West Papua is not merely a distant foreign policy issue for Melanesian governments.

West Papuans are Indigenous Melanesians, and the MSG was established to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation among Melanesian peoples.

Indonesia’s associate membership has therefore always contained a political tension.

Jakarta seeks recognition and legitimacy within an organisation representing Melanesian interests, while some MSG members continue to raise concerns about the rights and welfare of Indigenous Melanesians inside Indonesia.

The organisation has not abandoned dialogue. Fiji has made clear that engagement with Jakarta remains necessary. But dialogue without measurable outcomes risks becoming a diplomatic holding pattern.

The proposed OHCHR visit provides a practical benchmark. The MSG has effectively placed a deadline on the issue. That changes the diplomatic calculation. Jakarta is no longer responding only to general statements of concern; it is responding to a specific request accompanied by a potential institutional consequence.

The Pacific is testing itself
Pacific governments increasingly speak of a regional order grounded in Indigenous rights, human security, climate justice and self-determination. They insist that Pacific priorities should not simply be dictated by larger external powers.

West Papua therefore presents a difficult consistency test. At the same time, Pacific diplomacy must avoid reducing every disagreement with Indonesia to a confrontation over sovereignty. Indonesia is too important to the region for that approach to be strategically sustainable.

The better approach is precisely what the MSG appears to be attempting: engagement combined with accountability.

A new phase in the West Papua debate
The significance of Koror is therefore not that the Pacific has suddenly endorsed West Papuan independence. Nor has the MSG decided to remove Indonesia. What has changed is the political language.

The debate is shifting from the binary question of “Indonesia or independence” towards the more immediate question of “sovereignty and accountability”.

That shift creates political space for Pacific governments to demand transparency without having to settle the final status question first. It also places greater responsibility on Jakarta.

Indonesia has spent decades defending its sovereignty over West Papua. It now has an opportunity to demonstrate that sovereignty is compatible with transparency.

The coming months will determine whether the Koror decision becomes another diplomatic statement or a genuine turning point.

For West Papuans, this is not merely a diplomatic dispute. It concerns whether their experiences can be independently heard and investigated.

For the MSG, it is a test of whether Melanesian solidarity has practical meaning.

For the Pacific Islands Forum, it is a test of whether its principles apply consistently.

For Indonesia, it is a test of whether sovereignty can coexist with scrutiny.

And for the United Nations, it is a test of whether international human rights mechanisms can gain meaningful access to one of the Pacific’s most enduring political disputes.

Indonesia’s sovereignty may be internationally recognised, but sovereignty should never become a shield against legitimate human rights scrutiny.

Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountains region of Papua New Guinea. He holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.

AMY GOODMAN: A federal judge has ruled the Trump administration has violated the constitutional rights of international students in seeking to deport them for their pro-Palestinian activism and criticism of Israel.

In her ruling, US District Judge Noël Wise wrote, “In the United States, free speech, including the freedom to criticise the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength. That strength is diminished when members of our society — citizens and noncitizens alike — must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation.”

The lawsuit was filed by The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, which claimed some of its writers on student visas declined to cover pro-Palestinian protests or report on topics related to Israel, fearing deportation.

Student journalists also requested their published articles on such topics be removed from the paper’s website.

The case raises broader questions about the climate of fear and political repression facing international students during the Trump administration. One of the most striking examples is Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University.

Last year, masked plainclothes immigration agents snatched Öztürk off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. A year earlier, she had co-written an opinion piece for the Tufts student newspaper, The Tufts Daily, critical of the university’s response to campus protests over Gaza and the school’s failure to uphold student Senate resolutions on Palestine.

Tufts University later stated the op-ed did not violate university policy, that no complaints had been filed about it, and that Rümeysa Öztürk had been in good academic and immigration standing.

Nonetheless, her student visa was canceled, and she spent more than six weeks in an ICE jail in Louisiana. An immigration court eventually ruled in Rümeysa’s favor, saying the government failed to meet its burden of proof to deport her.

However, the message from the Trump administration to international students across the nation remained clear: Their ordinarily protected free political expression could now potentially cost them their immigration status and their freedom.

Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests who successfully challenged the Trump administration in court. Here in New York City, George Porteous is with us, editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily. And in Moorestown, New Jersey, Will Creeley, legal director of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represented The Stanford Daily in court.

George and Will, we welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with you, George Porteous. You are a rising senior —

GEORGE PORTEOUS: Senior, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — at Stanford. You’re the editor-in-chief of the paper. Talk about why you brought this suit. What were the student reporters saying to you, the international students?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: Thank you for having me.

And what we were hearing from the noncitizens in our newsroom and from noncitizens across campus — current students, former students, alumni — was that they were genuinely frightened because of what they saw in the headlines, what they saw happen to Rümeysa Öztürk.

They were understandably frightened that if they reported the news, even if they weren’t writing an op-ed, even if they were just covering a protest or a vigil, if they put their name on a byline, they were frightened that they were going to lose their visa.

And so, what we said is, we can’t function as a newspaper if we don’t have these voices included in our newspaper. So, we filed suit, and last week the judge gave us a favorable ruling.

Stanford Daily student press wins free speech lawsuit.    Video: Democracy Now!

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, George, what was the initial response of the Stanford administration to your lawsuit? Did they — did they support your efforts?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: You know, the administration has remained relatively silent about this suit. We still haven’t heard any response from them since this decision. And we’re an independent organisation, so this was a suit filed by The Stanford Daily on our own, independently. And that’s really why we were in this case, not really because of the university.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what has this all taught you in terms of the ability of folks to stand up and defend the First Amendment?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: Well, I think what it’s shown me is that it really has to begin locally, because we were dealing with a problem inside of our newsroom with our peers, and this was about solidarity, and also just the practical need to continue doing our jobs and to continue reporting the news.

So, it’s shown me that it really does begin with everyday people. It begins with students, too. Students, I think, have enormous power to stand up to what this administration has done in terms of civil liberties and constitutional rights. And we have real power, is what this ruling has shown us.

AMY GOODMAN: And are other students who have previously said they’re not going to cover a protest — are they willing to now? Has this made a difference, changed the climate in your newsroom?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: You know, it’s still, I think, too early to see. But I’m hopeful that this ruling, because it’s a very strong legal precedent, will carve out more room for noncitizens to feel that they can participate in democracy on campus.

AMY GOODMAN: Will Creeley, you are legal director at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Talk about why you approached The Stanford Daily, why this is such a significant decision.

WILL CREELEY: Well, it’s an honour to be here, Amy and Juan.

And I’m so proud listening to George now expound upon the importance of folks like George and his predecessor, Greta, standing up for First Amendment rights. It’s extremely important. When you see Rümeysa Öztürk in prison orange from a detention center in Louisiana for co-authoring an op-ed, you know something has gone terribly wrong.

With this administration, again and again, the chill is the point. These actions that they’re taking, these wanton violations of the First Amendment, are designed to get folks like George and his colleagues at The Stanford Daily to feel scared, to think twice, to ask that their names not appear on news reporting or opinion pieces.

That’s flatly un-American.

So, it was extremely important to us to fight back. And we’re so grateful for the bravery of The Stanford Daily folks and our Jane Doe colleague — Jane Doe plaintiff, who was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and was no longer going to protest or flying a Palestinian flag or wearing shirts that expressed her political opinions.

She self-censored because of what the administration was doing. That’s a First Amendment violation every day of the week. It’s flatly un-American. And that’s why we’re very proud of last week’s victory.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Will, some members of the Trump administration responded. Stephen Miller posted on X, “A district court judge says America must admit and keep foreigners who hate America and hate Americans. Court-ordered civilisational suicide. It will not stand.”

Your response? And also the issue that you —

WILL CREELEY: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: If you could talk a little bit about the due process question you raised?

WILL CREELEY: Stephen Miller has got it exactly backwards. In the year 1800, Thomas Jefferson, in his inaugural address, made clear that in this country we protect the First Amendment rights of even those who call for the dissolution of this country, responding to the Alien and Sedition Acts.

We have a long history in this country of protecting that speech. That’s what makes this country special. We have to live those values. It’s Stephen Miller who’s un-American here, not folks who are expressing their political opinions.

The United States is supposed to be where folks from around the world, folks like Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Mahmoud Khalil, can come and learn about what it means to be able to speak out without fear of a midnight knock on the door or being whisked away by masked federal agents.

We’re going to continue fighting for those fundamental American rights, no matter who’s in office.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to be talking about people being whisked away by federal agents in a moment when we go to Danbury, Connecticut. I want to thank you both for being with us, and just ask you, as you go into your senior year, George: What are you majoring in?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: I’m a history major.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what have you learned?

GEORGE PORTEOUS: Well, history repeats itself. And I think what we’ve seen is this administration has a clear agenda. They’re trying to instill fear on campuses. And they’ve done lasting damage. I mean, this lawsuit is a victory, but a lot of damage has already been done.

So, I think what I’ve learned is that we have a responsibility, especially as students. We have an opportunity to continue standing up for our peers, because when the most vulnerable among us is afraid to speak, we should all be deeply concerned.

AMY GOODMAN: George Porteous, editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily. Will Creeley, legal director at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

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

Misinformation on social media is the biggest challenge for journalists, says Belinda Kora, secretary of the Media Council of Papua New Guinea (MCPNG) and founder of Women in Media (WIM).

She gave her address at the closing ceremony of an Election Integrity Workshop for media last week.

The week-long programme was hosted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with the European Union (EU) and MCPNG on August 31-September 4.

• READ MORE: Other PNG media reports

She cautioned that Facebook posts were often unreliable and urged reporters to verify content before publication.

“Always make sure that whatever you have, go back to your newsroom and share it with your colleagues before publishing,” Kora said.

To illustrate, she pointed to a viral post about a giant cabbage being sold for more that 100 kina (NZ$38) at Eliseo Shopping Centre. Many online users dismissed it as artificial intelligence (AI), but she confirmed its authenticity after checking.

“Get used to verifying and then put it in your [social media] account and say, ‘I verified this’. Doing this will help because there is a lot of misinformation,” she told journalists at the workshop.

Importance of networking
Kora also stressed the importance of networking, highlighting the women-in-media WhatsApp group that has more than 300 members nationwide.

“It’s a good place to share experiences, or if you need contacts for news stories across the country, you can always ask in the group and they will be happy to help,” she advised.

The Media Council of Papua New Guinea, established more than 20 years ago, does not interfere with editorial decisions but provides guidance, training, and support to journalists.

The workshop was designed to strengthen ethical and objective reporting ahead of the 2027 elections.

At its conclusion, 10 media representatives received certificates of participation, equipping them to share the knowledge with colleagues and uphold ethical standards in their reporting during the election period.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

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.

More than 450 University of Sydney (USyd) alumni and current staff have signed a letter calling for a mass meeting to discuss the university’s ties to Israel amid concerns of a crackdown on free speech.

The letter, submitted to Chancellor David Thodey on Tuesday, accused the university of “failing to respond meaningfully to the ongoing genocide in Gaza” which it said “represents a profound moral failure”.

The signatories — among them recipients of Australian AM and OAM honours, a former deputy vice-chancellor and two politicians — are calling for a meeting of Convocation, a body comprising alumni, staff and members of the university’s governing Senate.

• READ MORE: Other university freedom of expression reports

As well as the university’s institutional ties to Israel, the letter noted “an accelerating erosion of freedom of expression” as a crisis warranting a Convocation meeting.

“We want to give voice to the disquiet among staff and alumni and force the university to take this issue seriously. They can’t keep sweeping an ongoing genocide under the rug,” Dr David Brophy, senior lecturer in history, told Deepcut News.

Two weeks to reply
Convocation meetings are common in universities as a means for alumni and staff to provide input into the institution’s governance. The University of Western Australia and University of New England are among those that hold regular Convocation meetings.

The University of Sydney (Amendment Act) Rule 1999 requires Convocation to “hold at least 1 meeting in each year”. The last meeting it held, however, was over three decades ago.

“Convocation is not a relic of a bygone age: meetings were held as recently as the 1990s,” the letter read.

According to the university’s governing document, the chancellor has 14 days from the request to give notice of a meeting — or until September 8. If granted, the meeting is to be held within 28 days of the request — or by September 22.

“Our chancellor is considering the request to summon a meeting of Convocation sent on Tuesday as required under relevant university rules,” a USyd spokesperson told Deepcut.

‘Suppression of dissent’
Campus atmosphere has remained tense since an anti-genocide student encampment was removed in 2024.

That same year, USyd management upgraded its CCTV system, installed additional cameras and introduced restrictions on students setting up stalls.

University staff also report being “unfairly accused of antisemitism for protesting Israel’s actions in Palestine”, according to a statement from the letter’s organisers.

The statement claims there has been a “suppression of dissent in the wake of the 2024 pro-Palestine encampment”.

When asked about the allegations, the USyd spokesperson said, “We remain strongly committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech balanced alongside our obligations to ensure the safety and well-being of our whole community.”

Many seem unconvinced. Jenny Leong, the state Greens MP for Newtown and a signatory to the letter as a former USyd Senate fellow, warned the university’s reputation was at risk.

“The student experience, beyond the classroom, was something that used to be valued by the university, so now to see policies and practices that crack down on the rights of freedom of speech, association and assembly, as well as attempting to silence pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide actions, is cause for serious concern,” she told Deepcut.

Refusal to cut Israeli ties
A key demand of the student encampment was for USyd to cut institutional ties to Israel, in line with several European universities that have taken such a step.

In February 2025, USyd ended an exchange programme with the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Israel but insisted that “recent advocacy against this student exchange had nothing to do with the university’s decision”.

“Our ties with Israeli and other institutions remain in place because we are committed to academic freedom, freedom of speech, and human rights as the university’s central pillars,” a USyd statement read at the time.

USyd’s approach to Israel contrasts with its decision in June this year to boycott “any research collaboration” with Russia in response to its war in Ukraine.

“The fact that the University recently decided to impose a ban on collaboration with Russia shows that the university is capable of firm measures in response to war crimes,” Brophy said.

Antisemitism definition condemned
The letter’s organisers drew attention to a significant NSW Supreme Court ruling this month that found criticism of Israel or Zionism did not constitute antisemitism.

Justice Desmond Fagan was particularly scathing of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which includes criticism of Israel and Zionism and is favoured by the pro-Israel lobby.

Universities Australia’s 39 members, including USyd, adopted a definition of antisemitism that drew on IHRA but was more explicit.

“… criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel … Substituting the word ‘Zionist’ for ‘Jew’ does not eliminate the possibility of speech being antisemitic,” it reads.

The definition was roundly condemned for its implications for free speech, with the Jewish Council of Australia calling it “a dangerous and politicised definition of antisemitism which threatens academic freedom”.

USyd, however, told a NSW parliamentary committee in July 2025 that it had included the controversial definition “as part of the Supplementary Resources to its Anti-Racism Statement” and “does not currently propose to amend the definition”.

That decision, however, is feeding the current backlash.

“There is no place for the IHRA definition of antisemitism on campuses or in any of our public institutions,” Leong said.

“Criticism of the criminal actions of the Israeli government and the IDF, amounting to apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people, should never be conflated with antisemitism,” she added.

“This conflation is wrong not only because it protects Israel from legitimate criticism, but also because it falsely identifies Jewish identity with the state of Israel — which is in itself an antisemitic trope.”

Republished from Deepcut News under Creative Commons.

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.

A Thai protest group submitted a letter outside the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok this week, urging Israeli tourists and residents in Thailand to respect the country’s laws, customs and culture.

Tae Achiwa, a leader of the Thai Mai Thon — “Thais Won’t Tolerate It” — group, delivered the protest letter on Monday following complaints from residents in several tourist destinations, including Phuket, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Pai.

The group said it had received complaints alleging intimidation, harassment and disputes involving Israeli nationals, including conflicts related to businesses and property.

• READ MORE: Thai vendor confronts Israeli tourists, raises Palestinian flag
• Other Israeli tourist protests

The letter stressed that the group did not intend to generalise about Israeli people, saying anyone found to have violated Thai law should be investigated and prosecuted through the legal process.

Embassy staff did not accept the letter directly and instead instructed the group’s representatives to leave it outside the embassy building. The representatives then placed the document there as requested.

Speaking to reporters, Tae said the group’s action was peaceful and was focused on complaints from Thai residents rather than the Israeli war on Palestine.

“We came peacefully. I’m not here to call for ‘Free Palestine.’ Your war is your war,” he said.

“Today I’m here because Thai people are suffering from tourists who come into the country, and you are not urging your tourists to behave. That’s all.”

The group said it hoped Israeli visitors and residents would respect Thai laws and local communities while authorities handle any alleged offences through established legal procedures.

Republished from Khaosod English.

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.