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.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale made an emergency trip back to Honiara on Sunday morning from Palau after a motion of no confidence was filed against him.

Wale was in Palau to attend the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting as its current chair.

He was suppose to hand over the chairmanship to Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr in Palau.

• READ MORE: Notable absences loom ahead of PIF leaders’ meeting in Palau
• Other PIF reports

Wale, 57, was elected prime minister of the country on May 15 and has been in office for just over 100 days.

The no-confidence motion against him over the weekend has been filed by East Malaita MP and Minister of Home Affairs Manasseh Maelanga. The Solomon Islands Parliament has confirmed it has received the notice.

Maelanga is accusing Wale of making unilateral decisions without proper consultation and without taking matters through cabinet.

“The motion follows concerns that the Prime Minister has repeatedly made decisions on matters of national importance without properly consulting Cabinet or obtaining its approval,” Maelanga said in the statement.

“I have taken this step with confidence in our democratic institutions and a firm commitment to stable, transparent and accountable government.”

Claims rejected
Maelanga has also rejected claims that the challenge against Wales leadership was intended to derail ongoing investigations.

The motion is the first major political challenge for Wale since coming to power.

He had only just landed in Palau when news of the no-confidence motion back home reached him.

When questioned at the airport by a Solomon Islands journalist on the matter, he said: “When I go, I will tell you more.”

He was gone the next day in the early hours of the morning.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister and Pacific Islands Forum chair Matthew Wale.

Other Solomon Islands officials who travelled with the prime minister to Palau were surprised to hear about the leadership challenge.

Local media have described the no-confidence motion against Wale as an “internal coalition revolt”.

“There appears to be a split within the GREAT Coalition. Few Ministers and MPs within the GREAT Coalition are likely to tender their resignations,” according to a report by Solomon Star.

Pacific security and geopolitics analyst Dr Anna Powles described the timing of the no-confidence motion as “deeply unfortunate”.

This story was first published on

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.

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.

It has been six months since the United States and Israel launched their coordinated military campaign against Iran on February 28. The war is easily cast as the latest turn in the long antagonism between Washington and Tehran, but that frame misses its immediate context.

Its real context is the aftermath of October 7, 2023: Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza that followed spread across the region, wore down Iran’s network of allies, and pulled Israel and Iran into increasing confrontation, culminating in the 12-day war of June 2025 and the US-Israel campaign launched last February.

The bilateral track only sharpened this trajectory. Nearly eight years before the current war, Trump’s first administration launched “maximum pressure” aimed at driving Iran’s oil exports to zero.

• READ MORE: Iran to draft conditions to open Hormuz following mediator requests
• Other War on Iran reports

When it failed to force political change, economic coercion eventually gave way to military force. Six months on, the campaign has come full circle, back to economic pressure applied with greater force. Economics, then war, then economics again.

At the 100-day mark, Tehran could plausibly present the outcome as a victory of survival: Its adversaries had failed to topple the system, and by its own measure that was what mattered.

Six months on, that claim is harder to sustain because the pressure has shifted to the terrain on which Iran has always been weakest. The question is no longer whether Iran can survive military attack, but whether it can withstand an economic siege with no sign of lifting.

A leadership hollowed out at the top
The most visible change is at the summit. After the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the opening strike, his son Mojtaba was appointed just more than a week later, a succession Tehran presented as proof of continuity and cohesion.

But six months on, he has yet to make a verified public appearance. His portrait is carried through city squares and at mourning ceremonies, and decrees are issued in his name, while rumours about his condition persist.

A leadership that once drew its authority from the visible presence of a single figure now rests, in part, on an absence.

The state has also had to rebuild its command structure in the middle of the war. The opening strike killed IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour and armed forces chief-of-staff Abdolrahim Mousavi, while other senior commanders were slain in the weeks that followed.

On August 10, decrees issued in Mojtaba’s name formalised a new military leadership, including Ahmad Vahidi as IRGC chief and Ali Abdollahi as chief-of-staff.

The appointments appear to favour loyalty and continuity over change and were widely read as a signal that Tehran did not intend to soften its posture. The deeper significance is simpler: A state still rebuilding its high command in the sixth month of a war is not doing so from a position of strength.

From maximum pressure to ‘Economic Outcast’
The clearest sign that the war has returned to its economic origins is the campaign Washington has intensified since suspending strikes in early August. US officials had already branded the broader effort “Economic Fury”; on August 24, the Treasury launched Operation Economic Outcast, an expanded campaign aimed at severing Iran’s remaining financial links with the outside world.

Its instruments are familiar from the pre-war “maximum pressure” era but are being applied more aggressively: Secondary sanctions on those moving Iranian oil, measures against its “shadow fleet” and financial networks, and greater enforcement of international sanctions.

Iran’s oil exports, near 1.8 million barrels a day before the war, have fallen to below half a million; inflation is approaching 90 percent, with food prices more than double what they were a year ago.

Yet the siege lands on an economy whose troubles were never solely the work of sanctions.

Iran had long failed to insulate itself from an architecture built over decades, from US sanctions dating to the 1980s to United Nations Security Council resolutions since 2006.

Neither the 25-year, $400 billion partnership with China nor the strategic treaty signed with Russia in early 2025 delivered the stability Tehran sought. Before the war, Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian had acknowledged that sanctions alone could not account for the depth of the crisis and that governance bore its share.

The economic weapon works in part because the state it targets was already structurally exposed.

That pressure is now enforced at sea. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation on February 28 and, six months on, it has not reopened; the naval blockade that followed has fused with the closure into a single chokehold on Iran’s trade.

Diverging narratives in Tehran
That structural exposure is forcing a longstanding divergence into the open. For years, Iran’s leadership has explained its crises through two competing narratives: One, advanced by the political leadership, acknowledging failures of economic governance; the other, promoted by the security establishment, attributing unrest to external enemies.

Under the pressure of the siege, that divergence has sharpened into a disagreement over the war itself. President Pezeshkian, who signed the June memorandum with Washington, has spoken with growing candour about an economy giving way, saying this month that Iran’s difficulties have “multiplied several times over” as revenue has fallen.

On August 21, he argued that it would be “better to end [the war] today, while we are in a position of strength”, even as his government prepared Iranians for painful increases in fuel prices.

Parliament Speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has put the danger more bluntly: “No matter how much military power we have, if the people are hungry and there is no financial circulation, economic growth, or national production, we will not endure.”

Yet he remains tied to the security establishment’s logic, insisting diplomacy carries weight only when backed by readiness for war and casting Washington’s economic turn as an admission of military failure.

That Iran’s two most senior civilian figures now say publicly that hunger, not bombardment, is the greatest threat marks a shift from the confident rhetoric of the war’s first months. It has not settled the argument over who is responsible, only raised its stakes.

Six months on, Iran’s leadership still measures the war by the standard it set at the outset: The system has not fallen, and everything else it considers recoverable. By that measure, survival remains a form of victory.

Pressure now falls on household
But the pressure now falls on the household and the market, where it is harder to answer with the language of resistance. The divide between a president urging an end to the war and a security establishment determined to outlast it is no longer concealed.

The war has also produced the terms of its own possible end. The closed strait and the blockade have become the centre of gravity for diplomacy. Reopening the strait and lifting the blockade are the levers each side holds over the other and the most plausible opening for negotiations that could bring the conflict to a close.

This leaves Iran with a difficult choice. To negotiate a settlement on terms Washington would accept risks provoking the internal fracture the hardliners fear; to hold out risks a bleeding economy and a winter that will test the state’s capacity to provide.

The war has also reinforced, within parts of the leadership, the conviction that only a nuclear capability could have deterred the initial attack, making any lasting settlement harder to reach.

Beneath these immediate pressures lies a more enduring pattern. The confrontation between Washington and Tehran has always been, at its core, a contest shaped by what the political elites of the two countries believe about each other and about the risks of dealing with each other.

On the Iranian side, US hostility has repeatedly deepened divisions within the political elite rather than compelling agreement, reinforcing its reluctance to make bold decisions about negotiating with the US.

Pressure intended to force Tehran’s hand has instead hardened the hesitation it sought to break, compounding Iran’s political and economic strains.

Six months into this war, that pattern is again on display: the campaign has come full circle to the economic weapon it began with, the Iranian elite is more divided, and the bold decision a settlement would require remains as distant as ever.

There is little sign that this cycle will end soon.

Professor Mahjoob Zweiri is an academic and senior political analyst specialising in Iran and Middle East politics. This article was first published by Al Jazeera and republished 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.

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.

In the past year there has been a scramble by the big powers to secure the continuing supply of “rare minerals” that are used in batteries driving electric cars and wind power turbines. There is a looming catastrophe awaiting the Pacific Ocean if countries in the region are not alert to the environmental threats facing the region.

Decades ago, greedy industrialists were polluting the air, and their governments refused to listen to scientific warnings of a looming climatic disaster, and now the island nations of the South Pacific are facing the brunt of climate change disasters.

If the current trends of digging out rare minerals from wherever you can find them continues, we will be left with oceans — especially the Pacific — where we cannot swim or fish, further threatening the livelihoods of many small Oceania nations.

• READ MORE: Pacific protesters against deep sea mining challenge US exploration ship
• Other Pacific deep sea mining reports

With the scramble for rare minerals extending to the deep seabed, a new geopolitical battle is hotting up in the South Pacific, where corruption and divisions among Pacific Island countries could be fermented by global powers battling to control the supply chain, with countries like Cook Islands, Kiribati and Nauru on the frontline.

Eliki Drugunalevu, a member of the research team that compiled the Pacific Ocean Climate Crisis Assessment (POCCA) to the COP 29 meeting in Azerbaijan in 2024, warned in an interview with In-Depth News that inaction by the United Nations to pause the march towards deep sea mining for precious metals would result in a “catastrophic impact” on the Pacific for the long term.

“People on the Pacific islands rely on the ocean not only for their sustenance but also for their economic survival,” he said.

“If the fish are not going to come in, they will have to fish in another community’s fishing grounds, that will have a butterfly effect and create conflict.”

‘Protected’ by ISA
The deep blue oceans are expected to be protected by an autonomous international organisation, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) as the “common heritage of mankind” under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which was adopted by the United Nations in 1982 and signed and ratified by 168 UN member states.

But the US has refused to sign the convention, objecting to articles restricting seabed mining.

Now the Trump administration seems keen to provide licences to American companies to mine the seabed in the Pacific, while the ISA which on July 31 concluded its latest two-week council and assembly meetings in Jamaica, is deadlocked in framing commercial exploitation guidelines — known as a Mining Code– for the seabed.

At the meeting, 45 countries called for a moratorium or precautionary pause on seabed mining, with Vanuatu in the Pacific proposing that such a pause be in operation until the risks are fully understood and the necessary scientific knowledge is available for a transparent process.

“Deep-sea mining is fraught with immense scientific uncertainty, [so] caution and common sense prevailed at this session, with member states rejecting a rushed adoption of the mining code,” noted Simon Candon, international media manager of Lisbon-based Oceano Azul Foundation in an interview with IDN.

With the US trying to undermine the UNCLOS and ISA, he added that “many countries used the assembly to unite against unilateral mining, agreeing that bypassing the ISA for commercial operations threatens ocean governance and the common heritage of humankind.

“But consensus could not be yet found on Vanuatu’s proposal.”

Onus on miners
Profesor David Schoeman, of the Ocean Futures Research Centre at Queensland’s University of the Sunshine State, argues that the onus should be on prospective seabed miners to provide empirical evidence that their activities will not cause harm to the ocean ecosystem.

“In terms of the type of evidence that could be provided, the gold standard would be a before–after, control–impact (BACI) study of simulated [small-scale] mining operations at select locations, with appropriate sampling of biotic and abiotic elements of the ecosystem over periods covering the anticipated recovery time of the system”.

Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ)  — a high seas area stretching over 4500 km between Hawai’i and Kiribati across to Mexico — is poised to become the first commercial seabed mining operation in the world if the US subsidiary of the Canada-based The Metals Company (TMC) succeed in getting an US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, licence to mine, in contravention of the UNCLOS.

Their application is currently under review.

Dr Felix Mallin, senior researcher of the Italian National Research Council told IDN that a test done in CCZ a few years ago with one machine alerted the scientific community to the damage to marine life in the deep oceans.

“While any commercial operation would be orders of magnitude bigger. Even if the scars left by modern technology were smaller, we would be looking at a much bigger aggregate damage across vast tracts of ocean floor,” he warns.

“For the Pacific, the fisheries link and the impact it might have on economic life is the one that should worry people most. Some modelling has projected tuna biomass in CCZ rising in coming decades, by up to about a third for skipjack, as global warming pushes stocks east, right into the zone where mining might take place.

‘Industrialising the water’
“So, if we are unlucky, we could be industrialising the water exactly where the region’s most valuable renewable resource is heading.”

While the ISA Mining Code negotiations drag on, Dr Mallin argues that what is needed is an environmental harm independent baseline study in the Pacific, “which no one wants to fund”.

He notes that the prospective seabed mining companies have plugged enormous financial resources into developing technology and lobbying, and if commercial returns are not forthcoming quickly, the investors could flee.

Thus, they are exercising enormous pressure on small Pacific Island states.

Nauru, a nation of 12,00 people, which was exploited by phosphate miners in the 1990s resulting in an environmental disaster to the land, is now been targeted by the seabed miners.

In 2021, Nauru said it would grant a commercial-scale seabed mining approval in their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) — granted under the UNCLOS — to a subsidiary of TMC, which rang alarm bells at ISA, and triggered an urgency to come up with a Mining Code.

The ISA called for a pause while the code is been negotiated, another arm of the UN has come up with another treaty, the Boundaries Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) agreement which came into effect in January 2026.

Agreement ‘plugging gaps’
This agreement is designed to plug gaps in the UNCLOS, to safeguard seabeds outside a nation’s EEZ.

A controversy is currently brewing in the Cook Islands over US corporate designs to mine the seabed that belongs to the Pacific Islanders.

While Cook Islands has 240 sq km of land, it owns just under 2 million sq km of sea. Under UNCLOS it exercises full sovereign rights to explore, exploit, and manage the natural resources of the seabed and subsoil within its expansive EEZ.

Another Pacific nation, Kiribati’s EEZ covers over 3 million sq km via its far-flung islands, making it one of the largest oceanic territories in the world. They generate significant economic revenue through fishing access agreements with foreign nations to this zone.

It is believed that China is wooing Kiribati to gain future access to seabed mining in their EEZ.

It will be lucrative for such island nations to sell mining rights to the ocean seabed under their EEZ’s, but the problem is, no one knows what would be the long-term impacts of such mining on marine resources like fisheries, and the ocean environment in general.

“My fear is that places like Kiribati and the Cook Islands (with their small populations) will simply be bought off by US miners,” warns Michael Field, Auckland-based editor of South Pacific Tides.

“Pacific states will get just licensing money out of mining [as they do with fishing] but undersea minerals will not provide much in the way of jobs or revenue.

“Minerals, for example, extracted in the Cook Islands, will have to be refined, probably in Asia. The profits will come elsewhere but the environmental risks will be the exclusive property of Pacific people”.

Kalinga Seneviratne is a Sri Lankan-Australian journalist and international communication scholar. He is author of GeoPolitics and the Media in Asia and the Pacific: Pulling in Different Directions. This article was first published by IDN and is republished with permission.

Some years ago when I headed the Pacific Media Centre that I founded at Auckland University of Technology, we ran a postgraduate internship programme at the China Daily in Beijing.

It was part of a professional development exposure platform that also included Jakarta in Indonesia and the Manila in the Philippines, along with several media and university journalism campus outlets in the Pacific, including the University of the South Pacific.

There was nothing else comparable at other journalism programmes in New Zealand, and now there are no opportunities of this kind after the closure of the PMC in 2021.

• READ MORE: China’s growing grip on the Solomon Islands’ fragile media sector
• New Zealanders’ Perceptions of Asia 2026
• Other reports on China and media in the Pacific

But there was some eyebrow raising about our collaboration over China Daily’s soft diplomacy role at the heart of Chinese media as part of its growing outreach into the Pacific along with the global Belt and Road development policy.

Linked to our Asia Pacific journalism studies course with support by the Asia NZ Foundation, these three-month internships provided a good insight into how Chinese media operated for New Zealand journalists graduating with an eye on an Asia-Pacific media future.

“Advanced studies in comparative journalism and media globalisation” and the “political economy” of the countries studied were important parts of our course.

A glimpse of how some media operate outside of the Western bubble.

‘Polishers’ of reports
The journalistic role that the students faced while they were at the China Daily were initially of a subeditorial or copy-editing nature — they were called “polishers” of English-language reports. But as time when on, the opportunities grew, including reporting assignments, feature writing, and broadcasting.

On exchange, we also hosted professional journalists from the China Daily on our journalism papers. Overall the collaborative experience was positive. But the stakes are much higher now.

The China Daily was founded as an English daily in 1981 and although it is owned and published by the Chinese Communist Party’s Publicity Department — the “Propaganda Department” — it is not an “official mouthpiece” of the CCP establishment.

In 2011, it celebrated 30 years of publishing during our collaboration.

China Daily has usually enjoyed a more “liberal” face than most other Chinese state media.

For example, coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre was generally sympathetic to the student protests and at least one account claims that some of its journalists joined in the demonstrations. Also, the paper’s coverage of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2002-2004 was more fact-driven and balanced than the “official” state media.

China Daily has also published sponsored inserts in such global newspapers as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal in the US and Le Figaro in France.

Massive operation
Published out of a large headquarters in Chaoyang district, it is a massive operation by New Zealand standards, publishing the best part of a million copies daily, two-thirds of the copies via special editions reaching at least 150 countries.

But the most visible face of the newspaper in New Zealand and the Pacific these days is online at the China Daily website.

China Daily has often framed its Pacific outreach through official editorials, youth forums and diplomatic rebuttals. It publicises green energy ties, criticises “foreign alarmism regarding regional expansion”, and argues that organisations such as the Pacific Islands Forum must back the one-China policy.

As the Chinese media outreach into the Pacific has been growing in recent years, the rivalry between Beijing, Washington and Canberra has been ratcheted up with accusations of “editorial interference and influence” in some countries, such as Kiribati and Solomon Islands, at least until the change of government in Honiara in May when Matthew Wale ousted the pro-China leadership in a general election.

In an in-depth report just two months before the election, the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders warned that since Honiara had established diplomatic relations with China in 2019 the Pacific country had become a “strategic arena for Beijing’s influence”.

“By capitalising on the economic fragility of the local media sector, China has stepped up conditional funding, editorial partnerships and influence programmes to disseminate its narratives,” RSF said, calling on the Solomon Islands’ government to make the viability and independence of the media sector a priority.

Outreach invitation
The China Daily has stepped up its outreach initiatives in the Pacific lately as evidenced by an email to me four days ago inviting me to write an op-ed for the publication’s Opinion section. And the deadline is tomorrow.

Signed by an editor of the newspaper’s Opinion Department, the invitation said: “In early September, a high-level forum on media cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region will be held, bringing together senior media professionals and experts to discuss how the region’s media can better foster dialogue, trust and mutual understanding.

“We would be honoured to invite you to contribute an opinion article of around 800 words for publication in China Daily.”

The invitation continued:

“As a reference, we have outlined several possible directions:
1. In the age of AI, how can Asia-Pacific media rebuild public trust?
2. From ‘reporting Asia’ to ‘telling Asia’s stories’: Can Asia-Pacific media move beyond Western narrative frameworks?
3. From “information competition” to media cooperation: How can Asia-Pacific media promote greater mutual understanding across the region?

These topics are only suggestions. We would be delighted if you chose to write on another angle that better reflects your current research or interests.

“Rather than opening with abstract concepts or institutional frameworks, we encourage authors to begin with something timely and tangible: a recent news event, a real-world development, or an everyday experience that readers immediately recognise.

‘Drawing in’ readers
“Once readers are drawn in, the article can naturally expand to explain the broader policy, economic, technological or geopolitical forces behind it. In our experience, this narrative structure makes complex issues far more engaging for a broad international audience.

“The strongest pieces usually build around one central argument, moving from the concrete to the conceptual, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, and from today’s headline to its longer-term implications.

“We particularly value articles that combine the immediacy of current events with original analysis, clear storytelling and practical insights, rather than offering a comprehensive survey of every aspect of the topic.

“In addition to the written article, we would also be delighted if you could record a short video commentary of around one minute.

“A simple self-recorded video using a mobile phone would be perfectly fine. A vertical format with a clean and quiet background would be ideal; there is no need for professional filming or editing, as our team will handle the post-production.”

The invitation continued in the same vein.

Concluding, the email said: “As our production schedule is quite tight, we would greatly appreciate it if you could send us both the article and the video by August 25, 2026.”

My reply? You are reading it right here on Asia Pacific Report.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

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

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

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

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

Different parties. Different states. The same obedient genuflection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is outlawing majority opinion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not consultation. Capitulation, formalised in a press release.

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

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

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

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

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

Fear is the cheapest police force ever deployed.

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

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

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

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

For a shirt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Read the full report at Reporters Without Borders.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

NSW Police examined the Community Security Group (CSG) proposal and warned the Premier it would fracture the state. Chris Minns is doing it anyway.

He is backing armed members of a private organisation formed to protect one community patrolling public events. He calls it a trial. In public, it would resemble an armed Jewish police force.

Apply one test. Imagine armed private guards, trained overseas on a foreign government’s money, patrolling Eid prayers at Lakemba. How many minutes does that proposal survive?

READ MORE:

It would be denounced as sectarian militia building and killed before lunch.

Favouritism with a firearms licence
And that rejection would be correct. A privilege unthinkable for any other community is not security policy. It is favouritism with a firearms licence, the state deciding whose fear earns guns and whose fear earns batons.

The GSG is not legally a police force and would not acquire general police powers. That, precisely, is the problem. Minns proposes putting armed private guards into public space without the command, accountability, discipline or universal duty owed by NSW Police.

CSG operates under the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, combining security professionals and volunteers to protect Jewish life, institutions and events. Its licensed guards already carry firearms at approved Jewish schools and synagogues.

Extending that into public gatherings crosses the line between guarding private premises and wielding armed power among the public.

Pistol apartheid opposed by police
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson was unambiguous. Protecting every member of the community is the job of police. Granting one part of society exceptional armed privileges, he warned, would appear favouritism, fracture tenuous relationships and create friction between groups.

Police Association president Kevin Morton was even more blunt. Only NSW Police are charged with protecting the people of NSW. If one private organisation is allowed to arm in public, where does it stop?

Minns’s answer is: wherever the lobby demands.

Minns joined AIJAC’s inaugural Rambam Israel Fellowship in 2003, later celebrated as a “strong friend” by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. He entrenched Operation Shelter and rushed through protest restrictions later unanimously struck down by the Court of Appeal.

The double standard already played out on Sydney’s streets. Before peaceful protesters gathered to oppose Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Minns restricted protest, declared the visit a major event and mobilised more than 3000 police shifts, 500 at the demonstration.

His police kettled, punched, pepper sprayed and dragged protesters. They sprayed Muslims as they knelt in prayer.

They broke a 69-year-old woman’s back in four places.

Human Rights Watch found apparent excessive force. The LECC is investigating. Michael West Media understands civil claims are being prepared, with taxpayers facing potentially enormous damages.

The community whose worshippers his police pepper sprayed would never be handed its own armed guards. The community whose lobby cultivated the Premier for two decades is offered them.

That is not equal citizenship. It is a hierarchy, and Minns built it.

What of proper process?
A former Sydney CSG volunteer and Army officer lost his security clearance after a tribunal upheld ASIO’s assessment that he placed loyalty to Israel above Australia and was vulnerable to exploitation by Israeli intelligence.

His CSG training in Israel, financed by the Israeli government, involved tactical planning and firearms.

That case does not implicate every CSG member. It makes blind political trust grotesquely irresponsible. A competent government would examine the group’s governance, overseas training, intelligence links and command before expanding its armed reach. Minns asked for none of it.

Then the operational nightmare. Police responding to an attack could confront multiple armed private guards. Who commands them? How do police tell defenders from attackers in seconds?

Who answers when a bystander dies?

Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell questioned the fantasy that guns create safety.

Australia rejected that fantasy after Port Arthur.

NSW already has 250 armed response officers. If a Jewish event faces a credible armed threat, deploy them.

Jewish Australians deserve the full protection of the state, as every Australian does. What they do not need is a Premier handing them guns no other community would ever be allowed, and the isolation that comes with them.

Minns is not protecting equality. He is letting lobby power decide who may carry arms in public and who gets batons for praying.

This is political capture wearing a gun belt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

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

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

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

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

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: Don’t touch me.

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: Terrorist. You are a terrorist.

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

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

LOUI RIDI: Thank you for having me.

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

They’re not arresting them whatsoever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OREN ZIV: Yeah, thank you for having me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMENTARY: By Jeffrey Loewenstein

As Australia’s Royal Commission into Antisemitism grinds through its 9th and final “Hearing Block”, one is now able to make some assessments and judgments about the Commission, the Commissioner and the evidence presented to the Commission.

The Commission has being accused of being influenced by the usual suspects in the Jewish community and in turn the Executive Council of  Australia (ECAJ) has accused the Commission as having been

“hijacked” by Palestinian/Arab community interests.

The Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell was quick to stamp on that assertion.

While not being revealed here for the first time, there are certainly troubling aspects relating the Commission when one looks at the whole “picture”.

For starters, the firm of solicitors retained by the Commission to act as its lawyers are Gilbert+Tobin — the very firm selected by Federal Attorney-General Michelle Rowland (who, surprise, was a partner at the firm) without any open tenders being called.

The same firm acts for interests closely aligned with Israel such as the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC). The firm is even a sponsor of the organisation.

Then there is Mark Leibler, the chairman of the unelected AIJAC (Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council) and senior partner of his firm Arnold Bloch Leibler. Leibler is impeccably connected to senior politicians, acts for many of them and is closely identified with Israel, including a close relationship with Mossad.

Enter the Royal Commission and the Commission through the Attorney-General’s Department inviting persons wanting to make submissions but seeking assistance from a lawyer to do so. Here the Department partnered with a previously unknown, murky, and new,

pro-Zionist legal body to assist people in their submissions.

According to Deepcut News, the AG’s Department had “partnered with” this new pro-Israel group, the Jewish Centre for Law and Justice, to solicit submissions.

The Segal agenda
Finally, there is the Anti-Semitism Envoy, Jillian Segal, not only a one-time chair of lobby group ECAJ but also of the Australian-Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC). It has been clear from the outset that her agenda has been to be promote the Israeli Zionist and Jewish narrative.

She has made misleading assertions

and submissions to the Royal Commission — such as that there were only some 9000 people who marched across Sydney Harbour Bridge in protest during the March for Humanity (independent estimates put the figure at between 225,000 and 300,000 taking part), that those who did (like those in all other weekly marches around Australia for two and a half years) were antisemitic — and absurdly that anti-Semitism is “rampant” in Australia.

These were recurrent themes echoed by many of the witnesses selected, that the anti-genocide protest movement was antisemitic.

The Bell challenge
Enter the Royal Commissioner, Virginia Bell. It is not known to whom she spoke or what she might have read — one can make a good calculated guess — but without having heard a word of evidence or submissions from anyone, at  the outset of Day One of the public hearings, Bell announced that she would proceed on the basis of the IHRA definition even if it was in part contentious.

What makes this more than startling — coming from a lawyer and one-time High Court justice — is that there are serious critical criticisms of the IHRA, including from the lead draftsman of it who has publicly written that

the definition has been “weaponised”.

And that she has ignored the respected Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism (JDA). It is no criticism of the Royal Commissioner personally, but given she is not Jewish she has been prepared to either ignore, or disregard, the JDA — drafted by Jews no less! As noted in Wikipedia:

“The drafting of the declaration was initiated in June 2020 under the auspices of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem by eight coordinators, most of whom were university professors. Upon its completion, the declaration was signed by about 200 scholars in various fields and released in March 2021.”

Evidence untested
As the hearings have unfolded at least two things have been evident. There has been little or no cross-examination, or even gentle questioning, of witnesses. Whatever has been said — some of which has been absurd, such as the woman who testified that she felt “uncomfortable” seeing TV bulletins showing Gaza in the lift at her place of work — has simply been left out there.

Then, many important witnesses have been refused an appearance at the Commission. One example is the organiser of the Sydney Harbour Bridge March and many other marches.

As the Commissioner has been charged as part of the Commission to consider social cohesion, many who could speak to the subject have been refused attendance to give evidence, or simply not been called at the Commission.

The Australian public now awaits the Commissioner’s Report in December. However, in the real world outside the Commission, “interesting” things have occurred which, if nothing else,

ought to give the Commissioner more than pause for thought.

Two court decisions counter Zionist narrative
In the case of Wertheim v  Haddad [2025] FCA 720 (1 July 2025) — a case brought in the Federal Court by two senior stalwarts of the ECAJ, Justice Stewart acknowledged (as conceded by the Applicants) that political criticism of Israel, however inflammatory or adversarial, was not by its nature criticism of Jewish people in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity.

Justice Stewart distinguished between legitimate political discourse and antisemitism,

stating that, “The conclusion that it is not antisemitic to criticise Israel is the corollary of the conclusion that to blame Jews for the actions of Israel is antisemitic; the one flows from the other”.

Even more interesting is the recent decision by Justice Fagan in the NSW Supreme Court a few weeks ago. Fagan said the IHRA formulation did not reflect the established Australian meaning of antisemitism and described it as an attempt to “repurpose” the term to encompass both hatred of Jews and criticism of Israel.

Moreover, Fagan said the IHRA definition was

“detached from the reality of common usage”.

His Honour also said that “The … (IHRA) core text is so verbose and imprecise that it could not realistically be attributed to the ordinary, reasonably informed member of the Australian public.”

“Fagan was equally dismissive of the proposition that institutional adoption of the IHRA definition had altered the ordinary meaning of the word. He cited former NSW Supreme Court judge Sir Stephen Spedley, who had criticised the formulation because it

“fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite”.

The fact that governments and several institutions had adopted the IHRA wording did not, Fagan said, “change the established meaning of a word that has been in use in the English language for 150 years”.

Instead, he said, the IHRA formulation “propounds a concept different from that which ‘antisemitism’ has long been understood to describe and appropriates that word to the novel concept”.

Commissioner’s conundrum
Commissioner Bell is now going to be met with a conundrum — determine what has been put before her at the Commission by the usual pro-Israel suspects, including Segal — who would label any criticism of Israel or Australian supporters of Israel as antisemitic and that IHRA was the appropriate “definition” of what constituted antisemitism — or accept what is being decided by judges confronted with evidence in the real world.

Finally, and insidiously, before the Commissioner has even issued her report, let alone any recommendations, we see the following having already occurred:

1. Segal has been deploying her office, using taxpayer monies, together with Jewish organisations (Courage to Care being just one of them and backed and supported by the likes of the Gandel Foundation) — and also supported by government grants — out there in the guise of teaching what is antisemitism or guiding local councils around Australia into accepting that the IHRA is the way of determining what is antisemitic. Of concern is that these Jewish groups propounding this narrative are avowed and publicly pro-Israel Zionist organisations.
2. The Federal Education Minister has flagged that universities will be required to appropriately address antisemitism on campus on pain of being fined up to $2 million if found wanting in their efforts.

Be aware! The slippery-slope to curbing our freedoms of expression has begun.

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

But for Palestinians, this has simply become the norm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Justice must prevail. Justice will prevail.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has drawn an outraged reaction from critics after he unveiled sanctions against Tomoko Akane, president of the International Criminal Court.

In announcing the sanctions, Rubio described the ICC as “a corrupt and fatally politicised” institution that has allegedly “abused its authority and exceeded its mandate”.

Rubio said the ICC “has repeatedly attempted to assert authority over… the United States and other countries that have not consented to its jurisdiction,” which he said “sets a dangerous precedent for all nations”.

• READ MORE: It won’t be Trump who kills the ICC — it would be the court’s alleged supporters who refuse to take action to defend it
• US sanctions international criminal court president and prosecutor
• Other ICC reports

In addition to sanctioning Akane, Rubio said the US would also be sanctioning ICC senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Saye.

While Rubio did not mention what specific actions the ICC had taken to warrant such sanctions, a report in The Guardian noted that Saye was charged with investigating war crimes allegedly committed by Israel during its years-long assault on Gaza.

The Trump administration had previously sanctioned then-ICC prosecutor Karim Khan — who obtained arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant — and an additional eight ICC officials.

Israeli officials warned local media in May that the ICC may seek five more arrest warrants for ministers and senior military officials involved in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

US protecting Netanyahu
The social media account of Drop Site News accused Rubio of attacking the court solely to protect Netanyahu from war crimes prosecution, pointing out that “there is currently not a single American citizen under indictment, investigation, or facing an arrest warrant” from the ICC.

The sanctions earned the praise of the Israeli American Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which accused the ICC of conducting “politically motivated investigations and prosecutions targeting America and Israel”.

Rutgers Law School professor Adil Haque said the ICC sanctions showed the US was acting like a “rogue government” and engaged in “deranged behaviour”.

Michael Karanicolas, law professor at Dalhousie University, did not just point fingers at the US over the sanctions, but at US allies who have sat back as international institutions have come under assault.

When you are shameless, contemptuous of international law and morally bankrupt, you boast of disgrace as though it were an achievement.https://t.co/AHdY7iwyE3

— Elijah J. Magnier (@ejmalrai) August 18, 2026

“I’m no longer surprised by the Trump administration’s efforts to destroy the ICC,” wrote Karanicolas. “What I keep waiting for is any response from Canada or the European governments who ostensibly still believe in international law to defend these institutions.”

War correspondent and international political analyst Elijah Magnier delivered a withering rebuke of Rubio’s announcement.

“When you are shameless, contemptuous of international law, and morally bankrupt,” wrote Magnier, “you boast of disgrace as though it were an achievement”.

Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams. This article is republished under Creative Commons.

American President Donald Trump posted an image on his Truth Social today. An AI-generated image. It has the Strait of Hormuz circled, and above it, in large letters:

NEW U.S. TERRITORY

I wrote that line in capitals on purpose. Because this is not something said in a speech. This is a picture. One state is drawing an image and declaring another country’s sea lane its own territory.

Now the question is: does the Strait of Hormuz belong to America?

• READ MORE: Trump denies talks with Iran; Tehran claims US begging for negotiation
• Other War on Iran reports

No. To the north of the strait is Iran. To the south is Oman. America is an outsider sitting several thousand kilometres away.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi answered this on X today: “We will correct the delusions of this delusional man.”

Last night, Trump told Fox News journalist Trey Yingst: “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.”

Meaning he does not want Oman reaching any agreement with Iran in any way at all. And yet Oman is an American ally. There are American troops in Oman. Oman lets America use its bases.

That same Oman, simply for talking to Iran, is today having its existence discussed. The threat was made once before as well, this past May.

The Strait still closed
Now let us come to the calendar. The war began on February 28. In June, a memorandum of understanding was signed, with a 60-day deadline. February passed into March. April, May, June and July went as well.

Now it is August. Yesterday those 60 days ran out. There is no deal. The strait is still closed.

Iran’s Speaker, the man who led Tehran’s negotiating team in the peace talks, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said in Parliament today: “The Strait of Hormuz will not open until the blockade is lifted.”

He laid out the rest of the conditions too — frozen assets must be released, the oil embargo must be lifted, threats and military operations on all fronts must end.

Think about it. The one who is supposedly finished off is the one setting the conditions.
But? Yes, there is a big but here. Trump said yesterday: “The Strait is open, and the oil prices are coming down.”

And yet on that very same day Brent crude went past US$90. And Reuters reported today, citing preliminary Kpler data, that six commodity ships passed through the strait on Monday.

The 10-day average is 11. Six. That is what total control looks like.

Cheap oil and gasoline
Now look at the state of things inside Washington. Vice-President JD Vance said on Fox last Thursday that goal number one is: keep oil and gas cheap for Americans.

On Monday morning Trump posted that goal number one is stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

The Vice-President says one thing. The President says another. And Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on that same Fox programme today that the strait was still a conflict zone.

The President says total control. His own Secretary says conflict zone.

This morning UKMTO reported that a vessel was struck by an unknown projectile while transiting the strait. The engine room was damaged. One crew member was a casualty. The Omani Coast Guard has moved in to assist the rest.

Yes, you are reading that right. The Omani Coast Guard. The Oman that was threatened with bombs yesterday is today saving ships in those very waters.

But the question is: why is Oman not backing down even after all these threats?

Not backing down
Here I will give my own opinion instead of quoting anybody else.

Oman is not backing down because Oman has worked out the arithmetic. Geographically the southern shore of the strait belongs to Oman. Iran cannot run the strait without that shore, and America cannot sustain the blockade without it either.

When you hold the thing both sides need, threats stop working.

JUST NOW: President Trump declares Strait of Hormuz as US territory. pic.twitter.com/OXyskj6BXW

— Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial (@TruthTrumpPost) August 18, 2026

And the whole world is watching this scene. An allied state that gave its bases, that allowed troops, a relationship two centuries old — is being threatened with bombing simply for talking to its neighbour.

Trump has taken Venezuela. He wants to take Cuba. He wants Greenland too. He says all of it openly. And this same America goes around preaching peace, civilisation and democracy from country to country.

Write it down — after the Iran war the countries of the world will slowly pull themselves away from America. Europe has understood all this and is moving along its own path.

But the kings and sultans of the Gulf still do not understand. The way Oman is being glared at today, the day American interests take a hit, that same treatment will fall to them. The America they have kept close to protect their own thrones is the same America that will one day bring about their ruin.

I am closing today’s piece with something Trump himself said. About the Iranians he told Fox: “Good poker players, but they’re dying.”

Those who are dying stood in Parliament today and set the conditions. And the one with total control is generating a picture with AI and declaring territory.

When an empire has to draw a map to prove possession, you have to understand that in reality the possession is not in its hands.

Republished from Iran International.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More attacks were reported in the following days.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few months back, the story of the Victoria University of Wellington economist Dr Eleanor Vance and her 1978 paper “The Market Autocrat: Anticipating the Neoliberal Siege on Welfare States” was shared numerous times on my Facebook feed.

Soon after, the heartwarming story of former prime minister Jacinda Ardern donating hundreds of thousands of dollars from speaking fees to building shelters for the homeless was all over social media.

And yesterday, I read about a meeting between the radical leftist former president of Uruguay, Pepe Mujica, and Princess Diana sharing their “deepest reflections on life”.

• READ MORE: Who’s behind the flood of AI slop online? — The Listening Post

The three stories have two things in common: they’re positive stories aimed squarely at political progressives, and they’re complete bullshit: AI slop.

Worryingly, they were shared on my social media feeds by a former board member of RNZ, a former foreign correspondent, a former journalism lecturer, and the editor of a professional trade magazine.

I’ve just read a tearjerker of a note here on Substack about Rachel Foster, a Vermont baker who took to delivering a blueberry muffin each Friday to a customer in a hospice. Gemini tells me it’s AI slop. (Yes, there’s an irony in the fact that by far the quickest way to identify AI slop is to ask an AI.)

That note has received more than 27,700 likes and 780 restacks.

Confession time
And, confession time, a year or so ago, I might have shared a piece of viral AI slop when I first heard about Burkina Faso’s leader Captain Ibrahim Traore and his defiant anti-imperialism. I say might because there were some legitimate stories among the flood of AI-generated video and text stories that filled my social media feeds.

Rosa Cafferty, in her paper A Digital Divide: A Breeding Ground for Hate, explains how social media’s need for eyeballs for its advertisers has seen it using algorithms to cluster people into bubbles and echo chambers.

“Algorithms exploit vulnerabilities, prioritising sensational, emotional, and divisive content which thrives on outrage and extremity. As a result, posts evoking anger, outrage, and fear gain far more visibility than those promoting reflection or nuance.”

That’s undoubtedly true but something else is going on here. People are sharing heartwarming and inspiring stories “promoting reflection” and “nuance” — that are completely bogus. If nothing else, it reveals there’s a demand for stories that give people hope.

My Facebook feed is, like everyone else’s, populated by my “friends” — people who not surprisingly share many of my values and interests.

If I were, say, an anti-abortion supporter of one rule for all, corporal punishment, and a tough-on-crime approach, no doubt my “friends” and the algorithms would be dishing up an entirely different AI menu — different but still most likely a bogus one.

The business logic of algorithms driving division and anger, described by Cafferty, is the same logic that drives commercial media: maximising the number of eyeballs that can be fed paid adverts.

Same thing with a twist
The same thing is at play here but with a twist. While Meta, X, and YouTube have traditionally platformed content created by the mainstream media, cannibalising their advertising base in the process, now Meta is paying creators to produce content. Content that doesn’t need to meet any standards of accuracy or truth.

The Jacinda Ardern slop was posted by a page called Kindness in Power. Until recently it was wall-to-wall AI-generated stories celebrating Ardern, many of which went viral. It currently has 5800 followers – including four I know, one of whom is a published writer.

Choosing Ardern with her massive following — both in Aotearoa and internationally — and her much smaller but highly motivated haters was a masterstroke. Glowing stories about Ardern are shared and commented on equally by those who love her and those who don’t and want to cry hypocrisy (and much worse).

Kindness in Power has — for some reason — pivoted from Ardern to stories about the All Blacks:

BREAKING: Former All Blacks Standout Identified as a Primary Suspect in Shocking S.ex.ual Ass.ault Investigation…

SHOCKING NEWS: The All Blacks have just announced that the team has parted ways with one of its veteran players…

There’s still the occasional political post but without the kindness:

BREAKING 30 MINS AGO: Chris Hipkins and Toni Grace have just delivered a massive bombshell announcement, sending shockwaves throughout New Zealand and leaving supporters…

Not a winning plan
It’s not a winning game plan. That story about Jacinda Ardern and the homeless was shared and liked thousands of times; the All Black ones rarely get liked more than a handful of times.

“Shady” who shared the story about the kind-hearted Vermont baker ended the note by inviting readers to subscribe to “see more kindness stories like this”.

Does Shady know it’s a made-up story — probably. Should Shady know — definitely.

Another Shady post is lifted directly from Moonlight_myths on X, which describes itself as: Story sanctuary — Quote haven — bite-size novels and pure vibe.

Anyone on X looking at Moonlight_myths’ bio is aware the story is fiction, while thousands of commenters on Substack believe it to be real.

Shady has 23,000 subscribers on Substack — some paying the US$6.50 a month — and tens of thousands of followers across other social media platforms.

There’s a link at the bottom of the President Mujica–Princess Di Facebook post that takes you to a page that explains it was an AI-generated “what if” story. (I doubt anyone who had clicked on that link would bother sharing the article. It makes a piss-poor fairy tale.)

Request to Deepseek
I asked Deepseek — the Chinese AI that’s apparently slightly less environmentally disastrous than its US competitors — to write me a short story based on an imaginary meeting between the princess and the president. In less than five seconds this is some of what it spat out.

A princess trapped in a broken marriage arrived seeking help, but a former guerrilla fighter, living without luxuries, uttered a phrase that left her trembling: “Freedom costs, but slavery costs more.” Imagine a world where a British royal princess and a former Uruguayan guerrilla fighter shared their deepest reflections on life. It seems impossible, but it happened… At the presidential residence, José Mujica, then a senator, sipped mate in the garden while reviewing some documents. His hands, calloused from years of working the land, firmly held the traditional gourd.

Sure, there are giveaways for fans of Mujica: he never lived at the presidential residence, preferring a shack on his small farm. And the style has the ickiness of so much AI inspirational slop. And it plagiarised the other AI produced story.

But five seconds! Facebook creators can literally churn out hundreds of these stories an hour and Meta will pay them for it.

The ABC investigation last week revealed Meta is paying white nationalists with neo-Nazi links and an anti-vaxxer to create content.

Meta declined to comment but it seems the company is agnostic about whether its creators are peddling hate or spreading fake stories of hope — as long as they’re capturing eyeballs.

And AI are just as quick at churning out fake images. An author of books on heterodox economics — not someone you’d expect to be fooled easily — recently shared this photo of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni draped in the Palestinian flag.

The image and others like it have gone viral. The world is desperate, it seems, for a woman leader of courage to call out the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Sadly, Meloni, a fan of Mussolini, isn’t that woman.

The Jewish president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, is a leader who has spoken out repeatedly against the genocide, but weirdly it’s barely reported.

It’s not only content creators wanting to make a quick buck using AI to generate images. A post in support of Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury recently included a photo of him smoking a pipe out of his cheek.

And a group opposing the building of AI data centres in New Zealand posted this obviously AI-generated image a week or so ago.

Already passed the point?
Now it feels as if we’re still at a point where the sceptical can spot AI slop. But with AI developing at an incredible pace, who knows how long that will last and whether we’d know if we had already passed that point.

The New York Times is reporting today that (gift link): “The digital sewage heap has sprawled across tech platforms, cheapening meaningful content and polluting the information ecosystem, as chatbots and video generators continue to advance.”

And it reports that across the internet, tech companies are undertaking a generative waste detox.

We can be sure that the detox is being undertaken for one reason and one reason only: the inundation of the internet with seemingly unlimited AI slop is bad for business. But it seems what’s bad for one business is good for another: Meta.

In the 1960s the American Bible Society published Good News for Modern Man in the hope of spreading the Christian message amongst the masses; today social media platforms are full of AI-generated fake good news stories (as well as stories of hate and pretty much any shit you can imagine) all driven by the state religion: capitalism.

It’s bad news for humanity, and one thing we can all do is stop sharing it and for everyone’s sake stop using it to produce second rate writing and even worse images.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and an Asia Pacific Report contributor. His Substack is Towards Democracy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Indonesia marks the 81st anniversary of its independence today — August 17 —  the republic has much to celebrate.

Over eight decades, Indonesia has transformed itself from a newly independent archipelago into one of the world’s largest democracies and economies, holding together an extraordinarily diverse nation across thousands of islands.

But anniversaries are not only moments for celebration. They are also moments for reflection.

• READ MORE: Indonesia at 81: Whose sovereignty are we celebrating?
• Indonesia’s magnitude 7.7 quake kills at least 51, displaces thousands
• Other Laurens Ikinia articles

From Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost region, one question deserves particular attention:

After 81 years of independence, what do development, equality and “Merdeka” (“freedom”) really mean for Indigenous Papuans?

Recent demographic figures make that question increasingly urgent.

Population data from May–June 2026 puts the population across the land of Papua — Indonesia’s six Papuan provinces — at 5,797,499 people. Of these, 2,283,703 are recorded as Orang Asli Papua (OAP), or Indigenous Papuans, in Indonesia’s centralised Population Administration Information System.

That is roughly 39.4 percent of the total population.

This could mean everyone outside that category is non-Papuan. Administrative records may include Indigenous Papuans whose status has not been properly identified. Better verification is essential.

Still, the figures point to a profound demographic transformation. Indonesia, at 81, needs to talk seriously about what that means.

Independence and Indigenous dignity
Indonesia’s independence was founded on a powerful principle: people should live with dignity and have a meaningful say over their future. That principle matters for Indigenous peoples too.

Around the world, Indigenous rights increasingly mean more than formal equality. They include protecting cultures, languages, customary institutions, and ancestral lands, while ensuring meaningful participation in decisions that affect Indigenous communities. Papua belongs in that conversation.

Indigenous Papuans are not simply another category in a population database. They represent hundreds of communities with distinct languages, customary systems, histories and relationships with ancestral territories.

Papua is among the most culturally and linguistically diverse places on Earth.

Protecting that diversity should not be seen as an obstacle to Indonesian nation-building. It should be one of its achievements.

After 81 years, Indonesia should be confident enough to recognise that national unity and Indigenous rights are not contradictory. A strong nation should be able to protect both.

Papua’s quiet demographic transformation
Papua has changed dramatically in recent decades. Roads now connect communities once accessible mainly by air or on foot. Towns have expanded. New provinces and districts have emerged. Airports, ports, telecommunications, mining, plantations and government institutions have transformed the economic landscape.

Alongside this development has come another powerful force: internal migration from other parts of Indonesia.

Migration itself is not the enemy. Many migrants have lived in Papua for decades. Some were born there. They teach in schools, work in hospitals, operate businesses, serve in government and contribute to local economies. The real issue is not whether non-Papuans should live in Papua.

The question is whether rapid demographic change, combined with unequal access to education, capital and economic networks, could gradually weaken Indigenous Papuans’ ability to shape the economic and social future of their ancestral homeland.

Across Papua’s growing urban centres, economic competition is intensifying. Land values are rising, businesses are expanding, and new opportunities are emerging. But people do not enter that competition from the same starting line.

A young Indigenous entrepreneur from Papua’s highlands may compete with someone raised with better schools, stronger business networks, easier access to banking and greater family capital. Calling that competition “equal” does not make the starting conditions equal.

What has Special Autonomy delivered?
Indonesia has already recognised that Papua requires a distinctive policy approach. That recognition lies at the heart of Special Autonomy, or Otonomi Khusus Papua.

Special Autonomy was intended, among other things, to give Papua greater authority and resources while strengthening the protection and empowerment of Indigenous Papuans.
More than two decades later, however, the important question is no longer simply how much money has been allocated. It is what that money has achieved.

How many Indigenous Papuan doctors, engineers, teachers, academics and entrepreneurs have been produced? How many OAP-owned companies have become competitive businesses? How many Indigenous Papuans hold senior positions in industries operating in their ancestral territories?

And how many children in remote Papuan communities now receive an education comparable to children elsewhere in Indonesia? These should be among the measures defining the next generation of Special Autonomy.

Papua does not simply need more government spending. It needs measurable Indigenous empowerment.

Land is more than an economic asset
Demographic change becomes particularly sensitive when it intersects with Indigenous land. For many Papuan communities, land is not simply property. It is identity. Mountains, forests, rivers and valleys carry genealogical, spiritual and historical relationships stretching across generations.

Modern development, however, also gives land commercial value. A road can turn customary territory into valuable real estate. An administrative centre creates demand for housing. Plantations transform forests into economic assets. Mining can turn mountains into resources worth billions.

In these situations, Indigenous communities may find themselves negotiating with institutions and corporations possessing far greater financial, legal and political resources. That imbalance cannot be ignored.

Indigenous rights should therefore become a central pillar of Papua’s development model, rather than something discussed only after disputes emerge.

Customary communities need stronger legal protection, transparent consultation and meaningful participation in decisions affecting their territories. Development should happen with Indigenous Papuans, not merely around them.

Better data, better policy
The 2026 figures expose another challenge: Indonesia needs more transparent and credible Indigenous demographic data.

The figure of 2.28 million registered OAP should be the beginning of the conversation, not its conclusion. A census is needed.

Indonesia should be able to answer basic questions: How many OAP live in each province and district? What are their education and health outcomes? How many attend university or own businesses? How much customary land remains under Indigenous control? And how is internal migration changing Papua’s demographic landscape?

Without reliable data, policy risks becoming guesswork. Special Autonomy cannot be properly evaluated if the government from the central to regional level cannot measure whether Indigenous Papuans themselves are progressing.

Education is the real battleground
Ultimately, Papua’s future will not be determined by population numbers alone. It will be determined by human capacity.

A population can be numerically smaller yet remain culturally, economically and politically strong when its people are educated, healthy and economically productive. That is why education should become the centrepiece of Indonesia’s next Papua strategy.

Consider a Papuan child born today in Puncak, Intan Jaya, Yahukimo, Nduga or Pegunungan Bintang districts. One day, that child may compete for a university place or professional job with students from Jakarta, Surabaya, Makassar or Yogyakarta.

But that competition begins long before the university entrance examination. It begins with maternal nutrition and early childhood development. It continues through primary education, teacher quality, electricity, internet access, books, laboratories and healthcare.

If those foundations are radically unequal, the final competition cannot reasonably be called equal.

The most powerful affirmative-action policy Indonesia can pursue is therefore not simply reserving positions for Indigenous Papuans. It is preparing Papuans so well that they can compete for those positions with confidence.

Papua does not need permanent dependency. Papua needs capacity.

A new meaning of Merdeka
Every August 17, the word “Merdeka” echoes across Indonesia.

It means freedom. But 81 years after independence, perhaps freedom should also be measured by whether people have the capacity to shape their own future.

For Indigenous Papuans, Merdeka should mean that a child born in a remote village has a realistic pathway to become a doctor, engineer, professor, entrepreneur or national leader.
It should mean communities can participate in development without losing their ancestral land. It should mean Papuan languages and cultures survive modernisation rather than becoming its casualties.

And it should mean demographic change does not translate into cultural, economic or political marginalisation.

This is not an argument against migration, nor a call to divide Papuans from other Indonesians. It is a call for Indonesia to make the promise of independence meaningful for one of its most distinctive Indigenous populations.

The demographic figures should not create fear. They should create urgency.
Indonesia still has an opportunity to build a model in Papua where economic growth, national integration and Indigenous rights reinforce rather than undermine one another.

That means better demographic data, stronger protection of customary land, investment in education and healthcare, affirmative economic opportunities, accountable Special Autonomy institutions and meaningful OAP participation in decisions affecting Papua.

Ultimately, Indonesia’s Papua policy should be judged by a simple question: Are Indigenous Papuans becoming stronger or weaker in their own homeland?

By Indonesia’s centenary in 2045, Papua will look very different. Its cities will be larger, its infrastructure more extensive and its economy more closely connected to Indonesia and the wider Asia-Pacific.

But infrastructure alone will not define success.

The real test will be whether Indigenous Papuans stand at the centre of that transformation — educated, healthy, economically competitive, culturally confident and capable of shaping their communities’ future.

A nation can build roads, airports, ports and cities. The greater achievement is building a country where development does not require Indigenous peoples to disappear.

Eighty-one years after independence, Indonesia has an opportunity to prove that Papua can modernise without losing Papuans — and that “Merdeka” can mean progress without erasure.

Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Pacific Studies, Indonesian Christian University, Jakarta. He is also an honorary member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) in Aotearoa New Zealand, and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

The Palestinian solidarity movement in Fiji is calling for greater transparency over the security arrangements surrounding the Israeli Embassy.

Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) coordinator Shamima Ali, representing the movement, questioned what specific threat had prompted the heightened police presence around the embassy after police confirmed the additional security was provided at the request of the embassy.

Ali said the public had a right to know why additional security measures had been put in place.

• READ MORE: Palestine supporters stage pickets in 3 cities in Fiji, NZ protesting against new Israeli embassy
• Other Israeli embassy in Fiji reports

“The security arrangements currently in place are unprecedented,” Ali said.

“We believe these resources would be better directed toward serving the needs of Fijians, particularly at a time when many communities continue to express concerns about delays and inadequate responses from the police.

“We call on the Police Commissioner and the government to explain the necessity of these extraordinary measures.”

She said the Palestinian solidarity movement had also encountered heightened police monitoring during its peaceful gatherings and demonstrations.

‘Stop chanting’ call at vigils
Ali claimed participants at vigil gatherings had on some occasions been instructed to stop chanting or remove banners supporting Palestine on “security” and “safety grounds”.

However, she said police had never explained to the movement what specific threat the security measures were intended to address.

“We also strongly reject any suggestion that members of the Palestinian solidarity movement pose a threat to public safety.

“As Fijians, we also have a right to know what specific threat has been identified against the embassy.”

Ali said the movement was not aware of any specific threat against the embassy and questioned why it appeared to have greater security than other embassies that had also been the subject of public protests.

• The Israeli Embassy was opened in June and is across the street from the FWCC.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

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

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

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

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

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) August 14, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They are doing that because they are scared.

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

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

“So let’s keep reminding them.”

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

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

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

“We cannot forget them ever.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maritime intelligence firm Kpler counted 13 vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday.

The number is small. But the number is not the story.

The story is that nine of those 13 took the Iranian-approved route. The route American warned ships against using.

• READ MORE: Trump says he will declare Hormuz US territory ‘pretty soon’
• Other war on Iran reports

Now the question is: Trump says the strait is “under our control”. So whose instructions are the ships following?

The answer is in the arithmetic. Sixty-nine percent of them ignored the American warning and entered Iran’s lane.

That is not a statement. Not a claim. That is a vote.

And the vote was cast by people with hundreds of millions of dollars floating on that water.

Plain language
CNN put it in plainer language. They wrote that the figure does not reflect Trump’s repeated insistence this week that the strait is “open” and under American control.

But today’s article will not only be about counting ships. Because Iran has done something on paper as well, and it has barely been discussed.

In May, Iran created an institution — the Persian Gulf Strait Authority.

According to a report by the US Congressional Research Service, Iran declared that no vessel may pass through the Strait of Hormuz without a valid passage permit issued by this authority.

Notice what that is. It is not a threat. It is administration.

A threat can stop a ship, but build a permit system and you never need to stop one. The ship comes to you and asks for permission.

And this is where Iran’s strategy becomes visible. Early in the war, Iran attacked vessels. That was a display of strength, but it carried a cost — every attack drained away the world’s sympathy.

A legal face
Now Iran attacks less and sells permits instead. Same result, but the face of it is legal.

There is one more line in the CRS report, and it is the foundation of this strategy. Iranian leaders claim it was the June memorandum of understanding that granted them the right to administer shipping through this strait.

Which is Iran saying:”We did not seize this power. You signed it over to us on paper.”

And what Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on June 23 is now coming true. He said “management of the strait will never return to the way it was before the war”.

But, yes, there is a big “but” here. And it would be unjust not to say it.

That same CRS report notes that Iran’s claim runs counter to geographic reality, because the Strait of Hormuz comprises the territorial waters of both Iran and Oman.

Which means Iran is not legally the sole owner of this strait. On paper, Iran’s claim is weak.

Iran’s lane followed
But paper and water are not the same thing. Whatever the law says, on Thursday nine ships followed Iran’s lane.

Now to America’s answer.

On Friday, the US Treasury issued new sanctions. The targets were Iran’s Shahr Bank, along with individuals, exchange houses and companies spread across several countries, accused of helping Iran move hundreds of millions of dollars clandestinely.

The Treasury said itself that this was its eighth set of sanctions in 2026 against Iran’s alleged shadow-banking system.

Eighth. Eight times in one year.

Now the question is: if seven did not work, why would the eighth?

That is the problem with sanctions. The first one lands a blow. The second raises the pressure. But what does the eighth do?

The eighth only announces that the previous seven did not work.

The new normal
And the strangest thing of all is the oil price. CNN reported that despite no sign of the war ending, and despite traffic through the strait staying low, oil prices are falling.

So you can see for yourselves. The market is no longer listening to war news. The market has decided this is the new normal.

And once something becomes “normal”, the urgency to change it fades.

Meanwhile, on Thursday evening, Abu Dhabi’s state oil company ADNOC said two of its vessels were attacked while transiting Hormuz. No injuries.

Who attacked them? ADNOC did not say. No group claimed responsibility.

Since the war began, 15 ADNOC vessels have been attacked in total. One crew member killed, 20 injured.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is an American ally. And the ally’s ships are burning every week.

Now a word on something that touches South Asian countries too.

Floating Iranian oil
Early in this war, America adopted a tactic — temporarily lifting sanctions on roughly 140 million barrels of Iranian oil already floating at sea, so that supply would rise and prices would fall.

America’s Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, told Fox News at the time that this oil had previously gone mainly to China. Now it could go elsewhere. He named the places — such as India, Bangladesh or elsewhere

He added that sanctions on the banks would remain in place, so Iran would not see a cent of that money.

Think about what that means. Iran’s oil gets sold, South Asian countries get to buy it, and Iran does not get the money.

Developing countries are offered cheap oil as bait while Iran’s own asset is released onto the market, and the proceeds stay locked inside the American banking system.

That is not trade. That is imperial accounting.

Here I will not quote anyone else. I will give you my own opinion.

Paper ‘control’ v ships moving
The shape of this war is becoming clear now. Everything Trump is doing is on paper. Sanctions, Truth Social posts, declarations of “total control”.

Everything Iran is doing is on the water. Which route, whose permission, which ship and when.

In March, Trump called on China, France, Japan, South Korea and Britain to send ships, “let us open the strait together”. Nobody answered.

Five months on, America has drawn a route through that same strait, and the ships are avoiding it and choosing Iran’s.

Control written on paper, or ships moving on water — which of the two is real power?

Let me finish with the number I started with.

Thirteen ships. Nine on Iran’s route.

Trump says the strait is ours. The ships’ captains are saying something else.

And at sea, the captain has the last word.

Republished from Iran International under Creative Commons.

Counsel for Fiji-British journalist Charlie Charters has been ordered by High Court judge Justice Pita Bulamainaivalu to serve a motion seeking the return of the 7 electronic devices seized by police on the police chief today.

The motion was filed after police re-seized the devices last Friday under a fresh search warrant, despite an earlier Magistrates Court order for the devices to be returned to Charters’ solicitor, Seforan Fatiaki, by 1pm.

Charters’ counsel, Juleen Fatiaki, told the High Court that Seforan Fatiaki had called to the police CID about 1pm last Friday, when the fresh search warrant was issued.

• READ MORE: Charters’ lawyers cite constitutional protection for journalistic sources
• Other Fiji media freedom reports

She said when Fatiaki was served with the warrant, they put police on notice that they were invoking Section 1(3) of the Criminal Procedure Act, stating that information on the devices was confidential and privileged.

Justice Bulamainaivalu, who joined the proceedings online from Labasa, questioned whether the magistrate who signed the warrant was aware of the High Court’s stay order on the FICAC proceedings.

Juleen Fatiaki said she was not aware and confirmed that Magistrate Sufia Hamza signed the warrant.

She also said that they had only been able to serve the motion to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions after receiving the files back from court this morning and had not been able to serve it on the Police Commissioner.

A hearing on the return of the devices will be held on Monday.

Meanwhile, DPP counsel Alisha Lal told the court they were appearing only as a friend of the court.

Earlier, Fiji Times journalist Anish Chand reported that Charters’ lawyers would tell the High Court that the confidentiality of journalistic sources was protected by Fiji’s Constitution and common law in their challenge over the re-seizure of his electronic devices.

Charters said the devices contained confidential journalistic material, information capable of identifying sources and communications with his legal advisers.