COMMENTARY: By John Hobbs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

STATEMENT | “Palestine must not disappear.”

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

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

— The Elders (@TheElders) July 17, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EDITORIAL: By The Daily Blog editor and publisher Martyn Bradbury

Daily Blog editor and publisher Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury yesterday declared he has been served “legal directives . . . under pain of 6 months imprisonment or a $5000 fine to censor 4 blogs”.

He also declared:

“We can’t tell you who is doing this.

“We can’t tell you why it’s being done.

“We can’t tell you how it’s being done.

“And we can’t tell you what has been censored.”

Today he has declared that he is willing to go to prison for Free Speech when he is due to appear in the Auckland District Court. His reasons why?

This is what he said in a speech given at this year’s Keith Locke Memorial Debate on Free Speech last month.

Moderator: Jane Kelsey
For the Affirmative: Martyn Bradbury (leader), Verity Johnson, Thomas Beagle
For the Negative: Simon Wilson (leader), Anjum Rahman, Yasmine Serhan

… you either believe in Free Speech or you don’t.

I do.

I can’t tell you who is doing this.

I can’t tell you what has been censored.

I can’t tell you why.

I can’t tell you what.

I can’t tell you how.

I am making it clear in court tomorrow.

The Bradbury Group is booked to go live 8pm on Tuesday – but IF I am in prison, Matthew Tukaki from Waatea will step in as host.

You either believe in Free Speech or you don’t.

On June 6, I published a Political Bytes post criticising the mis-named “Free Speech Union” (FSU) for opposing the exercise of free speech, in the context of fulfilling his duty of care for student wellbeing, by Otago University vice-chancellor Grant Robertson when raising a personal concern: Opposing free speech in practice.

In my words:

“The self-styled Free Speech Union has complained to Otago University over its vice-chancellor Grant Robertson both expressing his personal views on a NZ First parliamentary bill seeking to define what is a woman and what is a man and for his assessment on the 2026 Budget as it impacted universities.”

• READ MORE: Martyn Bradbury says he faces prison over blog posts; Free Speech Union ‘not across’ it
• The Daily Blog: We have secretly been taken to court and I’m facing 6 months in prison: We can’t tell you who, how, why or what
• The Daily Blog: Why I am willing to go to prison tomorrow for Free Speech — Martyn Bradbury

I concluded the post as follows:

“Attacking Grant Robertson for exercising his duty of care for student wellbeing crassly exposes the cloak of hypocrisy that the Free Speech Union hides beneath.

“It would be the honest thing for the Free Speech Union to rename itself as the ‘Selective Free Speech Union’ or the ‘Free Speech for the Political Right Union’. Just saying!”

Sinister FSU attack on investigative journalist
As sceptical as I was about the credibility of the FSU’s claimed commitment to genuine free speech, I never expected nearly two months later its sinister attack on an investigative journalist for being investigative in her questions to Health Minister Simeon Brown.

The attack was reported (paywalled) by The Post deputy editor Luke Malpass (July 28):  FSU attacks reporter for asking health minister questions.

The context was what I have previously described in my health systems blog Otaihanga Second Opinion (July 2) as a purging of the Medical Council leadership: Health minister purges Medical Council leadership.

At the heart of the issue
At the heart of the issue was the minister’s express ideological opposition to the council’s recognition of the importance of doctors understanding “cultural competence” or “safety” when caring for and treating patients.

But it went further. Brown is proposing a law change requiring the Medical Council and the other health regulatory authorities, such as the Nursing Council, to carry out government policies.

In other words, end the arms-length independent relationship between health practitioner regulatory authorities and government by enabling political interference in their work thereby undermining their prime statutory purpose of ensuring public safety.

Daring to ask questions
Luke Malpass reports that the day before publication of his article (Monday, July 27) The Post’s national affairs editor Andrea Vance emailed a series of questions to the Health Minister about his appointment of Dr Manoja Kalupahana to the Medical Council.

This had been announced on the Beehive website earlier that day (gazetted the previous Friday).

In his words:

“Before an answer was received and within three hours of the query going to the minister, the Free Speech Union issued a press release attacking Vance for even asking the questions.”

Vance’s questions were about the process of the appointment, rather than the suitability or political views, of Dr Manoja Kalupahana.

Again in his words:

“They focused on the appointment process: whether Brown was aware of her previous public profile before appointing her to the Medical Council; whether officials, Health New Zealand or the council were consulted; whether any concerns were raised about public confidence; and whether the minister had discussed the appointment with the Free Speech Union.”

These were all good questions by a quality investigative journalist. Consequently it was surprising that later the same day the FSU, to whom the minister’s office had promptly forwarded her questions, released a media statement stridently attacking her for her action.

Malpass described FSU’s attack as accusing Vance of an attempt to put Dr Kalupahana’s “lawful political views” on trial and warning against ideological tests for public appointments.

However, none of Vance’s questions involved Dr Kalupahana’s political views. They were about the appointment process, including a suspicion about FSU involvement.

For context, in 2023, Dr Kalupahana’s social media activity became the subject of a workplace complaint and media scrutiny.

A Stuff reporter had contacted her seeking comment about her online posts and their relevance to her role as a doctor. However, no story was published.

Nevertheless Malpass reports that the controversy “…became a cause célèbre for the FSU, which argued it showed health professionals could face consequences for expressing lawful opinions outside their clinical roles”.

Also published on July 28 was Andrea Vance’s own paywalled piece on the issue providing further context and background: Doctor at centre of ‘free speech’ row appointed to Medical Council.

Dr Kalupahana was, in fact, one of four new announced ministerial appointments to the council. As it turns out, she is a member of the FSU. Another doctor appointed to the council, Dr Roderick Mulgan, is on the FSU governing board and former president.

The fallout from the controversy over the Health Minister’s appointment process and FSU’s defence of it continued in Stuff (as the owner of The Post) later the same day with an article by senior political reporter Anneke Smith: Health minister accused of using ‘personal troll farm’ to attack reporter.

And there is more
The FSU got it badly wrong. Andrea Vance is not one for being intimidated into silence.

On July 29, she followed up with another paywalled article that revealed political intrigue (arguably scheming) into the escalating controversy: FSU lobbies health minister over regulating doctors.

In her words:

“A former chairperson of the Free Speech Union (FSU) — who lobbied Health Minister Simeon Brown over proposed changes to how doctors are regulated — has been appointed to the Medical Council.

“Roderick Mulgan, who remains a board member of the FSU, was one of four new members appointed to the council by Brown last week. That includes senior Auckland anaesthetist Manoja Kalupahana, whose anonymous social media activity became the focus of a high-profile FSU campaign. The others are Derek Sherwood and Andie Cook.

“The appointments come as Brown moves to give ministers greater powers over how doctors are regulated and the rules they must follow. He has also overhauled the Medical Council, declining to reappoint its chairperson and deputy in June.

“In May 2025, Mulgan and Kalupahana met with Brown in Auckland as part of an FSU delegation to discuss concerns about freedom of speech and conscience rights in healthcare, including cases involving doctors facing disciplinary action.

“A Health Ministry briefing prepared for the meeting identified Mulgan as FSU chairperson at the time. It recorded that the organisation wanted to discuss its correspondence with the Minister, the Government’s consultation on health workforce and patient prioritisation, and cases before the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal.

“The group argues health regulators have moved beyond their role by requiring practitioners to engage with particular views on issues such as Māori health inequities, colonisation and gender.

“The meeting was requested by the FSU and included then chief executive Jonathan Ayling, and liaison adviser Stephanie Martin.”

Spilling the ideological beans

Spilling the beans is an often used idiom for when secret information is released, usually inadvertently.

In a paywalled article published in NZ Doctor (July 28) health journalist Alan Perrott reports a possibly hyped FSU spilling its own ideological beans.

Perrott attributes this “bean-spilling” (my word, not his) to the above-mentioned Dr Mulgan (former FSU president and current board member) as follows:

“Stating that Māori are ‘disadvantaged because of systemic biases in the system’ represents a ‘well-known hard-left view’, says specialist GP and newly appointed Medical Council member Roderick Mulgan.

“Such a view holds ‘that there are nebulous biases in the world and in the health system that somehow or other undermine the welfare of Māori just because they are Māori,’ Dr Mulgan says.

“Dr Mulgan made the comments to The Platform host Sean Plunket on 25 March while discussing three draft consultation documents on cultural safety and competence and hauora Māori released by the Medical Council. 

“Dr Mulgan, also a lawyer and international director of the Free Speech Union, is one of four new appointments confirmed yesterday by Health Minister Simeon Brown, six weeks after Mr Brown changed the authority’s leadership. 

“On the consultation documents, Dr Mulgan says: ‘Whether or not these perspectives [as laid out in the documents] are valid or reasonable, it is highly contested. 

“’So, there are plenty of people who will say yes they are, and there will be plenty of people saying no they’re not, and it is not for regulatory bodies to pick sides in a contested ideological debate and mandate that its members, by reason of being members, must support these perspectives.’ ”

Dr Mulgan is at the very least as ideological as those he criticises are. The fact that he used the hard rightwing The Platform to make his claims is indicative.

Linking colonialisation in different ways to Māori health inequities is not confined to a  “hard-left” (whatever that means), well-known or otherwise.

While this link is certainly not a unanimous view, it is a view shared by many well-beyond the “hard left”, including those of “soft-left”, liberal and compassionate conservative opinions.

Perrott includes a response to Dr Mulgan from another specialist GP, Dr Rawiri McKree Jansen:

“…the statements made by his colleague are ‘troubling and disturbing’ and in denial of systemic biases within healthcare. 

“We need better representation on the Medical Council than the ideological perspective he brings.” 

Where does the FSU stand on a threat to real free speech?
There are many issues raised in the above discussion, particularly the threat to patient safety by the political undermining of the statutory health practitioner regulatory authorities.

However, that is more appropriate for my health system blog Otaihanga Second Opinion.

In this post I focus on the hypocrisy and political tactics of the FSU. Regardless of its name, an organisation that attacks an investigative journalist for investigating a subject that is contrary to the organisation’s political ideology is itself an opponent of free speech.

Instead, it is nothing more than a mask for hard-rightwing trolls. But now an opportunity presents itself for FSU to partly (ever so slightly) redeem itself.

“Bomber” Bradbury is the prolific editor of the leftwing The Daily Blog. On August 2 he reported a particularly vicious legal threat: Secretly threatened with potential six months imprisonment. [Disclosure: The Daily Blog republishes with permission my blog posts]

His blog has been served legal directives under pain of six months imprisonment or a $5000 fine to censor four blog posts. He describes the intimidatory threat this way:

“We can’t tell you who is doing this.

“We can’t tell you why it’s being done.

“We can’t tell you how it’s being done.

“And we can’t tell you what has been censored.”

Bradbury is constrained by legal secrecy but hopes that all these matters can be exposed in an Auckland District Court hearing scheduled for August 4. A ruling allows media to cover this in the courtroom.

Bomber Bradbury is not noted for quietness. In fact, few can surpass him for noise. But now something has; the deafening silence of the Free Speech Union over this nasty threat to free speech makes the editor of The Daily Blog mute by comparison.

Why is this so? Is it simply because the FSU is a hard rightwing troll organisation? Or is it something even more sinister? Just asking.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

Television New Zealand outdid itself last week.

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

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

Here is the complaint we have lodged with TVNZ:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is literally a deadly framing for Palestinians.

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

The report amounts to a lie.

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

Failing To Report for Duty

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

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

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

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

We spoke truth to power and the powerful folded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The people united will never be defeated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toitū Tiriti!

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

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

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

Independent candidates are replacing traditional political parties in the Cook Islands, argues a veteran former politician — a claim rejected by a party leader who dismisses independents as a significant election threat.

Former Cook Islands Parliament speaker, deputy prime minister and cabinet minister Norman George weighs in on the political landscape as the nation prepares to head to the voting booths on Wednesday, 12 August.

According to George, who served as an MP for almost three decades, political parties appear to have lost their “attraction, drawcard and magic touch”.

• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands elections reports

“Normally one refers to the dying out of certain plants or animals as extinction; one can extend that to organisations surrounding social human interactions. Plants and animals disappear when humans eat them out of existence,” George said.

“Political parties are not eaten up, but ignored, written off or completely abandoned.

“In its place come individuals on their own, independent candidates! The power of one!”

In this year’s general election, independent candidates represent about a fifth of the 63 total candidates competing for 24 seats in Parliament.

One already retained
One independent, Agnes Armstrong, has already retained her Ivirua seat unopposed, leaving 23 seats up for contest.

The governing Cook Islands Party (CIP) fields the largest candidate slate (20), followed by the Cook Islands United Party (14) and the Democratic Party (12). The Progressive Party and the newly formed Independent-Enuamanu field two each, alongside one candidate from the new Independence Party.

Cook Islands United Party leader Teariki Heather disagrees with George.

He said the nation was too small to accommodate independent candidates.

Heather said he is feeling confident in going forward into the election, and believes independent candidates pose no threat to the Cook Islands United Party.

The Cook Islands News has contacted CIP leader and caretaker Prime Minister Mark Brown and Democratic Party leader Tina Pukuke-Browne for comment.

While Pupuke-Browne had earlier ruled out any pre-coalition agreements — including with independent candidates — the CIP, which has formed successive governments with the help of independents, is counting on that “continued support” as it seeks a fifth consecutive term.

Three party banners
George, who served as an MP over two stints — from 1983 to 2004 and 2006 to 2014 — under three different political party banners, says it is now important for candidates to have powerful personalities.

“They have to be smart, intelligent, respectful and persuasive; male or female, makes no difference,” he said.

“Public speaking ability is a must; if unpolished, stand in front of the mirror over and over again, low key, high key, face adjustments, practice makes perfect.

“If you cannot handle public speaking, forget it.”

George says it is essential for candidates to create their own support teams.

“You cannot operate on your own; you will need a group around you, like a committee.

“You normally gather family and friends to make up your committee and while there could be a chair, secretary and treasurer, you will need a campaign manager. They will be your coach and chief adviser.”

Successful candidates
He said they would be the people who would accompany successful candidates to form the next government.

“Everyone has something to gain if you win; if you become a minister, then again, those people around you will become your aids and executives.

“This is how it works and there is nothing new about it.”

George said a critical tool of any political campaign was the policies.

“What you are going to do for your electorate, the services you will offer, what you will fight for, what you will build and the benefits your electors will gain if you make it into government.

“Candidates on their own cannot hide behind any political party because there will be none, there will be no place to hide.

“This is a clear advantage for election as these candidates have to declare what they will offer their electorate voters.

“It is not mission impossible and good luck to you all.”

Republished from the Cook Islands News with permission.

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

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

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

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

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

These journalists stood on the front…

— Tamer Nahed (@Tamer_Alnoaizy) July 26, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

أهذا حقًّا ما كان ينتظرني؟

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

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

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

He wrote about his abrupt termination by Al Jazeera:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NO CEASEFIRE, ISRAEL CONTINUES TO GENOCIDE GAZA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a commonly repeated statistic that the US military is the world’s largest institutional polluter, but what exactly does that mean?

The quest to find a real answer to that question led journalist and documentary filmmaker Abby Martin and her husband and co-director Mike Prysner on a five-year journey from defence contractor conferences and international climate gatherings to the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military training exercises and the fight against the construction of a military base in Okinawa that would fill in its iconic Oura Bay.

The result is Earth’s Greatest Enemy, released last year — but just screened in Australia and New Zealand over the past month — independently through Martin and Prysner’s own Empire Files, with editing by Taylor Gill and an original score by Anahedron.

• READ MORE: The Pentagon is the biggest polluter on the planet — ABC Late Night Live

The film uses personal narrative, research, investigative reporting, interviews, and live footage to detail all the ways in which the Pentagon poisons the planet, including greenhouse gas emissions, the ecocide of war, and the toxins left behind long after the fighting has stopped.

“When you combine all of this, it is completely undeniable that this force that is upheld by extreme violence is the greatest threat to all living things on Earth,” Martin told Common Dreams.

World’s largest polluter?
Toward the beginning of the film, Martin sets out to explain how the Pentagon can count as the world’s largest institutional polluter, and why the numbers behind that fact actually undersell its impact.

It turns out, Martin told Common Dreams, that this statement is only based on the amount of oil the US military purchases on paper, which comes to 270,000 barrels per day. This puts its emissions at 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, more than 150 countries.

This itself is a staggering amount of carbon pollution.

As Martin explains in the film: “It would take the average American driver over 40 years to burn as much fuel as a single flight of a Boeing Pegasus. The US flies more than 600 of these tankers.”

But it’s also only the tip of the melting iceberg. Through an interview with scientist Stuart Parkinson, Martin reveals how that 55 million keeps ballooning when considering life cycle emissions from military equipment and from the equipment purchased by NATO allies, projected to reach 295 million metric tons by 2028, or more than half of all countries. And that figure excludes the use of military equipment in war, or the emissions from reconstructing cities leveled by US-made bombs.

In one particularly candid interview, a major-general tells Martin that it’s great to develop alternative energy sources, “but let’s not walk away from what fuels today’s national security, which is oil. You have to have it.”

And until something is developed that can completely replace oil, “I think you need to keep the alternatives in check,” he says.

Statements like these give the lie to the idea that the US can have a “green military empire,” Martin said.

They also show how difficult it is to separate the US military’s carbon footprint from that of the fossil fuel industry itself.

“Everything has really been wrapped up into securing the fossil fuel, building the infrastructure for fossil fuel, and maintaining that infrastructure empire in order to maintain a fossil fuel economy,” she told Common Dreams.

“So you have to look at the military as actually the institution that’s actually keeping the fossil fuel infrastructure in place through brutality and violence.”

‘Human detritus’

The film also makes clear that carbon pollution isn’t the only kind of pollution the military generates.

“Once you get into the research, you realise every stone unturned is an entire other documentary because it’s not just emissions, it’s the totality of pollution that the military is emitting on a daily basis, the dumping of toxic waste, the legacy contamination, that alone is still killing people every day,” Martin said.

The film spends much of its run time digging into the landfill of military waste, from melted down pucks of plastic dumped off Navy boats and unused munitions exploded in the desert to decades of water contamination at Camp Lejeune, the 26 million marine mammals the US Navy is permitted to harm or kill over five years of training, and the more than 250,000 bullets left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan for every person killed.

Martin said that almost every fact or anecdote she unearthed surprised her.

“No matter what you think you know, it’s worse. It’s actually worse because of how big it is and how every face is a story, every victim is a story,” she said.

One of the most devastating stories comes at the film’s beginning, as viewers spend time with Lavon Johnson, an Iraq War veteran who once starred in a US Army commercial and is now living on Veterans Row, a stretch of tents bearing American flags lined up outside the Veterans Affairs hospital in Brentwood, Los Angeles.

“My life is so fucked!” he declares as he lifts his hands from the piano he furiously plays despite the nerve damage caused by exposure to hydraulic fluid while in the Army.

In the next scene, viewers see the camp being demolished by police, juxtaposed with images of war, pollution, and environmental destruction, such as soldiers breaking down doors or dumping trash off of boats, oil pump jacks working, and beachside homes collapsing into a rising tide.

Martin said she was inspired to open the film with Johnson because of a letter that late Iraq War veteran Tomas Young wrote to former President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney before he died, referring to himself and other victims of the invasion as “human detritus your war has left behind”.

“That always stuck with me, that line, ‘the human detritus,’” Martin told Common Dreams. “And that is exactly what they do to veterans. That is exactly what they do to veterans… they’re churned up and spit out. They’re the cannon fodder of the system. And for what?”

Prysner is an Iraq veteran who spoke out against the war, and Martin is very clear that veterans are not the target of the pairs’ critique.

“This isn’t about service members,” she said. “This isn’t about hating the military. This is about accountability and justice for them. We’re fighting for service members and every living person on Earth, because we are all victims of this.”

The demolition of Johnson’s camp cut through with clips of war and weather disaster illustrates this point, and could serve as a sort of thesis for the film, showing that the US military ultimately turns everything it touches into detritus, including, if it’s not stopped, the planet itself.

“Everything on Earth is in Lavon’s tent,” Martin said.

A movie and a movement
This sense of connection is ultimately why Martin decided to keep Earth’s Greatest Enemy as a two-hour feature documentary rather than pivoting to a documentary series, despite the fact that, the more she dug, the more she realised “it could be 10 documentaries.”

She also ran into roadblocks when seeking Hollywood distribution. While environmentalist distributors would praise the film and compare it to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, they also said frankly, “You’re never going to be able to get anyone to buy this stuff.”

But, Martin said, “I was so committed to making a movie because movies were what radicalised me,” citing inspiration from films like The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, War Made Easy, and Michael Moore’s filmography.

Ultimately, her stubbornness paid off.

“It shows that everything from ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to Gaza to the climate, that everything is connected,” she said. “Veterans, soldiers, the Indigenous people on the receiving end of this.

“If you care about cold water and good air, you can’t walk away from this not being impacted. And that was the goal. The goal is to lock people in and explain the totality and to bring you down to the depths of hell.”

She added: “We have to understand those depths, and you can’t get that with a 20-minute segment. You just can’t. You have to go through the pain of all the victims in this community and come out the other side empowered with the truth and the resolve that we have to change this.”

Change is a large part of Martin’s motivation for making the film, by educating people about the scope of the military’s destructive force and connecting them into a broader coalition.

Martin speaks in the film about coming to political consciousness and beginning her career as a journalist during the Iraq War, meeting Prysner through their shared opposition to war and empire, and developing “profound climate anxiety” following the birth of the pair’s first child.

She lamented that the climate and anti-imperialist movements have been largely siloed over the past two decades, though that is beginning to change.

Through local screenings, she said she wanted to “try to build the environmental movement with the anti-war movement together because… even though the consciousness is expanding, it’s not happening fast enough. And we are simply out of the luxury of time.”

The sense of urgency has only increased with US President Donald Trump’s second term. While the film does not cover this period, it points to many developments that have shaped the past 12 months, including Trump’s claim that he attacked Venezuela for oil, his imperialist push to control Greenland, and his deployment of ICE to terrorise US cities.

‘Big plan for climate crisis’
Toward the end of the movie, Martin includes a segment on the militarisation of US policing and warns that “this is our system’s big plan for the climate crisis.” She also films a panel on “Domain Awareness and Air Superiority in the Arctic” in which the generals speaking tell US companies they have an “open invitation” to experiment in Alaska.

“We know what they want the Arctic for, and it’s to pillage every last drop,” Martin said. “So if environmental organisations are not thinking this together, we have to do it for them. We have to do it for them quickly.”

So far, she has seen encouraging signs, with several Sierra Club chapters stepping up to host screenings and enthusiasm from the mainstream environmental groups, parks departments, and other city officials she has invited to attend.

But education is not her only goal.

“After we educate everyone, I hope to decommission the military empire,” Martin said.

For Martin, that doesn’t mean not having a military for self-defence, but rather decommissioning the 800 or so bases the US military maintains around the world and transforming the infrastructure into something that could help local communities in a climate-friendly way.

It also means accountability for harm caused and redirecting military spending toward basic needs like housing and healthcare, and certainly not giving the Pentagon another $600 billion as Trump desires.

While that may seem like an impossible task given the current political climate, Martin maintains a sense of revolutionary optimism, encouraged by the global mobilisation against the genocide in Gaza and the way that people are increasingly seeing the links between the multiple crises and struggles around the globe.

“There’s so many of us,” Martin told Common Dreams. “We care about the planet. We have a vested stake in life. And that’s our vision.”

“It’s like they have a vision of death and destruction for profit,” she continued. “Our vision is life, and we have to fight for it with every fibre of our being. And let this movie assist you however you can do that.”

• Earth’s Greatest Enemy, directed by Abby Martin and Mike Prysner, The Empire Files, 120min.

Olivia Rosane is the opinion editor and a staff writer for Common Dreams. This article is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

• For more information about Abby Martin’s documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy go to earthsgreatestenemy.com or email theempirefiles@gmail.com

• If your activist group wants to organise a community screening of this documentary in Aotearoa New Zealand, contact World Beyond War’s Liz Remmerswaal: lizrem@gmail.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meta is censoring Palestinian content, and now we have proof

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

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

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

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

Republished from +972 magazine.

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

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

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

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

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

— Wang Xiaolong (@AmbChina2NZ) July 29, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Winston Peters (@winstonpeters) July 30, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) July 31, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These are signs that we are growing morally healthier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is your rapport with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Palestine Forum called on the New Zealand government to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vanuatu’s government has issued a stinging rebuke to the country’s customary leaders who have reportedly called for revoking the appointment of the first woman to lead the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) Secretariat.

Dr Anna Naupa, a Pacific politics expert and ni-Vanuatu woman, was appointed MSG Secretariat Director-General last month, with Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat describing her as “one of the nation’s top minds”.

“Vanuatu believes the success of the MSG under Dr Naupa’s leadership will depend on never losing sight of that founding spirit — solidarity, justice, and self-determination for our peoples,” Napat said.

• READ MORE: Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre blasts ‘misogynistic attack’ over MSG leadership
• Malvatumauri demands revocation of Dr Naupa’s MSG DG appointment by July 30

However, the Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs, which is a constitutionally mandated body, has reportedly “issued an ultimatum” to Napat, “demanding the immediate revocation of Dr Anna Naupa’s appointment,” according to the Vanuatu Daily Post.

The traditional leaders want a man to head the organisation “to align with customary traditions”, according to the front page of Thursday’s edition of the newspaper.

“The council warned that if the government fails to rescind the appointment by 30 July 2026, traditional leaders across the country will initiate customary actions to challenge the decision,” the report said.

In a statement on Thursday, the Vanuatu government called the council’s stance “regressive, divisive, and an embarrassment”.

Based on merit
The government said Naupa’s appointment was based on merit and she was selected after “a rigorous, independent MSG panel process involving all MSG member countries”, adding it fully backed Naupa’s appointment.

“By dragging the entire nation into this stance, the Malvatumauri has done a disservice to Vanuatu.

“At a time when Vanuatu is being recognised internationally for leadership on climate justice, and on regional solidarity, this act seeks to drag our country backward.”

The government also condemned the Vanuatu Daily Post for publishing the council’s views.

“To platform and amplify misogyny without context or challenge is to normalise it. Our media must lift the standard of national discourse, not lower it.”

The Vanuatu Prime Minister’s Office is demanding a public apology from the Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs to Naupa, to the women of Vanuatu, and to the people of the MSG region.

“Vanuatu’s future depends on unity, on merit, and on respect. We will not allow outdated and discriminatory attitudes to define us on the regional or world stage.”

COMMENTARY: By Saige England

Auckland rejected DP World.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Capitalism. Colonialism. The money trail leads to destruction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DP World has an appalling environmental record.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre has strongly condemned a reported “ultimatum” from the Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs demanding that the appointment of a woman as Secretary-General of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) be revoked.

The Vanuatu Daily Post reports that the council has warned that if the government fails to rescind the appointment by 30 July 2026, traditional leaders across the country will initiate customary action to challenge the decision.

“This is a clear misogynistic attack on women’s leadership,” the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre said today in a statement.

• READ MORE: Malvatumauri demands revocation of Dr Naupa’s MSG DG appointment by July 30

“Dr Anna Naupa‘s appointment is path-breaking for women and girls in Vanuatu and the region, marking the first time a ni-Vanuatu and a Pacific woman has been appointed to lead the MSG Secretariat,” the statement said.

“Her appointment represents an important milestone for women’s leadership and participation in regional decision-making across Melanesia and the Pacific.

“We support the statement by the Office of the Prime Minister in Vanuatu,” which pointed out that the Vanuatu government had nothing to do with the appointment as the MSG has its own recruitment process.

“Women’s leadership across the Pacific is not up for negotiation,” added the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre.

CEDAW signatory
Vanuatu is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The country also has a National Gender Equality Policy 2020-2030.

According to the Daily Post, the controversy stems from the recent appointment of Dr Naupa, who is currently based in Australia for six months, while MSG Acting DG Ilan Kiloe oversees daily operations in Port Vila.

A formal letter of concern was addressed to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on 6 January 2026, in which then acting president of the Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs, Chief George Bumseng, outlined four key reasons why he believed the post should be held by a male officer.

Chief Bumseng, who is also chairman of the Malmemeli Ambrym Council of Chiefs, said that according to Vanuatu customs and traditional beliefs, only men were entitled to perform certain types of customary ceremonies.

He said these ceremonies were fundamental to the process of becoming chiefs and customary leaders who represented their tribes.

Chief Bumseng said in his letter that as MSG shortlisted candidates for interviews for the position of MSG director-general, the appointment should align with the nation’s traditions.

He encouraged the appointment of a male candidate to the position.

While acknowledging Dr Naupa’s qualifications, the Ambrym chief said the appointment of a female candidate to the position could risk undermining the respect accorded to customs and traditional values.

In a statement released yesterday, Chief Bumseng said the letter was issued before the appointment of Dr Naupa and he accused Prime Minister Jotham Napat of “turning a blind eye to the chiefs’ concerns”.

Chief Bumseng said that by setting a deadline of July 30, the chiefs had placed pressure on the government to reconcile regional diplomatic commitments with customary principles.

The Public Relations Officer in the Prime Minister’s Office, Kiery Manassah, said the appointment was not a decision made by PM Napat because it was separate from the Vanuatu government.

“The government has never had any say in these appointments. It is a Melanesian institution with its own process,” Manassah said.

The MSG does not specify any gender requirement for the position of director-general of the organisation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republished from Rappler with permission.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) July 22, 2026

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

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

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

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

Republished from BP Daily under Creative Commons.

Fiji’s universities have been criticised for failing to study the long-term effects of the country’s repeated political upheavals on the public service and governance, with the Fiji Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing that a major gap in research has left important national lessons undocumented.

Academic Professor Vijay Naidu told the commission it was “a great shame” that higher education institutions had not examined how cycles of political instability had affected the quality and performance of Fiji’s public sector.

“It’s a great shame that the universities in Fiji have failed to look at the impacts of these cycles of political instability on the nature, the quality and the function of the public sector.”

• READ MORE: Fiji Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings
• Fiji coup reports

Dr Naidu drew particular attention to the University of the South Pacific, saying its once-prominent governance programme had disappeared despite the country’s history of political crises.

“The governance programme was a flagship programme of the university in the early 2000s … Well, the governance programme is gone. It’s finished.”

He questioned what that said about the role of universities in serving Fiji and the wider Pacific.

“What does it tell you about universities serving Fiji and the region when governance is such an important issue?”

Strengthening democracy
Dr Naidu said strengthening democratic institutions required sustained effort and could not be achieved overnight.

“The general democratic institutions and the checks and balances associated with them, together with a supportive democratic culture, have to be built incrementally.”

He warned that every military coup had reversed progress made in democratic governance and institution building. Fiji has suffered four coups — two in 1987, and also in 2000 and 2006.

“The analogy of switching the light on and off doesn’t work. Democracy doesn’t work that way. Each time we have had a military coup, it’s actually taken us backwards.”

Referring to earlier evidence presented by Professor Graham Hassall, Dr Naidu said the damage extended beyond the public service to the broader confidence people had in national institutions.

“The wider implication is that there is a loss of confidence.”

He said understanding the long-term consequences of political instability was essential if Fiji was to rebuild stronger democratic institutions and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They must not throw in the towel again.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journalist Cole Martin on Palestine                 Video: Talanoa TV

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

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

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

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

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

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

PRODUCER
The Whānau Community Trust

PRODUCTION MANAGERS
Ernestina Bonsu-Maro and Rachael Mario

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

A Talanoa TV Production with Face TV Sky Channel 83

Broadcast on 1 July 2026.

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

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

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

• READ MORE: Fiji and Israel sign cybersecurity pact
• ‘We don’t want Israel in our country’, says Shamima Ali
• Other Israel in Pacific reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growing calls to release Dr Abu Safiya     Video: CBC News

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

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

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

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

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

“It is that silence — in the face of Israel’s overwhelming brutality to this good man and to countless innocent Palestinians — that we all have been challenging month on month. And we must continue to do so.

“Don’t be silent — talk about the amazing Dr Hussam to your friends and whānau.”

Criticising the media for its failure to cover this story, she called on the public to write letters to the editor, spread news on social media — “or submit your own articles”.

Last night I attended a packed meeting in Lyttelton against the takeover attempt by DP World of the Lyttelton Port. This is a local, regional, national, and international issue.

The meeting was organised by New Zealanders for A Democratic Economy. It was chaired by John Minto, a long time campaigner for human rights.

Think evil predator company with a track record in taking over international ports — sackings, enviro hazards and links to Epstein…  and you have DP World in a nutshell.

• READ MORE:  Community, unions meet over Lyttelton Port takeover bid, as decision looms
• Dubai-based DP World replaces chief named in Epstein files
• Top Canadian pension fund halts deals with UAE firm over Epstein ties
• Bribery allegations threaten DP World’s expansion plans in India
• Major multinational port operator paid zero tax in Australia while raking in billions
• Other DP World reports

I have researched the history of DP World and it is accused of being corrupt — and good at keeping the corruption out of sight — but that’s the way with these tax-evading companies.

Who pays for their profits? The people, the taxpayers through rate-hikes and workers, through redundancies. DP World loves replacing people with AI.

Predator companies like this start on the port and move into other areas because ports are a gateway to transport and other industries.

This is a local, regional, national and international issue about power and control.

It is about power being taken out of the hands of people and placed in the hands of predator companies.

Workers made redundant
Last night heard from workers who have been made redundant water side. Men who cared about community.

We heard from Gerard Loader, secretary at the Lyttelton branch of the Maritime Union of New Zealand and who is also the national vice-president of the union.

Loader presented as a union official, and also as a boy who grew up, married, had children and works in Lyttelton. He recalled the days when Lyttelton was a hive of activity, a harbour full of ships, trucks, trains, seafarers and “wharfies”.

He gave relevant background to the development of the takeover.

In 2023, the Lyttelton Port Company (LPC) appointed a new CEO in Graeme Sumner and chair of the board Barry Bragg.

“Not long after that we started hearing rumours of plans to privatise city assets, with DP world being mentioned more than once,” said Loader.

“So with the support of the greater community we lobbied council and demonstrated at the CCHL AGM achieving our goal of keeping our assets in public control, albeit with a lot of contorted right-leaning faces looking on in disappointment.”

Battle won, but war continues
That battle was won, but the war is far from over, he said.

“Since early 2024 we have been challenging or asking all LPC management, board members, councillors etc about the persistent rumours of DP World wanting to lease the port operations as a way to get around the mandate of keeping the port in public ownership, and to a man they have all denied or deflected the issue saying they know nothing or it is out of their hands, or we cannot interupt the process as we have to follow due diligence etcetera.

“Then to hear the announcement in June of Tonui (3 runanga and DP World) putting in an unsolicited bid to CCHL for the leasing out of port operations for a 30-year contract was a slap in the face to not only the employees at LPC but the people and ratepayers of Christchurch who have basically been lied to for the last two years by everyone, as DP World and Tonui have been negotiating behind closed doors on this, and in the words of LPC CEO Graeme Sumner, the worst kept secret in Canterbury.”

Barry Bragg is chair of LPC board, was on the Ngāi Tahu Property board for seven years, and is the deputy chair of Stevensons Limited who specialise in concrete and construction.”

Loader said the fact that Bragg claimed he “knew nothing about it”, when asked directly at the Christchurch City Council meeting on June 3, raises more questions than it answers.

Whether the powers that be had full knowledge, or they truly knew nothing while a deal of this magnitude was being discussed, as a ratepayer was “deeply concerning”, Loader said.

“Whose interests do they have at heart?”

End of people’s control
He added that if this “deal” proceeds it would be the end of the port being controlled by the people in the interests of Christchurch city and all profits going back to the Canterbury region.

Rather, the port would be controlled by a huge foreign monopoly which would only have their profit margin at the heart of the operation.

His words were sobering. There is no illusion that control has already slipped and deals are being made behind the scenes.

That is typical of Dubai-based DP World.

The broligarchy is alive and kicking and it does not care about the Tangata or the Whenua or the Moana.

We heard from researcher Edward Miller, of the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability (CICTAR) who has investigated DP World’s control of Australian ports.

This company evades tax and so rates rise. Rise and rise. The burden on tax payers is massive because the company is all about profit and not about sharing or caring for community.

The port is the first point of take over and not the last.

Need to stop this
We need to stop this. We need to stop this asset sale and others.

We need to ensure our community is heard and heeded, and not made redundant.
Councils and the government work for us. It is not the other way around.

We heard from poet Gary McCormick who said we, the people, have power. We have the power to stop this. We are the voice.

We heard from Māori women who talked about the generations to come. We heard form Māori women who talked about the terrible effect this would have on the environment. A greedy parasite controlling the port.

We heard from Sara Campbell who spoke eloquently and passionately about the toll this will take on our environment.

“We’re living in a rapidly warming world. The last 11 years have been the hottest on record.

“Aotearoa now has the highest proportion of threatened species in the world.

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

And yet:

“I truly believe we can stop DP World,” she said.

And the crowd cheered.

“And I believe we can change how the port is run. To a model where we’re actually at the table. Where mana whenua and the unions are strategic partners in decision making.”

No media present
As for me, I will try to publish articles in the media on this but the news media was not there. The newspapers were not present. Radio was not present.

Once the port mattered to media. Now, where is it?

We need to notice this. We need to draw attention to it, we need to join the protest against it. Or it will be too late. And what then?

As Gerard Loader said: “When my grandson asks what I did to stop it, I want to be able to tell him I did everything I could.”

Community for community. Rise people, rise.

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

• Sign the petition Keep Our Port Public to show there is no public mandate for privatisation
• More information on Our Port Public website

The Trump administration has announced a renewed crusade against “far-left terrorism,” which sounds okay if you don’t know that the word “terrorism” only ever means “behavior which goes against the agendas of the Western empire.”

The United States has for example placed sanctions on UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese for calling attention to Israeli atrocities in Gaza, justifying the move by claiming the human rights expert has “expressed support for terrorism”.

In the UK, police have been arresting people on terrorism charges just for holding signs which say “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”.

• LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley
• READ MORE: US wants to globalise fight against far-left terrorism
• US urges global crackdown on ‘far-left terrorism’ – NZ says focus on behaviour rather than labels

The designation has nothing to do with actual acts of terrorism as the average Westerner conceives of that notion. In 2024, the US government removed its $10 million bounty on former Al Qaeda leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (AKA Abu Mohammad al-Jolani) because he facilitated Washington’s regime change agendas in Syria, where he is now the sitting president.

You can literally be a leader in the most notorious terrorist network on earth and still see that designation disappear into thin air as soon as you start assisting the geostrategic ambitions of the empire.

The US has signalled that it will refocus its so-called counterterrorism efforts on repressing leftwing groups.

In a speech to officials from more than 60 countries on Thursday, secretary of state Marco Rubio said “far-left terror” had been overlooked for too long.

It comes as… pic.twitter.com/hXQ5PZRfX7

— Novara Media (@novaramedia) July 17, 2026

The White House announced on Thursday that it has launched “an unprecedented global offensive against the transnational threat of Radical Left terrorism,” under which “far-left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism.”

Journalist Ken Klippenstein reports that according to leaked documents from Marco Rubio’s State Department, groups to be targeted under the new marching orders will include “violent far-left and anarchist networks and other violent extremist actors,” as well as “violent pro-Iranian and antisemitic networks” and “militant anti-tech and eco-terrorist movements.”

Authoritarian implications
The move is premised on a White House memo known as NSPM-7, a directive that critics have been warning about for months due to its dangerously authoritarian implications and lack of congressional approval. In the words of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, NSPM-7 “directs, for the first time in American history, all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.”

This line strongly echoes the language of a 1967 FBI memo describing the goals of the J Edgar Hoover program COINTELPRO to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralise the activities of black nationalist hate-type organizations and groupings.”

Secretary Rubio hosted the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism – under President Trump’s leadership this @FBI has been proud to support this important work through National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 7, focusing federal law enforcement to investigate… pic.twitter.com/AIn0aX29Hl

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) July 16, 2026

Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI conducted covert operations under COINTELPRO to infiltrate and subvert Black civil rights groups, the Communist Party USA, Vietnam War protester organizations, and feminist groups with the goal of stomping out all meaningful leftward political movement in the United States.

The feds never fully stopped running such programmes of course – groups like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter were known to have been targeted by police surveillance and infiltration. But it’s clear the rightists in the White House are aiming for something far more aggressive, and FBI Director Kash Patel sounds super stoked about the chance to become a 21st century J Edgar Hoover.

“Secretary Rubio hosted the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism – under President Trump’s leadership this FBI has been proud to support this important work through National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 7, focusing federal law enforcement to investigate and disrupt organizations engaging in political violence and terrorism,” Patel said on Twitter regarding the latest escalation.

So it seems the United States is looking at a reinvigorated COINTELPRO for the 2020s, this time with police drones and AI-assisted mass surveillance. As Americans become more and more hostile toward US warmongering, more and more fed up with the state of Israel, more and more convinced that their government doesn’t care about them, and more and more discontented with what unbridled capitalism is doing to their bank accounts, their society, and their world, their rulers are responding with the iron fist of tyranny.

Measures will remain
And what makes all this especially threatening is that you know whatever measures they roll out while the Republicans are running things will remain in place when the Democrats are in power, because as we have discussed here many times before, it is the Democratic Party’s job to prevent leftward movement in the United States.

This will be one of those many, many times the Republicans did something evil and the Democrats just quietly kept it running in the background to protect the interests of the capitalist empire. Because that is their job.

But the fact that this is happening in the first place should inspire hope, not despair. The empire managers aren’t ramping up authoritarianism because it’s easy and fun; they’re doing it because they need to.

They know they’re losing their grip, and they know that they are vastly outnumbered by the ordinary human beings who just want a better world for their children.

They are afraid. And they are afraid because they are losing.

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.

INVESTIGATION: By Wendy Bacon and Stephanie Tran

A Zionist doctor has claimed that the Australian health regulator CEO Justin Untersteiner “was forced into a massive capitulation with IHRA”.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Authority (AHPRA) recently introduced the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism which puts healthcare workers at risk for criticising Israel.

The Zionist doctor, psychiatrist Dr Doron Samuell, alleges that he was part of a campaign that “exerted intolerable political pressure” on AHPRA to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

• READ MORE: Antisemitic, really? Jewish leader speaks out on Australia’s Royal Commission hypocrisy
• Saige England: Call out the Zionist hypocrisy – genociders are settler colonialists on steroids
• Antisemitism envoy Segal slams ABC, SBS ‘Israel bias’, wants to vet media
• Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

Resisted IHRA for two years
AHPRA, which regulates the conduct of 900,000 Australian healthcare workers, had resisted pressure to adopt the IHRA definition for two years.

However, on June 17, the health regulator shifted its position unexpectedly and without consultation when CEO Justin Untersteiner issued a joint statement with the federal government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, announcing the adoption of the definition and that Segal’s guidance handbook would be used as a tool in handling complaints.

Thousands of health care workers, and many organisations including the Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation, NSW Civil Liberties Council and Medical Association for Prevention of War have called for AHPRA to reverse its decision and continue to rely on its existing framework in dealing with complaints of racism, including antisemitism.

In response, Israel’s Foreign Ministry pressured the Australian government to “confront antisemitism in healthcare” in a post on X on Sunday.

This investigation paints a deeply troubling picture and should serve as a wake-up call.

We call upon The Australian government to confront antisemitism forcefully.

Every reluctance, every excuse, and every failure to act sends extremists the same message: they can keep pushing…

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) July 12, 2026

AHPRA subjected to ‘intolerable pressure’ from Israel lobby
The “intolerable pressure” claims were made by “Aba Shesh”, a social media pseudonym linked to the Facebook account used by Dr Doron Samuell, a member of the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance (AZHA).

Dr Samuell’s comments were made in response to a post on “Jews of Melbourne” (JOM) Facebook page drawing members’ attention to a Civil Liberties Defence Centre (CLDC) webinar presented by its chairperson, lawyer Nick Hanna. The webinar was an educational briefing for healthcare workers on the implications of AHPRA’s adoption of the IHRA definition .

A member of the Jews Of Melbourne group predicted there would be

lots of “antisemitism” at the webinar which members could monitor and report to AHPRA.

In response, “Aba Shesh” described Untersteiner as an “unthinking bureaucrat” who “repeatedly minimised the problem until his hand was forced”.

Samuell lamented that Untersteiner “said the right things and even visited a shule but AHPRA sat on their hands, receiving vexatious complaints for two years until we exerted intolerable political pressure on them to act.”

Samuell stated that Untersteiner “was forced into a massive capitulation with IHRA”.

Last year, Samuell claimed he was responsible for the cancellation of a staff forum on Children and War at the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Michael West Media sent detailed questions to Untersteiner and provided him with an opportunity to respond to the comments. Instead of specific answers, AHPRA provided us with a general statement. AHPRA’s full response is below.

MWM also contacted Samuell for comment, he did not provide a response.

APHRA CEO ‘under pressure’
Several healthcare professionals who opposed the change said they met with senior AHPRA officials, including Untersteiner, earlier this year to argue against adopting the IHRA definition.

One doctor, who requested anonymity because of concerns of professional repercussions, said senior leadership were presented with medical evidence of the genocide and concerns that the IHRA definition would be used to silence doctors.

“As well as presenting the overwhelming amount of medical evidence of genocide and the silencing of healthcare workers as an apparatus of genocide, we also focused on the concern of the IHRA definition being used to silence doctors who openly support human rights,” they said.

Jerusalem Definition preferred
The doctor said they proposed the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism as an alternate definition.

“We provided an alternative definition on antisemitism, the Jerusalem Definition, should it be necessary to single out one group for a separate definition on discrimination.”

The doctor said Untersteiner told them he had publicly rejected the IHRA definition and discussed pressure the regulator was facing from Israel lobby groups.

“Untersteiner said he has publicly rejected the IHRA definition but when pressed to provide this in writing later, AHPRA did not,” the doctor said.

“[Untersteiner] also expressed some of the personal stress he was under due to the Zionist groups and in particular from doctors like Doron Samuell. It appeared to be genuine and heartfelt.”

MWM put those claims to Untersteiner, who declined to comment.

The doctor expressed concern that AHPRA’s decision to adopt IHRA would encourage vexatious complaints against practitioners, an anxiety shared by thousands of other healthcare workers.

“AHPRA’s statement on the IHRA definition will embolden the Zionists to ramp up their vexatious complaint campaign,” they said.

Path to capitulation
Samuell told the Facebook group that “with my pressure, the Minister issued a directive for Justin to remedy the situation and gave him 6 months to do it” yet, “when he reported back 7+ months later, he was still refusing to define antisemitism”.

In September 2025, health ministers directed APHRA to provide a six monthly report on “Improving the health practitioner response to racism and discrimination, including antisemitism”. AHPRA established a Racism and Discrimination Committee to provide an action plan.

Minister for Health Mark Butler did not respond to questions on the matter.

In February 2026, Untersteiner was pressured by Senator Andrew Bragg in Senate Estimates to adopt the IHRA definition.

“I’m wondering why you haven’t decided to adopt a clear definition of antisemitism. We’ve just had a religious massacre in Australia where antisemitism was a key driver. So I’m wondering why you haven’t adopted one,” Senator Bragg asked.

In response, Untersteiner said the issue was a “live discussion”. However, “the vast majority of practitioners do the right thing and they comply with our codes of conduct” and “in the very few cases where they don’t, we do believe that we’ve got the tools to be able to deal with that effectively.”

The Segal meetings
When pressed further to explain why he had not adopted the IHRA definition, Untersteiner said he had been meeting with Jillian Segal “on a regular basis”.

“I’ve been meeting with the special envoy on a regular basis. I think we’ve been able to work quite well together,” Untersteiner told the Committee.

On 13 April 2026, AHPRA’s Race and Discrimination Committee submitted its report responding to the Ministerial directive. In his posts, Samuell objected to the composition of the committee because it

included a Jewish person who had been critical of Israel.

The report stated that “the National Code of Conduct sets out clear expectations that registered health practitioners will deliver care that is culturally safe and free from discriminatory behaviours.” There was an action plan for strengthening AHPRA’s anti-racism approach but no mention of the IHRA definition.

On April 24, Special Envoy Segal released the Understanding Antisemitism in Australia handbook.

On May 1, the Health Ministers accepted AHPRA’s report and it was published on AHPRA’s website.

APHRA’s usual practice is to publish communiques on its Board meetings shortly after they occur. Communiques have not been published for the May and June meetings.

Call for Untersteiner sacking
AHPRA declined to supply us with copies of those communiques so it is unclear whether the Board approved the use of the IHRA definition in these meetings.

On May 6, Samuell expressed his frustration with AHPRA in a podcast episode published by “The Israel Connexion”.

During the interview, Samuell said that AZHA had called for Untersteiner’s sacking in its submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

“AHPRA has dropped the ball. Now we’re making a submission to the Royal Commission, calling on the Health Minister to sack Justin Untersteiner for the role that he has played in this,” he said.

‘Antagonistic to Israel’
“We’ve outlined in our submission a large number of failures. For example, there are governance problems in AHPRA. There are board members in AHPRA who are on the public record as being antagonistic to Israel,” Samuell said.

“I know from their own staff, many of whom have been in private communications with me, that they are not taking this matter seriously at all. They’ve breached their social contract with us. [Untersteiner] is not the person that can fix this situation.”

Samuell told Israel Connexion that AZHA had encouraged “practitioners and patients in the health sector to make submissions to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism through [AZHA] website” and was “synthesising the submissions into a discussion paper for the Royal Commission” by applying the IHRA definition.

The result is a “whole of sector submission” developed by applying “social theories about what is going on and what should happen to remedy it.”

MWM is not asserting that any of the public allegations against AHPRA are true. In the absence of responses from AHRPA or Samuell on these matters, we are reporting them in the interests of transparency.

Zionist Healthcare Alliance attacks on AHPRA
Samuell is one of several Zionist health workers who represent the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance (AZHA).

The AZHA was launched in October last year. It describes itself as “Australia’s first dedicated Zionist healthcare advocacy organisation”.

AZHA’s most vocal member is public affairs officer Sharon Stoliar who helped found AZHA last year.

Ten days after the IHRA definition announcement, on June 27, Stoliar was featured in a major report by The Australian titled “How did hospitals become the front line in the antisemitic onslaught?”.

The report accused AHPRA of ignoring an “unprecedented explosion of antisemitism” and said Australian health care workers were amplifying anti-Jewish hate speech” and deliberating neglecting or harming Jewish patients.

Royal Commission hearsay
Stoliar told The Australian that she hoped to give evidence at the Royal Commission.

Stoliar is quoted describing an incident in which a woman in a Sydney hospital was “left to lie in a pool of blood with no pain relief” while her baby screamed in its cot alongside hers.

She has also claimed that an antisemitic health care worker caused a Jewish person to have a “forced abortion”.

No evidence is provided to support these hearsay claims which Stoliar has repeated in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12.

The Australian article has taken on a life of its own being regurgitated in various forms in Australian and Israeli media. The Channel 12 broadcast was reposted on Facebook and Instagram by the Zionist Federation of Australia.

Collectively these posts have triggered a large amount of hate against Australian health workers and precipitated the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs tweet this week.

AHPRA’s response
Rather than responding to our questions, AHPRA supplied MWM with a statement similar to one it has sent to thousands of healthcare workers who signed letters expressing opposition to its adoption of the IHRA definition.

AHPRA appears keen to allay the concerns of its registered health care workers. It emphasises that ”there is no place for racism or discrimination in healthcare”, and that it will deal with complaints on an individual basis. An AHPRA spokesperson provided the following explanation for the sudden change:

“Ahpra had initially not adopted the IHRA definition, as we felt there was insufficient clarity between legitimate commentary and debate regarding the policies and actions of the state of Israel and its elected leaders, and antisemitism. However, the Special Envoy on Antisemitism’s handbook is designed to support use of the definition by distinguishing ‘between antisemitism and legitimate political debate, including on the topic of Israel’.

“It is on that basis that Ahpra will use the IHRA definition as a reference tool where relevant, supported by the ASECA handbook, when considering regulatory responses. As a reference tool, the definition is not legally binding. There are no changes to the National Codes or the guidance that supports them.”

AHPRA’s explanation is surprising. The handbook itself exacerbates concerns with the IHRA definition. For example, Segal’s examples suggest that it is antisemitic to say that Israel is a “racist project” or that Israel is “committing genocide”, views that are widely held by numerous international law experts and humanitarian organisations.

The Gaza genocide continues
Daily, the genocide continues. Israel has murdered thousands of healthcare workers in Gaza and devastated its healthcare system.

Last week, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel demanded that Israel release Gaza paediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya who has been imprisoned without charge and tortured by Israel for over 18 months.

Australian health care workers are mobilising and have formed a new national coalition. Yesterday, the Australian Healthcare Alliance 4 Palestine, encompassing hundreds of thousands of registered doctors, nurses and dentists, wrote a letter to AHPRA asking it to “provide full transparency regarding the governance, consultation and decision-making processes” that led to the decision to adopt the IHRA definition.

The Alliance said that health practitioners have “an ethical responsibility to advocate for our patients, our colleagues and the healthcare system” and called on AHPRA to rescind its decision.

Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.

Stephanie Tran is a journalist with a background in both law and journalism. She has worked at The Guardian and as a paralegal, where she assisted Crikey’s defence team in the high-profile defamation case brought by Lachlan Murdoch. Her reporting has been recognised nationally, earning her the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award.

This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.

One of the oldest tropes in journalism is that it should be balanced; that journalists have a responsibility to present all sides of a given issue with equal weight. This view also holds that appearing to be critical of one side and sympathetic to another amounts to “bias”.

That notion of balance sounds ideal. After all, journalists should be neutral observers who favour nobody, so if anybody feels as though their side is not presented with equal measure, the journalist has somehow failed.

That failure was what Jillian Segal accused the ABC of in her evidence to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion last week. In her evidence, the antisemitism envoy lamented that the ABC’s reporting on Gaza “created an impression of great negativity about Israel”.

• READ MORE: Antisemitism envoy Segal slams ABC, SBS ‘Israel bias’, wants to vet media
• The problem of false balance when reporting on science
• Other Gaza media coverage reports

“It’s the perception of the Jewish community feeling constantly that they are being faced with reporting about the Middle East, about Gaza, and about Israel in a way that paints Israel constantly in a negative light,” she said.

For the country’s supporters, that is understandable. As Segal went on to point out, there has been a “disproportionate” number of stories critical of Israel.

And Liberal MP and prominent member of the Jewish community Julian Leeser told ABC Radio National:

I think the public broadcasters actually have to be prepared to address systemic bias against Israel in their reporting, and I think they need to subject themselves to greater transparency mechanisms as outlined by the envoy.

But the term “balance” implies finding equivalence between the two competing positions. Sometimes journalists cover stories where achieving balance amounts to a serious distortion of what is actually taking place.

Jillian Segal wants ‘independent group’ to examine ABC’s Israel coverage  Video: Guardian Australia

The pitfalls of both-sideism
A standard, if lazy, tactic for avoiding accusations of bias is to give equal space to opponents in an issue, presenting them as equally valid.

If you give five minutes to a vaccine researcher, you must give the same time to a sceptic. It is something journalists sometimes dub “both-sideism”.

The media grappled with that challenge in covering climate change. In the early heated stages of the debate, news organisations would often place a climate sceptic next to a climate scientist in the name of “balance”.

By 2018, the BBC’s news director Fran Unsworth had had enough. She circulated a briefing note that acknowledged, “Climate change has been a difficult subject for the BBC, and we get coverage of it wrong too often”.

The briefing went on to say, “Manmade climate change exists: if the science proves it we should report it.” And in a section on balance, the note said:

to achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken.“

As journalism academic Jonathan Foster of Sheffield University used to tell his students, “If someone tells you it’s raining and another tells you it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out the f—ing window and find out which is true.”

Who has the power?
The conflicts between Israel and its neighbours (in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran) are not football matches, and journalists are not referees.

But any journalist thinking about how to fairly cover the crises is likely to spend far more time looking at the human cost of Israeli bombs and tanks, than the impact on Israeli civilians.

That is simply because the greater impact of the conflict is felt outside Israel’s borders.

Any reporting that suggests an equivalence of experience between Israelis suffering Hamas rockets, and the Palestinians in Gaza bearing the weight of the Israeli military assault would be plainly disingenuous. Hardliners on both sides are calling for annihilation of the other, but only one side has tanks, fighter jets and control of food, water and medical supplies over the border.

That raises another journalistic cliche: “holding power to account”. It is rooted in the idea that the media’s job is to expose the impact of power on those who have none.

Israel has indisputably been projecting its might well beyond its borders, and correspondents in the region who failed to cover the consequences on ordinary civilians would be rightly criticised.

None of this is to suggest the experience of Israelis or the government’s arguments should be ignored.

But in a world of competing perspectives, the job of journalists is not to make everyone happy. Their job is to accurately and fairly represent the views of everyone involved and on that score, the ABC has been succeeding.

Imperfect, but largely accurate
The national broadcaster has not been perfect of course. The ombudsman found five breaches of editorial standards (out of more than seven thousand complaints).

Its own editorial director Gavin Fang acknowledged they were far too slow to correct a United Nations report that falsely claimed 14,000 children could die of starvation in Gaza within two days.

In her testimony to the Royal Commission, Jillian Segal conceded the government’s broadcast regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, had not “found a great deal of inaccuracy” in the ABC’s reporting.

But she argued she’s trying to achieve “the more complex, nuanced issues of prioritisation, impartiality and objectivity and balance”.

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

Perhaps she is right. But positive stories explicitly designed to cancel out the negative start to look like propaganda. And that is something journalists should never accept.

Peter Greste is professor of journalism at Macquarie University and the executive director for the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He also serves as an independent journalist on the Australian Press Council. This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished under Creative Commons.

Late last year, the British government suppressed a report that contained warnings from its intelligence agencies that climate change could drive mass migration and trigger a nuclear war in Asia.

A copy of the report, obtained by The Times, warned of collapsing ecosystems potentially triggering acts of eco-terrorism, and the possibility of NATO being drawn into conflicts over remaining breadbaskets in Russia and Ukraine.

It said: “Forests in Canada and Russia might pass a tipping point by 2030, as might glaciers in the Himalayas that fed rivers on which two billion people depended.”

• READ MORE: Suppressed climate report warned of mass migration and nuclear war
• New Zealand: Defence assessment on climate change and security released
• Palau’s President warns of rising nuclear anxiety in the Pacific and other Chinese missile test reports

In Australia, a 2022 climate change threat assessment by the Office of National Intelligence was described as “terrifying” by Senator David Pocock.

Similarly to the UK, the Albanese government has refused to release the full report.

A 2018 New Zealand Defence Force assessment declared climate change “one of the most significant security threats of our time, and one that is already having adverse impacts both at home and in New Zealand’s neighbourhood.”

New Zealand’s “neighbourhood” — otherwise known as the South Pacific — is on the frontlines of climate change, with low-lying atoll nations like Tuvalu and Kiribati predicted to be uninhabitable by the end of the century.

Pacific in forefront
Pacific Island nations have been at the forefront of efforts to force the world — particularly the rich world — to act.

Last year’s historic advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found that countries have a legally binding obligation to address climate change, was initiated by Vanuatu.

The contrast between New Zealand and Australia’s reactions to the court ruling and the existential threat faced by our neighbours, versus their response last week to China’s ballistic missile test which landed in the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, is instructive.

Vanuatu Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu has criticised both New Zealand and Australia for continuing with fossil fuel exploration and warned they could find themselves in court on the wrong side of the ICJ ruling.

New Zealand is ranked 44th on the Climate Change Performance Index, down from 28th in 2021. Australia is 56th of the 63 countries (plus the European Union) included in the index.

When it comes to dealing with the existential threat of climate change, both countries are laggards.

But when it comes to updating their military hardware for interoperability with US forces in the new Cold War with China, they’re keen to be seen at the front of the pack.

‘Biggest peacetime increase’
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles has boasted that the country is seeing the “biggest peacetime increase in defence spending in our nation’s history”.

The defence budget is projected to hit A$96.6 billion by 2033, or 3 percent of GDP.

New Zealand has committed to doubling its defence spending from the current 1 percent to 2 percent in the next eight years.

Its recent purchase of five US-built MH-60R Seahawk helicopters, costing NZ$2.6 billion, was made with the expressed intention of making New Zealand’s armed forces interoperable with the US military.

Officially, New Zealand’s only military ally is Australia, but with its commitment to interoperability, regular military secondments, and participation in joint exercises, nuclear-free New Zealand is a card-carrying member of the Western alliance. (Former Labour prime minister Jacinda Ardern spoke to a NATO conference in Madrid in 2022.)

Both Australia and New Zealand are justifying the billions of dollars being spent on high-end killing machines by hyping up the so-called China threat.

Leaders on both sides of the Tasman were quick to pounce on last week’s ballistic missile test by China as evidence of a growing military threat.

Unacceptable, unwelcome
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said it was unacceptable, unwelcome, and concerning.

“This is an intercontinental ballistic missile test, the second that we’ve seen in recent years, having not had one in the region for 40 years, from China,” RNZ reported him saying.

“We are living in a region that is proudly nuclear free … we don’t want to see increasing militarisation in our region.”

What was left unsaid is that, according to The New York Times, the US tests between five and 10 Minuteman missiles every year, and both New Zealand and Australia are ramping up purchases of military hardware — massively increasing the militarisation of the region.

Australia, a signatory of the Treaty of Rarotonga, which established the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, has three nuclear-powered submarines on order at a cost of more than A$300 billion.

If Prime Minister Luxon was truly concerned about the increasing militarisation of the South Pacific, he would not be expressing interest in New Zealand joining Australia and Fiji in the “Ocean of Peace Alliance” announced last week.

Peace needs climate justice
Following the announcement of Fiji’s first-ever military alliance, the Pacific Elders Group — whose membership includes former heads of state — released a strongly worded statement reiterating its position that climate change is the region’s most urgent concern:

“An Ocean of Peace cannot be built on a narrow security agenda. Peace cannot be separated from climate justice or from the forces that produce insecurity in Pacific lives: climate change, fossil fuel dependence, extractive industries, militarisation, nuclear legacies, gendered violence and the denial of self-determination. These are the challenges that any genuine Pacific peace agenda must confront.”

Sadly, New Zealand and Australia’s actions suggest they are more committed to militarisation than climate action.

Last month, the New Zealand Defence Force announced its first Harpoon missile launch from a P-8A Poseidon aircraft during a joint military exercise with the armed forces of the US, Australia, Canada, and Japan in the Philippine Sea.

The two missiles fired — estimated cost between NZ$3 million to NZ$6 million — were supplied to New Zealand by Australia.

Millions of dollars blown on sinking a decommissioned warship that could have gone to, say, providing half a dozen Pacific Island villages with solar panels, rather than ramping up a new Cold War.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by his Substack Towards Democracy.

Once again, the Strait of Hormuz is at the centre of the latest escalation in the war between Iran, the United States and their allies, reports Al Jazeera’s media watchdog The Listening Post.

The ceasefire collapsed just days after millions of Iranians took to the streets last week to pay homage to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hundreds of foreign reporters and social media influencers were granted rare access to Iran to cover the funeral, signalling just how carefully Tehran has been calibrating its media messaging.

• READ MORE: How Iran used Ali Khamenei’s funeral as a political and diplomatic tool
• Tehran teemed with Khamenei mourners, but divisions – and demands for change – remain
• Other war on Iran reports

Listening Post presenter Richard Gizbert says what began as a week of mourning in Iran has “turned into the latest flare-up in the war in the Middle East with US President Donald Trump effectively calling the ceasefire dead”.

His programme explores the spectacle and symbolism of Khamenei’s funeral and how coverage of the supreme leader’s funeral exposed the limits of familiar Western narratives about Iran.

Contributors:
HA Hellyer – senior fellow, Royal United Services Institute
Samira Mohyeddin – host, On The Line Media
Negar Mortazavi – host, The Iran Podcast
Alex Vatanka – senior fellow, Middle East Institute

Khamenei’s funeral                          Video: AJ The Listening Post

On our radar
Türkiye has just hosted the NATO summit, and the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the US president Trump, used the event to project an image of unity and strength between Ankara and Washington.

Elettra Scrivo looks at the images, the messaging and how the coverage has shaped this story.

How Big Food sells ultraprocessed food
Ultraprocessed food is a major part of diets worldwide. These industrially formulated foods are often marketed as nutritious despite growing concerns that these products are contributing to a global health crisis.

The Listening Post’s Nicholas Muirhead looks at how Big Food is shaping the way we see and consume ultraprocessed food.

Featuring:
Marion Nestle – professor, New York University
Christopher Snowdon – head of lifestyle economics, Institute of Economic Affairs
Arun Gupta – doctor and nutritionist

COMMENTARY: By Jeffrey Loewenstein

Sarah Schwartz, co-founder of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion last week.

I venture to suggest that it will come to be seen that Schwartz gave seminal evidence which the Commissioner is going to find hard to ignore when she is writing her report; evidence supported yesterday by the compelling testimony of Jewish university peace activist Yasmine Johnson.

Until Schwartz gave her evidence, we had seen testimonies given by members of the Jewish community — some of which can only be described as very troubling in terms of evidence — which sometimes bordered on hysterical.

• READ MORE: Saige England: Call out the Zionist hypocrisy – genociders are settler colonialists on steroids
• Antisemitism envoy Segal slams ABC, SBS ‘Israel bias’, wants to vet media
• Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

But, the elephant in the room?

Were the “attacks” described really attacks of an antisemitic nature,

or were they people venting their anger and outrage at Jews seen to be rusted-on, unquestioning supporters of Israel’s egregious actions in Gaza?

Take the example of a university student in Canberra who just yesterday was reported in the Nine media thus: ”Liat told the Commission she had felt “very physically unsafe” during the long encampment at her university campus … when people would laugh and leer at me and say, ‘Look at the baby killer, look at the genocide supporter’”.

No, that is not pleasant, but the fact is — a fact unchallenged aside from the state of Israel itself and the likes of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) — that more than 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed by the state of Israel and more than 44,000 injured since October 2023.

Why the rise in antisemitism?
What was more than significant, is that many of those who gave evidence of alleged antisemitism demonstrated absolutely no introspection. Why had there been a rise in anti-semitism since October 7?

Not because Hamas attacked Israel. No, it was, in many cases people showing their anger, yes, in some instances in a totally misguided way, at Israel’s actions in Gaza. Why did some 300,000 people from all walks of life and all ages, march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a foul, wet and windy day?

The palpable anger by a significant part of the Australian community, including many Jews, at what Israel did in Gaza, and continues to do to this day, is reflected in the sober evidence given at the Royal Commission yesterday by Yasmine Johnson, a co-convener for Students for Palestine and a protest organiser.

Following her evidence, Johnson, who is Jewish, told the media

the idea that campus protests “create a dangerous atmosphere, fear for people, is farcical”.

Antisemitism, anti-genocide conflation
“What we’ve heard,” she said “so far is day after day after day of evidence which conflates legitimate anti-genocide, pro-Palestine activism with genuine antisemitism which exists in our society.”

The earlier mentioned witness Liat, and others like her, may feel uncomfortable about what is being shouted out at her as much as she probably sees posters like “Free Palestine” as confronting and antisemitic, but has Liat — who acts as a  spokesperson for the Australasian Union of Jewish Students — either personally or on behalf of her organisation ever publicly accused Israel of being responsible for war crimes in Gaza, even if not genocide? Almost certainly, not!

And that is the rub.

Might this alleged antisemitism just have had something to do with Jews so visibly parading around with Israeli flags draped across their shoulders, waving Israelis flags at solidarity rallies for Israel, Jewish communal leaders excoriating those who called out Israel for engaging in genocide or starving children, and welcoming the Israeli President as their “national leader”?

Really? I thought we were Australians.

The “average” person could be forgiven for concluding that members of the Jewish community were demonstrating that they identified with and supported Israel.

The question to be asked here is why it is that criticising Israel by Jews is said to make the speaker a self-hating Jew, a “kapo” a “Judenrat” or, as in the case of Schwartz, to even be accused on ABC Radio National as being “anti-Jewish?”

They are shameful, offensive and disgraceful epithets. They are intended to be so.

Not to be ignored in the above is that the likes of a Mark Leibler, the ECAJ, AIJAC, the Zionist Federation of Australia and similar groups see Jews who criticise Israel as a no-go area even if they, falsely, assert that Jews are free to openly express their views about Israel.

It’s simply untrue!

There is the expectation from these quarters that all Jews will, as a matter of solidarity, support Israel as the Zionist/Jewish homeland. With this forked-tongue and double-speak it is no wonder that the sort of slurs and insults which Schwartz described at the Royal Commission are rife in the Jewish community.

A climate of fear
Conversely, those in the Jewish community who might otherwise speak out against Israel fear that they will be subjected to all manner of insults and even the break-down of family relationships.

Given the airing of Schwartz’s evidence, one has to also wonder why there has been total silence from the usually vocal Jewish organisations. Should they not be publicly calling out vilification of fellow-Jews, calling for vilification to be stopped and asking for respect for those Jews who are not Zionists, strident or not.

Proof of the “attitude” in the Jewish community to those who are not at one with supporting Israel is clearly demonstrated by the Australian Jewish News which, just last week, pulled a story attacking those in the Jewish community who attacked their fellow Jews with the the sort of offensive epithets directed at Sarah Schwartz.

My Israel question
I can speak personally to how the Jewish community reacts when Israel or the Israel Lobby comes under scrutiny. Back in 2006, Melbourne University Press published my son Antony Loewenstein’s book My Israel Question. The book flew off the shelves.

The response from the so-called powers-that be in the Jewish community — including a Jewish Federal member of  Parliament in Parliament, even exhorting people not to buy the book — bordered on feral.

Even putting aside the death threats to my son and his then partner, as an example of hate mail — which Schwartz has so clearly shown in her evidence — one early so-called correspondent wrote that he hoped that when the Nazis came to Australia that he and his parents would be the first to be marched into the gas chambers.

Unhinged? Yes!

But as Schwartz spelt out in her evidence at the Royal Commission many in the Jewish community see attacking those who do not support Israel 100 percent as legitimate. And if that extends to thuggery, look no further than the Jewish group the Lions of Zion and their “activities” — an organisation supported by the powers that be in the Jewish community.

Thankfully the JCA has provided an ever-growing forum and voice for Jews who will not remain silent given Israel’s genocide in Gaza and breaches of multiple international laws and conventions.

Let’s not forget, while Israel denies what a slew of scholars, human rights organisations and aid and medical agencies have found — including those learned on genocide, some of whom even live in Israel itself — the facts on the ground speak volumes. We have all seen and read about it.

Israel clearly stands guilty as charged!

Following the passing of Qatar’s Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani at 74 on Sunday, his solidarity with the Palestinian people remains one of the defining legacies of his leadership.

He is being remembered not only as a regional statesman, but also as a steadfast ally of the Palestinian people and the only Arab leader to physically break the crippling siege on the Gaza Strip.

In October 2012, Sheikh Hamad visited the embattled Gaza Strip, six years after Israel imposed its crippling international blockade on the territory, following the 2006 Palestinian elections.

• READ MORE: How Sheikh Hamad revolutionised Arab media through Al Jazeera

Accompanied by his wife, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, and a high-level delegation, the emir bypassed the political isolation imposed on the enclave by Western powers and regional actors, leading to a massive official and popular reception.

The head of Hamas’s diaspora office, Khaled Meshaal, told Al Jazeera that the visit to the Strip meant that “Jerusalem, Gaza and Palestine mourn him”.

“He was the first Arab and Muslim leader to visit Gaza, standing by its side with chivalry and magnanimity, as if officially announcing the breaking of the siege in its darkest circumstances,” Meshaal told Al Jazeera.

“He was intelligent, brave and a man of principles.”

‘Special love for Palestine’
Ahmed al-Sheikh, a senior journalist, Arab affairs commentator and former news director at Al Jazeera Arabic Channel, said the Father Emir had ”a special kind of love for Palestine”.

“Has any other leader in the Arab world done that [visit to Gaza], except Hamad bin Khalifa?” al-Sheikh reflected in a recent interview.

”Why did he go to Gaza? It’s because he saw that everyone around Gaza is neglecting it”, he added.

During that landmark visit, Sheikh Hamad announced an increase in Qatar’s reconstruction grant to the enclave from $254 million to $400 million, laying the foundation for vital housing, infrastructure and healthcare projects that benefited thousands of Palestinians.

His commitment to the Palestinian cause predated the blockade on Gaza. In 1999, Sheikh Hamad became the first Gulf leader to visit the Palestinian territories since 1967, meeting with the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat during a critical political impasse.

According to al-Sheikh, the emir viewed the Palestinian struggle through a deeply personal lens. When former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon besieged Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, the emir was profoundly pained. He told his aides that when Sharon attacked the Muqata’a, it felt as though he was attacking Qatar itself.

His connection to Palestine was coupled with a regret that he had never visited Jerusalem before its occupation in 1967, According to al-Sheikh, that prompted him to commission an extensive three-hour documentary on the holy city to capture its history and identity.

Rather than relying solely on international intervention, he believed in the agency of the Palestinian people and that they were the essential spearhead of their movement.

“You will do the primary action and without this action there can be no liberation,” the emir once told al-Sheikh.

Defying regional consensus
This stance put him frequently at odds with the regional consensus. During Israel’s devastating 2008–2009 war on Gaza, deep divisions emerged among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members over how to respond to the crisis.

Sheikh Hamad called for an emergency Arab summit in Doha, proposing a $250 million reconstruction fund and a maritime corridor to bypass the blockade. He famously expressed his disappointment on live television about the lack of an Arab quorum for the emergency meeting.

“God is sufficient for us and he is the best disposer of affairs.”

Some of Gaza’s most vital infrastructure projects before the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023 were the result of financial pledges made by Sheikh Hamad.

Qatar funded the rehabilitation of vital highways and the flagship Sheikh Hamad City in Khan Younis — a $58 million  public housing project with 53 modern apartment buildings for thousands of low-income families.

Additionally, the Sheikh Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, which officially opened in April 2019, became the territory’s premier facility for amputees and children with hearing impairments.

Israel erased infrastructure
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has systematically erased much of the infrastructure Qatar helped finance during Sheikh Hamad’s leadership. Satellite imagery from May this year confirmed that Hamad City and other areas in southern Gaza have been wiped from the map.

The Sheikh Hamad Hospital managed to resume its vital services last December, despite suffering direct attacks, severe shortages and the broader collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. Operating the only CT scanner in northern Gaza, the hospital has even opened a new branch in the south to cope with a 225 percent increase in amputation cases.

Sheikh Hamad Hospital’s continued operations during the ongoing genocide in Gaza remain a tangible remnant of the late emir’s unprecedented efforts in the besieged enclave. His support for Gaza will remain for generations to come.

Mohammad Mansour is a senior journalist of Al Jazeera with a particular focus on Gaza, Palestine and Israel. Before joining Al Jazeera, he held editorial positions at A News in Istanbul, Turkey; TRT World; and TRT Arabic in Gaza. Mansour won the 2016 Media Freedom Award for Best TV Report in Gaza, Palestine.

I loathe hypocrisy. I am sure you do too. So let’s state this plainly. The genociders have employed hypocrisy as a defence.

It is the weakest of all defences. It is the wall that crumbles.

It is NOT antisemitic to stand against the state of supremacy and genocide, the Zionist state. It is not anti-semitic to state that the state should be dismantled.

• READ MORE: Antisemitic, really? Jewish leader speaks out on Royal Commission hypocrisy
• Saige England: Praise for Australia’s Jewish Council but NZ’s council is a hasbara propaganda campaign
• Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

It is not antisemitic to state that every single massacre of Palestinians — their forced exile and the attempted extermination of all Palestinians, is wrong.

It is not antisemitic to demand a different state, one where all Palestinians have the right of return and where the land — from the river to the sea — can be shared.

The vast majority of Zionists in the world are not Jewish, they are born-mad-again people who identify as Christian and who have adopted a violent notion that violence is fine as long as it is directed against Palestinians.

Settler colonialism on steroids. Again.

Starving Indigenous people
Like the history of colonialism everywhere — an Empire killing and starving Indigenous people. In Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the US, Australia, New Zealand — the Palestinians have been ground down and cast into dust.

The only sensible stance is to stand against the carnage and to say never again means never again for everyone.

I know many Jews who stand against the fascism of Zionism. The Bund was a whole movement of Jews who stood for this.

Once again, and again and again, I call down my Jewish ancestors in standing with them and with all humanitarians who support the rights of Palestinians to live on the land, from the river, to the sea, free of apartheid, free of exile, free of the fear of snipers and bombs.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

By Stephanie Tran in Sydney

Giving evidence to the Royal Commission last week, Australian Antisemitism Envoy Jillian Segal lamented that reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza has “created an impression of great negativity about Israel”.

“It’s the perception of the Jewish community feeling constantly that they are being faced with reporting about the Middle East, about Gaza, and about Israel in a way that paints Israel constantly in a negative light,” she said.

Segal said there was a “disproportionate” number of stories critical of Israel.

• READ MORE: Jillian Segal falsely claimed Gaza death toll is ‘grossly inflated’. Here are the facts
• ABC and SBS reject antisemitism envoy’s call for ‘oversight’ committee to vet Israel coverage
• What ceasefire? People still being killed and Gaza still under siege
• Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

Sad for everyone
“There are going to be examples on both sides of activities in a war, which all you know is very sad for everyone, involving you know unfortunate loss of life. But it’s the preponderance of the focus … on the behaviour of Israel, as opposed to the behaviour of Hamas.”

Counsel assisting the commission challenged Segal’s criticism of the public broadcasters ABC and SBS, noting that since October 7, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) had not found the ABC or SBS to have breached broadcasting codes in relation to their coverage.

Segal conceded that ACMA “haven’t found a great deal of inaccuracy”.

“I do concede that they haven’t found a great deal of inaccuracy, but it’s the more complex, nuanced issues of prioritisation, impartiality, and objectivity and balance that I’m concerned to achieve,” she said.

Segal argued that the public broadcasters should devote more coverage to “positive stories” about Israel.

“We should find a way where they also run positive stories,” she said.

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

SBS too
Discussing reports that Israel was starving children in Gaza, Segal described them as “a very negative story” and questioned whether broadcasters should seek to balance such reporting with stories portraying Israel more positively.

Segal said that balance was “very complicated” but “if you wanted balance after that negative story should there have been a very positive story about what was positively in the Middle East to feed children?”

She said there should be “scepticism in relation to some information emanating from Gaza” and called on the ABC factcheck UN reports and “not just report it as if it was undoubted fact, the first item and the news”.

Segal also criticised the SBS’s reporting on the death toll in Gaza.

“The statistics have now been reported as having not distinguished between combatants and non-combatants, and therefore were inflated, but my point is that they were put out there as statistics by a Health Ministry, as we understand health industries being objective, organised structures within part of Hamas,” she said.

Monitor public broadcasters, adopt IHRA definition
Segal proposed forming an “independent” committee to monitor the ABC and SBS.

“That it is a committee that is appointed without the community, as long as they are people who are aware of the and understanding of modern day antisemitism and modern day hatreds.”

She said the existing Ombudsman and ACMC were “without teeth” as they do “not have the powers to impose or require reports to be taken offline”.

Segal urged the public broadcasters to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

“It would enable the reporters to better understand the conflation because it would be ‘are you seeking to make the point so much that Israel is different in its fighting at the war to other wars that have been fought by Australia, by America etc.?’ … So it would just help them in understanding it,” she said.

ABC editorial director Gavin Fang said the broadcaster had deliberately chosen not to adopt the definition because of concerns it would undermine their independence.

“The IHRA definition, the examples in the definition in particular, are contested,” Fang said.

“It is important for us to maintain not just our independence, but the perception of independence … adopting a definition that’s contested would not help us with both the perception of independence and our independence more broadly.”

Amanda Wicks, SBS’s director of news and current affairs, said the broadcaster neither “accepts nor rejects” the definition.

Wicks said SBS recognised the IHRA definition as “an important definition recognised by many”, but said the broadcaster did not determine for itself whether conduct was antisemitic.

“We are only ever reporting on antisemitism when it is determined to be such by police, the legal system [or] the community itself,” she said.

“We’re never in a position where something happens [and] we determine as SBS that that is antisemitic.”

The outcome of the US and Israel war against Iran looks likely to come down to a test of wills, says a local expert — with Iran appearing unlikely to be the first to blink.

The fragile ceasefire between the two sides has collapsed, with the US carrying out scores of strikes and Iran hitting back at US-aligned targets in the region.

Dr Robert Patman, professor of international relations at the University of Otago, told RNZ Morning Report today it was a “precarious situation” in which both sides wanted an agreement that would stop the fighting, but on incompatible terms.

• READ MORE: Concern for renewed war in Iran as US attacks military, civilian targets
• The Gulf tollbooth that demands real recognition – Iran closes the Strait on cue
• Other war on Iran reports

“He said the memorandum between the two sides included a requirement for Iran to “make its best efforts to … ensure the free passage of commercial traffic” through the Strait of Hormuz.

“The Iranians have interpreted that as giving them leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, and they believe that was a recognition by the United States,” Dr Patman explained.

“The United States disagrees, I think much of the international community disagrees with that interpretation, but the Iranians take the view that we’re not going back to the status quo.

Illegally attacked by US
“They take the view they were illegally attacked by the United States. That resulted in them asserting themselves over the Strait of Hormuz and also, as we’ve seen, retaliating against the Gulf States.

“But they’re not going to give up what they see as the leverage they obtained as a result of being attacked by the United States and Israel.”

While the US could “apply ever greater amounts of military power”, Dr Patman said its track record using such strategy was “not promising”.

“It was the very thing which gave the Iranians leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and enabled them to attack US bases in Gulf states. So applying more of the same doesn’t look like it’s going to bring the Iranians to heel. And the Iranians believe time is on their side.”

Dr Patman said despite its power — particularly over the UN Security Council — the US made a “profound strategic misjudgment” in attacking Iran, and should not expect any agreement which ends the war to be “optimal”.

“At the outset, it expected the conflict would be over within four to five days. The regime would collapse and Iran could be reshaped perhaps on a democratic basis.

“If anything, that attack has empowered and resuscitated the regime in Iran. And there’s little sign that hardline elements within Iran are going to back down in the near future.”

This story was first published on

Forty-eight hours ago, I wrote: “Iran doesn’t need to close the strait. It needs only to demonstrate, periodically, that it can.”

Today, Iran did.

On Saturday night, the IRGC Navy struck a vessel it says was running an unauthorised route with its tracking systems switched off — “struck and brought to a halt,” in Tehran’s words.

• READ MORE: Iran attacks Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar after US bombings
• Lim Tean: The Hormuz bone – why Iran will not let go
• Other Lim Tean articles

Hours later came the declaration: the Strait of Hormuz is closed “until further notice,” and until “the end of US interference in this region.”

Washington’s response was immediate — a THIRD round of strikes in a week, hitting radars, missile stores, drone launch sites. And still the declaration stands.

Understand what you are watching. This is not a wall going up. This is the tollbooth demanding recognition.

This is Iran’s third closure declaration since February. Each one follows the same grammar: a strike on a “non-compliant” vessel, a proclamation, a spike in oil prices and war risk premiums — and then, underneath the thunder, negotiation.

Safe passage ‘mechanisms’
Even as the IRGC announced the closure, Iranian and Omani ministers were meeting in Muscat to discuss “mechanisms for the safe passage of ships.”

Qatar and Pakistan are working the phones. Oman has floated a draft: free navigation through a southern corridor in Omani waters, while the northern corridor — through Iranian waters — requires Tehran’s prior approval.

Now, your instinct will be to say: fine — then every ship simply takes the free Omani route, and Iran’s leverage evaporates.

Look at the map before you believe that.

The strait is 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. There is no southern corridor beyond the reach of Iranian shore batteries, drones and fast boats sitting minutes across the water.

And look at where this month’s strikes actually landed: off Limah. Off Khor Fakkan. Nine nautical miles east of Oman. Every one of them in or near the very waters the proposal calls “free”.

The corridor is not safe because a document says so. It is safe only for as long as Iran chooses not to fire — and Iran has just demonstrated, three times in a week, that it can choose otherwise whenever it likes.

Not freedom of navigation
A passage that exists by the coastal power’s forbearance is not freedom of navigation. It is a licence — revocable at will.

And here is what 30 years in marine insurance taught me: the underwriters in London know this. War risk premiums do not price the legal regime. They price Iranian CAPABILITY — and the capability survives every settlement, every corridor, every ceasefire.

The day Iran wants leverage in the nuclear talks, one projectile anywhere near that “free” corridor resets the entire insurance market overnight. No cover, no cargo, no voyage. The closure enforces itself.

So read the Omani proposal again, because it is the entire game in one sentence. One lane requiring Tehran’s prior approval — and one lane requiring Tehran’s continued restraint.

Either way, Iran’s supervisory role over the world’s most important energy chokepoint gets written into the architecture of the settlement itself: formalised, internationalised, permanent.

Three rounds of American strikes have destroyed boats, radars and launchers. They have not touched THAT.

Every escalation has followed the same sequence: demonstration, declaration, negotiation. The bombs fall, the boats burn, and Iran’s position at the table grows stronger — because its leverage was never the boats. It was the geography.

And geography, as I said, does not negotiate.

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

COMMENTARY: By Cathy Peters

In a move that’s been largely unreported in Australia and New Zealand, Hamas announced earlier this week that it would dissolve its governing Emergency Committee with the resignation of its acting leader.

This move has been recognised as an attempt to hasten the transfer of administrative authority to the Trump-appointed Board of Peace’s National Committee for the Management of Gaza (NCAG), a body of Palestinian technocrats, assembled and waiting in Cairo to manage public administration, security, recovery and transition throughout the Gaza Strip as part of the agreed ceasefire plan.

However, despite being established in January this year, the NCAG has not yet been given access to enter Gaza by the Board of Peace or Israel.

• READ MORE: Antisemitism Envoy Segal slams ABC, SBS Israel bias, wants to vet media
• Other Gaza “ceasefire” reports

Trump’s controversial Board of Peace predictably dismissed the Hamas move, stating that the NCAG is not yet in a position to take on this role while Hamas retains control of weapons. Hamas maintains that while Israel is still killing Palestinians, it will not disarm.

Nine months since the Gaza ceasefire and Trump’s 20-point peace plan of October 2025, conditions throughout the Strip have remained unlivable and deadly for Palestinians, with more than 1000 killed by Israeli forces and more than 3500 wounded.

Parents stay awake all night in their tents to stop rats feeding on their children.

The amount of humanitarian aid is far short of what is required, and there is a trickle of medical evacuations despite some 16,500 Palestinians needing urgent medical transfer out of Gaza.

A Board of Inaction
The UN Security Council supported the establishment of the Board of Peace in November last year, noting that it would be temporary and transitional, although Trump subsequently declared it would address other world conflicts beyond Gaza.

The composition of the Board of Peace Executive and the Gaza Executive Board includes a number of Trump’s leadership team, plus other Republican operatives, wealthy US businessmen and real estate magnates, as well as Tony Blair.

• Donald Trump – Chairman for life
• Marco Rubio – US Secretary of State
• Jared Kushner – US presidential advisor and son-in-law
• Steve Witkoff – US Special Envoy to the Middle East
• Tony Blair – Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• Marc Rowan – CEO of Apollo Global Management
• Ajay Banga – President of the World Bank Group
  

The Gaza Executive Board includes all of the above plus various international diplomats and intelligence officials and representatives from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and the UAE and more Republican government appointees, Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff and former Trump campaign adviser, and Robert Gabriel, US Deputy National Security Advisor.

According to the UN Security Council Resolution 2803, this body has UN support to “set the framework and coordinate funding for the redevelopment of Gaza” until the Palestinian Authority has “satisfactorily reformed”. It also authorised the Board to deploy a temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF) in Gaza; however, this has not occurred.

Israel has moved some of the anti-Hamas Palestinian militias it’s been arming and funding for three years now into the area it has occupied behind the yellow line. These various militias, led by factional gangs, drug lords and criminals, pose additional threats to Hamas disarming and the transition of power to a Palestinian-led reconstruction committee and the ultimate withdrawal of the IDF.

Yellow and Orange Lines

The Israeli-defined ceasefire Yellow Line, according to Israel’s legal NGO Gisha, pushes more than two million people into less than half of the Strip’s territory, exacerbating unbearable overcrowding that is harming public health, including outbreaks of disease and infestation of rats and other pests.

Israel’s seizure of such vast areas also prevents Gaza residents from returning to their homes and lands. Most of Gaza’s agricultural lands lie east of the Yellow Line, meaning they are within areas controlled by Israel. Continued denial of access for farmers to their lands prevents the rehabilitation of vital food sources.

From March 2025, Israel instituted the Orange Line, a line that delineates almost 48 percent of Gaza’s land mass where any international organisations are prohibited from moving without prior coordination with Israeli authorities. Gisha reports that this orange line is now a new border that has expanded the area that Israel now directly controls.

While negotiations have stalled for 9 months on the initial implementation of the ceasefire agreement, the IDF, following on from Netanyahu’s call in May, has now occupied almost 70 percent of Gaza, with the yellow cement perimeter markers defining an ever-shrinking area where 2.1 million war-wounded and dispossessed Palestinians are helplessly surviving.

Remote-controlled machine guns
Everyone in Gaza is constantly monitored by drones, and now occupying the eastern perimeter of this dystopian landscape are 23 massive military cranes equipped with remote-controlled machine guns and high-tech surveillance cameras inside the Israeli IDF-defined Yellow Line.

Gaza journalist Tamar Nahed posted this description of Israel’s latest killing apparatus,

“These cranes have turned the entire city into an open field. The latest military technologies are directed at civilians. We have become an open testing ground for their new weapons. The horror is not just in the sound … it is the constant feeling of being an exposed target at all times.”

In the first week of July, the Board of Peace declared that there was no role for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, which is a continuation of the Israeli ban on this aid organisation, which has supported Palestinians with essential humanitarian and educational aid in Gaza since 1948.

This announcement negates the Charter of the United Nations, international law principles and fundamental human rights standards.

Shelters or camps?
Despite the Board’s apparent refusal to allow the Palestinian committee of bureaucrats (NCAG) into Gaza, the Israeli news outlet Israel Hayom just reported on plans aimed at relocating Palestinian residents into barbed wire fenced designated areas. This will allow the IDF to “deepen its grip on areas outside of the yellow line”.

“Surviving Palestinians will be herded into fenced ‘humanitarian shelters’ policed by foreign forces,” as reported by Israel Hayom on July 2.

Images of a camp that’s been described as a concentration camp have emerged in Tel Al-Sultan, an area near Rafah where a pilot project of “humanitarian shelters” will be established. Civilians will be channelled into Tel Al-Sultan, which was a densely populated area of Rafah from which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ordered to flee in April last year.

This image of stark, freshly flattened land surrounded by barbed wire fences and covered with masses of metal box shelters and no evidence of any permanent cement structures (as directed by Israel) appears to be a horrific precursor to

a very grim future for Palestinians in Gaza.

It recalls Israel Defence Minister Katz’s plan of a year ago of a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah, where the goal was to screen people before they were allowed to enter to ensure they were not Hamas and then refuse any exits except to third countries.

Legal immunity
The Board of Peace convened in Cyprus at the end of June for 3 days to “reset” after “the Iran war has completely shifted the attention in the last several months,” according to an official source. It sought to address the funding shortfalls, logistical delays and security challenges.

One of the more controversial draft resolutions was the Board’s plan to grant legal immunity to its members, contractors, and security forces; therefore

shielding the whole enterprise from potential legal proceedings.

As reported widely, human rights lawyers are highly critical of this proposal, including Palestinian American lawyer and academic, Noura Erakat: “They are basically saying there’s no external oversight, including applicable international law regarding occupation. It’s creating a legal system unto itself.”

At the same time, the IDF has reportedly called for fighting to resume as senior officers in the IDF claim that Hamas’ military wing is rebuilding.

Hamas has maintained that it will only disarm under the auspices of the Palestinian NCAG and when Phase 1 of the ceasefire agreement is achieved, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces to agreed positions, full implementation of humanitarian measures and a complete end to Israel’s military attacks.

The nightmare on the ground in Gaza for Palestinians continues. The machinations of Trump’s Board of Peace appear to be

stymying any chance for genuine reconstruction of Gaza

led by Palestinians for Palestinians. The available evidence at this point is that the 1000-day-plus Israeli genocide in Gaza continues apace behind the veneer of Trump’s “peace” plan and the continuing indifference of world powers

On October 9, 2023, just after the State of Israel began its ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, Sarah Cotte, a French-Ethiopian student at SOAS (the School of Oriental and African Studies) in London gave a speech at a rally organised by the SOAS Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Society.

Her speech was “expressing support for the right of Palestinians to armed resistance against occupation and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli state”, as the Defend the SOAS 2 website explains.

The speech was filmed on a phone and shared online, and, in response, the vicious and vindictive pro-Israeli lobbying group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), scouring the internet for dissent, shared the video and tagged the Metropolitan Police.

• READ MORE: How were the Filton 4 sentenced for terrorism when they weren’t convicted of terrorism?
• Other Palestine protest reports

This led, in January 2024, to Sarah being arrested in a dawn raid on her home, on the basis that she had committed a crime under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act for “inviting support for a proscribed organisation”, which is punishable by a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

It took another 13 months for the Metropolitan Police to formally charge Sarah, and, on the same day, another SOAS student was also arrested on suspicion of an offence under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act, although they have not been charged.

Together, however, they are known as “the SOAS 2″.

On June 22, two years and nine months since Sarah made her speech, her trial began at the Old Bailey, with the prosecution alleging that her speech on October 9, 2023 “intentionally or recklessly” encouraged support for Hamas.

Disgraceful broadened proscription
Crucially, although the military wing of Hamas was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government in 2001 (ignoring the fact that it is a legitimate resistance movement to illegal occupation and oppression), it was not until December 2021 that then-foreign secretary Priti Patel, an ardent Zionist, broadened the proscription to encompass the whole of Hamas, which, disgracefully, enabled an entire civilian government, and everyone who worked for it, to be regarded as terrorists.

In her closing remarks after the week-long trial, the defence barrister, Margo Munro Kerr, “reminded the jury that Ms Cotte’s speech was completely legal and that protecting solidarity with Palestine is ‘an absolute necessity in a democratic society’”, as the Morning Star described it.

A spokesperson for Defend the SOAS 2 told the newspaper, “This trial has never been about justice; it is about intimidation. The Terrorism Act 2000 is being deployed by a Zionist-supporting Labour government precisely as it was intended: to systematically criminalise anti-imperialists and silence solidarity with liberation movements.

“While Israeli war criminals enter Britain fresh from committing genocide in Gaza without a glance from the police, a young woman is dragged through the courts for speaking the truth.

“Sarah did not break under the prosecution’s pressure, and neither will we.”

On July 8, after failing to reach a verdict, the jury was dismissed, and a retrial was scheduled for September 14.

Sarah told Socialist Worker that, as the newspaper described it, her trial was “part of a broader crackdown on the Palestine movement and our civil liberties”.

‘Repressing’ Palestine movement
As she described it, “The state has no choice but to repress the Palestine movement”, because it “has politicised so many young people in the past two years.”

As the Morning Star added, she “explained the state has a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, it is targeting direct actionists such as the Filton 25 activists and the Brize Norton 6, but it is also trying to criminalise activists for speaking out against genocide.”

Speaking outside the court, Sarah told supporters, “We know that we are on the side of justice. We are on the side of liberation. We are on the side of people who fight back, people who strive for a better world, people who want to build a different system.

“The British state is on the side of terrorism, it’s on the side of apartheid, it’s on the side of colonialism, it’s on the side of imperialism.”

As with the case of Moog 4 — activists facing a retrial for direct action against an arms factory supplying weapons for the genocide, after the jury failed to reach a verdict — and as happened most prominently with the Filton 6, activists who took direct action against an Elbit Systems facility in Bristol in August 2024, and were acquitted of the main charge against them in February this year, the government, with the support of complicit lawyers and judges, refuses to accept defeat.

When jurors are unable to convict, or choose not to, on the basis of their consciences, the government keeps hammering away until it gets the result that it wants; in the case of the Filton 6, notoriously, that meant securing a conviction by the jury on lesser charges at the retrial, followed by the judge grafting a “terrorism connection” onto their conviction at the sentencing phase.

This is not justice, and it is to be hoped that it will backfire, with jurors becoming ever more wary of convicting defendants at all, as they recognise that they are not being allowed to exercise their fundamental rights to take decisions based on the merits of the cases before them, but are being manipulated in a toxic politically-biased charade, which is about defending a foreign country committing a genocide, and defending the rights of its arms companies to contribute to, and profit from that genocide.

The activists have true justice on their side; their opponents have only complicity in the most monstrous crimes of our lifetimes.