The New Zealand general election was last Saturday, and the people have spoken.

What they had to say was muffled, incomprehensible and as confused as Donald Trump at a lesbian folk festival.

Comrades, this election has had it all.

• READ MORE: Voters in areas with large Pacific populations clear on who should lead New Zealand
• Other NZ elections reports

Gerrymandering the enrolment process, billionaires plotting to rig it, and gang-selfie hysteria.

It made it all feel less like a democratic process and more like a Netflix true crime series.

But it did show Kiwis have a sense of humour.

Paul Goldsmith, the Justice Minister who criminalised the homeless is now homeless.

Finance minister unemployed
Nicola Willis, the Finance Minister who made 5.7 percent of Kiwis unemployed is now unemployed.

And despite maybe winning, the National Party’s caretaker Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is weaker now than when he won in 2023.

ACT’s David Seymour and New Zealand First’s Winston Peters are the Quick Yellow and Silver Foxes jumping over that Lazy Blue Hog.

The tail wagging this dog is now longer than the dog.

It’s all tail, no dog.

Expect 3 times the crazy, and 5 times the social carnage if National, ACT and NZF become the majority after almost 400,000 specials are counted and the final result is announced on November 27.

What we can say is Te Pati Māori’s strategy was a success and the generational shape of Māori demographics have bypassed Labour for the Greens.

The people have spoken; we need to wait to understand what they have said.

Martyn Bradbury is editor-publisher of The Daily Blog, convenor of The Bradbury Group political panel, and writes a column for urban Māori Radio Waatea News. Republished with permission.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Cathy Peters

To oppressed Palestinians, a change of Israel’s leader will mean very little.

Israel’s relentless dispossession and subjugation of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its ongoing genocide in Gaza, will continue under a government led by former military general and IDF Chief-of-Staff Gadi Eisenkot. He has been granted 28 days to form a coalition administration.

Eisenkot spent four decades in the military, joining the notorious Golani Brigade in 1978 and moving through the ranks to become head of the IDF. He was invited to join Netanyahu’s war cabinet as a minister without portfolio after October 7, 2023.

• READ MORE: Netanyahu’s legacy: Personality politics reshapes Israeli democracy
• IRGC chief vows to advance missile output; Israel kills 6 in Gaza hospital
• Other Gaza genocide reports

His stance in opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu is political, not philosophical.

Eisenkot’s legacy – the Dahiya Doctrine

Eisenkot has a brutal military legacy. As a general in Israel’s 2006 34-day war with Hezbollah, he developed the Dahiya Doctrine, a strategy which calls for the use of overwhelming disproportionate force and the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure.

It was named after the brutal attack on the Dahiya area in southern Beirut where Hezbollah was headquartered. Between 1000 and 1200 Lebanese people (mostly civilians) were killed, and roughly one million Lebanese were displaced.

The methodology that allowed 2000-pound bombs and similar weapons to flatten a whole section of Beirut was described by Eisenkot a couple of years later:

“What happened in the Dahieh quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which shots will be fired in the direction of Israel. We will wield disproportionate power and cause immense damage and destruction.

“From our perspective, these are military bases. […] This isn’t a suggestion. It’s a plan that has already been authorised. […] Every one of the Shiite villages is a military site, with headquarters, an intelligence center, and a communications center…” 

These comments were used in the 2009 Goldstone Report on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), in which 1400 Palestinians were killed, including 300 children. Goldstone later retracted some of the findings of deliberate targeting of civilians through excessive force, although the report’s other three co-authors stood by the findings.

Eisenkot stated in this video that he would in future use ‘softer words’ due to being exposed in the Goldstone Report:

Here is Netanyahu’s likely successor Gadi Eisenkot bragging about deliberately using terrorism against civilian infrastructure, i.e. Dahiya Doctrine:

Dan Schueftan (advisor to 2 Israeli PMs): “Ground invasions should be carried out, perhaps under the banner of ‘harming enemy forces’ but their real significance is the devastation they leave behind them in the field. I don’t mind that as a pretext, we claim that there is some military objective, because that is required by all these international law people, so we can bring in some lawyers to explain how to do it, but the main thing is that [we understand] very clearly [the real purpose].”

Gadi Eisenkot (smirking): “I will not use the same words Dan allows himself to use, I did it once in a press interview some years ago, and I had to deal with it for many months afterwards, and also had my name appear in the [UN] Goldstone report. So I will use softer words: in case there is a deterioration, we must leave the enemy with severe cumulative damage that will create deterrence for years to come.”

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) November 8, 2026

This doctrine can be seen to be at the heart of Israel’s attacks on Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014 and now from 2023, as large swathes of Gaza have been completely flattened and 2 million Palestinians have been displaced, now surviving in conditions inflicted on them by Israel which are barbaric.

Lebanon
Southern Lebanon has been the victim of Eisenkot’s Dahiya Doctrine again in recent years, with the extensive destruction of civilian structures and agricultural land between 2024 and 2026.

According to Amnesty International,

“The destruction was carried out by the Israeli military with manually laid explosives and bulldozers both before and after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that took effect on 27 November 2024… The visual evidence shows that Israeli troops deliberately left a trail of destruction as they moved through southern Lebanon.

“Among the structures affected are homes, mosques, cemeteries, roads, parks and football pitches. In one village, satellite imagery showed the Star of David, a Jewish symbol, carved into the ground.”

Since April this year, more than 90,000 homes and scores of border villages in Southern Lebanon and beyond this area have been razed, with millions left as refugees in their own country.

Eisenkot’s Dahiya Doctrine is the modus operandi of the IDF. Israel has shown it does not countenance the principle of proportionality in warfare,

nor the protection of civilians or civilian infrastructure.

West Bank
Israel closed all land crossings throughout the West Bank on October 27, the day of the Israeli election; however, it has severely restricted the movement of the 3.4 million Palestinians living in this area and in East Jerusalem for many decades.

Armed settler attacks have increased exponentially in recent years, and these attacks intensified in the past weeks during the annual olive harvest. European politicians and US Congressman Brad Lander were blocked or arrested last month as the IDF sanctioned and supported the extremist actions of the Israeli thugs throughout the militarily occupied West Bank.

According to Israel’s largest human rights organisation, B’tselem, at least 66 Palestinian rural communities have been forcibly displaced by settlers since 2023.

 

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On October 25, the whole city of Hebron was put under an 11-day siege, with the city and surrounding areas blocked off after two Palestinian gunmen shot and killed two Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint. Subsequently, the army brought in bulldozers to destroy hundreds of homes in the area where the gunmen lived.

According to Medical Aid for Palestine some 3000 Palestinians were displaced with those returning to their homes finding them partially destroyed and ransacked. The Hebron governorate has a population of just under 885,000, all of whom were affected by the extra punitive movement restrictions imposed by the IDF, which imposed an additional 128 gates and 120 checkpoints during this siege, according to Hebron’s Governor, Khaled Dudin.

An aid worker in Hebron described the sudden displacement:

“It happened all of a sudden and was unexpected to see this kind of mass forced displacement. Over 3000 individuals have been displaced, including persons with disabilities, pregnant women, children. They left their homes carrying whatever they could.

“A lot of those who were displaced are elderly people with chronic illnesses”. Many were forced at gunpoint to leave their homes in the Ein Deir Baha and Farsh al-Hawa neighbourhoods in the middle of the night while

the Israel Defence Force (IDF) targeted homes, businesses, industrial sites and infrastructure.

This collective punishment of entire populations and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is not new, but its severity in the West Bank has intensified as the IDF and settlers have been emboldened by the impunity given to Israel during the Gaza genocide.

In early 2025, just after the Gaza “ceasefire” agreement, Israel embarked on “Operation Iron Wall’” in which some 40,000 residents in refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams in the northern West Bank were forced to evacuate. The UN described this as

the longest and largest displacement crisis in the West Bank since 1967.

Between October 2023 and October 2026, Israel has terrorised the population of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and made approximately 26,000 arrests.

Gaza crisis worsens
Just prior to the first intense storm in Gaza, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza called on the international community to “intervene immediately to lift restrictions on the entry of humanitarian relief supplies and all types of goods and commodities”.

This was in light of Israel’s continued restriction of essential humanitarian and commercial supplies into the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom Crossing, the only entry point allowed for goods into Gaza to support 2 million people. Malnutrition and starvation rates in Gaza have reached “catastrophic” levels, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The rain falling on Gaza is not the cause of the humanitarian catastrophe. It is exposing it.

Three years of Israeli destruction have erased homes, drainage systems and essential infrastructure, forcing more than two million Palestinians into an ever-smaller area of land. Now, seasonal rainfall floods the tents in which people have been forced to seek refuge and threatens buildings already damaged by bombardment.

Our spatial analysis traces this transformation, mapping the destruction of buildings alongside the expansion and changing geography of tent camps. It reveals the spatial reorganisation of Gaza through the destruction of permanent shelter and the forced displacement of its population.

What is unfolding is not simply a failure to protect civilians from the elements. It is the destruction of the material conditions necessary for Palestinian life. This is inseparable from the ongoing genocide.

— Forensic Architecture (@ForensicArchi) November 10, 2026

The severe restriction on all forms of shelter since 2023 has meant that the flimsy tents housing huge numbers of Palestinians are now flooding due to the first winter storms.  26,000 tents and shelters have failed, leaving families freezing with no dry mattresses, bedding or clothes.

According to the International Rescue Committee, as of November 1, families still needed about 121,000 tents, 561,000 tarpaulins, 57,000 emergency shelter kits and 1.7 million mattresses. This committee noted that aid groups had about 2,800 tents in stock inside Gaza and no emergency shelter kits.

Killing protesters
In April-May 2018, when Palestinians in Gaza mounted a massive, peaceful protest at five sites along the Gaza fence perimeter known as the Great March of Return, Eisenkot, then lieutenant-general of the IDF, deployed 100 sharpshooters and gave them permission to fire on unarmed protesters.

The UN Inquiry into Israel’s actions found that 183 Palestinians had been killed by snipers and 6106 injured with live ammunition. Another 3098 were injured by bullet fragmentation, rubber-coated metal bullets or by hits from tear gas canisters.

An Israeli government led by Gadi Eisenkot

will not take action to stop this genocide, ethnic cleansing and ongoing war crimes.

Eisenkot has declared he needs to form a National Emergency Government and has already ruled out any coalition with the Arab (Palestinian) Parties who achieved an historic number of seats in the election.

He has, however, offered to form a government with members of Netanayhu’s Likud party and another ICC-indicted war criminal, Bezalel Smotrich, and his party, the Religious Zionist Party, which partners with two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas.

These politicians are the perpetrators. Change will not come from within Israel. The international community must act decisively to stop Israel’s crimes.

Cathy Peters  is a former ABC RN producer/executive producer and Greens councillor on the former Marrickville Council. She also worked for a state Greens MP and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights. In 2014, she co-founded PSNA / BDS Australia. She has Jewish heritage, has travelled and volunteered in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

I keep thinking about a talk I listened to by Julian Assange back in 2017 where he warned that one day AI could be used to facilitate the propaganda interests of the powerful by manipulating news media and information in ways that are too subtle for the human mind to notice.

Assange described a future where AI-powered algorithms serve us a customised feed of information based on data collected about our search queries and interests, calculated to appeal to our biases and construct a worldview for us which advances the agendas of those who control the machines.

He explained that sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence systems could arrange this information with more subtlety and complexity than human perception can pick up on, in much the same way a computer can outperform any human brain at a game of chess.

• LISTEN AND WATCH: A video reading by Tim Foley

Here’s an excerpt from Assange’s remarks, delivered via video chat at the Meltdown Festival in June 2017:

“What I think is probably the most important development that is happening as far as the fate of human beings is concerned is that we are getting close to the threshold where the traditional propaganda function that is employed by, you know, the BBC, the Daily Mail, etc… can be encapsulated by AI processes.

“Now, if you think about when you’re playing chess, already we’re in a situation where AI can do better than any human chess player.

“So you can see a certain number of moves ahead. And someone moves a piece onto the board and you go ‘Why did they put that knight there?’ And you start to think what is the intentionality behind it, and you try and look several steps ahead to work out what the intentionality was and then counter it: Okay, they want to manipulate me into moving here so this will happen and so I will lose.

“We take these considerations already when we’re  —  well, some of us  – when we’re reading stories in the press. What is the intentionality of this story? Why is this particular information being pushed to the public and not some other form of information? Who’s the name of the author? What publication is it appearing in? What language? Etc.

“Well, possibly the reason is because someone wanted to promote a particular agenda, therefore we should read it in a different light.

“But when you have artificial intelligence programMEs harvesting all the search queries that people have on their phones, all the YouTube videos that human beings have uploaded etc, and it starts to lay out perceptual influence campaigns 20 to 30 moves ahead, this starts to become totally beneath the levels of human perception.

“And once a computer-augmented organiSation such as Google is able to engage in influencing human beings 20 to 30 moves ahead, keeping each move beneath the level of human perception, there’s nothing we can do about it, because we can’t see it.”

I keep thinking about these remarks nearly a decade later because this does seem to be the goal. It’s becoming clearer and clearer to everyone that these new technologies are not intended to improve the lives of ordinary people, but to serve the interests of the oligarchs and empire managers who rule our world.

That’s why they’re being rammed into existence at breakneck pace despite the obvious fact that they’re making life worse for most people without advancing human quality of life in any meaningful way.

A big part of the agenda seems to be to re-centralise the control of information that was temporarily lost with the advent of the internet. Revolutionary sentiments are rumbling around the world as our species becomes increasingly discontented with the abuses of capitalism and the US-led World Order, assisted by humanity’s unprecedented ability to network and share information around the world in real time.

Artificial intelligence’s usefulness in re-centralising information in ways that can be easily manipulated has already been noted by the Israel lobby.

At an American Jewish Committee event this past June, Santa Clara University’s Maya Ackerman argued that generative AI presents an exciting new opportunity for imposing pro-Israel narratives on public consciousness, because AI companies can be lobbied directly to push pro-Israel narratives since their leaders can control what information people see.

Here’s a transcript of what she said:

“The really cool thing about AI is that while it can become a great ally for our enemies, if we act early it could be exactly the opportunity that we need after missing the boat with social media.

“AI is now becoming the dominant source of information  – the main source of information. People trust AI more than anything else. They trust AI more than social media. They turn to chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini instead of using Google.

“And young people use these bots instead of Google in very, very very large numbers. So this is becoming the main source of information.

“And so when I say this, I still find Jewish people being discouraged, they say, ‘Oh, but Wikipedia is already so antisemitic and social media is so antisemitic — why bother? The AI just learns from all of this data.’ So, you know, whatever, not much we can do.

“But that’s not true, because over the past two years the AI companies have been moving towards alignment. So instead of algorithms sort of honestly representing what’s in the data, we’re finding that these chatbots and the text to image models are increasingly showing us exactly what the companies want us to see.

“Okay, so it’s becoming intentional. Which means that instead of trying to control the whole world and trying to somehow manage what’s happening in this big blob called Wikipedia and social media, we can go directly to the companies with clear technical and advocacy solutions.

“For the first time, there is a path to correcting the digital world.”

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt recently confirmed that this was the Israel lobby’s new MO, saying the ADL has been “working with” all the top AI companies and pushing them into alignment with the pro-Israel agenda.

Speaking at a Jerusalem Post conference last month, Greenblatt said the following:

“So we’ve been working with the Frontier Labs — OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet the company that runs Gemini, Google, Meta who runs Muse, and others, X, who run Grok — testing their models and using the results to push them to do better.”

“Look, we’ve had excellent collaboration with Silicon Valley. These companies want to improve ChatGPT and Claude. We’ve got to help them.

“So we’ve run the tests and seen where antisemitism shows up and helped them develop strategies to tackle it right in the source code.”

If the Israel lobby manipulators are doing this, then we can assume that all the high-level imperial narrative managers are doing it as well.

In January 2018, Assange tweeted the following:

“The future of humanity is the struggle between humans that control machines and machines that control humans.

“While the internet has brought about a revolution in our ability to educate each other, the consequent democratic explosion has shaken existing establishments to their core. Burgeoning digital super states such as Google, Facebook and their Chinese equivalents, who are integrated with the existing order, have moved to re-establish discourse control. This is not simply a corrective action. Undetectable mass social influence powered by artificial intelligence is an existential threat to humanity.

“While still in its infancy, the geometric nature of this trend is clear. The phenomenon differs from traditional attempts to shape culture and politics by operating at a scale, speed, and increasingly at a subtlety, that appears highly likely to eclipse human counter-measures.

“Nuclear war, climate change or global pandemics are existential threats that we can work through with discussion and thought. Discourse is humanity’s immune system for existential threats. Diseases that infect the immune system are usually fatal. In this case, at a planetary scale.”

Anyway, just some things we should keep in mind as we make our way into this strange new future.

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.

The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the Israeli authorities’ impunity for a massive increase in crimes and has demanded the protection of all journalists.

Over the three years of the war in Gaza since 7 October 2023 — which has spread to Lebanon and the West Bank — nearly 210 journalists have been killed by the Israeli military, at least 71 slain due to their work, and 59 detained, the watchdog reports.

Compared with the previous three-year period (2020–2023), the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army has increased 24-fold, while the number detained has nearly tripled, RSF said in a new report.

• READ MORE: Other Gaza media freedom reports
• Read the full report at RSF

“Comparing the appalling number of journalists killed and imprisoned over the past three years with the statistics from the previous three-year period makes it possible to measure the massive scale of the abuses committed by Israeli armed forces since 7 October 2023 in Palestine,” said Jonathan Dagher, head of the RSF Middle East Desk.

“The impunity surrounding crimes committed against the press under the orders of the Israeli authorities in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon has continued, unpunished, for far too long.

“Israel’s allied governments must put pressure on the next cabinet formed following the Knesset elections [last month], whatever its composition, to investigate these crimes and put an end to the abuses.”

Over the past three years of war, the number of journalists killed by the Israeli military while working or in relation to their work was 24 times higher than in the previous three-year period, the RSF research found.

Also, the number of news professionals arbitrarily detained because of their work has tripled.

Of the nearly 210 journalists killed in Gaza and Lebanon between October 2023 and October 2026, at least 71 were targeted or killed by Israeli soldiers in connection with their work, compared with just three between October 2020 and October 2023.

59 arbitrarily detained
Meanwhile, 59 journalists have been arbitrarily detained by Israeli authorities for their work over the past three years, compared with 22 during the preceding period. This makes Israel one of the world’s 10 largest prisons for journalists for the fourth consecutive year.

Of the 71 journalists killed by the Israeli military due to their work over the past three years, 63 were killed in Gaza and eight in southern Lebanon.

Some journalists were targeted by drones, such as Amal Khalil, a reporter for the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar who was killed in southern Lebanon on 14 April 2026, and Mohamed Balousha, a correspondent for the Emirati television channel Al-Mashhad, killed in the Gaza Strip on 14 December 2024.

Others were targeted by snipers, such as Yasser Mamdouh El-Fady, a journalist for the Kan’an News agency, who was killed on 11 February 2024 while reporting near Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza.

Fadi Al-Wahidi, a journalist with the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera, was also seriously wounded by a sniper on 9 October 2024 in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Between 2020 and 2023, one journalist was killed in Lebanon: Lokman Slim, whose murder is attributed to Hezbollah, although the investigation has still not reached an official conclusion. On 7 October 2023, two Israeli journalists, Roee Idan and Ayelet Arnin, were killed while working by armed members of Hamas.

‘Double-tap’ strikes
Palestinian reporters have fallen victim to the Israeli military’s use of “double-tap” strikes, a tactic involving two attacks on the same location within a short period of time. As a result, those who arrive at the scene following the initial strike — generally journalists and rescue workers — are also killed.

On 25 August 2025, the Israeli military killed five Palestinian journalists who had rushed to Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis to cover the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike.

Mariam Abu Dagga was one of the five journalists killed. She was among the journalists and first responders who had rushed to the scene after a first strike killed Hossam al-Masri, a photographer working for Reuters. The second strike, which killed Abu Dagga, was captured live by television cameras, with the journalist and her colleagues clearly visible in the footage.

Haitham al-Mousawi, a Lebanese photographer for Al-Akhbar, was also wounded in a double-tap strike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut.

West Bank: 12 journalists detained in the first month of Gaza offensive
Alongside the conflict in Gaza, the Israeli military has been conducting its offensive against the press in the rest of occupied Palestine.

Of the 59 journalists arrested by the Israeli authorities since 7 October 2023, 40 were detained in the occupied West Bank, including 12 within the first 30 days after the start of the offensive in Gaza.

By comparison, a total of 21 journalists were detained during the three years preceding the war launched in retaliation for the 7 October attacks.

To justify these mass arrests, the Israeli judicial system has made extensive use of “administrative detention”. This legal provision allows individuals to be imprisoned indefinitely, without charge or trial.

The Palestinian Authority, which has also participated in the repression of journalists, has likewise stepped up its actions since 7 October 2023. In several cases — not included on the RSF map because the arrests lasted less than 48 hours — its security and intelligence services detained media professionals who were subsequently thrown behind bars by the Israeli armed forces.

No convictions have been handed down in connection with the 71 killings of Palestinian and Lebanese journalists who were targeted or killed due to their work by the Israeli military since October 2023, despite the fact that these killings appear to constitute war crimes.

Shireen Abu Akleh shot by sniper
An illustration of how this impunity long predates October 7 is the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist and one of Al Jazeera’s best-known correspondents. She was shot and killed on 11 May 2022 by an Israeli soldier while covering clashes in the Jenin area, in the northern occupied West Bank.

Although authorities have apparently identified the perpetrator, he has never been convicted. Israel’s then-Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, even publicly defended him.

Since 7 October 2023, the Israeli authorities have also maintained impunity for cases of abuse committed against international journalists.

Eleven reporters aboard ships belonging to the Global Sumud Flotilla, an international maritime initiative seeking to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, were arrested in international waters in violation of international conventions.

Despite reports submitted to RSF concerning cases of torture and sexual violence suffered by these journalists at the hands of Israeli security forces, no perpetrators have been identified or prosecuted.

RSF is working to combat this impunity. The NGO has filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) concerning war crimes committed by the Israeli military against journalists in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023.

Republished from Reporters Without Borders by Pacific Media Watch.

A South African activist representing more than 200,000 shack dwellers has praised New Zealanders for their international solidarity against settler colonialism and appealed for them to “emulate” their 1981 stand against apartheid over Palestine.

S’bu Zikode, co-founder and current leader of Abahlali baseMjondolo, recalled how it had been 15 years since he had been in New Zealand to mark the 20th anniversary of the “great protests against the Springbok rugby tour of 1981”.

Speaking at a public event in Auckland’s Ellen Melville Centre organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) last night, he said he wanted to remember that history and thank all those people of this country who “stood with us against apartheid”.

• READ MORE: Four children among five killed in Gaza floods
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“You refused to allow the apartheid state to present itself as a normal member of the international community,” he said.

“This was an outstanding example of international solidarity, and an example that we should seek to emulate in our solidarity with the people of Palestine.”

Zikode is in New Zealand for a week-long tour primarily to speak at a Federation of Socialist Societies event in Dunedin on November 13/14. He also addressed a Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland yesterday and will speak in Hamilton today.

He will visit Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Kerikeri and Whangarei.

“In our movement we speak of living solidarity. This means solidarity that exists in actions, not just in words,” he said at Ellen Melville, speaking on the theme “South Africa, Palestine and the urgency of solidarity”.

“It means solidarity between people who recognise one another as equals.”

Settler colonialism oppression
Zikode said South Africa and Palestine were both countries that had been oppressed by settler colonialism. This was part of the reason for the long solidarity with Palestine among South Africans.

His words came as global headlines exposed the cruelty of Israel’s breaches of the so-called Gaza genocide “ceasefire” with savage storms and flooding killing five Palestinians living in tents and during local body elections in South Africa where the progressive African National Congress (ANC) has suffered its worst electoral defeats.

Zikode said there were important differences between the two forms of settler colonialism.

“In South Africa, the colonial system was organised around dispossession of Africans from their land, the theft of their cattle and the exploitation of their labour.

“The economy depended on African workers in the mines, on the farms, in the factories and in the homes of white people. The settlers wanted the land , but they also wanted the labour of the people the dispossessed.

“Huge numbers of people were forced from their homes and land as African people were pushed into ‘reserves’, based on the system used to oppress Native Americans, and later into the ‘Bantustans’, the so-called ‘homelands’.

“The Bantustans were not just used to confine African people to tony areas of land. They were also central to the migrant labour system that ensured cheap labour for white capital and white families in their homes.”

Forced to leave families
African workers were forced by economic necessity to leave their families and communities to find work in the mines and cities. Many were compelled to live in single-sex hostels, separated from their families.

“When we look at Palestine today, we recognise many of these methods of oppression. We see a fundamentally racist settler colonial system in which there is ongoing dispossession of people from their land by the Israeli state and settlers,” Zikode said.

“We see homes being demolished. We see communities separated from one another by walls, checkpoints and military restrictions. We see people who stand up against oppression being called ‘terrorists’ and subject to mass imprisonment, torture and murder.

“The struggles against racism and for land are central to the struggle for freedom, both in South Africa and in Palestine. But there are also differences between apartheid in South Africa and oppression in Palestine.

“While Palestinians have been exploited as workers, the fundamental drive of settler colonialism in Israel is to remove or destroy the Palestinian people rather than to exploit them for their labour.”

The Nakba of 1948 had forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, Zikode said.

Many had become refugees in other countries while they and their descendants remained unable to return. The occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 had brought further dispossession, settlement expansion and military rule.

Genocide continues Nakba
The genocide in Gaza — with more than 75,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, in three years of war on the besieged enclave – and the ongoing theft of land in the West Bank had continued the process begun with the Nakba.

“We must also recognise that the Palestinian experience has become more terrible in certain respects than the experience of apartheid South Africa,” Zikode said.

“The scale of the destruction of Gaza, mass displacement and the killing of civilians have horrified people across the world.

“But we must be clear that, within South Africa itself, the apartheid state did not carry out mass killing on the scale that we have witnessed with the genocide in Gaza.

“Recognising this difference does not diminish the suffering of South Africans under apartheid.”

He acknowledged that the Palestinian people had not yet won their freedom .

“There must also be a single free and democratic country with equal rights for all and one person, one vote in historic Palestine – ‘from the river to the sea’.”

Warning against betrayal
Zikode warned also against sabotage of the path to freedom.

“In South Africa, we have been betrayed by the ANC who have enriched themselves, repressed popular movements and struggles, and left a devastated country with mass impoverishment, mass hunger, and mass unemployment – including more than 60 percent youth.”

Question time was lively with queries about solidarity organising, the global drift to the far right and fascism, stronger solidarity with Palestine, and why had South Africa requested more time for its genocide lawsuit against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

“We were proud when South African lawyers stood before the [ICC] court in The Hague and presented the case that Israel’s actions in Gaza violated the Genocide Convention.”

Zikode said this was an important act of international solidarity but South Africa was “paying a price” for the lawsuit and subjected to severe diplomatic pressure and threats from the United States. He also criticised the fact that South Africa had continued to “sell coal to Israel” and ANC-aligned trade unions had not blocked ships heading to Israel.

One young woman in the audience asked what worldwide protesters over the Israeli genocide should do when governments were failing to take action: “I am only 24, and already I am tired.”

Zikode replied it was important to not act alone, and to join others in solidarity and keep their spirits up.

The Free Palestine Party has criticised the NZ Electoral Commission for failing to take any action against what it says has been an NZME ban on key campaign messages from the party.

NZME reportedly refused to broadcast any of the Free Palestine Party’s advertisements on its ZB radio network.

NZME also refused to carry any campaign material with the wording “From the River to the Sea” in reference to expelled Palestinians’ right to return to their homeland.

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In a statement, Free Palestine Party president Paul Hopkinson said the party had been established for the 2026 election, “not to get votes, but instead to have people vote for the political party with the best policies in support of Palestinian rights”.

“We aimed to raise public awareness of the most fundamental rights of Palestinians and how the current government was ignoring these rights and the news media never reported on them,” he said.

“That’s why we called ourselves, ‘The Free Palestine from the River to the Sea Party.”

Hopkinson said UN Resolution 194 had been passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, which demanded Israel to allow the 750,000 Palestinians it had just expelled from their homes in Palestine to return.

Right of Return vital
“That Right of Return applies to all of the Mandate Palestine, from the River to the Sea. But NZME, and by extension the Electoral Commission when we appealed to them, wouldn’t allow us to use that expression,” Hopkinson said.

“We are only allowed to describe Palestinians’ rights within the accepted and highly restricted self-serving framework of the Zionist-Front NZ Jewish Council.”

“We are not permitted to describe a right of return which every government of New Zealand has voted to endorse in the United Nations every year since 1948.”

“And this is just because some sympathisers of genocidal Israel, use a ‘hecklers’ veto’ on NZME and the Electoral Commission, when they claim they are ‘upset’ to hear a geographically correct description of Palestine”.

The American public’s outrage over Gaza just decided this week’s US midterms.

Democrats have now won control of both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate, taking them from a belligerently defensive Republican Party that not only did the bidding of Israel and its allies in America’s foreign policy commentariat, but went out of its way to smear and shame those who opposed that deeply unpopular choice.

To take as a sample the nation’s most hotly contested and watched election, what we saw in Michigan was the defeat of a candidate who disregarded that public outrage by a candidate who sympathised with and substantially addressed it.

• READ MORE: ‘This is catastrophic’ – Gaza hit hard by UN food cuts and lack of humanitarian aid
• PSNA ‘outraged’ over NZ suspension of UNRWA aid, calls for immediate restored funding
• Caitlin Johnstone: Israel claims it had nothing to do with Trump’s decision to attack Iran . . . and other notes
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed beat out Republican Mike Rogers there. And this was a victory that really showed just how committed voters now are to ridding themselves of the influence of apologists for the tragedy of Gaza.

Before the US Senate vote in Michigan, El-Sayed was targeted for defeat with a record-breaking amount of political spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group that has made it its business to play surrogate to the regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even as his government’s violent campaigns in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon and the West Bank draw mounting international condemnation.

In fact, not only did AIPAC and its affiliates spend nearly $30 million to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary by backing self-proclaimed “Zionist Democrat” Haley Stevens — their largest-ever investment in a single race — but AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC, an organisation in the US allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money for political advertising, continued spending against El-Sayed after the primary, benefitting Rogers.

And finally Stevens, explicitly citing El-Sayed’s campaign messaging against Israel’s military actions and US taxpayer funding for it, baffled her own party by endorsing his Republican rival just days before the election.

Acknowledged by Vance
Vice-President JD Vance himself acknowledged the morning after the elections that the same coalition that voted President Donald Trump and himself into office in 2024 had just decided the results of 2026.

Citing his own best advisers, Vance said voters were motivated by four priorities:

1. ending the war on Iran;
2. the rising cost of living/inflation;
3. putting America First; and
4. changing the US relationship to Israel

“Our voters showed up,” the Vice-President said. “And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats.”

And Vance is hardly going out on a limb with that analysis. Donald Trump Jr, the president’s own son, publicly endorsed Vance’s admission of the GOP’s failures. Hours later, President Trump himself called Vance’s analysis “good” although he stood by the disastrous war nonetheless.

That’s because it is impossible to obscure or erase the impression the whole drama of this year’s elections leaves us with. The impression of a hostile faction embedded in our political class whose commitment to Israel-right-or-wrong is directly, undemocratically and contemptuously opposed to the growing consensus of the American people.

It is also impossible to miss, however, that the American people this year showed themselves willing and able to oust that faction. And it is impossible to miss why. To paraphrase the immortal maxim of Democratic political strategist James Carville: “It’s Gaza, stupid.”

The Gaza genocide scandal
As I’ve argued repeatedly over the past few years, the scandal of the Gaza genocide itself has profoundly reshaped Americans’ attitudes towards foreign policy, war and military aid — particularly when it comes to the Netanyahu regime.

Over the past year, Trump and other politicians have compounded that genocide with the disastrous Iran war and Israel’s new military campaigns in Lebanon — all while an increasingly antiwar America watches with growing outrage as its political leaders use our tax dollars for violence.

The coalition that elected Trump in 2024 was built around a rejection of what he called “forever wars” and “stupid wars”. On the campaign trail, he even spoke explicitly about ending the violence in Gaza.

As I wrote at the time, when a voter in Dearborn, Michigan, asked him about the Gaza genocide, Trump replied: “It’s gotta stop. What we want is peace.” So there is no denying that the initiation of the US-Israeli war against Iran this year was a betrayal and a reversal of the will of those who voted this administration into office.

Democrats had already received this warning in 2024. The Jerusalem Post reported in February that Democratic National Committee officials had acknowledged that the Gaza policy of President Joe Biden’s administration was a “net negative” in that election. The party’s defeat should have warned Republicans against treating public outrage over Gaza as politically irrelevant.

It is also no secret that this war would likely not have happened were it not for Israeli operatives (including Netanyahu himself) and neoconservative figures like Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin pressing for it.

Poll after poll has shown growing American disapproval of Israeli military actions. A valuable election night poll also showed a stunning 62 percent of voters explicitly calling the joint US-Israeli initiation of a war with Iran “wrong” while 74 percent identified the war as a crucial or major factor in their votes.

Concerned about ‘affordability’
But more broadly, the polls have shown clearly all this year that the American public is concerned about affordability. What showed less clearly was that, in the public mind, “affordability” concerns were always synonymous with the war and the war synonymous with the influence of Israel and Israel synonymous with the Gaza genocide — that is, with a warlike military policy that is as thoughtless of its cost to the American taxpayer as it is of the sanctity of innocent Palestinian lives.

And all this is to say nothing of the final scandal that, in a way, hits particularly close to home for American Christians: the Israeli terrorist campaign to ethnically cleanse the West Bank — including by attacking the ancient Christian communities who have lived there since the first century.

One can imagine how central that drama will be to the next major American election season. November is not far from December, after all, and asking Americans in 2028 to approach Christmas with few (or no) Christians left to celebrate it in Bethlehem thanks to Israel-backed settler terrorism against our coreligionists in the Holy Land would spell the end of whatever remains of the GOP after Tuesday’s midterms.

The effect of the Gaza genocide and its hideous, snowballing effects on American public life are unmistakable to those with eyes to see, even if invisible to the few pollsters and prognosticators who have somehow managed to remain too out of touch with common sentiments to rightly quantify them.

But that leads to a final consideration that leaders in both parties must now keep in mind: It is the coalition that Trump rallied in record numbers two years ago that won last night.

Not a political party and not a small, elite group in a strategy meeting who now might go on to manage and fine-tune that coalition as if it were their own man-made invention.

GK Chesterton once observed that the American way of life is not based on the clumsy ambitions of a tribe, on ethnic identity or even on some fragile truce between such groupings. Rather, America is united by the creed expressed in our Declaration of Independence – a creed of belief in the dignity of every human person, based on a reverence for immortal nature and “Nature’s God”. In this way, Chesterton wrote, America is “a nation with the soul of a church”.

The outrage over Gaza is a phenomenon as real and as unwieldy as that soul. Democrats should take no comfort in imagining that this outrage belongs to their party. It belongs to Americans who want their leaders to stop financing the slaughter of innocent people.

If the politicians entrusted with power now refuse to listen, they too can be replaced. The demand remains what it was when Trump spoke in Dearborn: End the violence.

Jason Jones is an American human rights activist and author. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says his government is being “hammered every day” by the media and critics, as he defended the repeal of the Media Industry Development Act (MIDA) and the restoration of media freedom.

Speaking in Parliament last night, Rabuka said the repeal had restored a more enabling environment for media freedom, but acknowledged the government was facing intense scrutiny.

“But they [are] enjoying their freedom. We get hammered every day by people who are enjoying their freedom and attacking us from every angle,” he said.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji media freedom reports

His remarks came as he outlined the government’s record of reforms and argued that tangible improvements in people’s lives should be the measure of its performance.

He was speaking in reply to an End of Week statement that was made by opposition leader Inia Seruiratu.

“Tangible improvements in the lives of our people. That is the standard by which this government must be judged,” Rabuka said.

He said successive governments, both in Fiji and elsewhere, were guided by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which provided a shared vision for humanity’s future.

Rabuka also defended the importance of traditional leadership, saying the restoration of the Great Council of Chiefs had reaffirmed the role of traditional institutions in national dialogue, cultural identity and the wellbeing of Fijians.

He said the government’s commitment to reform had extended to laws and institutions shaping Fiji’s democracy.

He also highlighted amendments to the iTaukei Land Trust Act, which he said were intended to improve fairness and accessibility for landowners.

Rabuka maintained that a nation’s strength rested on its ability to respect its history, protect its identity and prepare confidently for the future.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

Al-Abd Abu Beid set a box of food rations down on a pile of stones he uses as a makeshift table outside his ramshackle tent on the coastline west of Gaza City.

The cardboard box displayed the blue logo of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), along with a stamp showing it had been packed on July 11, 2026.

Abu Beid sifted through the contents: a plastic bottle of sunflower oil, a bag of red split lentils, and eight cans of hummus or white beans.

• READ MORE: PSNA ‘outraged’ over NZ suspension of UNRWA aid, calls for immediate restored funding
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“We have no income at all,” Abu Beid told Drop Site News. “We depend heavily on the brown boxes from the World Food Programme.

“We were actually hoping they would improve the contents of these boxes, because they contain rice, lentils, and the same things over and over again,” he continued. “Instead, we were shocked to hear that they’re going to cut it off.”

Abu Beid spoke to Drop Site on October 20 — one day after the WFP announced it was reducing food aid in Gaza by around one-third, cutting off access to half a million Palestinians from critical food assistance due to funding shortages.

The cuts also reduce food rations by half — with families receiving only one food parcel a month instead of two — and a smaller bag of wheat flour. In addition, WFP cut the number of daily hot meals it provides from 250,000 to 150,000.

Yellow line control
Meanwhile, families living in the most hard-to-reach areas of Gaza, including near the yellow line of Israeli military control, will now receive a hot meal every other day instead of daily. The value of cash assistance provided to 75,000 families would also be reduced, the UN agency said.

“What is a family supposed to do? I have seven people in my family. How am I supposed to feed them? Even if the food was repetitive, just rice and lentils, I have no income, so I relied on it to cook for my children,” Abu Beid said.

“This is a humanitarian crime. People are being killed and slaughtered every day, and now you’re cutting off their food too. This is catastrophic.”

The WFP announcement came a little over a year after the “ceasefire” agreement that was supposed to bring an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza and restore the delivery of food, fuel, medicine, and other life essentials to what experts say are the minimum required levels.

Instead, the Israeli military has continued its attacks, killing more than1500 men, women and children while severely restricting the amount of aid allowed into Gaza in violation of the agreement.

In October alone, Israel killed 143 Palestinians in direct attacks, according to the Health Ministry, including 23 children, and injured more than 670.

The unrelenting Israeli assault prompted a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry to conclude last month that Israel is continuing to “commit genocidal acts even after the so-called ceasefire agreement, with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part”.

Hunger levels growing
With the genocide now its fourth year, levels of hunger and malnutrition are once again growing. In the same announcement that it was heavily reducing food assistance to Gaza, the WFP said that an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, or 67 percent of Gaza’s population, are experiencing acute food insecurity at “crisis levels or worse”.

Some 200,000 people remain in “emergency conditions,” where immediate food assistance is needed to prevent deaths from hunger.

“We depend on these parcels for everything: flour, rice, lentils, paste, chickpeas, and beans. Most of what we eat is beans, rice, and lentils. We use the flour to make bread on a metal griddle over a fire,” Linda Abu Warda told Drop Site. She sat stirring a blackened pot filled with a rice stew as her husband, Fares, fed small pieces of wood into the fire beneath it — a thin metal box serving as a makeshift stove.

“Now they’re saying the aid has stopped, or that it’s going to stop. We’re already barely managing to get by with what little we have. Imagine what will happen if they cut it off completely. I have children, as you can see. They’ll die of hunger.”

She added, “We’ve already lived through famine. We’ve experienced it. We were hoping they’d increase the amount of aid we receive, not reduce it.”

In mid-2025, Gaza was plunged into a full-blown famine, with Palestinians collapsing in the streets and men, women, and children dying from hunger and malnutrition on a daily basis. An Israeli starvation campaign that included a full blockade in March 2025 was followed by a privatised “aid distribution” system overseen by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) that replaced the UN.

With just four distribution sites across the entirety of the enclave, guarded by American mercenaries and located in areas occupied by Israeli soldiers, the GHF sites became death traps for starving Palestinians seeking food. More than 2600 Palestinians were killed at or near GHF distribution sites or at the few UN convoys allowed inside.

‘Risking lives for food’
“We hope they’ll allow this aid to enter officially and legally, instead of forcing us to go back to Zikim like before, when people had to risk their lives just to bring home a bite of food for their children,” Linda’s husband, Fares, said, referring to one of the aid distribution sites in 2025 where hundreds of Palestinians were killed.

“A man would go out and instead of coming home with a bag of flour, he’d come back in a body bag.”

Food prices have soared as a result of food shortages and arbitrary closures of the crossings into Gaza by Israel. In mid-October, Israel suddenly halted all commercial shipments into Gaza. While commercial goods were eventually allowed back in after several days, the brief closure nevertheless sent prices shooting upward.

“The closure of the crossings is what’s driving prices up,” Linda Abu Warda said. “When we want to cook a meal, we can’t even afford a single onion, it’s expensive. Onions cost 30 or 40 shekels a kilo [about $9.5 to $12.75], so we’ve had to do without them…They used to cost four or five shekels [about $1.25 to $1.60].”

She added, “People don’t have the money to buy anything. They’ve raised the prices of sugar, food, cooking oil, and vegetables.”

Other humanitarian groups have also reduced aid distribution to Gaza. In May, World Central Kitchen (WCK), the biggest provider of hot meals in Gaza announced it was cutting its distribution in half, from around one million meals a day to 500,000.

WCK said the decision was “driven entirely by financial pressure,” citing rising food prices as a result of the US-Israeli war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Gaza famine ‘not ended’
“The famine has not ended in Gaza,” Ahmed Abu Qamar, a writer and economic affairs researcher in Gaza City, told Drop Site. “Perhaps its severity has eased slightly. When we look back at last summer, the famine was extremely severe. Since the ceasefire agreement last October, Israel has been pursuing a policy of engineered starvation.

“In other words, it may allow people the bare minimum to eat each day, or even less than that, but it does not provide them with what they need to achieve food security and sustain their lives.”

Mohammed Zayed, who lives in the same tent encampment on the sandy shoreline west of Gaza City, used rudimentary tools to try and erect a wall of tarp and blankets around his tent. Wind billowed through the pieces of cloth and tarp hanging from thin metal poles and pieces of wood hammered into the ground and connected by lengths of wire and rope.

“Here on the beach, we suffer terribly in both summer and winter. And now, as winter approaches, we’re trying to prepare because living here is extremely difficult,” Zayed told Drop Site on October 14. “These tents can’t withstand that because they’re worn out and falling apart. They’re three years old now. ”

“We’re extremely, extremely afraid of winter,” he continued. “We try to stitch up tarps and secure the metal poles properly. We’re trying to reduce the impact of the wind, because otherwise it’ll blow everything away.

“It’s extremely difficult for me and for everyone here. People’s tents are worn out, falling apart, collapsing around them. Nobody has the means to replace a tent or change the tarps to prepare for winter.

“All of this is just an illusion,” he said, pointing to the tarps. “All of this will be blown away.”

Vast tent encampment
Zayed’s tent is part of a vast tent encampment on the northern Gaza coastline. Nearly the entirety of Gaza’s population has been forced to displace by Israel’s assault, with many families displaced multiple times.

The majority of Palestinians in Gaza are now living crammed in tent encampments. Dilapidated tents now occupy every open space, with streets, squares, stadiums, courtyards, and fields filled with tent encampments.

The lack of proper shelter has been disastrous and even fatal, particularly in winter with torrential rains, high winds, flooding, and cold temperatures. Over the past three winters, Palestinians — mostly infants — have died of hypothermia in Gaza as a result of exposure, including 11 children last winter alone.

“The humanitarian situation remains catastrophic with the near totality of the population still surviving in deteriorated tents and makeshift shelters, bracing for a fourth winter without adequate protection from the cold, wind, rain and flooding risks,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted in its latest situation report.

Since the ceasefire, Israel has continued to push inward, expanding the yellow line that demarcates its area of control, driving Palestinians further west onto just 30 percent of the enclave. Israel has also blocked the entry of reconstruction materials, mobile homes, and heavily restricted the number of tents and shelter materials allowed into Gaza in violation of the agreement.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Jawa Ahmad contributed to this report for Drop Site News republished by Asia Pacific Report.

Should small parties that don’t have a chance of getting over 5 percent, get government funding? That is the question I would have answered on The Platform with Michael Laws (before his repugnant statements about women candidates came to light), had Sean Plunket not banned me.

That’s right, I received a text from The Platform which stated, “Change of plan … Sean Plunkett says you are banned from The Platform”.

Not a great loss you might think from that self-proclaimed champion of free speech, but it is a question I have been asked many times over the last few months.

• READ MORE: Free Palestine party seeks electoral voice in New Zealand
• NZ First’s Laws sorry for remarks, hours after defending them
• Palestine free from the River to the Sea Party
• Other Gaza genocide reports

The broadcasting allowance is from the statutory requirement to provide a fair opportunity for all eligible parties to convey their policies to the public. It can only pay expenses for TV, radio and some internet advertising but the rules aren’t clear for this.

To qualify your party must have more than 500 current financial members. There is just over $4 million to spread across 17 registered parties. Those six parties that are in Parliament having received more votes in the last election get most of the cash.

But the real money comes from donations from the super rich and corporates. So far this election $8,254,331 has been given in donations over $20,000.

As might be expected, National, Act, Labour, NZ First, Greens, and now Opportunity have got significant donations of $20,000 or over.

Extra $8 million to spend
You might think that these parties got an extra $8 million bucks to spend. Well yes, but there is more.

The real money comes in the form of smaller donations of $5000 or under. An unnamed individual can give an unlimited amount of these donations to a party and the amount of these only comes in their annual reports.

Of the $10,383,230.39 National got in the 2023 election, $6,003,941.05 came from donations of $5000 or under.

Of the $4,769,395.26 that Labour got in the 2023 election, $2,889,810.26 came from donations of $5000 or under.

So on top of getting the biggest share of the broadcasting allowance, in the 2023 elections National, Labour, Act, Greens and NZ First got an extra $24,607,405.60. The Free Palestine Party got $82,000 in Broadcasting Allowance this election.

Last election the Opportunity Party couldn’t get halfway to the 5 percent threshold; current polling puts it at 6 percent. Some super rich now approve of them, so they allow enough funding so Kiwis know who they are.

Do you wonder why the ordinary Kiwi has been getting poorer and their share of the wealth Aotearoa produces is getting less over the last 40 years? Or why the richest 150 individuals in NZ increased their wealth by 26 percent or $27 billion dollars in the last 12 months.

While the rest of us suffer a cost of living crisis thanks to the Israeli/US war on Iran. Why do well over 60 percent of Kiwis want Israel sanctioned for 78 years of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide, but no NZ government has ever done anything about it?

Odds stacked in favour of super rich
With the odds so stacked in favour of the super rich, most of whom support the apartheid regime of Israel and Western imperialism, you think that the Zionist lobby in NZ might have just let our $82,000 in broadcasting allowance go.

But when you’ve been raised or believe in an ideology and society that tell you you’re superior, you don’t stand for criticism from people you consider less human than you.

The tactics of the Zionist lobby are the same the world over and most mainstream news organisations don’t have the courage or integrity to challenge them, no matter what crimes against humanity they commit.

To TVNZ’s credit, despite some technical issues, they had the courage to run the few ads we could afford.

NZME has no courage or integrity and were completely gutless in face of the threat of the Zionist lobby. But they went beyond just saying no, they tried to tell us what political messages they would allow us to tell Kiwis.

They wasted our time until it was too late to advertise elsewhere. Perhaps the ZB in Newstalk stands for Zionist Broadcasting?

True to the tactics the Zionist lobby has used overseas they’ve come after me through my employment. They have made complaints to the school I teach at and the Teachers Council to intimidate, silence and make an example out of me to others.

But the members of the Free Palestine Party and the Kiwis of the Palestine solidarity movement in Aotearoa and around the world can’t be intimidated.

We will hold whatever government is formed after November 7 to account. We will continue until Palestine is free from the river to the sea!

Paul Hopkinson is president of the Free Palestine Party Aotearoa.

Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon is acting like it’s absurd for American voters to have gotten it into their heads that Israel had something to do with the Iran war that’s costing them so much money.

Asked by i24 News about JD Vance’s observation that American voters want a change in their country’s relationship with the Zionist entity, Danon framed Israel as an innocent passive witness to the Trump administration’s unprovoked attack on Iran.

“I think it’s unfortunate, and we saw it coming from different directions, that many made the linkage between the rising prices, mainly oil prices, to the situation here in Israel,” said Danon, adding, “We know that the decision to attack Iran was the decision of the United States. It wasn’t our decision. We supported the effort of the US. We think it was the right decision.”

• WATCH AND LISTEN: A video reading by Tim Foley

“It’s very easy always to blame Israel for everything, but that is not the case,” Dannon said.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon on JD Vance:

I think it’s unfortunate that many made the link between rising prices, mainly oil prices, and the situation here in Israel.

The decision to attack Iran was the decision of the United States. It wasn’t our decision. We supported the U.S. effort, and we think it was the right decision.

It’s very easy to always blame Israel for everything, but that is not the case.

— Clash Report (@clashreport) November 4, 2026

So it sounds like the new narrative from the Israeli government is that they were just sitting there minding their own business when the United States told them “We’re gonna bomb Iran, don’t try to stop us,” and then Israel was all like “WTF bro that’s crazy! I guess we’ll support you because we’re friends, but damn dude that sounds pretty reckless.”

Now that the war in Iran is costing Israel support from American voters, they’re trying to pretend they had nothing to do with that whole mess.

Which is wild considering the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly bragged about persuading the Americans to attack Iran, and the fact that the US State Department has explicitly said of the Iran war that “the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defence of its Israeli ally.”

But whatever.

❖

Hey remember when Charlie Kirk got killed and Republicans were like YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE UNLEASHED, TREMBLE IN FEAR AT WHAT’S COMING and then nothing happened and then they lost everything? That was funny.

❖

People should stop saying the Democrats will do nothing now that they’ve won both chambers of congress; that’s so unfair.

Democrats do a lot of things. Genocide, for example.

❖

If you’re wondering how things are going in Australia, it looks like they’re about to start fining universities millions of dollars for allowing criticism of Israel.

And on and on it goes.

@JasonClareMP keen to prosecute the Segal agenda.

“Education Minister announced last Friday that under the draft legislation, the maximum fine for universities will increase from the existing cap of $40,000 to $2 million – a 50-fold increase.” https://t.co/QHCe9oLIFW

— Jommy Tee (@jommy_tee) November 4, 2026

From The Jewish Independent:

“Australian universities could be fined up to $2 million if they do not deal effectively with antisemitism under new legislation to be introduced into parliament this month.

“The Education Minister announced last Friday that under the draft legislation, the maximum fine for universities will increase from the existing cap of $40,000 to $2 million — a 50-fold increase.

“The fine regime, which will be administered by the university regulator TEQSA, is the government’s response to the recommendation by the Antisemitism Envoy Jillian Segal, which proposed withholding funding or terminating grants from universities that fail to effectively combat antisemitic behaviour.”

As we discussed previously, Jillian Segal’s recommendations are completely geared around stomping out criticism of Israel and eliminating pro-Palestine protests, as evidenced by her stated position that pro-Palestine leftists represent “the most pervasive manifestation of antisemitism facing Australia today.” The plan is obviously to lean on universities to shut down anti-Israel speech in order to avoid millions of dollars in penalties.

❖

Tucker Carlson recently claimed that Trump is preparing to launch a nuclear strike on Iran at the urging of Benjamin Netanyahu, and I’m really, truly sorry if this comes across as antisemitic, but in my opinion it would be wrong for Trump to do that.

❖

The other day I saw an Israeli flag account on Twitter shrieking that her son got uninvited from a Halloween party because some of the kids said they didn’t want to attend a party with a Zionist. Somebody asked her how old her son is, and she said nineteen.

https://t.co/iN1i7giTPu

— Saint Charlie (@PollyVinyl1) November 2, 2026

This is the “antisemitism” we’ve been hearing so much about. It’s grown adults whining that anti-genocide sentiments hurt their feelings. It’s people disliking a genocidal apartheid state and its supporters, and then some members of a religious group claiming those opinions shouldn’t be allowed to exist because it upsets their feelings. When you drill down on the actual complaints, that is almost exclusively what’s going on.

Ultimately the “antisemitism” narrative is mostly just an especially entitled group of white people demanding that governments and institutions use force to protect them from feeling the uncomfortable feelings they experience when someone says their beloved apartheid state is guilty of crimes against humanity.

This is self-evidently ridiculous, and it deserves nothing but a dismissive scoff. You do not have a right to be protected from uncomfortable feelings, no matter what your religion happens to be. You do not have a right to have the government protect you from the feelings of cognitive dissonance brought on by your own genocidal ideology. You do not have a right to silence others because because you find their opposition to mass atrocities emotionally inconvenient. That’s not a thing. Grow the fuck up.

❖

Zionists are like, “No no, it’s not true that antisemitism means criticism of Israel. You’re allowed to criticize Israel, you just need to memorize a very long list of rules you must follow and circumstances under which criticism is acceptable, make sure you’re only criticizing the current sitting government rather than the Zionist state itself, and be careful not to invoke any of the ten thousand obscure Tropes you’ve never heard of, or else you will lose your job and possibly go to prison. So go on ahead, criticize Israel all you want. It’s a free country.”

❖

I saw a BBC report from last month expressing shock and outrage about China forcing companies to stop selling people “AI companions” as a substitute for real human contact, speculating that Beijing is only taking these actions to trick Chinese women into having more babies.

Chatbots are turning Western brains into pureed spinach while China bans AI “companions” and requires AI models to remind users they’re not talking to a real person, and the Western press frame this as China pushing a suspicious agenda.

Everything about our civilisation is making all of us dumber and dumber.

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 colloquial language, “Jesus wept” is a cry of exasperation when we encounter something either appalling or appallingly stupid.

The leaders of the 18 states and territories comprising the Pacific Island Forum — including Australia and New Zealand — have done both by inviting Israel to be a second-tier sectoral partner to their regional organisation.

The origin of “Jesus wept” lies in the Bible and Christ’s despair at the human condition — which I discuss in a separate article, Lazarus has come back from the dead.

• READ MORE: Israel approved as second-tier partner in Pacific Islands Forum — Barbara Dreaver
• Shameful move by Pacific Islands Forum undermines decolonisation and justice — David Robie
• Other Israel in Pacific reports

First and foremost the Forum’s invitation to Israel is a political statement that these countries — at the political level — are in alignment with the values and programmes being advanced by Israel.

As decisions of this body are made by consensus, it means that all 18 member states — including Australia and New Zealand — have given their blessing. At the heart of this move is the theologically-twisted world of Christian Zionism which has a powerful hold on both political elites and many ordinary folk in Pacific communities.

Fables, such as certain Polynesians or Melanesians being among the Lost Tribes of Israel, swirl around the Pacific and are deliberately nourished by cynical actors. The myth of a Pacific connection to Israel was first peddled by Christian missionaries in the early 19th century to rustle up recruits and has held sway with gullible minds ever since.

Shared Judeo-Christian framing
Elise Barandon, a visiting fellow at Australian National University, says Israel’s growing influence in the region can be better understood through the lens of a shared Judeo-Christian framing.

“These engagements — alongside targeted development cooperation, security assistance, and increased political dialogue and visits — signal the activation of existing religious affinities, now translated into more explicit diplomatic positionings, including in multilateral arenas such as the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA),” Barandon wrote earlier this year in an ANU paper All In for the Holy Land: Pacific Islands and Christian Zionism.

Scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (2007) exposed the depth of collusion and modus operandi of Israeli and US homegrown Zionists — Christian and Jewish — in massively influencing US policy. Israel has applied the same techniques with great success to the smaller fish in the Pacific.

For Israel the support of these small Pacific nations (Palau has a population of just 18,000 but one vote at the UN) is gold. For the price of a few shekels they can help build a narrative of “legitimacy” at the United Nations, despite the world’s states in large measure repudiating the racist Zionist project to extinguish Palestinian identity in Palestine.

Israel runs a sophisticated global influence campaign; state agencies include MASHAV and the “humanitarian” NGO IsraAID. Similar to US agencies like USAID these are operated as extensions of foreign policy, often focusing on “aid for votes”. What goes on under the radar in terms of purchasable politicians is opaque.

IsraAid is tasked with providing water, sanitation, mental health and emergency medical care — all the things they have systematically destroyed for millions of Palestinians. But some Christian communities of the Pacific turn deaf ears and blind eyes to this and accept the largesse.

Many — but not all — the leaders of the heavily Christian Pacific — where churches are still full on Sundays — have chosen to side with a regime that has killed tens of thousands of children and is actively attacking the Christian community of Palestine. A strange element of Christian Zionism is the fact it also ignores this persecution of Christians in the Holy Land.

Erasure of a people
As Australian John Menadue pointed out in a recent article in Pearls & Irritations:

“The ethnic cleansing of both Christians and Muslims from Palestine continues. It is not only erasure of a people but of their culture and history.

“Australian leaders in church and state are complicit in the ethnic erasure of the Palestinian people, Muslim and Christian alike, from their homeland. They appeal for our help. But they are not being heard. They are being ignored.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, like most “Christian” politicians, is probably not a true believer, otherwise he would know full well that by joining 17 other Pacific leaders last month in welcoming the state of Israel as a partner to the Pacific Islands Forum he has indelibly stained both his country’s and his own name.

To be clear: all 18 states have a great number of people who actively oppose the genocide and support the Palestinian people in this hour of need.

As David Robie, one of the veterans of Pacific journalism pointed out, the Forum has decolonisation as one of its founding principles. For good reason: our region has a long dark history of slavery, indentured labour, violent expropriation of land and European political and missionary imposed cultural erasure.

These wounds have not yet healed and now we have the ghastly sight of Israel representatives being embraced by Pacific leaders from New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and other states.

‘Global rogue pariah’
Dr Robie, in a recent article in Asia Pacific Report, Shameful Israel move by Pacific Islands Forum undermines decolonisation and justice, says: “The Pacific Islands Forum has betrayed one of its founding principles in admitting Israel — already a global rogue pariah state — as a development partner in the middle of the genocide of an Indigenous people, the Palestinians.”

Their actions effectively express support for widely-held religiously-fuelled sentiments like these:

“We should take the land because God commanded us to take it. It’s our land. The Palestinians can go to any other Arab country, except Jordan, Lebanon and Syria — those are ours too. Or we will kill them,” said American settler Atara Serwatien, who recently moved to Israel from the US.

I spoke over the weekend with Rinad Tamimi, a Palestinian-New Zealand activist. She was understandably distracted by the fact that 35 members of her family had been evicted this week, along with thousands of other Palestinians, by Israeli Occupation Forces from their homes in Hebron, in the West Bank.

The United Nations has made clear the Israelis are an illegal occupation force and should not be in the West Bank at all, let alone imposing a collective punishment pogrom as part of its widening and accelerating genocide. New Zealand’s famously-racist Foreign Minister Winston Peters yawns and looks the other way when Palestinian rights are on the agenda but the rest of us should not.

Rinad Tamimi’s 95-year-old grandfather was among the family members manhandled out of his home by the Israeli stormtroopers.

“We’ve been pleading, rallying, marching for over three years now. We’re not asking for a miracle. All we’re asking for is for our government to sanction Israel, join the ICJ [International Court of Justice] case, and most importantly, speak out for what’s going on in Palestine. But we are seeing quite the opposite and I think it’s sickening,” Tamimi says.

I’ll give the last word to Dante Alighieri. I re-read Dante’s Divine Comedy recently and this line came to mind as I wrote about these Pacific Forum leaders:

“Oh, you proud Christians, wretched and small

“Who, by the dim lights of your twisted minds,

“Believe you prosper even as you fall.”

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 hosts solidarity.co.nz and contributes to Asia Pacific Report.

Israeli opposition leaders have called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to leave office following the sweeping Democratic victories in the US midterm elections, warning that his continued leadership threatened Israel’s international standing and relations with Washington.

Yair Golan, leader of the left-leaning Democrats party, said the results revealed “just how toxic Netanyahu is among both Democrats and Republicans,” Anadolu news agency reported.

Writing on X, Golan warned that Netanyahu’s continued tenure alongside National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir could lead to “international sanctions, international isolation, and a clash with the US, our friend and most important ally”.

• READ MORE: Iran war live: Tehran lauds US election blowout; urges Trump to end assault
• PSNA ‘outraged’ over NZ suspension of UNRWA aid, calls for immediate restored funding
• Other Gaza genocide reports

He called for a government capable of restoring Israel’s international standing and pursuing long-term political and strategic arrangements.

Golan contrasted Netanyahu’s vision of a “Super Sparta,” which he described as “boycotted, backward, and isolated,” with his own preferred model of Israel.

“Netanyahu lost the elections. He is dangerous to Israel. We have no time to waste. We must form a government of change now,” he said.

Democrats lawmaker Gilad Kariv also rejected a Netanyahu-led unity government, accusing the prime minister of having “destroyed the relations with the Democratic Party and with half of the Republican Party.”

“He must not continue to lead the State of Israel,” Kariv said.

The calls came amid Israel’s own coalition deadlock. Netanyahu’s bloc secured 53 Knesset seats, compared with 48 for Jewish opposition parties and 19 for Arab parties, leaving neither main bloc with the 61 seats needed for a majority.

JD Vance blamed Republicans’ midterm defeat on the Iran war, saying defecting Trump voters demanded changes to Washington’s relationship with Israel.

Key Takeaways

Vance said Republican losses primarily reflected voters switching parties rather than a failure to mobilize supporters.

Citing an unnamed pollster, he identified ending the Iran war and changing US-Israel relations among four leading demands from former Trump voters.

He rejected explanations centered on messaging or immigration policy, insisting that the electoral cost of the war must guide the party’s response.

https://t.co/DyGbD8RdQF

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) November 4, 2026

Israeli newspapers warn of congressional pressure
Israeli media described the Democratic capture of the House and Senate as a “blue tsunami”, warning of consequences for Israel during Trump’s remaining two years in office.

Israeli newspaper Maariv headlined its coverage: “Trump was not the only loser; election results raise deep concerns in Israel.”

The newspaper highlighted victories by progressive Democrats who oppose US military assistance to Israel and criticise its conduct in Gaza.

Among them was Troy Jackson, who defeated Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, an established supporter of Israel. According to Maariv, Jackson campaigned for ending US military assistance.

The newspaper said the results could increase pressure on Democratic leaders to change policy toward Israel ahead of the 2028 presidential election, while noting that the outcome did not guarantee an immediate policy shift.

Yedioth Ahronoth described a “humiliating defeat for Trump,” emphasising Democratic gains in Republican strongholds and the resulting constraints on his legislative agenda.

Israel Hayom focused on the implications for Israel’s relationship with Washington.

“With Republicans beginning to distance themselves from the president, Israel will find itself having to deal with a much more critical Congress,” the newspaper said, according to Anadolu.

It predicted that congressional committees could become platforms for pressure over US policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, while Iran, sanctions and regional agreements could generate further disputes.

Arms transfers face greater scrutiny
Israel Hayom also addressed Trump’s announcement that he had agreed with Netanyahu to end annual US assistance to Israel by the end of this year.

Trump did not explain how the decision would be implemented.

The newspaper stressed that arms sales would remain subject to congressional oversight even if Israel paid for them itself.

“An unfriendly Congress could raise the political cost of Trump’s support for Israel and obstruct initiatives requiring parliamentary cooperation,” it said.

Israel Hayom noted that the incoming House would include at least five members of the Democratic Socialists of America, including Darializa Avila Chevalier, who said that “ending military aid is not enough”.

The newspaper urged Israel to strengthen relationships across both US parties rather than rely exclusively on Trump.

Netanyahu-aligned Channel 14 similarly described the results as a “major blow to Trump and Israel”.

It warned that Democratic control of committees overseeing foreign affairs, defence and appropriations could increase scrutiny of arms deals and shipments, alongside pressure over military policy toward Iran.

The channel also highlighted Democrats’ ability to investigate the administration and block Senate confirmation of judges, ambassadors and senior officials.

Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission.

A leading New Zealand advocacy group for Palestine has demanded immediate reinstatement of NZ funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the face of a humanitarian crisis for food, education and healthcare in Gaza.

In a statement today, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) said it was “outraged” that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had reportedly suspended New Zealand funding for UNRWA at a time when the Gaza crisis was sharply escalating.

Peters appears in a video for the pro-Israel lobby to make the announcement but has not issued any release for the New Zealand public.

• READ MORE: UN experts sound alarm over continuing devastation in Gaza, West Bank
• ‘This is catastrophic’ – Gaza hit hard
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“Peters has apparently caved in to pressure from New Zealand’s pro-Israel lobby which has for years run an intensive, sustained disinformation campaign about UNRWA,” said PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi.

The United Nations has just held a briefing on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza last week, underscoring the grave situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, warning that “genocide continues in Gaza”, while “crimes against humanity and war crimes” are being committed in the West Bank.

The briefings examined the immediate humanitarian and human rights consequences of the ongoing crisis in Gaza, one year after the ceasefire entered into force, as well as the escalating violence linked to Israel’s unlawful occupation.

Briefers warned that the “destruction of truth” had become part of the “destruction of a people” and that Palestinians were being deprived of hope and dreams for the future.

Peters ‘betrays NZ values’
“So, while Israel continues its genocide in Gaza, Peters betrays New Zealand values in the most sick and cynical way,” Tamimi said.

“Peters wants the minority votes of the pro-Israel lobby and has gone out of his way to pander to these most racist, reactionary parts of our community.”

New Zealand faces a general election on Saturday with New Zealand’s coalition government’s policies on the Palestine genocide under scrutiny.

“Peters hopes this will pass unnoticed by New Zealanders at large but he knows it will spread widely within the pro-Israel lobby before most people cast their votes,” Tamimi said.

UNRWA is the largest humanitarian organisation for Palestinian refugees and has incomparable expertise and resources to help Palestinians in Gaza, the PSNA statement said.

It has frequently been cited by New Zealand Foreign Affairs officials as the most important and crucial aid agency for Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Exploited suffering
“Israel hates it because it holds the key to UN recognition of Palestinian refugees forced out of Palestine in the 1948 Nakba. Israel will play Winston Peters with the most outrageous horror stories about UNRWA, because Peters wants to believe them,” Tamimi said.

“Peters is also happy to use the suffering of Palestinians because he believes it will bolster his electoral chances.

“We want to see the Prime Minister override Peters immediately and reinstate and triple funding to the UNRWA to meet the desperate Palestinian needs,” Tamimi said.

New Zealand had been previously making its annual payment of $1 million to UNRWA as scheduled.

Prominent Suva lawyer Richard Naidu says removing immunity provisions for coup perpetrators from Fiji’s Constitution may not necessarily result in prosecutions or legal action against those responsible for past coups.

Naidu says much of the current debate surrounding constitutional immunity has been dominated by rhetoric rather than a realistic assessment of its legal implications.

“There seems to be lots of earnest talk about constitutional immunity for coup perpetrators and whether it should be a feature of our Constitution, or deleted, etc,” he said.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji constitution reports

“And, as usual, there’s a lot of rhetoric but not much realism.”

Naidu explained that immunity clauses protect coup perpetrators from criminal prosecution and civil claims arising from their past actions, but do not protect those who might stage coups in the future.

He said removing such provisions could potentially expose Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama to criminal complaints over their roles in past coups.

However, he stressed that any decision to investigate or prosecute would rest with constitutionally independent institutions, including the Fiji Police Force and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Significant legal hurdles
“The DPP — also an independent decision-maker — would have to decide if it was in the public interest to prosecute them,” he said.

“Or they may decide — for what may be good reasons, including the long passage of time — to do nothing at all.”

Naidu said civil claims would also face significant legal hurdles because the usual limitation period for such actions was six years, or three years in some cases.

“So there is a good chance that if you deleted the immunity clause from the next constitution, nothing very much would happen,” he said.

He also questioned whether removing immunity provisions would deter future military takeovers, pointing out that those planning coups already faced serious criminal consequences, including treason charges.

“If you are planning to overthrow the government with guns, you already risk going to jail for the crime of treason — ask George Speight,” he said.

Naidu argued that successful coup perpetrators could simply replace the Constitution they had breached and introduce new immunity provisions protecting themselves.

Anish Chand is a senior Fiji Times journalist. Republished with permission.

The families of three residents shot in Nduga Regency, Highland Papua Province, last month have asked the Papua Legal Aid Institute (LBH Papua) to oversee the investigation into the incident, which left two people dead and one injured.

Papua Legal Aid Institute lawyer Imanus Komba said the organisation had also called on law enforcement authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into the shooting.

“We have received legal authorisation from the victims’ families to provide assistance and oversee this alleged human rights violation case,” Komba said.

• READ MORE: Nduga human rights violations reports
• Other West Papua reports

He made the statement at a press conference attended by the victims’ families, students and humanitarian activists at the LBH Papua office in Kamkey, Abepura District, Jayapura, Papua Province, yesterday.

The shooting occurred in Yosoma Village, Kenyam District, Nduga Regency on October 23. The alleged perpetrators were members of the Rajawali VI Task Force, Den 1, under the Habema Joint Operations Command (Koops Habema).

The two people killed were Masut Serera, 27, an official of Giliga Village, Gearek District, and Kelikia Karebea, 14, a student.

The third victim, Kabera Karebea, 20, is receiving intensive medical treatment at a hospital in Timika, Mimika Regency, Central Papua Province.

Victims’ families account
According to Komba, based on an account provided by the victims’ families to LBH Papua, the shooting occurred about 7 am Papua Time along the Trans Batas Batu–Kenyam Road in Nduga.

Before the shooting, military personnel reportedly flew a drone over the area from about 6 am. Approximately 15 minutes later, several members of the Habema Joint Operations Command arrived in three armoured vehicles and another vehicle.

“Two additional vehicles reportedly entered the residential area,” he said.

Komba said the families maintained that the three victims were civilians from Giliga Village, Gearek District, and not members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB-OPM), as alleged by security forces.

He said Masut Serera died from gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen after being hit by four bullets.

Kelikia Karebea also died from gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen, while Kabera Karebea sustained a gunshot wound to his right arm.

“According to the families, when three military vehicles arrived at the victims’ home, the three men tried to flee.

Indonesian military attack
“However, TNI and police personnel then launched an attack and opened fire. Inside the house, there was a woman holding her baby. They were later surrounded and taken to a military post, but were released that night,” he said.

Komba said LBH Papua believed that the incident involved alleged human rights violations by state security personnel from the Indonesian Military (TNI) and police.

“Security forces have claimed there was an exchange of fire with an armed group. However, the victims’ families say they were unarmed civilians who were inside their homes,” he said.

Family representative Yunius Serera also said the three victims were civilians with no links to any armed group.

He said the victims had attempted to escape when security personnel arrived but were immediately shot.

“Our family’s hope is that the personnel responsible for the shooting are held accountable, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and removed from their positions,” Yunius said.

He also questioned reports of an exchange of fire and allegations that an armed group was involved in the incident.

Belongings seized
Yunius said the victims’ belongings had also been seized during the incident. The family called for all actions taken by security personnel to be thoroughly investigated.

The families also called on Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto to order the withdrawal of non-organic TNI troops from Nduga Regency.

They said the presence of large numbers of security personnel in the region had created fear and trauma among residents, disrupting their daily activities, including their ability to find food.

“Prabowo is a major criminal leading this country, which is why so many human rights violations are happening on this land,” he said.

The government, customary leaders, religious leaders and intellectuals were also urged to pay attention to the situation facing Nduga residents.

“I also ask security personnel to verify people’s identities and status before carrying out operations in the field. They must not simply open fire,” he said.

Meanwhile, Nduga students studying in Jayapura called on President Prabowo and several state institutions to immediately investigate the shooting and ensure those responsible are brought to justice.

Student demands
Student representative Amanus Heluka said they had also submitted similar demands to TNI Commander General Agus Subiyanto, the Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs, and the Minister of Human Rights.

“We demand that President Prabowo ensure this case is thoroughly investigated and brought before the courts. The victims’ families must receive genuine justice,” Heluka said.

The students also presented 11 demands, including:

• The withdrawal of both organic and non-organic military personnel from Nduga Regency, particularly non-organic troops deployed in the region;
• A public and thorough investigation by the commander who led the operation during the shooting of civilians;
• The Nduga Regent and the Chair of the Nduga Regional House of Representatives (DPRK) to take responsibility and oversee the resolution of the case;
• The Nduga Regency administration and all 25 members of the Nduga DPRK to facilitate an investigation by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM);
• Komnas HAM to immediately establish an investigation team and follow up on the alleged serious human rights violations;
• Recognition that the area stretching from Wamena District to Kenyam District, the capital of Nduga Regency, is a refuge area, and that TNI and police personnel must not attack civilians there;
• The Minister of Law and Human Rights to handle the case seriously. The students warned that they would halt government activities if Komnas HAM failed to resolve the case promptly; and
• Security personnel stationed at the Yosoma post to retract their statements identifying the victims as TPNPB members and acknowledge that they were civilians.

Against ‘causing fear’
Urijanti Wasiangge, representing Nduga women, said she did not want future generations to inherit fear caused by conflict and violence.

She called on all parties to thoroughly investigate alleged human rights violations in Nduga and other regencies across Papua.

She said the suffering of communities, bloodshed and grief experienced by victims’ families must not go unanswered, and those responsible for violence against civilians must be held accountable.

“I do not want the bloodshed and our tears to end here. I demand accountability and answers for what happened,” Wasiangge said.

She also urged President Prabowo to stop the deployment and reinforcement of military personnel in Papua, particularly in Nduga Regency.

“President Prabowo Subianto, please stop the deployment and reinforcement of military personnel in Papua Province, especially in Nduga Regency,” she said.

Nuevaterra Mambor is a journalist for the West Papuan news platform Jubi. This article was first published by Jubi’s English language edition West Papua Daily, and is republished with permission.

From the moment I first became conscious of my identity as an Arab, Al Jazeera was in the background.

It was as vital to my upbringing as SpaceToon, Captain Majid and Ramadan soap operas, a familiar presence on the TV sets of every family gathering, every diaspora grocery store and barbershop, almost always on silent unless something big was happening.

Being from this part of the world meant something big could happen at any moment, and we grew up mistrusting state media channels as well as Western outlets, but remaining informed felt like a responsibility. It felt like survival.

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And there was consistently one channel that felt as close to the truth as we could get. The only one challenging the narrative. Asking difficult questions. Refusing to look away.

When protests erupted in Tahir Square on January 25, 2011, a few minutes away from my grandmother’s house, there was only one network broadcasting the news. The reporters were young Egyptians, like me. Their accents sounded like mine.

The region they spoke about felt like home, not an orientalist fantasy of one. State media meanwhile showed rolling images of the Nile as if history wasn’t taking place metres away.

From that moment on, there was no doubt in my mind what I wanted to do with my career, and where I would one day hope to work.

As I mark my first year as a senior producer with the brilliant Al Jazeera English team here in Doha, the network is celebrating its biggest milestone — 30 years on air!

Its place in the global media landscape is more important than ever, and the trust it’s won with Arab and non-Arab audiences is rare in a world where people feel betrayed by the news. So here’s to another generation shaped by its coverage, and to a region getting to speak for itself and on its own terms.

Happy anniversary Al Jazeera.

Mohamed Hassan is a senior producer and presenter with Al Jazeera’s digital team. He is also an Aotearoa New Zealand author, podcaster and poet from Auckland and Cairo. This commentary was first published as a social media post.

A prominent Palestinian advocate has praised a new book launched last week investigating the history, human consequences and international failures over Israel’s three-year genocide in Gaza and beyond.

“At a time when truth, justice, and accountability matter more than ever, documenting these events and preserving the stories of those affected is essential,” said Maher Nazzal, chair of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand.

Speaking at the launch of Gaza: Anatomy of a Genocide, Nazzal thanked New Zealand author Peter Macky for his research and work in producing the timely book.

• READ MORE: Iran vows ‘no limitations’ if US-Israel return to war
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“We remember. We bear witness. We demand justice,” Nazzal said.

Macky’s Gaza examines the destruction of Gaza and the political and historical forces behind it.

The book traces the conflict through the history of Palestinian dispossession, occupation and blockade, before examining the genocidal events following 7 October 2023.

It investigates the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the treatment of prisoners, the killing of journalists and humanitarian workers, and the role of political leaders and international institutions.

Historical conditions
Macky argues that Gaza’s devastation could not be understood as an isolated episode. His account examines the historical conditions, military decisions and international responses that shaped the catastrophe.

The book also addresses the legal and political controversy surrounding the term genocide, drawing on international law, human rights reporting and the evidence discussed throughout the work.

Macky, who has published several books, describes this as the work he is most proud of.

His engagement with Palestine and Israel extends over many years and includes his earlier book Six Days in the Holy Land published in 2009.

Gaza: Anatomy of a Genocide is published by Steele Roberts Aotearoa. It carries an endorsement from Michael Neill, emeritus professor of English at the University of Auckland, who also spoke at the launch.

“I admire this book enormously — its energy, its intelligence, its meticulous research, and its careful concern for history. I know of nothing like it,” Neill wrote.

The book invites readers to confront difficult questions about the destruction of civilian society, the meaning of accountability and the responsibilities of governments and individuals when confronted with mass suffering.

Truth ‘under the rubble’
Ironically, the book has been launched in the same week as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, launched her devastating Truth under the rubble: media in the time of genocide report critiquing mainstream media’s role in “normalising” the genocide.

She adopted the term “mediacide” to describe the sanitising process.

Republic of the Fiji Military Forces Commander Major-General Ro Jone Kalouniwai has called for a Truth, Accountability and Reconciliation Commission to replace the immunity clause in the Constitution.

Presenting before the Parliamentary Special Committee reviewing the Constitution Amendment Bill in Suva yesterday, Major-General Kalouniwai reaffirmed the RFMF’s position that it existed to serve the people and never to rule them.

In his submission, the RFMF pledged to remain neutral throughout any referendum, future elections, to respect the will of the people and continue supporting communities in times of need.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji Constitution reports

According to a Parliament statement, the RFMF took no position on the proposed referendum or any political party and encouraged the retention of key constitutional provisions, including civilian oversight of the military and the restoration of the Ombudsman, while recommending stronger protections for voting rights, human rights, the judiciary, anti-corruption institutions, children and people with disabilities.

Major-General Kalouniwai’s submission concluded with a call for reconciliation, equality before the law, and constitutional reforms that strengthen democracy and ensure that all citizens stand equal under one law.

• Fiji has endured four coups since becoming independent in 1970 after being a British colony for 96 years — two in 1987, one in 2000, and again in 2006 — and a reputation for “coup culture”.

Repeka Nasiko is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

Speakers at a pro-Palestine rally in Auckland’s downtown Te Komititanga Square today recalled the 1917 colonial “Balfour betrayal” and condemned it for opening “the gates of a century long tragedy”.

The protest marked the 160th consecutive week of demonstrations against the Gaza genocide in Aotearoa New Zealand in Auckland and also at dozens of other venues around the motu.

It also drew parallels with British colonial war crimes in the settling of New Zealand and the theft of Indigenous Māori land.

• READ MORE: Iran warns of unfettered retaliation if attacked as mediators try for peace
• A UN protection force must be urgently deployed to Palestine
• Other Gaza genocide reports

This came as Australia’s unelected South-African-born Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal has sought to “muzzle criticism of Israel” in a draft blueprint for policing a nation’s democracy and the public media.

And globally, with chants of “Workers do not work for war”, dock workers at more than 100 ports across Mediterranean countries and in other nations set up picket lines and strikes against arms sales to genocidal Israel and the European drive for rearmament.

Port workers protested in Italy, France, Greece, Türkiye, Morocco and the Basque Country in Spain and the action was taken up also in Australia, India, the United States and in other countries.

At the Auckland rally, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), speakers also targeted the New Zealand elections next Saturday with protesters chanting “If you don’t sanction Israel, you don’t get our vote”.

Call for change of government
Protesters were calling for the ousting of the rightwing coalition government of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, which has failed to take a tougher line against genocidal Israel.
Opposition parties Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori have pledged to recognise the State of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel if elected.

Speaking about British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour ahead of the anniversary of his infamous “promise” letter on 2 November 2017, activist Tim O’Shea reminded the crowd that at that time the population of Palestine consisted of 80 percent Palestinian Muslims, 10 percent Palestinian Christians and 10 percent Jewish people.

“A promise was made written in British ink and later fulfilled with Palestinian blood. A short letter, but one that changed the course of history and opened the gates of a century long tragedy,” O’Shea said.

“It was called the Balfour Declaration, a promise made by those who did not own the land, to those who had no rightful claim to it, at the expense of a people who had lived there for millennia.”

“The letter read, ‘His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’.

“It went on to say ‘that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’.

“The British used their weasel words carefully — they deliberately talked about a home and not a state.”

Palestinian rights violated
O’Shea said that was the start of a process that “ignored and violated the rights” of the Palestinian people and their ownership of their homes and land.

“Those 67 words were written by British Foreign Secretary Balfour and addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leading figure in the Zionist movement in Britain. Rothschild wasn’t even an elected official — he was a baron, and a banker.

“Balfour made a promise to the Zionists that Britain had no right to make.

“It was a betrayal that would shape the destiny of a nation, and indeed the whole of the Middle East.”

O’Shea also outlined how the betrayal actually began even earlier — in 1916, with the Sykes-Picot agreement, a treaty signed in secret between Britain, France, and Russia.

“It was a colonial conspiracy to divide the Arab world up like spoils of war. The dream of Arab independence was never given a chance to be born,” he said.

“Instead, an illusion was planted in the hearts of the Arabs that they were under occupation [by the Ottoman Empire] and that self-rule was their path to liberation.”

‘Illegal and immoral’ declaration
O’Shea said a century of dispossession, occupation, and resistance had been sealed by Britain “with a promise, and by the Palestinians with their steadfastness”.

“This was not a declaration. It was a curse written in British ink and fulfilled with Palestinian land, and lives.”

The Israeli genocide in Gaza since October 2023 has killed almost 75,000 Palestinians – mostly women and children – and more than 1400 since the so-called “ceasefire” signed in October 2025.

Palestinian activist Adnan Swaid, who was born in Syria and his family had fled Palestine during the Nakba of 1948, also spoke of the Balfour Declaration and how it had impacted on his people.

“The Palestinian holocaust did not start on 7 October 2023 and did not start even in 1948, but started on 2 November 1917 when the bankrupted British government at the end of the First World War ‘sold’ Palestine — which was under their mandate — to the rich Zionist families for cash and gold,” he said.

“Then they issued the most illegal and immoral declaration in human history.

“Remember Teresa May? She was the ex-British PM, who could not, refused to apologise to the Palestinians?

“The United Kingdom, right up until now, supplies killing arms and fly-over spy flights over Gaza.”

Swaid criticised British Zionists who “collaborated with the Nazis to prepare the ground for forced Jewish migration to British-occupied Palestine.

“The British government facilitated this migration from 1917 until 1948.”

Swaid also condemned the British military for “helping form terrorist organisations like the Hagana, Stern Gang, Palmach and others – these groups were armed, trained, protected by the British army”.

‘Opened the door to genocide’
Researcher and student community advocate Kākakatara Te Pou Kohere (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Te Ata Waiohua, Tūhoe, Ngāi Tahu) also spoke of Balfour and Zionist collaboration.

“The British Empire, with colonies in every ocean and occupations on every continent, opened a door to the genocide, theft, and misery of tangata whenua in Palestine,” he said.

“It was not the massacre of thousands in Gaza, it was not the displacement of a nation with the Nakba, it was not the brigandage of the Zionist terrorist militias.

“The door was opened by a declaration on 2 November 1917, made by one of the Empire’s colonial trouble shooters, Arthur Balfour. It was under “Bloody” Balfour’s watch that the British worked to ensure Ireland was kept under their rule.

Balfour enforced the strict Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act 1887 (known as the Crimes Act) to suppress agrarian unrest, ban nationalist political groups, and jail thousands of activists and protesters, Kohere said.

“Where the Irish were shot in the streets for daring to stand for their freedom and sovereignty, where the questions of nationhood were dismissed in Westminster, far to the North Sea.”

He also explained how during the Boer War of 1902, Balfour organised some of the first concentration camps “as we know them”, and moved thousands of Chinese people into functional slavery in South Africa.

“Balfour was the expression of the imperial drive for domination, of the need for markets, profits, and labourers to exploit,” Kohere said.

“Like with the Ulster Plantations in Ireland, and settling British troops across South Auckland, Waikato, the Bay of Plenty, and much of Aotearoa as a garrison against Māori struggle.”

Kohere described Balfour and “all of his brother officials across the Empire” as repeating the same practices in a “cycle of vicious and rapacious piracy”.

Comparing the struggle in Aotearoa with Palestine, Kohere outlined the peaceful resistance against land confiscations based in the Taranaki village of Parihaka and led by Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi.

“The people went out two by two. They pulled up surveyors’ pegs and ploughed the ‘sold’ land. Later they raised fences across roadways that were being built by the [colonial] government.

“Come 5 November 1881, a thriving community at Parihaka with gas street lamps and plumbed running water was invaded by 1600 men of the New Zealand Armed Constabulary.

Kohere described how a settler paramilitary force from around the country descended onto the fields and orchards of Parihaka, personally led by the Minister of Native Affairs, John Bryce.

The peaceful resistance of the people of Parihaka was brutally crushed by the Constabulary and the leaders exiled.

“The Armed Constabulary was inspired by the occupational forces in Ireland, the Royal Irish Constabulary,” Kohere said.

“The slavery of Māori was connected to the imprisonment and forced relocations of thousands across the British Empire, the French Empire, the genocides by the Germans in the First World War, and the Nazis that followed.”

The arms industry, the chemical weapons manufacturers, the institutions of justification in schools, universities, and academies, were all tied together in the web of empire, Kohere said.

“Arthur Balfour, Governor Grey, John Bryce, George Bush, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu — the faces change, but the action and demands of power do not.”

He called for unity in the world.

“It is the people united, the students in France, the children in Palestine, the
people of Aotearoa, of Indonesia, of China, of Iran, of Bolivia, of Sudan each and every struggle by the workers of the world, by the oppressed, by the people at home and abroad, that can tear up the [colonial] Balfour declarations.”

Street theatre satire
Meanwhile, in Christchurch Ōtautahi, protesters carried out street theatre today satirising the Luxon-Peters-Seymour coalition government’s “shameful” refusal to name the Gaza genocide, recognise Palestine, and impose sanctions on Israel.

Chants of “Garbage, garbage, garbage” greeted protesters wearing masks representing the National Party’s Christopher Luxon, ACT’s David Seymour and New Zealand First’s Winston Peters.

The chair of the Pacific Elders’ Voice (PEV) says the argument that religious affinity justifies the Pacific Islands Forum’s (PIF) partnership with Israel does not stack up.

The Forum’s recent decision to make Israel a sectoral partner has drawn widespread criticism by civil society in the region, and is described as being in conflict with the Pacific’s commitments to human rights, self-determination and international law.

The Pacific Elders’ Voice — a group of former Pacific prime ministers, presidents, senior diplomats and academics — has also come out strongly against the move.

• READ MORE: Pacific Elders’ Voice calls for reversal of Forum partnership with Israel
• Open letter: Mr Gavoka, don’t present your personal theology as the ‘voice of the Pacific’
• Shameful move by Pacific Islands Forum undermines decolonisation and justice — David Robie
• Other Gaza genocide reports

According to PEV chair and former Kiribati President Anote Tong, their position has been informed by a recent report from a Middle East fact-finding mission by the global Elders Group, including former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Pakistani human rights advocate Hina Jelani.

Their report concluded that Israel’s conduct was driving systematic occupation, annexation, and forced displacement of Palestinians amidst a prolonged campaign of violence.

“The mission also cited reports of genocide, killings, and the harassment [of Palestinians],” Tong told RNZ Pacific.

“These are not speculative, these are reports coming from the people who actually went on the ground, people who have absolute credibility. These are leaders, former leaders.”

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog has categorically rejected what he called the one-sided criticism of Israel’s conduct by the Elders.

However, deep division over the Forum’s move has been reflected in the reaction to the Pacific Elders’ stance. While many took to social media to applaud the call, others were critical of it.

For some Pacific Islanders, Israel’s partnership with the Forum makes sense because many of them are influenced by Judeo-Christian, biblical narratives and Christian Zionism, and consider the Middle Eastern country as the Holy Land.

But for the Pacific Elders’ Voice, this does not justify bringing Israel into the Forum.

“To say that we have an affinity with Israel because of religion … there is nothing morally defensible by the actions that are being described, and so that kind of an argument supporting Israel against a very clear report doesn’t really stand in any way.”

Consistency
The Pacific Elders Voice said the Forum’s decision raised questions about the consistency of the region’s positions on colonialism, human rights and self-determination.

Tong said he believed the Pacific Elders represent the views, principles, and moral standards common to Pacific Islands people.

“This is also important because in our advocacy on climate change, we’ve always emphasised the moral and the ethical perspective, which we are asking the world to step forward on climate action.

“I read the arguments that we need the technology that Israel is putting forward, but that does not give them the permit to do what it is that they are doing.

“We’re arguing exactly the same thing that the countries which are benefiting by the fossil fuel industry need to make sacrifices because what they are doing is immorally destructive.”

Tong said the Pacific Islands region should put substance to its new Ocean of Peace initiative.

“I don’t think we should be saying one thing and doing very opposite the next moment. I think it’s counterproductive.

“I guess as a non-political group of elders, we are not constrained by the political or the diplomatic constraints, and I think we can speak our mind, hopefully from from a moral perspective, more freely.”

Timing
A number of Pacific countries have recently forged closer ties with Israel’s Netanyahu regime, but Anote Tong says the Pacific should not be endorsing a government like that.

“I think it’s really the wrong time, given what is happening in that part of the world. It’s really the time to be very cautious to how we get involved with that region, particularly with a country that is very much at the forefront of the conflict.”

Tong said that from his own experience, he knows of the strong lobbying that is levvied against Pacific governments.

“There is no doubt at all in my mind that this has been the case because there is no reason why we all need now to establish relations and put offices in Israel at this time.

“We should be very cautious about getting closer to a country that is now being declared a criminal administration.”

Churches
The Forum’s move has been met with strong criticism from civil society groups in the region, including the Pacific Council of Churches (PCC).

Tong said the PCC’s strong rebuke represented a different position from those arguing the Pacific’s religious connection to Israel justifies stronger ties to the Israel state.

“That kind of argument doesn’t stand in the face of what is happening, in the face of the findings that the Elders have come up with,” he said.

“I cannot imagine any moral human being saying that religious affinity is what needs to guide our decision.”

The Pacific Elders’ Voice said the PIF should review and reverse its partnership with Israel.

Palestinian-Israelis are entitled to vote — sort of.

Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners apparently considered this an alarming development.

So alarming, in fact, that Netanyahu’s Likud party and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party announced plans to deploy approximately 2000 far-right bozos into Palestinian communities to monitor polling stations.

• READ MORE: No clear winner in Israel election with nearly 90 percent of votes counted
• Why Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote, but can’t expect any change
• UN puts media giants on notice over Gaza as journalists’ death toll spirals
• Other Palestine reports

Not ordinary election officials. Not neutral observers. Far-right activists, with no formal electoral oversight function.

Some were carrying firearms.

לא ניתן שיהיו זיופים במגזר הערבי! כ-2,000 משקיפים יוצבו בקלפיות הערביות.

בשיתוף פעולה עם ראש הממשלה נתניהו והליכוד, אנחנו נערכים למהלך חסר תקדים למניעת זיופים בהצבעה ובספירת הקולות, על רקע זיופים במערכות הבחירות הקודמות.

בנוסף, הקמנו מטה משותף להעלאת אחוזי ההצבעה בימין באמצעות מעבר מדלת לדלת, טלפניה ושיחות עם מצביעים בקלפיות.

יש לנו חשש גדול ממפלגות שלא יעברו את אחוז החסימה ויביאו לעליית שלטון השמאל. אסור שזה יקרה. פשוט אסור.

הפעם לא מהמרים. מצביעים הציונות הדתית!

— בצלאל סמוטריץ’ (@bezalelsm) October 15, 2026

On October 1, Israeli police had issued a directive permitting licensed polling-station personnel and party representatives to bring their personal weapons inside polling stations.

The Palestinian civil rights organisation Adalah and the Joint List challenged this arrangement in Israel’s Supreme Court.

They warned that armed far-right “observers” could intimidate Palestinian voters and provoke violence.

On October 25, the court rejected their petition.

Apparently, a ballot box is no place to be underprepared for armed confrontation.

And that was before polling day.

The election-day obstruction
On October 27, reports emerged from Palestinian communities of voters encountering extraordinary difficulties exercising their democratic rights:

• In Tira, a Le Monde reporter documented long queues and an observer controlling entry to a polling station. A Palestinian lawyer accused a Likud observer of deliberately slowing the voting process.
• At Segev Shalom High School in the Naqab, Israeli police and National Guard personnel reportedly restricted access while approximately 200 people waited outside.
• The Association for Civil Rights in Israel urgently appealed to election authorities over significant and unexplained delays at polling stations in Arab communities.
• Adalah recorded complaints involving missing Arabic ballot papers, police checkpoints, interrupted voting and difficulties faced by elderly, disabled and veiled women voters.

Meanwhile, Haaretz reported that Likud had spent millions of shekels recruiting teams to film Palestinian voters outside polling stations, transmitting information to party headquarters.

A remarkable amount of money, manpower and police attention devoted to the supposedly straightforward business of allowing citizens to vote.

The ‘danger’ of Palestinians voting
Netanyahu was not particularly subtle about the political message.

Reuters reported that vehicles displaying Likud flags drove through Jerusalem broadcasting the Islamic call to prayer and warning that Arabs were voting.

Netanyahu himself circulated warnings about a high Palestinian turnout.

Consider what was being presented as an emergency.

Citizens. Standing in queues. Exercising their right to vote.

Palestinians were voting.

This was not a new tactic.

In 2015, Netanyahu warned that Arab voters were heading to polling stations in droves.

In 2019, Likud deployed concealed cameras at polling stations in Palestinian communities, provoking accusations of voter intimidation.

In 2026, the operation involved thousands of proposed partisan monitors, permission to carry firearms, surveillance teams and reported obstruction of voters.

The common feature is unmistakable: Palestinian political participation repeatedly becomes the object of suspicion, alarm and extraordinary scrutiny.

The democracy test
Palestinian citizens of Israel have the legal right to vote.

That right is not a favour granted by Netanyahu. Nor is its exercise an act of aggression against Jewish citizens.

A democratic franchise means very little if a minority population must exercise it under the scrutiny of hostile partisan activists, with the possibility of firearms at the polling station and police obstructing access.

So much for “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

These sorts of antics would make a banana republic despot salivate.

• The Israeli Central Elections Committee said on Wednesday that it had counted more than five million votes as of 9pm local time (19:00 GMT). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc was on course to win 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, while the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot wass expected to secure 48 seats. Projections from Tuesday’s voting also showed that the Arab parties — the Joint List and Ra’am — could hold a record combined 19 seats.

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

A new human rights report has rated civic space in Indonesia under President Prabowo Subianto rated as “obstructed”.

Human rights groups have documented the criminalisation, harassment and attacks on activists and others for their activism, reports Civicus Monitor.

Journalists have been targeted for their reporting and there has been a brutal crackdown on protests, with arbitrary arrests, excessive force and ill-treatment by the security forces with impunity.

• READ MORE: Other Indonesian, West Papuan human rights reports

Authorities have also criminalised West Papuan activists for their peaceful expression and suppressed demonstrations in the Melanesian region.

On September 28, Indonesia rejected allegations of systematic human rights violations in Papua during its right of reply at the 81st session of the UN General Assembly.

The response followed statements by representatives of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu calling for greater international attention to the situation and independent verification of reported abuses, including through a visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Indonesia claimed that credible allegations were addressed through national institutions and legal mechanisms, including the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).

Military legal ruling
A significant legal development occurred on October 15 in dealing with violations by the military against civilians.

Indonesia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the Military Judiciary Law must be amended within two years to bring it into conformity with constitutional guarantees of judicial independence and equality before the law.

The ruling requires Parliament and the government to clarify the division of jurisdiction between military and civilian courts, including the treatment of ordinary criminal offences allegedly committed by military personnel.

Human rights groups highlighted the potential importance of the ruling for victims seeking accountability for alleged abuses by military personnel in Papua.

On October 20, Civicus published a report marking two years since President Prabowo Subianto came to power. It highlighted the regression of civic space, in particular the attacks, harassment, prosecutions and surveillance targeting human rights defenders, journalists and critics, as well as the crackdown on protests.

On the same day, Amnesty International Indonesia gave the government a “failing grade” on human rights. It said the government had not made progress in addressing serious past human rights violations.

Shrinking civil space
It also raised concerns on the shrinking civil space, the expanding military role in civil affairs, and several economic policies impacting community rights.

The Committee to Protect Journalists and Civicus also urged the government to end practices that undermine press freedom and take concrete action in protecting journalists, ending impunity, and fostering the conditions necessary for independent journalism.

In recent months, there have been allegations of censorship around the forest fires and Greenpeace activists briefly detained. A student activist was jailed, while an individual was criminalised for providing community internet access.

The Advocacy Team for Democracy (TAUD) released their findings around the August 2026 anti-corruption protests while the crackdown on peaceful protests in Papua persisted. A student leader was assaulted, Papua activists targeted and reduced sentences for an attack on an activist raises’ accountability concerns.

Sejumlah pengguna medsos baru-baru ini mengeluhkan adanya pembatasan unggahan konten terkait karhutla di Kalimantan. Hal itu menandai dua tahun pemerintahan Prabowo-Gibran yang disebut masih diselimuti praktik pengekangan kebebasan berpendapat https://t.co/TYEk3PgeVF

— BBC News Indonesia (@BBCIndonesia) October 19, 2026

Censorship of critical social media posts on the forest fires
In October 2026, social media users, civil society organisations and public officials reported that posts discussing forest fires and the resulting haze, including criticism of the government’s response, had been removed, restricted or made less visible on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

On October 15, the Nalar Rawat Institute published posts highlighting the health impact of wildfires and severe air pollution, using satellite imagery and pollution data.

TikTok subsequently removed its video, citing violations of community guidelines, while Instagram suspended the organisation’s account. Although access to the Instagram account was restored following an appeal, TikTok rejected the appeal against the video’s removal.

International Animal Rescue Indonesia (YIARI) also reported that Instagram had labelled a post about the impact of wildfires on wildlife as “sensitive content”, blurred the images and muted its audio.

On October 20, TikTok removed a video by Siak district chief Afni Zulkifli showing tree-planting activities on burned land in Riau; the video was restored following an appeal later that day.

The reported restrictions prompted concerns about possible censorship and their implications for freedom of expression and access to information during Indonesia’s ongoing wildfire and haze crisis.

Digital rights organisation SAFEnet called for greater protection of online freedom of expression, while raising concerns that existing regulations could encourage platforms to restrict content excessively.

Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid denied that the ministry had requested the removal or restriction of content about wildfires.

Dua tahun pemerintahan Prabowo-Gibran, bencana makin parah, biaya hidup makin mahal.

Dari banjir, karhutla, sampai cuaca ekstrem, krisis iklim makin terasa di kehidupan sehari-hari. Tapi, apa kerja pemerintah? https://t.co/o2kk4pTdmF

— Greenpeace Indonesia (@GreenpeaceID) October 20, 2026

Detention of Greenpeace activists
Six Greenpeace Indonesia activists and five others were taken into custody by police on October 21 after unfurling banners at a monument at the Hotel Indonesia roundabout in Jakarta. The banners criticised the government’s handling of forest fires and the haze crisis.

The unfurled banners read: “Address the Climate Crisis, Lower Living Costs” and “Disasters Are Getting Worse, Life Is Getting Harder. What Is the Government Doing?” to express their demand for action on the climate crisis.

The banners only remained up for two hours before police asked them to take them down.

Daniel Winarta, a representative from the Advocacy Team for Democracy (TAUD) at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH), said that the detention lacked a clear legal basis.

Chairperson of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) Anis Hidayah also called for the immediate release of the activists.

However, the police media outlet later denied an arrest, claiming the activists were brought to police headquarters solely for medical treatment after “feeling weak and dizzy” from descending the monument, and were released the same night.

• Read the full Civicus report here

REVIEW: By Aleta Moriarty

Israeli forces have killed between 209 and nearly 300 journalists and media workers in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories since October 2023, depending on when data was collected, and Western outlets routinely omitted or downplayed Israel’s responsibility in their headlines, according to the latest United Nations Special Rapporteur report.

The report, Truth under the rubble: media in the time of genocide, by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, was presented to the General Assembly recently and publicly launched yesterday.

It finds Israel’s failure to stop incitement on its airwaves is a continuing breach of the Genocide Convention and defies the International Court of Justice’s January 2024 order to prevent and punish it.

• READ MORE: The BBC and Western media have a case to answer over Gaza
• Other Gaza genocide and media reports

It also puts broadcasters and social media companies on notice: since that order, saying no platform can claim ignorance of the risk, and where a company knowingly provides practical assistance that has a substantial effect on international crimes, “questions of complicity arise”.

Massive toll on Palestinian journalists and their families
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls Gaza the deadliest war for journalists ever recorded. Israeli forces have wounded more than 400 journalists, and the report finds around

70 of those killed were killed as reprisal for their work.

More than 150 journalists’ homes and media offices and institutions have been destroyed, and Israel has completely destroyed 81 percent of Gaza’s information and communications infrastructure.

This devastation has not just been focused on the journalists, with around 710 journalists’ relatives also killed, 436 of them in the first four months alone.

Deliberate targetting
Photojournalist Fatma Hassouna was killed with five family members when precision-guided munitions struck their apartment in April 2025, a day after her documentary about life during the genocide was selected for Cannes.

In August 2025 a “double-tap” strike on Nasser Hospital killed 22 people. The first strike killed Reuters cameraman Hussam Al-Masri, and the second killed four more journalists who had rushed to the scene.

Israel said it had hit a “Hamas camera” — it belonged to Reuters.

Israel’s military says it does not intentionally target journalists. In October 2023 the Israeli military reportedly set up a “legitimisation cell” that has systematically recast Gaza-based journalists as “Hamas operatives”, the report says, creating a pretext before attacks and a justification after them.

More than 100 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been detained since October 2023, and around 30 are still held. Those released describe physical assaults, sexual violence including rape, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation and medical neglect.

Dehumanisation and incitement to genocide
Under Article III of the Genocide Convention, direct and public incitement to commit genocide is a crime in its own right, the report explains, “complete upon utterance or publication and applicable to officials, broadcasters and private media actors”.

No one has to act on it. Albanese finds that some statements broadcast in Israel meet that threshold.

Most people picture arms manufacturers when they think of business entities complicit in genocide. However, according to a 2024 Israel Law Review paper on Ben & Jerry’s exit from Israeli settlements, only two cases before international criminal tribunals since Nuremberg have held individual corporate defendants accountable, and both arose from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

The best known is the Media Case. In December 2003 the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda convicted RTLM executives Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, whose station became known as “Radio Machete”, along with Kangura owner and editor Hassan Ngeze.

A third case, against RTLM founder Félicien Kabuga, collapsed when he was found unfit to stand trial.

Broadcasters culpable
Albanese leans on the Nahimana judgment to argue that when presenters’ calls for genocide go unchallenged and unrepudiated by the broadcaster, the people who control the outlet carry the responsibility.

There are several worrying examples cited in the report. Channel 14 aired singer Eyal Golan’s call to “erase Gaza, don’t leave a single person there”, along with statements calling for a “Holocaust”, including “gas chambers”, and urging viewers to “destroy, kill, and obliterate”.

Three Israeli civil society groups listed hundreds of instances of incitement on the channel in a May 2025 High Court petition, yet the broadcasts continue unchecked. Channel 12 journalist Yehuda Schlesinger, who argued sexual violence against Palestinian detainees should become state policy, was temporarily suspended, then joined Channel 14.

Mainstream and pro-government Israeli media have described Palestinians as “Amalek”, “monsters”, “a cancerous growth” and

even “cannibals” who “must be eradicated”.

The report says this rhetoric comes with a denial of civilian status, with Israeli media asserting that “there are no innocents” in Gaza, that Palestinians are “not civilians” and that Gaza is inhabited by “two and a half million terrorists”.

Double standards and censorship
The report highlights how Western outlets widely reported unverified claims, including that Hamas beheaded babies on October 7 and that Palestinian journalists killed by Israel were “terrorists”, the report says, while corrections received far less prominence.

German broadcaster ARD’s editorial guidance presents civilian casualties as primarily a consequence of Hamas’s alleged use of “human shields”. Much of the media reproduced what Albanese calls “humanitarian camouflage”, presenting so-called safe zones and evacuation orders as civilian protection.

Content analysis cited in the report found the BBC downplayed or omitted Israeli responsibility in 83 percent of relevant headlines, and The New York Times in 65 percent. The BBC still runs its story on six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed by Israeli forces, under the headline

“Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help“.

Between October 2023 and August 2025, The Times invoked Hamas “human shields” 176 times and the BBC 81 times. The Times mentioned sexual violence against Israelis 76 times and against Palestinians four times across two sample periods.

At Germany’s ZDF, 90.7 percent of uses of “barbaric” referred to Israeli victims, and the word was never applied to attacks on Palestinians. Palestinian children made up about 99.7 percent of child deaths, yet appeared in just over half of CNN’s personalised stories about child victims.

Israel’s most important ‘weapon’
Alongside propaganda, high levels of censorship are also reported. Israel’s military censor banned 1635 articles in 2024 and redacted another 6265, 21 interventions a day. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described social media to US-based influencers as Israel’s most important “weapon” in what he calls the “battle for truth”.

The report also explicitly names Antoinette Lattouf,

unlawfully dismissed by the ABC after reposting a Human Rights Watch report on starvation in Gaza.

The report saves some of its sharpest findings for tech companies.

With Palestinian journalists killed and foreign media shut out of Gaza, Meta, X and Alphabet Inc. (Google) became the principal gatekeepers of information on Palestine, and the report finds recurring patterns of discriminatory moderation, censorship and amplification of Israeli government narratives.

Leaked Meta data shows about 38.8 million Facebook and Instagram posts have been removed, banned or suppressed since late 2023, and engagement with major Palestinian news outlets has fallen 77 percent. TikTok and Meta reported compliance rates of 99.2 and 94 percent with Israel’s takedown requests.

Meta had been warned before.

In 2018 the UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar found Facebook had been “a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate,” a conclusion Meta’s own commissioned assessment accepted.

Israel signed contracts worth roughly US$50 million, including with Google and X, for ads dismissing famine reports, among them a message telling viewers “There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie“.

Platforms kept taking that money after famine had been confirmed and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ordered aid let in. Google reportedly concluded the famine-denial ads didn’t breach its policies, and it carried paid ads calling the ICJ genocide case a “blood libel”, discouraging donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and attacking Albanese’s previous report.

Platforms also left up campaigns smearing Palestinian journalists before they were killed, including claims that Reuters and AP reporters had advance knowledge of October 7, which both agencies refuted.

What the report demands
Albanese wants the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor to investigate direct and public incitement to genocide by government officials and media figures, and the UN General Assembly to set up an independent mechanism to preserve evidence of crimes against journalists, secure the release of detained journalists and open Gaza to international media and human rights monitors.

Governments are urged to prosecute attacks on Palestinian journalists, treat their footage and archives as evidence, and review public funding and partnerships with media organisations and platforms that spread incitement or help conceal atrocity crimes.

Media organisations and platforms are told to stop “laundering propaganda through the journalistic form”, verify belligerents’ claims before publishing, run corrections as prominently as the original story and stop retaliating against journalists.

“Accountability depends on the survival of the record,” the report concludes. “Without it, neither justice nor the prevention of future atrocities remains possible.”

For the majority of Israelis, the general election today is a choice between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the forces that oppose him, led by former general Gadi Eisenkot.

But for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up 20 percent of the population, the polls present a different dilemma.

As the political mainstream in Israel continues to shift to the far right, Palestinian citizens face growing threats to their political and collective rights. Palestinian communities in Israel experience increased violence, while settlers are encroaching on their boundaries.

• READ MORE:  Opposition leads Netanyahu camp in Israel vote, Arab parties up: Exit polls
• Israel election 2026 live: Polls open as Netanyahu faces tough test
• Other Israeli election reports
• Other Gaza genocide reports

The recent push to expand policing and militarisation of civilian life is another source of growing anxiety within the Palestinian population.

In this context, the anti-Netanyahu bloc does not seem to offer the prospect of policy reversal or change. Therefore, the question on many Palestinian minds is whether voting in the Israeli elections can make any difference at all.

Recolonisation of 1948 Palestine
Since the Nakba of 1948, the Palestinians who managed to remain in their homes in what was declared as territory of the new State of Israel have had a different fate than the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

In 1952, they were granted Israeli citizenship, and in 1966, the martial law under which they were forced to live was lifted.

Although Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote and participate in politics, citizenship has not shielded them from the broader system of dispossession and attempts to reshape their Palestinian identity and national belonging.

Through land confiscation and the regulation of education and culture, the Israeli state has sought to detach Palestinians from their historical roots and collective past, promoting instead a model of the “Arab Israeli” as a citizen whose identity is separate from its Palestinian and Arab national context.

Formal citizenship has not secured substantive equality for Palestinians as they face discriminatory laws, systemic underfunding of basic services, and political and socioeconomic marginalisation.

Instead of engaging in direct violence towards Palestinian citizens — as it has done in the West Bank and Gaza — the Israeli state has instead “outsourced” brutality to criminal networks.

As a result, Palestinian communities have faced killings, shootings, bombings and arson while Israeli law enforcement has largely ignored the problem. More recently, this problem has escalated, as organised crime groups obtained advanced weapons reportedly stolen from Israeli army stockpiles or smuggled across borders.

Growing militarisation claims lives
This growing militarisation of organised crime has claimed hundreds of lives.

In parallel, Israeli settlements next to Palestinian communities have expanded, accompanied by accelerated seizure of land. This process of “recolonisation” began in mixed cities, such as Jaffa and Lydd, where religious-nationalist settler groups started establishing themselves in Palestinian neighbourhoods in 2021.

Since October 2023, this process has accelerated. In August, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveiled his party’s plan to “Judaise” the Naqab and northern Israel. He proposes to add one million Jewish residents to the two regions, establishing 40 new settlements and dozens of farms, expanding existing settlements, and creating hundreds of thousands of new housing units.

The idea is to extend the model of territorial control from the occupied West Bank into the Naqab and northern Israel, where Palestinian communities are concentrated.

There are also indications that the policing of Palestinian towns and villages could increasingly fall under the National Guard, established under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The idea of creating the force was prompted by the May 2021 protests, known as the Dignity Uprising, which spread across Palestinian communities in Lydd, Haifa, Umm al-Fahm, and dozens of other towns and villages.

Ben-Gvir has advocated expanding the state’s capacity to suppress such unrest. Although the National Guard’s precise role and operational framework remain under development, its potential deployment against mass protests raises serious concerns about the right to protest and the protection of democratic freedoms.

The government has strengthened settler security squads and integrated them into a broader security framework, raising concerns about the growing role of armed civilian groups in enforcing control over Palestinian communities.

At the same time, Ben-Gvir has widened access to personal firearms, issuing 300,000 gun licences since taking office.

Together, these measures normalise civilian policing and deepen the militarisation of everyday life, reinforcing the unequal distribution of coercive power in a society structured on the dispossession and subordination of Palestinians.

The Palestinian response
Parties seeking to represent Palestinian citizens of Israel, such as the United Arab List (Ra’am), led by Mansour Abbas, have long argued that parliamentary participation and support for the anti-Netanyahu camp can help remove the far right from power and halt its settler-colonial agenda.

But the party’s own track record proves this premise wrong.

Ra’am joined the coalition government formed after the elections in 2021, which excluded Netanyahu, but it failed to bring about fundamental changes in the conditions of Palestinian citizens. The coalition was fragile and often rocked by deep ideological contradictions.

In 2022, Mazen Ghnaim, a member of Ra’am, publicly acknowledged that he could not push through policies that would benefit the Palestinian population, despite his party being part of the ruling coalition and despite promises being made that such policies would be accepted. He also lamented the heavy criticism he faced whenever he was visiting Palestinian communities.

Ra’am’s experience in that coalition illustrated the challenge of sustaining Palestinian political participation in a government whose other constituent parties uphold exclusionary nationalist policies.

The problem, therefore, extends beyond Netanyahu himself: Palestinian support for the anti-Netanyahu camp cannot translate into meaningful policies that challenge the broader structures of discrimination and dispossession Palestinian citizens of Israel face.

Voting may offer a way to slow down this project, but it cannot reverse the deeper transformation taking place within Israeli society. The cultural shift towards fascism extends beyond the government and its political leadership, becoming increasingly embedded in social attitudes and everyday life.

That said, I believe another four years of far-right rule would pose an immediate threat to Palestinian communities and their rights. Therefore, I will vote in today’s election.

But Palestinians need to recognise that electoral participation must be accompanied by a more radical political response capable of confronting the structures and ideologies driving this transformation. This requires, among other things, reforming the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel and rooting it more firmly in Palestinian society through popular committees and grassroots organising.

It also demands a broader commitment to democratisation and de-Zionisation across historic Palestine, as part of a larger political project aimed at building a different future through alternative institutions, mechanisms, and forms of collective action.

Whatever the Israeli state might claim, the fate of the Palestinian citizens of Israel is tied to the fate of the rest of the Palestinian population. That is a realisation that Palestinian political leaders must finally embrace.

Mohamad Kadan is a Palestinian writer and PhD student in the Department of History at Rice University. His scholarly work has appeared in Middle East Critique and Interventions. He has also published essays and commentary in Mondoweiss, Al Jazeera English, Middle East Eye, and the Hampton Institute, and writes in Arabic for Romman Cultural Magazine and many others. He is a co-founder of the Edward Said Forum at Tel Aviv University. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

New Zealand’s oldest and largest Palestine solidarity movement today called on political parties to press for “immediate expulsion” of Israeli Ambassdor Alon Roth-Snir and to suspend ties with Israel.

The call by the Palestine Solidarity Network follows two damning new United Nations reports released yesterday and also the impact of the pariah state’s Occupied West Bank ethnic cleansing operation on the family of PSNA national spokesperson Rinad Tamimi.

“My family is directly affected by the past two days of Israel’s massive ethnic cleansing operation in Hebron in the Occupied West Bank, where my family — including my 95-year-old grandfather — have been expelled from their homes,” Tamimi said in a statement today.

• READ MORE: UN raises ‘ethnic cleansing’ concerns over Israel’s Hebron operation
• Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amid continuing genocide in Gaza, UN Commission of Inquiry finds
• Israel election 2026 live: Netanyahu faces tough test in high-stakes polls
• Other Gaza genocide reports

The call also comes as Israelis go to the polls today to elect a new government and New Zealand faces an election on November 7. Early voting began yesterday in New Zealand.

The UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk has condemned Israel’s actions in the Occupied West Bank.

More than 3000 Palestinians have been forced from their homes so far, in what Turk described as action “punitive in nature and designed to instil fear”.

“Collective punishment is a grave violation of international law. Threats to empty and erase entire neighbourhoods also raise serious concerns of ethnic cleansing,” Turk said.

Damning UN report on Israel
Meanwhile, the UN Independent Commission of Palestine and Israel has released its latest report which declares: “Israel has committed war crimes and the crimes against humanity of extermination, persecution, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, intentionally targeting Palestinian civilians as it continues to commit genocide in Gaza.”

The report confirms that the source of the endless violence and oppression by Israel goes back to the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) when more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and land.

“As part of a broader investigation into the root causes of recurrent tensions and protraction of conflict, the report outlines the key drivers of Israeli violence and concludes that Israel has striven to expand territorially and displace Palestinians through violence since the 1947-48 war.”

Tamimi said: “These shocking reports confirm that Israel has no intention of respecting New Zealand values or international law”.

“The argument that we need the ambassador here to keep lines of communication open is a smokescreen. There is not a scrap of evidence Israel has ever taken any notice of us. The embassy is not here to listen. It is here to propagandise, spy and infiltrate the Pacific,” she said.

“Across the country this week the Palestine solidarity movement will be highlighting these reports and demanding accountability for Israel in nationwide protests.

“The government must end its rhetoric about the Israelis in the West Bank and finally make an effective stand and cuts all ties with Israel, until the refugees can return and everyone living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has as equal rights,” she said.

“It would be appropriate justice for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to follow the expulsion of my 95-year-old grandfather from his home.”

Mr Gavoka, with respect, you do not speak for the “entire Pacific Islands” when you say the Pacific identifies with Israel because the relationship is “biblical, ageless and real”.

That statement is historically careless, theologically shallow and politically dangerous.

Christianity came to Fiji through the Wesleyan Methodist tradition in the 19th century, long before the modern political State of Israel was established in 1948 and before Christian Zionism became the powerful political theology it is today.

• READ MORE: Shameful move by Pacific Islands Forum undermines decolonisation and justice
• Aisake Casimira: How Christian Zionism has become hitched to the chariot of empire
• An Ocean of Peace is not built on occupation
• Other Israel in the Pacific reports

To suggest that Fijian Christianity has always carried some automatic political identification with the modern State of Israel is simply not true.

There is also a very important distinction between Christianity and Christian Zionism.
Christian Zionism is one particular interpretation of Scripture. It is not Christianity itself, and it certainly does not represent every Christian theologian, denomination or church.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has repeatedly warned against using Scripture to justify occupation, domination or the denial of Palestinian rights. In fact, just this year in Suva, WCC general secretary Reverend Professor Dr Jerry Pillay addressed Pacific church leaders directly and warned that Christian Zionism can selectively use Scripture, neglect justice and mercy, justify territorial claims and undermine Palestinian rights.

So perhaps before politicians start telling the Pacific what Christianity supposedly demands, they should listen to people who have spent their lives studying theology.

Consider Palestinian Christians
There are pastors, bishops, biblical scholars and theologians who have studied Christianity for decades, in seminaries and universities, who absolutely reject the idea that supporting every action of the modern Israeli state is somehow a Christian obligation.

The WCC itself has called interpretations of religion that justify occupation, violence or dehumanisation a distortion of faith.

And let us not erase Palestinian Christians from this conversation.

Christianity was born in the Middle East. Palestinian Christians are among the oldest Christian communities on earth. They live in the land of Christ’s birth, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection, and the WCC has specifically recognised their ongoing experience of occupation, displacement and discrimination.

So when someone says the relationship between “the Pacific” and Israel is simply biblical, I ask: what about the Christians of Palestine? Are their lives, their churches, their land and their theology suddenly irrelevant?

Even within the Pacific, your claim is already contradicted.

International law standards
Pacific Conference of Churches general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan has publicly challenged this very position, saying the Pacific must apply the same standards of international law everywhere and cannot speak about the suffering of one people while ignoring another.

That alone proves that there is no single “Pacific Christian position” on Israel.

The real danger here is when politicians take a highly contested theological interpretation and present it as though God has already settled their foreign policy for them. That is not theology. That is politics wearing religious clothing.

Faith should make us more concerned about justice, mercy, human dignity and the protection of the oppressed. It should never become a convenient excuse for abandoning critical thought or international law.

You are free to hold your personal beliefs, Mr Gavoka.

But please do not turn your personal theology into the voice of the entire Pacific.

The Pacific is larger, wiser and far more diverse than that.

Senia Burr is a Fijian digital creator and campaigner for human rights and against social injustice. This commentary was first published as a social media post and is republished with permission.

I cast my vote. Did it today. And I resisted the temptation to dance around the voting floor yelling the rebel yell.

I restrained myself. Just. Do we need change? Hell yeah.

I came home and played and danced. My election play list goes like this:
First up Donovan’s “It Must Be The Season of The Witch”.

• READ MORE: Do Palestinians in Gaza expect anything to change after Israel’s election on Tuesday?
• Other Gaza genocide reports
• Other NZ election reports

Because I know my own power and I want you to know your power. The power to change. To cast a spell. Voting is your rebel yell.

Then I played Zu Asche, Zu Staub:

The reason? It is the theme tune from Babylon Berlin a neo-noir series set in the latter years of the Weimar republic. The multi award-winning programme features a young woman who yearns to be a reporter (my former self), and a heroin-addicted detective during the rise to power of the fascist regime in Germany — featuring real street scenes.

The shocking aspect is that the emergence of a fascist regime was slippery and barely noticeable. Sound familiar. Sounds like now? Sounds like something to watch and watch out for? Yes.

Genocidal dictators
Oh, it is so so easy for the world to fall into the hands of genocidal dictators.

And then I turned to Psycho Killer because I resist normal.

Because as a young woman I fell, I developed reactive depression. And it was hard getting back up. And I don’t want life to be that hard for other young people who don’t fit. Who won’t fit. Why the hell should they?

My advice to them is not to run away but to demonstrate rebellion by voting against this rotten coalition.

Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer’ reminds me that I loathe “normal” because to me “normal” means conforming in a society is so abnormal it celebrates the strong and punishes the vulnerable.

It also reminds me that I want people like me to live. To be able to live. To feel accepted. To not be shunted to the margins.

And that led me to Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”.

“And when you’re out there, out there, well I was out of touch. Well it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough. I just knew too much.”

I just knew too much.

Criminal Coalition
We know what this criminal Coalition has done. We know. And we can’t look back.

I’ve written these last years about the injustices, about the vile support for a horrendous genocide by our leaders who defy the United Nations by refusing to call a genocide a genocide.

I’ve been deemed the enemy of this state but at least I’m alive. If I was in Gaza I would have had a target on my press vest. For reporting the truth. I stand by those fallen colleagues. More than 260 journalists — women and men, mothers, fathers, killed for reporting the truth. Unlike most of our media.

I was only pepper sprayed and banned from my own Town Hall and ghosted on social media.

But I am the proud member of Free Palestine — a political party that was formed by Christchurch schoolteacher Paul Hopkinson to push other parties to do the right thing. To stand against a genocide.

That is what the Free Palestine Party represents — the do the right thing party. And the Green Party and Labour Party responded.

The Free Palestine Party is the only party that came out with a reel “Don’t vote for us” presented by party member and candidate, Will Alexander.

In forming the party the members met with the people of Gaza, people speaking from tents. People returned to the desert. People who have lost people.

Party faced pushback
Before its launch, the party has received pushback from those who think it is very Jewish to support a genocide. I have news for them. It is not Jewish to support a genocide. It is Zionist and fascist.

The campaign launch was threatened with disruption. The launch went ahead.

Acclaimed Ngāi Tahu poet Ariana Tikao read her poignant distressing poems about Gaza, from her pukapuka, “Pepeha Portal”.

Beads of war a rosary
turning round and round
between his finger and thumb
touching each one as
it circulates like oxygen
in blood evidence of atrocity
lay on the floor
on the whenua
in the red red rock at Ōnawe
like stains on the body bags
in Gaza gagging my throat
as they carry her away
without ceremony I see
the dead in the eyes of
the bereft:
“ka mate au i taku tangata”

The party launch was a feel good launch of people doing the right thing for Palestine. And at last other parties have responded. But not this Coalition. A coalition complicit in pushing down and out.

My final song on my playlist is Macklemore’s “The Free Palestine Song” which means, as he says, equality for all.

He has also written and performed: “Hind’s Hall” — Hind Rami Iyad Rajab is the five-year- old Palestinian girl who cowered in a car, crying — crying that she was scared.

Force of genociders
That five-year-old girl was killed by the IDF — the offensive force, the force of genociders. That mercenary military force also killed six members of Hind’s family and two paramedics coming to her rescue.

She is one of more than 22,000 children killed by the IDF. At least 77,036 people have been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, and related operations since October 7, 2023, according to data reported by the Gaza Health Ministry and Israeli Foreign Ministry up to August 2026.

At least 1208 total deaths have been recorded in the West Bank, which includes over 254 children. The Zionist state has also invaded Lebanon, killing more than 4000 people have been killed. Oh and the Zionist state is playing team tag with the US, it has its eyes on the prize of the Pacific.

More than its eyes — its hands and feet and guns.

And is it any wonder that this Coalition plays team tag with toxic leaders? It values the value of stripping the environment. Mining. Draining the sea bed.

The planet is crying. Our land is beautiful and it will bleed if this continues. It is bleeding now.

As Macklemore says in “Free Palestine”:

“The word genocide is such a point of contention for some, that it’s more hurtful than seeing dead babies being pulled out of the crumbled cement and the dust.

“Comparative suffering leads to the lie there’s a them and an us. It’s a lie. We don’t own this earth,’ he says.

“We are just guests here, my love.”

Banned, but alive
And he was banned. Canned. But he’s alive. And this government, our New Zealand government, has joined all the toxic governments of this cruel world who won’t call a genocide a genocide.

I call down this coalition of cruelty.

I’ve seen it punch down on people with disabilities.

I’ve seen it try to evaporate the Waitangi Tribunal — the means for redress for Māori who lost land and forests and mahinga kai, Māori who were pushed to the margins.

Māori incarcerated.

Colonisation is a cruel system. This coalition is oppressing some to support others. Māori deserve a real and fair chance.

Ditto Pasifika.

Ditto all people queuing for jobs. All the people being ghosted when they apply for jobs.
All the broken lives and broken hearts.

I’ve seen the coalition push people who are on the margins off the margins and over the edge.

I’ve seen our politicians blame everyone but themselves for this mess.

Does that make me crazy? Probably. But I’m glad. I’m proud.

My right to vote
And I’ve exercised my right to vote. A right I have thanks to women like my three times grandmother and two times grandmother voting for a law change on the suffrage petition.

Thank you to all the many women who stood up for the right for women to vote.

And thank you to all the people of the past who stood up for the right of all people to vote — not just the toffs but the common people but the people of the land.

I don’t like to tell people what to do.

I like people to educate themselves.

But I’ve also seen the cons, the lies, the way narratives get skewed.

This Coalition has been undemocratic, pushing people down and out, making it more — not less — difficult for voters to vote.

Change for good
So I’m calling it. Vote this cruel coalition out.

We need a change for good.

We need to heed the call of our beloved land and waters.

We need to take responsibility for ourselves and all vulnerable people.

Liberty and Responsibility.

If you heed the rebel call at all you will vote this year.

Exercise that right. Prove that they can’t pull the wool over your eyes anymore.

Prove you know too much. Vote them out.

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.

In what is probably one of its most shameful acts ever, the Pacific Islands Forum has betrayed one of its founding principles in admitting Israel — already a global rogue pariah state — as a development partner in the middle of the genocide of an Indigenous people, the Palestinians.

As decisions of this nature are made by consensus, it means that all 18 member states of the region’s main political body – including Australia and New Zealand – have given their blessing.

The move undermines the Forum’s founding commitment in 1971 to regional decolonisation.

• READ MORE: Israel becomes world’s most disliked country, global survey finds
• Gaza Strip: A beginner’s guide to an enclave under blockade
• An Ocean of Peace is not built on occupation
• Other Israel in the Pacific reports

Six Pacific countries and territories — American Samoa, French Polynesia (Mā’ohi Nui), Guam (Guåhan), New Caledonia (Kanaky), Pitcairn and Tokelau – are still on the UN Decolonisation list.

And there are also questions about West Papua with supporters of independence long claiming the 1969 Act of Free Choice was fraudulent process – and branded as an “Act of No Choice”.

A perception of arrogance and deceit about the Israel partnership process has also angered many in the Pacific.

Israel move condemned
Already, two regional civil society groups have condemned the move after news emerged about the controversial move – not by a Forum announcement, but by a social media post by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.

They are the Suva-based ecumenical Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), which has called for a review of the decision, and the Pacific Regional Non-Governmental Organisations (PRNGO), which has challenged the “Blue Pacific” mantra, arguing “an ocean of peace is not built on occupation – Pacific civil society questions the Pacific Forum on Israel partnership”.

Another diplomatic achievement: Israel joins the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) as a Forum Partner.

The Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, Baron Divavesi Waqa, has informed me that Israel has been accepted as a Forum Partner, following a decision at the meeting of the Forum’s member state leaders in Palau.

This follows my visit to Fiji in June, where I met with the Secretary General and presented Israel’s request to join the Forum.

Strengthening ties with the Pacific Island nations is one of my objectives. Earlier this year, I opened Israel’s Embassy in Fiji, which also serves nine other Pacific Island nations, all friendly to Israel.
Under the current government, three of these countries, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Nauru, have opened embassies in Jerusalem.

As a Forum Partner, Israel will participate in a framework for cooperation in areas of mutual interest, based on regional priorities and Israel’s expertise in water management, desalination, agriculture, tackling climate change, innovation and sustainable development.

Israel and the Forum will also develop a joint action plan setting out practical areas of cooperation and a mechanism to monitor progress.

— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) October 20, 2026

Reminding the Pacific over the failure of partnership with Indonesia regarding accountability over the Melanesian region of West Papua, “inviting another state that perpetrates occupation and denies self-determination repeats that mistake, and weakens the principle on which our decolonisation depends”, PRNGO warned the move could split the Pacific.

This controversy comes at a time when Israel has been ranked as the world’s most unpopular country because it has consistently trampled on international law, and ignored eight decades of resolutions by the United Nations, the very body that created the State of Israel in 1947 through Resolution 181 — by partitioning Palestine when the Zionists only controlled 7 percent of the land in the British mandate of Palestine with 30 percent of the population, yet granting it 55 percent as their share of land at independence.

Jerusalem and Bethlehem would become an international zone. Palestine with about 70 percent of the population of almost 1.9 million, comprising mostly Arabs, and other non-Jewish communities, would have been left with 45 percent of the land under the UN Partition plan and, unsurprisingly, rejected it.

Israel unilaterally declared independence the following year and armed Zionist militia and terrorist gangs began a campaign of ethnically cleansing and expelling some 750,000 Palestinians and razing at least 450 Arab villages known as the Nakba (the “catastrophe”).

This set in motion eight decades of illegal occupation, militarisation, wars and repression of the Indigenous Palestinian people.

In the Six Day War in 1967, Israel captured and occupied Gaza, East Jerusalem and West Bank — the occupied Palestinian Territories have been administered illegally by the Israeli military ever since.

Since October 2023, Israel has launched 100,000 attacks on five Middle East countries and territories.

Voted against decolonisation
At the UN Decolonisation Committee (C-24) meeting earlier this month, Israel and the United States were the only two countries that voted against decolonisation, and the US unsuccessfully attempted to end the committee’s mandate.

In a statement issued on Friday, the PRNGO Alliance declared: “We understand our communities’ real needs for water, food security, agriculture, development and climate adaptation. The urgent need for resources across the region is increasing, and partnerships to secure such are important.”

However, “our concern is that the Forum family will welcome, without condition, a state in continuing breach of international law. We reject antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, and mourn every civilian life lost, Israeli and Palestinian.”

Israel’s war on Gaza since the “breakout” attack on southern Israel from the “world’s largest open air prison”, by Hamas and other resistance fighters on 7 October 2023, has led to more than 75,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — being slaughtered.

Although a sham ceasefire was declared in October 2025, Israel has continued attacking the besieged enclave almost daily since then killing at least 1500 people, mostly children, and has failed to honour the terms of the first phase of the peace agreement. US President Donald Trump’s brokered Board of Peace is widely regarded to be a failure.

Last year, the Belgian-based Hind Rajab Foundation filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar — the very person who announced the Forum partnership.

Seeking an arrest warrant
The foundation announced at the time that it was seeking an arrest warrant for Sa’ar for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Israel’s military assault on Gaza since October 2023.

It was alleged by the foundation that as a senior member of Netanyahu’s cabinet, Sa’ar had played “a central role in shaping and implementing policies that have led to mass displacement, collective punishment, and systematic attacks on Palestinian civilians”.

Although it is understood Sa’ar is not being formally investigated by the ICC, the court had already issued arrest warrants in November 2024 against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity and is believed to be investigating other officials.

The PRNGO Alliance statement cited the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, Advisory Opinion on 19 July 2024 that found Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful and that it must be ended “as rapidly as possible”.

The UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016) affirmed that the Israeli settlements had “no legal validity” and were “a flagrant violation under international law”. Also, the UNSC Resolution 478 (1980) called on States to withdraw their diplomatic missions from Jerusalem.

Yet “three Forum members of Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Naoero [formerly Nauru] have opened embassies there; Samoa has announced plans to follow, and Israel’s announcement cites them,” said the PRNGO statement.

Israeli forces launch a “targeted” raid in Hebron after a shooting killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded several others, as Palestinians fear “collective punishment” days ahead of Israel’s October 27 elections.

Follow our LIVE coverage: https://t.co/FL4SrZ5U5K https://t.co/DHUJNFknqd

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 24, 2026

Deprivation of Gaza’s water
Noting the mounting death toll with Israeli violations since October 2025 “ceasefire”, the statement said: “Human Rights Watch found Israel’s deliberate deprivation of Gaza’s water amounts to extermination and acts of genocide.

“FAO reports nearly 87 percent pf Gaza’s cropland damaged. The war’s emissions, an estimated 33 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, fall on islands like ours. Water, food and climate security cannot be offered with one hand and destroyed with the other.”

The PRNGO statement highlighted the fact that under international law, “a ceasefire requires a complete halt to the attacks, and allows unimpeded entry of humanitarian relief at scale.

“It would end unprecedented Israeli settlement expansion and terror, guaranteeing the right of displaced Palestinians to return home, prohibit forcible transfers and end collective punishment.

“Our Forum leaders have called on all the world to uphold the UN Charter, including the sovereign equality of all states and the rights of all peoples to exist in peace and security.”

The PRNGO statement recalled that in September 2025, “our leaders declared the Blue Pacific as an Ocean of Peace, grounded in the UN Charter and international law.”

“As we said in July, a genuine Ocean of Peace means security ‘founded on justice, sovereignty, self-determination, environmental stewardship and the wellbeing of our peoples’. It rests on a strong rejection of militarisation and great power rivalry at our expense.

“A regional partnership with Israel would further facilitate and advance security cooperation, military technologies and infrastructures, in addition to the growing military exercises and security treaties crowding our ocean.”

Pacific regionalism rested on solidarity based on shared values, not merely on shared resources, PRNGO said.

Whose voice will be silenced?
“This partnership will unravel — not strengthen, that weave. It risks dividing the Forum family, tying our voice at the United Nations to bilateral favours, and making the Pacific complicit in a conflict far from our shores. Who stands to benefit from this partnership? Whose voice will it silence?

“The Pacific remembers the cost of occupation, and our peoples continue to struggle under colonisation, nuclear testing and environmental destruction. In Kanaky New Caledonia, Ma’ohi Nui, Guahan and West Papua, the struggle for self-determination continues.

“West Papua is a long standing item on our leaders’ agenda. Since 2019, they have asked Indonesia, a Forum Dialogue Partner since 2001, to allow a visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights — a visit Jakarta offered in 2018.

“It has not eventuated, yet a similar partnership has brought delay: not accountability. Inviting another state that perpetrates occupation and denies self-determination repeats that mistake, and weakens the principle on which our decolonisation depends.”

The PRNGO Alliance demanded:

• The Forum Troika — Solomon Islands, Palau and New Zealand — reflect on its concerns over partnerships;
• Forum leaders review Israel’s partnership and suspend all engagements until Israel complies with the ICJ and UN Security Council resolutions;
• The Forum Secretariat publish the basis for the Israel decision and ensure any partnership agreement commits to international law;
• Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Naoero return their embassies to Tel Aviv, consistent with Resolution 478, and Samoa reconsider its plan; and
• All Forum members ensure no partnership, aid, or security, cyber or surveillance cooperation helps maintain the occupation.

The day before the response by PRNGO, the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), an umbrella organisation representing Christian churches and national councils across 18 countries and territories in the region, called for all engagement with Israel to be suspended until it complied with international court rulings and UN resolutions.

General secretary Reverend James Bhagwan told RNZ Pacific Waves that the region needed to apply consistent standards to its international relationships.

“We cannot invoke the [International Court of Justice] for our islands and ignore the fact that the ICJ, in 2024, stated that Israel must end its occupation of Palestinian territory as soon as possible,” he said.

Reverend Bhagwan, who is also a signatory to the PRNGO statement, was speaking in response to Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Viliame Gavoka who had claimed the “entire Pacific Islands identify with Israel” and their relationship with the country was “biblical, ageless and real”.

Responses from New Zealand
In New Zealand, the coalition government of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon which is fighting desperately to be re-elected on November 7 with tight opinion polls predicting a possible hung Parliament, has been struggling to justify support for the Forum move.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters described criticism of Israel’s inclusion in PIF as an “insult” to Pacific Island countries, adding that the decision by the Pacific leaders should be respected. However, the opposition parties led by Labour demanded explanations.

John Minto, national organiser of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), the largest activist group in New Zealand, which has been organising weekly protests against Israel for the past three years, said: “Wow – a tiny country in the Middle East is now joining the Pacific Islands forum [as a second-tier partner].

“This has nothing to do with supporting the Pacific but has everything to do with using Pacific nations to provide cover and legitimacy to a racist, apartheid state currently committing genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and conducting pogroms against Palestinian Communities across the Occupied West Bank.

“Sickening complicity by Pacific leaders!”

The chair of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand, Maher Nazzal, has called on the government to “explain itself”, especially in view of New Zealand becoming the host for the Pacific Islands Forum next year.

“Technical cooperation must not shield any state from scrutiny under international law,” he said.

Support Palestinian self-determination
Writing in the Otago Daily Times, John Hobbs, a doctoral scholar and former career public official at the University of Otago’s National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, has a clear-cut message for the incoming post-election government next month:

“New Zealanders and our political parties must act and be part of the global momentum to end the brutality in Gaza, to reverse the illegal occupation of the West Bank, support Palestinian self-determination and hold Israel to account.

“To do otherwise represents a moral failure as citizens of Aotearoa New Zealand and it will severely damage our reputation among many of our traditional allies, trading partners, and the international community.”

A poignant lesson also for the Pacific.

Count the hands the footage passed through. Whakaata Māori reported the video first. RNZ said it had independently obtained the same material. Newsroom published a still photograph from the event showing people in Mongrel Mob regalia making hand signs.

The Post added that the gathering had been advertised online as a fundraiser for a Mob chapter, a claim Chris Hipkins said he had been reassured was wrong, and which by then had already done its work. The New Zealand Herald put a Labour minister on camera to answer for it.

On Wednesday, Kerrin Leoni was a candidate defending her seat in an electorate debate. By Friday morning she was finished, with her name still on the ballot because nominations had closed and there was no mechanism left to remove it.

• READ MORE: The real reason Kerrin Leoni had to go is not about the gangs
• Other NZ election reports

Forty eight hours is about how long this takes now. The machinery runs without anyone in it making a decision they would describe as political. A clip surfaces. A second outlet obtains it.

A third finds the still that works better than the clip, because a photograph of men making hand signs needs no context and cannot be argued with. A fourth adds a detail about money that turns a family gathering into a transaction. A fifth books a Labour MP and asks her to account for a colleague.

Somewhere in the middle of that chain the thing stops being a story about an event and becomes the event itself, and the party reads the coverage, calculates the damage, and acts on the coverage rather than on anything that happened in that room.

Not one outlet in that chain appears to have asked the question that any reporter who had read the last decade of this country’s own inquiries would ask first. Where did the men in the photograph come from? Who put them in the institutions that produced them? What does the Crown owe them?

A question of candidate conduct
The story was reported instead as a question of candidate conduct, which is the safest possible framing and the one that requires the least work, because it needs no history, no interviews outside Parliament, and no contact with anybody in Tāmaki Makaurau who was actually at the gathering.

The video and the photograph were taken at the same gathering and they carry opposite cargo. In the video a patched man argues that the gangs should stop fighting each other and put their attention on the government, and a candidate tells a room that people who are not enrolled hold the power to change who governs. That is footage of political organising, and any newsroom that wanted a story about democratic participation among the most excluded citizens in the country had it handed over free.

The still photograph carries none of that. It shows bodies, patches and hand signs, and it travelled furthest, because an image requires no reading and permits no reply.

The caption vocabulary gives the game away. Regalia. Hand gestures associated with the gang. Those are the words of a police file transposed into news copy, and they work by telling the reader that what they are looking at is evidence.

Parliament has already made the patch an offence to wear in public, so the photograph functions as a charge sheet while the outlet that published it makes no accusation at all and takes no responsibility for one. The men in that frame are not named, not interviewed, not asked why they were there, and not treated as people who might have a view about the government they were discussing. They appear as a visual condition attaching to the woman standing near them.

Think about what never happens. A candidate photographed at a Federated Farmers breakfast is not asked to account for the nitrate in the Manawatū. A candidate at a corporate box is not asked whether he endorses the firm’s tax structure. A minister photographed with a property developer is covered as a diary item. Proximity becomes contamination only when the bodies in the frame are Māori and poor, and the newsroom knows this without ever having to say it, which is precisely how a shared set of assumptions does its work. Nobody had to instruct anybody. The picture editor simply knew which image would run.

Oriini Kaipara is in this story, which makes it almost too neat. A few years ago she was the first person to read primetime news in this country with a moko kauae, and viewers wrote in to tell the newsroom her face was offensive. She is now Te Pāti Māori’s candidate in Tāmaki Makaurau, and the same industry that once relayed complaints about her chin has spent this week staging a contest between two Māori women over which of them stood nearer to a gang pad.

Lively moment in a tight race
Leoni attacked Kaipara over it at the debate on Wednesday. Kaipara put it straight back. The coverage carried the exchange as a lively moment in a tight race, and the structure that made two wāhine Māori prosecute each other on camera went unexamined by every outlet that profited from it.

The record here is long and consistent. A Māori MP’s tie became a national story. A Māori foreign minister’s face was discussed as a diplomatic variable. Every Māori politician in this country gets asked, sooner or later, to account for a relationship no Pākehā politician is ever asked about, and the question is always framed as a reasonable one about standards.

The reason it is always framed that way is that the people framing it have never had to explain their own cousins to a camera. Senior editorial judgment in New Zealand newsrooms sits overwhelmingly in Pākehā hands, and the judgment in question is not malice. It is the plain inability to see that a room full of Māori men might contain anything other than a threat, combined with an institutional certainty that this inability is neutrality.

Whakaata Māori reported the footage first, and that fact deserves to be stated rather than stepped around. A Māori broadcaster is still a broadcaster, working under the same commercial logic, the same political pressure and considerably more funding risk than the outlets that picked the story up.

What happened afterwards is where the whiteness lives. One report became a saturation event because the rest of the industry recognised the material instantly as the kind of thing that performs, and pushed it until a party leader had no room to move. The first report is journalism. The 48 hours that followed is a removal mechanism, and no individual inside it has to intend the outcome for the outcome to arrive on schedule.

The figure that would have reframed the entire story has been sitting in the public record for years. The Waitangi Tribunal estimates that 80 to 90 percent of Mongrel Mob and Black Power members were once wards of the state, and the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care carried that estimate into its own findings after sitting with gang members who described what was done to them as children in Crown institutions.

Every newsroom in the chain has covered that inquiry. Not one of them reached for it this week. The men in the photograph are the state’s own product, documented at enormous public expense, and the press that reported the inquiry found no reason to connect the two stories when a connection would have cost a political party something.

The press played its colonial role
The press in this country was built into the land taking from the beginning. The settler papers of Auckland and Taranaki spent the early 1860s telling their readers that Waikato Māori were arming, that the Kīngitanga was a standing threat to settler life, and that the government had to move.

The invasion came, the confiscations followed, and the newspapers had supplied the public reasoning that made both appear defensive. Newspapers were as much a part of that apparatus as the survey chain and the militia, and the people who ran them understood themselves throughout as reporting the facts.

The technology changed and the function held. The Dawn Raids were covered as a crime wave. Bastion Point was covered as an occupation to be cleared. In 2007 newsrooms ran police allegations about training camps in Te Urewera for months, in detail, and the case against almost everyone arrested collapsed, after which the coverage simply stopped rather than reckoning with what it had helped do to a community that is still living with it.

In each of these the press produced the Māori body as a question of public order first, which is the step that makes everything the state does next look like a measured response to a situation it did not create.

What happened to Kerrin Leoni belongs in that sequence. No outlet in the chain published anything false. The video was real, the photograph was real, the advertisement for the event existed. The violence is in the selection, the sequencing and the frame, in which still ran and which three seconds of footage did not, in the decision to make candidate conduct the story and state care no part of it, and none of that is actionable before any media standards body in this country.

Watched a woman being publicly destroyed
A complaint can test accuracy. There is no complaint available against an industry’s shared sense of what is obviously a scandal, which is the thing that actually ended her candidacy.

Set out the week’s ledger. Labour lost a candidate and kept its standard. The newsrooms had a running story through a slow stretch of the campaign and will have forgotten it by the time the votes are counted.

The men in the photograph, who were abused by the Crown as children and have since been told that the clothing they wear is itself an offence, watched a woman be publicly destroyed for standing in a room with them and telling them that their vote could change the government.

They were the only people in this whole affair with nothing to gain and they paid for it anyway. Any newsroom could have written that story this week. The material was in their own archives. They ran the hand signs instead.

Professor Mohan J. Dutta of Massey University, Aotearoa, publishes the blog The Margins Review – Culture-Centered Approach featuring critical intellectual opinions from Aotearoa to the world. The views expressed are personal. This article is republished with permission by the author.

The Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) has been and will always be for justice, peace and integrity of creation, going back to the early 1960s when it was established.

Its statement follows a well-established prophetic witness tradition that goes back to the biblical narrative and to the times of Moses, the prophets and Jesus.

PCC has worked on decolonisation since the 1960s, on West Papua, East Timor, Kanaky (New Caledonia), Māohi Nui (French Polynesia), Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, etc. It continues to this day with West Papua, Māohi Nui and Kanaky.

• READ MORE: Israel votes against decolonisation for Pacific at UN – then says it has become PIF partner
• Shameful move by Pacific Islands Forum undermines decolonisation and justice
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The consistency in PCC’s prophetic witness over the years inspired past leaders and continues today with emerging leaders. It takes an enormous amount of courage and a reservoir of humility (to think less of oneself and more of others) to say the things needed to be said about violence, injustice and hypocrisy.

The recent “against” vote by the Israeli state at the United Nations for the decolonisation of Māohi Nui, Kanaky, etc., then the announcement that it has joined the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) as a second-tier partner is not only hypocritically despicable but casts our Pacific leaders as stupid and incompetent (which they probably are anyway, given their recent actions).

So, thank you PCC and Reverend James Bhagwan for your prophetic consistency and inspiration to many of us.

The profound hypocrisy of the Gaza and the West Papua genocides, and Māohi Nui and Kanaky decolonisation crisis lie in the fact that all primary actors justify their positions through frameworks derived from the Abrahamic traditions.

Betrayal of core prophetic mandate
Yet each tradition has systematically betrayed its core prophetic mandate to protect the weak and the vulnerable. Christian Zionism here in the Pacific constructed twisted theological narratives to grant unconditional moral immunity to violence, which in recent times saw their blind support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and their tacit silent support for Indonesia’s murderous occupation of West Papua.

The suffering of the West Papua people since the 1960s until today (an estimated 500,000 people have been murdered and 175,000 displaced) and the Palestinians (many of whom belong to the oldest Christian communities in the world) is rendered invisible or dismissed as necessary collateral damage in a grander geopolitical or Christian Zionism eschatological drama that will soon end with the second coming.

By prioritising imperial dominance and regional political convenience over human dignity, Christian Zionism in the Pacific has, in Andrew Tuley’s words “… decoupled its theology from the cross and hitched it to the chariot of empire”.

Aisake Casimira is a distinguished Rotuman theologian, author, and thought leader whose work has profoundly shaped contemporary understandings of Pasifika identity. This commentary was originally a FB post and is republished with the author’s permission.