ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

When is it possible to declare that a society has moved from liberal democracy, however imperfectly realised, to authoritarian rule?

Is there a moment when it is suddenly obvious the change has occurred? Does authoritarianism announce its arrival?

Or is it a process that gradually unfolds, where restraints on executive power are dismantled piece by piece until the tide cannot be reversed?

• READ MORE: Other Jonathan Cook articles
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Is the turn to authoritarianism something that can only be understood after the event, when all opportunities to halt the slide have been missed?

And how do we admit to ourselves that we have been stripped of our most basic and cherished freedoms — of speech, assembly and protest — when we are no longer free to speak, meet or protest?

The unpalatable truth is that Britain is already far down this path. And if you are unaware of the earthquake that has been taking place, that may be because — just as you might expect when authoritarianism comes calling — the very first to be smothered are the voices sounding the alarm.

A media owned by billionaires and the state — the parties that, in an age of growing popular discontent, have most to gain from the accretion of executive power and the silencing of dissent — have no reason to illuminate the encroaching darkness.

Foot work for authoritarianism
An ostensible Labour government under the outgoing Keir Starmer has done much of the foot work to usher in the new, ominous political climate.

It was precisely Starmer’s credentials as a human rights lawyer that provided the British state with the cover story it needed for an unprecedented assault on the freedoms fought for by earlier generations.

There are few signs that his successors, whether it be a new figurehead in the genocide-supporting Labour Party or Nigel Farage’s immigrant-bashing Reform, will change direction.

The logic driving Britain’s slide towards authoritarianism is being set not just by politicians, but by a British establishment that needs to sell its collusion in genocide and illegal wars abroad and to find easy scapegoats — immigrants — to blame for its failures at home.

The job of the main political parties, reliant on billionaire donors who also own the corporate media, is to shore up these narratives.

It was Starmer’s Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who incautiously gave the clearest expression to the British state’s vision of our future.

In a speech in January she laid out her ambition to harness new developments in AI to create an all-powerful, all-seeing “Big Brother” surveillance state of the kind foretold by George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984.

‘Panopticon’, the perfect prison
Mahmood even compared this future to the “panopticon” — a reference to 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s perfect prison: a central watchtower (the state) surrounded by a circle of windowed cells where the inmates (the public) would be visible at all times.

Bentham understood that this was not just about physical control. As he observed, the sense of being constantly observed would be a “new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind”. The inmates would police their own behaviour to avoid punishment.

Starmer’s successor, Andy Burnham, is reportedly keen to keep Mahmood a key figure in his government. But this isn’t about a single government minister.

Mahmood is the symptom of a deeper malaise, not its cause. The architecture of the new systems of control, as well as the erosion of freedoms and the cultural traditions that supported them, were already well advanced when she was appointed to the Home Office.

Whoever holds the reins of power in the months and years to come will be able to exploit these existing powers to the maximum, and then extend them further.

Once the spirit of authoritarianism takes hold, it becomes ever harder to stuff it back into the box. Only concerted mass protest can remind the state where ultimate power resides. And it is precisely this kind of protest that is being demonised and criminalised one step at a time.

If it is possible to identify a single moment when the new authoritarianism moved out of the shadows, it was some 15 years ago. That was the moment the state launched its protracted campaign against Julian Assange to vilify and incarcerate him.

Incensed US over war crimes
The founder of the whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks had incensed the United States and its loyal British sidekick by publishing details of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq both wanted to be kept secret.

It was probably no coincidence that, at the time, Starmer was head of the Crown Prosecution Service and making repeated trips to meet Washington’s most senior law officers. Contrary to protocols, records of these discussions were destroyed by his officials.

We will never know what instructions Starmer was given by the US regarding Assange. But a possible clue survived the further, and highly irregular, destruction by Starmer’s department of related correspondence between UK and Swedish prosecutors from that time.

One of the few surviving emails is revealing. It shows that Sweden was considering dropping an investigation into Assange for lack of evidence, as he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fearful of what lay in store.

Starmer’s staff, who were supposed to be neutral arbiters between Sweden and Assange’s legal team, angrily told the Swedes: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

In another email, the same CPS official told Swedish counterparts: “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another extradition.”

Later, with the active connivance of the UK and its courts, the US showed its true hand. Washington began extradition proceedings on the preposterous grounds that Assange had committed “espionage” by publishing details of its war crimes.

Caged in prison
Assange was caged in a high-security prison in London for years, often unable to meet his lawyers, his health failing, on a trumped-up, nakedly political charge.

This was a terrifying, unprecedented assault on the right of journalists to publish evidence of state wrongdoing in the public interest. And yet the billionaire-owned media could barely stifle their yawns.

There was a two-fold gain from Assange’s decade-long abuse and the trampling of his legal rights.

First, it established a very visible precedent in which the rule of law was turned on its head. The roles of victim and victimiser were reversed.

Assange, who had published incontrovertible evidence of US and British war crimes, was the one behind bars. British officials who approved and hid those crimes not only evaded justice but were free to hound and smear Assange.

This has been the theme ever since, as the British state has intensified its curbs on speech and protest, with Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians often serving as the testing ground for authorising this new crackdown.

In the second half of the 2010s, Jeremy Corbyn — Starmer’s predecessor as Labour leader — found himself and his supporters roundly vilified as “antisemites”.

Forewarning of the future
Why? Because they tried to bring attention to Israel’s criminal actions — a forewarning of what was to come, as Israel unleashed what legal experts, Holocaust scholars, human rights groups and United Nations investigators have all concluded is a genocide in Gaza.

In a properly functioning democracy, those who smeared Corbyn and other critics of Israel would have been permanently discredited.

Instead, UK officials — the same officials colluding in Israel’s current crimes by shipping arms to Israel, by carrying out surveillance flights to guide Israel’s bombing campaigns against Gaza’s civilians, and by offering diplomatic cover — simply stepped up the demonisation campaign.

As millions of Britons took to the streets, the Starmer government — and the British state behind it — not only labelled them as antisemites but radically rewrote the statute books to criminalise opposition to Israel’s genocide.

Direct action group Palestine Action, which had been targeting Israeli arms factories operating on UK soil, was proscribed as a “terrorist” group equivalent to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Holding placards protesting the genocide, as thousands of respectable British citizens did, became “support for terrorism”, risking a jail term of up to 14 years.

Reality was once again inverted.

UK supports state terrorism
Britain continues to actively support Israeli state terrorism.

But it was those ringing the alarm — those trying to stop these shipments, those opposed to British collusion in Israeli state terrorism, or those simply appalled by the undermining of basic rights to protest — who were arrested and charged as “terrorists”.

Meanwhile, documents show Elbit Systems continues to enjoy unrestricted access to British government officials.

Second, in stigmatising and isolating Assange for publishing details of US and UK war crimes, the British state was able to draw its own fake distinction between “good” and “bad” journalism — a distinction the billionaire-owned media was only too happy to embrace.

Assange, whose independent platform WikiLeaks had held Washington and London’s feet to the fire for committing war crimes, had in the process shamed the establishment media for their unwillingness to do likewise.

He exposed the extent to which corporate journalists, dependent on access to the rich and powerful for stories, conspire in the covert, unaccountable ways power is exercised by the state.

The media are not watchdogs; they are lap dogs, representing the interests of the billionaire class.

Independent media not tolerated
The British state — and its security services — made clear they would not tolerate truly independent or critical media that could expose their hypocrisies or bring them to book.

In response, the billionaire-owned media not only hung Assange out to dry. It joined the government in a chorus of claims that independent outlets were either peddling “fake news” or serving as “Kremlin assets” spreading “disinformation“.

It amplified the pressure from politicians on social media platforms, the billionaires’ new plaything, to tighten their algorithms to hide independent journalists, and stymie these dangerous new competitors in the battle for truth.

Similarly, corporate media cheerled the government’s decision to ban Russia Today, the Russian state’s news channel. It quickly became all but impossible for UK audiences to hear Russia’s version of events in the mainstream media, as Britain and European states built the case for permanent confrontation with Moscow.

The European Union imposed an even more draconian ban — upheld last month by the EU’s Court of Justice — that makes it a criminal offence to repeat any information reported by RT, and other banned outlets, even if demonstrably true. The law’s purpose is to supposedly “protect public order and safety”.

In recent weeks, two prominent US commentators, Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, have been denied entry to the UK over their criticisms of Israel. Uygur was due to speak at an Oxford University debate.

In this new authoritarian climate, truth is defined as whatever the state wants their citizens to know. Meanwhile, disinformation — “Russian propaganda” or “antisemitism” — is whatever those same states insist their citizenry must not hear.

Brazen reversal of Enlightenment
This is a brazen reversal of 350 years of the Western Enlightenment, with its professed belief both in the primacy of reason and that ideas must be tested through debate and critical scrutiny.

Now it matters not what is being said, but only who is saying it.

And unsurprisingly, the billionaire-owned, Western media has endorsed this new regime. After all, its voice — representing the interests of the super-rich — is guaranteed a hearing.

No surprise, then, that this same privileged media corps has continued to meekly accept its exclusion from Gaza by Israel as the biggest crime in modern history unfolds — even now, in the midst of a supposed ceasefire that Israel keeps breaking.

Because what matters is who is allowed to speak: Israel, not Gaza’s Palestinians, whether what Israel says is true or, as invariably turns out to be the case, a lie.

In line with this precept, the billionaire-owned media has barely raised a murmur as Israel has slaughtered Gaza’s journalists in unprecedented numbers — killing more of them than in two world wars, Vietnam, the Yugoslav wars and Afghanistan combined.

The lives of Palestinian journalists — like the reporting they have had to do alone under Israeli bombardment — count for nothing in the Western media because of who they are.

Genocide ‘erased as a crime’
Genocide — the what — has been erased as a crime because it is we — the West — who are helping to carry it out.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, reportedly facing a political and donor backlash, scrapped last year its annual Global Impunity Index — which measured where journalists are murdered with impunity — after it became clear Israel would top the rankings.

Now the same committee is being accused of caving in to these pressures by raising doubts about who counts as a journalist in Gaza — doubts that will serve to embolden Israel, which claims that Palestinian journalists, indeed all Palestinians, are terrorists in disguise.

The who has to be rewritten because the what cannot be denied.

The same story is unfolding in the UK, where independent British journalists have been detained at the airport or had their homes raided at dawn by counterterrorism police for “wrong-think” about the Gaza genocide and British complicity in it. They too face up to 14 years in jail.

That has sent a chilling message to other journalists, those that lack the protection of a billionaire patron or the state, about what can be said.

None of this is, or will be, confined to Gaza. The upending of Enlightenment values, as should be clear by now, is part of a much bigger political project to normalise and entrench this creeping authoritarianism.

Hard to reverse precedent
The proscription of Palestine Action and placard-holding has paved the way for the British state to designate any opponent — challenging its lawbreaking or contesting its right to dictate truth — as a criminal or a supporter of terrorism. A precedent has been set, and now approved by the UK courts, that will be hard to reverse.

The state has many tools at its disposal, some of which it is already wielding, again to no protest from billionaire-owned media “watchdogs”.

A particularly powerful one is “debanking”: forcing individuals or groups who disrupt the narrative of Western state moral and legal authority out of the financial system, driving them into a kind of purdah that makes it near-impossible for them to function in the modern, Western world.

Notably again, Assange and WikiLeaks were an early victim of the use of debanking as a political weapon. Washington imposed sanctions in late 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks exposed US and British war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, cutting off almost all of its donor revenue.

Sanctions — what some describe as a “financial death penalty” — have already been imposed on several judges and staff of the International Criminal Court over the issuing of an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for committing crimes against humanity in Gaza.

UN legal expert Francesca Albanese, at the forefront of highlighting Western complicity in Israel’s genocide, has also been debanked.

In Britain, Palestinian and Islamic-run charities have long faced harsh restrictions on their ability to operate financially, usually on the basis of claims that they may be funnelling donations to proscribed groups.

But this has gradually expanded to mainstream Palestine solidarity organisations and to individuals caught up in the ban on Palestine Action.

The Canary debanked
In an even more disturbing, if predictable, development, Lloyds Bank has now debanked The Canary, a leftwing publication whose criticisms of Labour’s capture by Big Business have long proved a thorn in the party bureacracy’s side. The Canary can no longer pay staff, and its news operation is in jeopardy.

This is the same Canary that the Labour Together project led by Morgan McSweeney — who propelled Starmer to power on behalf of the billionaire-friendly, pro-genocide Labour right — identified early on as a threat. His mantra was reportedly: “Destroy The Canary or The Canary destroys us.”

As investigative journalist Paul Holden sets out in his book The Fraud, which documents Labour Together’s covert, law-breaking operations, McSweeney almost succeeded in destroying The Canary. He created an astroturf group, Stop Funding Fake News, that lobbied advertisers to boycott the publication.

Labour Together under McSweeney’s successor, Josh Simons, would then launch a smear campaign on Holden and refer him to British security services as a supposed Kremlin asset.

Like a bad penny, Simons has turned up again, this time giving up his Makerfield seat for Andy Burnham to return to Westminster. Simons is now one of Burnham’s political advisers.

This systematic assault on the right to scrutinise the British state’s actions has been extended to the legal profession too.

Last month, Dan Kovalik, a respected US human rights lawyer and professor, was detained at Liverpool airport by counterterrorism police and questioned over his criticisms of Western foreign policy in Gaza and Iran.

Detained by police
Fahad Ansari, a British human rights lawyer, was detained by police last year on return to the UK from a family holiday in Ireland under Schedule 7 of the draconian Terrorism Act of 2000.

Both men had their electronic devices seized, despite protests that this was unlawful and violated their privileged lawyer-client communications.

Ansari’s detention appears to be a blatant act of political retaliation and intimidation. He had made legal representations challenging a Home Office decision in 2021 to expand the proscription of Hamas to its political wing. Hamas has never launched a military operation in Britain.

For the submission, Ansari had assembled a group of experts to argue that the expanded proscription — long desired by Israel — was having a profoundly chilling effect on the work of lawyers, scholars, human rights groups and journalists in documenting and discussing Israeli crimes in Gaza.

Five UN legal experts wrote protesting the abuse of Ansari’s rights as a lawyer, warning that “such measures threaten to criminalise, stigmatise and have chilling effects against lawyers and legal associations carrying out lawful work in national security and counter-terrorism matters”.

That seems to be precisely the point. Harassing lawyers is a feature, not a bug, of Britain’s new authoritarianism.

An even more visible victim of this new assault on the legal profession is the highly respected barrister Rajiv Menon.

Key human rights cases
He has worked on some of the most important human rights cases of modern times, challenging failures and abuses of power by the state in relation to the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, the deaths of nearly 100 Liverpool football fans at Hillsborough, and the 72 victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

He is currently facing contempt of court proceedings after making a closing speech in January that persuaded a jury not to convict six Palestine Action defendants of any of the charges brought by the British state against them. In 2024, the six had targeted an Elbit factory.

It is believed to be the first time that a lawyer has been prosecuted for contempt of court over a closing speech. Garden Court Chambers, where Menon has practised for three decades, said the proceedings had sent “shock waves through the legal profession”.

It warned of a severe chilling effect on barristers, who might be more reluctant to mount a strong defence, especially in politically charged trials, for fear of reprisals.

All of this should be seen in the context of the government’s equally unprecedented moves to erode the cornerstone legal principle of the right to trial by jury.

Authoritarian states permit no meaningful restraints on their ability to impose their will. Independent-minded lawyers and juries are just such a brake.

But perhaps the most sustained assault by the British state has been on the rights to protest and assembly, making it increasingly dangerous to express a view in the public space.

2 million in street power
Since some two million people took to the streets to oppose Britain’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, new ways have been sought to restrict the ability of ordinary citizens to raise their voice against the abuse of governmental and state power.

Recent legislation allows police to ban protests because they are “too noisy” or cause “serious unease”. Disruption has been redefined to now include hindrance to any daily activity. Protests can be barred if they have a “cumulative” impact.

These are all inherent features of protest. The mass demonstrations against Britain’s illegal attack on Iraq were noisy, disruptive and repeated — as have been the marches against Britain’s collusion in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

By judging the legality of protest according to these selective and largely subjective criteria, the state has given the police huge latitude to decide which protests should be criminalised and which allowed. It is hardly surprising then that the police are currently concentrating their efforts on the anti-genocide marches, which highlight British collusion in Israel’s crimes.

Facial recogition technology — pioneered by Israel against Palestinians — is being rolled out too, normalising the Panopticon state so beloved by Mahmood.

Where is all of this leading? The answer is to a new piece of legislation that was hurried through Parliament by the Home Secretary.

The National Security (State Threats) Act gives the state unprecedented powers to proscribe groups, as it did with Palestine Action, but now without having to claim to have evidence of a terrorist threat.

Claiming a ‘hostlle’ group
The Home Secretary can make such a designation unilaterally, without any parliamentary oversight, simply because he or she claims the group is a “hostile” foreign state actor that poses a threat to national security or public safety.

Mahmood has already done so with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), effectively Iran’s military.

Further, anyone who works with or receives a “material benefit” — defined to include “information” — from a proscribed group can be jailed for up to 14 years. That includes expressing support for the group or sharing information it has provided.

Simply hosting an event where someone expresses support for the group could open one to prosecution, as could posting something on social media that the British state claims is a hostile foreign state “talking point” — whether or not the information is true.

Once again, this is an assault on the most fundamental of Enlightenment values.

In the National Security Act, it matters only who is passing on the information, not what the information is, or whether it is truthful. There is no public interest defence, such as exposure of criminality by the British state or its allies.

There is no exemption for journalists, lawyers, scholars or human rights groups. It will be impossible for them to do the most essential part of their job: digging out information, testing claims from one side against the other’s, and allowing audiences to determine the truth.

Baring of journalists
Assuming Hamas is declared a hostile foreign actor, as seems all but certain, journalists will be barred from collecting details of Palestinian casualties from Gaza’s Health Ministry or speak to doctors there. Why? Because the Hamas government runs the Health Ministry and hospitals.

Worse, it would be impossible for journalists to visit Gaza to investigate Israeli crimes — something that will delight Israel — because such a visit would need to be organised through the Hamas government. To do so would risk 14 years in jail.

The same will be true for reporting from Iran or Russia, if the Home Secretary so decides.

The only apparent carve-out will be for journalists who get approval from the British government beforehand.

That should ensure that only the most compliant, access-driven journalists, belonging to state and billionaire-owned media, will be able to engage with “hostile” foreign actors — in ways the British state can be sure will best represent its interests.

Under this new law, the search for truth, and potentially the truth itself, will be criminalised.

The National Security Act systematises all the other developments we noted earlier. It gives the state carte blanche to criminalise anyone who scrutinises or challenges its moral or legal authority.

Search for the truth
Who should be in uproar over this monstrous legislative assault on the right to search for truth, to hold the state accountable, to act as a watchdog on the abuse of power?

If the billionaire-owned media did any of the above, news outlets would be leading the pushback. As it is, they are mostly silent — because they do none of these things.

It will be independent journalists, commentators, lawyers and human rights activists who will be picked off one by one, sending a message to everyone else to keep their heads down.

Starved of real information and critical scrutiny of the British state’s actions, the public, so it is hoped, will become more ignorant, more docile, more passive as their rights are steadily stripped away.

As the climate crisis intensifies, as resource wars accelerate, as austerity at home bites deeper, the finger will be pointed not at the real culprits — the super-rich, their media and the captured state — but at earlier victims of the West: those fleeing from the wars we initiated, from an increasingly unstable climate our inflated consumption provoked, and from a paucity of resources following centuries of colonial theft.

While we are encouraged to blame “the immigrants”, or “the Muslims”, or “the left”, or “the Israel haters”, the state is in a race to erect a scaffolding of control to protect itself before we wake up to the deception.

Time is running out on all fronts. The lack of urgency to address these crises is not because the crises don’t exist, but because our passivity has been engineered. The truth is we are already in the Panopticon, and our minds are already deeply fashioned for obedience.

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

SPECIAL REPORT: By Andrew Brown

Remember the referendum in which Australians voted to create a Voice to Parliament for Israel?

You don’t. It never happened. We got one anyway.

In 2023, 60.06 percent of Australians rejected a constitutionally recognised Voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. A body that could make representations only on matters concerning the people whose ancestors have been here 60,000 years.

• READ MORE: Reports on the Bondi Royal Commission

Too much, the No campaign shrieked. Division. Privilege. Special treatment.

Nine months later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese handed Jillian Segal what the Voice never dreamed of asking for. Not a right to be heard. Power. No election. No parliamentary vote. No hearing.

A three-year commission reporting personally to the Prime Minister, with a mandate reaching into every campus, newsroom, classroom, gallery, charity, arts contract and visa file in the Commonwealth.

Australia has never seen an office like this. Not once in 125 years.

We have been here before and we said no. In 1951, Robert Menzies asked Australians for power to outlaw communism and police political belief. Even Menzies put it to a referendum, because a democracy does not seize control of ideas by fiat.

A frightened people refused him.

That refusal became a founding settlement of this country. The state does not decide what citizens may think.

A captain’s call
Albanese tore up that settlement with a press release. No referendum. No bill. No debate. One man appointed one advocate, and the checkpoint went up.

An open society grants authority over its citizens three ways — election, appointment ratified by Parliament, or a court, ruling in public, subject to appeal.

Segal’s power arrived by none of them. The word for that is illegitimate. Not unlawful. Worse. Lawful, and

authorised by nobody but one man.

Do not look to the opposition for rescue. The Coalition demanded a national antisemitism crackdown before Labor delivered one, and its only complaint since is that the checkpoint is too small and the universities let off too lightly.

Resistance has come from the crossbench alone. When both major parties agree on machinery this size, the voters have been deleted from the equation. Neither will ask whether Segal’s authority is legitimate, because both intend to use it. That is imposition.

That is Australia in 2026.

Say it plainly. Antisemitism is real. It is sometimes murderous. Jewish Australians deserve safety, delivered without mercy by police, courts and criminal law against anyone who menaces a synagogue or a schoolchild.

Safety does not require a private advocate enthroned above the speech of 27 million people. That is not protection. That is capture.

The wrong person, chosen on purpose
Segal ran the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. She chaired the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce. Israel lobby groups.

Advocacy for Israel is her right as a private citizen. It is also the precise reason no honest government would put her near an office ruling on the boundary between antisemitism and criticism of Israel. Albanese did not blunder into the conflict. He shopped for it.

Her selection sits buried under Freedom of Information redactions. Up to $16.9 million was approved for the Envoy offices. You were not asked. You were not told. You are paying her a reported $1070 a day, and Home Affairs refuses to tell you her salary.

The machinery of a small authoritarian state
Jillian Segal produced a 20-page plan. Thirteen recommendations. Forty nine actions. And behind them, nothing. No published evidence base. No consultation paper. No regulatory impact statement.

Not one piece of credible research showing any of it would prevent a single antisemitic incident. For all the rigour on display, the plan might as well have been drafted at her Point Piper kitchen table. In December 2025, the government swallowed it whole anyway, named it a programme of work led by Segal, and pledged action on every recommendation, unquestioned.

Read the list and ask which country you are living in. Media monitoring. A university report card. Withholding university funding. Terminating academic grants. Stripping charities of their status. Screening visa applicants for their opinions. Ideological training for the public service. Cancellation clauses so arts grants can be ripped back from artists who say the wrong thing about the wrong state.

The fig leaf is that Segal cannot personally cancel anything. Her office helps define the offence, grades the accused and recommends the sentence.

Ministers supply the muscle and the deniability. Prosecutor, judge and probation service in one unelected body, answerable only to the man who created it. Build this for any other subject and Australians would name it instantly.

A censorship ministry.

A rigged definition, wired into everything
At the centre sits the contested IHRA definition, whose own lead drafter has protested its use as an enforcement weapon. The ABC, SBS, Amnesty International and hundreds of scholars warn its Israel-related examples can melt criticism of a state into hatred of a people. Segal bolts it into government regardless.

From January 2027, universities must define antisemitism under an enforceable national standard. Then Segal’s report card marks whether the definition is appropriate, while her plan demands IHRA everywhere. Choice, the way a loan shark offers choice.

No vice-chancellor will need to be ordered to censor.

They will censor themselves in advance.

That is only the architecture. Then Segal took an oath and showed what it is for.

And hold one question in your head overnight, the one polite Australia refuses to ask. Why does one form of racism summon a ministry, a report card and $130 million, while First Nations families waited 30 years and 590 deaths in custody for recommendations nobody implemented?

Why machinery for one hatred and a media release for the rest? You are not supposed to ask. Ask anyway.

• Part 2: the mask off under oath. The plan for your children. The $50,000 nobody will investigate. And the question answered.

Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and Palestine peace activist. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.

The Free Palestine Party is now an official list party and will be on every ballot paper for New Zealand’s general election on November 7.

The Free Palestine Party is the only party in this election dealing with the most pressing economic, political and moral issue facing Aotearoa and the world today, said a statement by the party.

This crisis is caused by the “apartheid colony of Israel backed by US military power destabilising the Middle East”.

• READ MORE: ‘Triple tap’ in Gaza, Iran and the Hind Rajab atrocities condemned at Stop Wars rally
• Other Gaza genocide reports

More than 60 percent of the people of Aotearoa believe that the New Zealand government should sanction Israel for its human rights abuses, this rises to 68 percent among 18-29 year olds.

The only way to bring peace to the Middle East, stop a global depression and end the holocaust of our time, is to put an end to the apartheid state of Israel, just like apartheid South Africa.

The people of Aotearoa helped fight for the end of the apartheid state of South Africa and thousands of Kiwis today have joined the ongoing protests against the crimes of Israel.

“It is time for Kiwis and Aotearoa to be leaders in the struggle against Zionism and Israel, as we were in the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid movements,” said the Free Palestine Party statement.

Centre of NZ politics
“The party has become registered with the Electoral Commission to push this issue to the centre of New Zealand politics “where it should be”.

Protesters over the Gaza genocide have held weekly demonstrations at multiple venues across New Zealand for 149 weeks — the longest continuous protests on an issue in New Zeakand’s history.

Six main principles in the party’s platform would help in the fight against apartheid and would stop New Zealand from being complicit in the crimes against humanity of Israel and the United States, said the statement:

The principles are:

• The right of Return for all Palestinians;
• The primacy of international law and UN resolutions;
• Upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in relation to Zionist abuses;
• Single State Solution for the whole of Palestine;
• Unconditional support for all forms of Palestine resistance; and
• Independent NZ foreign policy and withdrawal from military and security alliances with US.
• More information on the Free Palestine Party

United States unilateral sanctions, the kind being imposed on Cuba today, are deadlier for children than war according to a major piece of research published in The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal.

Totally ignored by the mainstream media, the report has bombshell findings that should call into question the use of sanctions to impose punishments on entire populations for the actions of their governments.

A staggering 500,000 civilians die annually due to US and EU unilateral sanctions that many Western countries help enforce.

• READ MORE: ‘To play God’: How US pressure has shattered Cuba’s healthcare
• Other sanctions reports

Sanctions are ‘more tremendous than war’
The report by Professor Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón and Mark Weisbrot vividly underscores US President Woodrow Wilson’s comment that sanctions were “something more tremendous than war.”

“Effects of international sanctions on age-specific mortality: a cross-national panel data analysis” data-mined major studies covering the years 1971-2021. Its primary source was the Global Sanctions Database (GSDB), internationally the most comprehensive aggregator of global datasets on sanctions.

Analysing research covering the years 1971-2021 across 152 countries, the researchers found that unilateral sanctions (such as those imposed on Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Yemen and Iraq) were “associated with an annual toll of 564,258 deaths, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.” Imagine that: every year, for decades, sanctions (primarily US and EU sanctions) have taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians — and that rate has accelerated, not declined, because American use of sanctions has exploded in recent years.

According to the Global Sanctions Database (GSDB), 25 percent of all countries have been put under US, EU, or UN sanctions in the 2010–22 period! That’s a massive leap from 8 percent in the 1960s. For this short article I will focus on Cuba but the same lessons apply to whatever countries are targeted for unilateral sanctions.

Saving the babies of Cuba
Professor Francisco Rodriguez, an economist at Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies is the lead author of the study. He says: “Our findings reveal that unilateral and economic sanctions, particularly those imposed by the USA, lead to substantial increases in mortality, disproportionately affecting children younger than 5 years.”

Some Americans are fighting every day to save the babies of Cuba. Others, like the President and the Secretary of State, are doing everything they can to kill Cuban babies and thousands of others of the most vulnerable citizens of the besieged Caribbean island.

This is not hyperbole; it is policy that is playing out on our watch.

Medea Benjamin, the great American activist from the CodePink peace organisation, recently visited Cuba to bring medicines and medical supplies to Cuba’s pediatric hospitals.

She is now under investigation for doing so — for breaking US unilateral sanctions.

“Basically, we want to help save babies, and that, according to Trump, is something that must be investigated. Because ‘How dare we want to help the Cuban people? How dare we love the Cuban people?’ If indeed the charge is that we love the Cuban people — ‘Guilty!’ I want my government to leave the Cuban people alone, not to be strangling them by keeping oil from the island, by sanctions that are so brutal. I want them to stop threatening to invade Cuba. I want them to listen to the global world opinion that every single year at the United Nations overwhelmingly says: lift the blockade.”

Sanctions: the modern ‘Siege Engine’
Why the silence from the mainstream media about the report’s findings? Why did they choose to ignore what in a sane and decent world would have been earth-shaking revelations?

Dr Josephine Varghese of the University of Canterbury suggests this is because the West puts great effort into burying inconvenient truths. She specialises in the intersections of colonialism, capitalism and structural violence and told me this week: “The United States has openly admitted that the purpose of the sanctions is to create conditions so bad that the people in Cuba will turn against their own government.”

Cuba’s entire electricity grid collapsed last week, driving millions of Cubans to the brink — just what the US wants.

“At the ground level, sanctions have a deadly impact,” Dr Varghese says. “Cuba had such impressive achievements in health, for example, in lowering infant mortality.

“The current sanctions and punishments are targeting this. We are seeing nurses and doctors having to manually operate ventilators and incubators for premature babies.”

Luis Ernesto Morejón Rodríguez, Cuba’s ambassador to Wellington, New Zealand, reinforced this message when he told me of the human impact of the blockade:

“I think about children fighting cancer whose chances of survival have been devastated because the chemotherapy drugs and other essential medicines they need are simply not available.

“Years ago, around 65 percent of these children could expect to survive. Today, because treatments are interrupted or cannot be provided at all, that figure has been tragically reversed: as many as 85 percent may not survive.

“I think about the parents waiting for a phone call that never comes because more than 100,000 Cubans — including over 12,000 children — are still waiting for surgery.

“Cuba once had one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the Americas. Today that rate has more than doubled, rising from around four to more than nine deaths per thousand live births.

“These are not just numbers. They are children who should still be alive, families carrying unbearable pain, and healthcare professionals forced to make impossible choices every day.

“Political differences should never be settled at the expense of ordinary people, and certainly never at the expense of children.”

Now that we know that sanctions have effects on the health and mortality of civilian populations similar in magnitude to those of armed conflict, what should we do about it? Will we continue to shrug and look the other way out of fear of the US or indifference to human suffering?

Will we have the courage to at last recognise the inconvenient truth that the US and the EU have killed civilians on a scale, albeit at a slower pace, greater than the German government of the 1940s?

Isn’t it time to find the courage to oppose this? The reform of the entire sanctions framework must be a global priority. Unilateral secondary sanctions (forcing other countries to implement sanctions) is already illegal under international law.

Such is the power of the US and the EU — controlling as they do a large portion of the levers of international trade and finance — that most countries bow down and comply. For the sake of children suffering now and millions more not yet born, that must end and a new era which restrains and reforms the use of sanctions must be ushered in.

As the great Brazilian educator Paulo Freire said: “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

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

Of late, Australia’s public broadcaster ABC has been altering the way it sees the world around it. Bound by a national charter, but modified from within after years of ideological, technical, and operational transfer, the organisation is failing in its duty to inform Australians.

This is occurring at a time of great uncertainty, when it is needed to function healthily, truthfully, the most.

The ABC’s subjective and selective journalism jolts through a country in flux, emblematic of a broader act of censorship that goes on to form the body of a foreign influenced effort to moderate the country’s resting state to entertain the previously unthinkable.

• READ MORE: Other media credibility reports

In a world at boiling point, in a nation being led down the garden path by powerful small interests working in concert to shape public perception and limit the range of acceptable debate, the decline of the ABC has been felt by many Australians.

With pandemics, bushfires, floods, wars and a live streamed genocide still unravelling unabated, the elite power structures that have controlled our country’s destiny have revealed themselves to be nothing short of diabolical — propped up by a corporate media apparatus that works directly in lockstep with the interests of the billionaires and powermongers of Australia’s shallow rooted elite.

In this time of power and consolidation, the ABC has been commandeered and realigned through a concerted effort carried out by a network of former commercial media executives and political appointees who have steadily replaced the organisation’s independent traditions with a more compliant, establishment-friendly outlook.

Ten years under the Coalition, squeezed from above, the ABC has been augmented from root to branch in a process of attrition. A decade of siloing and compartmentalising the old guard, replacing board members with former corporate media hatchetmen, and replacing outgoing ABC stalwarts and custodians with new-wave stenographers who kicked off their trade weaving in the dark arts of Murdoch, has left the ABC almost unrecognisable.

Sinophobic news specials
Barrie Cassidy got replaced by David Speers, ABC people get replaced by non-ABC people — and sooner rather than later we have Sinophobic news specials with moody music, too much airtime wasted on Hughsey, Sandilands and Stefanovic, and a repellent tabloid MSG-like shimmer can be seen on the once mighty public broadcaster.

The ABC once had a star factory within the organisation, with an organic workplace ethos, that produced inhouse some of the better journalists in the world. People like Mark Colvin, Caroline Jones and Kerry O’Brien defined the standard at the ABC by living it and bleeding it into the fabric of the organisation.

Now, as the old guard are washed out, they are replaced by former Murdoch heavies and corporate news executives.

These days, David Speers (News Corp), Patricia Karvelas (News Corp) and Clare Armstrong (News Corp), partner with CEO Kim Williams (News Corp, Foxtel) and a constellation of former corporate suits. A new ethos seeps into the organisation.

People like former Nine CEO Hugh Marks (current ABC managing director), see fit to continue the cultural transfer, employing former News Corp finance reporter Alex Turner-Cohen, and hiring London-based writer-at-large for The Nightly Latika Bourke.

Bourke is one of the most hawkish journalists in the country, enjoying her plum job co-presenting the ABC’s Global Roaming programme on Radio National while continuing to write articles for Kerry Stokes that look like they’re proofread by the military industrial complex.

The Shot’s editor Dave Milner recently covered a Pine Gap landback demonstration in the Northern Territory, where a powerful gathering of local Arrernte Indigenous families laid down four demands for land back, closure of the base, reparations, and compensation for the families in Gaza impacted by the base’s opaque operations.

The ABC told what resembled a story, waltzing around the glaring demands reflecting a national groundswell, and reducing the story to an ambiguous, if not futile, demonstration on an empty red desert highway.

Proof the ABC erased Gaza from its Pine Gap coverage         Video: The Sunday Shot

Israeli govt talking points
On the ABC, this is the way things are done now. And it looks like Patricia Karvelas positing Israeli government talking points almost three years into a UN-declared genocide in the name of balance, or a vibe coded report on the virtues of the Ukraine war with a comic book analysis from Matt Bevan, or it’s a rude and misguided gotcha themed interview from Sara Ferguson.

And just as seen outside Pine Gap, the national broadcaster is gaslighting the shit out of us on a raft of crucial issues. So where is the public interest at the ABC?

Is it in the public interest to frame Iran as some form of equal aggressor in the Netanyahu-Trump led conflict in West Asia? Is the community better off entertaining future wars with China with ideologically conflicted journalists who have no idea? Is it objective to run positive narratives on the inevitability of AUKUS, or speak for the Ukrainian and Russian people on their appetite for war, or omit the clear demands of the Arrernte people for the immediate closure of Pine Gap?

Is it in the public interest to move heaven and earth to engineer a curated and macabre middle ground on an open-cut UN declared genocide, in the name of “balance”?

The new ABC hosts private weapons industry investor and former-general Mick Ryan flogging off his drones in one hand while gesticulating towards the need for more endless drone wars with the other. It gives regular airtime to daggy-dad militarist Dr Malcolm Davis spinning his love for movies like Red Dawn into real life fantasies that involve unrealistic military scenarios that have terrible human consequences.

And it provides a runway to Epstein friend and former Israeli PM Ehud Barak to put a spin on his country’s genocide as the Epstein files loom with his name all over them.

Encroaching authoritarianism, sovereign transfer, foreign interference; these are all things good journalists should be working towards unpacking. But not in Australia, where a convergence between the media, business and political classes has morphed our press into subjective stenographers rather than objective truth tellers.

Joining the national decline
It’s devastating to see the national broadcaster, stacked with its corporate media heavies, joining in the national decline, rather than tirelessly working to uncover it and prevent it.

At a time of crisis and uncertainty, with clear power differentials impacting the sovereign independent trajectory of the country, the absence of quality ABC analysis, with conscious critical thinking applied, has hyperaccelerated the demise of the reasonable in the country — giving up sacred ground in the Australian discourse and ceding it to the foreign influenced dark forces that conjure a new image of what this country should look like.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 states within it that it is the responsibility of the ABC to provide innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard within Australia.

Within the ABC Code of Practice, accuracy, impartiality, and fair and honest dealing are listed as key principles. But in 2026, with the country in the state that it is, Australians feel that they are missing an independent national broadcaster to balance the droning hum of misinformation and political dishonesty.

Bringing back the old theme song and changing the blue tint and the classic ABC font won’t cut it. Latika Bourke isn’t George Negus. David Speers’ Sky News prestige doesn’t cut through to the high brow hard politics junkies in Australians who mourn for the lost tones of Barrie Cassidy and Kerry O’Brien and gravitate like husks in the places their voices used to be.

This is why the ABC is failing. It’s been run into the ground by the very people who longed for its demise, the same people who pipe a new paradigm on reluctant ABC consumers and loyal ABC staff that wonder what is going on, and stick around out of habit hoping the revisionists will go away one day.

By accepting orthodoxies from Washington, Tel Aviv, and people linked to the arms trade, we now have the ABC promoting war in Europe, entertaining tensions with China, and accepting the morbid orthodoxies that see military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel in its horrific genocidal sojourns throughout West Asia.

Journalists sacked, staff cautioned
Journalists that highlight that fact are sacked, staff that seek to expand those details are cautioned, exhausted into leaving, or guided into paddocks until they retire and their role can be handed to another wolf in sheep’s clothing from the corporate kennel.

In the process of remodelling the national broadcaster, those responsible have flogged the essence of the ABC. They now flog partial stories Australians need to hear in full, and flog the narratives of the elite and the dangerous at the expense of the truth. Whether it is a gotcha interview on 7.30, the omission of vital public interest information, or a corporate decree that silences staff inside the building itself, the ABC has fallen dramatically and may never get up again.

The abdication of the ABC away from the people and into the arms of the narratives of power is a tragedy for Australia during such consequential times.

For decades the ABC acted as a guardrail, ignored the haters, and fearlessly drove the standard of journalism in Australia. Now, it contributes to the mess, sitting in the pig-sty with the commercial media, so much so it’s hard to tell which is which, such is the stench.

Republished by Pacific Media Watch from The Shot under Creative Commons.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

Apparently antisemitism simply fell from the sky. Fully formed. Immaculately conceived.

Entirely unrelated to anything happening in Gaza.

That is the finding Australia has pre-purchased for $131.1 million, confirmed at Senate Estimates in February, with $91 million alone for staffing, property, lawyers and security.

• READ MORE: Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

Every single dollar buys theatre.

Measure the obscenity. The banking royal commission, which gutted an entire industry’s misconduct, cost $75 million. Aboriginal Deaths in Custody cost $50.2 million.

This inquiry outspends both combined. Meanwhile there is no royal commission into the domestic violence killing a woman most weeks, none into Islamophobia, now soaring.

Australia found $131 million for the one inquiry designed never to ask an obvious question.

Blame where it belongs. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote the answer into the question.

His Letters Patent instruct the Commission to find the drivers of antisemitism in extremism and radicalisation, the war deleted from the terms of reference before Commissioner Virginia Bell was even sworn in.

The Albanese government wrote the verdict into the terms of reference, then spent more than the banking royal commission to have a judge read it back. Here is what the money is buying.

Commissioning an alibi
Albanese promised the inquiry would deliver, in his own words, the right outcome. A Prime Minister announcing the right outcome in advance is commissioning an alibi.

This is the government that will gesture at recognising Palestine while refusing to utter the word genocide, that ships F35 components into the supply chain of the slaughter, that sanctions two Israeli ministers and calls it courage.

It needed a grand national explanation for collapsing social cohesion that never once mentions its own complicity.

For $131 million, it has bought one.

The process delivered. In the first three days of hearings, 23 of 36 witnesses characterised criticism of Israel, opposition to Zionism or Palestine advocacy as antisemitic.

Jewish organisations opposed to Zionism were refused leave to appear. Palestinian voices were excluded for lacking a direct and substantial interest.

The accused were barred from the courtroom so the prosecution could run unopposed at public expense.

The grievance parade
And the substance? A grievance parade.

The ABC and SBS hauled in to answer for Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal’s strong perception, her phrase, that their Gaza coverage lacks balance, then interrogated for declining the contested IHRA definition Bell waved through as uncontroversial.

Keffiyehs, flags, watermelon art, chants of Free Palestine, student encampments and fundraisers for maimed children tendered as exhibits of hate. Protest. Tents. Journalism.

Every place an ordinary Australian expressed solidarity with a people being exterminated, recast at public expense as a crime scene. Australians are not being investigated for hating Jews.

They are being investigated for objecting to a genocide.

The complainants were welcomed like royalty. Alex Ryvchin of the ECAJ, who called the anti-Israel movement indistinguishable from neo-Nazism, testified at length while his silk objected to opposing counsel merely uttering the word genocide, a finding the International Court of Justice considered plausible back in January 2024.

Robert Gregory of the self-appointed Australian Jewish Association, which the ECAJ itself calls unrepresentative, told the Commission the government egged on antisemitism, fresh from blaming Bondi on visas for Palestinians fleeing the bombs.

Sky’s the limit
Sky News completes the circuit, wheeling Gregory out to demonise protesters, then feeding its own segments back into the panic as evidence.

The outcomes are as predetermined as the terms.

Come December 14, expect IHRA stamped across the public service and pushed onto civil society, work Segal has begun.

Expect ABC oversight its own ombudsman rejected. Expect protest reframed as policing, and regulators monitoring speech the way AHPRA already does, having admitted under oath it watches nurses and doctors for criticism of Israel after Segal’s pressure.

Expect everything blamed but the war.

And expect antisemitism not to fall, because you cannot cure what you refuse to diagnose. Every recommendation will manufacture the resentment it claims to fight, and Labor will call the wreckage cohesion.

For almost three years the world has watched a genocide live-streamed by a state claiming to act in the name of the Jewish people, while its Australian cheer squad defended, excused or denied every atrocity.

Now they ask why anger grows.

None of this excuses antisemitism. Not one word of it. The Bondi gunmen murdered Jews for being Jews, and the law should fall hard on every bigot who follows them.

Fifteen dead Australians deserved a fearless inquiry. They got a pantomime, their graves deployed as a shield for a foreign state and the government that armed it.

The elephant is blocking the doorway and eating $131 million of paperwork, yet everyone keeps peering around it, declaring there is nothing to see.

This Commission will not defeat antisemitism. It will deliver the most expensive whinge in Australian history, commissioned by a government purchasing its own absolution with public money.

Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and a Palestine peace activist.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJP) of the Philippines calls it “outrageous” for the Vice- President to insult the work of Philippine news organisations

The NUJP criticised Vice-President Sara Duterte over remarks she made on July 30 and released by her office a day later, saying she denigrated Philippine news organisations and promoted social media as an alternative.

Duterte said Philippine news organisations fell short of international standards and accused them of “worshipping money”.

• READ MORE: Congress wants to regulate social media. Here is what’s on the table
• How Congress is looking to regulate deepfakes
• Other Philippines reports

“Unfortunately, kung gagawin talaga natin araw-araw na Diyos ang pera, wala talagang pagbabago na mangyayari sa ating bansa. Sa journalism man, sa mainstream media man o sa iba’t ibang aspeto ng ating bayan,” Duterte said.

(Unfortunately, if we continue worshipping money, there won’t be any real change happening in our country. Whether in journalism, in mainstream media, or in other aspects of our country.)

Duterte also praised social media and its use as an alternative platform for helping people see “the truth”. Disinformation has continued to thrive on various social media platforms.

‘Dictator’s tactics’
In the statement, the NUJP said that by denigrating the media, “Sara is unleashing one of tactics straight out of a dictator’s playbook: controlling information and demonising the independent press and weaponising social media for her propaganda”.

The NUJP recalled that the Philippine media had borne the attacks of Duterte-era leadership, and a number of them garnered awards and recognition from the international community because of their reporting.

It also pointed out that social media was far from being a “platform for truth” as misinformation and disinformation was prioritised by social media algorithms, and lies, as a result, spread faster than truth.

Republished from Rappler with permission.

The BBC recently interviewed an Israeli settler who said that all the Palestinians in four surrounding villages should be exterminated to avenge an Israeli who was killed while terrorising a Palestinian village last month, adding that just a single Jewish life is worth 10 million Palestinian lives.

“I think now after they kill one Israeli people, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” lawyer Yehuda Shimon told the BBC.

“It sounds like you’re saying one Jewish life is worth hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives,” replied the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in the interview.

• LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley

“Million,” Shimon corrected her. “One Jewish life, it’s 10 million, okay?”

“That just sounds racist,” Williamson responded, to which Shimon replied, “Yes, I know, I know. But this is the truth.”

The interaction has been going viral on social media as people react to the blatant display of the extremist ideology held by the settlers who are working to gradually squeeze Palestinians off their land in the West Bank.

And while it is true that Shimon’s comments are extremely evil and racist, that’s not what I personally found interesting about the interview. What I found interesting was Williamson’s response.

I mean, it is a bit rich watching a BBC reporter act shocked and offended by somebody saying they think Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives. After all, the premise that Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives has coloured every aspect of Western news media reporting on Israel and Palestine for generations.

That’s why the Western press expressed disproportionately more shock and horror at October 7 than the far more egregious Israeli abuses which led up to it and the far more egregious Israeli abuses which followed.

It’s why you saw howling outrage at the Bondi shooting in Sydney last year when the same number of Palestinians getting killed on any given day in Gaza never even makes a blip in the news.

On 26 March 2025, 15 Palestinians were killed by the IDF during a ceasefire in Gaza. On the December 14 that same year, 15 people were killed at Bondi Beach in Sydney in a mass shooting by ISIS members directed at Jewish Australians.

All mainstream Western institutions view Palestinian lives as worthless   Video: Caitlin Johnstone

Two instances of mass murder. Same exact number of victims. But you only heard about one of them.

Why did you only hear about one of them? Because only one of them made the news.

The mainstream press spent weeks urgently reporting on the Bondi shooting, frenetically working to falsely associate an ISIS terrorist attack with pro-Palestine demonstrations by uniformly repeating the line “This is what globalise the intifada looks like” in news outlets throughout the Western world.

Report after report after report was published about how Jews are being attacked, how Jews are feeling unsafe, and what new laws and free speech restrictions must be rolled out in order to stomp out pro-Palestine sentiment to protect the Jews.

Nothing remotely similar happened on the 26 March 2025. As far as the Western press were concerned, 15 Palestinians getting killed in Gaza was just another Wednesday.

This is because all mainstream Western media outlets hold the same racist opinions about Palestinians as those that were voiced by Yehuda Shimon.

So do all mainstream Western political parties. So do all other mainstream Western institutions. So do all supporters of the state of Israel. They all believe Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives, as evidenced by the policies they support and the news stories they pay attention to.

The BBC has a well-documented history of extensive pro-Israel bias, with its own reporters complaining that they’ve been performing PR for the Israeli government and its own editor losing a libel lawsuit against a journalist who exposed his pro-Israel slant.

They spent years running cover for an active genocide with “Hamas-run health ministry says” headlines and passive-language verbal gymnastics to protect Israeli information interests, so you know that when Lucy Williamson objects “That sounds racist!” to an Israeli settler claiming Jewish lives are worth far more than Palestinian lives, she’s not actually upset at his belief system.

She just knows you’re not supposed to say such things out loud.

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

Media Insider: Complainant wants apology and blog posts permanently removed; blogger Martyn Bradbury says he’s fighting for ‘free speech’

The good news is that I am not in prison. Yet.

I am deeply disappointed about today’s Court Case that I can’t talk about.

My hope was that this appalling abuse of process would be thrown out.

It wasn’t.

• READ MORE:  Gagged NZ editor’s ‘free speech’ case adjourned as judge warns Daily Blog over ‘contempt’ risk
• Complainant wants apology and blog posts permanently removed; blogger Martyn Bradbury says he’s fighting for ‘free speech’
• Blogger warned freedom of speech ‘not absolute’ and to watch what he posts amid court case
• Martyn Bradbury says he’s ‘gagged’ as court battle over blog posts delayed; welcomes Free Speech Union support
• I am now legally censored from even talking about being censored –- The Daily Blog
• Why I am willing to go to prison tomorrow for Free Speech – The Daily Blog editor
• Sinister ‘Free Speech Union’ attacks investigative journalist for being investigative

I am now legally censored from even talking about being censored.

This is Free Speech in Aotearoa New Zealand 2026.

The court case continues next week — I call on all Mainstream media to cover it

NZME, ZB, The Post and Stuff have covered the story.

RNZ and TVNZ, the public broadcasters, were both missing in action.

Republished from The Daily Blog.

Daily Blog editor and publisher Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury’s gagging case has been adjourned until next week, with the judge warning today that latest posts defending “free speech” might be risking contempt of court.

Bradbury’s TDB article yesterday claiming that he “faced 6 months imprisonment or a $5000 fine to censor 4 blogs” along with republication of his public debate commentary last month defending free speech was removed and replaced with a heading declaring:

This blog where I say I am prepared to go to prison for free speech is now legally censored.

The page also carried a “Redacted” line.

• READ MORE: Complainant wants apology and blog posts permanently removed; blogger Martyn Bradbury says he’s fighting for ‘free speech’
• Blogger warned freedom of speech ‘not absolute’ and to watch what he posts amid court case
• The Post rejects demand to take down reporting on Bradbury blog dispute
• Martyn Bradbury says he’s ‘gagged’ as court battle over blog posts delayed; welcomes Free Speech Union support
• I am now legally censored from even talking about being censored –- The Daily Blog
• Why I am willing to go to prison tomorrow for Free Speech – The Daily Blog editor
• Sinister ‘Free Speech Union’ attacks investigative journalist for being investigative

A “secret” complainant had successfully obtained an interim court order to remove four blog posts by Bradbury that were alleged to have breached New Zealand’s Harmful Digital Communications Act (HDCA).

The news media have been denied details of the allegations about the four posts that had been ordered removed from The Daily Blog, the largest leftwing website in New Zealand.

Bradbury, 52, representing himself without a lawyer, appeared in the Auckland District Court before Judge David Sharp. The complainant, whom news media are not allowed to name due to a court order, appeared via video-link.

Legal advice urged
The judge urged Bradbury to seek legal advice.

Bradbury was quoted by The New Zealand Herald, the country’s largest daily newspaper, as saying outside the court that he would fight to have the posts reinstated and was still prepared to go to jail if necessary, in order to preserve the principle of free speech.

He also said he would not apologise to the complainant, and he told the Herald the case was a “terrible abuse of process”.

Adjourning the case until next Thursday, Judge Sharp warned Bradbury that his “public comments on legal proceedings may risk seeing him found in contempt of court”, reports The Post.

The Free Speech Union (FSU) said in a statement New Zealand’s Harmful Digital Communications Act was “bad law”.

“It was well meant but naive, and we have said so for years. Nothing has happened to soften that judgement,” FSU chair Stephen Franks said.

Franks said the act gave courts powers that could “too easily be used to shut down lawful expression, including speech about powerful people that the public has every right to hear”.

Bradbury has had a long broadcasting, media and politics career — and also as a media educator — that began in 1997 as editor of the University of Auckland student publication Craccum.

Host of The Bradbury Group
“According to Stuff media he became a show host on radio station Channel Z in the late-1990s, and editor of music magazine Rip It Up in the mid-2000s. Bradbury was also a producer and host on the now-defunct TV channel Alt TV.

In the 2010s, Bradbury became involved in politics and worked as a consultant with Hone Harawira’s Mana Party.

He launched The Daily Blog in 2013 and in recent years has also hosted a podcast on iwi Māori radio station Waatea and a weekly television programme The Bradbury Group, widely regarded as the country’s best political analysis panel.

Tonight’s Bradbury Group live discussion — featuring Labour leader Chris Hipkins, Green Party’s Lawrence Xu-nan, Qiulae Wong, Michael Wood and Maria Slade — is expected to raise the free speech issue.

EDITORIAL: By The Daily Blog editor and publisher Martyn Bradbury

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

He also declared:

“We can’t tell you who is doing this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do.

I can’t tell you who is doing this.

I can’t tell you what has been censored.

I can’t tell you why.

I can’t tell you what.

I can’t tell you how.

I am making it clear in court tomorrow.

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

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

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

In my words:

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

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

I concluded the post as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In his words:

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

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

Again in his words:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In her words:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spilling the ideological beans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We can’t tell you who is doing this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Television New Zealand outdid itself last week.

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

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

Here is the complaint we have lodged with TVNZ:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is literally a deadly framing for Palestinians.

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

The report amounts to a lie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

These journalists stood on the front…

— Tamer Nahed (@Tamer_Alnoaizy) July 26, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

أهذا حقًّا ما كان ينتظرني؟

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

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

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

He wrote about his abrupt termination by Al Jazeera:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NO CEASEFIRE, ISRAEL CONTINUES TO GENOCIDE GAZA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EDITORIAL: By The Daily Blog editor and publisher Martyn Bradbury

Comrades.

The Daily Blog is New Zealand’s largest leftwing blog; we have been around for 13 years.

We’ve had many fights over the years.

This one is perhaps the most alarming.

• WATCH: The Bradbury Group
• Breaking: Free Speech Issue

TDB has been served legal directives from the Star Chamber under pain of 6 months imprisonment or a $5000 fine to censor 4 blogs.

We can’t tell you who is doing this.

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

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

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

I am facing Court action Tuesday this week and I am calling on all mainstream media to apply to cover this. A ruling allows media to cover this in the Court room.

When you find out who is doing this. Why they are doing this. How they are doing this, and what has been censored.

I am making it clear in court on Tuesday the following.

1 – I beg the Court to immediately throw this terrible abuse of process out.

2 – I’m not going to apologise.

3 – I will not pay a fine.

4 – I want to immediately repost my 4 censored blogs.

5 – I want everyone involved in this to be made public, because Free Speech issues like this are definitely in the public interest

6 – I’m prepared to go to prison for Free Speech.

Let’s see what happens on Tuesday.

Wish me luck Comrades.

In solidarity

The Revolution continues

PS – Look, If I do actually get arrested in Court on Tuesday, can someone set up a give-a-little account? I’m going to need money to pay my bills because I’ll be in prison!

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

PPPS – If I go to prison, please can you do me a Shawshank Redemption and send so many books in that they shame the State for putting me in prison in the first place. 

Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This itself is a staggering amount of carbon pollution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Human detritus’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ultimately, her stubbornness paid off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But education is not her only goal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meta is censoring Palestinian content, and now we have proof

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

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

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

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

Republished from +972 magazine.

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

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

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

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

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

— Wang Xiaolong (@AmbChina2NZ) July 29, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Winston Peters (@winstonpeters) July 30, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) July 31, 2026

The people won. The environment won. The Lyttelton port remains in public hands. For now.

Please join the protest tomorrow. There is more on the table. And the battle for the port is far from over.

The DP World deal being dropped can be attributed to rousing support and brilliant speakers who moved hearts and minds at a public meeting in Lyttelton two weeks ago. Thanks to these people and organisations the proposed deal with DP World (yes, that predator company with a shocking track record) has been turned down.

• READ MORE: Christchurch City Holdings rejects DP World-backed proposal to take over Lyttelton Port
• Capitalism. Colonialism. Why the DP World money trail leads to destruction — Saige England
• A tale of power being taken from the people and handed to predator companies
• Other Lyttelton Port reports

The people united and they were not defeated!

One of the public meeting speakers, environmental campaigner Sara Campbell, says: “While this is a win in the fight for public control of public assets … the fight is far from over.”

A protest outside CCHL offices tomorrow will go ahead as planned. At those offices, the CCHL will be deciding on LPC’s $800 million proposal to expand the port, which includes further land reclamation.

“We are demanding that LPC-CCHL does not proceed without full public scrutiny, consultation and partnership with mana whenua,” says Campbell.

The official ‘back down’
This is the official press release from the Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CCHL) backing down from the proposed DP World deal:

“Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CCHL) have declined to proceed with a proposal to lease operations at the port.

“The unsolicited proposal from Tōnui Consortium, representing DP World and three Runanga: Ngāti Wheke, Ngāi Tūāhuriri, and Te Taumutu, was received by CCHL in June.

“The consortium proposed acquiring a majority interest in a long-term lease of the operating entity of LPC.

“CCHL Chair, Bryan Pearson, acknowledged the effort by the Tōnui Consortium in considering the future of Lyttelton Port and preparing the proposal. ‘Lyttelton Port is a strategic asset for the city and region, and there are diverse groups within our community with interests in its future,’ says Bryan Pearson.

“’Our assessment of the proposal, as presented, is it does not meet the threshold for ongoing consideration and is not sufficiently compelling to warrant further detailed investigation by CCHL, or additional consultation with Council given its Letter of Expectation.’

“CCHL is mindful of the LPC workforce and the breadth of community interest in the port’s operation.Christchurch City Council’s 2026/2027 Letter of Expectation to CCHL is explicit in its direction, which does not support leasing the port and encourages retention of a directly employed workforce.

“CCHL reached its conclusion specifically considering LPC’s improving operational and financial performance, as well as input provided by LPC on the resilience of its infrastructure and the leadership required to maintain a culture of safety and efficiency.

“Bryan Pearson says ‘CCHL maintains full confidence in the LPC board and management and their operation of the port, and continues to work closely with LPC in considering the port’s long-term development and associated investment.'”

My view on this is that this is one victory and full credit goes those who spoke against this deal, who rallied and organised and spoke against the devious bid: NZDE — New Zealanders for a Democratic Economy; the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) Lyttelton branch secretary Gerard Loader; the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) Lyttelton Port branch secretary Mark Wilson; environmental campaigner Sara Campbell; human rights and Keep Our Assets campaigner John Minto; Marney Ainsworth and the Māori people who spoke up — and all the people who signed the petition against this potential travesty.

In these times when there seems to be few gains — when so much is taken out of public hands — it is great to see people move change.

The change came because the people spoke out. They used their hearts and minds.
The people won but it is a temporary win.

This was a close call. Too close. Predator companies still loom large and secret meetings are still being held behind closed doors.

It’s not the end. The battle continues. We need to keep our port clean and safe for the people and the environment.

KOA welcomes ‘victory’
Keep Our Assets convenor Murray Horton said KOA was pleased that Christchurch City Holdings Ltd (CCHL) had rejected the unsolicited proposal from the Tōnui Consortium (comprising DP World and three runanga) to acquire a long term lease of Lyttelton Port Company’s (LPC) operations.

“This is a victory for common sense. Lyttelton Port is a vital strategic asset for Christchurch, Canterbury, the South Island and, indeed, the whole country. So, it is vital that it remains in public ownership and control, subject to democratic accountability through the elected Christchurch City Council,” he said.

”KOA congratulates the port unions and grassroots community groups who have successfully campaigned to keep our port public.

“It would have been particularly egregious if DP World, 100 percent state-owned by the United Arab Emirates, had got its sticky fingers on Lyttelton’s revenue stream. The UAE is a highly dodgy state indeed.

“We savour the victory but know that we can’t relax our vigilance. Lyttelton is an attractive target for transnational corporations and their local allies. This is not the first time a move has been made on our port. Twenty years ago a similar unsuccessful bid was made, involving a Hong Kong corporation. There well be another ‘unsolicited offer’ in the future.”

And KOA was fully aware that, behind closed doors, CCHL was conducting a review of Enable, the broadband company, and another of CCHL’s portfolio of publicly-owned companies. There remained a threat to sell that, said Horton.

“Time and again the people of Christchurch have made it very clear that they want the city’s publicly-owned assets to remain exactly that. This decision by CCHL recognises that reality.”

And the last word goes to MUNZ’s Gerard Loader: “We thank the people of Lyttelton and greater Christchurch getting in behind this campaign as it was all for our next generations and what we leave for them.

“From the bottom of our hearts.

“Now we have crossed the DP World hurdle our focus now turns to keeping ‘Enable’ in the hands of future generations, so the fight continues.’

“See you all at the march tomorrow.”

In solidarity.

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

• Tomorrow’s protest rally outside the CCHL offices 8-10am

A leading Palestine solidarity group in New Zealand has challenged Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to explain why his government has not revealed how the country voted at the International Criminal Court over the ouster of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan after intense Israeli and US lobbying.

Khan has been under attack from Israel and the US because he successfully filed arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said Israel and the US had “intensified their lobbying and diplomatic bullying” after an ICC Judicial Panel established to examine the evidence on claims of sexual abuse against Khan declared they were “unanimously of the opinion that the factual findings by OIOS (the ICC evidence collecting body) do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant legal framework”.

• READ MORE: Israel accused of ‘buying Pacific votes’ over plan to open Nauru embassy in Jerusalem
• Former UN oversight chief says ICC prosecutor Karim Khan is ‘victim of massive stitch-up’
• ‘Humiliating as a New Zealander’: Helen Clark slams decision to abstain on UN vote
• How Volker Turk won new UN rights chief term despite US, Israel opposition
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Israel and the US rejected the ICC legal ruling and demanded a vote of all member states of the ICC to remove Khan. That vote was held on Friday and Khan was removed from office.

“The key question for Mr Luxon is ‘Did we capitulate to Israel/US pressure, or did we stand up for the ICC’s legal processes?” Tamimi said in a statement.

“We are not able to make any judgment on the allegations against Mr Khan, but New Zealand should have voted against his expulsion and insisted a proper judicial process be followed.

“Did we?” asked Tamimi.

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

“Mr Peters, did we waver on Friday?”

Khan’s removal lines up neatly with the fight to neutralise Netanyahu’s arrest warrant. Coincidence is a luxury intl law can no longer afford.

This proves that justice DOES threaten Apartheid Israel & Co. So if the ICC is paralysed, lawyers and judges worldwide must do more. https://t.co/wQEoPEoiIF

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) July 25, 2026

“New Zealand has already failed numerous times to uphold international law in the face of Israeli/US pressure. We want an assurance the Coalition [government] didn’t throw in the towel again.”

Controversy over NZ abstention
Meanwhile, there is also controversy over New Zealand’s abstention over the vote extending Volker Türk as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has strongly criticised the decision by New Zealand to abstain, saying the vote put the country in “very bad company” and made her “feel humiliated to be a New Zealander.”

New Zealand was one of just 13 countries to abstain in the UN General Assembly vote to reappoint Türk for another four years.

The General Assembly voted 144 in favour, 10 against with 13 abstentions to renew Türk’s four-year term from 12 October 2026 until 11 October 2030.

Astonished to see #NZ Govt vote against reappointment of @volker_turk as UN High Commissioner for #HumanRights. NZ was 1 of 13 abstentions; there were 144 Yes, 10 No. This demands a “please explain” from NZG as to why it didn’t support @antonioguterres recommendation to reappoint https://t.co/tkYvds42uL

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) July 25, 2026

The abstention placed New Zealand outside the overwhelming majority of UN member states that supported Secretary-General António Guterres’ recommendation to reappoint the Austrian diplomat, while also stopping short of joining the ten countries that opposed the appointment.

Turk, who has served in the role since 2022, will become the first person to serve two full terms as the UN rights chief since the position was created in 1993.

The role of UN human rights chief is inherently controversial because it requires public criticism of governments of UN members for alleged rights violations.

Turk’s outspoken criticism of policies in Israel, Russia and the US has put him at odds with all three countries.

Turk has repeatedly criticised Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, its deadly assault on Lebanon, and a “shameful” lack of accountability for its rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMENTARY: By Saige England

Auckland rejected DP World.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Capitalism. Colonialism. The money trail leads to destruction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DP World has an appalling environmental record.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) July 22, 2026

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

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

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

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

Republished from BP Daily under Creative Commons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journalist Cole Martin on Palestine                 Video: Talanoa TV

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

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

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

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

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

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

PRODUCER
The Whānau Community Trust

PRODUCTION MANAGERS
Ernestina Bonsu-Maro and Rachael Mario

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

A Talanoa TV Production with Face TV Sky Channel 83

Broadcast on 1 July 2026.

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

That notion of balance sounds ideal. After all, journalists should be neutral observers who favour nobody, so if anybody feels as though their side is not presented with equal measure, the journalist has somehow failed.

That failure was what Jillian Segal accused the ABC of in her evidence to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion last week. In her evidence, the antisemitism envoy lamented that the ABC’s reporting on Gaza “created an impression of great negativity about Israel”.

• READ MORE: Antisemitism envoy Segal slams ABC, SBS ‘Israel bias’, wants to vet media
• The problem of false balance when reporting on science
• Other Gaza media coverage reports

“It’s the perception of the Jewish community feeling constantly that they are being faced with reporting about the Middle East, about Gaza, and about Israel in a way that paints Israel constantly in a negative light,” she said.

For the country’s supporters, that is understandable. As Segal went on to point out, there has been a “disproportionate” number of stories critical of Israel.

And Liberal MP and prominent member of the Jewish community Julian Leeser told ABC Radio National:

I think the public broadcasters actually have to be prepared to address systemic bias against Israel in their reporting, and I think they need to subject themselves to greater transparency mechanisms as outlined by the envoy.

But the term “balance” implies finding equivalence between the two competing positions. Sometimes journalists cover stories where achieving balance amounts to a serious distortion of what is actually taking place.

Jillian Segal wants ‘independent group’ to examine ABC’s Israel coverage  Video: Guardian Australia

The pitfalls of both-sideism
A standard, if lazy, tactic for avoiding accusations of bias is to give equal space to opponents in an issue, presenting them as equally valid.

If you give five minutes to a vaccine researcher, you must give the same time to a sceptic. It is something journalists sometimes dub “both-sideism”.

The media grappled with that challenge in covering climate change. In the early heated stages of the debate, news organisations would often place a climate sceptic next to a climate scientist in the name of “balance”.

By 2018, the BBC’s news director Fran Unsworth had had enough. She circulated a briefing note that acknowledged, “Climate change has been a difficult subject for the BBC, and we get coverage of it wrong too often”.

The briefing went on to say, “Manmade climate change exists: if the science proves it we should report it.” And in a section on balance, the note said:

to achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken.“

As journalism academic Jonathan Foster of Sheffield University used to tell his students, “If someone tells you it’s raining and another tells you it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out the f—ing window and find out which is true.”

Who has the power?
The conflicts between Israel and its neighbours (in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran) are not football matches, and journalists are not referees.

But any journalist thinking about how to fairly cover the crises is likely to spend far more time looking at the human cost of Israeli bombs and tanks, than the impact on Israeli civilians.

That is simply because the greater impact of the conflict is felt outside Israel’s borders.

Any reporting that suggests an equivalence of experience between Israelis suffering Hamas rockets, and the Palestinians in Gaza bearing the weight of the Israeli military assault would be plainly disingenuous. Hardliners on both sides are calling for annihilation of the other, but only one side has tanks, fighter jets and control of food, water and medical supplies over the border.

That raises another journalistic cliche: “holding power to account”. It is rooted in the idea that the media’s job is to expose the impact of power on those who have none.

Israel has indisputably been projecting its might well beyond its borders, and correspondents in the region who failed to cover the consequences on ordinary civilians would be rightly criticised.

None of this is to suggest the experience of Israelis or the government’s arguments should be ignored.

But in a world of competing perspectives, the job of journalists is not to make everyone happy. Their job is to accurately and fairly represent the views of everyone involved and on that score, the ABC has been succeeding.

Imperfect, but largely accurate
The national broadcaster has not been perfect of course. The ombudsman found five breaches of editorial standards (out of more than seven thousand complaints).

Its own editorial director Gavin Fang acknowledged they were far too slow to correct a United Nations report that falsely claimed 14,000 children could die of starvation in Gaza within two days.

In her testimony to the Royal Commission, Jillian Segal conceded the government’s broadcast regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, had not “found a great deal of inaccuracy” in the ABC’s reporting.

But she argued she’s trying to achieve “the more complex, nuanced issues of prioritisation, impartiality and objectivity and balance”.

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

Perhaps she is right. But positive stories explicitly designed to cancel out the negative start to look like propaganda. And that is something journalists should never accept.

Peter Greste is professor of journalism at Macquarie University and the executive director for the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He also serves as an independent journalist on the Australian Press Council. This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished under Creative Commons.

Once again, the Strait of Hormuz is at the centre of the latest escalation in the war between Iran, the United States and their allies, reports Al Jazeera’s media watchdog The Listening Post.

The ceasefire collapsed just days after millions of Iranians took to the streets last week to pay homage to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hundreds of foreign reporters and social media influencers were granted rare access to Iran to cover the funeral, signalling just how carefully Tehran has been calibrating its media messaging.

• READ MORE: How Iran used Ali Khamenei’s funeral as a political and diplomatic tool
• Tehran teemed with Khamenei mourners, but divisions – and demands for change – remain
• Other war on Iran reports

Listening Post presenter Richard Gizbert says what began as a week of mourning in Iran has “turned into the latest flare-up in the war in the Middle East with US President Donald Trump effectively calling the ceasefire dead”.

His programme explores the spectacle and symbolism of Khamenei’s funeral and how coverage of the supreme leader’s funeral exposed the limits of familiar Western narratives about Iran.

Contributors:
HA Hellyer – senior fellow, Royal United Services Institute
Samira Mohyeddin – host, On The Line Media
Negar Mortazavi – host, The Iran Podcast
Alex Vatanka – senior fellow, Middle East Institute

Khamenei’s funeral                          Video: AJ The Listening Post

On our radar
Türkiye has just hosted the NATO summit, and the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the US president Trump, used the event to project an image of unity and strength between Ankara and Washington.

Elettra Scrivo looks at the images, the messaging and how the coverage has shaped this story.

How Big Food sells ultraprocessed food
Ultraprocessed food is a major part of diets worldwide. These industrially formulated foods are often marketed as nutritious despite growing concerns that these products are contributing to a global health crisis.

The Listening Post’s Nicholas Muirhead looks at how Big Food is shaping the way we see and consume ultraprocessed food.

Featuring:
Marion Nestle – professor, New York University
Christopher Snowdon – head of lifestyle economics, Institute of Economic Affairs
Arun Gupta – doctor and nutritionist

Following the passing of Qatar’s Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani at 74 on Sunday, his solidarity with the Palestinian people remains one of the defining legacies of his leadership.

He is being remembered not only as a regional statesman, but also as a steadfast ally of the Palestinian people and the only Arab leader to physically break the crippling siege on the Gaza Strip.

In October 2012, Sheikh Hamad visited the embattled Gaza Strip, six years after Israel imposed its crippling international blockade on the territory, following the 2006 Palestinian elections.

• READ MORE: How Sheikh Hamad revolutionised Arab media through Al Jazeera

Accompanied by his wife, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, and a high-level delegation, the emir bypassed the political isolation imposed on the enclave by Western powers and regional actors, leading to a massive official and popular reception.

The head of Hamas’s diaspora office, Khaled Meshaal, told Al Jazeera that the visit to the Strip meant that “Jerusalem, Gaza and Palestine mourn him”.

“He was the first Arab and Muslim leader to visit Gaza, standing by its side with chivalry and magnanimity, as if officially announcing the breaking of the siege in its darkest circumstances,” Meshaal told Al Jazeera.

“He was intelligent, brave and a man of principles.”

‘Special love for Palestine’
Ahmed al-Sheikh, a senior journalist, Arab affairs commentator and former news director at Al Jazeera Arabic Channel, said the Father Emir had ”a special kind of love for Palestine”.

“Has any other leader in the Arab world done that [visit to Gaza], except Hamad bin Khalifa?” al-Sheikh reflected in a recent interview.

”Why did he go to Gaza? It’s because he saw that everyone around Gaza is neglecting it”, he added.

During that landmark visit, Sheikh Hamad announced an increase in Qatar’s reconstruction grant to the enclave from $254 million to $400 million, laying the foundation for vital housing, infrastructure and healthcare projects that benefited thousands of Palestinians.

His commitment to the Palestinian cause predated the blockade on Gaza. In 1999, Sheikh Hamad became the first Gulf leader to visit the Palestinian territories since 1967, meeting with the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat during a critical political impasse.

According to al-Sheikh, the emir viewed the Palestinian struggle through a deeply personal lens. When former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon besieged Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, the emir was profoundly pained. He told his aides that when Sharon attacked the Muqata’a, it felt as though he was attacking Qatar itself.

His connection to Palestine was coupled with a regret that he had never visited Jerusalem before its occupation in 1967, According to al-Sheikh, that prompted him to commission an extensive three-hour documentary on the holy city to capture its history and identity.

Rather than relying solely on international intervention, he believed in the agency of the Palestinian people and that they were the essential spearhead of their movement.

“You will do the primary action and without this action there can be no liberation,” the emir once told al-Sheikh.

Defying regional consensus
This stance put him frequently at odds with the regional consensus. During Israel’s devastating 2008–2009 war on Gaza, deep divisions emerged among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members over how to respond to the crisis.

Sheikh Hamad called for an emergency Arab summit in Doha, proposing a $250 million reconstruction fund and a maritime corridor to bypass the blockade. He famously expressed his disappointment on live television about the lack of an Arab quorum for the emergency meeting.

“God is sufficient for us and he is the best disposer of affairs.”

Some of Gaza’s most vital infrastructure projects before the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023 were the result of financial pledges made by Sheikh Hamad.

Qatar funded the rehabilitation of vital highways and the flagship Sheikh Hamad City in Khan Younis — a $58 million  public housing project with 53 modern apartment buildings for thousands of low-income families.

Additionally, the Sheikh Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, which officially opened in April 2019, became the territory’s premier facility for amputees and children with hearing impairments.

Israel erased infrastructure
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has systematically erased much of the infrastructure Qatar helped finance during Sheikh Hamad’s leadership. Satellite imagery from May this year confirmed that Hamad City and other areas in southern Gaza have been wiped from the map.

The Sheikh Hamad Hospital managed to resume its vital services last December, despite suffering direct attacks, severe shortages and the broader collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. Operating the only CT scanner in northern Gaza, the hospital has even opened a new branch in the south to cope with a 225 percent increase in amputation cases.

Sheikh Hamad Hospital’s continued operations during the ongoing genocide in Gaza remain a tangible remnant of the late emir’s unprecedented efforts in the besieged enclave. His support for Gaza will remain for generations to come.

Mohammad Mansour is a senior journalist of Al Jazeera with a particular focus on Gaza, Palestine and Israel. Before joining Al Jazeera, he held editorial positions at A News in Istanbul, Turkey; TRT World; and TRT Arabic in Gaza. Mansour won the 2016 Media Freedom Award for Best TV Report in Gaza, Palestine.

On October 9, 2023, just after the State of Israel began its ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, Sarah Cotte, a French-Ethiopian student at SOAS (the School of Oriental and African Studies) in London gave a speech at a rally organised by the SOAS Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Society.

Her speech was “expressing support for the right of Palestinians to armed resistance against occupation and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli state”, as the Defend the SOAS 2 website explains.

The speech was filmed on a phone and shared online, and, in response, the vicious and vindictive pro-Israeli lobbying group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), scouring the internet for dissent, shared the video and tagged the Metropolitan Police.

• READ MORE: How were the Filton 4 sentenced for terrorism when they weren’t convicted of terrorism?
• Other Palestine protest reports

This led, in January 2024, to Sarah being arrested in a dawn raid on her home, on the basis that she had committed a crime under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act for “inviting support for a proscribed organisation”, which is punishable by a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

It took another 13 months for the Metropolitan Police to formally charge Sarah, and, on the same day, another SOAS student was also arrested on suspicion of an offence under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act, although they have not been charged.

Together, however, they are known as “the SOAS 2″.

On June 22, two years and nine months since Sarah made her speech, her trial began at the Old Bailey, with the prosecution alleging that her speech on October 9, 2023 “intentionally or recklessly” encouraged support for Hamas.

Disgraceful broadened proscription
Crucially, although the military wing of Hamas was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government in 2001 (ignoring the fact that it is a legitimate resistance movement to illegal occupation and oppression), it was not until December 2021 that then-foreign secretary Priti Patel, an ardent Zionist, broadened the proscription to encompass the whole of Hamas, which, disgracefully, enabled an entire civilian government, and everyone who worked for it, to be regarded as terrorists.

In her closing remarks after the week-long trial, the defence barrister, Margo Munro Kerr, “reminded the jury that Ms Cotte’s speech was completely legal and that protecting solidarity with Palestine is ‘an absolute necessity in a democratic society’”, as the Morning Star described it.

A spokesperson for Defend the SOAS 2 told the newspaper, “This trial has never been about justice; it is about intimidation. The Terrorism Act 2000 is being deployed by a Zionist-supporting Labour government precisely as it was intended: to systematically criminalise anti-imperialists and silence solidarity with liberation movements.

“While Israeli war criminals enter Britain fresh from committing genocide in Gaza without a glance from the police, a young woman is dragged through the courts for speaking the truth.

“Sarah did not break under the prosecution’s pressure, and neither will we.”

On July 8, after failing to reach a verdict, the jury was dismissed, and a retrial was scheduled for September 14.

Sarah told Socialist Worker that, as the newspaper described it, her trial was “part of a broader crackdown on the Palestine movement and our civil liberties”.

‘Repressing’ Palestine movement
As she described it, “The state has no choice but to repress the Palestine movement”, because it “has politicised so many young people in the past two years.”

As the Morning Star added, she “explained the state has a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, it is targeting direct actionists such as the Filton 25 activists and the Brize Norton 6, but it is also trying to criminalise activists for speaking out against genocide.”

Speaking outside the court, Sarah told supporters, “We know that we are on the side of justice. We are on the side of liberation. We are on the side of people who fight back, people who strive for a better world, people who want to build a different system.

“The British state is on the side of terrorism, it’s on the side of apartheid, it’s on the side of colonialism, it’s on the side of imperialism.”

As with the case of Moog 4 — activists facing a retrial for direct action against an arms factory supplying weapons for the genocide, after the jury failed to reach a verdict — and as happened most prominently with the Filton 6, activists who took direct action against an Elbit Systems facility in Bristol in August 2024, and were acquitted of the main charge against them in February this year, the government, with the support of complicit lawyers and judges, refuses to accept defeat.

When jurors are unable to convict, or choose not to, on the basis of their consciences, the government keeps hammering away until it gets the result that it wants; in the case of the Filton 6, notoriously, that meant securing a conviction by the jury on lesser charges at the retrial, followed by the judge grafting a “terrorism connection” onto their conviction at the sentencing phase.

This is not justice, and it is to be hoped that it will backfire, with jurors becoming ever more wary of convicting defendants at all, as they recognise that they are not being allowed to exercise their fundamental rights to take decisions based on the merits of the cases before them, but are being manipulated in a toxic politically-biased charade, which is about defending a foreign country committing a genocide, and defending the rights of its arms companies to contribute to, and profit from that genocide.

The activists have true justice on their side; their opponents have only complicity in the most monstrous crimes of our lifetimes.

A “lock out” incident in Honiara last year barring Pacific journalists from an Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese press conference is among several events “undercutting” media freedom that have led to a new campaign by the Australian journalists’ union MEAA.

The incident happened during the Pacific Islands Forum summit in the Solomon Islands in September 2025 and sparked widespread media condemnation.

Albanese’s political team barred local journalists reporting from Pacific outlets from the conference, only allowing Australian journalists access.

“As Prime Minister Albanese entered the room, the door was immediately locked,” reported the Solomon Star newspaper at the time. “Only journalists from Australia were granted access denying regional and local media outlets from participating or asking questions.”

Now this incident and others in Australia “undercutting press freedom and the public’s right to know by restricting access to and targeting journalists who they don’t like” has resulted in a pushback campaign from the MEAA.

The campaign brief with guidelines states:
There is a growing trend of politicians undercutting press freedom and the public’s right to know by restricting access to and targeting journalists who they don’t like.

In 2025, Anthony Albanese gave a press conference in the Solomon Islands. His team barred local journalists reporting from Pacific outlets from the conference, only allowing Australian journalists access.

In early 2026, One Nation candidate in the byelection for the Victorian state seat of Nepean, Darren Hercus, refused to speak to a reporter who works for the ABC due to disagreeing with the broadcaster’s coverage.

During the Farrer byelection in May, One Nation barred another ABC journalist from a press conference.

After threatening to defund the ABC and shut down the SBS, Pauline Hanson verbally abused Guardian Australia journalist Sarah Martin on several occasions including on a live broadcast of her National Press Club address.

Local Councils, Hawkesbury City Council in NSW and Mornington Peninsula Shire Council in Victoria have declared blacklists on journalists working for local papers The Hawkesbury Gazette and Somerville Times & Peninsula Local. This act, which has gone largely unchallenged, has left communities without the local council reporting and scrutiny they deserve and rely on.

It is up to us to hold the line
We talk a lot about the importance of freedom of the press to democracy and to the public’s right to know. We also talk about it as a workplace right for journalists to be able to safely do our jobs.

The truth is, no one will give us these rights or protect them on our behalf. Employers, politicians, and courts will always be susceptible to other interests and influences. It’s the responsibility and power of working journalists alone to protect press freedom and public interest journalism.

When one of us is attacked with impunity, it sets a new standard of behaviour that will have impacted us all. That is why we must work together to draw a line and collectively hold it.

How we can hold the line
When you go to a press conference for someone known to be hostile to press freedom:

Speak to your colleagues from other workplaces in the press pack about what threats might come your way and how you can have each other’s backs. Offer support and ask for it too.

When a colleague following a line of questioning is abused, threatened or stonewalled by someone seeking to avoid valid scrutiny:

Don’t let it slide.

Pick up their question and pursue it until it is answered.

Ask the spokesperson/talent why they are avoiding scrutiny on the topic.

Ask them why they think it is acceptable to abuse a journalist at work.

When colleagues are barred from press conferences:
Call for them to be let in.

Get agreement among the press pack to lower cameras and collectively turn your backs on the talent until they agree to basic press freedom principles.

If the group isn’t ready to do this action due to fear of employer retribution, call the barred journalist and facilitate their line of questioning. Debrief with the group about how we can build up worker strength to withstand employer and politician divide-and-conquer tactics.

After an incident occurs:
Debrief with affected colleagues around you.

Call your union delegate, organiser or MEAA Member Central.

If abuse or harassment has occurred, speak to the host or venue about it. Under Workplace Health and Safety legislation, many of these venues share an obligation to mitigate risks to the health and safety of workers and other people in the venue. In some jurisdictions, unions have a right to prosecute for breaches of these obligations.

Campaign republished from Australia’s Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance website.

Flashback 41 years on: One year ago marking the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, Te Aniwaniwa Paterson wrote this article. Further reading: David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior (Little Island Press). The late investigative journalist John Pilger wrote: “Eyes of Fire is a beautiful book and an anger-making book, a testament to the finest activism and the need always to ‘bear witness’ and stand up to criminal state power, as you did. I was reminded how pleased I was to use the rescue of the people of Rongelap in The Coming War on China [2016 documentary]. Reading your account moved me all over again.”

SPECIAL REPORT: By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson of Te Ao Māori News

Forty years ago today [10 July 1985], French secret agents bombed the Greenpeace campaign flagship  Rainbow Warrior in an attempt to stop the environmental organisation’s protest against nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll in Mā’ohi Nui.

People gathered on board Rainbow Warrior III to remember photographer Fernando Pereira, who was killed in the attack, and to honour the legacy of those who stood up to nuclear testing in the Pacific.

The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage before the bombing was Operation Exodus, a humanitarian mission to the Marshall Islands. There, Greenpeace helped relocate more than 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll, who had been exposed to radiation from US nuclear testing.

• READ MORE: David Robie: New Zealand must do more for Pacific and confront nuclear powers
• Review of David Robie’s Eyes of Fire: Nuclear – now climate change: New book on how great powers have plagued the Pacific — Lee Duffield
• Operation Exodus: The Rainbow Warrior’s last Pacific mission — E-Tangata
• Eyes of Fire: 30 Years On — Little Island Press microsite on the Rainbow Warrior
• Other Rainbow Warrior reports

The dawn ceremony was hosted by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and attended by more than 150 people. Speeches were followed by the laying of a wreath and a moment of silence.

Tui Warmenhoven (Ngāti Porou), the chair of the Greenpeace Aotearoa board, said it was a day to remember for the harm caused by the French state against the people of Mā’ohi Nui.

Warmenhoven worked for 20 years in iwi research and is a grassroots, Ruatoria-based community leader who works to integrate mātauranga Māori with science to address climate change in Te Tai Rāwhiti.

She encouraged Māori to stand united with Greenpeace.

“Ko te mea nui ki a mātou, a Greenpeace Aotearoa, ko te whawhai i ngā mahi tūkino a rātou, te kāwanatanga, ngā rangatōpū, me ngā tāngata whai rawa, e patu ana i a mātou, te iwi Māori, ngā iwi o te ao, me ō mātou mātua, a Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku,” e ai ki a Warmenhoven.

A defining moment in Aotearoa’s nuclear-free stand
“The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was a defining moment for Greenpeace in its willingness to fight for a nuclear-free world,” said Dr Russel Norman, the executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa.

He noted it was also a defining moment for Aotearoa in the country’s stand against the United States and France, who conducted nuclear tests in the region.

In 1987, the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act officially declared the country a nuclear-free zone.

This move angered the United States, especially due to the ban on nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships entering New Zealand ports.

Because the US followed a policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons, it saw the ban as breaching the ANZUS Treaty and suspended its security commitments to New Zealand.

The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage before it was bombed was Operation Exodus, during which the crew helped relocate more than 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, who had been exposed to radiation from US nuclear testing between 1946 and 1958.

The legacy of Operation Exodus
Between 1946 and 1958, the United States carried out 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.

For decades, it denied the long-term health impacts, even as cancer rates rose and children were born with severe deformities.

Despite repeated pleas from the people of Rongelap to be evacuated, the US government failed to act until Greenpeace stepped in to help.

“The United States government effectively used them as guinea pigs for nuclear testing and radiation to see what would happen to people, which is obviously outrageous and disgusting,” Dr Norman said.

He said it was important not to see Pacific peoples as victims, as they were powerful campaigners who played a leading role in ending nuclear testing in the region.

Between March and April this year, Rainbow Warrior III returned to the Marshall Islands to conduct independent research into the radiation levels across the islands to see whether it’s safe for the people of Rongelap to return.

What advice do you give to this generation about nuclear issues?
“Kia kotahi ai koutou ki te whai i ngā mahi uaua i mua i a mātou ki te whawhai i a rātou mā, e mahi tūkino ana ki tō mātou ao, ki tō mātou kōkā a Papatūānuku, ki tō mātou taiao,” hei tā Tui Warmenhoven.

A reminder to stay united in the difficult world ahead in the fight against threats to the environment.

Warmenhoven also encouraged Māori to support Greenpeace Aotearoa.

Dr Norman believed the younger generations should be inspired to activism by the bravery of those from the Pacific and Greenpeace who campaigned for a nuclear-free world 40 years ago.

“They were willing to take very significant risks, they sailed their boats into the nuclear test zone to stop those nuclear tests, they were arrested by the French, beaten up by French commandos,” he said.

This article was first published on 10 July 2025 to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.

Nuclear – now climate change: New book on how great powers have plagued the Pacific

“They’re scum … they’re led by sick people and they’re vicious, violent people.

There’s something wrong with them. They’re cuckoo. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.” Trump said after bombing Iran yesterday and and again today — and threatening to tear up the MOU.

The pussy-grabbing “Leader of the Free World” has always had poor impulse control but we are moving into a new phase with F-bombs, real bombs and threats to entire civilisations becoming daily occurrences.

What has largely been left unreported after Trump’s outburst at the NATO Summit in Ankara is the elegant response from the Iranians.

• READ MORE: Tehran hits Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar after deadly US strikes
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• Other war on Iran reports

Iran’s Fars News Agency reported Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi dismissing Trump’s insulting remarks. He stressed that Tehran does not answer vulgarity with vulgarity, but with action.

FM: Iran Not to Answer Vulgarity with Vulgarity, But with Actionhttps://t.co/iFneZILzw2 pic.twitter.com/vyy3T2wfSY

— Fars News Agency (@EnglishFars) July 8, 2026

“Addressing the Civilised and Courageous Nation of Iran with derogatory language does not diminish its Greatness,” Araqchi said. He added that Iranians were renowned for their “civility, culture, and strong moral values”.

I can vouch for that. I have visited Iran a couple of times, most recently in 2018, and have friendships with Iranians today. Some are anti-government, some are pro-government; all are intelligent, courteous people.

Travelling through Iran it is impossible not to notice that good manners and generosity are deeply embedded in Iranian culture.

And then there’s the Americans.

Best-in-class days gone
I remember attending the APEC summit in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 with the New Zealand delegation. At the time the American diplomats were considered best-in-class, to be emulated. Those days are long gone.

When Trump said in an earlier threat over the Strait of Hormuz: “You close it and you won’t have a country. You won’t even make it back to your fucking country” his diplomats made no efforts to soften the edges.

Trump threatened to end the entire Iranian civilisation overnight and the collective West did not demur. No class.

The West is now led by a senile version of Sammy The Bull Gravano, the New York mobster — violent, uncultured and believing that whacking someone is the solution to every problem.

Trump’s outbursts may not simply be a reflection of his lack of moral education but are likely symptomatic of his serious cognitive decline. Dementia experts cite a sudden increase in swearing or crude language as a neurological symptom.

The pussy-grabbing Leader of the Free World has always had poor impulse control but we are moving into a new phase with F-bombs, real bombs and threats to entire civilizations becoming daily occurrences.

While Trump rants, Tehran’s sophisticated diplomatic corps — packed with PhDs who understand the nuances of international law far better than the real estate agents Trump sends in to bat for the USA — have quietly outmaneuvered the Americans in purely diplomatic terms.

The reason for Trump’s potty-mouthed tantrum is clear: he’s not getting away with murder.

The Iranians are not letting the Americans and Israelis get away with breaching the Memorandum of Understanding.

Tehran safeguarding sovereignty
Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baqaei stated that the United States has violated the framework of the Islamabad Accord signed by the two countries, stressing that Tehran will firmly safeguard its national interests and sovereignty.

It is impossible to read the text of the MOU and not see that Iran is on firm ground.  Article One of the signed MOU reads:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, and their allies in the current war, by signing this MoU, declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final Deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and other provisions of this paragraph.”

Pacta sunt servanda — “agreements must be kept” — has been a bedrock of international law since before the Roman Empire.  American Exceptionalism has, until now, given itself an exception to the rule. No more, one hopes.

Israel’s war and war crimes in Southern Lebanon have continued since the US signed the MOU.  Iran is imposing a new rule on the Middle East: the rules apply to everyone, including the US and Israel.

On March 5 of this year, the United States launched a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from the Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Travelling at speeds of more than 24,000 km/h, it landed near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, 6700 kilometres away, 24 minutes later.

Minuteman III missiles can deliver up to three separate nuclear warheads, each more than 20 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

On March 3, 2025, the Marshall Islands formally announced its intention to join the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone by signing the Treaty of Rarotonga.

• READ MORE: NZ accuses China of going against peace and stability of Pacific
• RIMPAC 2026: Part 1 – World’s biggest naval games a dress rehearsal for the coming ‘war on China’
• Other RIMPAC reports

Searches of The New Zealand Herald and Stuff websites for stories about the missile test, and the signing of the treaty come up empty.

And yet, on Tuesday, both The Herald and The Post led with news that China had test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in the Pacific. Neither report made any mention of the at least 15 ballistic missile tests fired into the Pacific by the US since 2021.

How many missiles has the US fired into the Pacific — did Australia protest those?

Here are the dates that the US test fired nuclear-capable ICBM missiles 7,000kms into the mid-Pacific:

•2026: March 5, June tbc.
•2025: February 19, May 21, November 4.
•2024: June 4,… pic.twitter.com/v6nxkRGA9U

— Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) July 7, 2026

“The Pacific Islands Forum leaders have made clear that they want the Pacific to be an ocean of peace. We believe this test is inconsistent with that objective,” Wong said.

Wong isn’t wrong.

Kiribati criticised US test
In 2024 Kiribati publicly criticised an earlier test of a Minuteman III missile that also landed in the Ronald Reagan Space and Missile Test Range located near the Kwajalein Atoll. As the name suggests, the tests are a regular occurrence.

A statement from the President’s Office, reported by RNZ, said Kiribati objected equally to China and the US using the South Pacific for test-firing nuclear-capable missiles.

“Kiribati continues to advocate for the cessation of weapons testing in the Pacific Ocean and urges global cooperation to ensure the peace, security, and stability of our shared environment. We remain committed to protecting the peaceful future of the Pacific and safeguarding the well-being of future generations.”

It is a thought — almost — echoed by Winston Peters in his response to the Chinese test: “This missile was fired into the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone established by the Treaty of Rarotonga. China’s action goes against the object and intent of that Treaty.”

You will search long and hard to find any similar criticism of the US missile tests by Ministers Peters and Wong. That is despite the people of the Marshall Islands themselves and the leaders of neighbouring countries making it clear any testing of ballistic missiles in the Pacific goes against the spirit of the Treaty of Rarotonga.

The Chinese missile test is widely being reported as a response to Australia and Fiji’s signing of the Ocean of Peace Alliance the previous day.

Without confirmation from China, it is impossible to know for certain, but it seems likely that the alliance — which New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has expressed interest in signing up to — is seen as a ratcheting up of military tensions in the South Pacific.

When it comes to the “object and intent” of the Treaty of Rarotonga, mentioned by Peters, few if any of the signatories would have countenanced one of their members purchasing nuclear-powered submarines.

Australian nuclear submarines plan
But in 2023, Australia announced it was doing just that with the planned purchase of three nuclear submarines at an estimated cost of more than A$300 billion (about 15 times the combined GDP of the Forum countries excluding New Zealand and Australia).

Shortly after the announcement, then Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Damukana Sogavare told the UN General Assembly that his nation “would like to keep our region nuclear-free and put the region’s nuclear legacy behind us… We do not support any form of militarisation in our region that could threaten regional and international peace and stability.”

The legacy Sogavare mentions is nowhere felt more keenly than the Marshall Islands, where the US carried out 67 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1956, resulting in sky-high rates of thyroid cancer.

The US has paid out just US$150 million in compensation despite the internationally mandated Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal having awarded more than US$2 billion in personal injury and property claims.

A survey by the Asia New Zealand Foundation earlier this year found that just 23 percent of New Zealanders viewed China as a threat, compared to 35 percent who saw the US as one.

The US has more than 5000 nuclear warheads with 1700 actively deployed; China has 620 with 34 deployed.

China has a long-standing policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, while the US refuses to rule it out.

When our leaders claim to be supporting Pacific countries in their commitment to a nuclear-free Pacific by rightly criticising China’s missile tests while steadfastly refusing to criticise the US regular testing of intercontinental nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, they are indulging in hypersonic hypocrisy.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by his Substack Towards Democracy.

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

This is a story about what has been taken and what can be saved.  I had the honour and pleasure of interviewing Dr Emalani Case, a Hawai’ian (Kānaka Maoli) academic and activist about the cultural, political and environmental impact of RIMPAC 2026 on Hawai’i.

We also discussed the wider implication of the surge in US-led militarism in the Pacific, its dangers for all Pacific nations, and what a better vision of our future might look like.

Dr Emalani Case is a senior lecturer in Pacific Studies at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. She has written extensively on Indigenous rights, environmental impacts, and decolonial movements across Oceania.

I see that you’re named after Queen Emma.

She was the godmother of my great grandmother. She loved her people and cared for their health. She was instrumental in creating the Queen’s Hospital on Oʻahu and worked to create spaces of safety, health and genuine security.If I could make some link between RIMPAC and her —  RIMPAC is not about the health of the people; it’s not about our safety; and it’s not about our future.

RIMPAC is representative of the militarisation of our islands. There’s always this claim that it is for our benefit, for our protection and for the security of Hawai’i and the region, but beginning with the military-backed overthrow of the kingdom, the military has always been there for America’s imperial interests.

The PR for the event suggests the military exercise is conducted in an environmentally and culturally sensitive manner.  Is it? What makes you stand up to RIMPAC?  

You can’t say that you are aligned with the interests of the people or even with the environment when you’re based on destruction and violence.

I’ve experienced militarism and really felt it in visceral ways. When you grow up in Hawai’i, the military becomes normalised. It’s in your face all the time. It actually wasn’t until I moved away from Hawai’i that I realised, “Oh, it’s actually odd to see helicopters every day, and it’s an odd thing to see tanks driving through your community.”

Growing up in Waimea, which is about 40 miles from Pōhakuloa, one of the biggest military training facilities in the Hawai’ian archipelago, we could hear and feel when they were doing live target bombing there.

I grew up with parents who were activists in their own right, always fighting for our language, our way.  My mom was part of opening a Hawai’ian language preschool in my town and my dad was always fighting for our rights to continued access to our land, to be able to hunt and harvest, and fish.

So I grew up with that, and I grew up experiencing militarism and observing the violence. That led me to naturally stand against RIMPAC.

Tell us more about the rhetoric that the military are here to protect you — and us.

There’s a myth that the military is here to protect us. I always ask: who’s here to protect us from the military?

They see us as being sacrificeable and dismissible. When you start to confront this notion that we are supposed to be patriotic American citizens, that it’s our duty to give up our land and it’s our duty to sacrifice our places … that can be quite confronting for people.

Militarism shouldn’t be normalised, it is highly destructive. We need to unravel and challenge military rhetoric, because it is so strong.

I had a lot of family members around me who had already started to push back against that. We have a Hawai’ian Renaissance, this huge reawakening of political consciousness that started in the 1970s around the time of the bombing of Kaho‘olawe, one of our islands [for Vietnam war live firing training]. So I was born in the 80s, and I grew up with that reawakening, that renaissance, that revitalisation of language and culture, and dance.

It’s beautiful and it’s strong. We’ve got a really strong nation of people who are still learning, still unraveling, and still dismantling these normalised ideas, this colonial rhetoric.

What else do people need to understand about the negative impact massive events like RIMPAC have on the environment?

If you take Pōhakuloa — as just one example — you have these long stretches of black lava. It might look empty but under that lava is a massive aquifer. If you bomb on top of that and contaminate it with the chemicals that then seep into the soil, there’s major environmental damage.

If you repeatedly bomb a place, the threat to the aquifer is serious.

The logo for RIMPAC looks like a tourist advertisement for a tropical paradise.

That image of Hawai’i as a tourist paradise is strategic. The tourism industry is working as a mask for all of this other violence that’s happening here.

RIMPAC is part of this alliance of nations that ultimately might do crazy things like start a war on China? How worried should we be?

We have to confront these things like RIMPAC that are pulling us together in really dangerous, violent ways. It means confronting how militarism in one place actually shapes and even bolsters militarism in other places across the Pacific.

When these countries do decide to come together and wage war on China, that’s going to impact all of us.

There’s an image of the future that’s a very dark one but there’s also a positive one, that the Pacific can be an ocean of peace. Tell us, how you would like to see things shape up?

I think for anybody who does this work, there has to be a vision of something positive and beautiful. Otherwise, why do we do all of this? My vision for the Pacific is, of course, not just the absence of conflict.

As Pacific peoples, we have responsibilities to engage in some kind of decolonial dreaming and envisioning — as Linda Tuhiwai Smith says: to think beyond the absence of something, and to think about what our futures actually look like, and feels like, and smells like in a future that is demilitarised.

I dream I wake up to silence because I’m too used to waking up to chaos. I want that silence in that moment to breathe and just hear nothing but birds or laughter or all the things that should be there. What peace is to me is waking up in a peaceful environment and having the energy to truly care for people. That brings us back to Queen Emalani.

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, and he contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts solidarity.co.nz.

Pro-Palestine and anti-war protesters gathered at the US Consulate in downtown Auckland today to mark July 4 — but they were not celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, they were condemning “liberation with bombs”.

Several speakers criticised US global and military policies in this the 144th week of continuous rallies in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau.

One of them, a twice-displaced refugee from Afghanistan who has grown up in West Auckland and works as a healthcare provider, spoke of the devastation of America’s war, invasion and two-decade occupation of her country.

• READ MORE: America250: How the US heatwave will affect Fourth of July celebrations
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“Today, on the 4th of July, we are told to celebrate freedom. But today, we stand here to tell the truth — American freedom has always been built on the bones of the colonised,” Bibi Amena told the crowd.

“In October 2001, the US — backed by the United Kingdom — launched a bombing campaign against my home country Afghanistan. It was the start of a 20-year occupation,” she said.

“They sold it to the world as ‘self-defence’. Counter-terrorism. Then it evolved — as it always does — into nation-building, spreading democracy, and women’s liberation.”

These were the “token words of every colonialist project”.

Amena said she was “ashamed” to say that “New Zealand — under Helen Clark, a leader I have long respected — was also pulled into the conflict”.

NZ troops deployed
Over 20 years, under both Labour and National, New Zealand had deployed more than 3500 troops to Afghanistan, which she described as shameful.

“They [the US] showed us images of girls riding bicycles in Kabul. Democracy. Female generals. They told us we were liberating them,” Amena said.

“But let me tell you what they didn’t show you.

“They didn’t show you the weddings that were bombed. The hospitals. The bridges and power plants. The densely packed homes of sleeping families.

“They didn’t tell you that from 2001 to 2002 alone, the US dropped more than 1200 cluster bombs — containing almost a quarter of a million bomblets.

“These are indiscriminate. They do not distinguish between a soldier and a child.

“And when they fail to explode — as many do — they become landmines. They lie in the soil for decades, killing civilians long after the cameras leave. In Laos, in Vietnam, in Iraq, the contamination is still there today.

‘MOAB’ dropped
On April 13, 2017, the US dropped the MOAB — the so-called “Mother of All Bombs” — on Nangarhar Province. The most powerful non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat.

“Former President Hamid Karzai called it an ‘inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as a testing ground for new and dangerous weapons’, Amena said.

“And then the night raids.”

A BBC investigation in 2022 [BBC Panorama: “I Saw War Crimes” report] had revealed testimonies from former soldiers describing war crimes as “common practice” during their night raids.

In December 2009, in Narang village, 10 Afghan civilians were dragged from their beds and shot in the head or chest. Most of them were students aged 12 to 18.

In September 2019, in Helmand, a raid killed a couple and five of their six children. Only a two-month-old baby girl survived — injured and orphaned.

In another raid, Amena said, a family who had lost three grandchildren was given a parcel of rice, a can of oil, and some sugar as “compensation”.

“And then there was the Khataba massacre. February 2010. US Army Rangers raided a home where a family was celebrating a newborn child.

Civilians killed
“They killed five civilians — two men, a teenage girl, and two pregnant women. They were bound, gagged, and shot dead.

“The Pentagon investigated and concluded the soldiers had followed the rules of engagement. No disciplinary action.

“At first they called it ‘honour killing’. And they blamed the Taliban. But the truth eventually comes out.

“Now, the opium.

“During the US occupation, Afghanistan had produced more than 80 percent of the world’s opium. Within a year of the Taliban takeover and their ban on poppy cultivation, production dropped by 95 percent.”

Amena said it was estimated that up to 4 million Afghans had been addicted to heroin. That was “nearly the population of New Zealand”.

“The streets of Kabul looked like a zombie movie [under US occupation] — men and women, families and loved ones, withering away.

“And what did America do? They sent troops to guard the opium farms. When asked about their direct involvement in the drug trade, they said the opium would be trafficked to countries like Iran and Russia — enemies they wanted to weaken.”

Poppy for export
She spoke of a 2026 interview when CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou confirmed that a DEA official had told him Afghans were allowed to cultivate poppy specifically for export to Russia and Iran — “to weaken their societies”.

“This was not a war on terror. This was a war on the Afghan people. And it was fueled by profit, and by drugs.”

Amena asked what about women’s liberation?

“At the end of 20 years, according to the Central Statistics Organisation, 84 percent of Afghan women were illiterate. And only 2 percent had access to higher education. The rest were left behind.

“The elites — the collaborators — were paraded on television, given visas, and evacuated. The rest? The widows, the orphans, the mothers of the deep south who endured decades of night raids and bombings — they were left to starve under crippling US sanctions.

Amena said this was not “liberation”. It was “colonialism”.

She stressed that Afghanistan was just one country in a long list of those impacted.

New war of aggression
“And now — less than five years after the withdrawal from Afghanistan — the US is at it again. Starting a new war of aggression against the great people of Iran,” she said.

“So today — on the 4th of July — we say no. We say never again. Not in our name. Not with our taxes. Not with our silence.”

Amena said she had brought a young girl’s shoe with her — “for the 168 children killed in Minab, Iran. I want you to look at it, and remember the 168 little girls, murdered by the US in their classrooms.”

Other speakers critical of the July 4 US anniversary included Eugene Velasco, spokesperson of the Filipino movement BAYAN Aotearoa New Zealand; Adnan Swaid, a Palestinian freedom activist and a Nakba victim; Sapna Samant, a progressive Indian activist; Diana Phillips of Americans Abroad Against the War, and Dr Barry Lee, a longtime peace activist who researched a thesis on the Auckland Progressive Youth Movement during the US war against Vietnam.

ANALYSIS: By Hossam Shaker

Once again, the United Nations reminds us that genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip.

A report issued on 23 June 2026 by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory documented what Israel has committed against the Palestinian people, especially children.

This followed an earlier report from the same commission on 16 September 2025, which found that genocide was taking place, as well as the report of the UN special rapporteur issued on 20 October 2025.

• READ MORE: Sanctioned ICC judges sue Trump in US over ‘attack on judicial independence’
• Chris Sidoti on UN inquiry into Palestinian rights
• Other Gaza genocide reports

But what can meticulously documented international reports do in the face of those who have insisted on averting their eyes from declared Israeli intentions to commit genocide, ethnic cleansing, comprehensive destruction and horrific starvation — not to mention the torrent of live images transmitted around the clock to mobile devices from the field of atrocities over the course of two full years?

Specialised UN reports, testimonies by international rapporteurs and experts, assessments by the most prominent global human rights organisations, and even Israeli testimonies have followed one another, all confirming the reality of the genocide committed by Israel under the eyes of the world since October 2023.

In contrast, most European and Western states have clung to a rigid position that ignores this glaring truth, despite genocidal intentions being openly expressed in advance by senior Israeli leaders, who continued to boast of what their army and authorities were doing on the ground.

Official western comments on those reports were often absent, unlike what would have happened in other cases

Avoided the term ‘genocide’
Is it not worthy of condemnation that senior European and Western officials have persistently avoided using the term “genocide” in relation to these systematic and horrific Israeli practices?

It is as though the word were a firmly established taboo in European and Western political, media and cultural discourse whenever Israel is concerned.

This taboo exerts its power over those officials and commentators who, in this way, give reason to suspect that acknowledging genocide depends on the identity of the perpetrator and the status of the victims.

Double standards
It is entirely understandable that the allies of a regime of occupation and genocide, or those who consider themselves Israel’s partners and friends, would avoid issuing a clear condemnation of conduct they themselves helped support and encourage, directly or indirectly, even if only through silence and denial of its atrocities.

Throughout this prolonged season of horrors, the Israeli side has enjoyed military and political backing, as well as propagandistic cover, through carefully crafted formulas uttered by senior European and Western officials.

These amounted to evasive justifications for whatever war crimes and grave violations an occupying authority and its military forces might commit against a population left utterly exposed to continuous bombardment.

This may be inferred from the phrase that has become a staple of Western speeches: “Israel has every right to defend itself” — words that Israeli leaders understand simply as advance legitimation for a policy of mass killing and comprehensive destruction on the ground.

Naturally, no mention is made in this context of any right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves, for example, or of their right under international humanitarian law to resist the military occupation entrenched on their land.

States, governments and political leaderships — joined by elites in the fields of thought, culture and media — insist on ignoring the reality of genocide against the Palestinian people, or conceal it through a tendency toward genocide denial, as though all the serious international efforts of documentation and investigation had no value for them.

Denying a genocide that has unfolded before everyone’s ears and eyes simply means minimising its confirmed atrocities. It also entails direct or indirect encouragement of this pattern of horrific violations, so long as they are met with such shocking laxity.

Clinging to outright denial
Moreover, clinging to outright denial encourages the perpetrators to resume committing appalling war crimes, so long as these crimes are not named as such. Which Western leaders — apart from a handful, such as Spain — have described what the Israeli leadership and its army have committed as “genocide” or “war crimes”?

It must be recalled that the centres of Western decision-making, including the European Union and its leading bodies crowned with slogans of noble values and human rights, became implicated in a sweeping display of bias when they chose very mild or evasive terms to describe Israeli war crimes that the entire world followed in images, sound and live broadcasts.

Leaders and spokespersons resorted to cold expressions such as the ploy of “expressing concern” and voicing “sorrow” over the victims, often without naming the perpetrator, because the perpetrator was the Israeli leadership and its army, whose brutal policies and measures were visible to all.

Observers around the world have noted how the charge of “double standards” clings to European and Western political discourse.

This is precisely what the former Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, warned his EU colleagues against — in full view of a world that notices the grave moral gap between European positions on Ukraine and Palestine. He issued that warning days into the war, at a Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg on 23 October 2023.

One would not be exaggerating to conclude from these contradictory positions that they place some human beings above others in status, degree of concern and human dignity, so that the lives, safety and security of Palestinians are placed lower in rank than those of others.

Thus comes the tolerance of the crushing of children, mothers, the sick and the elderly in the Gaza Strip, without serious positions being taken to restrain the machinery of genocide.

The margins, not the centre
Those faltering positions gave the strong impression that they were conferring moral immunity on the perpetrator, namely the Israeli leadership and its regular army.

Prevailing European and Western criticism was limited to only two reckless ministers from the Israeli government, which amounts to little, since Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are already constantly criticised within Israeli circles.

The narrative has been shifted into familiar terms about a ‘humanitarian crisis’, as though the programmed genocide were merely a natural disaster

Meanwhile, the government and the political leadership more broadly continue to escape direct criticism, even after the accumulation of filmed atrocities and the issuance of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.

This evasion becomes even clearer when criticism, along with some sanctions of limited effect, has been confined to settler gangs and their leaders, without any verbal reproach or punitive gesture directed toward the Israeli army.

The latter not only sponsors and protects settlers on the ground but also directly commits grave violations, appalling war crimes and campaigns of ethnic cleansing within the context of a horrific genocide.

This contradiction betrays a firmly rooted European and Western position intent on exempting the state, its leadership and its regular military and security apparatuses from any clear criticism, explicit condemnation or accountability, while merely formal positions are issued concerning the margins rather than the centre: some settlers instead of the army, and only two ministers instead of the government.

Evading a simple question
Political Europe, and many elites in public life across Western states, have even evaded confronting a simple question: does what Israel has committed against the Palestinian people constitute genocide?

Denying the genocide committed in Gaza requires wilful disregard.

It begins by brushing aside these war crimes and behaving as though they merit no attention. The adopted narrative has been shifted into familiar terms about a “humanitarian crisis” and “alarming” conditions, or a show of concern for “civilian suffering” — as though the programmed genocide, reinforced by declared intentions to commit it, were merely a natural disaster that befell the place.

The states and governments that boast of their commitment to moral positions, human values, international law and human rights were supposed to honour those commitments. They should have warned against the campaign of genocide in its earliest stages, stripped it of political and propagandistic cover, and supported the enforcement of international justice and the cases filed over genocide against the Palestinian people.

Foremost among these is the case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on the basis of Israel’s violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Instead, campaigns of moral targeting, incitement, intimidation and even the imposition of unjust sanctions on prosecutors have escalated, affecting international justice bodies and their personnel, as well as UN rapporteurs.

Thus, it becomes clear that complicity with the genocide committed against the Palestinian people goes ever further in undermining international law and threatening the foundations of international action and the protection afforded to its institutions and authorities.

Hossam Shaker is a journalist and an author who has extensively covered the topic of migration in Europe.This article was first published in the Middle East Eye.

COMMENTARY: By Chris Hedges

Neoliberalism, better understood by its less sanitised term cutthroat capitalism, is the poison that destroyed our democracy in America.

It gave the billionaire class and corporations the ideological cover to impoverish the working class, impose crippling austerity, hollow out democratic institutions, buy off our two ruling political parties and deform our courts into appendages of corporations and the rich.

Neoliberalism drove tens of millions of disenfranchised, desperate people into the arms of Christian fascists, who preyed on their despair and sold them the fantasy of magic Jesus. It drove them into the arms of conspiracy theorists and right-wing charlatans.

• READ MORE: America250 versus Freedom 250: What to know about the US semiquincentennial
• Other Chris Hedges reports

It drove them down the self-destructive rabbit holes of alcoholism and opioid addiction, compulsive gambling, domestic and sexual violence. These were the inevitable consequences of personal stagnation, disempowerment and feelings of worthlessness, frustration and profound despair.

Neoliberalism ignores the cries of its victims. It dismisses their suffering and rage as irrational, ignorant and racist. It neuters liberal reforms, rendering them cosmetic and useless.

Liberal apologists for neoliberalism, no longer concerned with economic justice, retreat into boutique activism. They mouth empty slogans about diversity and political correctness while pretending the relentless class war, unleashed globally since the 1970s, does not exist.

The victims of neoliberal deindustrialisation, 30 million of whom lost their jobs in the US in mass layoffs, understand that the precarity of their existence does not concern their neoliberal masters.

Celebrated by the disenfranchised
Right-wing pundits and politicians, such as Donald Trump, who issue crude, vulgar and expletive-laden insults against the traditional neoliberal establishment are celebrated by the disenfranchised for exposing the political charade. These demagogues promise moral and economic renewal for the betrayed, albeit grounded in magical thinking.

Neoliberals peddle their own form of magical thinking. Neoliberalism is as absurd and infantile as the Christian Rapture and Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. Trump lies like he breathes, but so did previous presidents including Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Trump embraces fantasies, but so did they. Trump, like his Democratic predecessors, enriches himself and his family, although with far more ostentation and greed. He, like them, facilitates the ongoing pillage by the billionaire class. Trump is the fascist iteration of the neoliberal con.

Concentrating wealth in the hands of a global oligarchic elite — the 12 richest billionaires own more wealth than the poorest half of the world — is designed to create massive income inequality and monopoly power. It is the antithesis of democratic equality. It is designed to fuel political extremism and foster social and cultural divisions.

It is designed to hollow out democratic institutions. Economic rationality is not the point. David Harvey calls neoliberalism “accumulation by dispossession.”

As a ruling ideology, neoliberalism is a brilliant success. Starting in the 1970s, its Keynesian mainstream critics were marginalised or pushed out of academia, state institutions and financial organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

The same is true of the media. Compliant courtiers and intellectual poseurs such as Milton Friedman or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman were given prominent platforms and lavish corporate funding. They slavishly disseminated the official mantra of fringe, discredited economic theories popularised by Friedrich Hayek and the third-rate writer Ayn Rand.

Once the country was forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace, once government regulations were abolished, once taxes on the rich were slashed, once money was permitted to flow across borders, once unions were crushed and once trade deals were signed that sent jobs to sweatshops in Mexico and China, the world, these poseurs assured us, would be happier, freer and wealthier.

A scam – but it worked
It was a scam. But it worked. And it fueled the rival con game of the demagogues and fascists who were vomited up out of the moral and political morass.

The media bears much of the blame. In the name of objectivity, better understood as neutrality, it absented itself from the class war. It did not investigate the mounting abuses of the rich, corporations or its bought-and-paid-for political class. It did not expose the absurdity of neoliberalism. It rendered the victims invisible. By shutting themselves out of the debate, the media, a vital pillar of any democracy, neutered itself. It too became despised.

Individual freedom, which neoliberalism holds up as the highest good, and social justice are not compatible.

Social justice, Harvey writes in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, requires social solidarity and “a willingness to submerge individual wants, needs, and desires in the cause of some more general struggle for, say, social equality and environmental justice.” Neoliberal rhetoric is able to “split off libertarianism, identity politics, multiculturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power.”

Neoliberalism, as Ece Temelkuran writes in How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps From Democracy to Fascism, exiles morality from public life. It isolates it in the private space of the individual.

It corrals it into “the holding pen of religion” while religion is “clipped and cropped into market-friendly ‘spiritualities.’”

Justice and mercy are no longer shared concepts. Personal and public morality are severed. How, she asks, “can we convince people not to commit evil in those realms of public life from which law enforcement is absent?”

Lack of a story unbearable
“Humans,” she writes, “are incapable of functioning and living together without a good story to bind them and keep a certain set of values intact. That’s why the lack of a story in neoliberalism, the lack of meaning and cause, can be unbearable for the human mind.

“Since humans are forced to live in a state of mild antipathy — an acceptable amount of antipathy that is crucial to the neoliberal system — they are forever in dire need of a cause, a central triangulation point that they can use to orient themselves in relation to what’s good and what’s bad.

“The ethical vacuum of neoliberalism, its dismissal of the fact that human nature needs meaning and desperately seeks reasons to live, creates fertile ground for the invention of causes, and sometimes the most groundless or shallowest ones.”

Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation distinguishes between bad freedoms and good freedoms. Bad freedoms are sacrosanct under neoliberalism. They permit the powerful to exploit workers and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse. Pharmaceutical and health care corporations, for example, jeopardise the lives of those who cannot afford their exorbitant prices. The fossil fuel industry is driving us towards extinction.

Good freedoms — freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom of association, freedom to choose one’s job — are snuffed out by bad freedoms. The freedom of the many is transformed into the freedom of the few. The result is fascism.

Fascism uses the blunt instruments of fear, intimidation and violence to curb the mounting disquiet. It divides the country into warring factions — the patriots vs the enemies of the state. It obliterates shared values. It champions the cruelty of hypermasculinity. Those who dissent are branded domestic terrorists. Civil liberties are abolished in the name of national security.

The 30 to 100-year sentences meted out to eight anti-ICE protesters in Texas, who were portrayed in court as an “antifa terror cell,” are being normalised. A ninth defendant, David Rolando Sanchez Estrada, was not present at the protest, but was sentenced to 30 years after being convicted of concealing documents when he moved a box of political zines and other materials.

A second group of defendants in the broader Prairieland case were sentenced on July 1. Six who accepted plea agreements received prison terms ranging from nearly two years to 15 years, while Ines Soto, who rejected a plea agreement and went to trial, received 50 years.

The equation of civil disobedience with terrorism is routine in countries such as Turkey, Russia and India. It is being cemented into place in Europe.

Palestine Action jailings
A British judge, in a ruling that mirrors what took place in Texas, recently sentenced four members of Palestine Action as “terrorists”, sending them to prison for five to nine years, even though they were neither charged nor convicted of terrorism offences.

It does not matter if Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin or Nigel Farage disappear. The tens of millions of people “fired up by their message will still be there, and will still be ready to act upon the orders of a similar figure,” Temelkuran writes.

“And unfortunately, as we experienced in Turkey in a very destructive way, even if you are determined to stay away from the world of politics, the minions will find you, even in your own personal space, armed with their own set of values and ready to hunt down anybody who doesn’t resemble themselves.”

Our country, as we once knew it, no longer exists. It was methodically destroyed by neoliberal con artists. The institutions and legal protections that once shielded us from tyranny no longer function.

Those who champion an open society are orphans, smeared as traitors, excoriated as the “radical left”. I mourn what we have lost. I mourn what we are about to lose. This social isolation will soon be physical isolation. We will be criminalised or driven into exile.

Trump and his fascistic cabal, epitomised by billionaires such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, are constructing a mafia state. A nation of gangsters and marks. A nation where they alone have unlimited freedom to pillage and exploit.

A nation where the government is privatised. A nation where we are enslaved to corporate technology. A nation where we have no place.

We must name our enemies this Fourth of July. They are the fascists who have seized power. And they are those who, selling us the con of neoliberalism, put them there.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This commentary was first published on the Chris Hedges Substack page and is republished with permission.

• The Chris Hedges Report

Giving evidence before Australia’s Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, Sarah Schwartz, a human rights lawyer, said attacks from pro-Israel groups sought to delegitimise Jewish people who criticise Israel.

“They rest on the idea that Jewish identity is inherently tied to Israel, and therefore Jewish people who don’t support Israel or who criticise Israel are not really Jewish and are traitors,” she told the commission last Thursday.

Schwartz said she had been referred to as a “self-hating Jew”, “Hitler’s Jew”, “kapo” and “Judenrat”, and had been depicted using Holocaust imagery, including “on a train to concentration camps” and with the yellow Star of David imposed on Jews under Nazi rule.

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Holocaust weaponised
She said the atrocities of the Holocaust were a motivation for her Palestine solidarity work and the weaponisation by pro-Israel accounts of Holocaust imagery was “incredibly disturbing”.

“I was taught that never again meant never again for anyone, and that’s why I do the work that I do,” Schwartz said.

“To have the symbols of the Holocaust and Nazi imagery and Jewish persecution used against me has been incredibly disturbing and distressing, and I think it

sends a chilling message to other Jewish people when they want to speak out.

Schwartz said the stereotype that all Jewish people are politically aligned with Israel “causes immense harm”.

“I speak … almost every day to Jewish people who contact me and who are terrified of speaking out, because they know that if they speak their political convictions, they face the risk of a similar sort of abuse and vilification and targeting that I have experienced.”

Murdoch media coverage fuelled abuse
Schwartz told the commission that reporting by The Australian undermined her safety and ultimately led her to abandon a police application intended to protect her from ongoing harassment.

She recounted an incident in March 2025 after police applied for a personal safety intervention order (PSIO) on her behalf against lawyer Zara Cooper, who targeted Schwartz on Instagram under the pseudonym “@clammy_fraud”.

Schwartz said she first learned of the application through a journalist from The Australian, who contacted her to say the newspaper was preparing a story.

“I informed him I hadn’t been informed of the nature of the PSIO,” she said.

“When I asked him if he could provide me with a copy, he said he couldn’t provide me with a copy … because I didn’t know its contents, I also couldn’t really respond to a lot of it, because it was a police application.”

Schwartz said the following day’s front-page article ($) incorrectly suggested she, rather than police, had initiated the proceedings in an attempt to suppress free speech.

Free speech for me, not for thee
She told the commission that The Australian subsequently published further articles about the case, including reproducing images and slurs that formed part of the material relied upon by police in seeking the intervention order.

“What was most distressing to me is The Australian chose to republish some of the offensive imagery that was the basis on which police applied for the PSIO,” she said.

“[The Australian] republished content that took my image and placed it on a train to concentration camps, content calling me a kapo and other various slurs.”

Schwartz said the coverage convinced her that pursuing legal protection would expose her to further public attention and place her at greater risk.

“It became very clear to me after that coverage that this was becoming a media circus,” she said.

“Having reported these matters to police … was actually something that was

going to make me less safe because of the media coverage.

She subsequently told police she no longer wished to proceed with the intervention order, and the application was withdrawn. She has since been reluctant to report further incidents because she fears doing so would attract similar publicity.

“It’s become very clear to me that, because of the media interest in me as a person, but particularly because of News Corp’s targeting of me, it’s not going to be safe for me to engage in reporting,” she said.

She also expressed concern that republishing the abusive material normalised antisemitic attacks against Jewish critics of Israel.

“I think that media reporting really normalises the use of these terms against other Jewish people … people see that coverage and think that it is legitimate to call a Jewish person Nazi-aligned or to place our face on a train to concentration camps.”

Being pro-Palestine is not antisemitism
Schwartz dispelled suggestions that pro-Palestinian activism is a significant driver of antisemitism, stating that, despite attempts to portray Palestine solidarity spaces as hostile to Jews, that had not reflected her own experience.

“I know that there is a lot of public discourse … that suggests that human rights spaces and Palestine solidarity spaces, in particular, are spaces that might be hostile to Jewish people,” she said.

That hasn’t been my experience at all.

Instead, Schwartz said she had received “many messages of support and clear condemnations of antisemitism” from Muslim colleagues following the Bondi terror attack on 14 December 2025.

Government response
Schwartz criticised the government’s responses to antisemitism, which have disproportionately focused on the Palestine solidarity movement, including the banning of protest slogans.

“I think that government responses, which locate the source of antisemitism within the Palestine solidarity movement, suggest for Jewish people who are also part of that movement that either we’re not really Jewish or that we are somehow against Jewish people in our own communities.”

Asked what measures would most effectively combat antisemitism, Schwartz said governments should prioritise addressing far-right extremism and

avoid conflating antisemitism with the Palestine solidarity movement.

“It’s really important for us to take the threat of far-right extremism really seriously … we know that it’s rising and it’s becoming more mainstream,” she said.

“It is critically important that governments and institutions don’t adopt policies in response to antisemitism that engage in that form of conflation itself that suggests that antisemitism is coming from the Palestine solidarity movement.”

She also called for progressive Jewish organisations to be included in policymaking on antisemitism.

“It’s really important that organisations such as the Jewish Council and other progressive Jewish organisations actually have a seat at the table” she said.

“It shows the broader community that

the Jewish community, like every community, has a diversity of opinions.

For four decades, the West presented Iran’s regional strategy as the work of a rogue state exporting revolution and chaos. They never told you about the CIA coup that destroyed Iran’s democracy in 1953.

They never told you that America armed the man who gassed Iranian soldiers. They never showed you the map — the ring of American military bases on every border, the US Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf, the Israeli aircraft that bombed Iranian assets with impunity and assassinated Iranian scientists on Iranian soil.

Iran built the Axis of Resistance and the Mosaic Defence as its answer to that encirclement.

• READ MORE: ‘Technical’ talks under way in Doha as Tehran demands action
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Now, with the 2026 war and its fragile ceasefire, we can assess the full doctrine — what it achieved, where it was tested to its limits, and what it tells us about the future of Iranian sovereignty.

This is the story they spent decades trying to prevent you from understanding.

The fortress and the forward shield: How Iran built the architecture of survival
Look at a map.

Not the map the Western press shows you — the one that marks Iran in the colour reserved for rogue states, surrounded by the clean borders of American allies and reasonable nations.

I want you to look at the real map. The strategic map below.

This is the map that every Iranian general, every Iranian strategic planner, every Iranian Supreme Leader has looked at every morning for the past four decades.

What the map shows is not an aggressive power projecting menace outward. It shows a nation under siege — encircled, threatened, and facing an existential choice that empires have always forced upon those they cannot fully control: submit, or build the architecture of survival.

Iran chose to build.

What follows is the story of how — and why. And now, in the wake of the 2026 war and its fragile ceasefire, we can assess that architecture under the most severe test it has ever faced.

1. The doctrine born from betrayal
To understand Iranian grand strategy, you must first understand what Iran learned — not from ideology, not from theology, but from history. From its own history, written in blood and betrayal.

Lesson One came in 1953. Iran had a democracy. A real one — a Parliament, a free press, a Prime Minister of genuine popular legitimacy who had committed the unforgivable act of returning Iran’s oil to its own people.

The West destroyed it. Not with armies, but with money, propaganda, and hired mobs. The CIA and MI6 removed Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed a pliant Shah who would keep Iranian oil flowing to London and Washington.

The lesson Iran drew was stark and permanent: the West does not want Iran strong, sovereign, or self-determining. It wants Iran “manageable”.

Lesson Two came in the 1980s. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980 with the tacit blessing of Washington, which viewed the chaos of revolutionary Iran in 1979 as a strategic opportunity.

For eight years, Iran bled. Perhaps one million lives. And when Iranian forces began pushing back, Washington made its choice. It provided Saddam with satellite intelligence on Iranian troop positions. It supplied the precursor chemicals for the weapons Saddam used to gas Iranian soldiers on the battlefield — mustard gas, tabun, sarin — in one of the most extensively documented war crimes of the modern era.

American officials knew. They continued regardless.

The lesson Iran drew from those eight years was equally stark: when your existence is threatened, no one will come. Not the United Nations. Not international law. Not the conventions against chemical weapons. No one.

These two lessons — the 1953 betrayal and the 1980s abandonment — are the foundation of everything that follows. They are not ideology. They are experience. And as Oliver Wendell Holmes observed: the life of the law — and we might add, the life of strategy — is not logic. It is experience.

Iran’s grand strategy is the experience of a nation that has been betrayed, encircled, and attacked — and has drawn the only rational conclusions available to a sovereign state determined to survive.

2. The encirclement — what Iran actually sees
Before we examine what Iran built, we must understand what Iran faces. Because the architecture of Iranian strategy makes no sense without the map — the real map, not the sanitised version.

To Iran’s east, American forces spent two decades in Afghanistan — on Iran’s longest land border. To Iran’s west, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 removed Saddam Hussein but replaced him with a country that became host to the largest American embassy on earth, a vast network of military bases, and tens of thousands of American troops — sitting on Iran’s western doorstep.

In the Persian Gulf — Iran’s southern maritime frontier — the United States Fifth Fleet operates from Bahrain, a permanent naval presence of carrier groups, destroyers, and the full apparatus of American maritime power.

At Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, America maintained the largest US air installation in the entire Middle East — a facility capable of projecting devastating airpower across the region within hours.

In Kuwait. In the UAE. Across the Arabian Peninsula, American bases formed a constellation of military power that, viewed from Tehran, looked less like a defensive alliance and more like a slowly tightening noose.

This is not Iranian paranoia. This is Iranian geography.

Any strategic planner in any country — American, British, Chinese, Indian — looking at that map would draw the same conclusion. Iran had been encircled with a precision that left nothing to chance.

The message was unambiguous: the United States had positioned itself to strangle Iran economically through Gulf control, to strike Iran from multiple directions simultaneously, and to do so from bases close enough to minimise warning time and maximise devastation.

Iran looked at this map. And Iran made a decision.

If the Americans intend to make the Persian Gulf an American lake, Iran will ensure that lake has a price. If American power is to sit on every border, every border will become a potential front. If encirclement is the American strategy, Iran’s answer will be to make that encirclement so costly to act upon that it becomes, in practice, a cage with open bars — present but unusable.

The Axis of Resistance was not born of religious fervour or ideological ambition. It was born of that map.

3. The Israeli dimension — the undeclared nuclear power that bombs its neighbours
And then there is Israel.

The Western framing of the Iran-Israel confrontation presents it as Iranian aggression against a peaceful democratic state. This is such a complete inversion of the actual sequence of events that it requires dismantling with some care.

Israel is, by the near-universal assessment of the international intelligence community, a nuclear power. It possesses an estimated 90 nuclear warheads. It has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has never submitted to international inspection.

It maintains what is called a policy of “nuclear ambiguity” — neither confirming nor denying what the entire world knows to be true. And it directs its considerable diplomatic energy toward ensuring that no other state in its region acquires the same deterrent capability it has quietly accumulated for itself.

This is the context in which Iran’s nuclear programme must be understood. Iran is a signatory to the NPT. Its programme operated under international scrutiny that Israel’s never has.

And yet it was Iran that was presented as the existential threat, Iran that was sanctioned, Iran that was threatened with military strikes — and ultimately, Iran that was bombed.

But the nuclear dimension was only the beginning. Israeli planes repeatedly struck Iranian assets in Syria — military installations, weapons convoys, advisers — hundreds of strikes over a decade, conducted with complete impunity.

Israeli intelligence assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists on Iranian soil. In April 2024, Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus — sovereign Iranian territory under the Vienna Convention — killing senior commanders.

In July 2024, Israeli intelligence assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, in Tehran itself.

In June 2025, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion and America followed with Operation Midnight Hammer — the first direct US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, targeting Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

Then, on February 28, 2026, came the full assault: Operation Epic Fury, a joint US-Israeli campaign of nearly 900 strikes in 12 hours targeting Iran’s missiles, air defences, military infrastructure, and leadership. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Dozens of senior officials perished. Iran’s nuclear programme was severely degraded.

The doctrine that Iran had constructed across four decades — forward defence through the Axis of Resistance, interior resilience through the Mosaic Defence — was now facing its ultimate test.

Hezbollah had served as Iran’s most elegant strategic instrument — a deterrent positioned on Israel’s northern border, ensuring that any strike on Iran carried automatic, unavoidable cost.

For 30 years, it worked. Every Israeli military planner understood that attacking Natanz meant absorbing tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets into northern Israel simultaneously. That deterrent logic held — until 2024, when Israel called the bluff.

Yet even after Nasrallah’s assassination and the degradation of Hezbollah’s arsenal, the organisation demonstrated remarkable residual fighting capacity. When IDF ground forces attempted to push into southern Lebanon, Hezbollah gave them a drubbing — inflicting casualties, destroying armoured vehicles, and forcing repeated tactical withdrawals that exposed the limits of Israeli conventional military power on the ground.

The shield had been damaged. It had not been broken.

4. The Axis of Resistance — architecture of Forward Defence
With the American encirclement and Israeli threat understood, the Axis of Resistance reveals itself not as an Iranian imperial project but as a coherent strategic architecture built on a single organising principle: make the cost of attacking Iran prohibitive, by ensuring that any attack triggers consequences across the entire region simultaneously.

The components of that architecture were distinct in character but unified in purpose.

Hezbollah was Iran’s most sophisticated instrument — battle-hardened, institutionally deep, politically embedded in Lebanese society, and at its peak possessing an arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets and missiles.

It is not a militia in the casual sense. It is a military organisation with combat experience forged across four decades, in Lebanon’s civil war, the Syrian conflict, and multiple wars against one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world.

Despite the severe degradation it suffered in 2024 and 2025, Hezbollah remains a potent force — as the IDF discovered when its ground forces pushed into southern Lebanon and were met with fierce resistance, tactical ambushes, and anti-armour fire that forced repeated withdrawals.

Iran’s first line of forward defence has been bloodied but not destroyed.

Hamas was a different and more complicated case — Palestinian in origin, rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood tradition rather than Shia political theology. But Iran adopted the Palestinian cause with strategic intelligence, recognising that support for Palestinian resistance gave Tehran something invaluable: moral legitimacy across the entire Muslim world, Sunni and Shia alike.

Supporting Hamas cost Iran relatively little. It purchased Iran enormous influence and the one thing that money and missiles cannot buy — the genuine sympathy of the Arab street.

The Houthis of Yemen were the most recent and surprising component. Not originally an Iranian creation, they were driven into Tehran’s strategic embrace by the Saudi-led war in Yemen — backed by American weapons, logistics, and political cover.

The Houthis’ capacity to threaten Red Sea shipping and strike deep into the Gulf transformed them from a local insurgency into a regional strategic asset of considerable importance. Their intervention following October 7, 2023 demonstrated reach that surprised even optimistic Iranian planners — and their continued operations through the 2026 war demonstrated a resilience that confounded repeated predictions of their swift neutralisation.

The Iraqi militias — the Popular Mobilisation Forces and their various components — completed the architecture. Born from the chaos of the American invasion and consolidated during the fight against ISIS, these forces represented Iran’s most direct penetration of a neighbouring state’s security structure, giving Tehran influence over the country on its western border through which any American ground offensive would necessarily pass.

Together, these components formed what Iranian strategists called the “ring of fire” — a constellation of armed, motivated, battle-tested forces positioned around Iran’s primary adversaries. Not an empire. A defensive perimeter, constructed outside Iran’s borders precisely because Iran’s borders had proven, twice in living memory, to be insufficient protection against the ambitions of external powers.

5. The Mosaic Defence — making Iran unconquerable
Forward defence alone — however sophisticated — was always only half of Iran’s strategic architecture. Iranian planners understood that the outer ring could be degraded. Proxies could be weakened. Forward positions could be overrun. The question that preoccupied Iran’s military establishment for four decades was this: if the forward shield fails, what then?

The answer was the Mosaic Defence.

The concept is as elegant as it is ruthless. Iran deliberately, systematically, and over decades decentralised its entire military infrastructure across all 31 of its provinces. Missile arsenals were not concentrated in single facilities but dispersed across hundreds of sites — underground, mountainside, desert — spread across a country the size of Western Europe.

Command and control was distributed rather than centralised, designed to survive the decapitation strikes that destroyed Iraq’s military capacity in 1991 and Libya’s in 2011. Defence industries were deliberately dispersed so that no single strike, however precise, could eliminate Iran’s capacity to produce and deploy weapons.

The underground dimension was particularly significant. Iran invested enormously in what it called its “missile cities” — vast subterranean complexes buried deep enough to survive all but the most specialised munitions. The 2026 campaign tested this directly.

Despite nearly 900 strikes in the opening 12 hours and CENTCOM ultimately claiming over 11,000 targets struck across the entire war, a preliminary US Defense Intelligence Agency assessment — leaked and characterised by the Trump administration as “political” — concluded that Iran had moved much of its enriched uranium stockpile before the strikes began and that the underground facilities had not been collapsed.

The CIA subsequently disputed this, claiming severe damage that would take years to rebuild. The truth, as is so often the case in the fog of war, likely lies somewhere between these assessments.

What is beyond dispute is this: the logic Iran applied — the logic of a student of history who had watched what happened to states that presented centralised targets — proved partially vindicated. The 31-province dispersal model meant that even 11,000 strikes could not deliver a clean, decisive blow. Iran was damaged. Iran was not defeated.

Centralisation is a vulnerability. Dispersal is survival.

The Mosaic Defence and the Axis of Resistance were never separate strategies. They were two halves of a single, integrated doctrine. Attack Iran’s periphery — and the Axis activates. Penetrate to the interior — and the Mosaic ensures there is no clean, decisive blow to be struck. The 2026 war demonstrated both the power and the limits of that doctrine.

6. The 2026 War — the ultimate test
Intellectual honesty requires confronting what Operation Epic Fury achieved — and what it did not.

What it achieved was substantial. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes — a decapitation of the Islamic Republic’s leadership of historic proportions. Dozens of senior IRGC commanders, nuclear scientists, and regime officials perished. Iran’s nuclear enrichment infrastructure was severely degraded. Its air defences were systematically dismantled. Its navy was effectively destroyed.

The Iranian economy, already strangled by decades of sanctions, went into free fall. Its currency collapsed. Protests that had begun in December 2025 spread across the country as the regime’s authority visibly cracked.

What it did not achieve is equally instructive.

Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile — the IAEA had confirmed 440 kilograms enriched to 60 percent purity before the war, sufficient for multiple weapons if further enriched — could not be fully accounted for.

Two military campaigns left that stockpile harder, not easier, to locate. Iran had anticipated decapitation. Within 30 minutes of the opening strikes, Iranian forces launched simultaneous retaliatory attacks across multiple fronts without waiting for centralised authorisation — precisely the pre-delegated response architecture that the Mosaic Defence doctrine had prescribed.

The regime was headless. The military machine kept fighting.

Iran’s response was devastating to the American strategic position in the region. It closed the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly 20 percent of global oil supply passes — triggering a global energy shock and fuel crises across Asia.

It struck American bases across the Gulf simultaneously: Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE. It bombarded Israel with over 525 ballistic missiles. It struck oil infrastructure across the Arabian Peninsula. Thirteen American service members were killed. The regional war that Iran’s forward defence doctrine had always promised to trigger — the promise that had deterred attack for thirty years — was fulfilled.

The ceasefire that followed told its own story. After 40 days of sustained combat, with both sides exhausted and the global economy convulsing, Pakistan brokered a conditional truce on April 8, 2026.

The highest-level direct US-Iran engagement since the 1979 revolution followed — JD Vance meeting Iranian counterparts in Islamabad. On June 17, 2026, Trump and Iranian President Pezeshkian signed the Islamabad Memorandum, with Trump signing at the Palace of Versailles, establishing a 60-day framework for further negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme, sanctions relief, the unfreezing of Iranian assets, and the future of the Strait of Hormuz.

Read that again. The United States of America — which had launched nearly 900 strikes in 12 hours against Iran, killed its Supreme Leader, and declared regime change as its explicit objective — ended up negotiating. Not dictating. Negotiating. With the Islamic Republic it had sought to destroy.

The new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei — son of Ali — approved the memorandum, noting he had “a different view” but accepted it in the national interest. Iran committed to reaffirming it would not develop nuclear weapons. The US committed to lifting sanctions and removing forces from Iran’s proximity after a final deal.

Iran’s nuclear programme — battered but not eliminated — remained. Its missile programme was explicitly declared off the table for negotiations by Tehran. And critically, Iran extracted from the world’s most powerful military the one concession that no amount of technical language could conceal: America negotiated.

That fact is irreversible. And every adversary of American power on earth has filed it carefully for future reference.

7. The Strategic Verdict — doctrine under fire
Here is what four decades of Iranian grand strategy achieved, assessed without sentiment.
The Axis of Resistance was degraded — Hamas devastated in Gaza, Hezbollah bloodied in Lebanon, Iranian assets struck across Syria. The Mosaic Defence was tested as never before — 11,000 targets struck, nuclear facilities damaged, leadership decapitated.

The forward shield failed to deter the ultimate assault it was designed to prevent.
And yet. Iran survived.

The Islamic Republic — written off by analysts for decades, subjected to the most comprehensive sanctions in modern history, struck by two rounds of devastating military campaigns — survived. Its military kept fighting after its Supreme Leader was killed. Its enriched uranium could not be fully accounted for. Its proxies continued operating. The Strait of Hormuz became a weapon that brought the global economy to its knees.

And ultimately, America came to the table.

This is not the outcome of a state that built the wrong strategic doctrine. This is the outcome of a state that built remarkable strategic resilience — imperfect, costly, and tested to its absolute limits — but resilience nonetheless.

The Mosaic Defence’s dispersal across 31 provinces meant no clean killing blow. The pre-delegated command authority meant no paralysis after decapitation. The Houthis’ continued Red Sea operations meant the economic pressure never relented. The Iraqi militias provided Iran with leverage in negotiations.

And the nuclear stockpile — unaccounted for, potentially dispersed before the strikes — remained the ultimate trump card that no military campaign could eliminate with certainty.
What Iran demonstrated in 2026 was not the invincibility its doctrine promised. What it demonstrated was something perhaps more important: the cost of attacking Iran is catastrophic, even in victory.

America got its strikes. It killed Khamenei. It damaged the nuclear programme. It triggered regime change of a kind — though Mojtaba Khamenei is hardly the pro-Western successor Washington imagined.

And what did it get for all of that? A fragile ceasefire, a 60-day negotiating framework, an unaccounted nuclear stockpile, a Strait of Hormuz that remains contested, a global energy shock, thirteen dead Americans, and a region convulsed by war.

Mosaddegh was destroyed because Iran was weak — because it had no forward shield, no interior fortress, no capacity to make its destruction costly. The Iran of 2026 is not that Iran.

The wound of 1953 was the education. The architecture of survival — tested, battered, partially broken — was the graduation.

The lesson of Iran’s grand strategy is ultimately this: a nation that cannot be cheaply destroyed cannot be permanently dominated. Even after the most severe bombings, Iran extracted a negotiation. Even after decapitation, its military kept fighting. Even after 11,000 strikes, its nuclear stockpile remained unaccounted for.

That is not the record of a doctrine that failed. It is the record of a doctrine that made Iran’s destruction more costly than any power was ultimately willing to pay.

In a future article, I will examine Iran’s nuclear programme — not through the lens of Western proliferation anxiety, but through the strategic logic of a state that watched what happened to countries that disarmed, and has now watched what happened to itself when it did not yet possess the ultimate deterrent.

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

A friend and colleague, Solidarity columnist Eugene Doyle, posed a brief question on the Facebook media page Kiwi Journalists Association last week.

“Kiwi journalists . . . is there a reason for so little solidarity with Palestinian colleagues,” he mused over a haunting portrait of emaciated Palestinian journalist Mujahid Abu Mufleh showing his appalling state after 14 months inside an Israel torture prison.

“No trial. No conviction.”

• READ MORE: Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them
• Improvements in Pacific media freedom, but a shameful silence on Gaza ‘death trap’
• Facing up to genocide – a New Zealand journalist bears witness with Gaza and West Bank
• Other Gaza media reports

This is what Palestinian hostages look like after release: emaciated, exhausted, and visibly scarred by prolonged detention.

Occupied Palestine has become the deadliest place for journalists in the world. Yet merely three media people responded to Doyle’s question.

Broadcaster and singer Moana Maniapoto (Te Arawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa)
summed up the cruel image as “journacide”, citing the use of the label by UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine and the Occupied Territories Francesca Albanese: “Absolutely shocking.”

Journacide is a neologism used by scholars, journalists, and human rights experts to describe deliberate mass killing and hunting down of journalists and media workers in conflict zones. It is also the title of a harrowing new documentary on the topic: Journacide: The War on Truth.

Courage and fortitude
Community broadcaster and educator Victoria Quade commented: “I think few people living and working in relatively protected environments like New Zealand can imagine the courage and fortitude it takes to be a journalist under an oppressive regime where reporting on those regimes can be physically dangerous.

“And, if they can imagine it, would be able to match that courage in their own lives.”

A third comment was posted by communications adviser and journalist Susan Belt: “I think people are battle-worn after so much general genocide, kids and press included, on the part of Israel. There’s so much press targeting etc that it almost becomes ridiculous to keep posting on it. Stuff and NZME keep running Gaza, Lebanon stuff but because our govt like some others has not made much of a fuss about Israel’s illegal civilian and press killing in Gaza and its unprovoked attack on Iran and illegal forays into Lebanon, it leaves people feeling hopeless.

“I am very pro-Palestinian rights and have been since the 1970s but even my Facebook friends despair at the sad postings I seem to always be doing. They know it’s very bad behaviour but we’re in a trance at the hopelessness of it. When our ally the US is backing Israel (though cooling of late) our govt is too scared to say what’s right because it doesn’t want to offend Trump’s team.”

These comments reminded me that I have been puzzling over the generally poor and weak response from New Zealand journalists over what is currently the toughest moral and ethical challenge of our times. Yet, instead of facing up to the Gaza genocide and the accompanying journacide, most of our media colleagues have preferred to look away and remain silent.

The prevailing attitude is that it is something remote and of little relevance to Aotearoa New Zealand. It is a response of denial, astonishing given that there have been protests across the motu against the Israeli genocide — and lately the unjustified US-Israeli war on Iran and fragile peace — for the past 142 weeks: by far the longest and sustained political protests ever in this country, yet largely ignored by the media.

This has led to many public protests over media coverage. These too have rarely been reported.

Genocide in plain view
My own articles on the topic on Aotearoa and the Pacific, while stirring responses internationally, have barely raised a ripple in this country. Shameful responses to a genocide — at least 73,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, 20,000 of them children — revealed daily before our very eyes. Even since the sham ceasefire declared in October, more than 1000 people have been killed.

And the cost in lives of hundreds of Palestinian journalists trying to bear witness on the annihilation of their own communities is deeply shocking. Yet this barely raises a shrug from New Zealand journalists.

In a report released last week by the Freedoms Committee of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, a chilling new statistic was revealed — out of an estimated 1200 journalists in Gaza between 60 and 75 percent of them have lost their homes or been forcibly displaced since 7 October 2023.

The report, titled “Media Without Walls”, also said that approximately 265 journalists had been killed since the start of the conflict, by far the highest death toll recorded globally against journalists in a single conflict.

More than 80 percent of media offices and institutions had been completely or partially destroyed, leading to an “almost complete collapse” of journalistic infrastructure, it said.

The report added that journalists in Gaza no longer work from newsrooms but from tents, footpaths and shelter centres, with mobile phones as their primary production tool and intermittent internet dictating when they can publish.

“I lost my home and my office in the same week,” said one displaced journalist, Dr Ahed Farwana. “I no longer have a place to write, but I write from my phone among people, sometimes while searching for water for my family.”

‘Trying to concentrate’
Another Gaza journalist, Ola Kassab, said: “I work from inside a displacement shelter, choosing the quietest corner I can find. The hardest part is not the bombing itself, but trying to concentrate amid the overcrowding and fear.”

Photojournalist Wisam Zughair said: “The camera is no longer the heaviest thing I carry; it is the feeling that I may also be documenting what could happen to me.”

Just two weeks ago, an Al Jazeera photojournalist, Ahmed Wishah, 25, was killed in an Israeli air attack on central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp. He was the 12th Al Jazeera journalist killed by Israel in Gaza since 2023.

His targeted murder came just weeks after his brother Mohammed Wishah, who also worked for the Doha-based global television network, was killed in a deliberate Israeli shelling of his car.

In an interview after his brother’s death, Wishah called on the world to stop the killing of journalists.

“Let the martyrdom of Mohammed Wishah be the end to the killing of journalists. This is my message to the world . . . Stop the Israeli occupation from targeting journalists.”

Smearing journalists
The routine response of Israeli military authorities is a hamfisted attempt to smear all Gazan journalists as “Hamas terrorists”. There is never any credible evidence to back this up and it is shameful that New Zealand media simply echo these lies from a discredited regime whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a “false balance”.

The New York-based Committee to Protest Journalists (CPJ) and Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have frequently condemned the “smearing of killed Palestine journalists” with “baseless claims”.

In a statement, Al Jazeera said it condemned the Israeli occupation army’s “baseless accusations”, which sought to “justify its crimes against Al Jazeera journalists and cameramen in Gaza, most recently the killing of cameraman Ahmed Wishah”.

“Since October 2023, the Israeli campaign of incitement has relentlessly spread false allegations and baseless accusations against Al Jazeera staff. The Network considers this smear campaign a transparent and futile attempt to justify the deliberate targeting of journalists and cameramen whose only ‘crime’ has been their courageous determination to document and expose the genocide being perpetrated by Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza Strip.

“These attempts deceive no one and cannot obscure the truth witnessed by the world.”

Al Jazeera called on press freedom organisations and “people of conscience around the world” to take urgent action to safeguard all journalists in the Gaza Strip and ensure their safety.

Reporters Without Borders has filed at least five complaints with the ICC over alleged war crimes against journalists, and together with other media freedom groups such as the Foreign Press Association, has repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, sought an Israeli Supreme Court ruling overturning the IDF’s ban on global journalists being allowed into Gaza to see the reality for themselves.

Gaza bloodlust spreading
Another disturbing factor about the slaughter of journalists is the fact that the Israeli bloodlust against journalists in Gaza is spreading also to the illegally occupied West Bank and the invaded Lebanon.

Journacide: The War on Truth                                    Video: Democracy Now!

Irish filmmaker Seán Murray has investigated Israel’s killings of journalists in his new feature documentary Journacide: The War on Truth, which was featured by Democracy Now! earlier this month. Murray says the term “journacide” applies to Israel’s military actions because of the “explicit nature of the targeting and killing of journalists” as a way to silence the truth.

The filmmaker describes it as “the Gaza doctrine that is now being applied in Lebanon”.

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman highlighted the attempted killing on June 15 of Iranian journalist Hadi Hoteit, who was working for the news outlet Press TV in southern Lebanon. He was attacked by an Israeli drone while reporting live for his network at Kafr Tebnit.

Although he survived the attack, he was struck by six pieces of shrapnel.

With the latest invasion of Lebanon by Israel, the death toll of journalists has now topped 29.

Murray investigated the killings of four of those journalists for his documentary Journacide.

On March 28, journalists Ali Shoeib and brother and sister Fatima and Mohamed Ftouni were killed — all together — in an Israeli drone strike on their car.

The following month, on April 22, Amal Khalil was injured in an airstrike and died from her injuries after waiting for hours inside a bombed building as rescuers awaited clearance from Israeli forces to reach her, reports Democracy Now!

About the silence
In a trailer for the documentary, Murray says the film is not about war, it is about the silence. “As Lebanon burns, silence has now become the greatest weapon of oppression. This is a tale of those that fought different, the story of the gatekeepers of truth.”

In the Democracy Now! interview about his film, Murray explores the lengths that Israeli military authorities go to create false narratives about journalists, even to falsifying documents and creating fake images.

“I think Journacide effectively gives the explicit nature of the targeting and killing of journalists. I think that it fits perfectly. Not only do we see the targeting of journalists, but it’s the double-tap strikes that we see with the Gaza doctrine, that is now being applied in Lebanon.

“So, in the case of Ali, Fatima and Mohamed, the original strike killed Ali and Mohamed, and it was a double tap then that killed Fatima, Mohamed’s sister, in the second strike.

“This is a deliberate targeting of journalists. The reasons behind that is to, of course, silence what is happening in Lebanon, the ethnic cleansing that’s going on, the mass war crimes that’s being committed.

“But Lebanon is a little bit different. Israel doesn’t have the geographical repressive abilities that they did in Gaza. And we see that now playing out.”

A wake up call surely for the Middle East realities for New Zealand journalists.

David Robie is convenor of Pacific Media Watch.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, one of the signatories to the Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and the US, has called out what he says are double standards and duplicity by those trying to wreck the peace deal.

His short, memorable statement was largely ignored in the Western media but its content should be digested by all.

He addressed his comments directly to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian who arrived in Pakistan on June 23. The Iranian delegation had just arrived on a plane named Minab 168 — in memory of the 168 children and staff killed in an attack on an Iranian girls’ school by US and Israeli forces at the outset of the US-Israel attack on Iran.

• READ MORE: Air raid sirens in Bahrain, Kuwait; US bombs Iran again over Hormuz attacks
• Other war on Iran hypocrisy reports

Sharif made his comments a day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Gulf foreign ministers issued a joint statement that “lasting regional peace and security requires addressing the full spectrum of Iran’s threats, including its ballistic missiles, drones, and support of proxies in the region.”

Pakistan’s PM Shehbaz Sharif addressing the Iranian delegation:

“There are spoilers all over the world who want to scuttle this peace deal.”

“They don’t want the Iranian nation, a great nation, to come out of the ashes of war and touch the zenith of glory.”… https://t.co/17vpQQNamy

— The Saviour (@TheSaviour) June 23, 2026

One of the reasons Sharif’s comments are important is that the US-Israeli side operates a well-thumbed playbook of agreeing on frameworks for negotiations and then immediately breaking them (killing negotiators or attacking Lebanon, for example) or trying to rewrite the framework midstream to their advantage.

Shehbaz Sharif called them out:

ANALYSIS: By Lim Tean

It is a peculiar kind of defeat — one dressed in the language of victory. Operation Epic Fury was sold to the world as a decisive strike to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat once and for all.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lobbied Washington for precisely this moment. He got his war. What he didn’t get was the outcome he promised.

The US-Iran MOU is Israel’s strategic nightmare rendered in diplomatic text. And the consequences extend far beyond the terms of any single agreement.

• READ MORE: US strikes Iran after attack on vessel in Strait of Hormuz
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports
• Other Lim Tean articles

Left out of the room
Let us begin with the most humiliating fact. The MOU’s second paragraph mentions Lebanon three times and declares the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts — without once mentioning Israel.

A new deconfliction mechanism for Lebanon has been announced, including the United States, Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar. Israel is excluded from that too.

Think about what that means. The country that triggered this war, that flew alongside American aircraft, that provided the intelligence Netanyahu boasted had been decisive — was not in the room when peace was made.

Washington negotiated Israel’s strategic future without Israel.

Vice-President JD Vance’s message to Israeli critics of Trump and the MOU was blunt: they need to “wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in”. That is not the language of alliance. That is the language of managed irrelevance.

What Iran kept
The nuclear question — the ostensible casus belli for the entire war — remains unresolved.

The MOU suffices with rhetorical promises, deferring the actual mechanics of blocking Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capacity, with no guarantee of agreement on that most critical issue.

Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal? Untouched. The MOU offers no treatment of Iran’s ballistic missile programme or its patronage of regional proxies — leaving Israel to contend with those threats as before.

Iran’s financial position? All US sanctions on Iran have been lifted, giving Tehran immediate and significant financial relief — resources that will flow into rebuilding military capabilities.

Tehran emerged from this war battered but unbowed, its theocratic system intact, its strategic leverage demonstrated to the entire world.

Foreign Policy and The Atlantic described the outcome as a defeat for the United States and Israel. The BBC’s international editor assessed that while US and Israeli air forces scored tactical victories, they were not enough to avoid strategic defeat.

The death of the Abraham Accords
Let me be categorical: the Abraham Accords are dead.

That architecture — the crown jewel of American-brokered Middle East diplomacy, the grand bargain that promised Arab “normalisation” with Israel in exchange for security guarantees and Palestinian deferral — has been buried by the post-war regional reality now taking shape.

The Saudi-Iran reconciliation summit now gathering momentum tells the whole story.

Riyadh is actively convening Gulf states and Tehran around a new regional order. And at the centre of that order sits the Palestinian question — not deferred, not managed, but central.

Saudi normalisation with Israel, once dangled as the great prize Netanyahu sought, is now explicitly conditional on Palestinian statehood in terms his government categorically rejects and always will.

The Abraham Accords were premised on one fundamental assumption: that Arab states could be peeled away from the Palestinian cause by American inducements and Israeli economic partnerships.

The Iran war has demolished that premise. Arab publics watching Gaza, Lebanon, and now Iran have made their governments’ calculations for them. No Arab leader can now normalise with Israel without paying a catastrophic domestic political price.

The Abraham Accords are not merely stalled. They are finished.

Some will argue that normalisation architecture, once built, has institutional momentum that survives political setbacks. This misreads what has changed. It was not merely the political temperature that shifted — it was the foundational premise of the entire enterprise.

The Abraham Accords assumed American power could permanently reshape Arab strategic calculations. The MOU has demonstrated that American power in the Middle East is now conditional, transactional, and self-limiting.

The architecture built on that power has no foundation left to stand on.

The dual hegemony: Iran and Turkey
Most analysts have framed Turkey’s rise as a consequence of Iran’s weakening — the great power stepping into the vacuum left by a damaged adversary. This framing is fundamentally wrong, and it misreads the emerging regional order.

My thesis is this: what this war has produced is not a Turkish replacement of Iranian power, but the consolidation of a dual hegemony over the Middle East — Iran and Turkey together, each dominant in its own sphere, each with its own tools of regional influence, and collectively forming the twin poles around which the new Middle East will organise itself.

Iran has survived this war with something more valuable than military capability — it has demonstrated to every state in the region that it possesses a weapon of genuine mass economic destruction in the Strait of Hormuz, with strategic leverage over both the Gulf region and the world economy that no military strike can eliminate.

Iran will rebuild. Its reconstruction will be funded by sanctions relief. And it will re-emerge as the dominant power of the Persian Gulf and the Shia arc from Baghdad to Beirut.

Battered, yes. Eliminated as a regional hegemon? Absolutely not.

Turkey simultaneously consolidates its own distinct hegemony — Sunni, NATO-anchored, commercially formidable, and diplomatically agile in ways Iran can never be.

Turkey maintains a permanent military base in Qatar. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are among its largest defence clients, with Riyadh reportedly in final-stage discussions to join Turkey’s KAAN fifth-generation stealth fighter programme — which would make it the first Gulf state with a stake in an advanced combat aircraft project outside direct American control.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has already called for the formation of a Middle East security pact to build trust and stability across the region after the war.

Crucially, these two hegemonies are not necessarily in fatal conflict with each other. The restraint that Turkey and Iran have historically shown towards one another, particularly at moments of regional and global crisis, constitutes a managed rivalry — one that involves compartmentalisation, coexistence of competing strategic depths, and mutual calculation that outright confrontation serves neither.

They will compete, yes — in Syria, Iraq, and across the Levant. But they will also tacitly coordinate where their interests converge, above all in containing Israeli power and ensuring that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv can dictate the regional order.

For Israel, this dual hegemony is a strategic nightmare of the first order. It faced Iran as a declared enemy — isolated, sanctioned, and manageable within a US-led containment architecture. It now faces two hegemonic powers operating across every theatre in which Israeli interests are engaged, one of them a NATO member with a domestically built defence industry and deepening Gulf partnerships that Israeli power cannot easily reach.

Israel traded a weakened, contained adversary for two formidable and rising ones.

Netanyahu’s shattered grand design
History will not be kind to Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic vision. Behind the stated objectives of eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme lay a grander ambition — the consolidation of Israeli regional dominance, the permanent suppression of Palestinian statehood, and the realisation of a Greater Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the sea, secured by Arab normalisation and American military backing.

That project is now in ruins.

Reports cited Israeli intelligence provided by Netanyahu as a decisive factor in Trump’s authorisation of Operation Epic Fury. He designed this war. He lobbied for it. He provided the intelligence that launched it. And the outcome — Iran surviving with its strategic leverage intact, Turkey ascending, a dual hegemony replacing the old order, the Abraham Accords collapsing, and Palestinian statehood returning irresistibly to the regional agenda — is the precise opposite of everything his grand design required.

The Greater Israel project required three things simultaneously: permanent American backing, Arab acquiescence, and the suppression of Palestinian nationhood. All three pillars have collapsed in the same season.

A recent poll shows that 92.1 percent of Israelis, including Jews and Arabs, believe Iran gained the most from the MOU, and 86 percent hold a negative view of the agreement.

Netanyahu faces elections in September or October. He went to war promising existential resolution. He faces the ballot box having delivered existential ruin.

The greatest blow: The loss of the American shield
But the deepest and most consequential damage inflicted by this war on Israel is not the MOU’s terms, not the dual hegemony, not the death of the Abraham Accords. It is something more fundamental.

Israel can no longer be assured of American support in future conflicts.

This is a tectonic shift in the foundations of Israeli security doctrine. Since 1973, Israel has operated on one unshakeable assumption: that the United States would underwrite its military adventurism, absorb its diplomatic costs, and stand between Israel and strategic consequences. That assumption is now shattered.

Trump refused to share a preliminary text of the MOU with Netanyahu, whose judgment he questioned using multiple expletives, while simultaneously describing Iranian interlocutors as “very rational people who were nice to deal with.” Washington did not merely negotiate over Israel’s head — it negotiated against Israel’s preferences, excluded it from the peace architecture, and then told it to accept the outcome.

The lesson every future Israeli government must now absorb is devastating in its simplicity: America will pursue its own interests. When those interests align with Israeli military action, Washington will partner.

When they diverge — as they did the moment the Strait of Hormuz closure threatened the global economy — Washington will deal. And Israel will not be in the room.

This is not a temporary rupture that a change of American administration will repair. It is a structural shift. The United States has demonstrated, in front of the entire world, that Israeli military adventurism carries costs that Washington will not indefinitely absorb. Every future Israeli prime minister will govern in the shadow of that demonstration.

A bleak horizon
Israel enters this new era already deeply wounded from within.

More than 150,000 people have left Israel in the past two years, and more than 200,000 since the current government took office in December 2022. This is not the normal ebb and flow of migration. A Knesset report described it as a “tsunami” — and those departing are disproportionately the young, educated, tax-paying professionals who constitute the backbone of Israel’s high-tech economy.

For the second consecutive year, more people left Israel than arrived — a negative net migration balance unprecedented in the country’s modern history. Population growth slowed in 2025 for the first time in decades, driven primarily by emigration alongside declining fertility rates and war-related mortality.

More than 25 percent of Israelis are now considering leaving. The number of official requests to terminate residency in 2024 was more than double the total requests made between 2015 and 2021.

For a state that defines itself as the ultimate sanctuary for world Jewry, this exodus carries a verdict more damning than any diplomatic agreement. Jews are leaving Israel because of Israel’s wars. The state founded to make Jews safe has become, in the eyes of growing numbers of its own citizens, a state that makes them perpetually and inescapably unsafe.

The economy mirrors the demography. The departure of high-tech workers — the engineers, physicians, and entrepreneurs who drove Israel’s “Start-Up Nation” identity — carries compounding consequences. Capital, talent, and tax revenue leave together. The sectors that remain are progressively more dependent on state subsidies and less capable of generating the growth that underwrites military spending.

A state in permanent war cannot indefinitely sustain a first-world economy, and the numbers are beginning to reflect that truth.

The only path forward: A Palestinian state
There is only one exit from this strategic catastrophe, and it requires Israel to face a truth it has spent 70 years refusing to acknowledge.

Israel’s long-term survival as a viable state — economically, demographically, diplomatically — now depends on a single political act: the acceptance of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

This is no longer a moral argument, though the moral case is overwhelming. It is a cold strategic calculation. The post-war regional order being assembled — the dual hegemony of Iran and Turkey, the Saudi-led Gulf reconciliation, the death of the Abraham Accords — has Palestinian statehood as its non-negotiable foundation.

Every regional power that matters has made this clear. The price of Israel’s reintegration into a workable Middle Eastern order, and by extension the restoration of something resembling normal economic and diplomatic life, is Palestinian statehood.

Without it, Israel faces permanent regional hostility, no prospect of Arab normalisation, a continuing haemorrhage of its most productive citizens, an economy under sustained pressure, and an American patron whose support is now conditional and transactional rather than unconditional and structural.

The Zionist founders understood something Netanyahu’s generation has forgotten: that Israel’s survival ultimately depends not merely on military power but on legitimacy — the legitimacy that comes from being a state that other states and peoples can live alongside.

That legitimacy has been catastrophically squandered. It can only begin to be rebuilt through justice for the Palestinian people.

The reckoning has arrived. And the path forward, however painful, is clear.

Accept Palestinian statehood — with East Jerusalem as its capital — or face a future of accelerating isolation, demographic decline, and strategic irrelevance in a Middle East that has irrevocably moved on.

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