A key Palestinian solidarity movement is urging the New Zealand government to step in and punish New Zealanders breaching international law by fighting Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

“The news that New Zealanders are participating in ongoing mass killing and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza is abhorent,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal.

“Our government must do what it can to stop these New Zealanders perpetrating genocide.”

• READ MORE: Thousands of Western nationals fought Israel’s war on Gaza: What to know
• 600 Australians, 50 Kiwis fighting for Israeli military during Gaza genocide
• Gaza death toll exceeds 75,000 as independent data verify loss
• Other Gaza genocide reports

A report by Declassified UK, quoting from from official Israeli sources cited at the NGO Hatzlacha, shows 39 dual New Zealand/Israeli citizens, and 11 others with more than one additional passport, are serving in the Israeli “Defence” Force (IDF), which is carrying out genocide in Gaza.

The report also indicated 500 dual citizen Australians had been among the 50,000 foreign passport holders — mostly American — who have been fighting in the IDF.

Israel’s political and military leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the state of Israel is on trial in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “plausible genocide” in a 2024 case brought by South Africa and other nations.

“As well as killing perhaps hundreds of thousands and wholesale starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, Israel is still systematically destroying all civilian infrastructure: schools, hospitals, churches and mosques, farmland and crops,” Nazzal said in a statement.

NZ graves ‘not immune’
“Even New Zealanders’ graves in World War One cemeteries are not immune.”

Nazzal said there was “no excuse” for anyone fighting for a state committing genocide.

“Our government must step in and rigorously investigate the actions of each and every one of these 50 New Zealanders in the IDF,” he said.

“New Zealand has obligations under the international Genocide Convention to do what it can to stop a genocide.

“New Zealand charged Mark Tayor for membership of ISIS in 2004. There is ample precedent. The government must be consistent.”

Nazzal said that all of the New Zealanders serving in the IDF had various degrees of culpability in the genocide — “certainly the moment they set foot in Gaza”.

“But they would also be liable for actions at military facilities inside Israel, fuelling up bombers, for example, or calculating missile coordinates.”

Soldiers identified, examined
Nazzal said these soldiers must be identified, and their service in Israel’s army examined, alongside their social media accounts and those of the brigades and soldiers they had joined.

“The government must also collaborate with international agencies for evidence of how many of these people have already been identified for investigation of war crimes,” he said.

“The Hind Rajab Foundation is working to identify specific Israeli war criminals for referral to the International Court of Justice.”

While New Zealand law does not specifically prohibit citizens from fighting overseas, Nazzal argued the government must act in this case, where New Zealand citizens were participating in a genocide.

The government was also obliged to act under its Fourth Geneva Convention obligations, where New Zealand citizens were also enforcing an illegal occupation of Palestinian Territory.

In spite of the so-called “ceasefire”, Israel had continued its daily killing of Palestinians, destruction of infrastructure and occupation creep.

The Gaza Mortality Survey (GMS), a population-representative household study published in The Lancet Global Health, estimated 75,200 “violent deaths” between October 7, 2023 and January 5, 2025. Since the declaration of a “ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip on October 10, 2025, 603 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli breaches — mostly women and children.

United States President Donald Trump had the time of his life on Monday at the Israeli Knesset, where he was welcomed as “the president of peace”. His captive audience showered him with applause, laughs and too many standing ovations to count.

Two protesting lawmakers undertook a brief outburst in support of “Palestinian sovereignty” but were swiftly bundled out, earning the president more laughs and applause for his remark: “That was very efficient.”

It was a typical stream-of-consciousness Trump speech although he mercifully refrained from rambling about escalators and teleprompters this time.

• READ MORE: Opposition Israeli lawmakers interrupt Trump and call for recognition of Palestinian statehood
• Trump keeps admitting that he is bought and owned by the world’s richest Israeli
• Other Gaza reports

I had initially hoped the fact that the US head of state was promptly due at a Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, might have kept the tangents to a minimum. Such hopes were dashed, but Trump did manage to devote a good bit of time to speculating about whether his summit counterparts might have already departed Egypt by the time he arrived.

Trump’s Knesset appearance was occasioned by the ostensible end — for the moment — to the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has over the past two years officially killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Some scholars have suggested that the real death toll may be in the vicinity of 680,000.

Obviously, the Palestinian genocide victims were of scant concern at the Knesset spectacle, which was essentially an exercise of mutual flattery between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a celebration of Israel’s excellence in mass slaughter.

To that end, Trump informed Israel that “you’ve won” and congratulated Netanyahu on a “great job”.

‘Best weapons’
As if that weren’t an obscene enough tribute to genocide, enforced starvation and terror in Gaza, Trump boasted that “we make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”

There were also various references to what he has previously called on social media the “3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE”, which he fancies himself as having now resolved. This on top of the “seven wars” he claims to have ended in seven months, another figure that seems to have materialised out of thin air.

But, hey, when you’re a “great president”, you don’t have to explain yourself.

In addition to self-adulation, Trump had plenty of praise for other members of his entourage, including US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who merited a lengthy digression on the subject of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Trump’s “genius” son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also in attendance despite having no official role in the current administration.

During Trump’s first term as president, Kushner served as a senior White House adviser and a key player in the Abraham Accords, the normalisation deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which essentially sidelined the Palestinian issue in the Arab political arena.

Trump’s Knesset performance included numerous sales pitches for the Abraham Accords, which he noted he preferred to pronounce “Avraham” because it was “so much sort of nicer”. Emphasising how good the normalisation deals have been for business, Trump declared that the four existing signatories have already “made a lot of money being members”.

To be sure, any expansion of the Abraham Accords in the present context would function to legitimise genocide and accelerate Palestinian dispossession. As it stands, the surviving inhabitants of Gaza have been condemned to a colonial overlordship, euphemised as a “Board of Peace” — which Trump has hailed as a “beautiful name” and which will be presided over by the US President himself.

‘Path of terror’
This, apparently, is what the Palestinians need to “turn from the path of terror and violence”, as Trump put it — and never mind that the Palestinians aren’t the ones who have been waging a genocide for the past two years.

Preceding Trump at the podium was Netanyahu, adding another level of psychological torture for anyone who was forced to watch the two leaders back to back. Thanking the US president for his “pivotal leadership” in supposedly ending a war that, mind you, Netanyahu didn’t even want to end, the Israeli prime minister pronounced him the “greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House”.

Netanyahu furthermore put up Trump as the first non-Israeli nominee for the Israel Prize and assured him he’d get his Nobel, too, soon enough.

I didn’t time Trump’s own speech although I’d calculate that it was several aneurysms long. At one point in the middle of his discussion of some topic entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand, I wondered if my anguished cries at having to listen to him speak might elicit the concern of my neighbours.

When Trump at long last decided to wrap things up, his final lines included the proclamation: “I love Israel. I’m with you all the way.”

And while US affection for a genocidal state should come as no surprise to anyone, it’s also a good indication that “peace” is not really what’s happening at all.

Belén Fernández is the author of The Darién Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas (Rutgers UP, 2025), Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), and other books and has written widely for global news media. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

One of the key early leaders of a national Palestinian solidarity network in Aotearoa New Zealand today praised the “heroic” resilience and sacrifice of the people of Gaza in the face of Israel’s ruthless attempt to destroy the besieged enclave of more than 2 million people.

Speaking at the first solidarity rally in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau since the fragile ceasefire came into force last Sunday, Janfrie Wakim of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) also paid tribute to New Zealand protesters who have supported the Palestine cause for the 68th week.

“Thank you all for coming to this rally — the first since 7 October 2023 when no bombs are dropping on Gaza,” she declared.

• READ MORE: Israel blocks return of Palestinians to Gaza’s north after 4 female soldiers freed
• Other Israeli war on Gaza and ceasefire reports

“The ceasefire in Gaza is fragile but let’s celebrate the success of the resistance, the resilience, and the fortitude — the sumud [steadfastness] — of the heroic Palestinian people.”

Wakim was formerly a member of Palestine Human Rights Campaign (PHRC) in Auckland which began in the 1970s. This was later absorbed into the nationwide movement PSNA at a conference in 2013.

“Israel has failed,” she continued. “It has not achieved its aims — in the longest war [15 weeks] in its history — even with $40 billion in aid from the United States.

“It has failed to depopulate the north of Gaza, it has a crumbling economy, and 1 million Israelis [out if 9 million] have left already.”

Wakim said that the resistance and success in defeating Israel’s “deadly objectives” had come at a “terrible cost”.

“We mourn those with families here and in Gaza and now in the West Bank who made  the ultimate sacrifice with their lives — 47,000 people killed, 18,000 of them children, thousands unaccounted for in the rubble and over 100,000 injured.

Grieving for journalists, humanitarian workers
“We grieve for but salute the journalists and the humanitarian workers who have been murdered serving humanity.”

Janfrie Wakim speaking at today’s Palestine rally in Tamaki Makaurau. Video: APR

She said the genocide had been enabled by the wealthiest countries in the world and the Western media — “including our own with few exceptions”.

“Without its lies, its deflections, its failure to report the agonising reality of Palestinians suffering, Israel would not have been able to commit its atrocities,” Wakim said.

“And now while we celebrate the ceasefire there’s been an escalation on the West Bank — air strikes, drones, snipers, ethnic cleansing in Jenin with homes and infrastructure being demolished.

“Checkpoints have doubled to over 900 — sealing off communities. And still the Palestinians resist.

“And we must too. Solidarity. Unity of purpose is all important. Bury egos. Let humanity triumph.”

90-year-old supporter
During her short speech, Wakim introduced to the crowd the first Palestinian she had met in New Zealand, Ghazi Dassouki, who is now aged 90.

She met him at a Continuing Education seminar at the University of Auckland in 1986 that addressed the topic of “The Palestine Question”. It shocked the establishment of the time with Zionist complaints and intimidation of staff which prevented any similar academic event until 2006.

Wakim called for justice for the Palestinians.

“Freedom from occupation. Liberation from apartheid. And peace at last after 76 years of subjugation and oppression by Israel and its allies,” she said

She called on supporters to listen to what was being suggested for local action — “do what suits your situation and energy. Our task is to persist, as Howard Zinn put it”.

“When we organise with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress,” she said.

“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

As a symbol for peace and justice in Palestine, slices of water melon and dates were handed out to the crowd.

Calls to block NZ visits by IDF soldiers
Among many nationwide rallies across Aotearoa New Zealand this weekend, were many calls for the government to suspend entry to the country from soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

“New Zealand should not be providing rest and recreation for Israeli soldiers fresh from the genocide in Gaza,” said PSNA national chair John Minto.

“We wouldn’t allow Russian soldiers to come here for rest and recreation from the invasion of Ukraine so why would we accept soldiers from the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel?”

As well as the working holiday visa, since 2019 Israelis have been able to enter New Zealand for three months without needing a visa at all.

This visa-waiver is used by Israeli soldiers for “rest and recreation” from the genocide in Gaza.

Minto stressed that IDF soldiers had killed at least 47,000 Palestinians — 70 percent of them women and children.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has declared Israeli actions a “plausible genocide”; Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have branded the continuous massacres as genocide and extermination; and the latest report from UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestine Territories Francesca Albanese has called it “genocide as colonial erasure”.

War crimes red flags
Also, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“All these red flags for genocide have been visible for months but the government is still giving the green light to those involved in war crimes to enter New Zealand,” Minto said.

Last month, PSNA again wrote to the government asking for the suspension of travel to New Zealand for all Israeli soldiers and reservists.

Meanwhile, 200 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails have been set free under the terms of the Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Seventy of them will be deported to countries in the region, reports Al Jazeera.

Masses of people have congregated in Ramallah, celebrating the return of the released Palestinian prisoners.

A huge crowd waved Palestinian flags, shouted slogans and captured the joyful scene with their phones and live footage shows.

The release came after Palestinian fighters earlier handed over four female Israeli soldiers who had been held in Gaza to the International Red Cross in Palestine Square.

The smiling and waving soldiers appeared to be in good health and were in high spirits.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Egyptian, Palestinian and Israeli authorities to allow foreign journalists into Gaza in the wake of the three-phase ceasefire agreement set to to begin on Sunday.

The New York-based global media watchdog urged the international community “to independently investigate the deliberate targeting of journalists that has been widely documented” since the 15-month genocidal war began in October 2023.

“Journalists have been paying the highest price — with their lives — to provide the world some insight into the horrors that have been taking place in Gaza during this prolonged war, which has decimated a generation of Palestinian reporters and newsrooms,” the group’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement.

• READ MORE: What the Gaza ceasefire agreement means
• Israel’s planned expulsion of UNRWA – time for UN to walk the talk and invoke Security Council action
• Other war on Gaza reports

According to a CPJ tally, at least 165 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began. However, according to the Gaza Media Office, the death toll is much higher — 210.

CPJ welcomes the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in #Gaza and calls on authorities to grant unconditional access to journalists and independent human rights experts to investigate crimes committed against the media during the 15-month long war.https://t.co/9zloRVYhSf

— CPJ MENA (@CPJMENA) January 15, 2025

Israel and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas agreed to the ceasefire deal after more than 460 days of a war that has devastated Gaza, mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States announced.

After the ceasefire comes into effect on Sunday, Palestinians in Gaza will be left with tens of thousands of people dead and missing and many more with no homes to return to.

The war has killed at least 46,707 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Among the “horrifying numbers” released by the Gaza Government Media Office last week:

• 1600 families wiped off of the civil registry
• 17,841 children killed
• 44 people killed by malnutrition

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said that the ceasefire deal would come into effect on Sunday, but added that work on implementation steps with Israel and Hamas was continuing.

Israel said that some final details remained, and an Israeli government vote is expected today.

Gazans celebrate but braced for attacks
However, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported from al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza that while Gazans celebrated the ceasefire news, they were braced for more Israeli attacks until the Sunday deadline.

“This courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which has seen many funerals and bodies laid on the ground, turned into a stage of celebration and happiness and excitement,” he said.

“But it’s relatively quiet in the courtyard of the hospital now.

“At this time, people are back to their tents, where they are sheltering because the ceasefire agreement does not take effect until Sunday.”

That left time for the Israeli military to continue with the attacks, Mahmoud said.

“As people were celebrating here from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, we could clearly hear the sound of heavy artillery and bombardment on the Bureij refugee camp and Nuseirat.

“So these coming days until Sunday are very critical times, and people here expect a surge in Israeli attacks.”

Gaza ceasefire a ‘start’
Sheikh Mohammed said the Gaza deal came after extensive diplomatic efforts, but the ceasefire was a “start”, and now mediators and the international community should work to achieve lasting peace.

“I want to tell our brothers in the Gaza Strip that the State of Qatar will always continue to support our Palestinian brothers,” the Qatari prime minister said.

Welcoming the ceasefire deal, a Hamas official said Palestinians would not forget the Israeli atrocities.

The resistance movement’s Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya said Palestinians would remember who carried out mass killings against them, who justified the atrocities in the media and who provided the bombs that were dropped on their homes.

“The barbaric war of extermination . . . that the Israeli occupation and its backers have carried out over 467 days will forever be engraved in the memory of our people and the world as the worst genocide in modern history,” al-Hayya said.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was “imperative” that the ceasefire removed obstacles to aid deliveries as he welcomed the deal that includes a prisoner and captive exchange.

“It is imperative that this ceasefire removes the significant security and political obstacles to delivering aid across Gaza so that we can support a major increase in urgent life-saving humanitarian support,” Guterres said.

NZ calls for ‘massive aid’ for Gaza
In Wellington, Foreign Minister Winston Peters said New Zealand welcomed the ceasefire deal to end hostilities in Gaza.

“Over the past 15 months, this conflict has caused incomprehensible human suffering. We acknowledge the efforts of all those involved in the negotiations to bring an end to the misery, particularly the US, Qatar and Egypt.

“The terms of the deal must now be implemented fully. Protection of civilians and the release of hostages must be at the forefront of effort,” Peters said in a statement.

“There now needs to be a massive, rapid, unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“To achieve a durable and lasting peace, we call on the parties to take meaningful steps towards a two-state solution. Political will is the key to ensuring history does not repeat itself.”

The global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has revealed an “alarming intensification of attacks on journalists” in its 2024 annual roundup — especially in conflict zones such as Gaza.

Gaza stands out as the “most dangerous” region in the world, with the highest number of journalists murdered in connection with their work in the past five years.

Since October 2023, the Israeli military have killed more than 145 journalists, including at least 35 whose deaths were linked to their journalism, reports RSF.

• READ MORE: Media watchdog condemns Israel’s ‘harassment’ move to strip Al Jazeera journalists of press passes
• Amnesty International honours Gaza journalists with 2024 Human Rights Defenders Award

Also 550 journalists are currently imprisoned worldwide, a 7 percent increase from last year.

“This violence — often perpetrated by governments and armed groups with total impunity — needs an immediate response,” says the report.

“RSF calls for urgent action to protect journalists and journalism.”

Asia second most dangerous
Asia is the second most dangerous region for journalists due to the large number of journalists killed in Pakistan (seven) and the protests that rocked Bangladesh (five), says the report.

“Journalists do not die, they are killed; they are not in prison, regimes lock them up; they do not disappear, they are kidnapped,” said RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin.

“These crimes — often orchestrated by governments and armed groups with total impunity — violate international law and too often go unpunished.

“We need to get things moving, to remind ourselves as citizens that journalists are dying for us, to keep us informed. We must continue to count, name, condemn, investigate, and ensure that justice is served.

“Fatalism should never win. Protecting those who inform us is protecting the truth.

A third of the journalists killed in 2024 were slain by the Israeli armed forces.

A record 54 journalists were killed, including 31 in conflict zones.

In 2024, the Gaza Strip accounted for nearly 30 percent of journalists killed on the job, according to RSF’s latest information. They were killed by the Israeli army.

More than 145 journalists have been killed in Palestine since October 2023, including at least 35 targeted in the line of duty.

RSF continues to investigate these deaths to identify and condemn the deliberate targeting of media workers, and has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes committed against journalists.

RSF condemns Israeli media ‘stranglehold’
Last month, in a separate report while Israel’s war against Gaza, Lebanon and Syria rages on, RSF said Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi was trying to “reshape” Israel’s media landscape.

Between a law banning foreign media outlets that were “deemed dangerous”, a bill that would give the government a stranglehold on public television budgets, and the addition of a private pro-Netanyahu channel on terrestrial television exempt from licensing fees, the ultra-conservative minister is augmenting pro-government coverage of the news.

RSF said it was “alarmed by these unprecedented attacks” against media independence and pluralism — two pillars of democracy — and called on the government to abandon these “reforms”.

On November 24, two new proposals for measures targeting media critical of the authorities and the war in Gaza and Lebanon were approved by Netanyahu’s government.

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation validated a proposed law providing for the privatisation of the public broadcaster Kan.

On the same day, the Council of Ministers unanimously accepted a draft resolution by Communications Minister Shlomo Kahri from November 2023 seeking to cut public aid and revenue from the Government Advertising Agency to the independent and critical liberal newspaper Haaretz.

‘Al Jazeera’ ban tightened
The so-called “Al-Jazeera law”, as it has been dubbed by the Israeli press, has been tightened, reports RSF.

This exceptional measure was adopted in April 2024 for a four-month period and renewed in July.

On November 20, Israeli MPs voted to extend the law’s duration to six months, and increased the law’s main provision — a broadcasting ban on any foreign media outlet deemed detrimental to national security by the security services — from 45 days to 60.

“The free press in a country that describes itself as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ will be undermined,” said RSF’s editorial director Anne Bocandé.

RSF called on Israel’s political authorities, starting with Minister Shlomo Karhi and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, to “act responsibly” and abandon these proposed reforms.

Inside Israel, journalists critical of the government and the war have been facing pressure and intimidation for more than a year.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.

Pro-Palestinian anti-war activists in Australia have protested in Melbourne, disrupting a defence expo set to open on Wednesday.

Protesters gathered yesterday in front of companies connected to weapons manufacturing across Melbourne as police were called to prevent an escalation of the events, according to 7News Melbourne.

Many police cars and units were visible in front of company buildings to prevent an escalation of the protests.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Hamas rejects media reports of new conditions
• Thousands of anti-war activists to disrupt weapons expo as Melbourne braces for biggest protest in decades
• Netanyahu and the Israeli protesters are on the same genocidal page

Protests are expected to move across the city to different areas ahead of the Land Forces Military Expo on Wednesday, with more than 25,000 participants, potentially one of the biggest in the country in decades.

On Sunday, Extinction Rebellion activists blocked Montague Street near the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre where the expo is being held.

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Australia have been urging the government to impose sanctions on Israel for its genocidal war on Gaza.

Israel has continued a devastating military offensive in the Gaza Strip since an attack by Hamas resistance forces on October 7, 2023, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and more than 91,700 wounded, according to local health authorities.

As the Israeli war enters its 12th month, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel has also intensified its attacks on the Occupied West Bank in recent weeks, killing at least 692 Palestinians.

Extinction Rebellion disruption
Formed in 2018, Extinction Rebellion has employed disruptive tactics targeting roads and airports to denounce the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, reports Al Jazeera.

However, since the war on Gaza, they have also taken a strong position on the fighting and have called for an immediate ceasefire.

“If we believe in climate and ecological justice, we must seek justice in all forms. The climate and ecological emergency has roots in centuries of colonial violence, exploitation and oppression,” the UK-based group said in a statement in November.

Many platitudes about media freedom and democracy laced last week’s Pacific International Media Conference in the Fijian capital of Suva. There was a mood of euphoria at the impressive event, especially from politicians who talked about journalism being the “oxygen of democracy”.

The dumping of the draconian and widely hated Fiji Media Industry Development Act that had started life as a military decree in 2010, four years after former military commander Voreqe Bainimarama seized power, and was then enacted in the first post-coup elections in 2014, was seen as having restored media freedom for the first time in almost two decades.

As a result, Fiji had bounced back 45 places to 44th on this year’s Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index – by far the biggest climb of any nation in Oceania, where most countries, including Australia and New Zealand, have been sliding downhill.

• READ MORE:  Fiji protesters call for freedom and justice in the Pacific – and Palestine
• Other Pacific Media Conference reports

One of Fiji’s three deputy Prime Ministers, Professor Biman Prasad, a former University of the South Pacific economist and long a champion of academic and media freedom, told the conference the new Coalition government headed by the original 1987 coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka had reintroduced media self-regulation and “we can actually feel the freedom everywhere, including in Parliament”.

The same theme had been offered at the conference opening ceremony by another deputy PM, Manoa Kamikamica, who declared:

“We pride ourselves on a government that tries to listen, and hopefully we can try and chart a way forward in terms of media freedom and journalism in the Pacific, and most importantly, Fiji.

“They say that journalism is the oxygen of democracy, and that could be no truer than in the case of Fiji.”

Happy over media law repeal
Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Information and Communication Technology Timothy Masiu echoed the theme. Speaking at the conference launch of a new book, Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific (co-edited by Professor Prasad, conference chair Associate Professor Shailendra Singh and Dr Amit Sarwal), he said: “We support and are happy with this government of Fiji for repealing the media laws that went against media freedom in Fiji in the recent past.”

But therein lies an irony. While Masiu supports the repeal of a dictatorial media law in Fiji, he is a at the centre of controversy back home over a draft media law (now in its fifth version) that he is spearheading that many believe will severely curtail the traditional PNG media freedom guaranteed under the constitution.

He defends his policies, saying that in PNG, “given our very diverse society with over 1000 tribes and over 800 languages and huge geography, correct and factful information is also very, very critical.”

Masiu says that what drives him is a “pertinent question”:

“How is the media being developed and used as a tool to protect and preserve our Pacific identity?”

Another issue over the conference was the hypocrisy over debating media freedom in downtown Suva while a few streets away Fijian freedom of speech advocates and political activists were being gagged about speaking out on critical decolonisation and human rights issues such as Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua freedom.

In the front garden of the Gordon Street compound of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC), the independence flags of Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua flutter in the breeze. Placards and signs daub the walls of the centre declaring messages such as “Stop the genocide”, “Resistance is justified! When people are occupied!”, “Free Kanaky – Justice for Kanaky”, “Ceasefire, stop genocide”, “Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world” and “We need rainbows not Rambos”.

‘Thursdays in Black’
While most of the 100 conference participants from 11 countries were gathered at the venue to launch the peace journalism book Waves of Change and the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review, about 30 activists were gathered at the same time on July 4 in the centre’s carpark for their weekly “Thursdays in Black” protest.

But they were barred from stepping onto the footpath in public or risk arrest. Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly Fiji-style.

Surprisingly, the protest organisers were informed on the same day that they could stage a “pre-Bastllle Day” protest about Kanaky and West Papua on July 12, but were banned from raising Israeli’s genocidal war on Palestine.

Fiji Solidarity March for Kanaky and West Papua in Suva this morning pic.twitter.com/aEI223iZ8g

— Fiji One News (@FijiOneNews) July 12, 2024

Fiji is the only Pacific country to seek an intervention in support of Tel Aviv in South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague accusing Israel of genocide in a war believed to have killed more than 38,000 Palestinians — including 17,000 children — so far, although an article in The Lancet medical journal argues that the real death toll is more like 138,000 people – equivalent to almost a fifth of Fiji’s population.

The protest march was staged on Friday but in spite of the Palestine ban some placards surfaced and also Palestinian symbols of resistance such as keffiyehs and watermelons.

The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji and their allies have been hosting vigils at FWCC compound for Palestine, West Papua and Kanaky every Thursday over the last eight months, calling on the Fiji government and Pacific leaders to support the ceasefire in Gaza, and protect the rights of Palestinians, West Papuans and Kanaks.

“The struggles of Palestinians are no different to West Papua, Kanaky New Caledonia — these are struggles of self-determination, and their human rights must be upheld,” said FWCC coordinator and the NGO coalition chair Shamima Ali.

Media silence noticed
Outside the conference, Pacific commentators also noticed the media hypocrisy and the extraordinary silence.

Canberra-based West Papuan diplomacy-trained activist and musician Ronny Kareni complained in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “While media personnel, journos and academia in journalism gathered [in Suva] to talk about media freedom, media network and media as the oxygen of democracy etc., why Papuan journos can’t attend, yet Indon[esian] ambassador to Fiji @SimamoraDupito can??? Just curious.”

At the conference itself, some speakers did raise the Palestine and decolonisation issue, including Indonesian rule in Melanesian West Papua.

Khairiah A. Rahman, of the Asia Pacific Media Network, one of the partner organisers along with the host University of the South Pacific and Pacific Islands News Association, spoke on the “Media, Community, Social Cohesion and Conflict Prevention” panel following Hong Kong Professor Cherian George’s compelling keynote address about “Cracks in the Mirror: When Media Representations Sharpen Social Divisions”.

She raised the Palestine crisis as a critical global issue and also a media challenge.

In his keynote address, “Frontline Media Faultlines: How Critical Journalism Can Survive Against the Odds”, Professor David Robie, also of APMN, spoke of the common decolonisation threads between Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua.

He also critiquing declining trust in mainstream media – that left some “feeling anxious and powerless” — and how they were being fragmented by independent start-ups that were perceived by many people as addressing universal truths such as the genocide in Palestine.

PJR editorial challenge
Dr Robie cited the editorial in the just-published Pacific Journalism Review which had laid down a media challenge over Gaza. He wrote:

“Gaza has become not just a metaphor for a terrible state of dystopia in parts of the world, it has also become an existential test for journalists – do we stand up for peace and justice and the right of people to survive under the threat of ethnic cleansing and against genocide, or do we do nothing and remain silent in the face of genocide being carried out with impunity in front of our very eyes?

“The answer is simple surely . . .

“And it is about saving journalism, our credibility, and our humanity as journalists.”

Professor David Robie’s keynote speech at Pacific Media 2023.  Video: The Australia Today

At the end of his address, Dr Robie called for a minute’s silence in a tribute to the 158 Palestinian journalists who had been killed so far in the ninth-month war on Gaza. The Gazan journalists were awarded this year’s UNESCO Guillermo Cano Media Freedom Prize for their “courage and commitment to freedom of expression”.

Undoubtedly the two most popular panels in the conference were the “Pacific Editors’ Forum” when eight editors from around the region “spoke their minds”, and a panel on sexual harassment on the media workplace and on the job.

Little or no action
According to speakers in “Gender and Media in the Pacific: Examining violence that women Face” panel introduced and moderated by Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM) executive director Nalini Singh, female journalists continue to experience inequalities and harassment in their workplaces and on assignment — with little or no action taken against their perpetrators.

The speakers included FWRM programme director Laisa Bulatale, experienced Pacific journalists Lice Movono and Georgina Kekea, strategic communications specialist Jacqui Berell and USP’s Dr Shailendra Singh, associate professor and the conference chair.

“As 18 and 19 year old (journalists), what we experienced 25 years ago in the industry is still the same situation — and maybe even worse now for young female journalists,” Movono said.

She shared “unfortunate and horrifying” accounts of experiences of sexual harassment by local journalists and the lack of space to discuss these issues.

These accounts included online bullying coupled with threats against journalists and their loved ones and families. stalking of female journalists, always being told to “suck it up” by bosses and other colleagues, the fear and stigma of reporting sexual harassment experiences, feeling as if no one would listen or care, the lack of capacity/urgency to provide psychological social support and many more examples.

“They do the work and they go home, but they take home with them, trauma,” Movono said.

And Kekea added: “Women journalists hardly engage in spaces to have their issues heard, they are often always called upon to take pictures and ‘cover’.”

Technology harassment
Berell talked about Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence (TFGBV) — a grab bag term to cover the many forms of harassment of women through online violence and bullying.

The FWRM also shared statistics on the combined research with USP’s School of Journalism on the “Prevalence and Impact of Sexual Harassment on Female Journalists” and data on sexual harassment in the workplace undertaken by the team.

Speaking from the floor, New Zealand Pacific investigative television journalist Indira Stewart also rounded off the panel with some shocking examples from Aotearoa New Zealand.

In spite of the criticisms over hypocrisy and silence over global media freedom and decolonisation challenges, participants generally concluded this was the best Pacific media conference in many years.

A report by a media watchdog has revealed the United Kingdom’s media bias in covering the Hamas attack on October 7 and Israel’s five-month genocidal bombardment and ground assault in response.

“Much of the news coverage of 7 October refers to Hamas’s attacks on Southern Israel as ground zero, with guests or commentators who try and explain the 75-year-old occupation of Palestine being accused by some presenters and columnists as justifying the attacks,” the report by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) said.

By ignoring the context and history of the occupation of Palestine and Gaza in particular, the report said the media landscape had been “favourable to an Israeli narrative which has constantly promoted the attacks on Gaza and in the West Bank as a war between light and darkness”, reports Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: NZ news media under fire for ‘bias, propaganda’ in Gaza coverage
• Other media bias reports
• Israel’s war on Gaza live: Israeli attacks kill 86 Palestinians in a day

Titled “Media Bias Gaza 2023-24”, the report also called out treating the Israeli military as a “credible source” without subjecting it to further verification as “one of the glaring failures of journalists and media outlets”.

Difference in the use of language has also been a regular feature of coverage, the report says, with Palestinian deaths often underplayed compared with those of Israelis.

Pro-Palestinian voices and activists have been routinely denounced, misrepresented and targeted by many national media outlets, it says.

The report adds that the right-wing media have been particularly hostile towards pro-Palestinian voices, framing them as supporters of terrorism and anti-Semites as well as being hostile to British values.

Key findings include:

• Language use: Emotive language describes Israelis as victims of attacks 11 times more than Palestinians.
• Framing of events: Most TV channels overwhelmingly promote “Israel’s right” to defend itself, overshadowing Palestinian rights to defend itself and other rights by a ratio of 5 to 1.
• In broadcast TV, Israeli perspectives were referenced almost three times more than Palestinian ones.
• In online news, it was almost twice as much.
• Contextual framing: 76 percent of online articles frame the conflict as an “Israel-Hamas war,” while only 24 percent mention “Palestine/Palestinian,” indicating a lack of context.
• Misrepresentation and undermining: Pro-Palestinian voices face misrepresentation and vilification by media outlets, perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
  Right-wing news channels and right-wing British publications were at the forefront of misrepresenting pro-Palestinian protesters as antisemitic, violent or pro-Hamas.

At least 30,717 people have been killed and 72,156 wounded by Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, the Palestinian Health Ministry anounced.

The death toll from malnutrition and dehydration in Gaza has risen to 18.

New Zealand has taken another shameful act in its tone deaf approach to Israel’s War on Gaza this week by declaring Hamas a “terrorist entity” at a time when millions are marching worldwide for an immediate ceasefire and a lasting peace founded on an independent state of Palestine.

It would have been more realistic and just to condemn Israel for its genocidal war and five months of atrocities.

Instead, it has been corralled into the Five Eyes clique with an increasingly isolated United States as it continues to support the war with taxpayer funded armaments and providing the cloak of diplomacy.

• READ MORE: More chil­dren die of mal­nu­tri­tion — Is­rael hits Gaza amid truce push

It was really unwise of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s coalition government to declare the Hamas political wing as terrorist, after already having declared the military wing terrorist in 2010.

Many argue around the world with increasing insistence that actually Israel is a rogue terrorist state.

Also, it is very unlikely that Benjamin Netanyahu will succeed in his aims of “destroying” the Hamas movement, whatever the final outcome of the war.

As John Minto points out, Palestinian resistance movements have the right under international law to take up arms to fight against their colonial occupiers just as the African National Congress (ANC) had the right to take up arms to fight for freedom in apartheid South Africa.

Hamas represents an ideal, an independent Palestinian state and that can never be defeated.

Factions meet for unity
The various factions of the Palestinian resistance and political movements, including Fatah and Hamas, have been meeting in Moscow this week to settle their differences and stitch together a framework for a “Palestinian government of unity” as a basis for the future political architecture of independence.

Meet Gaza’s 11-year-old war reporter Sumayya Wushah, who says she was inspired by Shireen Abu Akleh to tell Palestine’s stories. pic.twitter.com/a7vB99nkqa

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 27, 2024

The United Nations General Assembly in 1969 — two years after the 1967 Six Day War when Israel seized Gaza from Egypt and Occupied West Bank from Jordan — recognised and reaffirmed “the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination”.

This includes the right to choose their own representatives, including Hamas, an Islamist nationalist independence and resistance movement defending their illegally occupied territory, not a “terrorist” movement that the US and Israel try to have the world believe.

They are still very likely to be in the post-war line-up ending the status quo after five decades of illegal military occupation of Palestinian lands and the rash of illegal Israeli settlements.

American economist and public policy analyst Professor Jeffrey Sachs summed up the reality over Israel’s colonial settler project in an interview this week by describing the Netanyahu government as a “murderous gang” and “zealots”, warning that “they are not going to stop”.

“Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. Starved. I am not using an exaggeration.

“I’m talking literally starving a population,” said the director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at New York’s Columbia University.

‘Israel is criminal’
“Israel is a criminal. Israel is in non-stop war crime status. Now, I believe, it is in genocidal status, and it is without shame, without remorse, without truth, without insight into what it is doing.

“But what it is doing is endangering Israel’s fundamental security because it is driving the world to believe that the Israeli state is not legitimate.

“This will stop when the United States stops providing the munitions to Israel. It will not be by any self-control in Israel. There is none in this government.

“This is a murderous gang in government right now. These are zealots. They have some messianic vision of controlling all of today’s Palestinian lands. They are not going to stop.

“They believe in ethnic cleansing, or worse, depending on whatever is needed. And it is, again, the United States, which is the sole support. And it our mumbling, bumbling president and the others that are not stopping this slaughter.”

In addition, to the growing massive protests around the world against the Israeli extremism, a growing number of countries and organisations, inspired by two International Court of Justice cases against Israel — one by South Africa alleging genocide by Israel and the other by the UNGA seeking a ruling on the legality of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine — have introduced lawsuits.

A Dutch court last month ordered the government to block all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel following concern that the country may be violating international laws such as the Genocide Convention.

Follow-up lawsuit
South Africa is preparing a follow-up lawsuit against the US and the UK for “complicity” in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. South African lawyer lawyer Wikus Van Rensburg said: “The United States must now be held accountable for the crimes it committed.”

Nicaragua is suing Germany at the ICJ for funding Israel – its export of weapons and munitions to the country has risen ten-fold since the Hamas deadly attack on Israel last October 7 — and cutting aid to the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), the major humanitarian agency in Gaza.

It has called for emergency measures that would force Germany to cease military aid to Israel, and restart funding to the UNRWA.

Nicaragua lawyers said in their lawsuit that the action was necessary because of Germany’s “participation in the ongoing plausible genocide and serious breaches of international humanitarian law” in Gaza.

Instead of joining the US-led coalition in the Red Sea operation against the Houthis, who are targeting US, UK and Israeli-linked ships to disrupt maritime trade in support of the Palestinians, New Zealand would have been more constructive by joining the South African case against Israel in The Hague.

Principle before profit if New Zealand is really committed to international rules based diplomacy.

Nicaragua lawyers said in their lawsuit that the action was necessary because of Germany’s “participation in the ongoing plausible genocide and serious breaches of international humanitarian law” in Gaza.

No time to be ‘neutral’
This is no time to be “neutral” over the War on Gaza, there are fundamental issues of global justice and human rights at stake. As various global aid officials have been saying, every day that passes without a ceasefire and a step towards an independent Palestine as a long-term solution means more children dying of starvation or from the bombing.

The death toll is already a staggering more than 30,000 — mostly women and children. The war is clearly directed at the people of Gaza, collective punishment. At least, 112 Gazans were killed while seeking food aid in Gaza City when Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) troops opened fire in what has been described as the “flour massacre”.

At least, 15 children have died from malnutrition so far.

Caretaker Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila told Al Jazeera that “the ceasefire is much more important than having food under fire . . . People are running from one place to another just to save their lives.”

Australian columnist Caitlin Johnstone warns against neutrality, advice that might have been heeded by New Zealand’s foreign affairs advisers.

“At least be real with yourself that by refusing to pick a position you are licking the boot of a nuclear-armed ethnostate that is backed by the most powerful empire the world has ever seen.”

And that impunity needs to end.