On August 3, last Saturday, prisoner rights institutions and Palestinians all around the world were standing in solidarity with Gaza and Palestininian prisoners. This day is dedicated to highlighting Israeli crimes and violations of Palestinian prisoners’ rights and the continuing genocide in Gaza.

The machinery of brutality that punishes and tortures in secrecy in Israeli prisons must be brought to light.

Since October 7, Palestinian detainees have faced horrific crimes.

• READ MORE: Palestinian prisoners describe systemic abuse in Israel’s jails
• Other torture of Palestinians reports

Shortly after Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced that Israel was cutting off food, water, electricity and fuel to Gaza, effectively announcing the start of the genocide, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir launched his own war against Palestinian political prisoners and detainees held in Israeli jails and camps, by declaring a policy of “overcrowding”.

Since then, the Israeli army and security services have launched mass arrest campaigns, which have swelled the number of Palestinian citizens from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to 9800.

At least 335 women and 680 children have been arrested. More than 3400 have been put under administrative detention — that is, they are held indefinitely without charge. Among them, there are 22 women and 40 children.

There has never been such a high number of administrative detainees since 1967.

Gaza arrests number unknown
Israel has also arrested an unknown number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, possibly exceeding thousands, according to our humble estimates. They are held under the 2002 “Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law”, which allows the Israeli army to detain people without issuing a detention order.

Israeli prisons cut food rations for Palestinians to the point of starvation since 7 Oct.

Testimonies of freed prisoners reveal that Israeli authorities rapidly converted more than a dozen prison facilities into a network of torture camps for Palestinian detainees. >> pic.twitter.com/BzciJGfzGY

— B’Tselem בצלם بتسيلم (@btselem) August 7, 2024

Under Ben-Gvir’s orders, the already grave conditions in Israeli prisons have been made even worse. The prison authorities sharply reduced food rations and water, closing down the small shops where Palestinian detainees could purchase food and other necessities.

They also cut off water and power and even reduced the time allocated to using the restrooms. Prisoners are also prohibited from showering, which has resulted in the spread of diseases, especially skin-related ones like scabies.

There have been reports of Palestinian prisoners being deprived of medical care.

The systematic malnutrition and dehydration Palestinian prisoners are facing has taken a toll. The few that are released leave detention centres in horrific physical condition.

Even the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that such weaponisation of food is “unacceptable”.

The use of torture, including rape and beatings, has become widespread. There have been shocking reports about prison guards urinating on detainees, torturing them with electric shock and using dogs to sexually assault them.

Human shield detainees
There have been even testimonies of Israeli forces using detainees as human shields during combat in Gaza.

The systemic use of torture and other ill-treatment has predictably gone as far as extrajudicial killings.

According to a recent report by Hebrew daily Haaretz, 48 Palestinians have died in detention centres. Among them is Thaer Abu Asab, who was brutally beaten by Israeli prison guards in Ketziot Prison, and died of his injuries at the age of 38.

According to Haaretz, 36 Gaza detainees have also died in the Sde Teiman camp. Testimonies from Israeli medical staff working at the detention centre have revealed horrific conditions for Palestinians held there.

Detainees are reportedly often operated on without anaesthesia and some have had to have their limbs amputated because they were shackled even when sleeping or receiving treatment.

Palestinians who have been released have said what they were subject to was more horrific than what they had heard took place at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo detention centres, where American forces tortured and forcibly disappeared Arabs and other Muslim men.

They have also testified that some detainees were killed through torture and severe beatings. One prisoner from Bethlehem, Moazaz Obaiat, who was released in July, has alleged that Ben-Gvir personally took part in torturing him.

Denied lawyer, family visits
Israeli authorities have denied prisoners visits by lawyers, family, and even medics, including the International Committee of the Red Cross. They have carried out acts of collective punishment, destroying the homes of their families, arresting their relatives and holding them hostage, and illegally transferring some to secret detention camps and military bases without disclosing their fate, which constitutes the crime of enforced disappearance.

Despite condemnations from various human rights orgaisations, Ben-Gvir and the rest of the Israeli governing coalition have doubled down on these policies. “[Prisoners] should be killed with a shot to the head and the bill to execute Palestinian prisoners must be passed in the third reading in the Knesset […]

“Until then, we will give them minimal food to survive. I don’t care,” Ben-Gvir said on July 1.

Electric shocks, rape, and torture to death.. Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons face serious violations, with some families receiving news of their deaths weeks later.

Euro-Med Monitor regularly documents dozens of testimonies from released Palestinian detainees and… pic.twitter.com/o04T1JS9bG

— Euro-Med Monitor (@EuroMedHR) August 7, 2024

By using mass detention, Israel, the occupying power, has systematically destroyed Palestinian social, economic and psychological fabric since 1967. Over one million Palestinians have been arrested since then, thousands have been held hostage for extended periods under administrative detention and 255 detainees have died in Israeli prisons.

Israeli crimes against the Palestinians did not begin in October 2023, but are a continuation of a systematic process of ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and apartheid that began even before 1948.

But Israel’s colonial regime overlooks the Palestinian people’s resilience. Inspired by the experiences of the free nations of Ireland, South Africa and Vietnam, we draw strength from our determination to achieve our right to self-determination, freedom and independence.

This is why on this day, August 3, we urged the world to collectively protest against Israeli occupation crimes and racist laws and we call on governments to uphold their legal duties to prevent such crimes from happening.

Political prisoners solidarity
We also called on unions, universities, parliaments and political parties to effectively participate in large-scale events, demonstrations and digital campaigns in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners.

The international community should hold the occupying power to account by imposing a complete arms embargo on it, applying economic sanctions, and suspending its UN membership.

They should also nullify bilateral agreements, and halt Israel’s participation in international forums and events until it abides by international law and human rights. The international community must compel Israel to protect civilians according to its obligations as an occupying power.

Israel must also reveal the identities and conditions of people it has forcibly disappeared. We demand an end to arbitrary and administrative detention policies. The bodies of those who have died inside and outside prisons must also be released, and all prisoners must receive legal protection.

Israel, the occupying power, is under the obligation to allow special rapporteurs, United Nations experts, and the International Criminal Court prosecutor to visit Palestine, inspect prisons and deliver justice for the victims, including material and moral compensation.

Israel must not be allowed to get away with these horrific crimes.

The coalition government is telling New Zealanders in Iran and Lebanon to leave immediately as tensions rise in the Middle East.

“The New Zealand government urges New Zealanders in Lebanon and Iran to leave now while options remain available,” Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said in a social media post today.

“We also recommend New Zealanders in Israel consider whether they need to remain in the country.”

• READ MORE: US, UK and France ask their citizens to leave Lebanon as war fears loom
• Other Israel’s War on Gaza reports

The New Zealand Government urges New Zealanders in Lebanon and Iran to leave now while options remain available.

We also recommend New Zealanders in Israel consider whether they need to remain in the country.

-WP

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) August 4, 2024

It comes after the government updated its Safetravel advisory, warning people not to travel to Lebanon due to what it called the volatile security situation.

The advisory elevated Lebanon to the highest level, meaning “extreme risk”.

The United States has urged citizens to leave Lebanon on “any available ticket”, while the British Foreign Secretary warned British citizens in Lebanon to leave immediately or risk “becoming trapped in a warzone”.

Iran vowed retaliation
Iran has vowed to retaliate against Israel, which it blames for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political bureau, earlier this week.

Just hours before his assassination, Israel killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an air strike.

There are fears that Hezbollah — which is based in Lebanon and backed by Iran — could play a big part in any retaliation.

That, in turn, could result in a huge Israeli response.

Israel has been at war with Hamas since the resistance group’s attack on 7 October 2023 which saw nearly 1200 people killed.

Israel’s ground and air campaigns have killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza in the months since, according to Palestinian health authorities.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian political leader and a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee, says Israel’s “gangster style assassination and extrajudicial executions” are designed to “inflame the whole region”, reports Al Jazeera.

The killings of the Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon, were carried out to “sabotage any chances” of a ceasefire deal in Gaza and regional de-escalation, Ashrawi said.

Haniyeh was a chief Hamas negotiator for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war and had built up formidable diplomatic credentials across the region.

• READ MORE: US sends warplanes, battleships to region amid Iran-Israel tension
• Promoting peace and stability in the Middle East by unconditionally backing its worst aggressor
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

While Israel and the United States regarded him as a “terrorist”, thousands mourned him across the Middle East yesterday, demonstrated huge and widespread support and respect.

“These are attacks not just on the capitals of sovereign states but also on significant leaders to ensure total provocation [and] destabilisation,” Ashrawi wrote on social media.

“Israel is a rogue state that represents a real [and] present danger globally,” she said.

‘Maddening and shameful’
Marking the 300th day of Israel’s war on Gaza yesterday, Palestinian-American scholar Noura Erakat said it was “maddening and shameful” that the world had not been able to stop one of the “grossest, most blatant colonial genocides”.

In a post on social media, Erakat said Israel’s genocide in Gaza had featured the use of advanced weapons as well as the spread of disease, “poisoning of the earth” as well as sexual assault and torture, reports Al Jazeera.

Israel’s genocide must be remembered for what it is, Erakat said, adding “we cannot afford to lose the next battle over narrative”.

“A blight on all humanity, to ascribe shame to all who let it happen [and] glory to those who fought so that the future indeed ensures: never again,” she said.

Day 300. Its maddening and shameful we have not been able to end one of the grossest, most blatant colonial #genocides feat disease, poisoning of the earth, sexual assualt, torture, & advanced weapons. This will end & we cannot afford to lose the next battle over narrative (1/2)

— Noura Erakat (@4noura) August 1, 2024

According to an analysis of data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), Israel is responsible for 17,081 incidents of air/drone raids, shelling/missile attacks, remote explosives and property destruction in eight countries since October 7, including the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Iran and Iraq.

A majority of these attacks were on the Palestinian territory, specifically the Gaza Strip, with 10,389 incidents accounting for more than 60 percent of the total offensives.

There were at least 6,544 incidents of Israeli attacks on Lebanon (38 percent), followed by Syria with 144 such incidents recorded.

Haniyeh funeral final ceremonies in Qatar.           Video: Al Jazeera

Released 15 Palestinian prisoners tortured
Israeli forces have released 15 Palestinian prisoners into Gaza. They were dropped off at a military checkpoint near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. Many spoke of abuse and torture while detained.

Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians during the war in Gaza and stands accused of numerous cases of torture, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says in a new report.

The 23-page report, released on Wednesday, noted allegations of widespread abuse of prisoners being held incommunicado in arbitrary, prolonged detention.

It was published during a tense standoff in Israel as far-right politicians and demonstrators opposed an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers.

The death toll in the genocidal war at the 300 day mark has topped 40,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children.

The War on Gaza will be etched in the memories of generations to come — the brutality of Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, and the ferocity of Israel’s retaliation.

In this Four Corners investigative report, The Forever War, broadcast in Australia last night, ABC’s global affairs editor John Lyons asks the tough questions — challenging some of Israel’s most powerful political and military voices about the country’s strategy and intentions.

The result is a compelling interview-led piece of public interest journalism about one of the most controversial wars of modern times.

• WATCH ABC FOUR CORNERS: The Forever War, reporter John Lyons

Former prime minister Ehud Barak says Benjamin Netanyahu can’t be trusted, former Shin Bet internal security director Ami Ayalon describes two key far-right Israeli ministers as “terrorists”,  and cabinet minister Avi Dichter makes a grave prediction about the conflict’s future.

Is there any way out of what’s beginning to look like the forever war? Lyons gives his perspective on the tough decisions for the future of both Palestinians and Israelis.

‘The Forever War’ – ABC Four Corners.      ABC Trailer on YouTube

With an “appalling” loss of life unfolding in Gaza, it’s essential Israel halts plans for an assault on the city of Rafah, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says.

The government has hardened its position towards Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying air strikes on the southern city of Rafah should stop and Israel should not go ahead with any more ground operations.

At a post-Cabinet press conference yesterday, Luxon said he was extremely concerned about the 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah right now — and that his preference was for a complete pause in hostilities.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘The cost of the conflict frankly is far too high — NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon

He said Foreign Minister Winston Peters had met with Israeli ambassador Ran Yaakoby at the Beehive on Monday to pass on the government’s concerns.

The statements come as British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has also called for the fighting to stop and for a permanent sustainable ceasefire to be put in place.

New Zealand was one of 153 countries calling for the ceasefire, Luxon told RNZ Morning Report.

He said the government was extremely concerned about the loss of life for civilians as well as the threat to regional stability in the Middle East.

‘Loss of life appalling’
“The loss of life is appalling, the humanitarian situation is deteriorating, the cost of the conflict frankly is far too high.

“We want to see a pause in hostilities and that’s why we’ve said we don’t want Israel to proceed with an assault on Rafah.”

He said it was crucial to invoke the Middle East peace process which would take action from both sides — Hamas to release the remaining hostages and stop its rocket fire on Israel while the latter would need to cease its military operations and allow increased humanitarian aid for Gaza.

“What you’re hearing overnight is a concerted position from countries all around the world saying: look, we need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. That needs to be the pathway to the permanent sustainable ceasefire we all want to see happen.”

Israel had a massive duty to protect civilians in Gaza and consider the long-term impact of its actions on the Middle East.

“That’s why we just don’t think going into Rafah, proceeding with operations there is a way forward. We want Israel to stop and think about the consequences and getting a long-term solution in place to actually get to peace.”

New Zealand had also continued to contribute humanitarian support with another $5 million donation to the International Red Cross and the World Food Programme.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

An activist organisation is accusing the Aotearoa New Zealand police of brutality after arrests were made at a pro-Palestine protest in Lyttelton today.

About 60 people took part in the protest at Lyttelton Port this morning, and police said four people were arrested about 1pm after blocking traffic.

Protesters had blocked a tunnel and poured a liquid onto the road, a police spokesperson said.

• READ MORE: ‘Scale of de­struc­tion and loss is stag­ger­ing’ in north Gaza Strip says UN­R­WA
• Court orders Israel to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza
• Other war on Gaza reports

Charges were being considered.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott issued a statement saying members were “repulsed” by police actions at the protest, which he labelled “disgusting”.

“The police arrested seven people and pepper sprayed many, including senior citizens protesting peacefully,” Scott said.

Scott said the group was 17 weeks into protests calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza and for the government to condemn the violations since last month’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling.

Police ‘aggression’ increased
Police “aggression” toward the protest activities had been increasing during that time, Scott said, and the group wanted an investigation into officers’ actions at the latest protest.

Protest organiser Ihorangi Reweti-Peters told RNZ that police used “brute force” to stop protesters from blocking the road.

“Police were sort of rarking people up and saying, ‘come on then’, and ‘do it’.”

“Everyone was sprayed — pepper sprayed — and then the people were arrested.”

Three of those arrested had been released by early this evening, Reweti-Peters said.

Police have been contacted for comment.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

• Protest organisers are planning a pro-Palestine protest at Parliament and the US Embassy in Wellington next Tuesday.

The International Court of Justice rejected Israel’s request to dismiss the genocide case brought against it by South Africa yesterday, ruling by a massive majority that the case shall proceed and instructing Israel to refrain from killing and harming Palestinians in the interim.

Many Palestine supporters have expressed dismay that the ICJ did not explicitly order a ceasefire, while many others (including South African officials) argue that the ruling is very positive and tantamount to a ceasefire order because it demands the end of harm to members of the protected group.

Imperial media are aggressively emphasising the absence of a ceasefire order in their headlines and many Israel apologists are framing that absence as a victory for their favorite ethnostate.

• READ MORE: No respite for Gaza de­spite ICJ rul­ing in Is­rael geno­cide case
• ICJ’s stunning blow over Gaza war genocide charge ups pressure on Israel
• ICJ ruling an ‘indirect’ order for Israeli ceasefire in genocidal war, says legal analyst
• World Court or­ders Is­rael to take steps to pre­vent acts of geno­cide in Gaza

But such performative chest-thumping is severely undercut by the way high-level Israeli officials are currently accusing the ICJ of antisemitism and saying Israel should ignore its rulings.

“The international court of justice went above and beyond when it granted South Africa’s antisemitic request to discuss the claim of genocide in Gaza, and now refuses to reject the petition outright,” complained Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant in response to the ruling.

Israeli officials accuse international court of justice of antisemitic bias https://t.co/QoUltAdHgG

— The Guardian (@guardian) January 27, 2024

“The decision of the antisemitic court in The Hague proves what was already known: This court does not seek justice, but rather the persecution of Jewish people,” said Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Ben Gvir also tweeted “Hague Schmague” immediately after the ruling was issued, which will probably go down in history as the most Israeli tweet of all time.

Everyone’s arguing about whether or not the ICJ’s ruling is helpful, and I don’t know enough one way or the other to be sure either way, but from where things stand right now it does seem unlikely to me that managers of the Israeli war machine would be getting this freaked out and whipping out their tired old “antisemitism” song and dance if there wasn’t something of substance to it.

The genocide case against Israel. Video: Al Jazeera

International lawyer Francis Boyle, who won provisional measures against Yugoslavia at the ICJ in 1993, said the following of the ruling:

“This is a massive, overwhelming legal victory for the Republic of South Africa against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. The UN General Assembly now can suspend Israel from participation in its activities as it did for South Africa and Yugoslavia.

“It can admit Palestine as a full member. And — especially since the International Criminal Court has been a farce — it can establish a tribunal to prosecute the highest level officials of the Israeli government, both civilian and military.”

So take that for whatever that’s worth to you. In any case the butchery in Gaza still urgently needs to be ended, and only time will tell whether Friday’s development had any major effect on the outcome of this horror.

But what I wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall at the meetings they were having at the US State Department on Friday.

It’s days like this that remind you why empire managers switched from talking about “international law” to using the meaningless phrase “rules-based international order”.

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.

RNZ News

New Zealand’s defence minister has defended a decision to send six NZ Defence Force staff to the Middle East to help “take out” Houthis fighters as they are “essentially holding the world to ransom”.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins confirmed the plan at the first Cabinet meeting for the year.

The deployment, which could run until the end of July, will support the military efforts led by the United States to protect commercial and merchant vessels.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘They are essentially holding the world to ransom’ – Defence Minister Judith Collins
• NZDF mission in Red Sea has ‘shades of Iraq’ – Labour
• ‘Abhorrent’ attacks must stop after 12 killed killed at Gaza civilian shelter – UN

No NZ military staff would be entering Yemen.

The Houthis attacks are disrupting supply lines, and forcing ships to voyage thousands of kilometres further around Africa in protest against the Israeli war on Gaza.

But opposition parties have condemned the government’s plan, saying it had “shades of Iraq”.

‘Firmly on side of Western backers of Israel’
A security analyst also said the US-requested deployment could be interpreted as New Zealand “planting its flag firmly on the side of the Western backers of Israel”.

Speaking to RNZ Morning Report, Defence Minister Judith Collins denied it showed New Zealand being in support of Israel over the war on Gaza.

She said it was a “very difficult situation”, but not what the deployment was about.

“It’s about the ability to get our goods to market . . .  we’re talking about unarmed merchant vessels moving through the Red Sea no longer able to do so without being attacked.”

Collins said New Zealand had been involved in the Middle East for a “very long time” and it needed to assist where possible to remain a good international partner and to make sure military targets were “taken out”.

Houthis had been given a number of serious warnings, Collins said, and its actions were “outrageous”.

“They are essentially holding the world to ransom.”

NZ would not allow ‘pirates’
New Zealand was part of the world community and would not stand by and allow “pirates to take over our ships or anyone’s ships”.

Collins said she was not expecting there to be any extension or expansion of the deployment which would end on July 31.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been attacking ships in the Red Sea, which they say are linked to Israel, since the start of the Israel-Gaza conflict. In response, US and British forces have been carrying out strikes at different locations in Yemen, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, according to a joint statement signed by the six countries.

The opposition Labour Party is condemning the coalition government’s deployment of Defence Force troops to the Middle East, saying it has “shades of Iraq”.

Labour foreign affairs spokesperson David Parker made clear his party’s opposition to the deployment.

“We don’t think we should become embroiled in that conflict . . .  which is part of a longer term civil war in Yemen and we think that New Zealand should stay out of this, there’s no UN resolution in favour of it . . . we don’t think we should get involved in a conflict in the Middle East.”

‘Deeply disturbing’, say Greens
The Green Party’s co-leaders have also expressed their unhappiness with the deployment, describing it as “deeply disturbing”.

In a statement, Marama Davidson and James Shaw said they were “horrified at this government’s decision to further inflame tensions in the Middle East”.

“The international community has an obligation to protect peace and human rights. Right now, what we are witnessing in the Middle East is a regional power play between different state and non-state groups. This decision is only likely to inflame tensions.”

Davidson and Shaw indicated they would call for an urgent debate on the deployment when Parliament resumes next week.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

“How dare we have a conversation about trade when there are children right now being treated without anaesthetic?”

British journalist Myriam Francois on the Houthis blockade of shipments in the Red sea amid Israel’s war on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Yg9RV2ek4p

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 24, 2024

The incoming chair of the ABC, Kim Williams, must immediately move to restore the reputation of Australia’s national broadcaster by addressing concerns about the impact of external pressures on editorial decision making, says the media union.

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, the union representing journalists at the ABC, today called on Williams to work with unions to support staff who were under attack, reaffirm the commitment to cultural diversity in the workplace, and uphold the standards of reporting without fear or favour that the public expected of the ABC.

MEAA welcomed the appointment of Williams, a former chief executive of News Corp Australia, noting that he had decades of media experience including senior management positions at the ABC, commercial broadcast media and arts administration in the past, and that he had been recommended by an independent nomination panel.

• READ MORE: PM announces Kim Williams as new ABC chair
• Ita Buttrose backs David Anderson after ABC board defiant over ‘abhorrent and incorrect’ journalists’ criticism
• ABC staff ‘have lost confidence’ in boss in defending public trust in Israel row
• Cancelling the journalist: Fuhttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/jan/23/abc-managing-director-david-anderson-no-confidence-vote-fails-ita-buttrose-supportrore over ABC’s coverage of Israel war on Gaza
• Back SA over genocide case, ‘don’t yield to pressure’, Hania tells NZ

The acting chief executive of MEAA, Adam Portelli, said the new chair would take office at a critical time for the ABC’s future following a staff vote of no confidence in managing director David Anderson earlier this week over the handling of a crisis over pressure from pro-Israeli lobbyists in the war on Gaza.

“On Monday, union members overwhelmingly said they had lost confidence in David Anderson because of his failure to address very real concerns about the way the ABC deals with external pressure and supports journalists from First Nations and culturally diverse backgrounds when they are under attack,” he said.

“Public trust in the ABC as an organisation that will always pursue frank and fearless journalism has been damaged, and management under Mr Anderson has not demonstrated it is taking these concerns seriously.

Buttrose ‘completely out of touch’
“Following yesterday’s board meeting, the current chair, Ita Buttrose, revealed she is completely out of touch with the concerns felt in newsrooms across Australia,” Portelli said.

“Dozens of staff have told us their first hand experiences of feeling unsupported by management when under external attack and the negative impact this is having on their ability to do their jobs and on the reputation and integrity of the ABC. But Ms Buttrose failed to acknowledge these concerns.

“ABC journalists have put forward five very reasonable suggestions to restore the confidence of staff in the managing director but at this stage, Mr Anderson has not committed to an urgent meeting as they requested.”

Portelli said MEAA was optimistic that Williams would bring a more collaborative approach to dealing with issues of cultural safety and editorial integrity than had been witnessed under Buttrose.

“He must understand that nothing less than the reputation of the ABC is at stake here,” Portelli said.

Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who has been documenting the impact of the war in the Gaza Strip, has left the enclave for Qatar and gave his first interview there with the Doha-based Al Jazeera global news channel.

Azaiza announced on Instagram yesterday that he was leaving the besieged enclave before boarding a Qatari military airplane at Egypt’s El Arish International Airport.

However, it was unclear how he was able to leave Gaza or why he had evacuated, reports Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: ‘Collective punishment’ inflicted on Gaza – UN
• RSF condemns Israel over ‘silencing of media’ – 31 Palestinian journalists in jail, 80 plus killed
• Friendly fire may have killed hostages on October 7. These Israeli families want answers now
• NZ foreign policy critics warn over ‘inflaming’ Red Sea crisis, call for Gaza ceasefire

“This is the last time you will see me with this heavy, stinky [press] vest. I decided to evacuate today. … Hopefully soon I’ll jump back and help to build Gaza again,” Azaiza said in a video.

The 24-year-old Palestinian captured the attention of millions globally — including in the South Pacific — as he filmed himself in a press vest and helmet to document conditions during Israel’s war, which has killed more than 25,000 people in Gaza.

“Motaz Azaiza – A 24-year-old man from Gaza, in 108 days, did what CNN, Fox, the BBC, and all their ‘journalism’ predecessors refused to do for 75 years.

“Humanise a people!”

– Khaled Beydoun

Israel launched its offensive after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,139 people and taking more than 200 people captive. However, there are demands within Israel for an inquiry into allegations that some hostages were killed by “friendly fire” from a tank.

In response, Israel has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in a relentless attack on Gaza.

Azaiza’s coverage often took the form of raw, unfiltered videos about injured children or families crushed under rubble in the aftermath of Israeli air strikes.

He said he has had to “evacuate for a lot of reasons you all know some of it but not all of it”.

In his post, he was seen on a video about to board a grey plane emblazoned with the words “Qatar Emiri Air Force”.

I’m at Al Jazeera studios where they are streaming.
حلل يا دويري pic.twitter.com/fWoABDKD3t

— MoTaz (@azaizamotaz9) January 24, 2024

“First video outside Gaza,” he said in one clip, revealing that it was his first time on a aircraft. “Heading to Qatar.”

He also shared a video of the inside of the plane as it landed in Doha.

Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza leaves Gaza after his “heroic” humanitarian reporting . . . “we are all Palestinian.” Video: Al Jazeera

Since the start of the war, the photojournalist has amassed millions of followers across multiple platforms.

His Instagram following has grown from about 27,500 to 18.25 million in the more than 108 days since October 7, according to an assessment of social media analytics by Al Jazeera.

His Facebook account grew from a similar starting point to nearly 500,000 followers. He now has one million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter.

As well as his social media posts, Azaiza has produced content for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA).

I left Gaza with a broken heart and eyes filled with tears.
There was no other option after 108 days of continuous massacres against us.
It’s time to move somewhere else so I can do more work and I pray that I can be a reason to stop this war and help rebuild Gaza again.
I’ve… pic.twitter.com/kg3FwTi38d

— MoTaz (@azaizamotaz9) January 24, 2024

Social media users thanked Azaiza for his coverage of the war, many saluting him as a hero.

“Thank you for everything you have done, you have moved mountains, what you have done in the last 100 days people can’t do in their whole lifetime. You were a pivotal voice in showing the world the Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Wishing you well and safety,” one user said on X.

Another, Khaled Beydoun, wrote on Instagram, “Motaz Azaiza – A 24-year-old man from Gaza, in 108 days, did what CNN, Fox, the BBC, and all their ‘journalism’ predecessors refused to do for 75 years.

“Humanise a people!”

“I’m so glad you had the opportunity to get out, God willing, YOU WILL RETURN TO A FREE PALESTINE,” wrote another.

“We love you so deeply,” American musician Kehlani wrote, adding, “Thank you for your humanity.”

“Frame that vest. It’s the armor of one of history’s greatest heroes,” comedian Sammy Obeid said.

Pacific Media Watch sourced from Al Jazeera.

For two months now, the United States and other Western countries backing Israel have been talking about “the day after” in Gaza. They have rejected Israeli assertions that the Israeli army will remain in control of the Strip and pointed to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as their preferred political actor to take over governance once the war is over.

In so doing, the US and its allies have paid little regard to what the Palestinian people want. The current leadership of the PA lost the last democratic elections held in the occupied Palestinian territory in 2006 to Hamas and since then, it has steadily lost popularity.

In a recent public opinion poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), some 90 percent of respondents were in favour of the resignation of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, and 60 percent called for the dismantling of the PA itself.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Death toll reaches 25,105 as attacks continue
• Indonesia files new Gaza lawsuit against Israel at ICJ

Washington is undoubtedly aware of the low public trust in the PA, but there is a reason why it insists on supporting its takeover of Gaza: its leadership has been a reliable partner for decades in maintaining a status quo in the interests of Israel.

The US would like that arrangement to continue, so its backing for the PA may be accompanied by an attempt to revamp it in order to solve its legitimacy problem. But even if this effort succeeds, it is unlikely the new iteration of the PA would be sustainable.

A reliable partner
Perhaps one of the main factors that has convinced the US that the PA is a “good choice” for post-war governance in Gaza is its anti-Hamas stance and willingness to conduct security coordination with Israel.

Since the Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, the PA and its leadership have not issued an official statement offering explicit political support for the Palestinian resistance. Their rhetoric has predominantly focused on condemning and disapproving of attacks on civilians on both sides, while also rejecting the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland.

In a political address on the ninth day of the war, Abbas criticised Hamas, asserting that their actions did not represent the Palestinian people. He emphasised that the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and underscored the importance of peaceful resistance as the only legitimate means to oppose Israeli occupation.

This statement was later retracted by his office.

In December, Hussein al-Sheikh, a PA official and secretary-general of the executive committee of the PLO, also criticised Hamas in an interview with Reuters. He suggested its armed resistance “method and approach” has failed and led to many casualties among the civilian population.

The stance of the PA is consistent with its own narrow political and economic interests which have come at the expense of the Palestinian national cause. It has systematically and brutally stamped out any opposition and any support for other factions, including Hamas, in order to maintain its rule over West Bank cities while Israel continues with its brutal occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

In Israel’s war on Gaza in 2008–2009, the PA leadership hoped to regain administrative control of Gaza with assistance from Israel. During that conflict, the PA prohibited any activities in the West Bank in support of Gaza and threatened to arrest participants.

I, myself, faced harassment and the threat of arrest for attempting to join a demonstration against the war. Similar positions were adopted by the PA, albeit with less aggressive measures, in subsequent Israeli assaults on Gaza, as its leadership came to recognise that Hamas was unlikely to relinquish its control over the Strip.

Since October 7, the PA has taken a bolder stance, marked by more aggressive actions. Its security forces have suppressed demonstrations and marches held in support of Gaza, resorting to shooting live ammunition at participants. Additionally, the PA has recently detained individuals expressing support for the Palestinian resistance.

While cracking down on Palestinian protests, the PA has done nothing to protect its people from attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian communities, which have resulted in deaths, injuries and the displacement of hundreds of people in the occupied West Bank.

Additionally, the Israeli army has intensified its raids in the PA-administered areas, leading to the arrest of thousands and the killing of hundreds of Palestinians, with no reaction from the PA.

The PA’s inability to offer basic protection has added to the deterioration of its legitimacy among Palestinians. Furthermore, by taking a stance against the Palestinian resistance and aligning itself with Israel and the US, the PA is only further undermining its own legitimacy.

Palestine Authority – PA 1.0
Washington is aware of the growing unpopularity of the PA and its leadership among Palestinians but it is not giving up on it because it seems to believe that that can be fixed. That is because the US has tried to revamp the authority before as it has always faced problems with legitimacy due to the way it was set up.

As a governing institution, the PA was established to bring an end to the first Intifada.

Conceived under the interim peace agreements in Oslo, it was envisioned as an administrative body to oversee civil affairs for Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip and certain parts of the West Bank, excluding occupied East Jerusalem.

It effectively took on a role as an Israeli security contractor in exchange for certain benefits related to administering Palestinian population centres. The PA faithfully fulfilled its mandate, carrying out routine arrests and surveillance of Palestinian individuals, whether they were involved in actions against Israel or were activists opposing its corrupt practices.

Thus, Israel strategically benefitted from the establishment of the PA, but the same cannot be said for the Palestinian people, as they continued to experience the ravages of a military occupation.

Expected independent state
“Despite this, the PA under Yasser Arafat — or what we can call PA 1.0 — leveraged patronage and corruption to maintain some level of support. Notably, Arafat viewed the Oslo process as an interim measure, expecting a fully independent Palestinian state by 2000.

He pragmatically engaged in security collaboration with Israel, hoping to build trust and ultimately achieve peaceful coexistence. In 1996, responding to ongoing Palestinian resistance, he even declared a “war on terror” and convened a security summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, involving Israel, Egypt and the US.

In 2000, the civil and security arrangements overseen by the PA became increasingly fragile and eventually collapsed, triggering the eruption of the second Intifada. This uprising was a response to Israel’s policies of settlement expansion, its firm refusal to accept any form of Palestinian sovereignty between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and broader social and economic grievances.

In 2002, the Bush administration conceived the idea of refurbishing the PA as part of the Road map for peace. While Arafat’s leadership was perceived as a hindering factor, he had already collaborated with the US by implementing structural reforms, including the creation of a prime minister’s position.

Seeking to reshape the Palestinian leadership, the US engaged with potential alternative leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, who eventually assumed the presidency of the PA in 2005 after the suspicious death of Arafat.

The PA took its first blow when Hamas won the elections in 2006 and was able to form a government. The US and EU rejected the results, boycotted the government and suspended financial assistance to the PA, while Israel halted the transfer of tax revenues.

Meanwhile, the PA security apparatus leadership refused to deal with the Hamas government and continued their work as usual, claiming they reported to the PA president’s office.

For several months, Hamas struggled to maintain its PA government, while Abbas and his supporters made significant efforts to isolate it.

In 2007, Hamas took over the PA security apparatus in the Gaza Strip and assumed control of all PA institutions. Abbas declared Hamas an unwanted entity in the West Bank and ordered the expulsion of the Hamas government and the imprisonment of many Hamas operatives.

After splitting the PA into two entities, one in the Gaza Strip and another in the West Bank, Abbas, along with allies Mohammed Dahlan and Salam Fayyad, led efforts to restructure the PA in the West Bank with full support from the US and the EU.

Restructuring PA 2.0
Under what we can call PA 2.0, two major restructuring efforts took place. First, it consolidated the Palestinian security apparatus under a united command. Led by US Army General Keith Dayton, the revamping of the Palestinian security forces aimed at deepening their partnership with the Israeli state and army.

Additionally, it sought to cultivate a vested interest among PA personnel in maintaining the role of the PA. Second, the restructuring of the PA consolidated its budget, placing all its resources under the Ministry of Finance.

This restructuring did not result in a “better” PA. It remained a dysfunctional entity, which mismanaged resources and service provision, leading to a severe deterioration in living standards for the majority of Palestinians.

Its leadership enjoyed certain privileges due to its security coordination with Israel and engaged in widespread corruption practices that have raised concerns even among PA supporters.

Meanwhile, Israel’s settlement enterprises continued expanding without limits and the violence employed by the Israeli army and settlers against ordinary Palestinians only worsened.

Restructuring PA 3.0?
The lack of support for the PA leadership and its dysfunction have raised concerns about whether it can play a role in the upcoming post-Gaza war arrangements that the US administration is trying to put together.

That is why Washington has signalled it will seek to revamp the PA once again — into PA 3.0 — with the aim of addressing the needs of various parties. The US administration and its allies seek an authority that can provide security to Israel and engage in a peace process without altering the status quo.

Since the start of the war, several US envoys have visited Ramallah carrying the same message: that the PA needs to be revamped. In December US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Abbas and al-Sheikh (the PLO secretary-general) urging them to “bring new blood” into the government. Al-Sheikh is considered a possible successor to Abbas, who could be part of these efforts to restructure the PA.

However, after more than 100 days since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, it looks like Washington does not have a concrete plan and only has some general ideas which the PA has declared a readiness to discuss. More importantly, the US vision does not seem to take into account the will of the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian public clearly demands a leadership that can head a democratic, national entity capable of fulfilling the Palestinian national aspirations, including creating an independent state and realising the Palestinians’ right of return to their homelands.

Revamping the PA implies intensifying cooperation with Israel and providing Israeli settlers with more security, which effectively means more insecurity and dispossession for the Palestinians.

As a result, the Palestinian people will continue to perceive the PA as illegitimate and public anger, upheaval and resistance will continue to grow.

In this sense, the US vision for revamping the PA would fail because it would not address the core issues of Israeli occupation and apartheid, which successive American administrations have systematically and purposefully ignored.

Pacific Media Watch

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says Israel’s legal team “started off weak” but made a few strong points near the end.

Bishara said the lawyers’ efforts at the genocide hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague yesterday to deflect blame for Israel’s attacks and ignore the context of Israel’s 75-year occupation of Palestine came across as “illogical”, the Al Jazeera video clip reports.

Their claims that Israel’s forces are “trying to protect, rather than harm”, civilians were also unconvincing, he said, given the toll of the war: 23,357 Palestinians, including 9,600 children, since October 7.

• READ MORE: South Africa’s genocide case against Israel over Gaza ‘chilling’ in detail
• ICJ genocide case: What are Israel’s arguments and do they hold up?

However, Bishara said Israel’s lawyers did well to zero in on the jurisdiction of the ICJ — pointing out that the court must specifically prove Israel was guilty of genocidal intent, not any other violations.

“You can claim Israel has committed heinous crimes, but if they do not fall under the framework of genocide, the court has no jurisdiction,” Bishara said.

Speaking to reporters outside the ICJ in The Hague, Palestinian Foreign Ministry official Ammar Hijazi said Israel’s legal team was not “able to provide any solid arguments on the basis of fact and law”.

“What Israel has provided today are many of the already debunked lies,” he added, referring to, among others, Israeli clams that hospitals in Gaza were being used as military bases.

“Additionally, we think that what the Israeli team today has tried to provide is the exact thing that South Africa came to the court for — and that is, nothing at all justifies genocide.”

Thomas MacManus, a senior lecturer in state crime at Queen Mary University of London, said the ICJ was likely to see a “massive disconnect” between the picture Israel painted of its humanitarian concern for Gaza and “the reality on the ground where UN agencies say people are starving, lacking water, and seeing attacks on hospitals, schools, and universities.”

‘Nothing can ever justify genocide’
South Africa’s Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola told media “Self-defence is no answer to genocide”.

Here are the main points from his interaction:

• “”Israel failed to disprove South Africa’s compelling case that was presented;
• Israel tells the court that statements read out by senior Israeli political, military and civilian society leaders are simply rhetorical, and we shall not ascribe them any importance;
• “There is no debate about what Prime Minister Netanyahu’s term ‘Amalek’ means and how it is understood by soldiers fighting on the ground and by the Israelis;
• “How can you ignore Netanyahu’s statement, the statement of the defence minister and the ground forces? That is a clear implementation of policy.
• “Israel chose to focus extensively on the events of October 7. South Africa has not ignored this event as Israel alleged because it has unequivocally condemned and continues to condemn October 7; and
• “Self-defence is no answer to genocide. Nothing can ever justify genocide.”

Marwan Bishara comments on the Israeli ICJ defence. Video: Al Jazeera

South Africa has accused Israel of “genocidal intent” over its war on the besieged enclave Gaza Strip, and pleaded with judges at the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an interim order demanding Israel halt its military offensive in the embattled territory, reports Middle East Eye.

South African lawyer Adila Hassim told judges at The Hague that “genocides are never declared in advance, but this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies as a plausible claim of genocidal acts”.

“Israel deployed 6000 bombs per week . . . No one is spared. Not even newborns.

• READ MORE: ICJ hears South Africa’s genocide case against Israel over Gaza war
• Genocide in Gaza: A call to urgent global action – Backgrounder

UN chiefs have described it as a graveyard for children,” she said told the court on the opening session of the two-day preliminary hearing.

“Nothing will stop the suffering except an order from this court.”

Israel’s ongoing three-month war in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, lawyers told the court.

Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced, and an Israeli blockade severely limiting food, fuel and medicine has caused a humanitarian “catastrophe”, according to the UN.

‘Genocidal in character’
South Africa submitted its case against Israel at the ICJ last month and has said Israel’s actions in Gaza are “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group”.

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another South African lawyer and legal scholar at the hearing, said Pretoria was not alone in drawing attention to Israel’s genocidal rhetoric.

He said that at least 15 UN special rapporteurs and 21 members of the UN working groups had warned that what was happening in Gaza reflected a genocide in the making.

Video: Middle East Eye

Ngcukaitobi added that genocidal intent was evident in the way Israel’s military was conducting attacks, including the targeting of family homes and civilian infrastructure.

“Israel’s political leaders, military commanders and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent.”

Ngcukaitobi said the “genocidal rhetoric” had become common within the Israeli Knesset, with several MPs calling for Gaza to be “wiped out, flattened, erased and crushed”.

Israeli defence
On Wednesday, Nissim Vaturi, a member of Israel’s ruling Likud party, said it was a “privilege” for his country to appear at The Hague as he doubled down on earlier remarks where he said there were “no innocent people” in Gaza.

This is the first time Israel is being tried under the United Nations’ Genocide Convention, which was drawn up after the Second World War in light of the atrocities committed against Jews and other persecuted minorities during the Holocaust.

During yesterday’s proceedings, Professor Max du Plessis, another lawyer representing South Africa, said Israel had subjected the Palestinian people to an oppressive and prolonged violation of their rights to self-determination for more than half a century.

Dr Du Plessis added that based on materials shown before the court, the acts of Israel were plausibly characterised as genocidal.

“South Africa’s obligation is motivated by the need to protect Palestinians in Gaza and their absolute rights not to be subjected to genocidal acts.”

Genocide cases, which are notoriously hard to prove, can take years to resolve, but South Africa is asking the court to speedily implement “provisional measures” and “order Israel to cease killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinian people in Gaza”.

Thank you Madiba. Thank you South Africa. #ICJ #ICJGenocideConvention pic.twitter.com/9xjdSR40MI

— Dr. Omar Suleiman (@omarsuleiman504) January 11, 2024

Three hour hearing
Yesterday’s hearing consisted of three hours of detailed descriptions detailing what South Africa says is a clear example of genocide. Israel will today have three hours to respond on Friday.

The spokesperson of the Israeli Foreign Affairs, Lior Haiat, hit out at the comments made in the hearing, calling it “one of the greatest shows of hypocrisy,” and demonstrated “false and baseless claims.”

He also accused South Africa of “functioning as the legal arm of the Hamas terrorist organisation”.

As South Africa did in its 84-page legal filing ahead of the case, the country’s Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola repeated that he “unequivocally condemns Hamas” for the October 7 attack on southern Israel.

Republished from Middle East Eye.

The full first day hearing – South Africa’s submissions. Video: Middle East Eye

Reporting Israel’s war on Gaza has become the greatest credibility challenge for journalists and media of our times. The latest assassination of an Al Jazeera photojournalist yesterday while documenting atrocities has prompted a leading analyst to appeal to global journalists to “take a stand” to protect the profession.

The killing of Hamza Dahdoud, the 27-year-old eldest son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, along with freelancer Mustafa Thuraya, has taken the death toll of Palestinian journalists to 109 (according to Al Jazeera sources while global media freedom watchdogs report slightly lower figures).

Emotional responses and a wave of condemnation has thrown the spotlight on the toll faced by reporters and their families.

• READ MORE: War on Gaza: The voices that really matter are the journalists on the ground
• Israeli military accused of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza
• Safe zones: Israel’s technologies of genocide
• This Israel has no future in the Middle East – Marwan Bishara

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son on October 25 in an earlier Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in. After mourning for several hours, Dahdouh senior was back on the job documenting the war.

Just under 20 months ago, Al Jazeera’s best known correspondent, Shireen Abu Akleh, was fatally shot by an Israeli sniper while reporting on the Occupied West Bank on 11 May 2022 in what Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned by saying this “systematic Israeli impunity is outrageous.”

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists protested about the killing of Hamza Dahdoud and Thuraya, saying it “must be independently investigated, and those behind their deaths must be held accountable”.

But few journalists would accept that this is anything other a targeted killing, as most of the deaths of Palestinian journalists in the latest Gaza war have been – a war on Palestinian journalism in an attempt to suppress the truth.

‘Nowhere safe in Gaza’
Certainly, Al Jazeera’s Palestinian-Israeli political affairs analyst and Marwan Bishara, who was born in Nazareth, has no doubts.

Speaking on the 24-hour Qatari world news channel, with at least 22,835 people killed in Gaza – 70 percent of them women and children — he said: “Nowhere is safe in Gaza and no journalists are safe . . . That tells us something.

“Killing the messenger”: Marwan Bishara’s interview with Al Jazeera — more tampering over the message? There is nothing “sensitive” in this clip.

“It is understood they are war journalists. But still the fact that more than 100 journalists were killed within three months is breaking yet another record in terms of killing children, and destruction of hospitals and schools, and the killing of United Nations staff.

“And now with 109 journalists killed this definitely requires a certain stand on the part of our colleagues around the world. Not just in a higher up institution.

“I am talking about journalists around the world – those who came to cover the World Cup in Doha for labour rights, or whatever. Those who are shedding tears in the Ukraine, those who are trying to cover Xinjiang in China [persecution of the Uyghur people], those who are claiming there are genocides happening right, left and centre – from China to Ukraine, to elsewhere.

“The same journalists who see in plain sight what is happening in Gaza should – regardless if we disagree on Israel’s motives, or Israel’s objectives in this war – must agree that the protection of journalists and their families is indispensable for our profession. And for their profession,” Bishara said.

“Journalists, and journalism associations and syndicates around the world – especially in those countries with influence on Israel, as in Europe, or the United States; journalists need to take a stand on what is going on in Gaza.

New investigations on U.S. and UK media bias have exposed chilling double standards by Western media when it comes to reporting on killings of Israelis compared to killings of Palestinians in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/uQ0I7cT340

— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 10, 2024

‘Cannot go unanswered’
“This cannot continue and go on unanswered. What about them?

“They’re going to be from various media outlets deploying journalists in war-stricken areas. They will have to call for the defence of journalists and their lives and their protection.

“This cannot go on like this unabated in Gaza,” Bishara added, as Israeli defence officials have warned the fighting could go on for another year.

The South African genocide case filed against Israel in the International Court of Justice seeking an interim injunction for a ceasefire and due for a hearing later this week could pose the best chance for an end to the war.

Bishara has partially blamed Western news networks for failing to report the war on Gaza accurately and fairly, a criticism he has made in the past and his articles about Israel are insightful and damning.

His call for a stand by journalists has in fact been echoed in some quarters where “media bias” has been challenged, opening divisions among media groups about fairness and balance that have become the most bitter since the climate change and covid pandemic debates when media “deniers” and “bothsideism” threatened to undermine science.

In November, more than 1500 journalists from scores of US media organisations signed an open letter calling for integrity in Western media’s coverage of “Israeli atrocities against Palestinians”.

Israel has blocked foreign press entry, heavily restricted telecommunications and bombed press offices. Some 50 media headquarters in Gaza have been hit in the past month.

Israeli forces explicitly warned newsrooms they “cannot guarantee” the safety of their employees from airstrikes. Taken with a decades-long pattern of lethally targeting journalists, Israel’s actions show wide scale suppression of speech.

In the United Kingdom, eight BBC journalists wrote an open letter in late November to Al Jazeera accusing the British broadcaster of bias in its coverage of Gaza.

A 2300-word letter claimed that the BBC had a “double standard” and was failing to tell the Israel-Palestine conflict accurately, “investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in coverage”.

What is next? He lost everyone!!! Literally!!! #GazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/1LVh4eruIt

— Palestine News (@palestine) January 7, 2024

In Australia, another open letter by scores of journalists and the national media union MEAA called for “integrity, transparency and rigour” in the coverage of the war and joined the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), RSF and others condemning the Israeli attacks on journalists and journalism.

Leading Australian newspaper editors of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and the Nine network hit back by banning staff who had signed the letter. According to the independent Crikey, a senior Nine staff journalist resigned and readers were angrily cancelling their newspaper subscriptions over the ban.

Crikey later exposed many editors and journalists who had made junket trips to Israel and is currently keeping an inventory of these “influenced” media people — at least 77 have been named so far.

In The Daily Blog, editor Martyn Bradbury has also questioned how many New Zealand journalists have also been influenced by Israeli media massaging. Bradbury wrote:

“If Israel has sunk that much time and resource charming Australian journalists and politicians, the question has to be asked, [has] the pro-Israel lobby sent NZ journalists and politicians on these junkets and if they have, who are they?”

He wrote to the NZ Press Gallery, the “journalist union” and media companies requesting a list of names.

Pacific journalists ought to be also added to the list.

I have just returned from a two-month trip in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Australia. After a steady diet of comprehensive and well backgrounded reporting from global news channels such as TRT World News and Al Jazeera (which contrasted sharply in quality, depth and fairness with stereotypical Western coverage such as from BBC and CNN), I was stunned by the blatant bias of much of the Australian news media, particularly News Corp titles such as The Australian and The Advertiser in Adelaide.

Some examples of the bias and my commentaries can be seen here, here, here, here, here and here.

A pithy indictment of much of the Western reporting — including in New Zealand — can be read in the Middle East Eye and other publications.

Exposing much of the Israeli propaganda and fabricated claims since October 7 (and even from time of The Nakba in 1948), award-winning columnist Peter Osborne wrote:

“I am haunted by one other consideration. It is not just that Western commentators, columnists and chat show hosts often don’t know what they are talking about. It’s not even that they pretend they do.

“It’s the comfort of their lives. They sit in warm, pleasant studios where they earn six-figure sums for their opinions. They take no risks and convey no truths.”

A polar opposite from the Gaza carnage and the risks that courageous Palestinian journalists face daily to bear witness. They are an inspiration to the rest of us.

Dr David Robie is editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific.

In the early hours of November 22, Qatar formally announced that an agreement had been reached for an Israeli-Palestinian exchange of captives — and it came into force today.

The available details suggest it largely reflects the proposal offered by Hamas several weeks ago that was initially rejected by Israel.

Тhe announcement was made just a week after Israeli tanks and soldiers stormed into the al-Shifa Hospital compound in Gaza City, causing international outrage.

• READ MORE: War on Gaza: Gaza truce begins
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Israel had claimed that there was a Hamas command centre there and repeatedly vowed to destroy it. As it happened, the only facility to be found within the compound was a hospital.

The United States fully supported Israel’s violation of al-Shifa’s sanctity and even claimed it had independent intelligence about a Palestinian Pentagon beneath it but produced no evidence in support of this assertion.

At the time, this led to speculation that these events may have been the product of an informal US-Israeli agreement: The Biden administration would support Israel’s seizure of al-Shifa and would cover for this war crime politically and diplomatically with lies of its own, thus allowing an Israeli military with few achievements since October 7 to have its “Iwo Jima moment” atop “Mount Shifa”.

But once it would become clear that there was nothing of military significance within the premises, the US would proceed to finalise a deal with Hamas and Israel would have to agree to its implementation.

Deal largely the Hamas offer
It does indeed appear to be the case that in exchange for US support for Israel’s systematic destruction of the health sector in the Gaza Strip, a deal with Hamas has been reached.

The agreement is significant in several respects. Perhaps most importantly, the US and Israel, which repeatedly vowed to eradicate Hamas, are now negotiating with the Palestinian movement and reaching agreements with it.

Qatari-Egyptian mediation, while indispensable, is ultimately a formality. The US and Israel are not negotiating with Egypt and Qatar but with Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and architect of the October 7 attacks.

The tenor of Israeli press reports in recent days has been that Hamas is desperate for a respite, however brief and at almost any price, from the ferocious Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip.

Yet the available reports about the deal suggest otherwise:

• Israel has committed to releasing three times as many imprisoned women and children as the Palestinians;
• No Israeli soldiers are included in the exchange;
• Significantly more humanitarian supplies, including fuel, will reach the Gaza Strip;
• The exchange of captives will be implemented during a continuous four-day truce rather than one in which the slaughter is paused for a brief period each day; and
• Israeli jets and drones will be prohibited from using the airspace over the Gaza Strip for several hours each day.

Why are so many Palestinians imprisoned?

This is quite close to the deal initially offered by Hamas several weeks ago, and it appears the bulk of its demands have been conceded by Israel and the US.

If the adage that negotiations reflect reality on the ground rather than overturning it applies, Hamas — in contrast to the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, which has been Israel’s main target — seems far from desperate.

Instead, it appears sufficiently confident to stick to its priorities until these are accepted by the US and Israel.

US, Israel forced to concede
“Pursuant to the agreement, Hamas has also forced the US and Israel to consent to the supply of large amounts of essential humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.

In other words, Hamas has in one fell swoop achieved exponentially more on the humanitarian front than the much-vaunted US diplomacy to secure humanitarian relief for Gaza’s Palestinian civilians during the past month.

This confirms that the entire US effort was in essence a circus — a diversionary charade to enable Israel to continue with its mass killings and transform the Gaza Strip into a wasteland and a killing field.

It bears repeating that Hamas has forced the US and Israel to allow significant quantities of food, water, medicine and fuel to reach the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

Yet Hamas is the anointed terrorist organisation in this equation while Israel is the light unto nations with the world’s most “moral army” and the US is the world’s greatest democracy dedicated to spreading freedom and human rights to the rest of the planet.

What happens next is difficult to assess. According to reports, only Israeli and dual nationals are to be released, presumably to help the Israeli leadership swallow this very bitter pill and to allay Israeli concerns that the release of foreign nationals would be privileged in negotiations with Hamas.

Yet by insisting on this formula, Israel has ensured that further negotiations to release foreign citizens would continue, potentially leading to an extension of the truce.

War in Israeli PM’s interests
At the same time, it is difficult to believe that the Israeli leadership can accept a temporary truce that metamorphoses into an indefinite one. It is clearly in the Israeli premier’s personal and political interest to keep this conflict going while the security establishment is also desperate to wipe away the stain of October 7.

Other members of Israel’s governing coalition partners see this war as a golden opportunity to unleash the apocalypse and want it to escalate further rather than wind down.

Although the Gaza Strip has been substantially destroyed, Hamas has yet to be significantly degraded, and the Israeli army has yet to kill more Hamas commanders than United Nations staff.

If Israel is confident it can once again flout US policy without consequences, it will. This could take the form of sabotaging the truce or resuming hostilities to ensure it is not extended. Farther afield, the Israeli-Lebanese front also seems to be rapidly heating up.

So further escalation is likely, but it is also possible that the implementation of this deal could cause Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to collapse under a combination of public pressure and internal conflicts among leaders who mutually detest and distrust each other.

The US leadership is also a question mark. With respect to the impact of this crisis on US interests in the region and beyond and particularly the question of regional escalation, US President Joe Biden appears not to care, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appears not to know while CIA Director William Burns and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin look mortified.

Which faction gains the upper hand remains an open question.

The one conclusion that can already be drawn is that the various “day after” scenarios produced by the Washington echo chamber can be safely discarded because they uniformly require the eradication of Hamas and not negotiated agreements with it.

Mouin Rabbani is a co-editor of Jadaliyya and non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha, Qatar.

Major media organisations all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch has asked BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it — even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government.

“Palestinian health officials in Gaza say hundreds of people have been killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. They’re blaming an Israeli strike on the hospital.

“But the Israel DefenCe Forces said an initial investigation shows the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch.”

That was how RNZ’s news at 8am last Tuesday reported the single deadliest incident of this conflict so far — and likely to be the deadliest one in all of the five times Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza so far.

The Israeli Defence Force also singled out Islamic Jihad for the atrocity — but the absence of hard evidence put the media reporting it in a difficult position.

“It’s still absolutely unclear. There are varying bits of information that are coming out for now. I don’t think anybody can quite say . . . it’s most likely to have been Israel,” the BBC Middle East editor Sebastian Usher told RNZ on Wednseday night.

“They said it seems like it might be a misfired rocket,”

Huge anger on streets
“We can’t say for now, but I don’t think  — in terms of the mood in the Arab world and the Middle East — that that really matters. People out on the streets are showing huge anger and they will reject any investigation, any Israeli claim, to say that Israel is not responsible,” he said.

Reporting those claims and counterclaims creates confusion among the audience. It’s also stoked the anger of those objecting to reporters’ choice of words.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward, for example, was criticised heavily on social media for mentioning the Israeli Defense Force claims — and then expressing doubt about them at the same time.

A video showing a pro-Palestinian protester calling Clarissa Ward “a puppet” has gone viral on social media. So did another falsely accusing her of faking a rocket strike.

The longer version of the video of Egyptian podcaster Rahma Zein confronting CNN reporter Clarissa Ward at the Rafah crossing. It’s raw, sincere, and powerful. Much respect for Rahma, she expressed our collective pain at the Western media’s dehumanization of the Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/yfB7zFYPwe

— Amro Ali (@_amroali) October 20, 2023

Her CNN colleague Anderson Cooper was also criticised online for referring to a huge civilian loss of life during the live report from Tel Aviv in Israel and repeating himself, but then without the word “civilian”.

Among those who, alongside expert investigators, tried to sift the available evidence and cut through the information war was Alex Thompson, correspondent for UK broadcaster Channel Four

“Israel and Hamas can tweet what they like. The truth of what happened here requires independent expert investigation — not happening,” was Alex Thompson’s bleak conclusion.

‘A fierce information war’
“Any doubt is due to a fierce information war that in truth matters little to the victims of the Gaza hospital tragedy,” another British correspondent — ITV Jonathan Irvine — said on Newshub at 6 last Tuesday.

At times, broadcasters have used the wrong words and given audiences the wrong idea.

Last week the BBC’s main evening news bulletin made a rapid apology for describing pro-Palestine protests in the UK as “pro-Hamas”.

“We accept that this was poorly-phrased and was a misleading description,” the presenter told viewers just before the end of the bulletin.

And earlier this month, people protested outside the BBC News headquarters in London about the BBC’s long-standing policy of not labeling any group as “terrorists”.

“You don’t seem to be particularly interested. If the BBC seems to refuse to call terrorists even though the British Parliament has legislated them terrorists — that is a question I haven’t heard the BBC answer yet,” UK government Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC radio flagship news show Today.

“Have you not seen any of the coverage on the BBC of the atrocities, the dead, the injured, the survivors?” the startled presenter asked him.

“How can you say that we’re not interested?” she replied, when Shapps said he had.

An obligation to audiences
The BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro was at Sydney’s South by Southwest festival this week to talk about how the BBC delivers news from and about conflict zones.

“We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are,” said Munro, who is also the BBC’s director of journalism.

“We’ve got an obligation to audiences to explain what’s going on and that involves lots of people on the ground as witnesses to events, but also the analysis that comes with expert knowledge,” he told Mediawatch.

“Expertise is just invaluable. People like Jeremy Bowen (former Middle East editor and current international editor of BBC News) and our chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and correspondents who are based in that region,” he said.

“But the main story here is the catastrophic loss of life and the appalling conditions that people are living in and that the hostages are being held in — the humanity of that,” he said.

A lot of reporting people will see, hear and read will come from Israel. Reporting from Gaza itself is difficult and dangerous — and access to Gaza at the border is restricted by Israel.

“We have a correspondent in Gaza, but he’s moved from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south of the strip, a safer option. But he can’t report 24 hours a day, and he is looking after his family which is paramount.

Need for transparency
“So we do have to add to that [with] reporting from Israel and from London by people who know Gaza very well,” he said.

“We have to be transparent about that and tell the audience and then the audience knows that wherever it’s coming from, and you still hold editorial integrity.”

A lot of what people will be seeing from Gaza is amateur footage and social media content that’s very difficult to verify.

The BBC recently launched BBC Verify, dedicated to checking out this kind of material and vetting its use.

“There’s a huge amount of video out there on social media we can all find at the touch of a button. The brand of BBC Verify is a signpost that the material . . . has been checked by us using methods like geolocation and looking at the metadata,” he said.

Even when verified, there are still ethical dilemmas.

For example, BBC Verify used facial recognition software to analyse images of an individual in the Hamas surprise attacks on October 8. It identified one gunman as a policeman from Gaza.

Independently verifying claims
“It’s case-by-case — but something shouldn’t go out on the BBC without us knowing it’s true. There are occasions we would broadcast something and we would tell the audience that we’ve not been able to independently verify a claim . . . and we need to caveat our coverage of the reaction to it with the fact that we do not have our own verification of source material,” he said.

Major media outfits all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch asks BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it – even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government https://t.co/gm8Fyv4ar1

— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) October 21, 2023

Even before the Al Ahli hospital catastrophe amplified emotions, intense scrutiny of reporters’ work was adding to the stress of those reporting from the region.

“Every word you say is being scrutinised so closely and is likely to be contested by one side or the other more or both — and that definitely adds to the pressure,” Channel Four correspondent Secunder Kermani told the BBC’s Media Show last week from Gaza.

“In the Israel Gaza situation it is critical. Every word can be checked and rechecked and double checked for any implication which is either inferred or implied by accident.

“Because our job is to be impartial, tell the reality of the story, and most importantly, share the witnessing of that story by our correspondents,” Jonathan Munro told Mediawatch.

“That’s why we’ve got a significant number of correspondents in Israel and back in the newsroom in London are adding explanations and leaning into that scrutiny on language,” he said.

Adjectives ‘can be dangerous’
“We’re using expertise, our knowledge as an organisation and we’re making sure that at every stage of that every sentence, every paragraph is reflective of what we know to be true.

“But adjectives can be dangerous, because they may imply something which is more emotive than we mean. We have to be quite clean in our language in these circumstances,” he said.

“Of course, people can come on the BBC and express their views in language of their choice. All of those things help to keep our coverage straight and honest and ensure that correspondents on the ground aren’t in danger by slips or mistakes that are made in good faith elsewhere in the BBC output.”

Last week at its annual conference, senior members of the Conservative Party — which is in power in the UK — heavily criticised the BBC for alleged bias and elitism. Some — including home secretary Suella Braverman and former prime minister Liz Truss made a point of praising GB News — the new right-wing TV channel backed by billionaire Brexiteers — for disrupting the news.

“The criticism of the BBC from politicians is as old as the BBC itself. Just because they’re habitual critics doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but we’ve got a well developed set of editorial guidelines which have stood the test of time over many, many difficult stories,” Munro told Mediawatch. 

“The editorial guidelines are robust and public. You can go online and look at them. All of our journalism abides by those guidelines and if you have guidelines that you believe in as an organisation, that’s a significant defence to some of the less well-founded attacks that we sometimes find ourselves on the end of,” he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

SPEECH: By Janfrie Wakim

Tena koutou Tena koutou Tena koutou katoa

Salaam Aleikum Ma’haba

Greetings to you all and thank you for coming here today to express your solidarity with the Palestinian people — in Gaza particularly — but Palestinians everywhere.

Free Free . . . Palestine!

I acknowledge the indigenous people of Aotearoa — Māori tangatawhenua, who 183 years ago signed the Tiriti o Waitangi with colonists from Britain. Also, Ngati Whatua of Orakei, manawhenua, on whose land we gather today and who battled the settler-colonialism at Takaparawha-Bastion Point in the 1970s.

History matters!

I stand here in solidarity with the indigenous people of Palestine who also have been dispossessed by the setter-colonialism of Zionist Jews.

An unfolding catastrophe
Today we are especially mindful of Palestinians in Gaza who are experiencing an unfolding catastrophe of epic and genocidal proportions.

We appeal to our elected leaders, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, and outgoing prime minister Chris Hipkins, to demand an immediate ceasefire and stop the carnage.

Throughout the world we see the massive outpouring of support for Palestinians. Not from the leaders and politicians but from ordinary citizens — like us — especially those who have some capacity to act.

History matters. Facts matter. Human rights of all people matter.

To take a stand you must understand.

Rightly we know and are reminded of European racism which culminated in the Holocaust.

But the Nakba — the Palestinian catastrophe?

Sustained by lies
The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to the colonisation of Palestinian land and the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation.

Israel is sustained by lies: from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to its birth in 1948 when the indigenous Palestinians were driven out — most to Gaza. (750,000 of the 1 million inhabitants of historic Palestine).

It’s a lie that Israel wants a just and equitable peace and will support a Palestinian state.

It’s a lie that Israel respects the rule of law and human rights.

Free Free . . . Palestine.

We must ensure the history of the Palestinian struggle for justice is known and understood. Hold our media and leaders to account.

John Minto is the chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and he regularly speaks out.

Western politicians and Western media are the source of the problem. If this war had been reported accurately from the outset, Palestinians would have the state of Palestine where religion, ethnicity and human rights were respected — as they were before European colonisation of Palestine early last century.

Hope is not enough. We must take action — Go to www.psna.nz and keep in touch with the local movement. Voice your alarm. Educate your friends, inform your workmates, challenge politicians — local as well as national.

Show your solidarity
Visit your MPs — insist on meeting face to face. This is especially important now that we have new MPs.

Join our monthly rallies in Takutai Square . . . show your solidarity.

That justice for Palestinians is achieved is not only a matter for the Palestinian people but also a symbol of overcoming injustice everywhere for all humanity.

As a mother and grandmother, I say: “Make Peace Not War!”

Nelson Mandela, who roundly applauded actions of the anti-apartheid movement in Aotearoa New Zealand, said: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Justice is the seed . . . peace is the flower. Kia Kaha Mauri Ora!

Janfrie Wakim is an Auckland campaigner for human rights in Palestine.

Te Pāti Māori wants the incoming and outgoing governments of Aotearoa New Zealand to use the country’s strong international voice to insist on an urgent ceasefire between Israel and Gaza.

And they say the government should be prepared to “kick the Israeli ambassador out” if the fighting does not stop and humanitarian aid corridors into Gaza are not opened.

“I’d like anyone in the government to come out loud and clear in the condemnation of the killing of thousands of innocent people in Palestine,” Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told RNZ Morning Report today.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: Te Pāti Māori on ‘failure’ of NZ leadership over Gaza
• Israel bombs Greek Orthodox Gaza church sheltering displaced people
• Al Jazeera live War on Gaza updates
• Other War on Gaza reports

“We’ve got a history in Aotearoa of indigenous people in a colonial context and I am deeply upset as Te Pāti Māori on the absolute failure of our [country’s] leadership and our foreign policy which talks about a values-based approach.

“We talk about supporting a peace-based approach and the two-state solution but we have failed horrifically to do anything proactive since the beginning.

“And we have seen the contradiction in [contrast to] how we have been with Afghanistan and Ukraine in the recent past.

“What we need to see is Aotearoa take a strong stance on the killing of innocent people.

‘Not two-sided’
“It is not a two-sided situation here [in the war on Gaza]. We only have one side living under military occupation and we need to be much stronger on what we have called for — absolute peace and allowing humanitarian aid in.”

Outgoing Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta declined RNZ’s request for an interview, citing the constraints of the current caretaker government provisions.

While National — which also said no to our request to speak to their foreign policy spokesperson Gerry Brownlee — referred to Prime Minister-elect Christopher Luxon’s statement that the government should be speaking for all New Zealanders on the situation.

Pacific Media Watch reports at least 3785 people have been killed in the bombing of Gaza and 81 in the Occupied West Bank and 12,493 have been wounded — including 2000 children and 1400 women.

Since the surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, at least 1403 people have been killed, including 306 soldiers and 57 police.

Hamas is reported to be holding 203 civilian and military hostages.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A progressive foreign policy group is calling for the New Zealand government to condemn the siege of Gaza, and demand an immediate ceasefire to allow the establishment of a humanitarian aid corridor in the region.

Israel’s complete siege on the Gaza Strip has cut off power, food, water, electricity and fuel to the region, as the death toll from Israeli air strikes climbs over 1,100.

Human rights advocates are condemning this action as a crime against humanity.

• READ MORE: Operation Al Aqsa Storm: How, why, and where to now in Gaza?
• Other reports on the Attack on Gaza

Thousands of Palestinians — including the deaths of seven journalists bearing witness — and humanitarian workers have been targeted, injured and killed by Israeli air strikes.

Hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed, as fuel supplies needed to run generators have been cut off, resulting in a power blackout across the region.

“We are horrified by the New Zealand government’s failure to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza,” said Te Kuaka co-director Dr Arama Rata.

“We call for the New Zealand government to urge an immediate ceasefire and the provision of healthcare and humanitarian assistance in Gaza.”

Reckless rhetoric
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant justified the siege by claiming: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

US President Joe Biden condemned Hamas as a “terrorist” organisation, and affirmed “Israel’s right to defend itself”.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta reiterated these statements.

A member of Te Kuaka, researcher and writer Dr Max Harris, said: “There is a pressing danger right now that claims about Israel’s right to self-defence are being used as cover for profound violations of international law, and the destruction of families and communities in Gaza.”

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, has expressed deep concern about the situation, and about UK Labour leader Keir Starmer’s comments claiming Israel’s right to self-defence justified the cutting off of electricity and supplies to Gaza.

Albanese has called the intentional starvation of civilians as part of a broader attack on civilians a “war crime and, potentially, a crime against humanity”.

Dr Harris said: “New Zealand must set other countries’ sights on the need for a humanitarian aid corridor, and our political leaders must avoid reckless rhetoric that will pave the way for war crimes and further senseless loss of life.”

• Nationwide rallies on Saturday, October 14, calling for an end to the Israeli-Gaza war and the killing of civilians — in Auckland at 2pm at Aotea Square.
• Other rally details here

The tragic events in Israel/Palestine these past few days have highlighted the absolute failure of Western governments like New Zealand to hold Israel accountable for its myriad war crimes against the Palestinian people for more than 75 years.

Even in the past year the New Zealand government has failed to speak up despite obvious signs that unbearable pressure was building in Palestine following the election in late 2022 of the most extreme far-right government in Israel’s history.

• READ MORE: in the face of Western hypocrisy, people stand with Gaza
• Other Gaza-Israel war reports

This new government has taken numerous steps to ramp up pressure on Palestinians everywhere in the occupied Palestinian territories by:

• Announcing the building of more illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land;
• Encouraging attacks on Palestinian towns villages and rural communities by illegal Israeli settlers and provided Israeli military support for the settlers;
• Organising highly provocative incursions into the Al Aqsa mosque compound by Israeli government ministers; and
• Justifying and casualised the killing of Palestinians resisting the Israeli occupation of their country (more than 250 Palestinians were killed in the first nine months of this year including dozens of children)

The total silence of Western governments such as New Zealand to these developments has emboldened Israel to act with impunity as it bulldozes more Palestinian land, builds more illegal settlements.

The reaction from Hamas when its attack came has shocked and appalled Israelis, Palestinians and most of the world community.

Attacks on civilians condemned
Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has condemned the Hamas attack on civilians as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, just as we condemn any attack on civilians no matter who the attacker is.

But unlike our Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, and most Western governments, we also condemn Israeli war crimes.

It is a war crime to use collective punishment against civilian populations. In other words it is unlawful to punish a whole group for the actions of a few.

It is also unlawful to withhold, food, water and the essentials of life from people living under military occupation as Israel is doing to Gaza.

The New Zealand government must not only condemn war crimes committed by Hamas but it must also condemn war crimes against the Palestinian people.

But Prime Minister Hipkins has not once this year condemned Israeli war crimes and even after the events of the past few days he is silent. For the government, Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli lives.

More war crimes
Meanwhile, Israel has announced preparations to commit more war crimes against Palestinians.

“We are fighting against human animals” said Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant yesterday as he announced what he called a “complete siege” on Gaza which Israel is set to impose.

Hearing racist, dehumanising, language about Palestinians from Israeli politicians is nothing new but this time Israel is using genocidal language to justify the massive death toll which they are planning to inflict on Palestinian refugees in Gaza — refugees created through war crimes committed by Israeli militias in 1948.

On Saturday, Palestinians and their supporters are holding rallies and vigils around New Zealand to demand our government speak out and condemn not only the killing of Israeli civilians but also the slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

We will be demanding the government take action to hold Israel to account for the crimes of its occupation of Palestine in the same way we have held Russia to account for its crimes against the Ukrainian people in its occupation of Ukraine.

The start of each rally will include a minute of silence to remember all the civilians — Palestinians and Israelis — who have been killed in the last week.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

• Nationwide rallies on Saturday, October 14, calling for an end to the Israeli-Gaza war and the killing of civilians — in Auckland at 2pm at Aotea Square.
• Other rally details here

Almost 50 years to the day after the joint Egyptian-Syrian offensive that launched the 1973 October War, Israel has once again been caught with its pants down. On this occasion its briefs were dangling from its ankles as well.

Operation Al Aqsa Storm, as Hamas named its 7 October 2023 offensive into Israeli territory, represents an even greater Israeli failure.

Extensive and reasonably successful Egyptian and Syrian efforts to conceal their intentions, preparations, and capabilities notwithstanding, Israel in 1973 received multiple warnings about an impending Arab attack from, among others, King Hussein of Jordan, a high-level Egyptian agent, and several of its own intelligence officers.

• READ MORE: Netanyahu shows map of ‘New Middle East’– without Palestine — to UN General Assembly
• Hospitals under threat as Gaza power plant to run out in hours – Al Jazeera live news
• Other Palestine reports

Its primary failure was not ignorance, but the haughty dismissal of knowledge that contradicted preconceptions.

While hubris and complacency have been mainstays in Israel’s dealings with Arab military adversaries, on this occasion it additionally had no information about the impending operation.

This despite its world-leading surveillance and intelligence capabilities, and the reality that the Gaza Strip is not only miniscule in size but also the most intensively and intrusively surveilled territory and population on the planet, and one that has furthermore been under blockade for 17 years.

That Hamas and Islamic Jihad were under these circumstances able to plan and prepare an operation of such scale, scope, and sophistication, a process that will have consumed many months at the least, and will have required extensive communications among leaders, cadres, and operatives, is an astonishing achievement and testament to the legendary resourcefulness of Gaza’s Palestinians.

Launched in plain view
While we can at this point only speculate as to how Hamas managed to prepare and launch this offensive in plain view of Israel, the avoidance or effective encryption of electronic and digital communications will certainly have played an important role.

Similarly, Hamas has in recent years considerably improved its counter-intelligence capabilities to minimise infiltration, an essential feature given the nearly constant flow of Palestinians who transit through Israeli-controlled border crossings and are susceptible to recruitment by Israeli intelligence as conditions for access to health care, employment, and the like.

Rather than serving as Israel’s eyes and ears within the Gaza Strip, it seems likely at least some of these Palestinians conducted reconnaissance for Operation Al Aqsa Storm within Israel.

As for the weaponry used, much of it is either rudimentary or of local manufacture, making ingenious use of available materials such as paragliders, steel from a British ship that sunk off the Gaza coast decades ago to manufacture rocket tubes, and unexploded Israeli ordnance. More advanced capabilities will have been smuggled in, presumably with the assistance of Hizballah in Lebanon, perhaps with the cooperation of sympathetic or corrupt Egyptian border patrols.

The legendary corruption of Israel’s own border crossings with the Gaza Strip may also have played a role.

Committed to fighting the previous war, Israel constructed formidable underground obstacles to prevent Palestinian commandos from infiltrating Israel through their tunnel network. In response, Hamas and Islamic Jihad simply breached the weak points in the barriers surrounding the Gaza Strip, such as wire fences that relied on electronic monitoring rather than more sturdy concrete obstacles (some of which also appear to have been breached).

And a key objective of the initial Palestinian missile barrage, which targeted Israeli military airfields among other objectives, was to paralyze and thus delay Israel’s ability to rapidly respond.

Immediate objectives
Al Aqsa Storm’s immediate objectives were to infiltrate and seize key Israeli security installations, such as the Re’im military base which serves as the headquarters for the Gaza Division; kill or capture a significant number of Israeli soldiers; establish Palestinian territorial control over population centers within Israel’s boundaries for the first time since 1948; and present significantly improved Palestinian capabilities to the Israeli public and security establishment with a massive missile barrage at Israeli cities and the deployment of new infiltration and combat techniques.

While Israeli civilian casualties do not appear to have been an objective as such, it appears that many were killed, and others abducted. Additionally, there are reports of a massacre at a desert party.

In the event, the operation succeeded in nearly all respects, one suspects beyond the wildest expectations of those who planned and executed it. Dozens of Israeli soldiers, including a major general, were spirited into captivity inside the Gaza Strip.

Many more, including senior officers, were killed and wounded, and almost 24 hours after the operation commenced, Palestinian fighters remained ensconced in multiple locations and installations inside Israel.

Images of Israeli bulldozers and missiles deployed against the Israeli police headquarters in Sderot to dislodge Palestinian fighters within it will remain with us for some time, and as with the Egyptian military’s nearly effortless crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973, won’t be erased by subsequent developments.

A more difficult question concerns Hamas’s motives and broader aims. Seen from the movement’s perspective, Israel has simply gone too far, for too long.

Particularly under the stewardship of the Netanyahu government and its predecessor, escalation has been consistent and transformed into a strategy.

Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley, army-enabled attacks on villages throughout the West Bank by settler auxiliaries, and increasing incursions by prominent Israeli politicians and settler groups into the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem’s Old City have reached new heights, and done so in the explicit service of formal annexation.

Indeed, speaking last month to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a map that showed both the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, Israel has shown no inclination to lift or significantly relax the blockade, and treats Hamas as a force that can safely be ignored on the grounds that the movement cares about little else than maintaining its rule over the Gaza Strip.

Within Israel’s prisons, the situation of Palestinian detainees has been deteriorating by design. Yet every Israeli escalation has been normalised by Israel’s US and European partners, with each outrage met by little more than paeans to “shared values” and Israel’s “right to defend itself” and, under Washington’s leadership, a focus on an Israeli-Saudi agreement intended to render Palestine and the Palestinians irrelevant.

Within the region, a growing number of Arab states have in practice extended to Greater Israel a halal certificate, at Palestinian expense. Closer to home, Turkey has forced a number of Hamas leaders it previously hosted to leave the country, and Qatar has in recent months reduced the financial support it provides to Gaza in agreement with Israel, on the grounds that Hamas needs to find a more sustainable solution to its financial crisis.

So what is Operation Al Aqsa Storm meant to achieve? It appears that the movement concluded, some time ago, that a repeat of previous confrontations with Israel, such as during the 2021 Unity Intifada, the first that Hamas rather than Israel initiated, would be insufficient to break the logjam, and that only a spectacle on the scale of what we witnessed on October 7 would serve to concentrate minds in Israel and other relevant capitals.

In other words, the main objective would seem to be to render the status quo obsolete and put paid to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade, entirely or at least in its current form. Secondly, Hamas appears determined to free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, and additionally use those it has captured and abducted as leverage in negotiations on other matters, including for example those relating to the Haram al-Sharif.

Insurmountable obstacles
It is highly unlikely that undermining Saudi-Israeli diplomacy formed an important motivation, because the proposed deal faces too many insurmountable obstacles in Washington and Israel, and both Hamas and its allies understand this.

Additionally, if Muhammad bin Salman is determined to proceed with such a deal, there’s no indication he would be deterred by a mound of Palestinian corpses any more than his Arab cohorts who preceded him, and in any case, could consummate any agreement after a decent interval.

This notwithstanding, embarrassing not Riyadh specifically but all regional capitals that maintain formal or informal relations with Israel is an added benefit for Hamas. Particularly so if mass demonstrations in the region in support of the Palestinians serve to remind its governments and the world at large that Palestine remains a live issue.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad can additionally be presumed to hope that their offensive fatally weakens the PA ensconced in Ramallah, thereby creating greater freedom of action for their movements in the West Bank.

The above notwithstanding, the timing of this operation is curious, because conventional wisdom held that Israel’s various adversaries were content with a strategy of managed escalation so as not to interrupt the growing polarisation and dysfunction within the Israeli political arena.

That Hamas nevertheless chose an unprecedented offensive at this moment may have been related to matters of operational security and fears of exposure, or an assessment that this was an opportune moment with Israel having prioritised sadism in the West Bank and reinforcement of its border with Lebanon, or indeed a revised assessment that exposing the colossal failure of Israel’s extremists and security establishment is the best way to weaken them.

It is inconceivable that Hamas would have embarked on an operation of this scale without also preparing for an unprecedented Israeli response. Together with Islamic Jihad and others, it will probably have prepared for massive Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip launched for the purpose of significantly degrading their organisations and infrastructure, killing cadres and assassinating leaders it can locate, and leaving a massive trail of death and destruction.

Last stand thinking
Better a last stand than a slow death, the thinking apparently goes, particularly if that stand gives a renewed lease on life. Israel will presumably also conduct a massive sweep throughout the West Bank, crack down on Palestinians within Israel, and may also seek to abduct or liquidate Hamas leaders based abroad.

It’s a scenario based on the reasonable assumption that Israel remains unprepared to resume direct control of the entire territory for a protracted period of time. In other words, and as with previous assaults on the Gaza Strip, Israel’s objective may ultimately be to restore a version of the status quo that produced the present crisis.

Inflicting significant casualties in close-quarter combat, as the Palestinians succeeded in doing in 2014, could reduce the length and intensity of such incursions. The Palestinian organisations presumably know better than to believe that holding dozens of Israeli prisoners will provide them with a measure of protection from the authors of the Hannibal Doctrine, which considers a dead Israeli soldier preferable to a captive one.

It is an issue that can at most be used for psychological warfare.

A key question is whether Gaza’s militants will confront Israel only with their existing preparations, or whether Operation Al Aqsa Storm is part of a broader initiative by the self-styled Axis of Resistance, in which Hezbollah and perhaps others will join the fray if Israel crosses certain red lines to relieve the pressure on the Gaza Strip.

If Israel follows through on its demands of mass evacuations of densely populated Palestinian neighborhoods and proceeds with intensive carpet bombing to flatten them, causing mass casualties in the process, we may soon find out.

Mouin Rabbani has published and commented widely on Palestinian affairs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He was previously senior analyst Middle East and special advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group, and head of political affairs with the Office of the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria. He is co-editor of Jadaliyya Ezine.