COMMENTARY: By Ramzy Baroud

A shock and awe. The phrase is apt in describing what Israel has done in the occupied West Bank almost immediately following the events of 7 October 2023 and the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein defines “shock and awe” not merely as a military tactic, but as a political and economic strategy that exploits moments of collective trauma — whether caused by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse — to impose radical policies that would otherwise be resisted.

According to Klein, societies in a state of shock are rendered disoriented and vulnerable, allowing those in power to push through sweeping transformations while opposition is fragmented or overwhelmed.

• READ MORE: Trump’s ‘board of peace’ appears to seek wider mandate beyond Gaza
• Other Palestine reports

Though the policy is often discussed in the context of US foreign policy — from Iraq to Haiti — Israel has employed shock-and-awe tactics with greater frequency, consistency, and refinement.

Unlike the US, which has applied the doctrine episodically across distant theatres, Israel has used it continuously against a captive population living under its direct military control.

Indeed, the Israeli version of shock and awe has long been a default policy for suppressing Palestinians. It has been applied across decades in the occupied Palestinian territory and extended to neighboring Arab countries whenever it suited Israeli strategic objectives.

In Lebanon, this approach became known as the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut that was systematically destroyed by Israel during its 2006 war on Lebanon.

Disproportionate force
The doctrine advocates the use of disproportionate force against civilian areas, the deliberate targeting of infrastructure, and the transformation of entire neighborhoods into rubble in order to deter resistance through collective punishment.

Gaza has been the epicenter of Israel’s application of this tactic. In the years preceding the genocide, Israeli officials increasingly framed their assaults on Gaza as limited, “managed” wars designed to periodically weaken Palestinian resistance.

These operations were rationalised through the concept of “mowing the lawn,” a phrase used by Israeli military strategists to describe the periodic use of overwhelming violence to “reestablish deterrence”. The logic was that Gaza could not be politically resolved, only indefinitely managed through recurrent destruction.

What unfolded in the West Bank shortly after the start of the Gaza genocide followed a strikingly similar pattern.

Beginning in October 2023, Israel launched an unprecedented campaign of violence across the West Bank. This included large-scale military raids in cities and refugee camps, the routine use of airstrikes — previously rare in the West Bank — the widespread deployment of armoured vehicles, and a surge in settler violence carried out with the backing or direct participation of the Israeli army.

The death toll rose sharply, with hundreds of Palestinians killed in a matter of months, including children. Entire refugee camps, such as Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarm, were subjected to systematic destruction: roads were torn up, homes demolished, water and electricity networks destroyed, and medical access severely restricted.

Israeli forces repeatedly laid siege to communities, preventing the movement of ambulances, journalists, and humanitarian workers.

Accelerated the ethnic cleansing
At the same time, Israel accelerated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities, particularly in Area C. Dozens of Bedouin and rural villages were forcibly emptied through a combination of military orders, settler attacks, home demolitions, and the denial of access to land and water.

Families were driven out through sustained terror designed to make daily life impossible.

Yet the most violent period of Israeli aggression in the West Bank since the Second Intifada (2000–2005) has been largely overlooked, in part because of the sheer scale and horror of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The annihilation of Gaza has rendered the violence in the West Bank seemingly secondary in the global imagination, despite the fact that its long-term consequences may prove just as devastating.

At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition succeeded in presenting themselves to the world as reckless, unrestrained, and ideologically drive — willing and able to expand the cycle of destruction far beyond Gaza, into the West Bank and across Israel’s borders into neighboring Arab countries.

This performance of extremism functioned as a political strategy.

The consequences are now unmistakable. Large areas of the West Bank lie in ruins. Entire communities have been shattered, their social and physical fabric deliberately dismantled.

12,000 displaced children
According to UNRWA, more than 12,000 Palestinian children remain displaced, increasingly suggesting a displacement that may become permanent rather than temporary.

History, however, offers a critical lesson. The Palestinian struggle against Israeli settler-colonialism has repeatedly demonstrated that Palestinians do not remain passive indefinitely.

Despite the paralysis and fragmentation of their political leadership, Palestinian society has consistently regenerated its capacity for resistance.

Israel understands this reality as well. It knows that shock is not infinite, that fear eventually gives way to defiance, and that once the immediate trauma begins to fade, Palestinians will reorganise and push back against imposed conditions of domination.

What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground — one that enables formal annexation, normalises permanent military rule, and completes the ethnic cleansing of large segments of the Palestinian population.

For this reason, a deeper and more sustained understanding of current events in the West Bank is essential.

Without confronting this reality directly, Israeli plans will proceed largely unchallenged. To expose, resist, and ultimately defeat these designs is not only a matter of political analysis but a moral imperative inseparable from supporting the Palestinian people in restoring their dignity and achieving their long-denied freedom.

New Zealand pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched peacefully on The Warehouse in downtown Auckland today to protest over the sale of products by the genocidal state of Israel.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal and fellow protesters delivered a giant letter calling on the management to stop selling SodaStream products.

SodaStream — an Israel-based company since 1978 — is at the centre of the global BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions) campaign.

• READ MORE: Israel attacks Gaza as large-scale recovery of bodies set to begin
• Other Gaza reports

The letter was reluctantly accepted by The Warehouse city branch duty manager Alyce, who needed to take a management phone call before agreeing to take the letter mounted on a board.

“The Warehouse’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes must stop,” said Nazzal in the letter. “I know you will be appalled as we are at Israel’s cruel and depraved war crimes against Palestinians.”

The letter was handed over by a small deputation on behalf of about 200 protesters who stood peacefully by the shop entrance escalator in Elliott Street as they chanted “Blood on your hands” and other condemnation of Israel over the genocide in Gaza that has killed at least 69,000 people, mostly women and children.

The letter addressed to The Warehouse management said that “trading in SodaStream products . . . supports Israel to continue its war crimes against Palestinian people. It encourages Israel to expand its illegal occupation and its genocidal oppression of Palestinians.”

One third of aid trucks
In spite of the so-called “ceasefire” brokered by US President Donald Trump commencing on October 10, only one third of the promised 600 aid trucks a day had been allowed into Gaza.

“Arrest warrants have been issued by the International Criminal Court against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But this is not enough,” said the letter, signed by scores of the protesters.

“On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice, in a landmark ruling, declared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories — the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza strip — is illegal and no one should give ‘aid or assistance’ to Israel in maintaining its illegal occupation.

“However, The Warehouse is giving direct ‘aid and assistance’ to Israel’s racist policies through selling SodaStream. This must stop.

“Since 2005, Palestinian civil society organisations have called for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel, to build international, non-violent pressure on Israel to end its brutal oppression of Palestinians.

“BDS aims to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, end its apartheid policies towards Palestinians and allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land in Palestine.

The PSNA letter said the protesters supported BDS against Israel — “just as we supported the international boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s”.

‘New Zealanders support sanctions’
“New Zealanders support sanctions against Israel by the ratio of two to one amongst those who give an opinion. New Zealanders expect The Warehouse to end its collaboration with Israeli apartheid and genocide and swap out of SodaStream for alternative brands,” the letter said.

The Warehouse Group’s says “ethical sourcing” policy was cited in the letter, quoting in part: “Like our customers,  we  care about doing the right thing — not only here in New Zealand but everywhere we operate.

“Our aim is to ensure our customers have confidence  that  our products have been ethically sourced.”

The letter continued: “Selling SodaStream directly violates this policy. So why do The Warehouse and it’s subsidiary, Noel Leeming, continue to sell these products linked to ethnic cleansing and genocide?”

Nasser said PSNA wanted the opportunity to speak with The Warehouse management directly about the stocking of SodaStream and looked forward to hearing from the business.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched on the Warehouse in downtown Auckland today to protest over the sale of products by the genocidal state of Israel. #AsiaPacificReport #TheWarehouse #sodastream #protestletter @BDSmovement @palestine @OnlinePalEng https://t.co/jLbwrcUnLB pic.twitter.com/qY2hMDlrk1

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) November 22, 2025

Earlier, at a rally in Te Komititanga Square several speakers about BDS policies included PSNA secretary Neil Scott and South African-born activist Achmat Esau, who explained how global sanctions had forced the brutal racist minority white regime in his homeland to abandon apartheid and bow to genuine democracy.

Esau recalled how in 1968 white South African Prime Minister John Vorster banned a tour by the England cricket team because it included a mixed-race player, Cape Town-born Basil D’Oliveira.

Boycott of apartheid South Africa
“After this incident, South Africa was excluded from international cricket until the release of political prisoner Nelson Mandela 22 years later.

“The anti-apartheid boycott of the South African regime from the 1960s until the 1980s was instrumental in bringing the racist apartheid regime to its knees,’ Esau said.

He said the success of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa was an indicator of how it could also succeed through the BDS movement against apartheid Israel.

“We must draw in the politicians and political parries to isolate, expose and oppose this evil Zionist regime that is guilty of state terrorism.”

“It is among the strongest language the New Zealand leader has used against Netanyahu and comes amid reports of intense aerial attacks on Gaza after Israel’s decision to launch a fresh military operation.”

These are the opening two paragraphs of The New Zealand Herald coverage by political reporter Jamie Ensor of Prime Minister Luxon’s public declaration that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lost the plot.

His comment was in the context of the Israeli government’ genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and their increasing persecution on the Israeli occupied West Bank (August 13): Netanyahu lost the plot says Luxon.

Spectrum of NZ government’s response to genocide
The New Zealand government’s response to this ethnic cleansing by genocide strategy in Gaza has ranged on a spectrum between pathetically weak to callous disregard.

Previously I’ve described this spectrum as between limp and deplorable; both have their own validity.

Consequently, the many New Zealanders who were appalled by this response might have been somewhat relieved by Luxon’s frankness.

Perhaps a long overdue change of direction towards humanitarianism? In the interests of confusion avoidance this is a rhetorical question.

However, there is a big problem with Luxon’s conclusion. Quite simply, he is wrong; there is a plot and it is based on a perverse biblical origin.

Why NZ Prime Minister Luxon got it wrong.        Video: RNZ

Just over three weeks from the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack across the border in the Israeli occupied former Palestinian land, Netanyahu made the following broadcast,  including on You Tube (October 30): Netanyahu’s biblical justification.

The ‘”war criminal” is explicit that there is a plot behind the ethnic cleansing through genocide strategy in Gaza. It is a dogmatically blood thirsty and historically inaccurate biblical centred plot.

In his own words:

“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible — and we do remember. And we are fighting — our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza, or around Gaza, and in all other regions in Israel, are joining this chain of Jewish heroes — a chain that started 3000 years ago, from Joshua until the heroes of the Six-Day War in 1948 [sic], the 1973 October War, and all other wars in this country.

“Our heroic troops — they have only one supreme goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country.”

Netanyahu was referring to the Book of 1 Samuel (Chapter 15, Verse 3) which states:

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Samuel was a prophet through who the Jewish God Yahweh commanded one Saul to conduct a total war of annihilation against the Amalekites.

The Amalekites were a biblical nation who, so biblical history goes, had attacked the Israelites during their “Exodus” from Egypt.

From apartheid to ethnic cleansing to recognition of Palestine
Previously I have published four posts on the Gaza genocide. The first (March 15) discussed it in the context of the apartheid in the South Africa of the past and apartheid as continuing defining feature in Israel since its creation in 1948: When apartheid met Zionism.

The second (May 28) discussed what underpins the Zionist support for ethnic cleansing through genocide: Reasons for supporting ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

This theme was followed through in the third (June 4) in the context of recognising the state of Palestine: Ethnic cleansing, genocide and Palestine recognition.

From Netanyahu to Zelda
In the context of the truer number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, my fourth previous post (July 2) was more directly closer to the theme of this post: How to biblically justify 400,000 Palestinian deaths.

I quoted a genocide supporter going by the name of “Zelda” justifying Israel’s war in similar vein to Bejamin Netanyahu:

“Gaza belongs to Israel! This is not just a political claim; it is a sacred, unbreakable decree from Almighty God Himself. If any government from around the world recognises Palestine, the United States needs to declare it part of the Axis of Evil

“The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness. No enemy, no terrorist, no foreign power can wrest it away. Those who reject this truth stand against God’s will and will face His judgment.

“If Palestinians want aid and peace, they must recognise Israel’s God-given right and leave Gaza forever. Only under God’s blessing can this land flourish, and all who defy His plan will be cast down.”

From Zelda to Alfred
On July 4, I received the following email from a reader called Alfred. In his words (be warned, at the very least this is a mind-boggling read):

“Accidentally I came across your blog on ‘How To Justify 400,000 Palestinian Deaths In Gaza: Ask ‘Zelda’ (Thursday, 3 July 2025). It was an interesting read.
With all due respect, I would like to place before you my ‘two cents’
Consider this history Mr Ian:
1) Before the modern state of Israel there was the British mandate, Not a Palestinian state.
2) Before the British mandate there was the Ottoman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
3) Before the Ottoman empire there was the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt, Not a Palestinian state.
4)Before the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt there was the Ayyubid dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. Godfrey of Bouillon conquered it in 1099.
5) Before the Ayyubid dynasty there was the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, Not a Palestinian state.
6) Before the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem there was the Fatimid caliphate, Not a Palestinian state.
7) Before the Fatimid caliphate there was the byzantine empire, Not a Palestinian state. 8. Before the Byzantine empire there was the Roman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
9) Before the Roman empire there was the Hasmonaean dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. 10) Before the Hasmonean dynasty there was the Seleucid empire, Not a Palestinian state.
11) Before the Seleucid empire there was the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon, Not a Palestinian state.
12) Before the empire of Alexander, the 3rd of Macedon there was the Persian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
13) Before the Persian empire there was the Babylonian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
14) Before the Babylonian empire there was the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, Not a Palestinian state.
15) Before the kingdoms of Israel and Judea there was the kingdom of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
16) Before the kingdom of Israel there was the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
17) Before the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel there was the individual state of Canaan, Not a Palestinian state.
In fact, in that corner of the earth there was everything but a Palestinian state!
Interesting history isn’t it?
Yes, I agree with Zelda’s statement that …
‘The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness.’
Mr Ian, if you go back to the Bible to read the Old Testament history, we see that God declares time and again that they (Israelites) are His chosen people, and He will bring them back to land of Israel. (Which has started to happen, as you observe world events). He also condemns His own chosen that if they turn away from Him, he will turn away His face. And that was what He did to the 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. They were wiped out. And the sort of genocide that we see today in Gaza, was prevalent in that time, when Gentile nations were even wiped out if they stood between the Israelites and the ‘promised land’ (Israel). Even the lives of His own chosen people were not valuable to Him, and was at stake (holocaust recently) when they turned away from Him, as those many of their enemies (or opponents)!

8000-year-old history is repeating itself now in Gaza, I believe.
Alfred

Mapping the success of Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The views of both Zelda and Alfred are not off the planet in terms of supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through genocide.

They are thoroughly consistent with Netanyahu’s well-thought out plot. Both are part of his “echo chamber”.

Who has really lost the plot?
The genocide towards Palestinians will not end in Gaza. All the evidence is that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are next.

Gaza the precursor to West Bank Palestinians.

There the ethnic cleansing is continuing in the form of persecution and repression, including imprisonment (hostage-taking by another name).

But it is escalating and, unless there is a change in direction, it is only a matter of time before persecution and repression morph into genocide.

Benjamin Netanyahu has not lost the plot. However, Christopher Luxon has. His criticism of Netanyahu is a flimsy attempt to avoid doing what a humanitarian government with a “plot” should do. This includes:

1. Recognising the Palestinian Territories as an official independent state;
2. Sanctioning Israeli Defence Force (IDF) visitors;
3. Close the Israel Embassy;
4. Impose trade and bilateral sanctions; and
5. Suspend Israel from the United Nations.

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

About 120 journalists, film makers, actors, media workers and academics have today called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and two senior cabinet ministers in an open letter to “act decisively” to protect Gaza journalists and a free press.

“These are principles to which New Zealand has always laid claim and which are now under grave threat in Gaza and the West Bank,” the signatories said in the letter about Israel’s war on Gaza.

The plea was addressed to Luxon, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith.

• READ MORE: RSF protests over more Gaza journalist killings – calls for emergency UN Security Council meeting
• The full text of the open letter from NZ media workers
• UK open letter on protecting journalists and defending truth in Gaza

Among the signatories are many well known media personalities such as filmmaker Gemma Gracewood, actor Lucy Lawless, film director Kim Webby, broadcaster Alison Mau, and comedian and documentarian Te Radar, and journalist Mereana Hond.

The letter also calls on the government to urgently condemn the killing of 13 Palestinian journalists and media workers this month as the death toll in the 22-month war has reached almost 63,000 — more than 18,000 of them children.

Global protests against the war and the forced starvation in the besieged enclave have been growing steadily over the past few weeks with more than 500,000 people taking part in Israel last week.

Commitment to safety
The letter urged Luxon and the government to:

1. Publicly reaffirm New Zealand’s commitment to the safety of journalists worldwide and make clear this protection applies in every conflict zone, including Gaza.

2. Reiterate the Media Freedom Coalition call for access for international press, ensuring safety, aid and crucial reporting are guaranteed; paired with New Zealand’s existing call for a ceasefire and safe humanitarian access corridors.

3. Back international action already underway, by publicly affirming support for International Criminal Court (ICC) investigations into attacks on journalists anywhere in the world, and by advocating that the United Nations adopt an international convention for the safety of journalists and media workers so that states parties meet their obligations under international law.

4. Formally confirm that New Zealand’s free press and human rights principles apply to Palestinian journalists and media workers, as they do to all others.

The letter said these measures were “consistent with New Zealand’s values, our history of independent foreign policy, and the rules-based international order we have always claimed to champion, and for which our very future as a country is reliant upon”.

It added: “They do not require us to choose sides and they uphold the principle that a free press and those who embody it must never be targeted for doing their jobs.”

Condemn the killings
The recent deaths brought the number of Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to at least 219 at the time of writing, said the letter.

“Many more are injured and missing. Many of those killed were clearly identified as members of the press. Some were killed alongside their families,” it said.

The letter called on the government to urgently condemn the killings of:

● Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, along with freelance journalist Mohammad Al-Khalidi and freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa, who were targeted and killed in, or as a result of, an August 10 airstrike on their tent in Gaza City.

● Correspondents Hussam al-Masri, Hatem Khaled, Mariam Abu Daqqa, Mohammad Salama, Ahmed Abu Azi and Moaz Abu Taha, all killed in a strike on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis on August 25.

● Journalist and academic Hassan Douhan, killed in Khan Younis on August 25.

“From Malcolm Ross to Margaret Moth, Peter Arnett to Mike McRoberts, New Zealand has a proud history of war correspondents. The same international laws that have protected them are meant to protect all journalists, wherever they work,” said the letter.

“Today, those protections are being violated with impunity.

“Our media colleagues are being murdered, and we have a duty to speak up.”

As journalists, editors, producers, writers, documentary-makers, media workers and storytellers, said the letter, “we believe in the essential role of a free press.

“These killings are in violation of international rules-based order, including humanitarian law, and are intended to erase witnesses to the truth itself. These media professionals are doing their jobs under extremely challenging conditions, and are civilians worthy of protection under human rights laws.

“This is not only a matter of professional solidarity, this is a matter of principle. Journalists are civilians. They are witnesses to history. They deserve the same protection anywhere in the world.”

“We urge you to lead, knowing you have the voices of Aotearoa’s storytellers and history-keepers standing with you.”

The organiser of the letter, Gemma Gracewood, a member of Women in Film and Television, said the letter had been “open for all Aotearoa media professionals to sign in solidarity with our international colleagues”.

She added: “Our mahi depends upon these freedoms and protections.

COMMENTARY: By Sara Qudah

The New Zealand Green Party co-leader suspended over criticising government MPs over a “spineless” stance over Gaza has called for action.

Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said in an interview with Al Jazeera that public pressure was mounting on governments to end the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The politician continues to push for recognition of Palestinian statehood and sanctions on Israel, despite being ejected from New Zealand’s Parliament for a week for her remarks.

• WATCH: New Zealand MP suspended over Gaza calls for action
• Israel attacks displacement shelters to force Palestinians to southern Gaza
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

She refused to apologise in the House last week, telling Al Jazeera that New Zealand must “stand on the right side of history”.

“We in Aotearoa New Zealand have a long proud history of standing typically on the right side of things, whether that be our anti-nuclear stance or our stance against apartheid in South Africa,” she said.

“So it really is a question for this current government whether they are now willing to do the right thing and stand on the right side of history, and that was precisely the point that we were making last week in Parliament.”

• Watch a “shorts” clip from her interview with Al Jazeera.

Palestinian journalists have long known Gaza to be the most dangerous place on earth for media workers, but Israel’s attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City last week has left many reeling from shock and fear, reports Al Jazeera.

Four Al Jazeera staff members were among the seven people killed in an Israeli drone strike outside al-Shifa Hospital on August 10.

The Israeli military admitted to deliberately targeting the tent after making unsubstantiated accusations that one of those killed, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, was a member of Hamas.

• READ MORE:  Pro-Palestinian protests across NZ call on government to sanction Israel
• Luxon ‘grow a spine’ chants as big rallies call for NZ to recognise Palestine state
• Nick Rockell: Supporting Palestine
• Gordon Campbell: The lack of spine in New Zealand’s foreign policy on Gaza
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed at least 238 media workers since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. This toll is higher than that of World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan and the Yugoslavia wars combined.

Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud said in a video report about the plight of journalists this week that  “press vests and helmets, once considered a shield, now feel like a target.”

“The fear is constant — and justified,” Mahmoud said. “Every assignment is accompanied by the same unspoken question: Will [I] make it back alive?”

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have been among several organisations denouncing Israel’s longstanding pattern of accusing journalists of being “terrorists” without credible proof.

Smears no coincidence
“It is no coincidence that the smears against al-Sharif — who has reported night and day for Al Jazeera since the start of the war — surfaced every time he reported on a major development in the war, most recently the starvation brought about by Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient aid into the territory,” CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said in the aftermath of Israel’s attack.

In light of Israel’s systematic targeting of journalists, media workers in Gaza are forced to make difficult choices.

Palestinian reporter Sally Thabet told Al Jazeera: “As a mother and a journalist, I go through this mental dissonance almost daily, whether to go to work or stay with my daughters and being afraid of the random shelling of the Israeli occupation army.”

Across the street from the ruins of the School of Media Studies at al-Quds Open University in Gaza City, where he used to teach, Hussein Saad has been recovering from an injury he sustained while running to safety.

“The deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists has a strong effect on the disappearance of the Palestinian story and the disappearance of the media narrative,” he said.

In less than 2 years, we lost over 250 Journalists

These are their names and faces. Please do not forget them pic.twitter.com/kGyta8ZFmj

— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) August 18, 2025

Saad argued the Gaza Strip was witnessing “the disappearance of the truth”.

While journalists report on mass killings, human suffering and starvation, they also cope with their own losses and deprivation. Photographer and correspondent Amer al-Sultan said hunger was a major challenge.

“I used to go to work, and when I didn’t find anything to eat, I would just drink water,” he said.

Palestinian journalists under fire.             Video: Al Jazeera

‘We are all . . . confused’
“I did this for two days. I had to live for two or three days on water. This is one of the most difficult challenges we face amid this war against our people — starvation.”

Journalist and film director Hassan Abu Dan said reporters “live in conditions that are more difficult than the mind can imagine.”

“You live in a tent. You drink water that is not good for drinking. You eat unhealthy food …

“We are all, as journalists, confused. There is a part of our lives that has been ruined and gone far away,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud said that despite the psychological trauma and the personal risks, Palestinian journalists continue to do their jobs, “driven by a belief that documenting the truth is not just a profession, but a duty to their people and history”.

After years of sitting on the fence and looking the other way, the Australian media is today reckoning with the fact that showing basic sympathy towards the starving and war-weary people of Gaza is actually a very mainstream sentiment.

This explosive moment of self-reflection has rocked newsrooms all over the country, from the talk back radio stations to the increasingly gun-shy ABC.

This comes as the tens of thousands of everyday Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in solidarity in protest against the abhorrent war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

• READ MORE: More satire about Israel’s horrendous war on Gaza

This existential media feeling of extreme detachment from the general public is only amplified by the undeniable fact this crowd actually isn’t even that representative of the actual number of people who are horrified by the events taking place on the Gaza Strip — as the extreme weather conditions clearly shrank the overall number of people who would have otherwise attended this record-breaking protest.

The crowd that did make it there is still one of the biggest to ever march the Harbour Bridge, many who braved heavy winds and rain to join the chants “ceasefire now” and “free Palestine”.

With a large number of high-profile household names such as Julian Assange and former NSW Premier Bob Carr making their presence known, it’s now very difficult for the media to now write these protesters off as “terrorist sympathisers”.

It’s also clear that the plight of the Palestinians is something that ripples far beyond the university lawns and instagram timelines that have since been dismissed as the musings of “detached inner-city elites” and “brazen antisemites”.

Sydney’s “Rainy Sunday” march also comes as a blow to both the Federal and State Labor governments, which have worked tirelessly to squash these protests using police powers and anti-free speech laws.

The Betoota Advocate is an Australian satirical news website that takes its name from the deserted regional western Queensland town of Betoota but is actually published in Sydney.

Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on the Israeli arms and surveillance industry, says Australian protesters are “outraged” not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also by the Australian government’s “complicity”.

Loewenstein, who also spoke at the rally, told Al Jazeera that Australia has, for many years, including since the start of the war, been part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jets that Israel has been using in attacking the besieged enclave.

“A lot of Australians are aware of this,” he said. “We are deeply complicit, and people are angry that their government is doing little more than talk at this point.”

• READ MORE: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange joins Sydney Gaza humanitarian protest as thousands cross bridge
• NZ ‘lagging behind’ world by failing to recognise Palestinian statehood, says former PM Helen Clark
• What would New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood mean?
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports
• Other reports with Antony Loewenstein

Asked about opinions within Israel, Loewenstein, who is an Australian-German and Jewish, condemned what he called a prevailing climate of “genocide mania” and also criticised the role of the mainstream media in not reporting accurate coverage of the reality in Gaza.

Organisers of the Palestine Action Group Sydney-led march across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge have said at least 100,000 people — and perhaps as many as 300,000 — took part in the biggest pro-Palestinian held in Australia. Police say more than 90,000.

Mehreen Faruqi, the New South Wales senator for the left-wing Greens party, addressed the crowd gathered at central Sydney’s Lang Park before the march, calling for the “harshest sanctions on Israel”, accusing its forces of “massacring” Palestinians.

At least 175 people, including 93 children, have died of starvation and malnutrition across the enclave since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, according to latest Gaza Health Ministry figures.

The horrifying images of Gazans being deliberately starved is adding to the pressure on Western governments which have been enthusiastic supporters of Israel’s genocide, reports the Sydney-based Green-Left magazine.

Former US President Barack Obama has started to push for an end to Israel’s military operations. Sections of Israeli society, including five human rights organisations, now agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Media corporations, such as BBC, AFP, AP and Reuters, which have been complicit in manufacturing consent for “Israel has a right to defend itself” line, are now condemning the killing of Palestinian journalists.

These shifts reflect the scale of the horror, but also the success of the global Palestine solidarity movement.

It is undermining support for Israel — a factor which is starting to weigh on Western governments. Only 32% of Americans approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza, according to a new Gallup poll.

With the exception of Ireland and Spain, Western governments have refused to describe Israel’s war as an act of genocide.

.@antloewenstein on the huge pro Palestinian Sydney Harbour bridge march and what it tells us about where people around the world are at. He goes on to draw parallels with the attitude towards apartheid South Africa in the 1980s and notes that that regime ended in 1994. pic.twitter.com/jvCsr8ZgOV

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) August 3, 2025

While the Israeli government claims it is backing “clans” in Gaza to counter the resistance movement Hamas, the groups it supports more closely resemble criminal gangs, says a British-based security specialist.

Dr Rob Geist Pinfold, international security lecturer at King’s College London, says: “These are criminal gangs. Many were in prison before October 7 for drug offences, not for being political dissidents.

“They rob Palestinians on the streets. They feed off and contribute to the chaos and disorder,” he told Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: Bloodshed at GHF-run Gaza aid sites ‘a great sin’, says former top UN official
• NZ ‘lagging behind’ world by failing to recognise Palestinian statehood, says former PM Helen Clark
• What would New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood mean?
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

“Many of these people, like Yasser Abu Shabab, are outcasts from their clans. Israel has basically chosen the least popular people in Gaza to arm and equip.

“It’s not trying to create a viable political alternative to Hamas, it’s identifying people who thrive off chaos and encouraging them to further that chaos.”

Dr Pinfold said Israel appeared to be intentionally sowing chaos in Gaza to make the territory “unlivable”.

“It used to look like this chaos in Gaza was the product of Israel not having a day-after plan,” he said. “But I think it is now evident that this chaos is . . .  part of the day-after plan, which is a grander strategy to make Gaza unlivable in the long term.”

Arming criminal gangs
To accomplish this, Israel is arming the criminal gangs that “thrive off chaos” and funnelling the little aid coming in through the dysfunctional and violence-ridden GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] system.

From Israel’s perspective, “I actually think this is working very well”, he said, “because its undeclared aims are to create chaos and ensure Gaza becomes unlivable”.

“Unfortunately, so far, that is proving to be a very successful strategy.”

Earlier this week it was announced that the death toll had topped 60,430 people (not including the tens of thousands buried under the rubble, or missing and believed dead). This number of dead included more than 18,000 children.

Also, 148,722 wounded were wounded.

Already there have been 162 deaths from starvation in Gaza, 92 of them children and the predictions are dire.

Also, more than 1300 Palestinians have been killed near the GHF aid depots.

A former senior UN aid official has condemned the bloodshed at the notorious US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid food depots, describing the distribition system as having turned into a “catastrophe”.

The number of aid seekers killed continues to climb daily beyond 1000.

Martin Griffiths, director of Mediation Group International and the former Under Secretary General of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, said: “I think when many of us saw the first plans of the GHF to launch this operation in Gaza, we were immediately appalled by the way they were proposing to manage it.”

• READ MORE: US envoy visits Gaza as Israeli forces kill starving Palestinians
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• What would New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood mean?
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“It was clearly militarised. They’d have their own security contractors,” he told Al Jazeera.

“They’d have [Israeli military] camps placed right beside them. We know now that they are, in fact, under instructions by [the Israeli military].

“All of this is a crime. All of this is a deep betrayal of humanitarian values.

“But what I at least did not sufficiently anticipate was the killing and was the absolutely critical result of this operation, this sole humanitarian operation allowed by Israel in Gaza,” Griffiths added.

“The 1000 killed are an incredible statistic. I had no idea it would go that high and it’s going on daily. It’s not stopping.

“I think it’s a catastrophe more than a disappointment,” he said. “I think it’s a great sin. I think it’s a great crime.”

However, he acknowledged it was still an “important form of witness”.

“I’m glad that they’re going,” Griffiths said.

“Maybe they will see things that are unexpected. I can’t imagine because we’ve seen so much. But I don’t see it leading to a major change.

“If I was one of the two million Gazans starving to death, this is a day I would like to go to an aid distribution point,” Griffiths added.

“There’s slightly less risk probably than any other day.”

New Zealand is lagging behind the rest of the world through its failure to recognise Palestinian statehood, says Former Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Canada yesterday became the latest country to announce it would formally recognise the state of Palestine when world leaders met at the UN General Assembly in September.

It follows recent similar commitments from the France and the United Kingdom.

• READ MORE: What would New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood mean?
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon suggested the discussion was a distraction and said the immediate focus should be on getting humanitarian aid into Gaza.

But, speaking to RNZ Midday Report, Clark said New Zealand needed to come on board.

“We are watching a catastrophe unfold in Gaza. We’re watching starvation. We’re watching famine conditions for many. Many are using the word genocide,” she said.

“If New Zealand can’t act in these circumstances, when can it act?”

Elders call for recognition
“The Elders, a group of world leaders of which Clark is a part, last month issued a call for countries to recognise the state of Palestine, calling it the “beginning, not the end of a political pathway towards lasting peace”.

Clark said the government seemed to be trying avoid the ire of the United States by waiting until the peace process was well underway or nearing its end.

“That is no longer tenable,” she said.

“New Zealand really is lagging behind.”

Even before the recent commitments from France, Canada and the UK, 147 of the UN’s 193 member states had recognised the Palestinian state.

Clark said the hope was that the series of recognitions from major Western states would first shift the US position and then Israel’s.

“When the US moves, Israel eventually jumps because it owes so much to the United States for the support, financial, military and otherwise,” she said.

“At some point, Israel has to smell the coffee.”

Surprised over Peters
Clark said she was “a little surprised” that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had not been more forward-leaning given he historically had strongly advocated New Zealand’s even-handed position.

On Wednesday, New Zealand signed a joint statement with 14 other countries expressing a willingness to recognise the State of Palestine as a necessary step towards a two-state solution.

However, later speaking in Parliament, Peters said that was conditional on first seeing progress from Palestine, including representative governance, commitment to non-violence, and security guarantees for Israel.

“If we are to recognise the state of Palestine, New Zealand wants to know that what we are recognising is a legitimate, representative, viable, political entity,” Peters told MPs.

Peters also agreed with a contribution from ACT’s Simon Court that recognising the state of Palestine could be viewed as “a reward [to Hamas] for acts of terrorism” if it was done before Hamas had returned hostages or laid down arms.

Luxon earlier told RNZ New Zealand had long supported the eventual recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that the immediate focus should be on getting aid into Gaza rather than “fragmenting and talking about all sorts of other things that are distractions”.

“We need to put the pressure on Israel to get humanitarian assistance unfettered, at scale, at volume, into Gaza,” he told RNZ.

“You can talk about a whole bunch of other things, but for right now, the world needs to focus.”

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

Protesters demonstrated outside several major US media outlets in Washington this week condemning their coverage of the genocide in Gaza, claiming they were to blame over misinformation and the worsening catastrophe.

Banging pots and pans to spotlight the starvation crisis, they accused the media of “complicity in genocide”.

Banners and placards proclaimed “Stop media complicity in genocide” and “US media manufactures consent for Israel’s crimes”, as the protesters demonstrated outside media offices that included NBC News and Fox News.

• READ MORE: With the UK and France moving toward recognising Palestine, will Australia now follow suit?
• ‘Battle for the truth’: Pro-Israel bias inside UK newsrooms revealed
• Israeli social media campaign denies there is starvation in Gaza as death toll mounts
• More Israeli war on Gaza reports

But the irony was that while the protests appeared to have been ignored or overlooked by national media in the US – and certainly in New Zealand, they were strongly reported by at least one global news agency, Turkey’s Anadolu Agensi.

The protests echoed a series of statements by various news media organisations, such as Agence France-Presse concerned about the safety of their journalists from both under fire and the risk of starvation, and media freedom advocacy groups.

The Doha-based global television news network Al Jazeera, that has been producing arguably the best and most honest news coverage of Gaza and the occupied West Bank – which earned it being banned last year by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority from reporting inside their territory — called for global action to protect Gaza’s journalists.

It said in a statement that Isael’s forced starvation of the besieged enclave that threatened Gaza’s entire population, including those “risking their lives to shed light on Israel’s atrocities”.

At least six Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023.

Death toll passes 60,000
On Tuesday this week, the world noted a grim milestone in Gaza, with the Health Ministry announcing that the death toll had surpassed 60,000 (this does not include the tens of thousands of people buried under the rubble and missing, presumed dead).

Put in perspective, that is one in every 36 people in Gaza killed, and more than 90 people on average slaughtered every day.

Also, 1157 people have been killed near the notorious Israel and US-backed Gaza “Humanitarian” Foundation food depots condemned as “death traps”, while 154 people have died from starvation, 89 of them children with the numbers rising.

Israel’s genocide – ‘Everyone in Gaza is starving’       Video: Al Jazeera

An episode of the weekly media watch programme, The Listening Post, took up the theme as well, criticising the failure of many high profile Western news services from adequately reporting the horror of Israel’s devastating and cruel policies.

“When trying to stave off starvation becomes part of the job. What it means to be a Palestinian journalist in Gaza. The stories they are determined to tell, the incredible risks they are prepared to take,” said host Richard Gizbert when introducing the programme. He wasted no time firing a few caustic shots.

“What is unfolding in Gaza now has the appearance of a final solution, orchestrated by Israel and the United States, Israel’s other ally: The transformation of parts of the Gaza strip into starvation and concentration camps, a place where famine has been turned into a weapon of war,” he said.

“Reporting on the reality of this genocide can amount to a death sentence. Palestinian journalists can easily identify with the suffering they are documenting since they too are going hungry.

“They have been targeted because for [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, like other genocidal leaders before him, starving a population is much easier to do when no one is watching.

Perpetrator ‘left out’
“Across Western mainstream media, news outlets have been unable to ignore this story of mass starvation in Gaza. But in report after report, they have made a habit of leaving out a key detail – naming the perpetrators of the famine, Israel.

“The missing actors, the sanitised language, the use of the passive grammatical voice, it is all part of the playbook for far too many international news outlets and that is exactly what the few Palestinian journalists still standing are out to tell the world.”

Gizbert explained that “journalists in Gaza already have the world’s toughest assignment”:
“Job one for almost 22 months now has been survival; job two, telling heartbreaking stories; documenting a genocide while under fire.”

Like, for example, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Anas al-Sharif who was reporting live from outside Al Shifa medical complex when a woman behind him collapsed at the hospital’s gate.

Al-Sharif, who had reported on the genocide of his own people for more than 650 days without rest or complaint, through Israeli occupation airstrikes, drone attacks, and countless “scenes resembling hell”, suddenly could not take it anymore.

He broke down: “People are falling to the ground from the severity of hunger,” al-Sharif said through his tears. “They need one sip of water. They need one loaf of bread.”

Al-Sharif has also been threatened by the Israeli military, accusing him of being a “Hamas militant”, an accusation strongly denied by Al Jazeera, denouncing what it called Tel Aviv’s “campaign of incitement” against its reporters in the Gaza Strip.

Discredited for bias
Many Western mainstream media – including BBC, CNN, Sky, ITN, and Australia’s public broadcaster ABC — have been repeatedly discredited for their “pro-Israel bias” by scores of journalists who have acted as whistleblowers about the actions of their own news organisations.

According to a Declassified UK report, for example, the journalists working for a range of outlets from across the political spectrum have “painted a consistent picture of the obstacles faced by reporters who want to humanise Palestinians or scrutinise Israeli government narratives”. The US media is also under attack and has been putting up a lame defence.

Last week, more than 100 aid groups warned of “mass starvation” throughout Gaza — predictably denied by Israeli government in the face of overwhelming evidence — with their staff severely impacted by shortages and serious implications for journalists already being threatened with targeting by the Israeli military.

Israel faces growing global pressure over the enclave’s dire humanitarian crisis, where more than two million people have endured 22 months of war. UN Security Council member France has led a group of countries announcing that they plan to recognise the Palestinian state at the UN in September, with United Kingdom, Canada, Malta and Finland among those following with the total number now almost 150 of the 193 UN member states.

A statement with 111 signatories, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam, warned that “our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away”. The groups called for an immediate negotiated ceasefire, the opening of all land crossings and the free flow of aid through UN-led mechanisms.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reported from Amman that the Israeli government had accused the UK of supporting the establishment of a “jihadi” state and of derailing efforts to reach a ceasefire.

“But really,” she said, “the Israeli media, for example, is describing this as a political tsunami, a realisation of how significant the tide is, and how improbable it is to turn it back to countries withholding recognition because Israel said it doesn’t want it.”

Calling for sanctions
She also noted how 31 high-profile Israelis, including the former speaker of the Knesset, a former attorney general, and several recipients of Israel’s highest cultural award, were calling on world governments to impose crippling sanctions on Israel to stop the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and their expulsion

“This was taboo just a few days ago and has never really been done before, certainly not at this level of prominence of the signatories,” Odeh added.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) added its voice to the appeal by aid agencies to call for an end to Israel’s starvation of journalists and other civilians in Gaza, backing the plea for states to “save lives before there are none left to save.”

In a statement on its website, the CPJ accused Israel of “starving journalists into silence”.

“Israel is starving Gazan journalists into silence. They are not just reporters, they are frontline witnesses, abandoned as international media were pulled out and denied entry,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.

“The world must act now: protect them, feed them, and allow them to recover while other journalists step in to help report. Our response to their courageous 650 plus-days of war reporting cannot simply be to let them starve to death.”

‘Bearing witness’ videos
Also, last week the CPJ launched a “bearing witness” series of videos from Gaza giving voice to the challenges the journalists have been facing. In the first video, Moath al Kahlout described how his cousin had been shot dead while awaiting humanitarian aid.

As Israel partially eased its 11-week total blockade of Gaza that began in May, CPJ published the testimony of six journalists who described how “starvation, dizziness, brain fog, and sickness” had threatened their ability to report.

Among highlights cited by the CPJ:
• On June 20, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif — the journalist cited earlier in this article — posted online: “I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion, and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment . . .  Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”
• Sally Thabet, correspondent for Al-Kofiya satellite channel, told CPJ that she fainted consciousness after doing a live broadcast on July 20 because she had not eaten all day. She regained consciousness in Al-Shifa hospital, where doctors gave her an intravenous drip for rehydration and nutrition. In an online video, she described how she and her three daughters were starving.
• Another Palestinian journalist, Shuruq As’ad said Thabet had been the third journalist to collapse on air from starvation that week, and posted a photograph of Thabet with the drip in her hand.
• During a live broadcast on July 20, Al-Araby TV correspondent Saleh Al-Natour said: “We have no choice but to write and speak; otherwise, we will all die.”

Little of this horrendous state of affairs has made it onto the pages of newspapers, websites of the television screens in the New Zealand mainstream media which seems to have a pro-Israel slant and rarely interviews Palestinian journalists or analysts for balance.

HISTORY: By Scott Hamilton

The man in the photo walks down the deserted street, over rubble. On both sides of the street buildings have lost their roofs and walls. A pockmarked minaret totters over the wrecked townscape. The photo is captioned “Ruins of Gaza at the Time of the Great Attack”.

The photo I’m describing wasn’t taken in 2025, but in 1917. Today Gaza is being destroyed by the armies of Israel and Hamas. In 1917 the British and Ottoman empires wrecked the city. New Zealanders played an important role in the destruction.

In 1917 most Gazans lived in village-suburbs interspersed with gardens and orchards. Their houses were made with mud bricks. The highest building in their town was the Great Mosque, whose foundations dated from the 7th century.

• READ MORE: Death toll in Israel’s war on Gaza surpasses 60,000
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The Ottomans had made Gaza into a fortress, and had connected it by rail and road to a series of redoubts further east. These guarded the southern border of the province of Palestine, and were manned by German and Austrian as well as Ottoman troops.

Britain’s new prime minister David Lloyd George was desperate to capture Palestine, in the hope a victory there would shift public attention from the disaster on the western front, where tens of thousands of Britons had died fighting over mud.

The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which crossed the Sinai desert to attack Gaza and Palestine, was made up of British, Anzacs, South Africans, West Indians, a volunteer Jewish Legion and Indians.

The Anzac Mounted Division was an essential part of the EEF. Its men rode to battles but fought on foot. Many of them had learned to ride on the farms of their homelands. Some were survivors of Gallipoli, where they had battled without their horses; others had arrived in Egypt after that catastrophe.

Farmland confiscated
Gaza’s suffering began before the British attack. Its defenders confiscated farmland for trenches, and demolished houses to give artillerymen better sight lines. The Great Mosque was seized and turned into an ammunition dump.

It took the British empire three battles to capture Gaza. A photo taken before the second assault shows New Zealanders trying on gas masks. It is captioned “Gaza Beauty Show”. The attackers fired 4000 canisters of asphyxiating gas towards the city. No Gazan had a gas mask.

Before the final assault the city was bombarded for four days by naval guns, artillery and planes. When they finally captured Gaza, the New Zealanders found it empty. Almost the entire population had fled the bombardment; the Ottomans had followed them.

On the day its troops entered Gaza the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which committed it to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1917, though, Jews made up less than a tenth of Palestine’s population.

And Britain had made contradictory promises to Arabs, promising them independence if they rose up against Ottoman rule, and funding an Arab army that had advanced to the edge of Palestine.

There was still another group that wanted Palestine. When the Auckland Mounted Rifles had passed the stone pillar that marked the border between Sinai and Palestine, Henry Mackesy had stopped his men, and prayed to thank god for delivering the “Holy Land” to Britain.

Like New Zealand’s wartime prime minister William Massey, Mackesy was a British Israelite, who believed that Anglo-Saxons were a lost tribe of Israel, and that the British empire was god’s kingdom on earth. For Mackesy and many other Anzacs, Palestine belonged rightfully to Britons, not Jews or Arabs.

Conquerors warned
So many Anzacs wanted to settle in Palestine that Kia ora Coo-ee, their official magazine, had to run an article warning them that conquerors could not legally take locals’ land.

For most Anzacs, the inhabitants of Palestine — the Arabs of the villages and towns, the nomadic Bedouin of the deserts, the small and ancient Jewish communities in towns like Jerusalem — were at best an inconvenience, and at worst a reminder of the decadence and evil condemned in the Old Testament.

New Zealander Alexander McNeur summed up a widespread feeling when he wrote “no wonder the old inhabitants of Palestine had to be destroyed . . .  many a chap is disgusted by the people”. (The only Palestinians the Anzacs really liked were the settlers in Zionist colonies, who looked, spoke and acted like Europeans.)

The Anzacs complained about the dirtiness and dishonesty of Palestinians. Many complained they had been cheated by Arab or Jewish traders; others said that Bedouins dug up soldiers’ graves and plundered them.

But the Anzacs themselves had a reputation for taking whatever they could from Palestinians, as well as from Ottoman soldiers. In 1988, Australian veteran Ted O’Brien gave an interview in which he confessed to killing a wounded Ottoman so that he could steal the man’s possessions. Robbing the dead was routine, O’Brien said.

O’Brien added that he and his comrades would immediately kill any Bedouins they found in the desert. Edwin McKay, a member of the Otago section of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, said that theft was a “two-way thing”, with Anzacs and Palestinians preying on each other.

After its defeat of Gaza the Ottoman army began to disintegrate, but as the EEF advanced through Palestine and into Jordan and Syria, it did not always bring peace. Arabs who fought alongside the British imperial forces, hoping for independence, became possessive about the areas they had captured.

Pushed off land
Ottoman deserters became bandits. Bedouins who had been pushed off their land by war raided EEF camps in search of loot. The Jewish Legion clashed with Arabs so often that the EEF commander General Allenby asked the War Office not to send him any more Jews.

The Anzacs’ contempt towards Arabs grew even greater after a calamitous attempt to capture Amman near the end of the war. Rain, cold and tougher-than-expected Ottoman resistance sent the mounted riflemen away with heavy losses.

As they rode towards safety, the Wellington Mounted Rifles entered Ain es Sir, a small village set amid hills and ravines. Villagers opened fire from houses and from nearby ledges, and seven Wellingtonians died. The Anzacs counterattacked Ain es Sir ferociously, shelling the village and killing 38 of its inhabitants. They took no prisoners.

The attack on Amman had made been made in partnership with an Arab force, and the Anzacs seem to have believed that the ambush at Ain es Sir was an act of treachery by their supposed allies.

They do not seem to have known, or cared, that Ain es Sir was not an Arab village. Its inhabitants were Circassians, a Caucasian group that migrated to the Middle East centuries ago.

On the night of December 10, more than a month after the end of the war, the Anzacs’ hatred of Arabs erupted. Hundreds of them were camped outside a village named Surafend, waiting impatiently for a ship to take them home. On the night of December 9 a man entered the tent of a New Zealand soldier named Leslie Lowry. Lowry had been using his kitbag as a pillow. The intruder grabbed it and fled.

Lowry chased the thief across the dunes that separated the Anzac camp from Surafend. The thief turned and fired a pistol. Lowry died three hours later. The next morning Anzacs found Lowry’s blood in the sand. Footprints led from the stain towards Surafend.

Surafend attacked
On December 10, up to 200 Anzacs and a few Scots smashed through the fence that surrounded Surafend. They beat and stabbed scores of male inhabitants of the village, leaving between 40 and 120 dead and many more wounded, then set fire to the Arabs’ homes.

A nearby Bedouin encampment was also set ablaze. Ted O’Brien was one of the raiders. He and his comrades had “done their blocks”. They “all went for” the Arabs with “the bayonet”. “It was a godawful thing,” O’Brien remembered.

New Zealander Ted Andrews explained that the massacre was not just about Lowry’s murder. “The treacherous ambush at Ain es Sir was still fresh in the minds of New Zealand troops,” he wrote, ignoring the fact that the men of Surafend had nothing to do with that village.

Andrews said that victims at Surafend were castrated. Some historians have dismissed this claim, but American scholar Edward Woodfin has shown that castration and humiliation of the dead were being practised in 1918 by the Indian members of the Egypt Expeditionary Force, with whom the Anzacs were friendly.

Most historians say that children, women and old men were removed from Surafend before the slaughter, but they ignore the testimony of Australian John Doran, who was at the Anzacs’ medical station the night of the massacre. Doran said that women and children appeared there with burns and bullet wounds.

The Jewish soldier Roman Freulich said that Australians had fired a machine gun at the Bedouin encampment on the night of December 10. Freulich also reported that the members of the Jewish Legion were excited by the massacre — they hated Arabs even more than the Anzacs — and that they used what he called “the Australian method” on a group of Bedouin civilians shortly after. Freulich said that he and his comrades sealed off a Bedouin camp and stabbed the men with bayonets.

No one prosecuted
Although the Anzacs’ commander General Allenby condemned the attackers, calling them “cowards and murderers”, no one was ever prosecuted for the massacre at Surafend. In 2009, the New Zealand television programme Sunday ran a story on the massacre.

Sunday’s team visited the site of Surafend, which has now been covered by an Israeli town, interviewed an old man who remembered the massacre, and asked why New Zealand had never apologised for the crime. The question is just as pertinent now.

When we look back from 2025 to the destruction of Gaza and the rest of the Palestine campaign, we can see that New Zealand troops played a part in setting in motion the cycle of violence that continues today in Palestine and Israel.

Scott Hamilton is the author of two great modern works of sociology and place, Ghost South Road (Titus Books, 2018), and Searching for Ata’a (Bridget Williams, 2017). He writes the blog Reading the Maps and is currently working on a book about sorcery and sorcery-related violence in Melanesia as part of his ongoing exploration of Pasifika arts and colonial Pākehā histories. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished with the author’s permission.

The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji has sharply criticised the Fiji government’s stance over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, saying it “starkly contrasts” with the United Nations and international community’s condemnation as a violation of international law and an impediment to peace.

In a statement today, the NGO Coalition said that the way the government was responding to the genocide and war crimes in Gaza would set a precedent for how it would deal with crises and conflict in future.

It would be a marker for human rights responses both at home and the rest of the world.

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“We are now seeing whether our country will be a force that works to uphold human rights and international law, or one that tramples on them whenever convenient,” the statement said.

“Fiji’s position on the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestinians starkly contrasts with the values of justice, freedom, and international law that the Fijian people hold dear.

“The genocide and colonial occupation have been widely recognised by the international community, including the United Nations, as a violation of international law and an impediment to peace and the self-determination of the Palestinian people.”

Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would formally recognise the state of Palestine — the first of G7 countries to do so — at the UN general Assembly in September.

142 countries recognise Palestine
At least 142 countries out of the 193 members of the UN currently recognise or plan to recognise a Palestinian state, including European Union members Norway, Ireland, Spain and Slovenia.

However, several powerful Western countries have refused to do so, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

At the UN this week, Saudi Arabia and France opened a three-day conference with the goal of recognising Palestinian statehood as part of a peaceful settlement to end the war in Gaza.

Last year, Fiji’s coalition government submitted a written statement in support of the Israeli genocidal occupation of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, noted the NGO coalition.

Last month, Fiji’s coalition government again voted against a UN General Assembly resolution that demanded an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Also recently, the Fiji government approved the allocation of $1.12 million to establish an embassy “in the genocidal terror state of Israel as Fijians grapple with urgent issues, including poverty, violence against women and girls, deteriorating water and health infrastructure, drug use, high rates of HIV, poor educational outcomes, climate change, and unfair wages for workers”.

Met with ‘indifference’
The NGO coalition said that it had made repeated requests to the Fiji government to “do the bare minimum and enforce the basic tenets of international law on Israel”.

“We have been calling upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes,” the statement said.

“We campaigned, we lobbied, we engaged, and we explained. We showed the evidence, pointed to the law, and asked our leaders to do the right thing.

“We’ve been met with nothing but indifference.”

Instead, said the NGO statement, Fiji leaders had met with Israeli government representatives and declared support for a country “committing the most heinous crimes” recognised in international law.

“Fijian leaders and the Fiji government should not be supporting Israel or setting up an embassy in Israel while Israel continues to bomb refugee tents, kill journalists and medics, and block the delivery of humanitarian aid to a population under relentless siege.

“No politician in Fiji can claim ignorance of what is happening.”

62,000 Palestinians killed
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war on Gaza, most of them women and children.

“Many more have been maimed, traumatised, and displaced. Starvation is being used by Israel as weapon to kill babies and children.

“Hospitals, churches, mosques,, refugee camps, schools, universities, residential neighbourhoods, water and food facilities have been destroyed.

“History will judge how we respond as Fijians to this moment.

“Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of always standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.”

Members of the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights are Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (chair), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, femLINKpacific, Social Empowerment and Education Programme, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji.

Also, Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.

The NGO coalition said it stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.

“Silence is not an option,” it added.

Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network said it supported this NGO coalition statement.

INTERVIEW: By Sebastian Shehadi

The Handala, a 1968 Norwegian trawler repurposed by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), set sail for Gaza from southern Italy on July 20, carrying around 21 people and a cargo of food, medical kits, baby formula, water desalination units and more.

The ship is named after the iconic Palestinian cartoon figure, Handala, who symbolises Palestinian identity, resilience and the ongoing struggle against displacement and occupation.

Just hours before departure, the crew uncovered deliberate sabotage: a rope tightly bound around the propeller and a sulfuric acid swap mistaken for water, leading to chemical burns in two people.

• READ MORE: Israeli forces storm Gaza-bound aid ship Handala in international waters
• Gaza condemns Israeli ‘piracy’ over storming of Handala aid ship
• Other reports on New Zealand participation on past Gaza Freedom Flotilla missions at Kia Ora Gaza

Despite this alarming start, the mission continued, echoing the defiance of past flotilla efforts such as the interception of the Madleen in June and the Israeli drone strike on the Conscience in May.

However, contact with the vessel was reported lost on July 24, with coalition officials warning that communications have been jammed and drones have been seen near the ship, raising concerns about interception or further hostile action.

The mission resumed following the brief two-hour communications blackout. “Connection has now been re-established. ‘Handala’ is continuing its mission and is currently less than 349 nautical miles from Gaza,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) announced on Telegram on July 25.

Then on Saturday, the Israeli military attacked the ship and violently detained and “abducted” the entire crew and issued a statement saying they were “safe” and on their way to Israel.

‘Handala’ was illegally boarded by Israel military in international waters, around 40 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza.

Before interception the 21 crew made this statement: if attacked they will join the global hunger strike for Gaza.

Call your governments now and hold them… pic.twitter.com/QbqUaduXG1

— Freedom Flotilla Coalition (@GazaFFlotilla) July 27, 2025

The New Arab spoke to one of Handala’s crew, Lebanese-Australian filmmaker, human rights activist and journalist Tan Safi, before the arrest to find out more about the mission and why she chose to be on board this mission:

The New Arab: How’s the mood on the ship at the moment?
Tan Safi: The morale of everyone at the moment is high, as everyone is happy to be here. Of course, different emotions come up, and we talk them out, but as a collective, we’re all looking out for one another. Everyone is very caring and kind.

We are a group of 21 people from 10 different countries. We have a very proud grandmother, as well as MPs, nurses, a human rights lawyer, a comedian, an actor, human rights activists and more. We’re from many different walks of life, and we pose absolutely no threat to anyone.

We’re simply trying to challenge something illegal. Like previous Freedom Flotilla actions, we will be sailing through international waters into Palestinian territorial waters.

How are you preparing for the very real threat of Israeli violence?
Back in 2010, we sent a flotilla that was caught in a deadly raid. The Israelis came in a helicopter, boarded the ship and killed nine people instantaneously, while another person died from a coma years later.

So we know very well that Israel poses a real threat.

More importantly, we’ve seen what they’re capable of over the last two years. The most horrific things imaginable. Israeli soldiers are committing endless crimes against Gazan children, and then going into the homes of the Palestinians they’ve murdered and taking selfies in women’s lingerie. We know what they’re capable of.

Any interception of our vessel would violate international maritime law. The ICJ [International Court of Justice] itself ordered Israel not to interfere with any delivery of international aid. Of course, we know that Israel gets to exist in this world by hopping over international law, without any accountability, without any real sanctions.

In terms of processing, what might happen to me? I’ve had to do it time and time again whenever I’ve joined FFC missions over the last two years. I’ve had to say goodbye to my friends and family, but also try to keep them reassured.

Sometimes I feel like I’m lying, to be honest. I tell them that “everything will be okay”. But it’s psychologically impossible to explain.

Are you worried that Handala is less protected than the last ship, Madleen, which had the global media attention (and protection) of having Greta Thunberg on board?

No matter how many Instagram followers you have, your life is just as important as the next person’s. We have people on this boat who have Instagram. We have people who do.

The lives of all these people are as valuable as everyone else’s. I would just try to focus on the fact that we’re all human beings, just as every Palestinian in Gaza is. I’m more worried that Israel’s violence will expand until it’s too late, and people wish that they had done more. The time is now.

What is your message to global or Australian leaders?
I’m Lebanese, but I grew up in so-called Australia, a country that has such a dark history. What our politicians forget is that so-called Australia was not theirs to begin with. Australia was, and will always be, Aboriginal land. They can try to hide their dark truths, just like Israel used to as well. But the truth will become exposed in time.

To this day, Aboriginal people are abused and discriminated against by the state. My message to Australia’s leadership is: how can you watch tens of thousands of men, women and children being slaughtered and still be enabling Israel’s siege and genocide?

The Australian embassy in Israel sent me a message urging me to “please reconsider your decision to join a humanitarian aid trip to Gaza”. If they’re so concerned about the two Australians on this boat, I would urge them to be more concerned with the millions of Palestinians who are suffering daily.

Can you tell us more about daily life and organisation on the ship?
We all put our hands up to volunteer for various tasks throughout the day. Some of us are more skilled in certain areas than others. For example, we have someone here from France who is a nurse, and they’re helping anyone who is feeling sick.

We have the proud grandmother, Vigdis from Norway, who loves to cook. And then someone will put their hand up to do the dishes. No one is too good to clean the toilets.

We’re all helping out to keep this ship organised. We also do shifts, helping out with the crew when needed. No one is sitting around. And if someone is, it’s because it’s really hot or the seas are rough.

What do you hope Handala will achieve, beyond potentially breaking the siege?
I hope this action will encourage all forms of solidarity and, more importantly, inspire direct action. I know that protests and non-direct actions serve a purpose, but we have talked and talked and talked at length. I don’t know how people are finding the strength.

Sometimes when I’m asked to talk at events, I just don’t know what to say, because if you need me to explain this, maybe you will never understand.

But what we clearly need to do is disrupt the financial flow that enables and fuels this genocide. The BDS movement is huge. People used to look down on it and question its efficacy. But now we’re able to quantify that it’s actually affecting real, big business.

I’ve always been advocating for that and asking people to be aware of the companies they consume from, such as Unilever, Nestle and Coke. This is having a real impact on these companies that are profiteering from unethical practices to begin with, that extends far beyond the genocide in Gaza.

Direct action could also involve blockading shipments of weapons from ports and docks, as seen in Greece. It’s amazing to see more countries step up. However, we often see a lot of lip service as well. It takes everyday people to actually stand up and say: “I’m able-bodied. I’m sick to my stomach. I’m gonna listen to my instinct and explore other options”.

If protesting is not working, explore other options. If there is no direct action group, create one. All it takes is one person to begin.

Are there any final or other messages you’d like to convey?
The Handala ship is the 37th boat from the FFC to travel to Gaza. There are thousands of people behind each of these journeys who make these voyages happen.

The FFC has existed for as many years as Israel’s siege on Gaza has. The FFC exists only because of Israel’s illegal siege.

We are people from around the world who are united in our shared consciousness and care for Palestine. We pose no threat. I’m looking at a bunch of toys and baby formula. We have as much food as we can carry, but our main goal is to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza because you need to fix a problem at the root of the cause.

• Track the Handala’s journey here

Sebastian Shehadi is a freelance journalist and a contributing writer at the New Statesman. This article was first published by The New Arab. Follow Shehadi on X: @seblebanon

Protesters against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and occupied West Bank targeted three business sites accused of being “complicit” in Aotearoa New Zealand today.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa’s “End Rocket Lab Genocide Complicity” themed protest picketed Rocket Lab’s New Zealand head office in Mt Wellington.

Simultaneously, protesters also picketed a site in Warkworth where Rocket Lab equipment is built and Mahia peninsula where satellites are launched.

• READ MORE: UN expert calls on world to end trade with Israel’s ‘economy of genocide’
• Palestine solidarity group lawyers refer NZ prime minister Luxon, 3 ministers to ICC over Gaza
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

In a statement on the PSNA website, it was revealed this week that the advocacy group’s lawyers have prepared a 103-page “indictment” against two business leaders, including the head of Rocket Lab, along with four politicians, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

They have been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for investigation on an accusation of complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Rocket Lab chief executive Sir Peter Beck is one of the six people named in the legal brief.

“Rocket Lab has recently launched geospatial intelligence satellites for BlackSky Technology,” said PSNA co-chair John Minto in a statement.

High resolution images
“These satellites provide high resolution images to Israel which are very likely used to assist with striking civilians in Gaza. Sir Peter has proceeded with these launches in full knowledge of these circumstances”

“When governments and business leaders can’t even condemn a genocide then civil society groups must act.”

The other business leader named is Rakon Limited chief executive officer Dr Sinan Altug.

“Despite vast weapons transfers from the United States to Israel since the beginning of its war on Gaza, Rakon has continued with its longstanding supply of crystal oscillators to US arms manufacturers for use in guided missiles which are then available to Israel for the bombing of Gaza, as well as Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran with consequential massive loss of life,” Minto said.

“Rakon’s claims that it has no responsibility over how these ‘dual-use’ technologies are used are not credible.”

Rocket Lab and Rakon have in the past rejected claims over their responsibility.

Speakers at Mount Wellington included PSNA co-leader John Minto; the Green Party spokesperson for foreign affairs Teanau Tuiono; Dr Arama Rata, an independent researcher and part of the Te Kuaka collective; and Sam Vincent, on the legal team for the ICC referral.

Law academic Professor Jane Kelsey spoke at the Warkworth picket.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, leading international scholars and the UN Special Committee to investigate Israel’s practices have all condemned Israel’s actions as genocide.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, has called on countries to cut off all trade and financial ties with Israel — including a full arms embargo — and withdraw international support for what she termed an “economy of genocide”, reports Al Jazeera.

Albanese made the comments in a speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday as she presented her latest report, which named dozens of companies she said were involved in supporting Israeli repression and violence towards Palestinians.

“The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is apocalyptic,” she said. “Israel is responsible for one of the cruellest genocides in modern history.”

• READ MORE: Israel kills more than 300 in Gaza in 48 hours as focus intensifies on GHF
• Palestine solidarity group lawyers refer NZ prime minister Luxon, 3 ministers to ICC over Gaza
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Nearly 57,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the war — now in its 22nd month — began, hundreds of thousands have been displaced multiple times, cities and towns have been razed, hospitals and schools targeted, and 85 percent of the besieged and bombarded enclave is now under Israeli military control, according to the UN.

Al Jazeera’s Federica Marsi reports that Albanese’s latest document names 48 corporate actors, including United States tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. — Google’s parent company — and Amazon.

“[Israel’s] forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech — providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability — while investors and private and public institutions profit freely,” the report said.

“Companies are no longer merely implicated in occupation — they may be embedded in an economy of genocide,” it said, in a reference to Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.

In an expert opinion last year, Albanese said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel was committing genocide in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The report stated that its findings illustrate “why Israel’s genocide continues”.

“Because it is lucrative for many,” it said.

Francesca Albanese v Israel’s lobby.     Video: Al Jazeera

Military procurements
Israel’s procurement of F-35 fighter jets is part of the world’s largest arms procurement programme, relying on at least 1600 companies across eight nations. It is led by US-based Lockheed Martin, but F-35 components are constructed globally.

Italian manufacturer Leonardo S.p.A is listed as a main contributor in the military sector, while Japan’s FANUC Corporation provides robotic machinery for weapons production lines.

The tech sector, meanwhile, has enabled the collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, “supporting Israel’s discriminatory permit regime”, the report said.

Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon grant Israel “virtually government-wide access to their cloud and AI technologies”, enhancing its data processing and surveillance capacities.

The US tech company IBM has also been responsible for training military and intelligence personnel, as well as managing the central database of Israel’s Population, Immigration and Borders Authority (PIBA) that stores the biometric data of Palestinians, the report said.

It found US software platform Palantir Technologies expanded its support to the Israeli military since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023.

The report said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe the company provided automatic predictive policing technology used for automated decision-making in the battlefield, to process data and generate lists of targets including through artificial intelligence systems like “Lavender”, “Gospel” and “Where’s Daddy?”

The report named the US’s Drummond Company and Switzerland’s Glencore as the primary suppliers of coal for electricity to Israel, originating primarily from Colombia.

In the agriculture sector, Chinese Bright Dairy & Food is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel’s largest food conglomerate, which benefits from land seized from Palestinians in Israel’s illegal outposts.

Netafim, a company providing drip irrigation technology that is 80-percent owned by Mexico’s Orbia Advance Corporation, provides infrastructure to exploit water resources in the occupied West Bank.

Treasury bonds have also played a critical role in funding the ongoing war on Gaza, according to the report, with some of the world’s largest banks, including France’s BNP Paribas and the UK’s Barclays, listed as having stepped in to allow Israel to contain the interest rate premium despite a credit downgrade.

Which are the main investors behind these companies?
The report identified US multinational investment companies BlackRock and Vanguard as the main investors behind several listed companies.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is listed as the second largest institutional investor in Palantir (8.6 percent), Microsoft (7.8 percent), Amazon (6.6 percent), Alphabet (6.6 percent) and IBM (8.6 per cent), and the third largest in Lockheed Martin (7.2 percent) and Caterpillar (7.5 percent).

Vanguard, the world’s second-largest asset manager, is the largest institutional investor in Caterpillar (9.8 percent), Chevron (8.9 percent) and Palantir (9.1 percent), and the second largest in Lockheed Martin (9.2 percent) and Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems (2 percent).

New Zealand referrals to the International Criminal Court
Meanwhile, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa yesterday released a report saying that it was referring two New Zealand businessmen along with four politicians, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, to the International Criminal Court for investigation over alleged policies relating to Gaza.

The PSNA accused the six individuals of complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by “assisting Israel’s mass killing and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza”.

In a statement, PSNA co-chairs John Minto and Maher Nazzal said the referral “carefully outlines a case that these six individuals should be investigated” by the Office of the Prosecutor for their knowing contribution to Israel’s crimes in Gaza.

“The 103-page referral document was prepared by a legal team which has been working on the case for many months,” said Minto and Nazzal.

“It is legally robust and will provide the prosecutor of the ICC more than sufficient documentation to begin their investigation.”

In the new weekly political podcast, The Bradbury Group, last night presenter Martyn Bradbury talked with visiting Palestinian journalist Dr Yousef Aljamal.

They assess the current situation in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and what New Zealand should be doing.

As Bradbury, publisher of The Daily Blog, notes, “Fourth Estate public broadcasting is dying — The Bradbury Group will fight back.”

Gaza crisis and Iran tensions.     Video: The Bradbury Group/Radio Waatea

Also in last night’s programme was featured a View From A Far Podcast Special Middle East Report with former intelligence analyst Dr Paul Buchanan and international affairs commentator Selwyn Manning on what will happen next in Iran.

Political Panel:
Māori Party president John Tamihere,
NZ Herald columnist Simon Wilson
NZCTU economist Craig Renney

Topics:
– The Legacy of Tarsh Kemp
– New coward punch and first responder assault laws — virtue signalling or meaningful policy?
– Cost of living crisis and the failing economy

• The Bradbury Group is sponsored by Waatea News live at 8pm Tuesdays on ROVA, Youtube, SkyTV and Waatea’s main Facebook page.

Israel’s weaponisation of starvation is how genocides always end.

I covered the insidious effects of orchestrated starvation in the Guatemalan Highlands during the genocidal campaign of General Efraín Ríos Montt, the famine in southern Sudan that left a quarter of a million dead — I walked past the frail and skeletal corpses of families lining roadsides — and later during the war in Bosnia when Serbs cut off food supplies to enclaves such as Srebrencia and Goražde.

Starvation was weaponised by the Ottoman Empire to decimate the Armenians. It was used to kill millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor in 1932 and 1933.

• READ MORE: Gaza babies face starvation as Israel blocks entry of baby formula
• Other Chris Hedges Report articles

It was employed by the Nazis against the Jews in the ghettos in the Second World War. German soldiers used food, as Israel does, like bait. They offered three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to lure desperate families in the Warsaw Ghetto onto transports to the death camps.

“There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several days to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman writes in The Ghetto Fights. “The number of people anxious to obtain the three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.”

And when crowds became unruly, as in Gaza, the German troops fired deadly volleys that ripped through emaciated husks of women, children and the elderly.

This tactic is as old as warfare itself.

Ordered to shoot
The report in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that Israeli soldiers are ordered to shoot into crowds of Palestinians at aid hubs, with 580 killed and 4,216 wounded, is not a surprise. It is the predictable denouement of the genocide, the inevitable conclusion to a campaign of mass extermination.

Israel, with its targeted assassinations of at least 1400 health care workers, hundreds of United Nations (UN) workers, journalists, police and even poets and academics, its obliteration of multi-story apartment blocks wiping out dozens of families, its shelling of designated “humanitarian zones” where Palestinians huddle under tents, tarps or in the open air, its systematic targeting of UN food distribution centers, bakeries and aid convoys or its sadistic sniper fire that guns down children, long ago illustrated that Palestinians are regarded as vermin worthy only of annihilation.

The blockade of food and humanitarian aid, imposed on Gaza since March 2, is reducing Palestinians to abject dependence. To eat, they must crawl towards their killers and beg. Humiliated, terrified, desperate for a few scraps of food, they are stripped of dignity, autonomy and agency. This is by intent.

Yousef al-Ajouri, 40, explained to Middle East Eye his nightmarish journey to one of four aid hubs set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The hubs are not designed to meet the needs of the Palestinians, who once relied on 400 aid distribution sites, but to lure them from northern Gaza to the south.

Israel, which on Sunday again ordered Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, is steadily expanding its annexation of the coastal strip. Palestinians are corralled like livestock into narrow metal chutes at distribution points which are overseen by heavily armed mercenaries. They receive, if they are one of the fortunate few, a small box of food.

Al-Ajouri, who before the genocide was a taxi driver, lives with his wife, seven children and his mother and father in a tent in al-Saraya, near the middle of Gaza City. He set out to an aid hub at Salah al-Din Road near the Netzarim corridor, to find some food for his children, who he said cry constantly “because of how hungry they are.”

On the advice of his neighbour in the tent next to him, he dressed in loose clothing “so that I could run and be agile.” He carried a bag for canned and packaged goods because the crush of the crowds meant “no one was able to carry the boxes the aid came in.”

Massive crowds
He left at about 9 pm with five other men “including an engineer and a teacher,” and “children aged 10 and 12.” They did not take the official route designated by the Israeli army. The massive crowds converging on the aid point along the official route ensure that most never get close enough to receive food.

Instead, they walked in the darkness in areas exposed to Israeli gunfire, often having to crawl to avoid being seen.

“As I crawled, I looked over, and to my surprise, saw several women and elderly people taking the same treacherous route as us,” he explained. “At one point, there was a barrage of live gunfire all around me. We hid behind a destroyed building. Anyone who moved or made a noticeable motion was immediately shot by snipers.

“Next to me was a tall, light-haired young man using the flashlight on his phone to guide him. The others yelled at him to turn it off. Seconds later, he was shot. He collapsed to the ground and lay there bleeding, but no one could help or move him. He died within minutes.”

He passed six bodies along the route who had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

Al-Ajouri reached the hub at 2 am, the designated time for aid distribution. He saw a green light turned on ahead of him which signaled that aid was about to be distributed. Thousands began to run towards the light, pushing, shoving and trampling each other. He fought his way through the crowd until he reached the aid.

“I started feeling around for the aid boxes and grabbed a bag that felt like rice,” he said. “But just as I did, someone else snatched it from my hands. I tried to hold on, but he threatened to stab me with his knife. Most people there were carrying knives, either to defend themselves or to steal from others.

Boxes were emptied
“Eventually, I managed to grab four cans of beans, a kilogram of bulgur, and half a kilogram of pasta. Within moments, the boxes were empty. Most of the people there, including women, children and the elderly, got nothing. Some begged others to share. But no one could afford to give up what they managed to get.”

The US contractors and Israeli soldiers overseeing the mayhem laughed and pointed their weapons at the crowd. Some filmed with their phones.

“Minutes later, red smoke grenades were thrown into the air,” he remembered. “Someone told me that it was the signal to evacuate the area. After that, heavy gunfire began. Me, Khalil and a few others headed to al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat because our friend Wael had injured his hand during the journey.

“I was shocked by what I saw at the hospital. There were at least 35 martyrs lying dead on the ground in one of the rooms. A doctor told me they had all been brought in that same day. They were each shot in the head or chest while queuing near the aid center. Their families were waiting for them to come home with food and ingredients. Now, they were corpses.”

GHF is a Mossad-funded creation of Israel’s Defense Ministry that contracts with UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions, run by former members of the CIA and US Special Forces. GHF is headed by Reverend Johnnie Moore, a far-right Christian Zionist with close ties to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.

The organisation has also contracted anti-Hamas drug-smuggling gangs to provide security at aid sites.

As Chris Gunness, a former spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) told Al Jazeera, GHF is “aid washing,” a way to mask the reality that “people are being starved into submission.”

Disregarded ICC ruling
Israel, along with the US and European countries that provide weapons to sustain the genocide, have chosen to disregard the January 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which demanded immediate protection for civilians in Gaza and widespread provision of humanitarian assistance.

Ha’aretz, in its article headlined “‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid” reported that Israeli commanders order soldiers to open fire on crowds to keep them away from aid sites or disperse them.

“The distribution centers typically open for just one hour each morning,” Haaretz writes. “According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centers close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night — ahead of the opening — it’s possible that some civilians couldn’t see the boundaries of the designated area.”

“It’s a killing field,” one soldier told Ha’aretz. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force — no crowd-control measures, no tear gas — just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

“We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces,” the soldier explained, “I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.”

He said the deployment at the aid sites is known as “Operation Salted Fish,” a reference to the Israeli name for the children’s game “Red light, green light.” The game was featured in the first episode of the South Korean dystopian thriller Squid Game, in which financially desperate people are killed as they battle each other for money.

Civilian infrastructure obliterated
Israel has obliterated the civilian and humanitarian infrastructure in Gaza. It has reduced Palestinians, half a million of whom face starvation, into desperate herds. The goal is to break Palestinians, to make them malleable and entice them to leave Gaza, never to return.

There is talk from the Trump White House about a ceasefire. But don’t be fooled. Israel has nothing left to destroy. Its saturation bombing over 20 months has reduced Gaza to a moonscape. Gaza is uninhabitable, a toxic wilderness where Palestinians, living amid broken slabs of concrete and pools of raw sewage, lack food and clean water, fuel, shelter, electricity, medicine and an infrastructure to survive.

The final impediment to the annexation of Gaza are the Palestinians themselves. They are the primary target. Starvation is the weapon of choice.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.

On June 22, American warplanes crossed into Iranian airspace and dropped 14 massive bombs.

The attack was not in response to a provocation; it came on the heels of illegal Israeli aggression that took the lives of more than 600 Iranians.

This was a return to something familiar and well-practised: an empire bombing innocents across the orientalist abstraction called “the Middle East”.

• READ MORE: Eugene Doyle: Why Asia-Pacific should be cheering for Iran and not US bomb-based statecraft
• Other Israeli war on Middle East reports

That night, US President Donald Trump, flanked by his vice-president and two state secretaries, told the world: “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace”.

There is something chilling about how bombs are baptised with the language of diplomacy and how destruction is dressed in the garments of stability. To call that peace is not merely a misnomer; it is a criminal distortion.

But what is peace in this world, if not submission to the West? And what is diplomacy, if not the insistence that the attacked plead with their attackers?

In the 12 days that Israel’s illegal assault on Iran lasted, images of Iranian children pulled from the wreckage remained absent from the front pages of Western media. In their place were lengthy features about Israelis hiding in fortified bunkers.

Victimhood serving narrative
Western media, fluent in the language of erasure, broadcasts only the victimhood that serves the war narrative.

And that is not just in its coverage of Iran. For 20 months now, the people of Gaza have been starved and incinerated. By the official count, more than 55,000 lives have been taken; realistic estimates put the number at hundreds of thousands.

Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed. Most schools have been attacked and destroyed.

Leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already declared that Israel is committing genocide, and yet, most Western media would not utter that word and would add elaborate caveats when someone does dare say it live on TV.

Presenters and editors would do anything but recognise Israel’s unending violence in an active voice.

Despite detailed evidence of war crimes, the Israeli military has faced no media censure, no criticism or scrutiny. Its generals hold war meetings near civilian buildings, and yet, there are no media cries of Israelis being used as “human shields”.

Israeli army and government officials are regularly caught lying or making genocidal statements, and yet, their words are still reported as “the truth”.

Bias over Palestinian deaths
A recent study found that on the BBC, Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Palestinians dying at a rate of 34 to 1 compared with Israelis. Such bias is no exception, it is the rule for Western media.

Like Palestine, Iran is described in carefully chosen language. Iran is never framed as a nation, only as a regime. Iran is not a government, but a threat — not a people, but a problem.

The word “Islamic” is affixed to it like a slur in every report. This is instrumental in quietly signalling that Muslim resistance to Western domination must be extinguished.

Iran does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel and the United States do. And yet only Iran is cast as an existential threat to world order.

Because the problem is not what Iran holds, but what it refuses to surrender. It has survived coups, sanctions, assassinations, and sabotage. It has outlived every attempt to starve, coerce, or isolate it into submission.

It is a state that, despite the violence hurled at it, has not yet been broken.

And so the myth of the threat of weapons of mass destruction becomes indispensable. It is the same myth that was used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. For three decades, American headlines have whispered that Iran is just “weeks away” from the bomb, three decades of deadlines that never arrive, of predictions that never materialise.

Fear over false ‘nuclear threat’
But fear, even when unfounded, is useful. If you can keep people afraid, you can keep them quiet. Say “nuclear threat” often enough, and no one will think to ask about the children killed in the name of “keeping the world safe”.

This is the modus operandi of Western media: a media architecture not built to illuminate truth, but to manufacture permission for violence, to dress state aggression in technical language and animated graphics, to anaesthetise the public with euphemisms.

Time Magazine does not write about the crushed bones of innocents under the rubble in Tehran or Rafah, it writes about “The New Middle East” with a cover strikingly similar to the one it used to propagandise regime change in Iraq 22 years ago.

But this is not 2003. After decades of war, and livestreamed genocide, most Americans no longer buy into the old slogans and distortions. When Israel attacked Iran, a poll showed that only 16 percent of US respondents supported the US joining the war.

After Trump ordered the air strikes, another poll confirmed this resistance to manufactured consent: only 36 percent of respondents supported the move, and only 32 percent supported continuing the bombardment

The failure to manufacture consent for war with Iran reveals a profound shift in the American consciousness. Americans remember the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that left hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead and an entire region in flames. They remember the lies about weapons of mass destruction and democracy and the result: the thousands of American soldiers dead and the tens of thousands maimed.

They remember the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the never-ending bloody entanglement in Iraq.

Low social justice spending
At home, Americans are told there is no money for housing, healthcare, or education, but there is always money for bombs, for foreign occupations, for further militarisation. More than 700,000 Americans are homeless, more than 40 million live under the official poverty line and more than 27 million have no health insurance.

And yet, the US government maintains by far the highest defence budget in the world.

Americans know the precarity they face at home, but they are also increasingly aware of the impact US imperial adventurism has abroad. For 20 months now, they have watched a US-sponsored genocide broadcast live.

They have seen countless times on their phones bloodied Palestinian children pulled from rubble while mainstream media insists, this is Israeli “self-defence”.

The old alchemy of dehumanising victims to excuse their murder has lost its power. The digital age has shattered the monopoly on narrative that once made distant wars feel abstract and necessary. Americans are now increasingly refusing to be moved by the familiar war drumbeat.

The growing fractures in public consent have not gone unnoticed in Washington. Trump, ever the opportunist, understands that the American public has no appetite for another war.

‘Don’t drop bombs’
And so, on June 24, he took to social media to announce, “the ceasefire is in effect”, telling Israel to “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” after the Israeli army continued to attack Iran.

Trump, like so many in the US and Israeli political elites, wants to call himself a peacemaker while waging war. To leaders like him, peace has come to mean something altogether different: the unimpeded freedom to commit genocide and other atrocities while the world watches on.

But they have failed to manufacture our consent. We know what peace is, and it does not come dressed in war. It is not dropped from the sky.

Peace can only be achieved where there is freedom. And no matter how many times they strike, the people remain, from Palestine to Iran — unbroken, unbought, and unwilling to kneel to terror.

Ahmad Ibsais is a first-generation Palestinian American and law student who writes the newsletter State of Siege.

Kia ora koutou,

I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.

At least 79 killed and 391 injured by Israeli forces in Gaza over the last 24 hours, including 33 killed and 267 injured while seeking aid at the US-Israel “humanitarian” centres.

*

Three killed and 7 injured by settler pogrom on the town of Kafr Malik, northeast of Ramallah; setting fire to houses and cars, and protected by soldiers. Israeli forces shot and killed 15-year-old Rayan Houshia west of Jenin as they retreated from resistance fighters, after using a civilian home as military barracks; also invading several towns across the West Bank, firing teargas into al-Fawar refugee camp south of Hebron, sound-bombs near the Jenin Grand Mosque in the north, and arresting several Palestinians.

• READ MORE: Israel kills more than 80 in Gaza; 3 killed in attack by Israeli settlers
• Other Middle East crisis reports

Al Quds/Jerusalem’s old city faced low visitor numbers even after restrictions were lifted by the Israeli occupation. Jerusalem Governate reported 623 homes and facilities demolished by Israel since October 2023.

*

Palestinian political prisoner Amar Yasser Al-Amour was released after 2.5 years without charge or trial in Israeli prisons. Thousands remain detained illegally in this way. Another freed prisoner Fares Bassam Hanani mourned his mother who passed away while he was imprisoned. Mohammad al-Ghushi, also freed, was taken to hospital to have his kidney removed due to torture and medical neglect he faced in Israeli prisons.

*

The unexpected ceasefire between Israel, America, and Iran appears to be holding for now. Iranian officials say the US “torpedoed diplomacy” and have passed a bill to halt cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA.

Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Kia ora koutou, 

I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.

Sixty nine people killed in Gaza, 12 while seeking aid, and 221 injured (172 seeking aid). 11 killed by Israeli airstrike on a house in central Gaza. Qassam Brigades carried out a “complex” ambush against Israeli forces in southern Gaza. Israel are preventing humanitarian organisations from accessing fuel storage sites in the enclave, hospital supplies last for just three days.

*

Iranian authorities report five hospitals damaged in targeted Israeli strikes, have arrested 16 agents allegedly linked to Israel, and offered Israeli “collaborators” a pardon if they surrender their drones by July 1.

*

Two US destroyers have arrived in the eastern Mediterranean, bringing the total to five in the region and two in the Red Sea.

*

An Israeli drone targeted a car in southern Lebanon, violating the existing ceasefire and Lebanese sovereignty yet again.

*

Israeli leaders double down on their accusations that Iran is developing nuclear bombs, despite the international watchdog, IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], saying there is no sufficient evidence. 18 injured by Iranian missile in the southern Israeli territories, 17 in Haifa. Strikes targeted Israel’s Channel 14 news stations as threatened, after Israeli forces struck Iran’s state broadcaster two days ago. 100 million shekel pledged by Israeli regime to build 1000 new bomb shelters in some areas; the regime is known for under-investment in Palestinian neighbourhoods.

*

More checkpoints and barriers installed across the West Bank. Ambulance movement continues to be disrupted by gas shortages in Bethlehem. Despite the war, Israeli occupation forces continue extensive home demolitions in Nour Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Settlers crush and uproot Palestinian olive trees near Sinjil, north of Ramallah. Occupation bulldozers dug up roads south of Jenin. Palestinian residents were shot at by settlers while trying to extinguish fires west of Bethlehem.

*

Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza continues, with minimal political intervention to prevent it.

Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

By Helen Musa in Canberra

Former Palestinian diplomat and long-time Canberra identity Ali Kazak died on Saturday en route to Palestine.

Sources at the Canberra Islamic Centre report that he was recovering from heart surgery and died during a stopover in Thailand.

Kazak was born in Haifa in 1947 and grew up in Syria as a Palestinian refugee. He and his mother were separated from his father when Israel was created in 1948 and Kazak was only reunited with his father in 1993.

• READ MORE: The third Nakba in Israel’s war of genocide: Why does the Albanese government shirk its responsibility?

In 1968, while at Damascus University, Kazak had been invited to join the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Fateh) and joined its political wing.

He migrated to Australia in 1970 where he became the founder, publisher and co-editor of the Australian newspaper, Free Palestine, also authoring among many books, The Jerusalem Question and Australia and the Arabs.

Kazak was the driving force behind the establishment in 1981 of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign and was appointed by the PLO executive committee as the PLO’s representative to Australia, NZ and the Pacific region.

In 1982, he established the Palestine Information Office, which was recognised by the Australian government in 1989 as the office of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and then further recognised in 1994 as the General Palestinian Delegation.

As Palestinian Ambassador, Kazak initiated the establishment of the NSW State and Australian Federal Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, as well as the Victorian, South Australian and NZ Parliamentary Friends of Palestine.

Always a passionate advocate, in 1986 he became the first person to call for adjudication by the Australian Press Council of stereotyped reporting of Palestinians.

After retiring from diplomacy, he became the managing director of the consultancy company Southern Link International, but continued to comment on Palestinian affairs and Gaza.

His most recent article was published in the Pearls and Irritations: John Menadue’s Public Policy journal on May 16, titled The third Nakba in Israel’s war of genocide: Why does the Albanese government shirk its responsibility?

Arrangements are being made to return his body from Thailand to Australia for internment.

Helen Musa is the Canberra City News arts editor. This article was first published by City News.

ANALYSIS: By Soumaya Ghannoushi

US President Donald Trump’s tour of Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha is not diplomacy. It is theatre — staged in gold, fuelled by greed, and underwritten by betrayal.

A US president openly arming a genocide is welcomed with red carpets, handshakes and blank cheques. Trillions are pledged; personal gifts are exchanged. And Gaza continues to burn.

Gulf regimes have power and wealth. They have Trump’s ear. Yet they use none of it — not to halt the slaughter, ease the siege or demand dignity.

• READ MORE: Patients flee Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital after Israel forces displacement
• Key takeaways from day two of Donald Trump’s Middle East tour in Qatar
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

In return for their riches and deference, Trump grants Israel bombs and sets it loose upon the region.

This is the real story. At the heart of Trump’s return lies a project he initiated during his first presidency: the erasure of Palestine, the elevation of autocracy, and the redrawing of the Middle East in Israel’s image.

“See this pen? This wonderful pen on my desk is the Middle East, and the top of the pen — that’s Israel. That’s not good,” he once told reporters, lamenting Israel’s size compared to its neighbours.

To Trump, the Middle East is not a region of history or humanity. It is a marketplace, a weapons depot, a geopolitical ATM.

His worldview is forged in evangelical zeal and transactional instinct. In his rhetoric, Arabs are chaos incarnate: irrational, violent, in need of control. Israel alone is framed as civilised, democratic, divinely chosen. That binary is not accidental. It is ideology.

Obedience for survival
Trump calls the region “a rough neighbourhood” — code for endless militarism that casts the people of the Middle East not as lives to protect, but as threats to contain.

His $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia in 2017 was marketed as peace through prosperity. Now, he wants trillions more in Gulf capital. As reported by The New York Times, Trump is demanding that Saudi Arabia invest its entire annual GDP — $1 trillion — into the US economy.

Riyadh has already offered $600 billion. Trump wants it all. Economists call it absurd; Trump calls it a deal.

This is not negotiation. It is tribute.

And the pace is accelerating. After a recent meeting with Trump, the UAE announced a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment framework with the US.

This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace

Across the Gulf, a race is underway — not to end the genocide in Gaza, but to outspend one another for Trump’s favour, showering him with wealth in return for nothing.

The Gulf is no longer treated as a region. It is a vault. Sovereign wealth funds are the new ballot boxes. Sovereignty — just another asset to be traded.

Trump’s offer is blunt: obedience for survival. For regimes still haunted by the Arab Spring, Western blessing is their last shield. And they will pay any price: wealth, independence, even dignity.

To them, the true threat is not Israel, nor even Iran. It is their own people, restless, yearning, ungovernable.

Democracy is danger; self-determination, the ticking bomb. So they make a pact with the devil.

Doctrine of immunity
That devil brings flags, frameworks, photo ops and deals. The new order demands normalisation with Israel, submission to its supremacy, and silence on Palestine.

Once-defiant slogans are replaced by fintech expos and staged smiles beside Israeli ministers.

In return, Trump offers impunity: political cover and arms. It is a doctrine of immunity, bought with gold and soaked in Arab blood.

They bend. They hand him deals, honours, trillions. They believe submission buys respect. But Trump respects only power — and he makes that clear.

He praises Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Is Putin smart? Yes . . .  that’s a hell of a way to negotiate.” He calls Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “a guy I like [and] respect”. Like them or not, they defend their nations. And Trump, ever the transactional mind, respects power.

Arab rulers offer no such strength. They offer deference, not defiance. They don’t push; they pay.

And Trump mocks them openly. King Salman “might not be there for two weeks without us”, he brags. They give him billions; he demands trillions.

It is not just the US Treasury profiting. Gulf billions do not merely fuel policy; they enrich a family empire. Since returning to office, Trump and his sons have chased deals across the Gulf, cashing in on the loyalty they have cultivated.

A hotel in Dubai, a tower in Jeddah, a golf resort in Qatar, crypto ventures in the US, a private club in Washington for Gulf elites — these are not strategic projects, but rather revenue streams for the Trump family.

Reward for ethnic cleansing
The precedent was set early. Former presidential adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, secured $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund shortly after leaving office, despite internal objections.

The message was clear: access to the Trumps has a price, and Gulf rulers are eager to pay.

Now, Trump is receiving a private jet from Qatar’s ruling family — a palace in the sky worth $400 million.

This is not diplomacy. It is plunder.

And how does Trump respond? With insult: “It was a great gesture,” he said of the jet, before adding: “We keep them safe. If it wasn’t for us, they probably wouldn’t exist right now.”

That was his thank you to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar; lavish gifts answered with debasement.

And what are they rewarding him for? For genocide. For 100,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on Gaza. For backing ethnic cleansing in plain sight. For empowering far-right Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as they call for Gaza’s depopulation.

For presiding over the most fanatically Zionist, most unapologetically Islamophobic administration in US history.

Still, they ask nothing, while offering everything. They could have used their leverage. They did not.

The Yemen precedent proves they can act. Trump halted the bombing under Saudi pressure, to Netanyahu’s visible dismay. When they wanted a deal, they struck one with the Houthis.

And when they sought to bring Syria in from the cold, Trump complied. He agreed to meet former rebel leader turned President Ahmed al-Sharaa — a last-minute addition to his Riyadh schedule — and even spoke of lifting sanctions, once again at Saudi Arabia’s request, to “give them a chance of greatness”.

No US president is beyond pressure. But for Gaza? Silence.

Price of silence
While Trump was being feted in Riyadh, Israel rained American-made bombs on two hospitals in Gaza. In Khan Younis, the European Hospital was reportedly struck by nine bunker-busting bombs, killing more than two dozen people and injuring scores more.

Earlier that day, an air strike on Nasser Hospital killed journalist Hassan Islih as he lay wounded in treatment.

As Trump basked in applause, Israel massacred children in Jabalia, where around 50 Palestinians were killed in just a few hours.

This is the bloody price of Arab silence, buried beneath the roar of applause and the glitter of tributes.

This week marks the anniversary of the Nakba — and here it is again, replayed not through tanks alone, but through Arab complicity.

With every cheque signed, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame

The bombs fall. The Gaza Strip turns to dust. Two million people endure starvation. UN food is gone.

Hospitals overflow with skeletal infants. Mothers collapse from hunger. Tens of thousands of children are severely malnourished, with more than 3500 on the edge of death.

Meanwhile, Smotrich speaks of “third countries” for Gaza’s people. Netanyahu promises their removal.

And Trump — the man enabling the annihilation? He is not condemned, but celebrated by Arab rulers. They eagerly kiss the hand that sends the bombs, grovel before the architect of their undoing, and drape him in splendour and finery.

While much of the world stands firm — China, Europe, Canada, Mexico, even Greenland – refusing to bow to Trump’s bullying, Arab rulers kneel. They open wallets, bend spines, empty hands — still mistaking humiliation for diplomacy.

They still believe that if they bow low enough, Trump might toss them a bone. Instead, he tosses them a bill.

This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace.

With every cheque signed, every jet offered, every photo op beside the butcher of a people, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame.

Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer and expert in Middle East politics. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Corriere della Sera, aljazeera.net and Al Quds. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye. A selection of her writings may be found at: soumayaghannoushi.com and she tweets @SMGhannoushi.

The Baptist Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East has condemned Israeli’s Palm Sunday attack on al-Ahli Arab Hospital, the last functioning hospital in Gaza City.

It said in a statement the Israeli forces had destroyed the two-storey Genetic Laboratory, damaged the pharmacy and emergency department buildings, and caused damage to surrounding structures, including St Philip the Evangelist Chapel.

The hospital can no longer function with staff and patients being forced to flee in the dead of night after a military warning at 2am to evacuate the hospital.

• READ MORE: Israeli forces bomb al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, forcing patients to flee
• Health workers call for NZ government to join global demands for ambulance massacre inquiry
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

The bombing of the hospital began minutes later. It was hit by at least two missiles, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

At least three people were reported killed.

“The Diocese of Jerusalem is appalled,” the church statement said, adding that the Baptist hospital had been bombed “for the fifth time since the beginning of the war in 2023 — and this time was on the morning of Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week.”

It added: “We call upon all governments and people of goodwill to intervene to stop all kinds of attacks on medical and humanitarian institutions.”

Qatar says attack a ‘horrific massacre’
The Qatar government described the Israeli attack as a “horrific massacre and a heinous crime against civilians” that constituted a grave violation of international humanitarian law.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry warned about the collapse of the health system in Gaza and the expansion of the cycle of violence across the region.

It said the international community must assume its responsibilities in protecting civilians.

It reaffirmed Qatar’s backing of the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.

Israel has repeatedly attacked hospitals in the Palestinian enclave with impunity throughout its devastating war, said the Gaza Government Media Office.

Attacks on 36 hospitals
According to Al Jazeera, Israeli attacks on 36 hospitals since October 2023 include:

• In November 2023, Israeli tanks surrounded the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya and fired artillery at the complex, killing at least 12 Palestinians.
• Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City was subjected to a prolonged Israeli siege starting in March 2024. By early April last year, the World Health Organisation reported that the facility, Gaza’s largest medical complex, was “in ruins” and no longer functional. Dozens of bodies were later recovered from the hospital grounds and surrounding areas, indicating that patients and medical staff had been killed and placed in mass graves.
• In March 2024, an Israeli nighttime attack on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis killed two Palestinians, including a 16-year-old boy who had undergone surgery two days earlier.
• At least 50 people were injured in the same month in an Israeli drone attack next to the entrance of the al-Helal al-Emirati Maternity Hospital in the Tal as-Sultan area of Rafah city.
• In May, Rafah’s Kuwaiti Speciality Hospital was forced to shut down after an Israeli attack just outside the gates of the hospital killed two of its medical staff.
• In December, Israeli soldiers stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, torching large sections, ordering hundreds of people to leave and kidnapping its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya — who is still detained by the Israeli military without charge — and other medical staff.
• In March 2025, Israel blew up the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, destroying Gaza’s specialised cancer treatment facility as well as an adjacent medical school.

ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

This is the last chapter of the genocide. It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza. No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity.

Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return.

The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies. The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas.

• READ MORE: Other Chris Hedges Report articles

The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties.

The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.”

The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.

Israel’s naked genocidal visage is exposed. It has ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza where desperate Palestinians are camped out amid the rubble of their homes. What comes now is mass starvation — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on March 21 it has six days of flour supplies left — deaths from diseases caused by contaminated water and food, scores of killed and wounded each day under the relentless assault of bombs, missiles, shells and bullets.

Nothing will function, bakeries, water treatment and sewage plants, hospitals — Israel blew up the damaged Turkish-Palestinian hospital on March 21 — schools, aid distribution centers or clinics. Less than half of the 53 emergency vehicles operated by the Palestine Red Crescent Society are functional due to fuel shortages. Soon there will be none.

Israel’s message is unequivocal: Gaza will be uninhabitable. Leave or die.

Since last Tuesday, when Israel broke the ceasefire with heavy bombing, over 700 Palestinians have been killed, including 200 children. In one 24 hour period 400 Palestinians were killed.

This is only the start. No Western power, including the United States, which provides the weapons for the genocide, intends to stop it. The images from Gaza during the nearly 16 months of incessant attacks were awful.

But what is coming now will be worse. It will rival the most atrocious war crimes of the 20th century, including the mass starvation, wholesale slaughter and leveling of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 by the Nazis.

October 7 marked the dividing line between an Israeli policy that advocated the brutalisation and subjugation of the Palestinians and a policy that calls for their extermination and removal from historic Palestine. What we are witnessing is the historical equivalent of the moment triggered by the annihilation of some 200 soldiers led by George Armstrong Custer in June 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

After that humiliating defeat, Native Americans were slated to be killed with the remnants forced into prisoner of war camps, later named reservations, where thousands died of disease, lived under the merciless gaze of their armed occupiers and fell into a life of immiseration and despair.

Expect the same for the Palestinians in Gaza, dumped, I suspect, in one of the world’s hellholes and forgotten.

“Gaza residents, this is your final warning,” Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz threatened:

“The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza and the second Sinwar will completely destroy it. The Air Force strikes against Hamas terrorists were just the first step. It will become much more difficult and you will pay the full price. The evacuation of the population from the combat zones will soon begin again…Return the hostages and remove Hamas and other options will open for you, including leaving for other places in the world for those who want to. The alternative is absolute destruction.”

The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was designed to be implemented in three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, would see an end to hostilities. Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023 — including women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses — in exchange for upwards of 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children imprisoned by Israel (around 1,900 Palestinian captives have been released by Israel as of March 18).

Hamas has released a total of 147 hostages, of whom eight were dead. Israel says there are 59 Israelis still being held by Hamas, 35 of whom Israel believes are deceased.

The Israeli army would pull back from populated areas of Gaza on the first day of the ceasefire. On the seventh day, displaced Palestinians would be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel would allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.

The second phase, which was expected to be negotiated on the 16th day of the ceasefire, would see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel would complete its withdrawal from Gaza maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the 13 km border between Gaza and Egypt.

It would surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.

The third phase would see negotiations for a permanent end of the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.

Israel habitually signs agreements, including the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Peace Agreement, with timetables and phases. It gets what it wants — in this case the release of the hostages — in the first phase and then violates subsequent phases. This pattern has never been broken.

Israel refused to honour the second phase of the deal. It blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza two weeks ago, violating the agreement. It also killed at least 137 Palestinians during the first phase of the ceasefire, including nine people, — three of them journalists — when Israeli drones attacked a relief team on March 15 in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza

Israel’s heavy bombing and shelling of Gaza resumed March 18 while most Palestinians were asleep or preparing their suhoor, the meal eaten before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan. Israel will not stop its attacks now, even if the remaining hostages are freed — Israel’s supposed reason for the resumption of the bombing and siege of Gaza.

The Trump White House is cheering on the slaughter. They attack critics of the genocide as “antisemites” who should be silenced, criminalised or deported while funneling billions of dollars in weapons to Israel.

Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is the inevitable denouement of its settler colonial project and apartheid state. The seizure of all of historic Palestine — with the West Bank soon, I expect, to be annexed by Israel — and displacement of all Palestinians has always been the Zionist goal.

Israel’s worst excesses occurred during the wars of 1948 and 1967 when huge parts of historic Palestine were seized, thousands of Palestinians killed and hundreds of thousands were ethnically cleansed. Between these wars, the slow-motion theft of land, murderous assaults and steady ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, continued.

That calibrated dance is over. This is the end. What we are witnessing dwarfs all the historical assaults on Palestinians. Israel’s demented genocidal dream — a Palestinian nightmare — is about to be achieved.

It will forever shatter the myth that we, or any Western nation, respect the rule of law or are the protectors of human rights, democracy and the so-called “virtues” of Western civilisation. Israel’s barbarity is our own. We may not understand this, but the rest of the globe does.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.

The new Universities Australia (UA) definition of antisemitism, endorsed last month for adoption by 39 Australian universities, is an ugly attempt to quash the pro-Palestine solidarity movement on campuses and to silence academics, university workers and students who critique Israel and Zionism.

While the Scott Morrison Coalition government first proposed tightening the definition, and a recent joint Labor-Coalition parliamentary committee recommended the same, it is yet another example of the Labor government’s overreach.

It seeks to mould discussion in universities to one that suits its pro-US and pro-Zionist imperialist agenda, while shielding Israel from accountability.

• READ MORE: Jewish Council slams Australian universities’ ‘dangerous, politicised’ antisemitism definition
• With words they try to jail us — US universities are not citadels of freedom
• Australian universities agree to antisemitism definition that bans calling for Israel’s elimination
• Other university freedom of speech reports

So far, the UA definition has been widely condemned.

Nasser Mashni, of Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, has slammed it as “McCarthyism reborn”.

The Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) has criticised it as “dangerous, politicised and unworkable”. The NSW Council of Civil Liberties said it poses “serious risks to freedom of expression and academic freedom”.

The UA definition comes in the context of a war against Palestinian activism on campuses.

The false claim that antisemitism is “rampant” across universities has been weaponised to subdue the Palestinian solidarity movement within higher education and, particularly, to snuff out any repeat of the student-led Gaza solidarity encampments, which sprung up on campuses across the country last year.

Some students and staff who have been protesting against the genocide since October 2023 have come under attack by university managements.

Some students have been threatened with suspension and many universities are giving themselves, through new policies, more powers to liaise with police and surveil students and staff.

Palestinian, Arab and Muslim academics, as well as other anti-racist scholars, have been silenced and disciplined, or face legal action on false counts of antisemitism, merely for criticising Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine.

Randa Abdel-Fattah, for example, has become the target of a Zionist smear campaign that has successfully managed to strip her of Australian Research Council funding.

Intensify repression
The UA definition will further intensify the ongoing repression of people’s rights on campuses to discuss racism, apartheid and occupation in historic Palestine.

By its own admission, UA acknowledges that its definition is informed by the antisemitism taskforces at Columbia University, Stanford University, Harvard University and New York University, which have meted out draconian and violent repression of pro-Palestine activism.

The catalyst for the new definition was the February 12 report tabled by Labor MP Josh Burns on antisemitism on Australian campuses. That urged universities to adopt a definition of antisemitism that “closely aligns” with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.

It should be noted that the controversial IHRA definition has been opposed by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) for its serious challenge to academic freedom.

As many leading academics and university workers, including Jewish academics, have repeatedly stressed, criticism of Israel and criticism of Zionism is not antisemitic.

UA’s definition is arguably more detrimental to freedom of speech and pro-Palestine activism and scholarship than the IHRA definition.

In the vague IHRA definition, a number of examples of antisemitism are given that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but not the main text itself.

By contrast, the new UA definition overtly equates criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism and claims Zionist ideology is a component part of Jewish identity.

The definition states that “criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic . . . when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”.

Dangerously, anyone advocating for a single bi-national democratic state in historic Palestine will be labelled antisemitic under this new definition.

Anyone who justifiably questions the right of the ethnonationalist, apartheid and genocidal state of Israel to exist will be accused of antisemitism.

Sweeping claims
The UA definition also makes the sweeping claim that “for most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity”.

But, as the JCA points out, Zionism is a national political ideology and is not a core part of Jewish identity historically or today, since many Jews do not support Zionism. The JCA warns that the UA definition “risks fomenting harmful stereotypes that all Jewish people think in a certain way”.

Moreover, JCA said, Jewish identities are already “a rightly protected category under all racial discrimination laws, whereas political ideologies such as Zionism and support for Israel are not”.

Like other aspects of politics, political ideologies, such as Zionism, and political stances, such as support for Israel, should be able to be discussed critically.

According to the UA definition, criticism of Israel can be antisemitic “when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions”.

While it would be wrong for any individual or community, because they are Jewish, to be held responsible for Israel’s actions, it is a fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former  minister Yoav Gallant for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But under the UA definition, since Netanyahu and Gallant are Jewish, would holding them responsible be considered antisemitic?

Is the ICC antisemitic? According to Israel it is.

The implication of the definition for universities, which teach law and jurisprudence, is that international law should not be applied to the Israeli state, because it is antisemitic to do so.

The UA’s definition is vague enough to have a chilling effect on any academic who wants to teach about genocide, apartheid and settler-colonialism. It states that “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions”.

What these are is not defined.

Anti-racism challenge
Within the academy, there is a strong tradition of anti-racism and decolonial scholarship, particularly the concept of settler colonialism, which, by definition, calls into question the very notion of “statehood”.

With this new definition of antisemitism, will academics be prevented from teaching students the works of Chelsea Watego, Patrick Wolfe or Edward Said?

The definition will have serious and damaging repercussions for decolonial scholars and severely impinges the rights of scholars, in particular First Nations scholars and students, to critique empire and colonisation.

UA is the “peak body” for higher education in Australia, and represents and lobbies for capitalist class interests in higher education.

It is therefore not surprising that it has developed this particular definition, given its strong bilateral relations with Israeli higher education, including signing a 2013 memorandum of understanding with Association of University Heads, Israel.

It should be noted that the NTEU National Council last October called on UA to withdraw from this as part of its Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution.

All university students and staff committed to anti-racism, academic freedom and freedom of speech should join the campaign against the UA definition.

Local NTEU branches and student groups are discussing and passing motions rejecting the new definition and NTEU for Palestine has called a National Day of Action for March 26 with that as one of its key demands.

We will not be silenced on Palestine.

Jonathan Strauss and Markela Panegyres are members of the National Tertiary Education Union and the Socialist Alliance. Republished from Green Left with permission.

ANALYSIS: By Ilan Pappé

“When we revolt, it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.”

— Franz Fanon

Since the 1948 Nakba and arguably before, Palestine has not seen levels of violence as high as those experienced since October 7, 2023. But we need to address how this violence is being situated, treated, and judged.

Indeed, mainstream media often portrays Palestinian violence as terrorism while depicting Israeli violence as self-defence. Rarely is Israeli violence labelled excessive.

• READ MORE: At least 30 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on two schools in Gaza
• Other Israeli War on Gaza reports

Meanwhile, international legal institutions hold both sides equally responsible for this violence, which they classify as war crimes.

Both perspectives are flawed. The first perspective wrongly differentiates between the “immoral” and “unjustified” violence of Palestinians and Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

The second perspective, which assigns blame to both sides, provides a misguided and ultimately harmful framework for understanding the current situation — likely the most violent chapter in Palestine’s modern history.

And all of these perspectives overlook the crucial context necessary to understand the violence that erupted on October 7.

This is not merely a conflict between two violent parties, nor is it simply a clash between a terrorist organisation and a state defending itself.

Rather, it represents a chapter in the ongoing decolonisation of historic Palestine, which began in 1929 and continues today. Only in the future will we know whether October 7 marked an early stage in this decolonisation process or one of its final phases.

Throughout history, decolonisation has been a violent process, and the violence of decolonisation has not been confined to one side only. Apart from a few exceptions where very small, colonised islands were evicted “voluntarily” by colonial empires, decolonisation has not been a pleasant consensual affair by which colonisers end decades, if not centuries, of oppression.

But for this to be our entry point to discuss Hamas, Israel, and the various positions held towards them in the world, one has to acknowledge the colonialist nature of Zionism and therefore recognise the Palestinian resistance as an anti-colonialist struggle — a framework negated totally by American administrations and other Western countries since the birth of Zionism, and so therefore also by other Western countries.

Framing the conflict as a struggle between the colonisers and the colonised helps detect the origin of the violence and shows that there is no effective way of stopping it without addressing its origins.

The root of the violence in Palestine is the evolvement of Zionism in the late 19th century into a settler colonial project.

Like previous settler colonial projects, the main violent impulse of the movement — and later the state that was established — was and is to eliminate the indigenous population. When elimination is not achieved by violence, the solution is always to use more extraordinary violence.

Therefore, the only scenario in which a settler colonial project can end its violent treatment of the indigenous people is when it ends or collapses. Its inability to achieve the absolute elimination of the native population will not deter it from constantly attempting to do so through an incremental policy of elimination or genocide.

The anti-colonial impulse, or propensity, to employ violence is existential — unless we believe that human beings prefer to live as occupied or colonised people.

The colonisers have an option not to colonise or eliminate but rarely cease from doing so without being forced to by the violence of the colonised or by outside pressure from external powers.

Indeed, as is in the case of Israel and Palestine, the best way to avoid violence and counter-violence is to force the settler colonial project to cease through pressure from the outside.

The historical record is worth recollecting to give credence to our claim that the violence of Israel must be judged differently — in moral and political terms — from that of the Palestinians.

This, however, does not mean that condemnation for violation of international law can only be directed towards the coloniser; of course not.

It is an analysis of the history of violence in historical Palestine that contextualises the events of October 7 and the genocide in Gaza and indicates a way to end it.

The history of violence in Modern Palestine: 1882-2000
The arrival of the first group of Zionist settlers in Palestine in 1882 was not, by itself, the first act of violence. The violence of the settlers was epistemic, meaning that the violent removal of the Palestinians by the settlers had already been written about, imagined, and coveted upon their arrival in Palestine — debunking the infamous “land without people” myth.

To translate the imagined removal into reality, the Zionist movement had to wait for the occupation of Palestine by Britain in 1918.

A few years later in the mid-1920s, with assistance from the British mandatory government, 11 villages were ethnically cleansed following the purchase of the regions Marj Ibn Amer and Wadi Hawareth by the Zionist movement from absentee landlords in Beirut and a landowner in Jaffa.

This had never happened before in Palestine. Landowners, whoever they were, did not evict villages that had been there for centuries since Ottoman law enabled land transactions.

This was the origin and the first act of systemic violence in the attempt to dispossess the Palestinians.

Another form of violence was the strategy of “Hebrew Labour” meant to drive out Palestinians from the labour market. This strategy, and the ethnic cleansing, pauperised the Palestinian countryside, leading to forced emigration to towns that could not provide work or proper housing.

It was only in 1929, when these violent actions were coupled with a discourse on constructing a third temple in place of Haram al-Sharif, that the Palestinians responded with violence for the first time.

This was not a coordinated response, but a spontaneous and desperate one against the bitter fruits of the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.

Seven years later, when Britain permitted more settlers to arrive and supported the formation of a nascent Zionist state with its own army, the Palestinians launched a more organised campaign.

This was the first uprising, lasting three years (1936-1939), known as the Arab Revolt. During this period, the Palestinian elite finally recognised Zionism as an existential threat to Palestine and its people.

The main Zionist paramilitary group collaborating with the British army in quelling the revolt was known as the Haganah, meaning “The Defence,” and hence the Israeli narrative to depict any act of aggression against Palestinians as self-defence — a concept reflected in the name of the Israeli army, the Israel Defence Forces.

From the British Mandate period to today, this military power was used to take over land and markets. It was deployed as a “defence” force against the attacks of the anti-colonialist movement and as such was not different from any other coloniser in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The difference is that in most instances of modern history where colonialism has come to an end, the actions of the colonisers are now viewed retrospectively as acts of aggression rather than self-defence.

The great Zionist success has been to commodify their aggression as self-defence and the Palestinian armed struggle as terrorism. The British government, at least until 1948, regarded both acts of violence as terrorism but allowed the worst violence to take place against the Palestinians in 1948 when it watched the first stage of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Between December 1947 and May 1948, when Britain was still responsible for law and order, the Zionist forces urbicided, that is obliterated, the main towns of Palestine and the villages around it. This was more than terror; this was a crime against humanity.

After completing the second stage of the ethnic cleansing between May and December 1948, through the most violent means that Palestine has witnessed for centuries, half of Palestine’s population was forcefully expelled, half of its villages destroyed, as well as most of its towns.

Israeli historians would later claim that “the Arabs” wanted to throw the Jews into the sea. The only people who were literally thrown into the sea — and drowned — were those expelled by the Zionist forces in Jaffa and Haifa.

Israeli violence continued after 1948 but was answered sporadically by Palestinians in an attempt to build a liberation movement.

It began with refugees trying to retrieve what was left of their husbandry and crops in the fields, later accompanied by Fedayeen attacking military installations and civilian places. It only gelled into a significant enterprise in 1968, when the Fatah Movement took over the Arab League’s PLO.

The pattern before 1967 is familiar — the dispossessed used violence in their struggle, but on a limited scale, while the Israeli army retaliated with overwhelming, indiscriminate violence, such as the massacre of the village of Qibya in October 1953 where Ariel Sharon’s unit 101 murdered 69 Palestinian villagers, many of them blown up within their own homes.

No group of Palestinians have been spared from Israeli violence. Those who became Israeli citizens were subjected, until 1966, to the most violent form of oppression: military rule. This system routinely employed violence against its subjects, including abuse, house demolitions, arbitrary arrests, banishment, and killings. Among these atrocities was the Kafr Qassem massacre in October 1956, where Israeli border police killed 49 Palestinian villagers.

This same violent system was transited to the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the June 1967 War. For 19 years, the violence of the occupation was tolerated by the occupied until the mostly non-violent First Intifada in December 1987. Israel responded with brutality and violence that left 1,200 Palestinians dead, 300 of them children — 120,000 were injured and 1,800 homes were demolished. 180 Israelis were killed.

The pattern here continued — an occupied people, disillusioned with their own leadership and the indifference of the region and the world, rose in a non-violent revolt, only to be met with the full, brutal force of the coloniser and occupier.

Another pattern also emerges. The Intifada triggered a renewed interest in Palestine — as has the Hamas attack on October 7 — and produced a “peace process”, the Oslo Accords that raised the hopes of ending the occupation but instead, it provided immunity to the occupier to continue its occupation.

The frustration led, inevitably, to a more violent uprising in October 2000. It also shifted popular support from those leaders who still put their faith in the diplomatic way of ending occupation to those who were willing to continue the armed struggle against it — the political Islamic groups.

Violence in 21st century Palestine
Hamas and Islamic Jihad enjoy great support because of their choice of continuing to fight the occupation, not because of their theocratic vision of a future Caliphate or their particular wish to make the public space more religious.

The horrific pendulum continued. The Second Intifada was met by a more brutal Israeli response.

For the first time, Israel used F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters against the civilian population, alongside battalions of tanks and artillery that led to the 2002 Jenin massacre.

The brutality was directed from above to compensate for the humiliating withdrawal from southern Lebanon forced upon the Israeli army by Hezbollah in the summer of 2000 — the Second Intifada broke out in October 2000.

The direct violence against the occupied people from 2000 took also the form of intensive colonisation and Judaisation of the West Bank and Greater Jerusalem area.

This campaign was translated into the expropriation of Palestinian lands, encircling the Palestinian areas with apartheid walls, and giving a free license to the settlers to perpetrate attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem.

In 2005, Palestinian civil society tried to offer the world a different kind of struggle through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – a non-violent struggle based on a call to the international community to put a stop to the Israeli colonialist violence, which has not been heeded, so far, by governments.

Instead, Israeli brutality on the ground increased and the Gaza resistance in particular fought back resiliently to the point that forced Israel to evict its settlers and soldiers from there in 2005.

However, the withdrawal did not liberate the Gaza Strip, it transformed from being a colonised space into becoming a killing field in which a new form of violence was introduced by Israel.

The colonising power moved from ethnic cleansing to genocide in its attempt to deal with the Palestinian refusal, in particular in the Gaza Strip, to live as a colonised people in the 21st century.

Since 2006, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have used violence in response to what they view as ongoing genocide by Israel against the people of the Gaza Strip. This violence has also been directed at the civilian population in Israel.

Western politicians and journalists often overlooked the indirect and long-term catastrophic effects of these policies on the Gaza population, including the destruction of health infrastructure and the trauma experienced by the 2.2 million people living in the Gaza ghetto.

As it did in 1948, Israel alleges that all its actions are defensive and retaliatory in response to Palestinian violence. In essence, however, Israeli actions since 2006 have not been retaliatory.

Israel initiated violent operations driven by the wish to continue the incomplete 1948 ethnic cleansing that left half of Palestinians inside historic Palestine and millions of others on Palestine’s borders. The eliminatory policies, as brutal as they were, were not successful in this respect; the desperate bouts of Palestinian resistance have instead been used as a pretext to complete the elimination project.

And the cycle continues. When Israel elected an extreme right-wing government in November 2022, Israeli violence was not restricted to Gaza. It appeared everywhere in historical Palestine. In the West Bank, the escalating violence from soldiers and settlers led to incremental ethnic cleansing, particularly in the southern Hebron mountains and the Jordan Valley. This resulted in an increase in killings, including those of teenagers, as well as a rise in arrests without trial.

Since November 2022, a different form of violence has plagued the Palestinian minority living in Israel. This community faces daily terror from criminal gangs that clash with each other, resulting in the murder of one or two community members each day. The police often ignore these issues. Some of these gangs include former collaborators with the occupation who were relocated to Palestinian areas following the Oslo agreement and maintain connections with the Israeli secret service.

Additionally, the new government has exacerbated tensions around the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, permitting more frequent and aggressive incursions into the Haram al-Sharif by politicians, police, and settlers.

It is too difficult to know yet whether there was a clear strategy behind the Hamas attack on October 7, or whether it went according to plan or not, whatever that plan may be. However, 17 years under Israeli blockade and the particularly violent Israeli government of November 2022 added to their determination to try a more drastic and daring form of anti-colonialist struggle for liberation.

Whatever we think about October 7, and we do not have yet a full picture, it was part of a liberation struggle. We may raise both moral questions about Hamas’ actions as well as questions of efficacy; liberation struggles throughout history have had their moments when one could raise such questions and even criticism.

But we cannot forget the source of violence that forced the pastoral people of Palestine after 120 years of colonisation to adopt armed struggle alongside non-violent methods.

On July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice issued a significant ruling regarding the status of the West Bank, which went largely unnoticed. The court affirmed that the Gaza Strip is organically connected to the West Bank, and therefore, under international law, Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza. This means that actions against Israel by the people of Gaza are considered part of their right to resist occupation.

Once again, under the guise of retaliation and revenge, Israeli violence following October 7 bears the marks of its previous exploitation of cycles of violence.

This includes using genocide as a means to address Israel’s “demographic” issue — essentially, how to control the land of historical Palestine without its Palestinian inhabitants. By 1967, Israel had taken all of historical Palestine, but the demographic reality thwarted the goal of complete dispossession.

Ironically, Israel established the Gaza Strip in 1948 as a receptor for hundreds of thousands of refugees, “willing” to concede 2% of historical Palestine to remove a significant number of Palestinians expelled by its army during the Nakba.

This particular refugee camp has proven more challenging to Israel’s plans to de-Arabize Palestine than any other area, due to the resilience and resistance of its people.

Any attempt to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza must be made in two ways. First, immediate action is needed to stop the violence through a ceasefire and, ideally, international sanctions on Israel. Second, it is crucial to prevent the next phase of the genocide, which could target the West Bank. This requires the continuation and intensification of the global solidarity movement’s campaign to pressure governments and policymakers into compelling Israel to end its genocidal policies.

Since the late 19th century and the arrival of Zionism in Palestine, the impulse of the Palestinians has not been about violence or revenge. The impulse remains the return to normal and natural life, a right that has been denied to the Palestinians for more than a century, not only by Zionism and Israel but by the powerful alliance that allowed and immunised the project of the dispossession of Palestine.

This is not a wish to romanticise or idealise Palestinian society. It was, and would continue to be, a typical society in a region where tradition and modernity often coexist in a complex relationship, and where collective identities can sometimes lead to divisions, especially when external forces seek to exploit these differences.

However, pre-Zionist Palestine was a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted peacefully, and where most people experienced violence only rarely — likely less frequently than in many parts of the Global North.

Violence as a permanent and massive aspect of life can only be removed when its source is removed. In the case of Palestine, it is the ideology and praxis of the Israeli settler state, not the existential struggle of the colonised Palestinian people.

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian and socialist activist. He is a professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is also the author of the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld) and many other books. Republished with permission by the author from The New Arab.

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.

West Papuan pro-independence supporters are calling Indonesia’s condemnation of Israel hypocritical considering its occupation of Papua for 61 years.

The Indonesian government, through the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the President, has condemned the Israeli government’s handling of the conflict in Gaza.

In a statement, a United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) spokesperson said: “Indonesia’s stance on the international stage contrasts with its actions in Papua”.

“Indonesia mediates conflicts in several Asian countries but lacks a roadmap for resolving the conflict in Papua.”

The group is calling for the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to immediately form a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights violations. They have also asked for a review of Indonesia’s UN membership.

In November last year, the Pacific Islands Forum appointed the Fiji and Papua New Guinea prime ministers as special envoys to Indonesia to “address the West Papua issue“.

The ULMWP are asking for Indonesia to let the two leaders visit Papua.

Hard to compare with Gaza
Human Rights Watch researcher in Indonesia Andreas Harsono said the situation in West Papua was hard to compare to Gaza.

“Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank, of course, is recognised by more than 130 countries, members of the United Nations. Meanwhile, West Papua is being discussed mostly among seven or maybe 10 other countries, so this is difficult to compare.”

He said Indonesia — the most populous Muslim majority country — had religion in common with Palestine.

But Harsono said West Papua did need more international attention and there was little understanding of the conflict inside Indonesia because of propaganda.

ULMWP executive secretary Markus Haluk reiterated calls for a UN fact-finding mission.

“We want the UN to send their fact-finding mission to West Papua to witness and to prove that there is a slow-motion genocide, ethnocide and ecocide happening in West Papua,” Haluk said, speaking to RNZ Pacific through a translator.

It is an ongoing plea for the United Nations to visit. In 2019, the Indonesian government agreed in principle to a visit by the Human Rights Commissioner but that promise has not been fulfilled.

Haluk said the “big brothers” in the region — referring to New Zealand and Australia — could bring up the UN fact-finding mission when the nation’s leaders meet with their Indonesian counterparts.

“There has been several visits by the leaders but it seems like the issue of West Papua is not as important as the other issues such as trade,” he said.

‘Refusing to take responsibility’
Former New Zealand Greens MP Catherine Delahunty said she felt frustrated that West Papua had not got the attention it should, especially considering it was in “our own backyard”.

Nearly all foreign media has been banned from entering West Papua.

“Anyone that criticises the regime has great difficulty getting into that country to report and local journalists are subjected to sustained threats and so we’re in a very unhealthy situation in terms of public understanding of just how drastic the situation is,” she said.

Delahunty said Indonesia had been intimidating smaller nations, while larger ones like New Zealand and Australia were “refusing to act”.

“They are refusing to take responsibility for their own part in allowing this to continue.”

She said New Zealand and Australia could create consequences for Indonesia if it continued to not allow the fact-finding mission, by doing things like stopping military exchanges.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said New Zealand “follows human rights developments closely, and takes all allegations of human rights violations seriously”.

“New Zealand continues to register concerns about the human rights situation in Papua via appropriate fora. New Zealand encourages Indonesia to promote and protect the rights of all its citizens, and to be transparent in policy relating to Papua.

“New Zealand recognises Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, including in Papua.”

In a statement to RNZ Pacific, the Indonesian Embassy in Wellington said the government of Indonesia was committed to accelerate the development of all provinces, “including our brothers and sisters in Papua”, to lead and enjoy a prosperous way of life.

“Papua is highly respected as an honourable region and will continue to be maintained as such,” it said.

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

As Israel drives the Palestinians deeper into another Nakba in Gaza with its assault on Rafah, the Palestine Youth Aotearoa (PYA) and solidarity supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand tonight commemorated the original Nakba — “the Catastrophe” — of 1948.

• READ MORE: As Israel bombs Gaza, sirens echo in West Bank marking 76 years since Nakba
• Fiji abstains from new UN vote on Palestinian membership bid
• 1000 protest in Auckland over Israel’s war on Gaza, honour Nakba victims
• Other War on Gaza reports

This was when Israeli militias slaughtered more than 15,000 people, perpetrated more than 70 massacres and occupied more than three quarters of Palestine, with 750,000 of the Palestinian population forced into becoming refugees from their own land.

The Nakba was a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing followed by the destruction of hundreds of villages, to prevent the return of the refugees — similar to what is being wrought now in Gaza.

The Nakba lies at the heart of 76 years of injustice for the Palestinians — and for the latest injustice, the seven-month long war on Gaza.

Participants told through their stories, poetry and songs by candlelight, they would not forget 1948 — “and we will not forget the genocide under way in Gaza.”

Photographs: David Robie

Nakba Day vigil in Tāmaki Makaurau in Aotearoa 2024

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The Pacific state of Hawai’i’s House of Representatives has joined the state’s Senate in calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, becoming the first state to pass such a resolution, reports Hawaii News Now.

In March, the Senate passed a ceasefire resolution with a 24–1 vote, and now the House has passed it on a 48–3 vote last Friday.

However, although the lawmakers are the first to pass a ceasefire resolution, reports have quoted the state legislature’s Public Access Room as saying it “does not have the force and effect of law”.

• READ MORE: Is­raeli strikes kill 34 in Gaza – Hamas con­sid­ers lat­est cease­fire pro­pos­al
• Other War on Gaza reports

Nor does it need a signature from the governor.

According to the resolution, the lawmakers are pushing for President Joe Biden’s administration to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

The Hawai’i lawmakers are also demanding that the administration “facilitate the de-escalation of hostilities to end the current violence, promptly send and facilitate the entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, including fuel, food, water, and medical supplies, and begin negotiations for lasting peace.”

President Biden has previously called for a ceasefire in Gaza, but there did not appear to be a contingency plan should negotiations seeking a ceasefire fail, according to The Washington Post.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, more than 34,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip by strikes from Israel, and 77,143 have been wounded.

US overthrew Hawai’ian kingdom
Tensions in the region go to at least the Nakba in 1948 when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land and illegal Israeli settlements began.

Given Hawai’i’s history of American businessmen overthrowing the indigenous Hawai’ian kingdom with the support of US military forces in 1893, pro-Palestinian advocates have pointed out that Hawai’i has a key connection to the conflict in Gaza.

Fatima Abed, founder of Rise for Palestine, is both Palestinian and Puerto Rican, and has a family member who is based in Gaza.

She told The Huffington Post: “People in Hawai’i, especially Native Hawai’ians, are determined on this issue because it’s very jarring to know that our tax dollars are going to fund the genocide of another colonised people while, here at home, our government budgets aren’t covering the basic needs of the people.”

Abed said that the island of Lahaina and its people had not been sufficiently cared for after the wildfires last August.

“Native Hawai’ians across the state have been underserved for decades. The people of Hawai’i see that money being sent overseas to hurt people instead of helping here, and it makes no sense.

“From the river to the sea, all of our people will be free.”

The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza.

All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave.

However, organisers received word of an “administrative roadblock” initiated by Israel in an attempt to prevent the departure.

• READ MORE: Nelson Mandela’s grandson joins Gaza flotilla, slams ‘genocide complicit’ leaders
• Other Gaza Freedom Flotilla reports

Israel is reportedly pressuring the Republic of Guinea Bissau to withdraw its flag from the flotilla’s lead ship — Akdeniz (“Mediterranean”).

This triggered a request for an additional inspection, this one by the flag state, that delayed yesterday’s planned departure.

“This is another example of Israel obstructing the delivery of life-saving aid to the people in Gaza who face a deliberately created famine,” said a Freedom Flotilla statement.

“How many more children will die of malnutrition and dehydration because of this delay and an ongoing siege which must be broken?”

Israeli tactics
This is not the first time that Israel has used such tactics to stop Freedom Flotilla ships from sailing.

“We have overcome them before and are diligently working to overcome this latest attempt,” said the flotilla statement.

“Our vessels have already passed all required inspections and we are confident that the Akdeniz will pass this inspection provided there is no political interference.

“We expect this to be no more than a few days delay. Israel will not break our resolve to reach the people of Gaza.”

‘Freedom flotilla’ defying Israel’s Gaza blockade.       Video: Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera reports that lawyers, aid workers and activists are on board the ship in preparation for efforts by the flotilla to break the Israeli air, land and sea blockade of Gaza.

About 100 media people are on board as well, hoping to provide a more global eye on what is happening in Gaza.

Chief Mandla Mandela, the grandson of former South African President Nelson Mandela, is part of the flotilla that plans to soon set off for Gaza.

“For us South Africans, the Palestinian issue has always been close and dear to our hearts,” Mandela said, noting that this grandfather had also said, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.”

Published in collaboration with Kia Ora Gaza.

Hours ago, the news media reported that Israel has attacked Iran. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition publicly declared that it is reminding the world that with all the escalation between Israel and Iran, the killing is still going on in Gaza.

“While those two countries go back and forth, we cannot let Israel distract the world from what is causing far more death, disease, and destruction — Israel’s policies of starving and continued bombardment of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children,” said the Freedom Flotilla.

Hundreds of civilians from dozens of countries — including Aotearoa/New Zealand — have been meeting in Istanbul, Turkiye, to prepare to sail soon for Gaza, carrying thousands of tonnes of life-saving food and medicine, said Kia Ora Gaza, one of the flotilla coalition members, in a statement.

• READ MORE: Rousing farewell for Kiwi doctors flying out to Gaza aid flotilla
• Other Gaza Freedom Flotilla reports

Three New Zealand doctors are among the international participants.

The flotilla aims to break Israel’s unlawful siege of Gaza and demand an immediate ceasefire to save the lives of thousands of Palestinians.

Participants from 30 countries will be on board, including 40 Americans.

Elliot Adams, former president of Veterans for Peace and a former US paratrooper, called out the complicity of his own government in supporting Israel’s genocidal aggression:

“Israel is trying to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, with US support, through starvation as well as direct violence.

“This is a humanitarian crisis and we have got to try to stop it by breaking the siege.”

Israeli ‘bombs, bullets killing’
Former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau said: “Israeli bombs and bullets are killing Palestinians in Gaza every day and their illegal siege is deliberately starving everybody else.”

She said she was joining the nonviolent flotilla “because our governments are not listening to the people’s demand to stop Israel’s barbaric crimes against humanity.”

Argentinian surgeon Carlos Trotta, who has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) across the world, including in Gaza, said that the health situation for Palestinians in the besieged Strip was at a crisis point:

“It’s an emergency. Children are dying of malnutrition, patients have their limbs amputated without anesthesia, and thousands are at risk of dying from the spread of infectious disease, all because of Israel’s arbitrary restrictions on aid arriving in Gaza.

“It is critically important for this flotilla to act right now to help prevent even more loss of life.”

Participants will undergo non-violence training for the next three days.

During that time they will review potential scenarios and learn various strategies and tactics to protect themselves and each other in the event of any attacks.

Departing next week
The flotilla will depart next week carrying more than 5000 tonnes of humanitarian aid on a cargo ship, accompanied by two passenger ships.

Huwaida Arraf, a human rights lawyer and Freedom Flotilla organiser, said: “Israel’s current siege on Gaza, as well as its 17-year-long blockade are forms of collective punishment, which is a war crime.

“As the siege and blockade are illegal, Israel has no right to attack or stop our ships.

“We call on our governments, which have thus far done nothing to protect the Palestinian people or compel Israel to abide by international law, to start living up to their obligations and demand our flotilla have safe passage to Gaza.

“We ask people around the world to join us in this call.”

• More information

A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza.

The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to be able to reach Gaza and join with other flotilla medics to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid and treat wounded patients in the war-ravaged enclave.

Their participation is facilitated by Kia Ora Gaza.

• READ MORE: Other Kia Ora Gaza and Freedom Flotilla reports

The doctors being farewelled were Dr Wasfy Shahin and Dr Faiez Idais led by Dr Adnan Ali.

Kia Ora Gaza organiser Roger Fowler anticipated this current flotilla was “shaping up to be an historic event”.

After ignoring six months of horrific genocide in Gaza, he said, the New Zealand government had failed to take a stand.

“They haven’t even lifted a finger,” he said.

The Freedom Flotilla’s solidarity mission “is an international civil society attempt to break through Israel’s illegal siege and end the occupation and slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza”.

And it was also planned to deliver more than 5500 tonnes of urgently needed humanitarian aid.

Other speakers included Green Party co-leader, Marama Davidson, who sailed on the 2016 Women’s Boat to Gaza, PSNA secretary Neil Scott and local Palestinian community leader Maher Nazzel.

The leader of a New Zealand solidarity group of Palestinian self-determination supporters has accused the country’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters of making a “bluff and bluster” speech at the United Nations that was misleading about inaction at home.

National chair John Minto of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) said in a statement today the Peters speech at the UN General Assembly yesterday was “bluff and bluster . . . [and] a classic case of doing one thing at home and saying another for overseas audiences”.

He said the speech “fooled nobody” in New Zealand.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Rafah threat raises questions about truce talks
• NZ’s Peters criticises Security Council at UN, says Gaza ‘a wasteland’
• Other War on Gaza reports

In his UNGA speech, Peters described Israel’s war on Gaza as an “utter catastrophe” and labelled the besieged enclave a “wasteland”.

He went on to say Israel could “not be under any misconceptions as to its legal obligations”.

Peters also condemned the use of the veto in the UN Security Council five times to block ceasefire resolutions, and Israel’s continued building of illegal settlements on Palestinian land, saying the “misguided notion” and forced displacement of Palestinians “imperil the two-state solution”.

Minto admitted that “these were strong words” but he added that they were “meaningless in the context of what the government has failed to do at home”.

The PSNA chair said Peters had not told his international audience that the New Zealand government had:

• Refused to stop New Zealand military exports which support Israel’s war on Gaza;
• Refused (and still refuses) to condemn Israel for any of its war crimes such as collective punishment, the mass slaughter of over 33,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — the targeting of aid workers and deliberate starvation of Gaza’s Palestinian population;
• Refused (and still refuses) to call for an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza;
• Refused (and still refuses) to reinstate funding for UNRWA (let alone doubling its funding and bringing forward payments which the government has been urged to do);
• Refused (and still refuses) to withdraw from the US war to target Yemen which is acting to oppose Israel’s genocide of Palestinians;
• Refused (and still refuses) to support or join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice;
• Refused (and still refuses) to shut down the Israeli Embassy; and
• Refused (and still refuses) to grant humanitarian visas for Palestinians with family in New Zealand

“Winston Peters stands with the US/Israel on Gaza in every important respect but has tried to give a different impression to the United Nations,” Minto said.

“There was nothing in his speech which holds Israel to account for its war crimes — not even a single punctuation mark.

“It was a Janus-faced performance at the United Nations.”

UN considers Palestine membership bid
Meanwhile, Palestine’s ambassador at the United Nations, speaking earlier than Peters, was optimistic about the occupied territory’s bid for full membership at the UN. The bid has been referred to a Security Council committee.

“This is a historic moment again,” said Ambassador Riyad Mansour.

The committee is expected to make a decision about Palestine’s status later this month, said Vanessa Frazier, Malta’s UN ambassador.

Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo is monitoring the latest developments at UN headquarters.

He said the last time Palestine’s bid for full UN membership got this far in 2011, it failed primarily because the US threatened to veto it.

The New York-based media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists says the announcement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his intention to ban Al Jazeera follows a similar pattern of media interference, including the killing of media workers.

“We’ve seen this kind of language before from Netanyahu and Israeli officials in which they try to paint journalists as ‘terrorists’, as ‘criminals’. This is nothing new,” Jodie Ginsberg told Al Jazeera.

“It’s another example of the tightening of the free press and the stranglehold the Israeli government would like to exercise. It’s an incredibly worrying move by the government.”

• READ MORE: Other Gaza media freedom reports

Netanyahu wrote on X on Monday that “Al Jazeera harmed Israel’s security, actively participated in the October 7 massacre, and incited against Israeli soldiers.

“The terrorist channel Al Jazeera will no longer broadcast from Israel. I intend to act immediately in accordance with the new law to stop the channel’s activity.’

The Israeli parliament approved a law granting the government authority to ban foreign news networks, including Al Jazeera. PM Netanyahu pledged to “act immediately” to close the network’s local office pic.twitter.com/L2RXOzVi5t

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 2, 2024

The Qatar-based network rejected what it described as “slanderous accusations” and accused Netanyahu of “incitement”.

“Al Jazeera holds the Israeli Prime Minister responsible for the safety of its staff and network premises around the world, following his incitement and this false accusation in a disgraceful manner,” it said in a statement.

‘Slanderous accusations’
“Al Jazeera reiterates that such slanderous accusations will not deter us from continuing our bold and professional coverage, and reserves the right to pursue every legal step.”

Netanyahu has long sought to shut down broadcasts from Al Jazeera, alleging anti-Israel bias, the network reports on its website.

The law, which passed in a 71-10 vote in the Knesset, gives the prime minister and communications minister the authority to order the closure of foreign networks operating in Israel and confiscate their equipment if it is believed they pose “harm to the state’s security”.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that an Israeli move to shut down Al Jazeera would be “concerning”.

“The United States supports the critically important work of journalists around the world and that includes those who are reporting in the conflict in Gaza,” Jean-Pierre told reporters.

“So we believe that work is important. The freedom of the press is important. And if those reports are true, it is concerning to us.”

The legislation’s passage comes nearly five months after Israel said it would block Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen. It refrained from shutting Al Jazeera at the same time.

Move with closure
After the vote on Monday, Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said he intended to move forward with the closure. He said Al Jazeera had been acting as a “propaganda arm of Hamas” by “encouraging armed struggle against Israel”.

“It is impossible to tolerate a media outlet, with press credentials from the Government Press Office and offices in Israel, acting from within against us, certainly during wartime,” he said.

According to news agencies, his office said the order would seek to block the channel’s broadcasts in Israel and prevent it from operating in the country. The order would not apply to the occupied West Bank or Gaza.

Israel has often lashed out at Al Jazeera, which has offices in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

In May 2022, Israeli forces shot dead senior Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while she was covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin.

A UN-commissioned report concluded that Israeli forces used “lethal force without justification” in the killing, violating her “right to life”.

During the war in Gaza, several of the channel’s journalists and their family members have been killed by Israeli bombardments.

On October 25, an air raid killed the family of Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, including his wife, son, daughter, grandson and at least eight other relatives.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 32,782 people, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian authorities.

Pacific Media Watch and news agencies.

Meta, the giant social media corporation, has “unpublished” Green Left’s longstanding Facebook page, which had tens of thousands of followers.

We had been regularly posting stories, videos and photographs on the page from our consistent reporting of the news and views that seldom get into the mainstream media.

But our recent interviews with veteran Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled have resulted in what appears to be a 10-year ban, imposed without warning, nor an avenue of appeal.

• READ MORE:  Meta’s broken promises — systemic censorship of Palestine content on Instagram and Facebook
• Leila Khaled on the Kurdish struggle
• Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence — David Robie

Khaled, 79, is a member of the Palestinian Council (Palestine’s parliament) and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. She lives in political exile in Jordan.

She is recognised as the Che Guevara of Palestine; she has enormous respect from Palestinians and millions of progressive people around the world.

The Facebook banning came shortly after Zionist organisations combined with right-wing media (SkyNews and the Murdoch media) to pressure Labor to say it would prevent Khaled from addressing Ecosocialism 2024 — a conference GL is co-hosting in Boorloo/Perth in June — by not only denying her a visa, but even banning her from speaking by video link.

Multiple visits
As GL reported, the excuse for such political censorship is, as the Executive Council of Australian Jewry alleged in its letter to Labor, that allowing Khaled to speak “would be likely to have the effect of inciting, promoting or advocating terrorism”.

This is nonsense.

Khaled has visited Britain on multiple occasions over the past few years. Israel issued her a visa to visit the West Bank in 1996.

She has visited Sweden and South Africa and, on one of her multiple visits, met Nelson Mandela (once also labelled a “terrorist” by the West), who warmly welcomed her.

A growing number of human rights activists, academics, journalists and community leaders have protested against this blatant political censorship. Their statements are here and we urge you to join in by sending us a short statement.

Khaled told GL the real reason for this censorship is to “make us shut up about what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank today”.

Meta has been exposed for carrying out “systematic online censorship”, particularly of Palestinian voices.

Suppression of content
In December 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented “over 1050 takedowns and other suppression of content on Instagram and Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses”.

Meta did not apply the same censorship to pro-Zionist posts that incited hate and violence against Palestinians.

HRW noted that “of the 1050 cases reviewed for this report, 1049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel”.

Other studies have described the systematic “shadow banning” of pro-Palestinian posts on Facebook and Instagram.

AccessNow, which defends the “digital rights of people and communities at risk” reports that Meta is “systematically silencing the voices of both Palestinians and those advocating for Palestinians’ rights” through arbitrary content removals, suspension of prominent Palestinian and Palestine-related accounts, restrictions on pro-Palestinian users and content, shadow-banning, discriminatory content moderation policies, inconsistent and discriminatory rule enforcement.

Social media corporations, such as Meta and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), exercise a lot of power to manipulate people’s social and political views. This power has grown exponentially as more people access their news, views and information online.

Break this power
The search for ways to break this power will go on.

In the meantime there is one way readers can break the social media bans and restrictions on GL’s voice-for-the-resistance journalism: become a supporter and get GL delivered to you.

It has always been a struggle to keep people-power media projects alive. But GL has been going since 1991 and, with your help, we will not let the giant social media corporations silence us.

Republished with permission from Green Left.

A leader of one of New Zealand’s main Palestine solidarity groups today called on the government to expel the Israeli ambassador and call for an immediate ceasefire in the genocidal war on Gaza.

“We know what the crimes are — occupation. Land theft. Ethnic cleansing. Apartheid. Genocide. All crimes against humanity,” Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott told a cheering protest rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga (Britomart) Square.

“My challenge to the politicians of Aotearoa is stand up for international law. Oppose Israeli crimes against humanity. Speak up.”

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Ceasefire talks in Doha struggling amid disputes
• UN Security Council does not pass draft US resolution on Gaza ceasefire
• Other War on Gaza protests

Expressing a frequently cited epithet, “Silence is complicity”, Scott gave a brief rundown on the months of protest since the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, pointing out that the struggle really began after the Second World War with the Naqba (“Catastrophe”) forced expulsions of Palestinians in 1948.

“Another week. Another rally. Another month! Another rally,” Scott began.

“Another year. Another decade. And another decade. Another rally . . .

“This didn’t start on October 7 last year. It started in 1948.”

Heavy Israeli attacks
Scott’s condemnation of the New Zealand government for its “silence” followed news reports today that Israeli forces had launched “violent” ground and air attacks on Khan Younis and bombed homes in Rafah and Deir el-Balah, killing at least 14 Palestinians.

Scott said that “many long term campaigners” would know that “Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa stalwart, Janfrie Wakim, her husband [David] and a whole bunch of Palestine supporters were pivotal in setting up these [Auckland] rallies”.

“Monthly rallies. They were set up in 1981,” he said.

“Forty-three years ago. Forty-three long damn years ago . . .  silence from [New Zealand] governments.

“Throughout those years, we knew that extreme racism and Jewish supremacy was baked into the core of Zionist ideology.”

Turning to the systematic theft of Palestinian land, Scott asked: “Who here knew about the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine — the Israeli theft of Palestinian land.

“The Israeli ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians from their homes and lands.”

The Israeli apartheid had treated Palestinians as second class humans, if Zionist Israel had thought of Palestinians as humans at all.

“We took on South African apartheid back in the day,” he said about the 1981 anti-aterheid Springbok rugby tour protests which were inspirational in forcing eventual change to the minority white-ruled regime in Pretoria.

“But [with] the Israeli apartheid of Palestinians. . . Our governments have done nothing.

“All of those breaches of international law! Laws Aotearoa has signed up to. All crimes against humanity,” Scott said.

“You. I. And most people with a simple interest in knowing what was happening in Palestine know the facts. The truth.

“For decades, we have been taking action shouting the issues from the roof tops. Almost begging successive governments to take action.

“Not to spout silly, petty words and then look the other way but take real action.”

Scott said PSNA had written to ministers, taken delegations to Wellington, and visited local MPs in their offices as well as holding rallies.

“Successive governments knew. They all knew about these crimes against humanity.”

But for more than 85 years of Israel committing crimes against humanity, successive New Zealand governments had taken “no real action”.

“They have never sent the Israeli ambassador home to show our displeasure of those crimes against humanity,” Scott said.

He said New Zealand governments had allowed 200 young Israelis to come to Aotearoa to “rest and relax” after enforcing a vicious deadly occupation of Palestine.

“A dehumanising apartheid. And now, to rest and relax after committing genocide.

“What the hell are the politicians thinking? Where are their moral compasses? Israelis committing genocide,” Scott said.

“With a warm smile — welcome to Aotearoa and thanks for bringing your blood stained money with you. Feel free to walk among us, free from consequences.

“We must sanction genocidal Israel. Send the ambassador home. End the Israeli working holiday visa! Ban ZIM shipping agents from our lands.

“Silence is complicity — to the politicians: End your silence.”

Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March praised he crowd for protesting week after week and applying pressure on the government — “it’s thanks to you,” he said to resounding cheers.

He explained the moves the Green Party was taking to persuade the government to grant humanitarian visas for members of Palestinian families in New Zealand impacted on by the brutal ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

A Palestinian campaigner, Billy Hania, was also among many speakers. He broadcast a series of outspoken messages, including a Tiktok rundown on NZ government ministers’ support for Israel and from Michael Fakhri, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

He also praised many of the regular protesters for their perseverance and solidarity, naming several in the crowd.

Meanwhile, Hanan Ashrawi, a former member of the Palestine Legislative Council, has told Al Jazeera’s Inside Story that the US should support a “straightforward” resolution in the UN Security Council instead of using “using evasive tactics”.

UN Security Council members are expected to vote on a new resolution put forward by the elected “E10” members calling for an immediate ceasefire on Monday.

Israel is reported to have killed more than 32,070 people in the war on Gaza arrested more than 7350 Palestinians in West Bank so far during the war.

Visiting the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, UN Secretary-General Antònio Guterres said a line of blocked aid trucks stuck on Egypt’s side of the border while Palestinians faced starvation on the other side was a “moral outrage”.

About 5000 protesters calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to Israeli’s genocidal  war on Gaza today took part in a rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square and a march up Queen Street in the business heart of New Zealand’s largest city.

This was one of a series of protests across more than 25 cities and towns across Aotearoa New Zealand in one of the biggest demonstrations since the war began last October 7.

Many passionate Palestinian and indigenous Māori speakers and a Filipino activist condemned the Israeli settler colonial project over the destruction caused in the occupation of Palestinian lands and the massive loss of civilian lives in the war.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Death toll rises as Israel intensifies attacks
• Other War on Gaza reports

The most rousing cheers greeted Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick who condemned the killing of “more than 30,000 innocent civilian lives” — most of them women and children with International Women’s Day being celebrated yesterday.

“The powers that be want you to think it is complicated . . .,” she said. “it’s not. Here’s why.

“We should all be able to agree that killing children is wrong.

“We should all be able to agree that indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians who have been made refugees in their own land is wrong,” she said and was greeted with strong applause.

“Everybody in power who disagrees with that is wrong.”

‘Stop the genocide’
Chants of shame followed that echoing the scores of placards and banners in the crowd declaring such slogans as “Stop the genocide”, “From Gaza to Paekākāriki, this govt doesn’t care about tamariki. Free Palestine”, “Women for a free Palestine”, “Unlearn lies about Palestine”, “Food not bombs for the tamariki of Gaza”, “From the river to the sea . . . aways was, always will be. Ceasefire now.”

Three young girls being wheeled in a pram held a placard saying “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around”, in reference to a protest against the New Zealand government joining a small US-led group of nations taking reprisals against Yemen.

The Yemeni Houthis are blockading the Red Sea in solidarity with Palestine to prevent ships linked to Israel, UK or the US from getting through the narrow waterway. They say they are taking this action under the Genocide Convention.

Swarbrick vowed that the Green Party — along with Te Pati Māori — the only political party represented at the rally, would pressure the conservative coalition government to press globally for an immediate ceasefire, condemnation of Israeli atrocities, restoration of funding to the Palestine refugee relief agency UNRWA, and expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.

pic.twitter.com/pB5gPPJ8jH

— Khaled Beydoun (@KhaledBeydoun) March 8, 2024

Meanwhile, as protests took place around the country, national chair John Minto of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) declared on social media from Christchurch that “[Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon and [Foreign Minister] Winston Peters can’t find the energy to tweet for an end to Israel’s genocidal starvation of Palestinians in Gaza”.

He added that Israel continued to turn away humanitarian convoys of desperately needed aid from northern Gaza.

“But PM Christopher Luxon has been silent while FM Winston Peters has been indolent.”

Death toll rising
Al Jazeera reports that the death toll is ris­ing as Is­rael in­ten­si­fies at­tacks on Rafah in southern Gaza, and also in cen­tral Gaza.

Three more children have died of malnutrition and dehydration at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, according to health officials, taking the total confirmed toll from starvation to 23.

The US military has denied responsibility for an airdrop of humanitarian aid that Gaza officials say killed five people and injured several others when parachutes failed to open while Israeli forces again opened fire on aid seekers in northern Gaza.

President Joe Biden’s plan of a temporary port for maritime delivery of aid has been widely condemned by UN officials and other critics as an “election year ploy”.

Dr Rami Khouri, of the American University of Beirut, said the plan was “a ruse most of the world can see through”. It could give Israel even tighter control over what gets into the Gaza Strip in the future while completing “the ethnic cleansing of Palestine”.

Protesters stop US lecturer
Wellington Scoop reports that students and activist groups at Victoria University of Wellington yesterday protested against a lecture by the US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Dr Bonnie Jenkins.

Dr Jenkins is a senior official in charge of AUKUS implementation, a military alliance currently between Australia, UK and USA.

About 150 people, mostly students from groups including Justice for Palestine, Student Justice for Palestine-Pōneke (SJP), Stop AUKUS and Peace Action Wellington rallied outside the university venue in Pipitea to protest against further collaborations with the US.

A peaceful protest was undertaken inside the lecture hall at the same time.

An activist began by calling for “a moment of silence for all the Palestinians killed by the US-funded genocide in Gaza”.

He then condemned the weapons that the US was sending to Gaza, before eventually being ejected from the lecture theatre.

Shortly after, another activist stood up and said “Karetao o te Kāwana kakīwhero!” (“Puppets of this redneck government”) and quoted from the women’s Super Rugby Aupiki team Hurricanes Poua’s revamped haka: “Mai te awa ki te moana (From the river to the sea), free free Palestine!”

Video on ‘imperialism’
Dr Jenkins was ushered away for the second time. Subsequently a couple of activists took to speaking and playing a video about how AUKUS represented US imperialism.

When organisers later came in to announce that Dr Jenkins would not be continuing with her lecture, chants of “Free, free Palestine!” filled the room.

“For five months, Aotearoa has been calling for our government to do more to stop the genocide in Gaza. And for years, we have been calling our governments to stand against Israel’s occupation of Palestine,” said Samira Zaiton, a Justice for Palestine organiser.

“We are now at the juncture of tightening relations with settler colonies who will only destroy more lives, more homes and more lands and waters. We want no part in this. We want no part in AUKUS.”

Dr Jenkins’ lecture was organised by Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Studies, to address “security challenges in the 21st century”.

Valerie Morse, an organiser with Peace Action Wellington, said: “Experts on foreign policy and regional diplomacy have done careful research on the disastrous consequences of involving ourselves with AUKUS.

“Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa is not a nuclear testing ground and sacrifice zone for US wars.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has designated the political wing of Hamas as a “terrorist” entity.

New Zealand designated the military wing of Hamas as a terrorist entity in 2010.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the government unequivocally condemned the “brutal” terrorist attacks by Hamas in October, and the move had been taken after he received official advice.

• READ MORE:  Gaza faces ‘mass killing of chil­dren in slow mo­tion’ as Is­rael blocks aid
• What is Hamas?: A simple guide to the armed Palestinian group
• Why New Zealand should not designate Hamas a terrorist group
• Other War on Gaza reports

“What happened on 7 October reinforces we can no longer distinguish between the military and political wings of Hamas,” Peters said.

“The organisation as a whole bears responsibility for these horrific terrorist attacks.”

The designation means any assets of the terrorist entity in New Zealand are frozen. It also makes participation in or supporting Hamas’ activities, or recruiting for it a criminal offence.

However, Peters made clear the designation would not affect the provision of humanitarian support to Palestinians, and would not stop New Zealand providing aid to benefit civilians in Gaza.

‘Gravely concerned’
“Nor does it stop us providing consular support to New Zealand citizens or permanent residents in the conflict zone,” he said.

“We remain gravely concerned about the impact of this conflict on civilians and will continue to call for an end to the violence and an urgent resumption of the Middle East Peace Process.

“A lasting solution to the conflict will only be achieved by peaceful means.”

The coalition government has also banned several extremist Israeli settlers from travelling to New Zealand.

Peters said those banned had committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

It was not clear how many settlers have been banned and who exactly they are.

There has been a significant increase in extremist violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinian populations in recent months, Peters said.

He acknowledged the official advice provided to him had been commissioned by then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in October.

Just over a fortnight earlier, Peters had specifically urged Israel not to begin a ground offensive in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.

A day later, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon issued a joint statement with his Australian and Canadian counterparts calling for the same thing.

It included a call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the release of hostages, condemned Hamas for its terror attacks on Israel, and said Israel must protect Palestinian civilians.

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

Unfortunately there was no discussion of foreign policy during Aotearoa New Zealand’s general election last year. Aside from the odd obligatory question in a TV debate it barely got a mention.

Our international relations tend to be glossed over because most policy is shared by Labour and National at least.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in the 1970s there was a palpable feeling of pride across the country as the Norman Kirk Labour government sent a New Zealand frigate to protest against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

• READ MORE: Bureaucratic muck up releases two versions of joint statement from New Zealand, Australia and Canada on the Beehive website
• A shameful NZ response to genocide of Palestinians in Gaza
• NZ to deploy Defence Force to Red Sea
• Other War on Gaza reports

A similar community pride surrounded developing our anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s and relief as well when New Zealand did not buckle to US pressure and stayed out of the infamous invasion of Iraq in 2003 while the rest of the Western world fell for the huge propaganda blitz about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”.

It has been an awful surprise to see New Zealand give up that independence so easily in the last two years.

We rightly joined the condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because while there were clear reasons for Russia’s action there was no justification.

But then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her successor Chris Hipkins just gave up even the pretence of independence.

Fast downhill ride
Both attended belligerent NATO meetings and it’s been a fast downhill ride since. Our new National-led coalition government is continuing the same political momentum.

Nevertheless, it still came as a shock last month when Prime Minister Christopher Luxon — flanked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins — announced we were sending military personnel to join the US-led bombing of Yemen.

There was no United Nations mandate for war and it was supported only by the tiniest minority of Western countries.

The Houthi group in Yemen have attacked Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea to pressure Israel to end its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

Yemeni groups have done this because the Western world has turned its back on the people of Gaza and refuses to condemn Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.

Shouldn’t we be speaking strongly for an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza like most of the world rather than joining in bombing one of the world’s poorest countries?

A ceasefire in Gaza would end the attacks on Red Sea shipping and dramatically reduce tensions across the Middle East.

That’s what an independent New Zealand would have done.

Shame, instead of pride
Instead of pride, most of us feel shame as the world now looks on us as a small, obsequious appendage to the US empire — an empire which has blocked three UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The killing of civilians and the taking of civilian hostages is a war crime under the fourth Geneva convention and must always be condemned, no matter who the perpetrator.

We were right to condemn the killing of Israeli civilians, but our government’s refusal to condemn the killing of more than 28,000 Palestinians, including more than 12,000 children, or even call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — until it belatedly did so this week — leaves an indelible stain on our reputation.

Our lack of independence was on display again last month when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found a plausible case exists that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Instead of backing up the court ruling with demands Israel end the killing of Palestinians New Zealand has been all but silent with the Prime Minister blundering his way through question time in Parliament without a clue about our international responsibilities.

While all but ignoring the genocide ruling by the ICJ, Luxon was quick to halt New Zealand funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency over Israeli allegations that 12 of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees had been implicated in terrorism.

A classic diversion by Israel to avoid the dreadful truth of their killing of Palestinians in Gaza. New Zealand happily joined the diversion.

Why are Israeli attacks on UNRWA so much more important for the Prime Minister than genocide committed against the Palestinian people?

The simple truth is we are swimming against the great tide of humanity which stands with Palestinians.

Our government has pushed us into the dark shadow of US/Israeli policies of oppression and domination. We need to be back out in the sun.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). Republished with permission from The Daily Blog.

New Zealand would likely continue funding the United Nations agency delivering aid in Palestine if concerns about its staff were dealt with, the Foreign Affairs Minister says.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Tuesday confirmed New Zealand was reviewing future payments to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

It follows accusations by Israel that 12 agency staff were involved in the Hamas’ attacks on October 7, which left about 1140 dead and about 250 taken as hostages.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘What is the critical issue here, it is the humanitarian crisis that we face and war in Gaza’ – Foreign Affairs Minister Peters
• Defunding UNRWA will cause Gazans ‘more misery and suffering’, warns former PM Clark
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Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report the allegations warranted a proper investigation.

But he said the critical issue was the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

According to the Palestine Health Ministry more than 26,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched a war on the besieged enclave in response to October 7.

Awaiting UN investigation
Peters said it was possible there were a few “rotten apples” within UNRWA.

“If the matter has been dealt with, and with assurances that it does not happen in the future, then the crisis is of a level, we must, I believe, and I think the New Zealand people would want us to respond to the crisis rather than to react in that way and punish a whole lot of innocent people because of the actions of a few.” he said.

Peters said it would be premature to make a decision before the UN finished its investigation.

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

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.

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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.

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“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.

A Palestinian advocate has appealed to the New Zealand government to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to back the South African genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“A sovereign state like New Zealand that has historically stood for what is morally correct must not bend to foreign pressure, and must reject policies aligned with the United Kingdom of Israel and the United States of Israel which blindly endorse and support the apartheid regime,” said Billy Hania of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

He was speaking at the pro-Palestinian rally and march in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau yesterday as the Gaza death toll rose above 25,000 dead, mostly women and children.

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Belgium is among the latest of 61 countries — and the first European nation — to support the genocide case and a growing number of other lawsuits are also being brought against Israel.

Chile and Mexico have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes against civilians in the war and Indonesia has filed a new lawsuit in the ICJ against Israel for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

Swiss prosecutors have also confirmed that a “crimes against humanity” case has been filed against Israeli President Isaac Herzog during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. No further details were given.

“The Zionist project is failing in Palestine — the apartheid entity with 75 years of colonial terror has achieved nothing for the Jewish people, oppressing and killing Palestinians through a violent settler colonial approach,” Hania said.

“Mass killing of Palestinians will achieve nothing for the Jewish people. Without respect for Palestinian rights and respect for life in Palestine, there will be no peace period.”

‘One holocaust not enough?’
Constrasting the shrinking support for Israel with massive citizen protests “in their millions” taking place around the world, Hania criticised Germany’s intervention in the genocide case supporting Tel Aviv while also planning to provide 10,000 tank munitions to “the apartheid regime with which to massacre Palestinians — as if one holocaust was not enough”.

“We are calling on the New Zealand government to support the South African ICJ case in addition to supporting the recent Chile-Mexico ICC war crimes initiative. This initiative is technically important with Israel being a signatory to the ICC,” Hania said.

He also thanked Indonesia for its legal initiative.

“More than 100 days of targeting Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure to exterminate Palestinian life is committing genocide, the crime of all crimes and with total impunity,” Hania said.

“More than 60,000 tons of explosives dropped over Gaza in 100 days equals three nuclear bombs, more than the infamous nuclear tragedy on Japan that led to its immediate surrender. It’s fundamentally different for Gaza as surrendering does not exist in Palestine vocabulary.”

He said the more than 100 Israel hostages would remain in Gaza until the “thousands of Palestinian hostages are freed”.

“The Gaza siege must end, West Bank Israeli settler extremist violence must end, there must be respect for worshippers and Muslim religious sites attacks by Israeli extremists is well documented and must end.”

24 massacres cited
Hania stressed that the current war did not start on October 7 with the deadly Hamas resistance movement attack on southern Israel as claimed by the Israeli government.

He cited a list of 24 massacres of Palestinians by Zionist militia that began at Haifa in 1937 and Jerusalem the same year, including the Nakba – “the Catastrophe” — in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and lands with the destruction of towns and villages.

Hania also referred to a recent New York Times article that warned Israel was in a strategic bind over its failed military policies, saying Israel’s objectives were “mutually incompatible”.

“Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza,” wrote the authors Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley.

Israel had established control over a smaller part of Gaza at this stage of the war than originally envisaged in battle plans from the start of the invasion, which were reviewed by The Times.

Citing Dr Andreas Krieg, a war analyst at King’s College London, from the article, Hania quoted:

“It’s not an environment where you can free hostages.

“It is an unwinnable war.

“Most of the time when you are in an unwinnable war, you realise that at some point — and you withdraw.

“And they didn’t.”