There is a bitter truth that must be spoken before we can talk honestly about what is happening to us now. Michael West Media reports on Australia’s quiet complicity in the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

When the bombs fell on Gaza, Australia was quiet.

When the hospitals were destroyed, when the aid was blocked, when children were pulled from rubble in pieces, when the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and humanitarian organisations with decades of credibility in conflict zones used words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, Australia was quiet.

Not uniformly. Not entirely. There were protests in every major city, sustained over months, of a size and seriousness this country has not seen since the Iraq War.

• READ MORE: Iran accepts ceasefire after Trump says it will pause bombing for two weeks
• Synagogue in Tehran ‘completely destroyed’ in US-Israeli attack
• Top university says US-Israel attack targeted Iran’s progress, AI learning
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

There were independent senators who stood in Parliament and said what needed to be said, in plain language, without diplomatic hedging. There were journalists, academics, former diplomats, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who signed petitions, marched in the streets, and wrote letters that went largely unanswered.

Palestinian-Australian, Muslim-Australian, Arab-Australian communities, and many others with no personal connection to the conflict beyond a functioning conscience, screamed into a political void and were told, in effect, to calm down.

Or apprehended for wearing a t-shirt.

“I’m offended by crocs,” says man apprehended by many police & special ops for wearing “F… Israel” t-shirt

The footage #andrewbrown #legend #auspol pic.twitter.com/fc1p3f911d

— Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) April 6, 2026

The country, as a political entity, its government, its major institutions, its official voice to the world, was quiet.

The cost of silence
That silence had a cost. Not just a moral cost, though the moral cost is staggering and will take generations to fully reckon with.

A strategic cost. The cost of allowing a logic of unchecked military impunity to establish itself as the operating principle of the US-Israeli alliance. A logic that, once normalised in Gaza, did not stay in Gaza.

It never does.

More than 72,000 people killed so far. More than 171,000 injured. An entire civilian population, in one of the most densely populated places on earth, was systematically starved, displaced, and destroyed.

Journalists were killed in numbers that constitute, by any honest accounting, a deliberate campaign to eliminate witnesses. Paramedics were bombed. UN peacekeepers were struck.

Aid workers from Australia’s own partner organisations were killed in strikes so precise they could not have been accidental.

Australia expressed concern.

Calibrated, diplomatically worded, operationally meaningless concern.

And then, when the same alliance, emboldened by 18 months of zero meaningful consequence, turned its weapons on a sovereign nation-state, on Iran, on February 28 of this year, Australia expressed support. Called it constructive. Offered the American justification back to its own people as sovereign Australian policy.

Warnings ignored
The people warning loudest about Gaza were not merely warning about Palestinians. They were warning about a system. A system in which American military power and Israeli strategic ambition, freed from the constraints of international law and serious allied pushback, would expand. Would find new targets. Would come, eventually, for the stability of every country caught in its orbit.

They were right. And they were called antisemitic for saying so.

Iran did not come from nowhere. The assault on Iran is the direct and logical extension of the impunity normalised in Gaza. If you can destroy a civilian population with no meaningful consequence, you can bomb a sovereign nation.

If the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu means nothing, then international law means nothing. And if international law means nothing, then the only operating principle is force.

And the consequences of force are distributed not just to the combatants but to every country whose government chose alignment over principle.

Australia chose alignment over the people of Gaza. It chose it again over Iran. And now it is discovering, at the bowser and the checkout and the business bank account, exactly what that choice costs.

The war came home
Here is what makes this moment different from every protest march and every unanswered letter that came before.

The pain is no longer abstract.

When Gaza burned, the average Australian, cocooned by geographic distance, insulated by a media that kept the most confronting images off prime time, reassured by politicians who described it as heartbreaking while doing nothing, could maintain the fiction that this was someone else’s tragedy.

Terrible, certainly. Distant. Manageable. Something that happened over there, to people over there, in a conflict that had been going on forever and would presumably continue

without any particular bearing on the school fees or the mortgage or the quarterly business figures.

That fiction is now dead.

The fuel price spike is not over there. The supply chain disruption is not over there. The investment uncertainty showing up in superannuation statements, in business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months.

None of that is over there.

The war came home. Not in body bags. Not in the specific grief of a military family. It came home in the way that imperial adventurism always eventually comes home to the countries that enable it.

Through the economy. Through the slow, grinding, distributed punishment of a population that was never consulted, never warned, and never honestly told what their government’s choices would cost them.

Australia’s complicity
Australia was a participant in Gaza’s destruction. Not with weapons. Not with soldiers. With silence. With diplomatic cover. With the specific, material legitimacy that flows from a liberal democracy declining to formally object. And with the arms adjacent, intelligence and security cooperation that flows through Five Eyes and has never been seriously interrogated in the Australian public domain.

Complicity is not passive.

When you have the power to intervene, to sanction, to condemn, to withdraw diplomatic cover, and you choose not to, you are not a bystander. You are a participant. And participants, eventually, share in the consequences.

The Palestinian people could not make Australia listen with their suffering alone.

Not because Australians are cruel. They are not. But because the suffering was made distant. The media made it complex. The politicians made it delicate. The lobby groups made it professionally dangerous to say in plain language what was plainly happening.

The whole architecture of managed consent did its job with brutal efficiency for 18 months.

But a 40 percent fuel price increase cuts through managed consent, as does a wave of small business closures. And young Australians told to absorb the economic consequences of a war their government endorsed without their knowledge or consent. That cuts through everything.

The people who protested over Gaza, who were dismissed and belittled and accused of antisemitism and told they were being naive about geopolitical complexity, understood something that the political class is only now beginning to grasp: That the world does not offer permanent non-involvement. That the wars you enable reach you. That the impunity you excuse comes back denominated in currencies you understand personally.

Fuel. Food. Jobs. Mortgages. Businesses. Futures.
This is that reckoning. The genocide in Gaza did not wake Australia up, the bill for enabling it will.

And when Australia wakes, fully, clearly, with the focused fury of people who now understand exactly what was done to them, the politicians who called it constructive and the media that told them to blame the Energy Minister are going to find that managed consent has a shelf life.

That shelf life has expired.

Right now, the United States and Israel are continuing their bombardment of Iran.

As the confirmed death toll climbs past 1330 and hospitals, schools, and residential neighborhoods are hit daily, the media apparatus that sold you the Iraq war and denied Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians for the last two years is now running the same playbook.

The Atlantic is laundering Netanyahu’s reputation as a “conflict-averse” leader while he tells the world this war lets him do what he’s “yearned for” for 40 years.

• READ MORE: Iran says US, Israel have hit nearly 10,000 civilian sites since war began
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

Bari Weiss is tweeting fire emojis at pro-war clips, falsely suggesting Iran has nuclear weapons, and devoting journalistic resources to tracking the Instagram likes of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife.

CNN is giving unchallenged airtime to International Criminal Court (ICC)-indicted Israeli officials claiming American soldiers have an “obligation” to die for Israel.

And that’s before the cable news network is taken over by Paramount, the Weiss operation run by the nepo-son of Larry Ellison, the single largest donor to Friends of the IDF.

The BBC, meanwhile, leads with nine dead in Israel while relegating some 180 children killed by the US in a girls’ school in Minab to a footnote.

This is what the legacy media machine looks like in wartime. It has always looked like this.

And it is exactly why we launched Drop Site less than two years ago.

On the ground reporting
While Weiss and CBS were manufacturing consent for this war, Drop Site has had reporters on the ground reporting the facts.

In just the last week:

• Reza Sayah reported from Tehran on a double-tap bombing that killed over 20 people at a popular square during Ramadan, connecting the tactic to US strikes in Afghanistan, and Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza.
• Drop Site correspondent reported from Minab, where a missile struck a girls’ elementary school and killed 180 children, and from Lamerd, where a sports hall full of teenage girls was bombed during practice.
• We were among the first outlets on the ground verifying the strike in Minab as US and Israeli propagandists sought to deny and deflect.
• We have consistently obtained exclusive information from senior Iranian officials who have contradicted claims by Trump, claims that have just as consistently fallen apart under scrutiny.
• We exposed the fabricated CIA narrative about “tracking Khamenei for months” to his “secret location” — his secret location was his office, and he had refused to relocate.

Republished from Drop Site News. Subscribe to this independent news service.

By Jodesz Gavilan in Manila

The confirmation of charges hearings at the International Criminal Court (ICC) kicked off on Monday this week setting the stage for four days of high-stakes arguments over former President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly drug war.

The team of prosecutors, victims’ representatives, and the defence are laying out their cases aiming to prove — or challenge — whether Duterte’s actions warrant trial.

After this pre-trial hearing, the ICC judges may decide whether there is enough evidence to move forward to a full trial, a process that could define Duterte’s legacy and signal accountability.

• READ MORE: Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

The past few days have been tense, with prosecutors presenting the systematic anti-illegal drug campaign that led to the thousands of deaths under Duterte, while victims’ representatives described the human toll in stark terms.

The defence team, so far, has painted a portrait of a president who was tough, outspoken, and misunderstood, but whose actions, they argued, were within the law.

Rappler has highlighted some of the most striking statements from the sessions. This will be updated as the confirmation of charges progresses and ends tomorrow.

Day 1 — February 23, 2026

Read the highlights from Day 1 at Rappler

“Mr Duterte’s criminal plan and his intent were no secret. He not only shared them with his co-perpetrators and members of the [Davao Death Squad], but also made them abundantly clear to the general public in the numerous public statements that he made time and again.

“His intent and knowledge are shown by the multiple statements that he made throughout his mayoral and presidential tenure promising to reduce crimes by killing alleged criminals, promoting the common plan, and urging the police and even members of the public to kill alleged criminals.”

— Deputy ICC prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang on how Duterte’s public speeches demonstrate his intent and knowledge in promoting drug war killings

“The arrest and detention of Mr Duterte has not stopped impunity in the Philippines. The virus of impunity that he spread all over the country has become a cancer that has metastasised, infecting millions of Filipinos. Mr. Duterte has created clones of himself. He converted millions of peace-loving citizens into bloodthirsty disciples who have become converts to the belief that violence and killings are valid solutions to societal problems.

“The killings masterminded by Mr Duterte continue to have consequences for the victims, even to this day, because of his clones. These mini-Dutertes harass, threaten, or commit outright violence against the victims and their families.”

— Lawyer Joel Butuyan, ICC-appointed common legal representative for victims, on the culture of impunity in the Philippines and the continuing threats faced by families of drug war victims

“If the charges are not confirmed in this case, one of the gravest concerns of the victims is that Mr Duterte will return to the Philippines as a conquering hero. He will resume preaching his gospel of impunity. In fact, if Mr Duterte could threaten to slap the judges of this court — which he did while he was president — this chamber should imagine the kind of terror-filled threats and the violent actions that can easily be used against the victims if the suspect walks free from this court.”

— Lawyer Joel Butuyan, ICC-appointed common legal representative for victims, on the potential risks if Duterte is not tried in court and punished.

“Rodrigo Duterte was, and will always remain, a unique phenomenon. His style of statesmanship was novel and unpalatable to many. His expletives and hyperbole grated, while his honesty and wild popularity irritated. He spoke openly from the heart, sincerely and truthfully. And what a contrast between him and his successor in Malacañang. For [Duterte], his word was his word, and the people knew it. For President Bongbong, his was for the wind and the people will not forget it.”

— Lead defence counsel Nicholas Kaufman on Duterte’s style of leadership and his contrast with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

“[Duterte]’s rhetoric was calculated to arouse fear and obedience, to instill fear in their hearts, and to inculcate a respect for the law in their minds. Nothing more, nothing less. That was his intent, and it was not criminal.”

— Lead defence counsel Nicholas Kaufman on Duterte’s use of rhetoric to enforce law and order.

“The reality is that Mr Duterte’s message was clear, and it was understood by the perpetrators, and it was followed. That message was: commit murder at my direction, and I will protect you, I will pay you, I will promote you. That’s what happened.

“And I’ll say this as well, your Honours, for purposes of this confirmation hearing, disregard every speech ever made by Mr Duterte. Throw them all out. There is still ample evidence of substantial grounds based on the other evidence which we have put on our list of evidence. And the evidence as a whole, when you weigh it together, will show that what [Nicholas Kaufman] said is not correct, that Mr Duterte intended for his subordinates to follow the law and that he was interested and that his speeches were simply bluster.”

— Senior trial lawyer Julian Nicholls of the ICC prosecution team, on why evidence beyond his public speeches demonstrates intent to commit killings.

Day 2 — February 24, 2026

Read the highlights from Day 2 at Rappler

“Mr Duterte goes on to comment on extrajudicial killings. And as he does so, your Honours will note the nonchalant, casual manner in which he draws his finger across his throat . . .  And in this opulent, gilded presentation room, the officials laugh along with their president while he boasts about his skills in extrajudicial killing. Outside, on the streets of the Philippines, the bodies pile up.”

— Lawyer Edward Jeremy of the ICC prosecution team, on the behaviour of Duterte during public speeches that were shown in the confirmation of charges hearing

“And in the face of this public outcry, Mr Duterte was forced to temporarily withdraw police from drug operations . . .  And this led to a reduction in the frequency of killings. In announcing this temporary withdrawal, Mr Duterte sarcastically stated that he hoped that this would satisfy ‘bleeding hearts and the media’. And, in this way, he publicly communicated that this was not a genuine effort to prevent crime, but rather a temporary attempt to placate public criticism. And less than two months later, Mr Duterte decided to once again scale up operations.”

— Lawyer Edward Jeremy of the ICC prosecution team, on Duterte’s response following the killing of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos

“From everything you have heard over the past two days, there can be no doubt about Mr Duterte’s knowledge and intent. He intended that the crimes would be committed and he was aware that they would be committed as a result of implementing the common plan . . .  Mr Duterte knew because he himself established the DDS to kill people. He repeatedly broadcast his intention to implement the common plan nationally if elected president. He made it clear that this would involve killing.

“Once he was president, he moved his trusted co-perpetrators from Davao into key national positions. And as the number of killings rose, Mr Duterte persisted with the common plan. He praised the 32 killings in a one-time big-time operation in Bulacan. He publicly named so-called high-value targets. He promised to protect police and as your Honours have heard, Mr Duterte has admitted to many of these things.”

— Lawyer Robynne Croft of the ICC prosecution team, on the deliberate orchestration of drug war killings and the role of the Davao Death Squad and national officials in executing the common plan.

“We speak for families who cannot be here, mothers who buried their sons, children who lost their parents, the spouses who now raise families alone, and communities that have lived for years under fear and silence and that continue to bear the consequences of violence that swept through their neighborhoods like a storm. These victims appear today before you not as mere statistics or distant figures or images in reports . . . but as human beings whose rights under the Rome Statute have been violated in the most profound ways.”

— Paolina Massida, principal counsel of the Office of Public Counsel for Victims (OPCV), on what the families of drug war victims had to go — and are going — through.

“The shooting could happen immediately, behind closed doors or in the street, or the victims would be taken away by the gunmen, only for shots to be heard minutes later and the body to be discovered by local residents. At times, bodies were dumped elsewhere, sometimes with hands tied or heads wrapped in plastic. Relatives typically found them after being alerted by policemen or by the neighbors.”

— Paolina Massida, OPCV principal counsel, on the pattern of killings during Duterte’s drug war.

“In other cases, victims tried to seek justice. They went to the police, to local officials, to government agencies. They filed reports, they asked for investigation, they begged for answers. Their pleas were ignored, their complaints were dismissed, their testimonies were doubted. In some cases, the very people they approached for help were the same ones involved in the violence. They were left with no path forward. No institution was willing to hear them, no authority was willing to protect them, no system was willing to acknowledge what was happening.”

— Paolina Massida, OPCV principal counsel, on the systemic failure in the Philippines to provide justice or protection for drug war victims.

“The victims have waited years for this moment. They have been silenced, stigmatized, and denied justice in their own country. Today, they stand before you with the hope that justice long denied may finally be within reach. This [ICC] is their last refuge. And today, on their behalf, we ask this chamber to affirm that their suffering matters, that their rights matter, and that the rule of law extends even to the most powerful by confirming all the charges against Mr Duterte and committing him to trial.”

— Paolina Massida, OPCV principal counsel, on the appeal of victims for accountability.

“Mr Duterte’s drug war campaign targeted the very humanity of the victims, of their families, and of their communities. In Filipino, the indirect victims expressed this in one sentence: ‘Inalisan kami ng dangal.’ We were stripped of our dignity.”

— Lawyer Gilbert Andres, ICC-appointed common legal representative for victims, on their dehumanisation and targeting during Duterte’s drug war.

Republished from Rappler with permission.

The issue of Australians — and New Zealanders as well — serving in the Israeli military has sparked growing debate as the genocidal war crimes in Gaza mount.

Most of those involved are believed to be dual Israeli-Australian citizens, and under current Australian law, it is not automatically illegal to join a recognised foreign army, reports OnePath Network.

However, critics say the lack of transparency, including unclear numbers, roles, and oversight, is troubling, especially while international courts are examining serious allegations linked to the conflict.

• READ MORE: Thousands of Western nationals fought Israel’s war on Gaza: What to know
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Israel is on trial for  genocide in a case brought by South Africa, and International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu and other officials have intensified questions about Australia’s responsibility to monitor its citizens abroad.

According to an Al Jazeera report, more than 50,000 Western nationals — most of them holding US or European Union passports — have joined the Israeli military in its genocidal war that has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians.

The largest number is from the United States — 12,350 dual nationality US-Israel citizens and 1207 multiple nationalities — followed by 6127 French dual national citizens and 337 multiple nationalities, according to data obtained by the Israeli NGO Hatzlacha through Israel’s Freedom of Information Law.

Australia is well down the list with 502 dual nationality soldiers and 119 multiple nationality citizens. New Zealand is 56th with 39 and 11.

Accountability major concern
A major concern being raised is accountability: if any Australians serving in Gaza were involved in alleged war crimes, would they actually be investigated?

Legal experts say Australia has “universal jurisdiction” laws, meaning citizens can theoretically be prosecuted for serious crimes committed overseas, but so far, there has been little public evidence of active investigations.

Critics argue this creates a perception of double standards.

The debate ultimately centres on whether Australia is willing to apply the same scrutiny to its own nationals in foreign conflicts, ensuring that military service abroad does not place individuals beyond the reach of the law.

Similar questions apply to New Zealand.

On the eve of his Australian tour, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog faces huge opposition to his visit.

In a “National Day of Protest”, hundreds of thousands are expected to march in 30 cities around Australia, including every state capital city tomorrow evening.

Herzog’s visit has been opposed by the Australian Greens and several Labor and Independent MPs, some of whom are expected to join the marches.

• READ MORE: Anti-genocide movement says: ‘Herzog out!’
• Isaac Herzog is accused of inciting genocide in Gaza. He shouldn’t be welcomed to Australia
• Pro-Palestinian group vows protests in 24 cities against Israeli president’s Australia visit
• Jonathan Cook: The criminal elite exposed in the Epstein files are burying the truth about Gaza
• Speech by Labor MLC NSW Cameron Murphy
• Other Gaza genocide reports

The NSW Minns government has gone to extraordinary lengths to stop the Sydney protest by declaring it a “major event” under the Major Events Act. The organisers, Palestinian Action Group, will challenge the validity of this action in the Supreme Court tomorrow before the protest.

Herzog’s visit follows the anti-semitic massacre in Bondi on December 14 when 15 people were killed and many more injured by two allegedly Islamic State-inspired gunmen. One gunman was killed and the other is now facing multiple charges of murder.

The idea of bringing Herzog to Australia originated with senior Australian Zionists, including the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia Jeremy Liebler, who is a personal friend of Herzog.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese then invited Herzog to make an official visit “to support the Jewish community at what has been a very difficult time”. He has justified his decision as reflecting a “need to build social cohesion in this country.”

Conflict rather than unity
In fact, the visit was always likely to create conflict rather than unity in Australia.

Scores of community and activist groups, including the progressive Jewish Council of Australia and NSW Council for Civil Liberties, have condemned the Herzog visit.

Amnesty International Australia urged the Australian government “to comply with its international and domestic legal obligations and investigate Herzog for genocide… As President of Israel, Herzog has overseen and legitimised Israel’s genocide and has made statements amounting to genocidal incitement.”

Federal Labor MP Ed Husic, who was previously a Minister in the Albanese government, told The Guardian that he was “uncomfortable” with the visit and did not think it would build social cohesion. He pointed to findings by a United Nations Commission of Inquiry that Herzog and other Israeli officials were “liable to prosecution for incitement to genocide” for comments made after the October 7 attack by Hamas in 2023.

Australian human rights lawyer Chris Sidoti was a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry; he told Michael West Media that:

“There is both a legal scope and a moral duty to arrest Isaac Herzog on arrival.”

Among his actions that have stirred widespread criticism of him in the Australian and global media are images of him signing bombs to be dropped on the children of Gaza.

Adding to the controversy over his visit, President Herzog will bring with him Doron Almog, a retired Israel Defence Forces major-general. Almog, who is currently chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel, has formerly faced arrest warrants over allegations he committed war crimes in Gaza in 2002.

A coalition of legal groups has asked the Australian federal police to investigate and arrest Almog over war crimes allegations.

War crimes challenge
Members of this coalition, including the Australian Centre for International Justice, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights have lodged a submission with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) arguing that Almog should be investigated for crimes committed during his time as an IDF Commander between 2000 and 2003.

“Under his command, the Israeli military was responsible for countless and extensive human rights violations and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions inside the illegally occupied Gaza Strip,” the submission alleges.

The AFP has referred the submission to its Special Investigations Command. Almog has previously denied the allegations and a UK warrant for Almog’s arrest was previously withdrawn.

The Zionist community is meanwhile celebrating Almog’s visit.

According to a Zionist Federation of Australia promotion, Almog was due to arrive before Herzog and appear at a conference at a Sydney Synagogue yesterday alongside Zionist Liberal MP Julian Leeser to discuss anti-semitism education.

3500 police to flood Sydney’s CBD
Tension is high in Sydney where Premier Chris Minns has announced a “massive policing presence” to flood the CBD with 3500 armed police during the Herzog visit.

Premier Minns has warned Sydney’s residents against travelling to the CBD even for work tomorrow, predicting disruption and even riots, despite the fact that hundreds of pro-Palestinian protests over more than two years have been uniformly peaceful.

Despite his warnings, many thousands are expected to attend a protest at Sydney’s traditional weekday protest place Town Hall Square at 5.30 pm tomorrow, from which they plan to march to Parliament House.

Popular 2021 Australian of the Year and campaigner against sexual assault Grace Tame and Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi are among the advertised speakers. NSW Labor MP barrister Stephen Lawrence is also expected to speak.

The NSW government tried to deter the protesters by using unprecedented laws passed in late December to declare that no protest permits will be granted to a large swathe of Sydney which includes Town Hall Square. The ban has been in place since the laws were passed.

Although the ban does not stop people peacefully assembling, it grants the police full powers to make “move on” orders to disband protests and prevent marches.

These powers were used when mounted police prevented hundreds of peaceful Deaths in Custody campaigners conducting a short march on the pavement last month.

A coalition of groups including the Palestinian Action Group and Jews Against Occupation 48 has challenged the laws as unconstitutional.

‘Major event’ status
With support for the march growing despite Minns’ warnings, his government took a further extraordinary step yesterday and declared Herzog’s visit a major event under the Major Events Act. The legislation is typically invoked to manage crowds during sporting events or very large festivals.

The act gives the police powers to issue directions to people not to enter an area, and to search people.  Anyone who fails to comply with police directions may face penalties, including fines of up to $5,500.

But the Act states that it is not intended to be used against political protests. Today, the Palestinian Action Group announced that it will make an urgent application to the NSW Supreme Court tomorrow to declare the “major event” declaration invalid.

While in Sydney, Herzog and his delegation will visit families whose family members were killed in the Bondi massacre and will attend an invitation only “Solidarity and Light” event at the ICC centre in Darling Harbour.  He will then travel to Melbourne and Canberra.

On Friday, the independent media outlet Lamestream reported that  Prime Minister Albanese had invited him to visit Parliament although he is not expected to address Parliament.

Wendy Bacon is a Sydney investigative journalist and retired journalism professor, and contributes to many publications, including Michael West Media. She is also a committee member of the Asia Pacific Media Network.

COMMENTARY: By Chris Sidoti

It’s not too late for Anthony Albanese to withdraw the invitation to the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog. It should be withdrawn for three reasons.

The first is institutional: The President of Israel is a constitutional role that is head of state but not part of the political or military chain of command. The office is similar to that of Australia’s Governor-General, though with somewhat more power.

As head of state, the president embodies and represents the state of Israel.

• READ MORE: Pro-Palestinian group vows protests in 24 cities against Israeli president’s Australia visit
• Jonathan Cook: The criminal elite exposed in the Epstein files are burying the truth about Gaza
• Other Gaza genocide reports

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has found that Israel unlawfully occupies the Palestinian territories, has unlawfully purported to annex parts of the Palestinian territories and unlawfully plants, encourages and maintains unlawful settlements in Palestinian territories.

The court is also trying a case in which Israel is accused of genocide.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defence Minister, citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The same court is investigating other senior Israeli military and political leaders on similar charges.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory has found evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal intent by Israeli leaders and recommended their prosecution. Israel is a rogue state whose head of state, its supreme representative, should not be permitted to visit Australia.

The second reason is about Herzog himself: The Commission of Inquiry has found that Herzog has incited genocide. Herzog made the statement that all Palestinians, “an entire nation”, are responsible for the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.

The commission found that, because as president he is not part of the political or military chain of command, he was not responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity. But the crime of incitement to genocide stands outside the chain of command. It can be committed by any individual. The commission recommended that he be investigated and prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.

Herzog denies this and has qualified his statement, saying “there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don’t agree” with the actions of Hamas. But the UN commission said it viewed that as an effort “to deflect responsibility for the initial statement”.

He has been a vocal head of state and his words have been taken and repeated by Israeli soldiers. Someone who incites genocide does not satisfy the good character test for entering Australia. On the contrary, a person who incites genocide should be arrested on arrival and tried under Australian law and international law for the crime.

Traditionally, a head of state has a special immunity when visiting another country. However, there is now strong legal argument that this immunity does not apply in relation to atrocity crimes, namely war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Australia should not apply immunity in relation to these crimes.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has previously rejected the commission’s report as “distorted and false”, and Herzog has said his comments have been taken out of context, noting he also said Israeli soldiers would follow international law.

The third reason for withdrawing the invitation relates to us, Australia, and our current situation: The Hanukah massacre on 14 December 2025 has shaken us all. It was an atrocity. Immediately political leaders across the spectrum expressed concerns for “social cohesion”. They said steps were needed to restore social cohesion and called for national unity at a time of crisis.

Eventually a royal commission was appointed for this purpose. And yet it’s hard to imagine a single event at this point in time more likely to harden national division and undermine social cohesion than a visit by the Israeli president. It could be the most divisive state visit to Australia since that of US president Lyndon B Johnson in October 1966 when the Vietnam war was at its height and Australian soldiers were being killed.

What was the Prime Minister thinking when he invited Herzog? In the days after the massacre, he no doubt thought inviting Herzog was a good way to express support for the traumatised Jewish community.

But Herzog is a political leader, not a religious leader. He is divisive in Israel and his visit could be divisive in Australia. If the Prime Minister wanted to support the Jewish community, he would have done better to invite a respected Jewish religious leader.

For reasons of law, ethics and social cohesion, this divisive political visit should be stopped.

The prime minister is widely acclaimed for his willingness to recognise mistakes and change course before it’s too late. He should recognise that he made a terrible mistake, in the emotional, traumatic days after the massacre, in inviting Herzog to visit.

It’s not too late to correct the mistake.

Chris Sidoti is Australian and a Commissioner on the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. Republished from The Guardian on 5 February 2026 and from Pearls and Irritations today with permission from the editor.

The internationally recognised Lemkin Institute for the Prevention of Genocide has issued severe criticism of Germany.

In a statement dated 13 January 2026, it “condemns the persistent efforts by several high-profile German civil society organisations to deny the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to disseminate disinformation and denialist narratives among German political decision-makers.”

At the same time, the institute accuses major German media corporations of having become “the Israeli government’s most loyal mouthpiece”.

• READ MORE: Rights advocates welcome Canada’s exclusion from Trump’s Gaza ‘Board of Peace’
• Other Gaza genocide reports

German policymakers are likewise criticised for turning away from the “international legal order” — an order “that was created in large part due to the horrors it produced”.

This refers to Nazi crimes, including the Holocaust against European Jews, the genocide of the Sinti and Roma, and the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union.

Systematic denial of the Gaza genocide
The institute denounces the fact that, in Germany, the reality continues to be denied that Israel has been responsible for a genocide in the Gaza Strip lasting at least two years since 7 October 2023.

This criticism is directed not only at governing parties and senior political figures, but also at Germany’s leading media outlets: “Germany’s largest media outlets have abandoned their journalistic responsibilities, threatening critical voices and effectively becoming the Israeli government’s most loyal mouthpiece.”

According to the report, this systematic denial of genocide is driven primarily by political pressure from above as well as by Israeli lobbying and disinformation efforts.

The latter are attributed in particular to the Middle East Peace Forum (NAFFO), the Europe Israel Press Association (EIPA), the German-Israeli Society (DIG), and the European Leadership Network (ELNET), including its Forum of Strategic Dialogue (FSD).

“In this symbiosis, organisations deliver the pseudo-arguments that German politicians rely on to legitimise an otherwise untenable political stance.

“In return, these organisations are rewarded with public funding or privileged access to Parliament.

“By financing, platforming, and politically endorsing actors that discredit UN bodies, ignore well-established legal standards, and engage in genocide denial, Germany has turned its back on an international legal order that was created in large part due to the horrors it produced.“

Call for political reversal
The report points out that both Israel and Germany are currently before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — Israel accused of genocide, Germany of possible complicity.

The latter, in particular, continues to be almost entirely ignored in Germany’s public discourse.

Against this backdrop, the Lemkin Institute issues an urgent appeal to German state authorities “to immediately halt all active financing, dissemination, and legitimation of genocide denialist propaganda masked as critical expertise.”

It continues: “We further urge the German government to withdraw public funding and end privileged parliamentary access for organisations and initiatives engaged in genocide denial and the systematic discrediting of international legal institutions.

“We remind Germany and all its political bodies of their obligations under the Genocide Convention, including the duty to prevent and punish genocide and any forms of complicity.

“Above all, we call on the German state to end its complicity in the genocide against Palestinians, including through arms exports to and uncritical diplomatic support for the state committing genocide.“

Connecting global grassroots
The Lemkin Institute is an internationally active NGO based in the United States. It is named after Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish jurist and Holocaust survivor who coined the term “genocide”.

The institute’s mission is “to connect the global grassroots with the tools of genocide prevention.”

As early as April 2024, the institute stated that the current Israeli genocide was not confined to the Gaza Strip alone, but affected all of Palestine, including the West Bank.

Leon Wystrychowski is a journalist, historian, Middle East scholar and Palestine activist from Germany.

If you want to understand what’s going on in Iran, abandon what the Persians invented centuries ago: Manichaeism. We use the term today to denote political framing which is simplistic, black-and-white, two-dimensional — a world of Angels (us) and Demons (them).

This article recognises multiple perspectives, including those of an activist associated with the anti-government Woman Life Freedom movement whom I interviewed this week.

First, however, let us look at the geopolitical manoeuvres at work and “The Invisible Hand of Israel”.

• READ MORE: Gulf countries gear up diplomacy to stave off US-Iran escalation
• Israel tries to drag US into ‘fighting wars on its behalf,’ says Iran’s foreign minister
• Other Iran reports

The invisible hand of Israel
Former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli army radio this week that Israel must be ready to act when the Iranian “regime” is ready to fall.

“At this moment, when what matters most is the mass action on the ground, we need to stay in the background and steer things with an invisible hand,” said Gallant, who is the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant.

Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted this week: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”

The Iranian regime is in trouble. Bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope.

Riots in dozens of cities and the Basij under siege — Mashed, Tehran, Zahedan. Next stop: Baluchistan.

47 years of this regime; POTUS 47. Coincidence?

Happy New Year to every Iranian in the…

— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) January 2, 2026

I don’t believe this was a case of letting the cat out of the bag; I think this is both true and a form of psy-ops (psychological warfare), trying to unnerve the Iranian government and encourage the kind of harsh crackdown that regimes resort to when they feel cornered.

MI6, CIA and Mossad are active in Iran, much to the frustration of many of the large numbers of anti-government protesters determined to end the rule of the clerics.

According to Israeli and Western sources, tens of thousands of Starlink terminals were smuggled into Iran to bypass any internet shutdown. Yet the government — apparently using sophisticated Chinese “kill switches” — were able to disable most of them, thus decoupling people within Iran from external coordinators.

Trump: ‘Help is on the way’
“Help is on the way,” Trump said menacingly on January 12.  How did that kind of “help” go for Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan or so many other countries going back to the Guatemalan Silent Genocide or the Vietnam War?

American “help” resulted in the overthrow of the democratically-elected Mossadegh government and the installation of authoritarian rule under Shah Pahlavi in 1953. The West got their hands on the oil.

This time if they cannot get regime change they will be happy with regime destruction, civil war and the end of the multi-century project for a unified and sovereign Iranian state. So far, things have not gone to plan.

Long-standing Israeli security analyst Ehud Ya’ari told Israeli Channel 12 this week that the Iranian government remained firmly in control and that there was no evidence of momentum in the protests.

“I want to say things that disappoint not only the viewers, but also me,” he said. “At the moment, we do not see a continued expansion of the uprising.

“It is not taking on new and larger dimensions, as it did in 1978–1979 before Khomeini returned to Tehran.”

This is inconvenient if the West indeed plans to launch a war.  The first Gulf War was partially sold on the killing of imaginary Incubator Babies, the Second Iraq War was sold on imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction, the genocide in Gaza was launched amid lurid tales of imaginary Beheaded Babies.

War propaganda peddled by our mainstream media demands worthy victims.

Western contempt for international law could get a lot of people killed

As shown in Palestine and in Iran, the West tends to have a spitting contempt for international law if it is their team that tramples on it. Two cornerstones we should never forget are:

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter – Prohibition of Force: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

And, yes, that does include powerful white countries. And yes, that does include Russia.

Secondly, we should never forget the 1965 UN Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in Domestic Affairs.

Back in the 1980s the Reagan Administration secretly sold weapons to its enemy Iran to secretly fund Nicaraguan Contra death squads. In the 1984 Nicaragua Case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), international law was clarified by reaffirming that the principle of non-intervention “involves the right of every sovereign State to conduct its affairs without outside interference”.

Alastair Crooke, a former high-ranking member of Britain’s MI6, an expert on Islamist revolution, says Mujahedeen-e-Khalq fighters trained by the CIA in Albania, along with Kurdish fighters trained by the US in Syria, infiltrated Iran recently and played an important role in the violence.

“We’ve had demonstrations periodically in Iran but these were much more violent.” He suggests the ploy was to provoke retaliatory regime violence which could act as an accelerant to further popular escalation.

Some important truths about what is happening in Iran
There is a large anti-government portion of the population which has long-standing and genuine grievances.  I know and admire a few of them. There have also been equally large pro-government protests, largely unreported in the Western media.

Foremost among the anti-government protesters are women and, for that reason, I interviewed Aida Tavassoli, an Iranian women’s rights activist with the Woman Life Freedom movement.

“I think the people of Iran are just so fed up right now,” she told me. “I’ve always said Iran is like a pressure cooker. Each uprising is like you put more steam in the pressure cooker. Eventually it will explode.”

Aida became active in advocacy for women’s rights in Iran in 2022 when Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in a Tehran hospital after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly improper hijab wearing. Her death sparked major protests inside Iran and around the world.

The circumstances of her death are, typically, contested.

“The whole world basically erupted into protests over the lack of women’s rights in Iran,” Tavassoli says. “The entire legislation of Iranian law is against women; they treat us as second-class citizens. We have basically no right to divorce, to the custody of children, to say no to child marriage. There’s a lot of honour killings in Iran, which we think are perpetuated by these discriminatory laws.”

This time around the most prominent anti-government groups rally around Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah, who lives in the US, is endorsed by Israel, the US and powerful parts of the Iranian diaspora. According to Iran watchers I follow, his popularity within Iran is limited.

Pahlavi is in direct contact with Trump.  He publicly supported the American bombing of his own country last year.  He has expressed a desire to be in Tehran sooner rather than later.

“We will soon be by your side.” he tweeted to protesters, urging them to stay on the streets.

Images of rallies around the Western world in support of the anti-government action inside Iran typically show three flags prominent in the protests – the Lion and Sun flag of the Pahlavi regime, the Israeli flag, and the US flag.  This alliance between the monarchists, the Israelis and the Americans is concerning for many Iranians, including anti-government people like Aida Tavassoli.

“It almost feels like Reza Pahlavi and his dear friends — the Israelis and Americans — are stealing our revolution,” Tavassoli says. She emphasises any change should come from civil society inside Iran not external actors.

London-based Middle East Eye, with reporters on the ground, says “Iranian protesters reject US and Israeli interference”.

MEE quotes one of the protesters, Sara: “We want regime change, but we do not want our country to be destroyed. And given Israel’s record, it would not be surprising if they tried to exploit this situation.”

Not in any way discounting the validity and determination of many anti-government protesters, the events of the past month show all the tell-tale signs of a US “colour revolution”.

The Islamic Republic is under the kind of pressure that the West has become adept at applying.

The US reneged on the JCPOA nuclear agreement in 2018. Subsequent sanctions and further isolation are powerful. US-Israeli assassinations and missile attacks triggered the 12-day War last year.

Some believe the sharp decline in the Iranian currency this month was part of an orchestrated destabilization campaign. Combine this with corruption and what is widely assessed as incompetent economic management and you have all the ingredients for serious discontent.

Ordinary Iranians are suffering and frustrated; many are turning against the government.

The US is moving more attack assets into the region; Israel apparently wants to try its luck again. Here we go, yet again.

Professor Glenn Diesen: “The result is always the same — from the Arab Spring onward. The country which was to be liberated is instead destroyed. So we’ve all seen this movie before.”

Government incapable of reform?
Protesters make the valid point that the Iranian government has shown itself incapable of the kind of reform that would recognise the pluralistic nature of Iranian society. Whether it is capable of reform is a moot point but all regimes crack down on dissent in the face of serious external threats and that is why I believe the US-Israel-EU approach is disastrous and counterproductive.

Change must come from within and not be imposed by powerful hostile countries — not least by ones actively pursuing genocide in Palestine.

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

There is no doubt that Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela was illegal, former prime minister and UN leader Helen Clark says.

Over the weekend, the US attacked the Venezuelan capital Caracas and captured the South American nation’s president and his wife, citing alleged drug offences.

Nicolás Maduro is now being held in a federal jail in New York City, and is expected to appear in court this week.

• READ MORE: Trump’s gift-wrapped Maduro package has done the world a favour — revealing what a lie US foreign policy really is
• Venezuela army ready to ‘confront imperial aggression’ after Maduro seized

Speaking to RNZ’s Morning Report, Clark said there was no argument for the steps the US had taken.

“Article 24 of the UN Charter says states must refrain from using military force against each other and respect their sovereignty.

“There is a case for Maduro appearing before a court — that should be the International Criminal Court — on charges for crimes against humanity and there’s quite a long list of those that have been documented by various UN bodies over the years but this operation by the US . . .  is illegal.”

There was not an argument to be made that removing Maduro was in the security interests on the US, she said.

‘Not self-defence’
“There’s no evidence that the US was able to act in self-defence because it was not about to be attacked by Venezuela. So the self-defence argument does not apply at all.”

Hard not to conclude that intervention in #Venezuela is a breach of international law. Maduro was a dictatorial ruler presiding over arbitrary detention & torture of opponents. Iraq 2003 intervention, however, suggests unpredictable path ahead: https://t.co/4qjeENjpAH

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) January 3, 2026

While some people in Venezuela were celebrating Maduro’s capture in the hopes it would create more stability, Clark said this might not be the case.

“The worry with the president of other such interventions, when you take out a leader of an apparatus and then if you try to dismantle that apparatus by external forces, as was the case with Iraq — and I suppose, to some extent, with Libya — is that you create more instability and chaos,” Clark said.

“We don’t really know at this point what the US’s even short-term, let alone medium-term plans are. There’s been, effectively a warning by President Trump this morning that if the acting president, Ms Rodriguez, doesn’t play ball, she will ‘pay a price even bigger than Maduro’.

“What does this mean? Will she be literally, physically taken out? Killed? So this is a very unstable, unpredictable, uncertain situation at the moment.”

On Sunday, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters made the first public statement from New Zealand on the situation.

“New Zealand is concerned by and actively monitoring developments in Venezuela and expects all parties to act in accordance with international law,” Peters said in a post on X (formerly Twitter), using the official Minister of Foreign Affairs account.

NZ ‘stands with Venezuelan people’
“New Zealand stands with the Venezuelan people in their pursuit of a fair, democratic and prosperous future.

Clark said the statement was a “good start”.

RT @WhiteHouse: Nicolas Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima. pic.twitter.com/Y4wzZM5qde

— Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial (@TruthTrumpPost) January 3, 2026

New Zealand was known for following and upholding international law and Peters’ statement was consistent with the country’s long-held position, she said.

On Sunday, international relations Professor Robert Patman of the University of Otago described the US’ military actions against Venezuela as an “audacious move”.

“It’s a direct challenge for countries like New Zealand, which support the view that international relations should be based on rules, procedures and laws,” he told RNZ’s Worldwatch.

Patman said while many would be pleased to see Maduro gone, that did not mean they would be happy the US “violated Venezuela’s sovereignty”.

He believed New Zealand’s response to the US action in Venezuela should be firm and robust.

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

New Zealand’s Space Minister Judith Collins was warned just two months into Israel’s war on Gaza that new BlackSky satellites being launched from NZ could be used by that country’s military, reports Television New Zealand’s 1News.

According to a network news item on Friday, government documents showed officials had recommended the launches go ahead in spite of risks, saying there were no restrictions on trade with Israel.

Minister Collins gave the green light and RocketLab began launching the the Gen-3 BlackSky satellites from Mahia Peninsula earlier this year.

• READ MORE: Arrests as protesters target Christchurch aerospace summit
• Other RocketLab reports

In the documents, obtained by 1News political reporter Benedict Collins under the Official Information Act, Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment officials said while there were risks, the positives outweighed the negatives.

The officials’ advice on the satellite launches stated: “While it poses risks, there is a net good associated with commercially available remote sensing due to the wide range of applications,” 1News said.

One risk they identified related to Israel, but they said there were mitigating factors.

“There are no United Nations Security Council sanctions on Israel, and New Zealand does not implement autonomous sanctions outside the context of the conflict in Ukraine,” they advised the minister.

“There are also no policy restrictions on New Zealand’s trading relationship with Israel.”

World court warnings
However, over the two years of war on Gaza since 7 October 2023, several nonbinding legal opinions by the world’s highest court and UN agencies have warned Israel about its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and also warned countries and companies about complicity with the pariah Zionist state.

In the latest ruling this week, the International Court of Justice said Israel was obliged to ease the passage of aid into Gaza, stressing it had to provide Palestinians with “basic needs” essential to survival.

The wide-ranging ICJ ruling came as aid groups were scrambling to scale up much-needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza, seizing upon a fragile ceasefire agreed earlier this month.

ICJ judges are also weighing accusations, brought by South Africa, that Israel has broken the 1948 UN Genocide Convention with its actions in Gaza.

Another court in The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC), has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

According to 1News, the NZ documents also show that when MBIE officials recommended the application be approved they were aware experts at the UN were warning a possible genocide could unfold in Gaza and that schools and hospitals were being bombed.

‘Appalling’ decision
The officials’ advice came in December 2023, two months after the Hamas attacks on Israel which left 1200 people dead. Israel in response launched a retaliatory offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 68,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Minister Collins said this week the decision had been the right one.

“We don’t have sanctions on Israel, we’re not at war with Israel, Israel is not our enemy,” she said.

But Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said it was an “appalling” decision that could fuel human rights abuses, reports 1News.

Officials at New Zealand’s space agency declined to be interviewed by 1News about Blacksky and RocketLab did not respond to a request for an interview with its founder Sir Peter Beck.

If it were China or Russia, the imposition of sanctions and threats of harm to prosecutors and judges of the International Criminal Court would be front page news in Australia- and in New Zealand.

The Australian’s headline writers and columnists, for example, would be apoplectic. Prime Minister Albanese, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland and Foreign Minister Penny Wong would issue the strongest possible warnings to those countries about consequences.

But, of course, that’s not happening because instead it is the US that is seeking to put the lives and well-being of the ICC’s staff in danger, the reasons the ICC has rightly issued arrest warrants against undoubted war criminals and genocide enablers such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

• READ MORE: Other International Criminal Court reports

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, purely a slavish appendage of the worst US president on record, Donald Trump, announced sanctions on two judges and two prosecutors at the ICC.

Rubio issued a statement calling the ICC “a national security threat that has been an instrument for lawfare” against the US and Israel. A statement that, no doubt, war criminals around the world will be applauding.

These are not the first attacks on the ICC.

In February this year, Trump issued an order that said the US “will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions, some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the US of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our nation would be detrimental to the interests of the US”.

The ICC was established in 2002 to administer the Rome Statute, the international law that governs war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and other crimes.

Leading atrocity nations
Australia is a signatory, but the US and Israel have not signed up in the case of the former, and failed to ratify in the case of the latter, because they are, of course, leading nations when it comes to committing atrocities overseas and — in the case of Israel — within its own borders, through what many scholars say is a policy of apartheid inflicted on Arab Israelis.

So, despite the relatively muted interest in Australia today at the latest outrage against the international order by the corrupt thugs in the Trump Administration, what should the Albanese government do?

Trump’s shielding of Netanyahu and his advisers from criminal proceedings through sanctions and threats to members of the court is akin to both aiding and abetting crimes under the Rome Statute and clearly threatening judges, prosecutors and court officials.

This means Australia should make it very clear, in very public terms, that this nation will not stand for conduct by a so-called ally, which is clearly running a protection racket.

Australia has long joined with the US and other allies in imposing sanctions on regimes around the world.

When it comes to Washington, those days are over.

Sarah Dehm of UTS and Jessica Whyte of the University of New South Wales, writing in The Conversation in December last year, referenced Trump and Rubio’s thuggery towards the ICC among other sanctions outrages, and observed correctly that “Australian sanctions law and decision-making be reoriented towards recognising core principles of international law, including the right of all people to self-determination”.

A ‘trigger mechanism’
Dehm and Whyte argued this “could be done through ‘a trigger mechanism’ that automatically implements sanctions in accordance with decisions of the International Court of Justice concerning serious violations and abuses of human rights”.

What the Albanese government could do immediately is make it abundantly clear that any person subject to an ICC arrest warrant would be detained if they set foot in Australia. This would obviously include Netanyahu and Gallant.

And further, that Australia stands to contribute to protection for any ICC personnel.

Not only that, but given the Rome Statute is incorporated into domestic law in Australia via the Commonwealth Criminal Code, a warning should be given by Attorney-General Rowland that any person suspected of breaches of the Rome Statute could be prosecuted under Australian law if they visit this country.

What Australia could also do is make it mandatory, rather than discretionary, for the attorney-general to issue an arrest warrant if Netanyahu and others subject to ICC warrants came to this country.

As Oxford international law scholar, Australian Dane Luo, has observed, while Foreign Minister Wong has said in relation to the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants that “Australia will act consistently with our obligations under international law and our approach will be informed by international law, not by politics”, this should not be taken as an indication that Rowland would have them arrested.

The Trump administration must be told clearly Australia will not harbour international criminals. And while we are at it, tell Washington we are imposing economic, cultural, educational and other sanctions on Israel.

Greg Barns SC is a former national president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance. This article was first published by Pearls and Irritations : John Menadue’s public poiicy journal.

Three media commentators addressed the 98th week of New Zealand solidarity rallies for Palestine in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland today, criticising the quality of news reporting about the world’s biggest genocide crisis this century.

Speakers at other locations around the country also condemned what they said was biased media coverage.

The critics said they were affirming their humanity in solidarity with the people of Palestine as the United Nations this week officially declared a man-made famine in Gaza because of Israel’s weaponisation of starvation against the besieged enclave with 2 million population.

• READ MORE: Facing up to genocide — a New Zealand journalist bears witness with Gaza and West Bank
• NZ joins calls for urgent, independent foreign media access to Gaza
• Gaza’s ‘nutrition clinics packed amid worsening hunger crisis’
• Other killing of Gaza journalists reports

More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 22 months of conflict – mostly women and children.

One of the major criticisms at the Palestine Solidarity Network (PSNA) organised rally was that the New Zealand media has consistently framed the series of massacres as a “war” between Israel and Hamas instead of a military land grab based on ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The first speaker, Mick Hall, a former news agency journalist who is currently an independent political columnist, said the way news media had covered these crimes had “undoubtedly affected public opinion”.

“As Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza devolved into a full-blown genocide, our media continued to frame Israel’s attack on Gaza as a war against Hamas, while they uncritically recorded Western leaders’ claims that Israel was exercising a ‘right of self-defence’,” he said.

NZ media lacking context
New Zealand news outlets continued to “present an ahistorical account of what has transpired since October 7, shorn of context, ignoring Israel’s history of occupation, of colonial violence against the Palestinian people”.

“An implicit understanding that violence and ethnic cleansing forms part of the organisational DNA of Zionism should have shaped how news stories were framed and presented over the past 22 months.

“Instead, newsroom leaders took their lead from our politicians, from the foreign policy positions from those in Washington and other aligned centres of power.”

Hall said newsrooms had not taken a “neutral position” — “nor are they attempting to keep us informed in any meaningful sense”.

“They failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.

“By wilfully declining to adjudicate between contested claims of Israel and its victims, they failed to meet the informational needs of democratic citizenship in a most profound way.

“They lowered the standard of news, instead of upholding it, as they so sanctimoniously tell us.”

Evans slams media ‘apologists’
Award-winning New Zealand cartoonist Malcolm Evans congratulated the crowd of about 300 protesters for “being on the right side of history”.

“As we remember more than 240 journalists, camera and media people, murdered, assassinated, by Zionist Israel — who they were and the principles they stood for we should not forget our own media,” he said.

“The media which, contrary to the principles they claim to stand for, tried to tell us Zionist Israeli genocide was justified.”

“Whatever your understanding of the conflict in Palestine, which has brought you here today and for these past many months, it won’t have come first from the mainstream media.

“It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.

“The reporters whose witness to Zionist Israel’s war crimes sparked your outrage were not from the ranks of Western media apologists.”

Describing the mainstream media as “pimps for propaganda”, Evans said that in any “decent world” he would not be standing there — instead the New Zealand journalists organisation would be, “expressing solidarity with their murdered Middle Eastern colleagues”.

Palestinian journalists owed debt
David Robie, author and editor of Asia Pacific Report, said the world owed a huge debt to the Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

“Although global media freedom groups have conflicting death toll numbers, it is generally accepted that more than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed — many of them deliberately targeted by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force], even killing their families as well.”

Dr Robie stressed that the Palestinian journalist death toll had eclipsed that of the combined media deaths of the American Civil War, First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cambodian War, Yugoslavia Wars, Afghan War, and the ongoing Ukraine War.

“The Palestinian death toll of journalists is greater than the combined death toll of all these other wars,” he said. “This is shocking and shameful.”

He pointed out that when Palestinian reporter Anas al-Sharif was assassinated on August 10, his entire television crew was also wiped out ahead of the Israeli invasion of Gaza City — “eliminating the witnesses, that’s what Israel does”.

Six journalists died that day in an air strike, four of them from Al Jazeera, which is banned in Israel.

Dr Robie also referred to “disturbing reports” about the existence of an IDF military unit — the so-called “legitimisation cell” — tasked with smearing and targeting journalists in Gaza with fake information.

He condemned the New Zealand media for republishing some of these “counter-narratives” without question.

“This is shameful because news editors know that they are dealing with an Israeli government with a history of lying and disinformation; a government that is on trial with the International Court of Justice for ‘plausible genocide’; and a prime minister wanted on an International Criminal Court arrest warrant to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said.

“Why would you treat this government as a credible source without scrutiny?”

Mock media cemetery
The protest included a mock pavement cemetery with about 20 “bodies” of murdered journalists and blue “press” protective vests, and placards declaring “Killing journalists is killing the truth”, “Genocide: Zionism’s final solution” and “Zionism shames Jewish tradition”.

The demonstrators marched around Te Komititanga Square, pausing at strategic moments as Palestinians read out the names of the hundreds of killed Gazan journalists to pay tribute to their courage and sacrifice.

Last year, the Gazan journalists were collectively awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize for their “courage and commitment to freedom of expression”.

In Ōtautahi Christchurch today, one of the speakers at the Palestine solidarity rally there was author and journalist Saige England, who called on journalists to “speak the truth on Gaza”.

“The truth of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon — slow starvation, mutilation by hunger,” she said.

“The truth is a statement by Israel that journalists are ‘the enemy’. Israel says journalists are the enemy, what does that tell you?

“Why? Because it has carried out invasions, apartheid and genocide for decades.”

Collective measures to confront Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people have been agreed by 12 nations after an emergency summit of the Hague Group in Bogotá, Colombia.

A joint statement today announced the six measures, which it said were geared to holding Israel to account for its crimes in Palestine and would operate within the states’ domestic legal and legislative frameworks.

Nearly two dozen other nations in attendance at the summit are now pondering whether to sign up to the measures before a September deadline set by the Hague Group.

• READ MORE: UN expert advocates peacekeeper path to break Israel’s siege on Gaza
• Syrian troops withdraw from Suwayda after Druze deal to end fighting
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

New Zealand and Australia stayed away from the summit.

The measures include preventing the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel and dual-use items to Israel and preventing the transit, docking or servicing of vessels if there is a risk of vessels carrying such items. No vessel under the flag of the countries would be allowed to carry this equipment.

The countries would also “commence an urgent review of all public contracts, in order to prevent public institutions and public funds, where applicable, from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory, to ensure that our nationals, and companies and entities under our jurisdiction, as well as our authorities, do not act in any way that would entail recognition or provide aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

The countries will prosecute “the most serious crimes under international law through robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels, in compliance with our obligation to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes”.

They agreed to support universal jurisdiction mandates, “as and where applicable in our legal constitutional frameworks and judiciaries, to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes in the Occupied Palestine Territory”.

This will mean IDF soldiers and others accused of war crimes in Palestine would face arrest and could go through domestic judicial processes in these countries, or referrals to the ICC.

The statement said the measures constituted a collective commitment to defend the foundational principles of international law.

It also called on the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to commission an immediate investigation of the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, devise a plan to meet those needs on a continuing and sustained basis, and report on these matters before the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Following repeated total blockades of Gaza since October 7, 2023, Gazans have been dying of starvation as they continue to be bombed and repeatedly displaced and their means of life destroyed.

The official death toll stands at nearly 59,000, mostly women and children, although some estimates put that number at over 200,000.

The joint statement recognised Israel as a threat to regional peace and the system of international law and called on all United Nations member states to enforce their obligations under the UN charter.

It condemned “unilateral attacks and threats against United Nations mandate holders, as well as key institutions of the human rights architecture and international justice” and committed to build “on the legacy of global solidarity movements that have dismantled apartheid and other oppressive systems, setting a model for future co-ordinated responses to international law violations”.

Countries face wrath of US
Ministers, high-ranking officials and envoys from 30 nations attended the two-day event, from July 15-16, called to come up with the measures. It is now hoped some of those attendees will sign up to the statement by September.

For countries like Ireland, which sent a delegation, signing up would have profound implications. The Irish government has been heavily criticised by its own citizens for continuing to allow Shannon Airport as a transit point for military equipment from the United States to be sent to Israel.

It would also face the prospect of severe reprisals by the US, as would others thinking of adding their names to the collective statement. The US is now expected to consult with nations that attended and warn them of the consequences of signing up.

The summit had been billed by the UN Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, as “the most significant political development of the last 20 months”.

Albanese had told attendees that “for too long, international law has been treated as optional — applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful”.

“This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order. That era must end,” she said.

Co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa, the Hague group was established by nine nations in late January at The Hague in the Netherlands to hold Israel to account for its crimes and push for Palestinian self-determination.

Colombia last year ended diplomatic relations with Israel, while South Africa in late December 2023 filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide, which was joined by nearly two dozen countries.

The ICJ has determined a plausible genocide is taking place and issued orders for Israel to protect Palestinians and take measures to stop genocide taking place, a call ignored by the Zionist state.

Representatives from the countries arrived in Bogota this week in defiance of the United States, which last week sanctioned Albanese for attempts to have US and Israeli political officials and business leaders prosecuted by the ICC over Gaza.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it an illegitimate “campaign of political and economic warfare”.

It followed the sanctioning of four ICC judges after arrest warrants were issued in November last year for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Ahead of the Bogota meeting, the US State Department accused The Hague Group of multilateral attempts to “weaponise international law as a tool to advance radical anti-Western agendas” and warned the US would “aggressively defend” its interests.

Signs of division in the West
Most of those attending came from nations in the Global South, but not all.

Founding Hague Group members Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa attended the Summit. Joining them were Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iraq, Republic of Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

However, in a sign of increasing division in the West, NATO members Spain, Portugal, Norway, Slovenia and Turkey also attended.

Inside the summit, former US State Department official Annelle Sheline, who resigned in March over Gaza, defended the right of those attending “to uphold their obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.

“This is not the weaponisation of international law. This is the application of international law,” she told delegates.

The US and Israel deny accusations that genocide is taking place in Gaza, while Western media have collectively refused to adjudicate the claims or frame stories around Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the strip, despite ample evidence by the UN and genocide experts.

Since 7 October 2023, US allies have offered diplomatic cover for Israel by repeating it had “a right to defend itself” and was engaged in a legitimate defensive “war against Hamas”.

Israel now plans to corral starving Gazans into a concentration camp in the south of the strip, with many analysts expecting the IDF to exterminate anyone found outside its boundaries, while preparing to push those inside across the border into Egypt.

Asia Pacific and EU allies shun Bogota summit
Addressing attendees at the summit yesterday, Albanese criticised the EU for its neo-colonialism and support for Israel, criticisms that can be extended to US allies in the Asia Pacific region.

Independent journalist Abby Martin reported Albanese as saying: “Europe and its institutions are guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vessels to US Empire even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery.

“The Hague Group is a new moral centre in world politics. Millions are hoping for leadership that can birth a new global order, rooted in justice, humanity and collective liberation. It’s not just about Palestine. This is about all of us.”

The Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was asked why Foreign Minister Penny Wong did not take up an invite to attend the Hague Group meeting. In a statement to Mick Hall in Context, a spokesperson said she had been unable to attend, but did not explain why.

She said Australia was a “resolute defender of international law” and added: “Australia has consistently been part of international calls that all parties must abide by international humanitarian law. Not enough has been done to protect civilians and aid workers.

“We have called on Israel to respond substantively to the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“We have also called on Israel to comply with the binding orders of the ICJ, including to enable the unhindered provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale.”

When asked why New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters had failed to take up the invitation or send any of his officials, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokesperson simply refused to comment.

She said MFAT media advisors would only engage with “recognised news media outlets”.

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, as well as a number of his ministers, have been referred to the ICC by domestic legal teams, accused of complicity in the genocide.

Evidence against Albanese was accepted into the ICC’s wider investigation of crimes in Gaza in October last year, while Luxon’s referral earlier this month is being assessed by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office.

Delegates told humanity at stake
Delegates heard several impassioned addresses from speakers on what was at stake during the two-day event in Bogota.

Palestinian-American trauma surgeon, Dr Thaer Ahmad, told the gathering that Palestinians seeking food were being met with bullets, describing aid distribution facilities set up by the US contractor-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as “slaughterhouses”. More than 800 starving Gazans have been killed at the GHF aid points so far.

“People know they could die but cannot sit idly by and watch their families starve,” he said.

“The bullets fired by GHF mercenaries are just one part of the weaponisation of aid, where Palestinians are ghettoised into areas where somebody in military fatigues decides if you are worthy of food or not.”

Palestinian diplomat Riyad Mansour had urged the summit attendees to take decisive action to not only save the Palestinian people, but redeem humanity.

“Instead of outrage at the crimes we know are taking place, we find those who defend, normalise, and even celebrate them,” he said.

“The core values we believed humanity agreed were universal are shattered, blown to pieces like the tens of thousands of starved, murdered and injured civilians in Palestine.

“The mind and heart cannot fathom or process the immense pain and horror that has taken hold of the lives of an entire people. We must not fail — not just for Palestine’s sake — but for humanity’s sake.”

At the beginning of the summit, Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir told summit delegates the Palestinian genocide threatened the entire international system.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote in The Guardian last week: “We can either stand firm in defence of the legal principles that seek to prevent war and conflict, or watch helplessly as the international system collapses under the weight of unchecked power politics.”

Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers, as well as Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, met in Brussels at the same time as the Bogota summit, to discuss Middle East co-operation, but also possible options for action against Israel.

At the EU–Southern Neighbourhood Ministerial Meeting, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas put forward potential actions after Israel was found to have breached the EU economic cooperation deal with the bloc on human rights grounds. As expected, no sanctions, restricted trade or suspension of the co-operation deal were agreed.

The EU has been one of Israel’s most strident backers in its campaign against Gaza, with EU members Germany and France in particular supplying weapons, as well as political support.

The UK government has continued to supply arms and operate spy planes over Gaza over the past 21 months, launched from bases in Cyprus, while its military has issued D-Notices to censor media reports that its special forces have been operating inside the occupied territories.

Mick Hall is an independent Irish-New Zealand journalist, formerly of RNZ and AAP, based in New Zealand since 2009. He writes primarily on politics, corporate power and international affairs. This article is republished from his substack Mick Hall in Context with permission.

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 an unprecedented legal move in Aotearoa New Zealand, a national Palestine solidarity advocacy group has filed a referral against the prime minister, three other ministers in the coalition government and two business leaders, alleging complicity with Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has 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”.

The PSNA movement has led 90 consecutive weeks of protest at multiple locations across New Zealand in the country’s biggest humn rights campaign since the war began in October 2023.

• READ MORE: ‘Horrific scenes’ in Gaza as Israel kills dozens of aid seekers
• UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war
• Australian Prime Minister referred to ICC for complicity in genocide

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.”

The six people named in the referral documentation are Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, Minister for Defence and Space Judith Collins, Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour, and businessmen Rocket Lab chief executive Sir Peter Beck and Rakon Limited chief executive Dr Sinan Altug.

Spy satellites
According to PSNA, Rocket Lab launches spy satellites from Māhia, which PSNA claims Israel uses go target civilians in Gaza, while Rakon exports military-grade crystal oscillators to the US “to be put in missiles which Israel can deploy in Gaza and elsewhere”.

“This is a grave step which we have not taken lightly,” Minto and Nazzal said.

“The government’s ongoing and meaningful support for Israel, despite its horrendous war crimes, is not only egregious to most New Zealanders, but is also criminal conduct under international law.”

The PSNA referral follows an open letter by one of the country’s largest environmental organisations two days ago that called on the government to impose sanctions on Israel amid mounting criticism in New Zealand over war crimes allegations against the state over its 20-month war.

Greenpeace Aotearoa’s executive director Dr Russel Norman, a former Green Party co-leader, said in an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Luxon and Foreign Minister Peters that he was expressing grave concerns about the “ongoing genocide in Gaza being carried out by Israeli forces, and the ongoing failure of the New Zealand government to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel.”

Norman cited a statement by the UN Human Rights Office last week that “at least 410 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while trying to fetch from controversial new aid hubs in Gaza”.

The office said this was “a likely war crime”.

‘Killing field’
He also cited Ha’aretz, a respected Israeli newspaper, quoting an Israeli soldier describing the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHC) aid hubs as a “killing field”.

In March last year, Sydney law firm Birchgrove Legal referred a case to ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan consisting of 92 pages of documented evidence, alleging that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and several other high level local politicians were complicit in the Gaza genocide.

The case was lodged under article 15 of the Rome Statute and although Albanese claimed it had “no credibility”, two months later the ICC announced that it had agreed to investigate Albanese as part of its ongoing “Situation in the State of Palestine” investigation.

In January 2015, the Palestinian government lodged a claim with the ICC regarding war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories since 13 June 2014.

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.

In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for the war crimes of starvation as a weapon and crimes against humanity.

‘Letter of demand’
The New Zealand referral to the ICC followed a “letter of demand” issued to the government last year actions that a “reasonable government” would take to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, and the actions a government should take to avoid criminal complicity with Israel.

“For 20 months these political and business leaders have supported Israel to commit crimes which have shocked the human conscience,” Minto and Nazzal said.

“This has brought shame on the whole country.”

It is understood that this is the first time that New Zealand political or business leaders have been referred to the ICC for investigation.

There were no immediate responses. However, a growing number of such cases are being filed around the world.

In July 2024, the UN’s highest global court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion declaring that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Gaza and East Jerusalem, was illegal.

It called on Israel to halt all settlements and withdraw settlers from the territory. The court is also investigating Israel over a case brought by South Africa alleging genocide.

“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”

This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.

Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.

• READ MORE: Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36

Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.

This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.

Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.

Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.

Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.

Making life unbearable
The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.

This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.

Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.

New Zealand recently joined 23 other countries calling out Israel and demanding a full supply of foreign aid be allowed into Gaza.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.

While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.

People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.

World must force Israel to stop
Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.

The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.

New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.

Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.

These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.

New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.

These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.

Show our preparedness to uphold values
In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.

We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.

Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.

An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.

He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.

Protest is not enough. We need to act.

Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.

Journalists have been targeted, detained and tortured by the Israeli military in Gaza — and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has now taken a new approach towards bringing justice these crimes.

The Paris-based global media freedom NGO has submitted multiple formal requests to the International Criminal Court (ICC) asking that Palestinian journalists who are victims of Israeli war crimes in Gaza be allowed to participate as such in international judicial proceedings.

If granted this status, these journalists would be able to present the ICC with the direct and personal harm they have suffered at the hands of Israeli forces, reports RSF.

• READ MORE: Other Gaza journalists reports

RSF has filed four complaints with the ICC concerning war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza and recently joined director Sepideh Farsi at the Cannes Film Festival to pay tribute to Fatma Hassoun, a photojournalist killed by the Israeli army after it was revealed she was featured in the documentary film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.

After filing the four complaints with the ICC concerning war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza since October 2023, RSF is resolutely continuing its efforts to bring the issue before international justice.

The NGO has submitted several victim participation forms to the ICC so that Gazan journalists can participate in the legal process as recognised victims, not just as witnesses.

Being officially recognised as victims is a first step toward justice, truth, and reparations — and it is an essential step toward protecting press freedom and journalistic integrity in conflict zones.

Nearly 200 journalists killed
Since October 2023, Israeli armed forces have killed nearly 200 journalists in Gaza — the Gaza Media Office says more than 215 journalists have been killed — at least 44 of whom were targeted because of their work, according to RSF data.

Not only are foreign journalists barred from entering the blockaded Palestinian territory, but local reporters have watched their homes and newsrooms be destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and have been constantly displaced amid a devastating humanitarian crisis.

Fiji lawyer Nazhat Shameem Khan has been elevated to the top prosecutorial position at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

The Office of the Prosecutor at ICC has announced that deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan and Mame Mandiaye Niang have taken over leadership following chief prosecutor Karim AA Khan KC’s temporary leave of absence.

Khan stepped aside on May 16, 2025, pending the outcome of a UN Office of Internal Oversight Services investigation into alleged misconduct.

• READ MORE: ICC prosecutor to step aside until probe ends

The ICC states the deputy prosecutors will continue to rely on the support and collaboration of the Rome Statute community, and all partners, in carrying the office’s mandate forward.

In 2014, Nazhat Khan was appointed Fiji’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna, and to Switzerland and took up the ICC post in 2021.

Pacific Media Watch notes that Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan had issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza, and also against three Hamas leaders who have been killed in the war on Gaza. In contrast to most of the world’s condemnation and a majority of UN members, Fiji supports Israel and its main backer, United States, in the war.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

Statement by the Presidency of the Assembly of States Parties regarding the situation of the Office of the Prosecutor #RomeStatute #ICC #ASP pic.twitter.com/Tq1eD5N36B

— Paivi Kaukoranta (@PASPKaukoranta) May 18, 2025

Filipo Tarakinikini has been appointed as Fiji’s Ambassador-designate to Israel.

This has been stated on two official X, formerly Twitter, handle posts overnight.

“#Fiji is determined to deepen its relations with #Israel as Fiji’s Ambassador-designate to Israel, HE Ambassador @AFTarakinikini prepares to present his credentials on 28 April, 2025,” stated the Fiji at UN twitter account.

• READ MORE: Israel accused at ICJ of using aid as ‘weapons of war’ and trying to ‘destroy’ Palestinian people
• Israel’s restrictions on UN agencies in Gaza highlighted at world court
• Other Israeli war on Palestine reports

Tarakinikini is also Fiji’s current Ambassador to the United Nations.

In a separate post, Deputy Director-General Eynat Shlein of Israel’s international development cooperation agency said she was “honoured” to meet Tarakinikini.

“We discussed the vast cooperation opportunities, promoting & enhancing sustainable development, emphasizing investment in capacity building & human capital,” she said on X.

Fiji is only the seventh country in the world to open an embassy in Israel.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

Centre of controversy
Pacific Media Watch reports that Lieutenant-Colonel Tarakinikini was at the centre of controversy in Fiji in 2005 when he was declared a “deserter” by the Fiji military.

However, from 1979 to 2002, he served in the Fiji Military Forces, including eight years in United Nations peacekeeping missions, among them, south Lebanon and the Multinational Force in Sinai, Egypt.

Great honor to have have this timely briefing @EynatShlein, Ambassador Roi @IsraelMFA #Fiji is determined to deepen its relations with #Israel as Fiji’s Ambassador-designate to Israel, HE Ambassador @AFTarakinikini prepares to present his credentials on 28 April, 2025 … https://t.co/mGPKjYM5Qc

— Fiji at the UN (@FijiMissionUN) April 27, 2025

Beginning in 2003, he was the UN Department for Security and Safety’s (UNDSS) Chief Security Adviser in Jerusalem, as well as in Kathmandu, Nepal, from 2006 to 2008.

From 2008 to 2018, he served in numerous United Nations integrated assessment missions, programme working groups, restructuring and redeployments and technical assessment missions.

‘Weapons of war’
Yesterday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) began week-long hearings at The Hague into global accusations of Israel using starvation and humanitarian aid as “weapons of war” and failing to meet its obligations to the Palestinian people in Gaza as the occupying power in its genocidal war on the besieged enclave.

Forty countries are expected to give evidence.

The ICJ has been tasked by the UN with providing an advisory opinion “on a priority basis and with the utmost urgency”.

Although the ICJ judges’ opinion is not binding, it provides clarity on legal questions.

In January 2024, the ICJ ruled that Israel must take “all measures” to prevent a genocide in Gaza.

Then in June, it said in an advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza was illegal.

Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted on arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In the absence of any measures taken by the New Zealand government to respond to the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza, Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick is doing the principled thing by trying to apply countervailing pressure on Israel to stop its brutal actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

New Zealand is a state party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).

As a contracting party New Zealand has a clear obligation to respond to a genocide when it is indicated and which it must “undertake to prevent and to punish”.

• READ MORE:  ‘Wiped out’: Israel kills ‘entire family’ in latest attacks on Gaza
• Other articles by John Hobbs

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, deemed that a “plausible genocide” is occurring in Gaza. That was a year ago. Thousands of Palestinians have died since the ICJ’s determination.

The New Zealand government has failed its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention by applying no pressure to influence Israel’s military actions in Gaza. There are a number of interventions New Zealand could have chosen to take.

For example, a United Nations resolution which New Zealand co-sponsored (UNSC 2334) when it was a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 2015-16 required states to distinguish in their trading arrangements between Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank and the rest of Israel.

New Zealand could have extended this to all trading arrangements with Israel.

Diplomatic pressure needed
Diplomatic pressure could have been put on Israel by expelling the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand. Finally, New Zealand could have shown well-needed solidarity with Palestine by conferring statehood recognition.

In contrast, Swarbrick is looking to bring her member’s Bill to Parliament to apply sanctions against Israel for its ongoing illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza).

The context is the UN General Assembly’s support for the ICJ’s recent report which requires that Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem comes to an end.

New Zealand, along with 123 other general assembly members, supported the ICJ decision. It is now up to UN states to live up to what they voted for.

Swarbrick’s Bill, the Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill, responds to this request, in the absence of any intervention by the New Zealand government. The Bill is based on the Russian Sanctions Act (2022), brought forward by then Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta, to apply pressure on Russia to cease its military invasion of Ukraine.

While Swarbrick’s Bill has the full support of the opposition MPs from Labour and Te Pāti Māori she needs six government MPs to support the Bill going forward for its first reading.

Andrea Vance, in a recent article in the Sunday Star-Times, called Swarbrick’s Bill “grandstanding”. Vance argues that the Greens’ Bill adopts “simplistic moral assumptions about the righteousness of the oppressed [but] ignores the complexity of the conflict.”

‘Confict complexity’ not complicated
The “complexity of the conflict” is a recurring theme which dresses up a brutal and illegal occupation by Israel over the Palestinians, as complicated.

It is hardly complicated. The history tells us so. In 1947, the UN supported the partition of Palestine, against the will of the indigenous Palestinian people, who comprised 70 perent of the population and owned 94 percent of the land.

In 1948, Jewish paramilitary groups drove more than 700,000 Palestinian people out of their homeland into bordering countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, the UAE) and beyond, where they remain as refugees.

Finally, the 1967 illegal occupation by Israel of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This occupation, which multiple UN resolutions has termed illegal, is now over 58 years old.

This is not “complicated”. One nation state, Israel, exercises total power over a people who have been dispossessed from their land and who simply have no power.

It is the unwillingness of countries like New Zealand and its Anglosphere/Five-Eyes allies (United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia) and the inability of the UN to enforce its resolutions on Israel, which makes it “complicated”.

Historian on Gaza genocide
One of Israel’s most distinguished historians, Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim at Oxford University, in his recently published book Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine, now chooses to call the situation in Gaza “genocide”.

In arriving at this position, he points to the language and narratives being adopted by Israeli politicians:

“Israeli President Isaac Herzog proclaimed that there are no innocents in Gaza. No innocents among the 50,000 people who were killed and nearly 20,000 children.

“There are quotes from [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] that are genocidal, as well as from his former Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, who said we are up against ‘human animals’.

“I hesitated to call things genocide before October 2023, but what tipped the balance for me was when Israel stopped all humanitarian aid into Gaza. They are using starvation as a weapon of war. That’s genocide.”

There is growing concern among commentators about the ability of international rules-based order to function and hold individuals and states to account.

Institutions such as the UN, the ICJ and the ICC are simply unable to enforce their decisions. This should not come as a surprise, however, as the structure of the UN system, established at the end of the Second World War was designed to be weak by the victors, with regard to its enforcement ability.

Time NZ supports determinations
It is time that New Zealand supported these same institutions by honouring and looking to enforce their determinations.

Accordingly, New Zealand needs to play its part in holding Israel to account for the atrocities it is inflicting on the Palestinian people and stand behind and support the Palestinian right to self-determination.

Swarbrick is absolutely right to introduce her Bill.

At the very least it says that New Zealand does care about the plight of the Palestinian people and is willing to stand behind them. It is the morally correct thing to do and incumbent on the government to provide support to Swarbrick’s Bill — and not just six of its members.

John Hobbs is a doctoral candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.

The BBC’s news verification service, Verify, digitally reconstructed a residential tower block in Mandalay earlier this week to show how it had collapsed in a huge earthquake on March 28 in Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia largely cut off from the outside world.

The broadcaster painstakingly pieced together damage to other parts of the city using a combination of phone videos, satellite imagery and Nasa heat detection images.

Verify dedicated much time and effort to this task for a simple reason: to expose as patently false the claims made by the ruling military junta that only 2000 people were killed by Myanmar’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake.

• READ MORE: Middle East Eye’s live coverage of the Israeli war on Palestine
• Other Jonathan Cook articles

The West sees the country’s generals as an official enemy, and the BBC wanted to show that the junta’s account of events could not be trusted. Myanmar’s rulers have an interest in undercounting the dead to protect the regime’s image.

The BBC’s determined effort to strip away these lies contrasted strongly with its coverage — or rather, lack of it — of another important story this week.

Israel has been caught in another horrifying war crime. Late last month, it executed 15 Palestinian first responders and then secretly buried them in a mass grave, along with their crushed vehicles.

Israel is an official western ally, one that the United States, Britain and the rest of Europe have been arming and assisting in a spate of crimes against humanity being investigated by the world’s highest court. Fourteen months ago, the International Court of Justice ruled it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, is a fugitive from its sister court, the International Criminal Court. Judges there want to try him for crimes against humanity, including starving the 2.3 million people of Gaza by withholding food, water and aid.

Israel is known to have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them women and children, in its 18-month carpet bombing of the enclave. But there are likely to be far more deaths that have gone unreported.

This is because Israel has destroyed all of Gaza’s health and administrative bodies that could do the counting, and because it has created unmarked “kill zones” across much of the enclave, making it all but impossible for first responders to reach swathes of territory to locate the dead.

The latest crime scene in Gaza is shockingly illustrative of how Israel murders civilians, targets medics and covers up its crimes — and of how Western media collude in downplaying such atrocities, helping Israel to ensure that the extent of the death toll in Gaza will never be properly known.

Struck ‘one by one’
Last Sunday, United Nations officials were finally allowed by Israel to reach the site in southern Gaza where the Palestinian emergency crews had gone missing a week earlier, on March 23. The bodies of 15 Palestinians were unearthed in a mass grave; another is still missing.

All were wearing their uniforms, and some had their hands or legs zip-tied, according to eyewitnesses. Some had been shot in the head or chest. Their vehicles had been crushed before they were buried.

Two of the emergency workers were killed by Israeli fire while trying to aid people injured in an earlier air strike on Rafah. The other 13 were part of a convoy sent to retrieve the bodies of their colleagues, with the UN saying Israel had struck their ambulances “one by one”.

Even the usual excuses, as preposterous as they are, simply won’t wash in the case of Israel’s latest atrocity — which is why it initially tried to black out the story

More details emerged during the week, with the doctor who examined five of the bodies reporting that all but one — which had been too badly mutilated by feral animals to assess — were shot from close range with multiple bullets. Ahmad Dhaher, a forensic consultant working at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said: “The bullets were aimed at one person’s head, another at their heart, and a third person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.”

Bashar Murad, the Red Crescent’s director of health programmes, observed that one of the paramedics in the convoy was in contact with the ambulance station when Israeli forces started shooting: “During the call, we heard the sound of Israeli soldiers arriving at the location, speaking in Hebrew.

“The conversation was about gathering the [Palestinian] team, with statements like: ‘Gather them at the wall and bring some restraints to tie them.’ This indicated that a large number of the medical staff were still alive.”

Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Palestine, reported that, on the journey to recover the bodies, he and his team witnessed Israeli soldiers firing on civilians fleeing the area. He saw a Palestinian woman shot in the back of the head and a young man who tried to retrieve her body shot, too.

Concealing slaughter
The difficulty for Israel with the discovery of the mass grave was that it could not easily fall back on any of the usual mendacious rationalisations for war crimes that it has fed the Western media over the past year and a half, and which those outlets have been only too happy to regurgitate.

Since Israel unilaterally broke a US-backed ceasefire agreement with Hamas last month, its carpet bombing of the enclave has killed more than 1000 Palestinians, taking the official death toll to more than 50,000. But Israel and its apologists, including Western governments and media, always have a ready excuse at hand to mask the slaughter.

Israel disputes the casualty figures, saying they are inflated by Gaza’s Health Ministry, even though its figures in previous wars have always been highly reliable. It says most of those killed were Hamas “terrorists”, and most of the slain women and children were used by Hamas as “human shields”.

Israel has also destroyed Gaza’s hospitals, shot up large numbers of ambulances, killed hundreds of medical personnel and disappeared others into torture chambers, while denying the entry of medical supplies.

Israel implies that all of the 36 hospitals in Gaza it has targeted are Hamas-run “command and control centres”; that many of the doctors and nurses working in them are really covert Hamas operatives; and that Gaza’s ambulances are being used to transport Hamas fighters.

Even if these claims were vaguely plausible, the Western media seems unwilling to ask the most obvious of questions: why would Hamas continue to use Gaza’s hospitals and ambulances when Israel made clear from the outset of its 18-month genocidal killing rampage that it was going to treat them as targets?

Even if Hamas fighters did not care about protecting the health sector, which their parents, siblings, children, and relatives desperately need to survive Israel’s carpet bombing, why would they make themselves so easy to locate?

Hamas has plenty of other places to hide in Gaza. Most of the enclave’s buildings are wrecked concrete structures, ideal for waging guerrilla warfare.

Israeli cover-up
Even the usual excuses, as preposterous as they are, simply won’t wash in the case of Israel’s latest atrocity — which is why it initially tried to black out the story.

Given that it has banned all Western journalists from entering Gaza, killed unprecedented numbers of local journalists, and formally outlawed the UN refugee agency Unrwa, it might have hoped its crime would go undiscovered.

But as news of the atrocity started to appear on social media last week, and the mass grave was unearthed on Sunday, Israel was forced to concoct a cover story.

It claimed the convoy of five ambulances, a fire engine, and a UN vehicle were “advancing suspiciously” towards Israeli soldiers. It also insinuated, without a shred of evidence, that the vehicles had been harbouring Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.

Once again, we were supposed to accept not only an improbable Israeli claim but an entirely nonsensical one. Why would Hamas fighters choose to become sitting ducks by hiding in the diminishing number of emergency vehicles still operating in Gaza?

Why would they approach an Israeli military position out in the open, where they were easy prey, rather than fighting their enemy from the shadows, like other guerrilla armies — using Gaza’s extensive concrete ruins and their underground tunnels as cover?

If the ambulance crews were killed in the middle of a firefight, why were some victims exhumed with their hands tied? How is it possible that they were all killed in a gun battle when the soldiers could be heard calling for the survivors to be zip-tied?

And if Israel was really the wronged party, why did it seek to hide the bodies and the crushed vehicles under sand?

‘Deeply disturbed’
All available evidence indicates that Israel killed all or most of the emergency crews in cold blood — a grave war crime.

But as the story broke on Monday, the BBC’s News at Ten gave over its schedule to a bin strike by workers in Birmingham; fears about the influence of social media prompted by a Netflix drama, Adolescence; bad weather on a Greek island; the return to Earth of stranded Nasa astronauts; and Britain’s fourth political party claiming it would do well in next month’s local elections.

All of that pushed out any mention of Israel’s latest war crime in Gaza.

Presumably under pressure from its ordinary journalists — who are known to be in near-revolt over the state broadcaster’s persistent failure to cover Israeli atrocities in Gaza — the next day’s half-hour evening news belatedly dedicated 30 seconds to the item, near the end of the running order.

This was the perfect opportunity for BBC Verify to do a real investigation, piecing together an atrocity Israel was so keen to conceal

The perfunctory report immediately undercut the UN’s statement that it was “deeply disturbed” by the deaths, with the newsreader announcing that Israel claimed nine “terrorists” were “among those killed”.

Where was the BBC Verify team in this instance? Too busy scouring Google maps of Myanmar, it would seem.

If ever there was a region where its forensic, open-source skills could be usefully deployed, it is Gaza. After all, Israel keeps out foreign journalists, and it has killed Palestinian journalists in greater numbers than all of the West’s major wars of the past 150 years combined.

This was the perfect opportunity for BBC Verify to do a real investigation, piecing together an atrocity Israel was so keen to conceal. It was a chance for the BBC to do actual journalism about Gaza.

Why was it necessary for the BBC to contest the narrative of an earthquake in a repressive Southeast Asian country whose rulers are opposed by the West but not contest the narrative of a major atrocity committed by a Western ally?

Missing in action
This is not the first time that BBC Verify has been missing in action at a crucial moment in Gaza.

Back in January 2024, Israeli soldiers shot up a car containing a six-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, and her relatives as they tried to flee an Israeli attack on Gaza City. All were killed, but before Hind died, she could be heard desperately pleading with emergency services for help.

Two paramedics who tried to rescue her were also killed. It took two weeks for other emergency crews to reach the bodies.

It was certainly possible for BBC Verify to have done a forensic study of the incident — because another group did precisely that. Forensic Architecture, a research team based at the University of London, used available images of the scene to reconstruct the events.

It found that the Israeli military had fired 335 bullets into the small car carrying Hind and her family. In an audio recording before she was killed, Hind’s cousin could be heard telling emergency services that an Israeli tank was near them.

The sound of the gunfire, most likely from the tank’s machine gun, indicates it was some 13 metres away — close enough for the crew to have seen the children inside.

Not only did BBC Verify ignore the story, but the BBC also failed to report it until the bodies were recovered. As has happened so often before, the BBC dared not do any reporting until Israel was forced to confirm the incident because of physical evidence.

We know from a BBC journalist-turned-whistleblower, Karishma Patel, that she pushed editors to run the story as the recordings of Hind pleading for help first surfaced, but she was overruled.

When the BBC very belatedly covered Hind’s horrific killing online, in typical fashion, it did so in a way that minimised any pushback from Israel. Its headline, “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help”, managed to remove Israel from the story.

Evidence buried
A clear pattern thus emerges. The BBC also tried to bury the massacre of the 15 Palestinian first responders — keeping it off its website’s main page — just as Israel had tried to bury the evidence of its crime in Gaza’s sand.

The story’s first headline was: “Red Cross outraged over killing of eight medics in Gaza”. Once again, Israel was removed from the crime scene.

Only later, amid massive backlash on social media and as the story refused to go away, did the BBC change the headline to attribute the killings to “Israeli forces”.

But subsequent stories have been keen to highlight the self-serving Israeli claim that its soldiers were entitled to execute the paramedics because the presence of emergency vehicles at the scene of much death and destruction was “suspicious”.

In one report, a BBC journalist managed to shoe-horn this same, patently ridiculous “defence” twice into her two-minute segment. She reduced the discovery of an Israeli massacre to mere “allegations”, while a clear war crime was soft-soaped as only an “apparent” one.

Notably, the BBC has on one solitary occasion managed to go beyond other media in reporting an attack on an ambulance crew. The footage incontrovertibly showed a US-supplied Apache helicopter firing on the crew and a young family they were trying to evacuate.

There was no possibility the ambulance contained “terrorists” because the documentary team were filming inside the vehicle with paramedics they had been following for months. The video was included near the end of a documentary on the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, seen largely through the eyes of children.

But the BBC quickly pulled that film, titled Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, after the Israel lobby manufactured a controversy over one of its child narrators being the son of Gaza’s deputy Agriculture Minister, who served in the Hamas-run civilian government.

Wholesale destruction
The unmentionable truth, which has been evident since the earliest days of the 18-month genocide, is that Israel is intentionally dismantling and destroying Gaza’s health sector, piece by piece.

According to the UN, Israel’s war has killed at least 1060 healthcare workers and 399 aid workers — those deaths it has been possible to identify — and wrecked Gaza’s health facilities. Israel has rounded up hundreds of medical staff and disappeared many of them into what Israeli human rights groups call torture chambers.

One doctor, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, has been held by Israel since he was abducted in late December. During brief contacts with lawyers, Dr Safiya revealed that he is being tortured.

Other doctors have been killed in Israeli detention from their abuse, including one who was allegedly raped to death.

Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and execution of medical personnel is part of the same message: there is nowhere safe, no sanctuary, the laws of war no longer apply

Why is Israel carrying out this wholesale destruction of Gaza’s health sector? There are two reasons. Firstly, Netanyahu recently reiterated his intent to carry out the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

He presents this as “voluntary migration”, supposedly in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate the enclave’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians to other countries.

There can be nothing voluntary about Palestinians leaving Gaza when Israel has refused to allow any food or aid into the enclave for the past month, and is indiscriminately bombing Gaza. Israel’s ultimate intention has always been to terrify the population into flight.

Israel’s ambassador to Austria, David Roet, was secretly recorded last month stating that “there are no uninvolved in Gaza”— a constant theme from Israeli officials. He also suggested that there should be a “death sentence” for anyone Israel accuses of holding a gun, including children.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has threatened the “total devastation” of Gaza’s civilian population should they fail to “remove Hamas” from the enclave, something they are in no position to do.

Not surprisingly, faced with the prospect of an intensification of the genocide and the imminent annihilation of themselves and their loved ones, ordinary people in Gaza have started organising protests against Hamas — marches readily reported by the BBC and others.

Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and execution of medical personnel is part of the same message: there is nowhere safe, no sanctuary, the laws of war no longer apply, and no one will come to your aid in your hour of need.

You are alone against our snipers, drones, tanks and Apache helicopters.

Too much to bear
The second reason for Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health sector is that we in the West, or at least our governments and media, have consented to Israel’s savagery — and actively participated in it — every step of the way. Had there been any meaningful pushback at any stage, Israel would have been forced to take another course.

When David Lammy, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, let slip in Parliament last month the advice he has been receiving from his officials since he took up the job last summer — that Israel is clearly violating international law by starving the population — he was immediately rebuked by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office.

Let us not forget that Starmer, when he was opposition leader, approved Israel’s genocidal blocking of food, water and electricity to Gaza, saying Israel “had that right”.

In response to Lammy’s comments, Starmer’s spokesperson restated the government’s view that Israel is only “at risk” of breaching international law — a position that allows the UK to continue arming Israel and providing it with intelligence from British spy flights over Gaza from a Royal Air Force base in Cyprus.

Our politicians have consented to everything Israel has done, and not just in Gaza over the past 18 months. This genocide has been decades in the making.

Three-quarters of a century ago, the West authorised the ethnic cleansing of most of Palestine to create a self-declared Jewish state there. The West consented, too, to the violent occupation of the last sections of Palestine in 1967, and to Israel’s gradual colonisation of those newly seized territories by armed Jewish extremists.

The West nodded through waves of house demolitions carried out against Palestinian communities by Israel to “Judaise” the land. It backed the Israeli army creating extensive “firing zones” on Palestinian farmland to starve traditional agricultural communities of any means of subsistence.

The West ignored Israeli settlers and soldiers destroying Palestinian olive groves, beating up shepherds, torching homes, and murdering families. Even being an Oscar winner offers no immunity from the rampant settler violence.

The West agreed to Israel creating an apartheid road system and a network of checkpoints that kept Palestinians confined to ever-shrinking ghettoes, and building walls around Palestinian areas to permanently isolate them from the rest of the world.

It allowed Israel to stop Palestinians from reaching one of their holiest sites, Al-Aqsa Mosque, on land that was supposed to be central to their future state.

The West kept quiet as Israel besieged the two million people of Gaza for 17 years, putting them on a tightly rationed diet so their children would grow ever-more malnourished. It did nothing — except supply more weapons — when the people of Gaza launched a series of non-violent protests at their prison walls around the enclave, and were greeted with Israeli sniper fire that left thousands dead or crippled.

The West only found a collective voice of protest on 7 October 2023, when Hamas managed to find a way to break out of Gaza’s choking isolation to wreak havoc in Israel for 24 hours. It has been raising its voice in horror at the events of that single day ever since, drowning out 18 months of screams from the children being starved and exterminated in Gaza.

The murder of 15 Palestinian medics and aid workers is a tiny drop in an ocean of Israeli criminality — a barbarism rewarded by Western capitals decade after decade.

This genocide was made in the West. Israel is our progeny, our ugly reflection in the mirror — which is why Western leaders and establishment media are so desperate to make us look the other way. That reflection is too much for anyone with a soul to bear.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and media critic, and author of many books about Palestine. He is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the Middle East Eye and the author’s blog with permission.

It is difficult to be shocked after 18 months of Israel‘s genocidal onslaught on Gaza.

Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now, the US does not even bother with that.

It is fully on board with genocide.

• READ MORE:  Middle East Eye’s live coverage of the Israeli war on Palestine
• It will take more than an Oscar to stop Israel’s West Bank plans
• Other No Other Land and West Bank reports
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no one will stop them.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.

Israeli anti-Zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi posted on X this week:

“As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action.

“Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs.

“Not a word from the ICJ. Zionism and American imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”

As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned…

— Alon Mizrahi (@alon_mizrahi) March 30, 2025

Under the US Joe Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians with weapons they had supplied. (They would never use a word as clear as “killing”, always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).

Today, under the Donald Trump regime, even the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside.

This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what it believes is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.

Brutally targeted
Last week, a group of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), civil defence and UN staff rushed to the site of Israeli air strikes to rescue wounded Palestinians in southern Gaza.

PRCS is the local branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which, like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), provides essential health services to Palestinians in a devastated, besieged war zone.

Alongside other international aid groups, they have been repeatedly and brutally targeted by Israel.

That pattern continued on March 23, when Israeli forces committed a heinous, deliberate massacre that left eight PRCS members, six members of Gaza’s civil defence, and one UN agency employee dead.

The bodies of 14 first responders were found in Rafah, southern Gaza, a week after they were killed. The vehicles were mangled, and the bodies dumped in a mass grave. Some were mutilated, one decapitated.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said some of the bodies were found with their hands tied and with wounds to their heads and chests.

“This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said, describing it as “one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history”.

Under fire: Israel’s war on medics.     Video: Middle East Eye

‘Killed on way to save lives’
The head of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said: “Today, on the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of eight PRCS, six civil defence and one UN staff.

“They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”

Nothing happened following previous lethal attacks, such as the killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff on 1 April 2024, exactly one year ago, when the victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen.

Despite a certain uproar that was absent when dozens or hundreds of Palestinians were massacred, Israel was not sanctioned by Western powers or the UN. And so, it continued killing aid workers.

Israel declared Unrwa a “terror” group last October and has killed more than 280 of its staff — accounting for the majority of the 408 aid workers killed in Gaza since October 2023.

The international response to this latest massacre? Zilch.

#GAZA – New images emerge from the execution and burial site of 15 Red Crescent and Civil Defense members in Tal al-Sultan, Rafah, southern Gaza Strip
On March 24, the #IDF surrounded the five ambulances and their crew members, handcuffed them, executed them, buried them in a… pic.twitter.com/KM5DLWpfyH

— Brunella C. (@BrunellaCapitan) April 1, 2025

Official silence
On Sunday, Save the Children, Medical Aid for Palestinians and Christian Aid took out ads in the UK Observer calling for the UK government to stop supplying arms to Israel in the wake of renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza: “David Lammy, Keir Starmer, your failure to act is costing lives.”

The British prime minister is too busy touting his mass deportation of “illegal” migrants from the UK to comment on the atrocities of his close ally, Israel. He has said nothing in public.

Lammy, UK Foreign Secretary, has found time to put out statements on the Myanmar earthquake, Nato, Russian attacks on Ukraine, and the need for de-escalation of renewed tensions in South Sudan.

His last public comment on Israel and Gaza was on March 22, several days after Israel’s horrific massacre of more than 400 Palestinians at dawn on 18 March: “The resumption of Israeli strikes in Gaza marks a dramatic step backward. Alongside France and Germany, the UK urgently calls for a return to the ceasefire.”

No condemnation of the slaughter of nearly 200 children.

In response to a request for comment from Middle East Eye, a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are outraged by these deaths and we expect the incident to be investigated transparently and for those responsible held to account. Humanitarian workers must be protected, and medical and aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely.

“We continue to call for a lift on the aid blockade in Gaza, and for all parties to re-engage in ceasefire negotiations to get the hostages out and to secure a permanent end to the conflict, leading to a two-state solution and a lasting peace.”

As this article was being written, Lammy put out a statement on X that, as usual, avoided any direct mention of who was committing war crimes. “Gaza remains the deadliest place for humanitarians — with over 400 killed. Recent aid worker deaths are a stark reminder. Those responsible must be held accountable.”

Age of lawlessness
The new world order of 2025 is a lawless one.

The big powers and their allies are committed to the violent reordering of the map: Palestine is to be forcibly absorbed into Israel, with US backing. Ukraine will lose its eastern regions to Vladimir Putin’s Russia with US support.

Smaller nations can be attacked with impunity, from Yemen to Lebanon to Greenland (no US invasion plan as yet, but the mood music is growing louder with every statement from Trump and Vice-President JD Vance).

This has always been the way to some extent. Still, previously in the post-war world, adherence to international law was the official position of great powers, including the US and the Soviet Union.

Israel, however, never had time for international law. It was the pioneer of the force-is-right doctrine. That doctrine is now the dominant one.

International law and international aid are out.

In the UK last Thursday, a group of youth activists were meeting at the Quaker Friends House in central London to discuss peaceful resistance to the genocide in Gaza.

Police stormed the building and arrested six young women.

Such a police action would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but new laws introduced under the last government have made such raids against peaceful gatherings increasingly common.

This is the age of lawlessness. And anyone standing up for human rights and peace is now the enemy of the state, whether in Palestine, London, or at Columbia University.

Joe Gill has worked as a journalist in London, Oman, Venezuela and the US, for newspapers including Financial Times, Morning Star and Middle East Eye. His Masters was in Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics. Republished from Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.

Dozens of Filipinos and supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand came together in a Black Friday vigil and Rally for Justice in the heart of two cities tonight — Auckland and Christchurch.

They celebrated the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this month to face trial for alleged crimes against humanity over a wave of extrajudicial killings during his six-year presidency in a so-called “war on drugs”.

Estimates of the killings have ranged between 6250 (official police figure) and up to 30,000 (human rights groups) — including 32 in a single day — during his 2016-2022 term and critics have described the bloodbath as a war against the poor.

• READ MORE: Arrested on ICC warrant: What was Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’?
• Philippines ex-president Rodrigo Duterte arrested on ICC warrant – video
• Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

But speakers warned tonight this was only the first step to end the culture of impunity in the Philippines.

Current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator, and his adminstration were also condemned by the protesters.

Introducing the rally with the theme “Convict Duterte! End Impunity!” in Freyberg Square in the heart of downtown Auckland, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan’s Eugene Velasco said: “We demand justice for the thousands killed in the bloody and fraudulent war on drugs under the US-Duterte regime.”

She said they sought to:

• expose the human rights violations against the Filipino people;
• call for Duterte’s accountability; and
• to hold Marcos responsible for continuing this reign of terror against the masses.

Flown to The Hague
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Duterte on March 11. He was immediately arrested on an aircraft at Manila International Airport and flown by charter aircraft to The Hague where he is now detained awaiting trial.

“We welcome this development because his arrest is the result of tireless resistance — not only from human rights defenders but, most importantly, from the families of those who fell victim to Duterte’s extrajudicial killings,” Velasco said.

“These families fought for justice despite the complete lack of support from the Marcos administration.”

Velasco said their their courage and resilience had pushed this case forward — “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”.

“‘Shoot them dead!’—this was Duterte’s direct order to the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). His death squads carried out these brutal killings with impunity,” Velasco said.

But Duterte was not the only one who must be held accountable, she added.

“We demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of all those who orchestrated and enabled the state-sponsored executions, led by figures like Senator Bato Dela Rosa and Lieutenant-Colonel Jovie Espenido, that led to over 30,000 deaths, the militarisation of 47,587 schools, churches, and public institutions — especially in rural areas — the abductions and killings of human rights defenders, and the continued existence of National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC.”

Fake news, red-tagging
Velasco accused this agency of having “used the Filipino people’s taxes to fuel human rights abuses” through the spread of fake news and red-tagging against activists, peasants, trade unionists, and people’s lawyers.

“The fight does not end here,” she said.

“The Filipino people, together with all justice and peace-loving people of Aotearoa New Zealand, will not stop until justice is fully served — not just for the victims, but for all who continue to suffer under the Duterte-Marcos regime, which remains under the grip of US imperialist interests.

“As Filipinos overseas, we must unite in demanding justice, stand in solidarity with the victims of extrajudicial killings, and continue the struggle for accountability.”

Several speakers gave harrowing testimony about the fate of named victims as their photographs and histories were remembered.

Speakers from local political groups, including Green Party MP Francisco Hernandez, and retired prominent trade unionist and activist Robert Reid, also participated.

Reid referenced the ICC arrest issued last November against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Gaza genocide, saying he hoped that he too would end up in The Hague.

Mock corpses surrounded by candles displayed signs — which had been a hallmark of the drug war killings — declaring “Jail Duterte”, “Justice for all victims of human rights” and “Convict Sara Duterte now!” Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte is currently Vice-President and is facing impeachment proceedings.

Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has recalled that 20 journalists were killed during the six-year Philippines presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, a regime marked by fierce repression of the press.

Former president Duterte was arrested earlier this week as part of an International Criminal Court investigation into crimes against humanity linked to his merciless war on drugs. He is now in The Hague awaiting trial.

The watchdog has called on the administration of current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom and combat impunity for the crimes against media committed by Duterte’s regime.

• READ MORE: Rodrigo Duterte, how the powerful turned powerless — by a target
• Duterte makes first appearance before ICC
• Other Philippines media freedom reports

“Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Rodrigo Duterte said in his inauguration speech on 30 June 2016, which set the tone for the rest of his mandate — unrestrained violence against journalists and total disregard for press freedom, said RSF in a statement.

During the Duterte regime’s rule, RSF recorded 20 cases of journalists killed while working.

Among them was Jesus Yutrago Malabanan, shot dead after covering Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war for Reuters.

Online harassment surged, particularly targeting women journalists.

Maria Ressa troll target
The most prominent victim was Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the news site Rappler, who faced an orchestrated hate campaign led by troll armies allied with the government in response to her commitment to exposing the then-president’s bloody war.

Media outlets critical of President Duterte’s authoritarian excesses were systematically muzzled: the country’s leading television network, ABS-CBN, was forced to shut down; Rappler and Maria Ressa faced repeated lawsuits; and a businessman close to the president took over the country’s leading newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, raising concerns over its editorial independence.

“The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte is good news for the Filipino journalism community, who were the direct targets of his campaign of terror,” said RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani.

The repression carried out during Duterte’s tenure continues to impact on Filipino journalism: investigative journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been languishing in prison since her arrest in 2020, still awaiting a verdict in her trial for “financing terrorism” and “illegal possession of firearms” — trumped-up charges that could see her sentenced to 40 years in prison.

With 147 journalists murdered since the restoration of democracy in 1986, the Philippines remains one of the deadliest countries for media workers.

The republic ranked 134th out of 180 in the 2024 RSF World Press Freedom Index.

Source report from Reporters Without Borders. Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.

A New Zealand-based Filipino solidarity network has welcomed the arrest of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte by Interpol on charges of crimes against humanity on a warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“We congratulate the human rights activists — both from the Philippines and around the world — who held the line and relentlessly pursued justice for Filipino victims of the former Duterte regime,” said the Aotearoa-Philippines Solidarity (APS) in a statement.

“This arrest is a long time coming, with Duterte having been complicit in the extrajudicial killings of activists, trade unionists, indigenous peoples’ advocates, peasants and human rights lawyers since he was president back in 2016.

• READ MORE: Drug war victims’ families celebrate Duterte’s arrest, vow to keep fighting
• Duterte arrested on ICC warrant — what was his ‘war on drugs’?
• Special Rappler coverage: The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte
• PHOTOESSAY: Buried in debt only to have their loved ones get a burial — Pacific Journalism Review
• Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

“His brutal and merciless so-called ‘war on drugs’ also led to the deaths of thousands of Filipinos — many of which were not involved in the drug trade at all or were merely drug addicts and low-level drug peddlers.

“Their only ‘crime’ was that they were poor, as documented by many human rights watchdogs that Duterte’s fake ‘drug war’ disproportionately targeted poor Filipinos.”

The APS statement said that Duterte had admitted to these crimes when he faced an inquiry before the Philippines’ House of Representatives in October last year.

“In that hearing, the former president admitted the existence of ‘death squads’ composed of ‘gang members’ and Philippine police personnel who would ‘neutralise’ drug suspects – both when he was president and as mayor of Davao City.

Police ordered to ‘goad suspects’
“He also [revealed] that he [had] instructed members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) to goad suspects to fight back or attempt to escape so they would have a reason to kill them.”

The APS noted that all these actions constituted crimes against humanity, the very charge laid against him by the ICC. Since the initial charges were laid against Duterte in 2017 by human rights activists, many had anticipated the day he would finally face justice.

“This arrest is a historic step towards justice and a reminder to all that no one is above the law. The APS extends our best wishes to the bereaved families of those killed during Duterte’s unjust ‘war on drugs’ and also its survivors,” the statement said.

The APS said challenge now was to ensure that justice was meted out by the ICC and Duterte was punished for his crimes.

“Let us not allow this monumental victory slip from our hands and ensure that all evidence against Duterte is brought to light and he faces consequences for the human rights violations he committed against the Filipino people.”

The statement said that Duterte’s arrest also served as a “warning to the US-Marcos regime” that any abuse of their powers and attacks on human rights would not go unpunished.

The continuation of indiscriminate military operations which violated international humanitarian law would also lead to the downfall of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr — who is the son of the 1970s dictator who declared martial law.

The State of Palestine has submitted a written plea to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) asking it for an advisory opinion regarding Israel’s obligations not to obstruct humanitarian and development assistance in the territories it occupies, Al Jazeera reports.

In the submission, Palestinian officials affirmed the responsibility of Israel, as an occupying power, to not obstruct the work of the UN, international organisations, and third states so they can provide essential services, humanitarian aid, and development assistance to the Palestinian people.

Many states, as well as international groups, have submitted written pleas to the ICJ ahead of oral proceedings set to start next month.

• READ MORE: Israel threatens a second Nakba, yet denies the first ever happened
• First phase of Israel-Hamas ceasefire ends with no deal

Last July, the ICJ issued a historic advisory opinion determining Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”.

Widespread ‘torture’ of Gaza medics in Israeli custody
In a separate report, the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights accused the Israeli military of detaining more than 250 medical personnel and support staff since the beginning of the war on Gaza in October 2023.

More than 180 remained in detention without a clear indication of when or if they would be released, the physicians’ report said.

“Detainees endure physical, psychological and sexual abuse as well as starvation and medical neglect amounting to torture,” the report said, denouncing a “deeply ingrained policy”.

Healthcare workers were beaten, threatened, and forced to sign documents in Hebrew during their detention, according to the report based on 20 testimonies collected in prison.

“Medical personnel were primarily questioned about the Israeli hostages, tunnels, hospital structures and Hamas’s activity,” it said.

“They were rarely asked questions linking them to any criminal activity, nor were they presented with substantive charges.”

Where does Trump stand on the Gaza ceasefire?
With phase one of the ceasefire due to end today and negotiations barely started on phase two, serious fears are being raised over  the viability of the ceasefire.

President Donald Trump took credit for the truce that his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff helped push across the finish line after a year of negotiations led by the Biden administration, Egypt and Qatar, reports Al Jazeera.

However, Trump has since sent mixed signals about the deal.

Earlier last month, he set a firm deadline for Hamas to release all the captives, warning “all hell is going to break out” if it didn’t.

But he said it was ultimately up to Israel, and the deadline came and went.

Trump sowed further confusion by proposing that Gaza’s population of about 2.3 million be relocated to other countries and for the US to take over the territory and develop it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the idea, but it was universally rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries, including close US allies. Human rights groups said it could violate international law.

Trump stood by the plan in a Fox News interview over the weekend but said he was “not forcing it”.

Responding to DAWN’s referral of Biden, Blinken & Austin to the ICC for investigation for aiding Israeli war crimes, @alhaq_org‘s @SJabaren says:

“Finally, we see an effort to hold” accountable “US officials who have armed, financed and politically defended Israeli atrocities.” pic.twitter.com/yCpRaogE2I

— DAWN MENA (@DAWNmenaorg) February 28, 2025

‘Finally’ an effort to hold the US accountable, says Al-Haq director
Palestinian human rights activist Shawan Jabarin has welcomed a plea by the US-based rights group DAWN for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Joe Biden and senior US officials for aiding Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

In a video posted by DAWN, Jabarin, director of the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, said the effort was long overdue.

“For decades we have called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, but time and again, the US has used its power and influence to block that accountability, to shield Israel from consequences and to ensure that it can continue its crimes with impunity,” Jabarin said.

“Now, finally, we see an effort to hold not just Israeli officials accountable but also those who have made these crimes possible: US officials who have armed, financed, and politically defended Israeli atrocities.”

I watched US President Donald Trump’s joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week in utter disbelief. Not that the idea, or indeed the practice, of ethnic cleansing of Palestine is new.

But at that press conference the mask has fallen. Recently, fascism has been on the march everywhere, but that press conference seemed to herald an age of naked fascism.

So the Palestinians have just been “unlucky” for decades.

• READ MORE: Fear, anxiety in Gaza as Trump gives Hamas ultimatum to release captives
• Other Israel’s war on Palestine reports

“Their lives have been made hell.” Thank God for grammar’s indirect speech. Their lives have been made hell. We do not know who made their lives hell. Nothing to see here.

Trump says of Gaza: “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings — level it out and create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area . . . ”

I wonder who are those lucky “people of the area” he has in mind, once those “unlucky” Palestinians have been “transferred” out of their homeland.

Trump speaks of transforming Gaza into a magnificent “Riviera of the Middle East”. Obviously, the starved amputees of Gaza do not fit his image of the classy people he wants to see in the Riviera he wants to build, on stolen Palestinian land.

No ethnic cleansing questions
After the press conference, I did not hear a single question about ethnic cleansing, genocide, occupation or international law.

Under the new fascist leaders, just like under the old ones, those words have become old-fashioned and are to be expunged from the lexicon.

The difference has never been more striking between the meek who officially hold the title “journalist” and the brave who actually work to hold the powerful to account.

Now, more than ever, independent journalists are a threatened species. We should treasure them, support them and protest every attempt to silence them.

Gaza is now the prototype. We can forget international laws and international organisations. We have the bombs. You do as we wish or you will be obliterated.

Who now dares say that the forced transfer of a population by an occupying power is a war crime under the Geneva Convention? But then again, Trump and Netanyahu are not really talking about “forced transfer”. They are talking about “voluntary transfer”.

Once the remaining Israeli hostages have been freed, and water and food have been cut off again, those unlucky Palestinians will climb voluntarily onto the buses waiting to transport them to happiness and prosperity in Egypt and Jordan.

Or to whatever other client state Trump manages to threaten or bribe.

Can the International Criminal Court (ICC) command a shred of respect when Netanyahu is sharing the podium with Trump? Or indeed when Trump is at the podium?

Dismantling the international order
Recently, fascist leaders have been dismantling the international order by accusing its organisations and officials of being “antisemitic” or “working with terrorists”. Tomorrow they will defund and delegitimise these organisations without the need for an excuse.

I listen to Trump speak of combatting antisemitism and deporting Hamas sympathisers and I hear, “We will combat anti-Israel views and we will deport those who protest Israel’s crimes.

“And we will continue to conflate antisemitism and anti-Israel’s views in order to silence pro-Palestinian voices.”

I watch Trump and Netanyahu, the former reading the thoughts of a real estate developer turned into a president’s speech and the latter grinning like a Cheshire cat — and I am gripped by fear. Not just for the Palestinians, but for all humanity.

If we think fascism is only coming for people on a distant shore, we ought to think again.

I watch Netanyahu repeating lies that investigative journalists have spent months debunking. Why would he care? The truth about his lies will not make it to mainstream media and the consciousness of the majority of people.

Hamas suspends the release of Gaza captives, accusing Israel of violating the ceasefire by continuing to kill Palestinians and blocking humanitarian aid.

Follow our LIVE coverage: https://t.co/OXOBADdF6T pic.twitter.com/h4vf4GM9W7

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 11, 2025

Lies taking hold, enduring
And the more he repeats those lies, the more they take hold and endure.

I wonder how our political leaders will spin our allies’ new, illegal and immoral plans. For years, they have clung to the mantra of the two-state solution while Israel continued to make every effort to render this solution unfeasible.

What will they say now? With what weasel words will they stay on the same page as our friends in the US and Israel?

Netanyhu praises Trump for thinking outside the box. Here is an idea that Israel has spent billions on arms and propaganda to persuade people that it is dangerously outside the box.

Instead of asking Egypt and Jordan to take the Palestinians, why not make Israel end the occupation and give Palestinians equal rights in their own homeland?

Sawsan Madina is former head of Australia’s SBS Television. This article was first published by John Menadue’s public policy journal Pearls and Irritations and is republished with permission.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ refusal to join 79 other countries trying to protect the International Criminal Court (ICC) after vicious attacks and sanctions issued by US President Trump is unconscionable.

Endless New Zealand politicians, including the present government, have pointed to our support for a rules-based international system.

The ICC is a key part of that system but Winston Peters has jettisoned this policy in favour of a US-First approach, rather than a New Zealand-First approach.

• READ MORE: World leaders react to Trump sanctions on International Criminal Court

In fact, we can find no evidence that Peters has ever uttered a word of real criticism of the US in his entire political career.

Within the past two weeks Winston Peters has:

• Openly welcomed Israeli soldiers and Israeli war criminals coming into New Zealand, with no questions asked, for “rest and recreation” from their genocide in Gaza
• Refused to condemn Trump’s racist plans for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza so his son-in-law can turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”.  This is an intended international crime of epic proportion, and now
• Refused to join 79 countries supporting the International Criminal Court against Trump’s actions

The countries we are refusing to join in criticising Trump include two other Five Eyes countries — the UK and Canada — as well as Germany, France, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Spain and so on.

Extremist camp
Winston Peters has put New Zealand in the hard-right international minority extremist camp with Trump. This is creepy and cowardly complicity with a state whose values we do not share.

His ministry has been at great pains over the past year to state how much our government supports the work of the ICC. The MFAT website states: “We have also been clear in our support of the International Criminal Court’s mandate in Palestine.”

But when the ICC issues arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity, our government goes completely silent.

Will Winston Peters now copy his master and revoke an immigration ban on 33 Israeli settlers responsible for leading pogroms against Palestinian communities in the Occupied West Bank, as Trump did a few days ago?

US policy towards Palestine underlines the case for New Zealand to leave the Five Eyes US international spy network.

An independent foreign policy means making our own decisions and working with the great majority of like-minded countries who support international institutions, such as the ICC and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Instead, we have a foreign minister who is in the US pocket and blindly working for the interests of Trump and his robber barons.

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

UN Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese has hailed the formation of The Hague Group, describing it as the “best news” from a coalition of policymakers “in a long time”.

Formed on Friday in the city of its namesake, The Hague Group’s members — Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa — have joined together to “end Israeli occupation of the State of Palestine”.

The groups said in a joint statement that they could not “remain passive in the face of such international crimes” committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

• READ MORE: Joy as first Palestinian prisoners freed after 3 captives released in Gaza

They said they would work to see the “realisation of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine”.

Albanese said on social media: “Let’s make it real. And let’s keep growing.”

BREAKING The Inaugural Joint Statement of The Hague Group. https://t.co/J2BsKIRmd8 pic.twitter.com/76noGvDE8v

— Progressive International (@ProgIntl) January 31, 2025

“The Hague Group’s formation sends a clear message — no nation is above the law, and no crime will go unanswered,” said the South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola.

South Africa filed a case before the International Court of Justice alleging genocide in 2023 and an interim ruling in January 2024 said that there was “plausible genocide” and accepted the case for substantive judgment. Since then, 14 countries have joined the proceedings in support of South Africa and Palestine.

Malaysia has been preparing a draft resolution for United Nations to expel Israel from the global body.

Joyful scenes erupted today as buses carrying Palestinian prisoners released under last month’s Gaza ceasefire deal arrived in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. A total of 183 prisoners were due to be freed today.

Three captives — Keith Siegel, Ofer Kalderon and Yarden Bibas– were earlier released in two separate locations in southern and northern Gaza.

NZ ‘march for the martyrs’ protest
In New Zealand’s largest city Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a vigil and march for the more than 47,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza — mostly women and children.

More than 44,500 names of the victims of the genocidal war were spread out on the pavement of Te Komititanga Square in the heart of Auckland and one of the organisers, Dr Abdallah Gouda, said: “It is important to honour the names, they are people, families — they are not just numbers, statistics.”

A canvas with an outline of Palestine flag was also spread out and protesters invited to dip their fingers in black, red and green paint — the colours of the Palestinian flag — and daub the ensign with their collective fingerprints.

This was part of a global campaign to “stamp my imprint” for the return to Palestine.

“Each mark represents solidarity and remembrance for those who have lost their lives in the struggle for justice,” said the campaign.

“As you add your fingerprint, please take a moment to reflect on their sacrifice and the collective desire for peace and freedom.

“This canvas will become a living tribute with each fingerprint contributing to a powerful symbol of unity and support.”

The protesters followed with a “march for the martyrs” through central streets of Auckland past the consulate of the United States, main backer and arms supplier to Israel, and beside the city’s iconic harbourside.

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the ceasefire was signed and came into force on January 19.

UNRWA chief “salutes’ aid staff defying Israeli ban
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has hailed staff for continuing to work despite an Israeli ban on their operations coming into force on Thursday.

In a post on social media, Philippe Lazzarini said: “I salute the commitment of UNRWA staff”.

“We remain committed to upholding the humanitarian principles and fulfil our mandate,” Lazzarini said.

He noted that nearly 500,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, continued to access healthcare provided by UNRWA.

Since the start of the ceasefire in Gaza, UNRWA has ensured that humanitarian food supplies entering the territory under bombardment have reached more than 600,000 people, he said.

“UNRWA must be allowed to do its work until Palestinian institutions are empowered and capable within a Palestine State,” he added.

Israel passed a law in October that came into effect this week, banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory — including in East Jerusalem where its headquarters is located — and prohibiting contact with Israeli authorities.

However, Israel is occupying the Palestinian territories illegally in defiance of many UN resolutions ordering it to leave.

UNRWA has said that it is mandated by the UN General Assembly and is committed to staying open and delivering services to Palestinians despite Israel’s prohibitions.

To be Jewish does not mean an automatic identification with the rogue state of Israel. Nor does it mean that Jews are automatically threatened by criticism of Israel, yet our media and Labor and Liberal politicians would have you believe this is the case.

We are seeing a debate in Australia about the so-called rise of antisemitism which includes rally chants for Gaza at a time when we are witnessing the most horrific Israeli genocide of Palestinians in which our government is complicit.

Jewish peak bodies here and internationally have continually linked their identity to that of Israel.

• READ MORE: Attorney-General Dreyfus’ trip to Israel makes a mockery of Labor’s foreign policy
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

Why? Can generations of Jews in this country still believe that Israel represents anything like the myths that were perpetrated at its inception?

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Zionist Federation of Australia, the Jewish Board of Deputies and others, all staunchly defend this apartheid state that is accused of plausible genocide by the UN International Court of Justice and confirmed by dozens of human rights and legal NGOs, UN Rapporteurs, medical organisations and holocaust scholars.

Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defence Minister have been charged as war criminals by the International Criminal Court and must be arrested and tried in the Hague, yet Australia maintains a cosy relationship with Israel and our media dutifully repeats its outright lies verbatim.

Conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism has been the main focus of the Israeli state and its defenders for decades. With the emergence of the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement in 2005, Israel’s narrative was countered, leading to a persistent Israeli directed campaign to link BDS with antisemitism.

Colonial, occupying power
BDS focuses on the actions of Israel as a colonial, occupying power violating international law against the indigenous people of Palestine. It is anti-racist and human rights-centred.

On December 11, we heard Prime Minister Albanese at the Jewish Museum in Sydney combining his support for Jewish people with his ongoing condemnation and active campaigning against BDS.

He referred to the Marrickville Council BDS motion, (which I proposed back in 2010 along with my Greens councillor colleague, Marika Kontellis), and again repeated the bald-faced mistruths that were spread back then about BDS and the intent and focus of the Marrickville motion.

“I was part of a campaign against BDS in my own local government area. At the time I argued that if you start targeting businesses because they happen to be owned by Jewish people, you’ll end up with the Star of David above shops.

“And that ended in World War II, during the Holocaust, with six million lives lost, murdered. We need an end to antisemitism.”

In one sentence we see Albanese’s extremely offensive equation of the horror of the Holocaust and antisemitism, directly linked to BDS. Why would a prime minister and local federal member deliberately mischaracterise BDS, given the movement has always been clear that its targets are global companies and corporations that are complicit in the Israeli state’s apartheid and genocidal actions, as well as Israeli government bodies and arms companies?

Tonight on @SystemUpdate_, live at 7pm ET:

Amidst intense hysteria over January 6, Congress certifies the Electoral College victory of “Hitler”

Plus: the latest serious attacks on free speech rights to protect Israel: from NY State to Australia:https://t.co/iyckmya5UG

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 6, 2025

The latest serious attacks on free speech rights to protect Israel — the targeting of prominent Australian broadcaster @MaryKostakidis   Video: Glenn Greenwald

What is in it for Albanese, Wong, Plibersek or Dutton and all of the politicians back in 2010/2011 who appeared to think there was political advantage in scapegoating BDS by jumping on the frenzied anti-BDS campaign?

Fawning support for Israel
It was obvious back then, as it is now, that their fawning support for the rogue Israeli state knows no bounds. Lock step in line with the United States outlier position, Australia has maintained its repugnant inaction in the face of 15 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza despite continued condemnation by the UN and a majority of states.

But Australia has, however, appointed a public supporter of Zionism and the Israeli state, as its special envoy on antisemitism.

The inaction by all states since 1948 to apply sanctions has gifted Israel the impunity that’s led to its industrial scale slaughter of innocents in Gaza and its continuing violence and killing of civilians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. All governments must bear responsibility for this.

Albanese has been described as an opportunist, liar and a bully.

At the time of the Marrickville BDS, he used the situation to attempt to discredit the Greens who were challenging the incumbent Labor state member, Carmel Tebbutt (his former wife). He fanned the national media frenzy that was fed by pro-Israel Jewish lobbyists who were the long-time custodians of the “reputation” of Israel.

Marrickville Council and the Greens were characterised as antisemites who would be pulling Jewish books out of the local library.

This insanity was akin to what is happening today. The legitimate opposition to the worst, most egregious, brutality of the Israeli state has somehow been cleverly morphed into so-called expressions of antisemitism.

Absurd claims on protest
In the media conference of December 11, Albanese also made absurd claims that the peaceful 24-hour protest outside his electorate office in Marrickville was displaying Hamas symbols in a vile attempt to discredit the constituents he had refused to meet for more than eight months.

He and his colleagues in Canberra continue to appease the powerful Israel lobby at the expense of our rights and the rights and visibility of the whole Palestinian population here and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories who are now literally on death row.

Back then, we heard locally that he and the party had bullied the four Labor councillors to vote to rescind the Marrickville BDS motion that they had all previously wholeheartedly supported. Some months earlier these same councillors had also supported a motion condemning the latest Israeli strike against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The meaning of BDS was no secret to them — they appreciated that it was important for a council to check its ethical purchasing guidelines to ensure that it was not supporting companies that were in violation of international human rights law by operating in the illegal Israeli settlements or by providing technology or services that maintained Israel’s apartheid and dispossession of Palestinians.

They knew then, as we know now, that this is not antisemitic. They knew then that no Jewish businesses per se were the target of this peaceful civil rights movement. And they knew then that the Labor Party was lying for political gain.

Now, as for far too many decades, political parties in power in this country have failed Palestinians for political gain and at the behest of Israel lobby groups which dare to speak on behalf of anti-Zionist Jews like me.

Despite all the gratuitous rhetoric, these politicians have failed to uphold the basic precepts of human rights law — rights they regularly give lip service to, but rights they will never defend by taking the action required of them as signatories to numerous UN conventions.

Australia must sanction Israel
To act with humanity and to act as required by international law, Australia must sanction and end all economic and military ties with the Israeli state.

We must expel the Israeli ambassador and bring our ambassador back and we must prosecute any Australian citizen or resident who has joined the IDF to kill Palestinians. We must also support Palestinian refugees and take all action necessary to assist those in Gaza for as long as it takes.

But as we have seen so clearly this year, most governments have not acted to pressure Israel to end its barbaric colonial project. To protest as allies and to call out the hypocrisy of governments and politicians that speak of a rules-based order while enabling a state that has continually breached fundamental human rights laws, is to be called antisemitic.

The pressure applied to governments, universities and the like in recent years to adopt the discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism is precisely because it equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

It’s the perfect tool for shutting down condemnation of Israel’s grave human rights violations. We’ve seen some universities and parliaments endorse it in deference to this pressure, despite the serious flaws that have been identified, including from Jewish Israeli experts.

Now more than ever BDS is imperative.

BDS campaigns will work to isolate Israel as it should be isolated until it complies with international law. Multinational companies are increasingly loath to be associated with this terror state.

Major pension funds are divesting from companies that are complicit in Israel’s human rights violations and local councils, unions and universities are taking steps to ensure they divest from any partnerships or investments that would make them part of the chain of complicity and liable for prosecution by the International Court of Justice as enabling Israel’s genocide.

The facts are indisputable. Australia’s complicity with Israel’s genocide and colonisation of Palestine can be countered by individuals, churches, unions, councils and students taking immediate and urgent BDS action.

Do not wait for Labor or Liberal politicians in this country to act, as they are doing their best to shut us down and to appease Israel. Their complicity will never be forgotten.

Cathy Peters is a former Greens councillor on the Marrickville Council from 2008-2011 and the co-founder of BDS Australia. She worked as a radio producer and executive producer for the ABC for 30 years making some documentaries on the Israeli occupation. She is Jewish and her grandparents and other relatives perished in the Holocaust. She has travelled to Gaza and throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories on a number of occasions and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights and justice. First published in the Australia social policy journal Pearls and Irritations and republished with permission.

Israeli soldiers have been denied visas to enter Australia over war crime concerns — and the New Zealand government is now being called on by Palestine solidarity activists to act immediately to stop Israeli soldiers visiting.

Some Israeli soldiers have been denied visas to enter Australia after being required to fill in a 13-page form designed to determine if they had been involved in war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.

The Middle East Eye reports Israeli visa applicants are asked about their involvement in physical or psychological abuse, their roles as guards or officials in detention facilities, and whether they had participated in war crimes or genocide.

• READ MORE: Syria’s new leader says Syrians ‘too exhausted’ for new conflict with Israel
• Other Gaza and Syria reports

This follows last month’s ruling from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity over atrocities committed since October 7 last year.

However, Israelis coming to New Zealand face no such requirements, says the Palestine Solidarity Network (PSNA)

Since 2019, Israelis have been able to enter New Zealand for three months without needing a visa. This visa-waiver is used by Israeli soldiers today for “rest and recreation” from the genocide in Gaza.

“We face having Israeli soldiers rejected by Australia over war crime concerns jumping on a plane to New Zealand,” said PSNA national chair John Minto in a statement.

‘Suspend all IDF visas’ call
“We cannot depend on Israeli soldiers to give accurate reports of their involvement in war crimes so we have asked the government to suspend all visas for Israelis who are serving or who have served in the Israeli Defence Force [IDF].”

United Nations officials, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and now Amnesty International have all used the term genocide to describe the actions of the Israeli military in Gaza where more than 45,000 People – mostly women and children – have been slaughtered by the IDF.

“Last month, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Minto said.

“All the red flags for genocide have been visible for months but our National-led coalition government is giving the green light to those responsible for war crimes to enter New Zealand.

“New Zealand’s response to genocide in Gaza has been a cowardly refusal to stand up for the Genocide Convention which requires us to ‘prevent and punish’ the crime of genocide.

“This needs to change today.”

Former Israeli justice minister barred
Australia’s recent denial of visas to two Israeli soldiers — siblings in one family — follows a similar case involving the former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who was denied a visa last month over fears of “incitement”, reports the Middle East Eye.

The Australian Department of Home Affairs told the former Israeli justice minister she had been denied a visa to travel to the country under the Migration Act.

The act allows the government to deny entry to individuals likely to “vilify Australians” or “incite discord” within the local community.

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, has condemned Israel’s extensive airstrikes on Syrian installations — reportedly almost 500 times in 72 hours, comparing them to historic Israeli actions justified as “security measures”.

He criticised the hypocrisy of Israel’s security pretext endorsed by Western powers.

Asked why Israel was bombing Syria and encroaching on its territory just days after the ousting of the Bashar al-Assad regime after 54 years in power, he told Al Jazeera: “Because it can get away with it.”

• READ MORE: Israel bombs near Damascus as Syrians celebrate fall of al-Assad regime
• Other Gaza and Syria reports

Bishara explained that Israel aimed to destabilise and weaken neighbouring countries for its own security.

He noted that the new Syrian administration was overwhelmed and unable to respond effectively.

Bishara highlighted that regional powers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia had condemned Israel’s actions, even though Western countries had been largely silent.

He said Israel was “taking advantage” of the chaos to “settle scores”.

“One can go back 75 years, 80 years, and look at Israel since its inception,” he said.

“What has it been? In a state of war. Continuous, consistent state of war, bombing countries, destabilising countries, carrying out genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.

“All of it for the same reason — presumably it’s security.

“Under the pretext of security, Israel would carry [out] the worst kind of violations of international law, the worst kind of ethnic cleansing, worst kind of genocide.

“And that’s what we have seen it do.

“Now, certainly in this very particular instance it’s taking advantage of the fact that there is a bit of chaos, if you will, slash change, dramatic change in Syria after 50 years of more of the same in order to settle scores with a country that it has always deemed to be a dangerous enemy, and that is Syria.

“So I think the idea of decapitating, destabilising, undercutting, undermining Syria and Syria’s national security, will always be a main goal for Israel.”

In an Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau solidarity rally today, protesters condemned Israel’s bombing of Syria and also called on New Zealand’s Christopher Luxon-led coalition government to take a stronger stance against Israel and to pressure major countries to impose UN sanctions against Tel Aviv.

A prominent lawyer, Labour Party activist and law school senior academic at Auckland University of Technology, Dr Myra Williamson, spoke about the breakthrough in international law last month with the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants being issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Lawyer and law school academic Dr Myra Williamson speaking at the Auckland rally today.  Video: Asia Pacific Report

“What you have to be aware of is that the ICC is being threatened — the individuals are being threatened and the court itself is being threatened, mainly by the United States,” she told the solidarity crowd in Te Komititanga Square.

“Personal threats to the judges, to the prosecutor Karim Khan.

“So you need to be vocal and you need to talk to people over the summer about how important that work is. Just to get the warrants issued was a major achievement and the next thing is to get them on trial in The Hague.”

ICC Annual Meeting — court under threat.      Video: Al Jazeera

A Fiji solidarity group for the Palestinians has accused the Rabuka-led coalition government of “complicity” in Israel’s genocide and relentless war on Gaza that has killed more than 44,000 people — mostly women and children — over the past year.

The Fijians4Palestine have called on the Fiji government to “uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes”.

“We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians,” the movement said in a statement  marking the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

• READ MORE: Palestinian musicians, poets and solidarity partners in vibrant NZ cultural celebration
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

The group said it was “ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians”.

It said that it expected the Fiji government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

The Fijians4Palestine group’s statement said:

It has been over one year since Israel began its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Over the past year, Israeli attacks have killed more than 44,000 Palestinians living in Gaza, equal to 1 out of every 55 people living there.

At least 16,756 children have been killed, the highest number of children recorded in a single year of conflict over the past two decades. More than 17,000 children have lost one or both parents.

At least 97,303 people are injured in Gaza — equal to one in 23 people.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, every day 10 children lose one or both legs, with operations and amputations conducted with little or no anaesthesia due to Israel’s ongoing siege.

In addition to the killed and injured, more than 10,000 people are feared buried under the rubble.

With few tools to remove rubble and rescue those trapped beneath concrete, volunteers and civil defence workers rely on their bare hands.

We, the #Fijians4Palestine Solidarity Network join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

Families torn apart
The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.

As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.

Today, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.

We unequivocally condemn the State of Israel for its actions that amount to war crimes, genocide, and apartheid against the Palestinian people. The deliberate targeting of civilians, the disproportionate use of force, and the destruction of essential infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, are in clear violation of international humanitarian law.

The intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group is evident. The continuous displacement of Palestinians, the destruction of their homes, and the systematic erasure of their history and culture are indicative of genocidal intent.

The State of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, characterised by racial segregation, discrimination, and domination, amount to apartheid as defined under international law.

Oppressive regime
The construction of settlements, the separation wall, and the system of checkpoints are manifestations of this oppressive regime. Palestinians are subjected to different laws, regulations, and treatments based on their ethnicity, clearly violating the principle of equality.

We call upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes. We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians.

We are ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians. We expect our government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

The silence of the Fiji government is complicity, and history will not forgive their inaction.

Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect. We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.

There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation.

The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In The Hague, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during Israel’s assault on Gaza.

In a statement, the ICC said the Israeli leaders had, “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity.”

The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, although Israel’s military claims it killed Deif in a July airstrike.

• READ MORE: World reacts to ICC arrest warrants for Israel’s Netanyahu and Gallant
• ‘Psychopath’ Netanyahu is ‘poisoning’ the country: Israeli lawmaker to Mehdi
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

The ICC arrest warrants come a week after a UN special committee found Israel’s actions in Gaza since October 2023 are, “consistent with genocide,” including using starvation as a weapon of war and recklessly inflicting civilian casualties.

AMY GOODMAN: In related news, on Wednesday, the United States vetoed a Gaza ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council for the fourth time, and the US Senate rejected a resolution brought by Senator Bernie Sanders that sought to block the sale of US tank rounds, bomb kits and other lethal weapons to Israel. Nineteen senators supported blocking the arms.

For more on all of this, we’re joined by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. His latest piece is “Exclusive: White House Says Democrats Who Oppose Weapons to Israel Are Aiding Hamas.”

Ahmed, thank you so much for being with us. As you write your book on the Biden administration in Gaza called Crossing the Red Line, clearly the ICC has ruled that today by issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Can you talk about the significance of this move?

“A Great Day for Justice”: Palestinian Lawyer Raji Sourani on ICC Warrants for Netanyahu & Gallant https://t.co/TEb1VwShfn

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) November 21, 2024

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Yeah, Amy. This is just an absolutely huge development, and it’s significant for a number of reasons. It’s significant because the ICC has come out and amplified and affirmed the allegations of crimes against humanity, of war crimes. This is one more international body.

These are . . . international charges with a great deal of respect. This is a court that most of the world is a member of. And they’re coming out and saying, “Look, we think there are reasonable grounds to believe that these major international red lines have been crossed by the Israelis.”

What’s really important to remember is that this isn’t just a decision about Israel. By extension, it fundamentally is a decision about the United States, which has been the ultimate enabler of Israel’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon, which are under consideration by the ICC.

And even in this ICC statement today, they point out that in the situations where Israel has addressed concerns over what it describes as starvation as a method of warfare — right? — depriving civilians, Palestinians, of food, water and medical equipment, Israel has really only done so in an extremely arbitrary and, what the ICC judges call, conditional way in response to the US. So, fundamentally, Amy, what we’re seeing is the ICC is saying yet again that Israel and the US, as its major enabler and backer, are in the dark and will continue to be in the dark for years to come.

This kind of adds to a broader picture in which there are now ICC warrants for the sitting Israeli prime minister and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who remains a significant politician in Israel. Simultaneously, there’s the genocide case at the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, which is ongoing and will be ongoing for years to come.

And there’s the Geneva Conventions conference underway next year regarding kind of similar issues — right? — violations of international law, laws of war and the Israeli grave abuses that are alleged. So, the US and Israel will be kind of on trial on the international stage for years to come.

‘Wanted for war crimes in Gaza.’        Video: Democracy Now!

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Akbar, would you say that this move is mostly a symbolic one? Because, as you pointed out, of course, most countries are members of the International Criminal Court, but in this instance, perhaps most importantly, neither Israel nor the US are.

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Right, Nermeen. And that’s something that the ICC judges did get into today — right? — because Israel said, “Look, the International Criminal Court doesn’t have jurisdiction over us.” That said, the state of Palestine is a member of the court, and that’s why this becomes a relevant and interesting thing, because you’ve seen European nations recognise Palestine as a state. You’ve seen Palestine join the United Nations General Assembly over just last year.

So, yes, while the US and Israel continue to reject international scrutiny by the ICC, by the ICJ, of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, there’s a growing international push to kind of challenge that, right?

And I think you will see the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration assertively push back against the ICC. The Trump administration did actually target the ICC directly when President Trump was last in office, threatening to put sanctions on ICC officials. And we also know from reporting that the Israelis have spied on and threatened the ICC themselves, according to reporting by The Guardian. So, yes, there will be increased pressure.

But I think we’re really in a place that no one thought we would be even a few months ago, right? I think even the prospect of the ICC prosecutor successfully getting these warrants issued, it was initially thought that would be quite quick. It’s taken a long time. The fact that judges were able to issue those warrants suggests that even though it’s an uphill battle to get this international scrutiny, there’s a real determination and clear will.

And we’ve seen a lot of states turn around and say over 13 months, right? Since the October 7 attack by Hamas within Israel that did spark this current round of fighting, there have been calls to say, “We don’t want this to escalate,” right?

The US’s allies, Western countries have said, “We want to resolve this. We don’t want you on trial. Can the US and Israel please change course?” And what you’ve seen is a defiance from Tel Aviv and from Washington to say, “Actually, no, we’re continuing these wars.”

So, that does take it to a different forum to kind of change the policy.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Akbar, could you also — while we’re looking at the way in which international organisations, multilateral ones, are responding to this, what about the latest vote at the Security Council and the fact that the US blocked it for the fourth time, a ceasefire vote?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: It’s really striking at this point — right? — to see the Biden administration totally alone. And you see how this develops over the course of the war. Initially, the US was able to get Britain, even France, kind of abstaining, standing with them.

And now, 13 months in, where conduct hasn’t changed, and you still have daily strikes that are killing dozens, sometimes over a hundred civilians, you have a mounting death toll of mostly women and children, the US is totally alone, where it’s shielding Israel on the world stage diplomatically.

And this is really important to see in the context of the Biden administration as an outlier even among American presidents and administrations. When President Barack Obama was in office, after he was in the lame-duck period that Biden is in now, he actually did abstain at the UN Security Council and said, “You know what? Go ahead and pass a resolution that Israel doesn’t like,” because tacitly the US acknowledged there was a basis, there were credible grounds for that resolution, which in that instance was about Israeli settlement activity.

Here, what you’re seeing from the Biden administration, even in their dying days — right? — two months to go, there’s an obstinacy, a defiance, and a real commitment to shielding Israel, even if they are totally alone against now their closest allies — Britain, France and everyone else on the Security Council.

So, I think the context of that veto kind of presages whatever may come in the next two months in terms of the Biden administration allowing any UN scrutiny of the wars.

AMY GOODMAN: Akbar, I want to play Palestine’s envoy to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, speaking yesterday.

MAJED BAMYA: There is no right to mass killing of civilians. There is no right to starve an entire civilian population. There is no right to forcibly displace a people. And there is no right to annexation. This is what Israel is doing in Gaza. …

Maybe for some, we have the wrong nationality, the wrong faith, the wrong skin color. But we are humans! And we should be treated as such. Is there a UN Charter for Israel that is different from the charter we all have? Tell us. Is there an international law for them, an international law for us? Do they have the right to kill, and the only right we have is to die?

Republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court.

The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said in a statement yesterday that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials must cease immediately.

While the prosecutor’s statement did not mention Israel, it was issued after Israeli and US officials have warned of consequences against the ICC if it issues arrest warrants over Israel’s war on Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: Other War on Gaza reports

“The office seeks to engage constructively with all stakeholders whenever such dialogue is consistent with its mandate under the Rome Statute to act independently and impartially,” Khan’s office said.

“That independence and impartiality is undermined, however, when individuals threaten to retaliate against the court or against court personnel should the office, in fulfillment of its mandate, make decisions about investigations or cases falling within its jurisdiction.”

It added that the Rome Statute, which outlines the ICC’s structure and areas of jurisdiction, prohibits threats against the court and its officials.

Arrest warrants speculation
Over the past week, media reports have indicated that the ICC might issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in Gaza.

The court may prosecute individuals for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The Israeli military has killed nearly 35,000 people in Gaza and destroyed large parts of the territory since the start of the war on October 7.

News of possible ICC charges against Israeli officials led to an intense pushback by the country and its allies in the United States.

Statement of the #ICC Office of the Prosecutor pic.twitter.com/Cw331pMcDm

— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 3, 2024

On Tuesday, Netanyahu released a video message rebuking the court.

“Israel expects the leaders of the free world to stand firmly against the ICC outrageous assault on Israel’s inherent right of self-defence,” he said.

“We expect them to use all the means at their disposal to stop this dangerous move.”

The court has been investigating possible Israeli abuses in the occupied Palestinian territory since 2021. Khan has said his team is investigating alleged war crimes in the ongoing war in Gaza.

In October, Khan said the court had jurisdiction over any potential war crimes committed by Hamas fighters in Israel and by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Student protests spread to NZ
Meanwhile, more than 2200 students have been arrested in the United States as protests against the war on Gaza and calling for divestment from Israel have spread to more than 30 universities in spite of police crackdowns, and have also emerged in Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom — and now New Zealand in the Pacific.

RNZ News reports that more than 100 students gathered on Auckland University’s city campus to protest against the war.

The rally was originally planned as an encampment, but the university said any overnight stand would not be allowed.

Tents had been set up within the crowd, but protest organisers said the event would be a rally.

Academic staff have appealed over the administration’s decision against the encampment.

South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has been described as involving two competing narratives: one, about a displaced Palestinian people denied their right to self-determination, and the other, about the Jewish people who, having established an independent state in their historical homeland after generations of persecution in exile, have been under threat from hostile neighbours ever since.

When Fiji joined the United States as the only two countries to support Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory at the ICJ in February, it was seen as walking head-on into one of the longest running conflicts in history, leaving Fijians, as well as the international community struggling to figure out which narrative that position fits into.

Following Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel in October, Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Gaza has provoked international consternation and has seen a humanitarian crisis unfolding, resulting in the motions against Israel in the ICJ.

• READ MORE: South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice explained
• Nicaragua’s case against Germany over Israel’s war on Gaza
• Faith and foreign policy — how the Pacific vies the Israel-Gaza conflict
• Other War on Gaza reports

And since then other cases such as Nicaragua this month against Germany alleging the enabling by the European country of the alleged genocide by Israel as the second-largest arms supplier.

South Africa had asked the ICJ to consider whether Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Fiji’s pro-Israel position was on another matter — the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) had requested the ICJ’s advisory opinion into Israel’s policies in the occupied territories.

Addressing the ICJ, Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, retired Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini said the ICJ should not render an advisory opinion on the questions posed by the General Assembly. He said the court had been presented “with a distinctly one-sided narrative. This fails to take account of the complexity of this dispute, and misrepresents the legal, historical, and political context.”

The UNGA request was “a legal manoeuvre that circumvents the existing internationally sanctioned and legally binding framework for resolution of the Israel-Palestine dispute,” said Tarakinikini.

“And if the ICJ is to consider the legal consequences of the alleged Israeli refusal to withdraw from territory, it must also look at what Palestine must do to ensure Israel’s security,” he said.

On the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, “Fiji notes that the right to self-determination is a relative right.

“In the context of Israel/Palestine, this means the Court would need to ascertain whether the Palestinians’ exercise of their right to self-determination has infringed the territorial
integrity, political inviolability or legitimate security needs of the State of Israel,” he added.

Crossing the line
Long-standing Fijian diplomats such as Kaliopate Tavola and Robin Nair said Fiji had crossed the line by breaking with its historically established foreign policy of friends-to-all -and-enemies-to-none.

Nair, Fiji’s first ambassador to the Middle East, said Fiji had always chosen to be an international peacekeeper, trusted by both sides to any argument or conflict that requires its services.

“The question being asked is, how is it in the national interest of Fiji to buy into the Israeli-Palestine dispute, particularly when it has been a well-respected international peacekeeper in the region?

“Fiji has either absented itself or abstained from voting on any decisions at the United Nations concerning the Israeli-Palestinian issues, particularly since 1978 when Fiji began taking part in the UN-sponsored peacekeeping operations in the Middle East,” Nair told Islands Business.

Nair said it was worth noting that in keeping with its traditionally neutral position on Israeli-Palestinian issues, Fiji had initially abstained on the UN General Assembly resolution asking the ICJ for an advisory opinion.

Former Ambassador Kaliopate Tavola asks why that position has changed. “Fiji’s rationale for showing interest now is not so much about the real issue on the ground — the genocide
taking place, but the niceties of legal processes. Coming from Fiji with its history of coups, it is a bit over-pretentious, one may say”.

At odds with past conduct
Former Deputy Commander of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, now professor in law at the University of Fiji, Aziz Mohammed, says the change of position does not reconcile with Fiji’s past endorsement of international instruments and conventions, including the International Criminal Court (ICC) statute on war crimes at play in the current proceedings at the ICJ.

“That endorsement happened by the government that was in power at the time of the current Prime Minister (Sitiveni Rabuka’s administration in the 1990s),” says Mohammed.

“We became the fifth country to endorse it. So, it was very early that we planted a flag to say, ‘we’re going to honour this international obligation’. And that happened. But subsequently, we brought the war crimes (section from the ICC statute) into our Crimes Act. Not only that, but we also adopted the international humanitarian laws into our laws — three Geneva Conventions, and three protocols. So, in terms of laws, most countries only have adopted two, but we have adopted all the international instruments. But then we’re not adhering to it.”

Fiji was among six Pacific Island countries — including Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Nauru, Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia — that voted against a UN resolution in October calling for a humanitarian truce in Gaza.

That vote caused significant political ruptures. One of Rabuka’s two coalition partners, the National Federation Party (NFP), said Fiji should have voted for the resolution. “It was a motion that called for peace and access to humanitarian aid, and as a country, we should have supported that,” said NFP Leader, Professor Biman Prasad, who is Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister.

Prasad’s fellow party member and former NFP Leader, Home Affairs Minister, Pio Tikoduadua, served in the Fiji peacekeeping forces deployed to Lebanon in the 1990s, and recounted the horrors of war he had seen in the region.

“I can still vividly remember the blood, the carnage and the mothers weeping for their children and the children finding out that they no longer had parents,” he said.

“In any war, no matter how justified your cause may be, it is always the innocent that suffer and pay the price. Those images, those memories are seared into my memory forever . . . that is why NFP has taken the position of supporting a ceasefire in Gaza contrary to Fiji’s position at the UN.”

Commander of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, Major-General Jone Kalouniwai said the “decision has significant implications for the safety and security of RFMF troops currently deployed in the Middle East” and called on the government to reevaluate its stance on the Israel-Hamas issue.

“Their safety and security should remain a top priority, and it is crucial that their contribution to international peacekeeping efforts are fully supported and respected,” an RFMF statement said.

Interesting cocktail
Writing in the Asia-Pacific current affairs publication, The Diplomat, Melbourne-based Australia and the Pacific political analyst, Grant Wyeth said Pacific islanders’ faith and foreign policy make an “interesting cocktail” that drives their UN votes in favour of Israel. He knocks any theories about the United States having bought off these island nations.

“Rather than power, faith may be the key to understanding the Pacific Islands’ approach,” writes Wyeth. “Much of the Pacific is highly observant in their Christianity, and they have an eschatological understanding of humanity.”

He notes that various denominations of Protestantism see the creation of Israel in 1948 as the fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy in which the Jewish people — “God’s chosen” — return to the Holy Land.

“Support for Israel is, therefore, a deeply held spiritual belief, one that sits alongside Pacific
Islands’ other considerations of interests and opportunities when forming their foreign policies.”

In September, Papua New Guinea moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Prime Minister James Marape was quoted as saying at the time: “For us to call ourselves
Christian, paying respect to God will not be complete without recognising that Jerusalem is the universal capital of the people and the nation of Israel.”

Political vs humanitarian
The commentators draw the distinction between the matter of political recognition/state identity and the humanitarian issues at stake.

Says Mohammed: “This is not about recognising the state of Israel. This is about a conflict where people wanted to protect the unprotected. All they were saying is, ‘let’s’ support a ceasefire so [that] women, children, elderly … could get out [and] food supplies, medical supplies could get in …’ and it wasn’t [going to be] an indefinite ceasefire, which we [Fiji]
agreed to later.”

Fiji eventually did vote for the ceasefire when it came before the UN General Assembly again in December, following a major outcry against its position at home. The key concern going forward is the impact on the future of Fiji’s decades-long peacekeeping involvement in the Middle East.

Fiji-born political sociologist, Professor Steven Ratuva, is director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies and professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Canterbury.

“The security of Fijian soldiers overseas will be threatened, as well as Fijian citizens themselves,” says Ratuva. “There are already groups campaigning underground for a tourist boycott of Fiji. I’ve personally received angry emails about ‘your bloody dumb country.’”

Nair says when 45 peacekeeping Fijian soldiers were taken hostage by the al Qaeda-linked Syrian rebel group al-Nusra Front in the Golan Heights in 2014, when all else — including the UN — had failed to secure their release, Fiji’s only bargaining power was the value of its peacekeeping neutrality.

“No international power stepped up to help Fiji in its most traumatic time in international relations in its entire history. Fiji had to fall back on itself, to use its own humble credentials. I successfully used our peace-keeping credentials in the Middle East and over many decades, including the shedding of Fijian blood, to ensure peace in the Middle East, to free our captured soldiers.”

Punishing the RFMF?
Mohammed agrees with the concern about the implications of Fiji’s compromised neutrality.

“I think what’s on everybody’s mind is whether we’re going to continue peacekeeping or suddenly, somebody is going to say, ‘enough of Fiji, they have compromised their neutrality, their impartiality, and as such, we are withdrawing consent and we want them to go back,’” he says.

Fiji’s Home Affairs Minister, Pio Tikoduadua has been dismissive of such concerns, saying Fiji’s position on Israel at the ICJ did not diminish the capability of its peacekeepers because Fiji had “very professional people serving in peacekeeping roles”.

Mohammed, with an almost 40-year military career and having held the rank of Deputy Commander and once a significant figure on Fiji’s military council, asks whether Fiji’s position on Israel is a strategic manoeuvre by the government to reign in the military.

“Do they really want Fijian peacekeepers out there? Or are they going to indirectly punish the RFMF [Republic of Fiji Military Forces]?” he said in an interview with Islands Business.

He floats this theory on the basis that Fiji’s position on Israel came from two men acutely aware of what is at stake for the Fijian military — Prime Minister Rabuka and Tarakinikini, both seasoned army officers with extensive experience in matters of the Middle East.

“We all know that in recent times, the RFMF has been vocal (in national affairs). And they have stood firm on their role under Article 131 (of Fiji’s 2013 Constitution which states that it is the military’s overall responsibility to ensure at all times the security, defence and well-being of Fiji and all Fijians).

“And they have pressured the government into positions, so much so, the government has had difficulty. And they (government) say, ‘the RFMF are stepping out of position. Now, how do we control the RFMF? How do we cut them into place? One, we can basically give them everything and keep them quiet, or two, we take away the very thing that put them in the limelight. How do we do that? We take a position, knowing very well that the host countries will withdraw their consent, and the Fijians will be asked to leave’.

“Fiji will no longer have peacekeepers. No peacekeeping engagements, the numbers of the RFMF will have to be reduced. So, all they will do is be confined to domestic roles.

“People are questioning this,” says Mohammed. “Military strategists are raising this issue because the government knows they can’t openly tell the Fijian public that we are withdrawing from peacekeeping. There’ll be an outcry because every second household in Fiji has some member who has served in peacekeeping.

“So, strategically, we [government] take a position. It may not be perceived that way. But the outcome is happening in that direction.”

Richard Naidu is currently editor of Islands Business. This article was published in the March edition of the magazine and is republished here with permission.

In an unprecedented legal development, senior Australian politicians, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation into whether they have aided or supported Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The referral, made by the Sydney law firm Birchgrove Legal on behalf of their clients, is the first time any serving Australian political leaders have been formally referred to the ICC for investigation.

The referral asserts that Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and other members of the government have violated the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that established the ICC to investigate and prosecute allegations of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

• READ MORE: There has been much talk of war crimes in the Israel-Gaza conflict. But will anyone actually be prosecuted?
• Why is accountability for alleged war crimes so hard to achieve in the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

Specifically, the law firm references:

• Australia’s freezing of aid to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the aid agency that operates in Gaza
• the provision of military aid to Israel that could have been used in the alleged commission of genocide and crimes against humanity
• permitting Australians to travel to Israel to take part in attacks in Gaza
• providing “unequivocal political support” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

A key aspect of the referral is the assertion, under Article 25 of the Rome Statute, that Albanese and the others bear individual criminal responsibility for aiding, abetting or otherwise assisting in the commission (or attempted commission) of alleged crimes by Israel in Gaza.

At a news conference today, Albanese said the letter had “no credibility” and was an example of “misinformation”. He said:

Australia joined a majority in the UN to call for an immediate ceasefire and to advocate for the release of hostages, the delivery of humanitarian assistance, the upholding of international law and the protection of civilians.

How the referral process works
There are a couple of key questions here: can anyone be referred to the ICC, and how often do these referrals lead to an investigation?

Referrals to the ICC prosecutor are most commonly made by individual countries — as has occurred following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — or by the UN Security Council. However, it is also possible for referrals to be made by “intergovernmental or non-governmental organisations, or other reliable sources”, according to Article 15 of the Rome Statute.

The ICC prosecutor’s office has received 12,000 such referrals to date. These must go through a preliminary examination before the office decides whether there are “reasonable grounds” to start an investigation.

The court has issued arrest warrants for numerous leaders over the past two decades, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova; former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir; and now-deceased Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

ABC interview with barrister Sheryn Omeri KC on the referral of Australian political leaders to the International Criminal Court.

Acting for over 100 Australian lawyers, Omeri, through the law firm Birchgrove Legal, has referred Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese & key… pic.twitter.com/aHAdVct6eV

— Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) March 5, 2024

Why this referral is unlikely to go anywhere
Putting aside the merit of the allegations themselves, it is unlikely the Australian referrals will go any further for legal and practical reasons.

First, the ICC was established as an international court of last resort. This means it would only be used to prosecute international crimes when courts at a national level are unwilling or unable to do so.

As such, the threat of possible ICC prosecution was intended to act as a deterrent for those considering committing international crimes, as well as an incentive for national authorities and courts to prosecute them.

Australia has such a process in place to investigate potential war crimes and other international crimes through the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI).

The OSI was created in the wake of the 2020 Brereton Report into allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. In March 2023, the office announced its first prosecution.

Because Australia has this legal framework in place, the ICC prosecutor would likely deem it unnecessary to refer Australian politicians to the ICC for prosecution, unless Australia was unwilling to start such a prosecution itself. At present, there is no evidence that is the case.

Another reason this referral is likely to go nowhere: the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, is currently focusing on a range of investigations related to alleged war crimes committed by Russia, Hamas and Israel, in addition to other historical investigations.

Given the significance of these investigations – and the political pressure the ICC faces to act with speed – it is unlikely the court would divert limited resources to investigate Australian politicians.

Increasing prominence of international courts
This referral to the ICC, however, needs to be seen in a wider context. The Israel-Hamas conflict has resulted in an unprecedented flurry of legal proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s top court.

Unlike the ICC, the ICJ does not deal with individual criminal responsibility. The ICJ does, however, have jurisdiction over whether countries violate international law, such as the Genocide Convention.

This was the basis for South Africa to launch its case against Israel in the ICJ, claiming its actions against the Palestinian people amounted to genocide. The ICJ issued a provisional ruling against Israel in January which said it’s “plausible” Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and ordered Israel to take immediate steps to prevent acts of genocide.

In addition, earlier this week, a new case was launched in the ICJ by Nicaragua, alleging Germany has supported acts of genocide by providing military support for Israel and freezing aid for UNRWA.

PRESS RELEASE: #Nicaragua institutes proceedings against #Germany and asks the #ICJ to indicate provisional measures https://t.co/RtdImbNben pic.twitter.com/UdsKZmDdxS

— CIJ_ICJ (@CIJ_ICJ) March 1, 2024

All of these developments in recent months amount to what experts call “lawfare”. This refers to the use of international or domestic courts to seek accountability for alleged state-sanctioned acts of genocide and support or complicity in such acts. Some of these cases have merit, others are very weak.

As one international law expert described the purpose:

It’s […] a way of raising awareness, getting media attention and showing your own political base you’re doing something.

These cases do succeed in increasing public awareness of these conflicts. And they make clear the desire of many around the world to hold to account those seen as being responsible for gross violations of international law.

Dr Donald Rothwell, professor of international law, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Despite the carnage, United Nations resolutions and international court rulings, Israel’s war in Gaza has the potential to get much worse. Unless Hamas frees all Israeli hostages by March 10, Israel may launch an all-out offensive in Rafah, a city of 1.5 million people, cornered against the border with Egypt.

The US has continued to block UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire. But President Joe Biden has cautioned Israel against a Rafah ground assault without a credible plan to protect civilians.

More direct calls for restraint have come from the UN secretary-general and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

• READ MORE: Israeli siege has placed Gazans at risk of starvation − prewar policies made them vulnerable in the first place
• Why Egypt refuses to open its border to Palestinians forcibly displaced from Gaza
• The UN’s top court didn’t call for a ceasefire in Gaza – how does NZ respond now?

To its credit, New Zealand, along with Australia and Canada, added its voice in a joint statement on February 15:

A military operation into Rafah would be catastrophic […] We urge the Israeli government not to go down this path […] Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas.

New Zealand also reiterated its commitment to a political settlement and a two-state solution. Given how hard some other countries are pushing for a ceasefire and peace, however, it is fair to ask whether the National-led coalition government could be doing more.

NZ absent from a crucial case
So far, New Zealand’s most obvious contribution has been to deploy a six-member defence force team to the region to deter Houthi rebel attacks on commercial and naval shipping in the Red Sea.

This collaboration with 13 other countries is on the right side of international law. But the timing suggests it is more about preventing the Israel-Gaza situation from spreading and destabilising the region than about protecting international waterways per se.

Furthermore, there is a risk of New Zealand’s response appearing one-sided, considering its relative silence on other fronts.

For example, following the interim ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the application of the Genocide Convention to Israel’s devastation of Gaza, a second opinion is being sought from the court over the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki told the court his people were suffering “colonialism and apartheid” under Israeli occupation. It was the latest round in a monumental debate central to any lasting peace process.

More than 50 countries presented arguments at the ICJ last week, the most to engage with any single case since the court was established in 1945. But New Zealand was not present in the oral proceedings.

This absence matches New Zealand’s abstention at the United Nations General Assembly vote that referred the case to the ICJ. A country that prides itself on an independent foreign policy seems to have lost its voice.

Doctors Without Borders warns that Gaza’s whole healthcare system is collapsing as Israel continues to intensify its attacks.

Follow our LIVE coverage: https://t.co/bo5Dp2wxPd pic.twitter.com/lyy6NQiRhX

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 29, 2024

An even-handed foreign policy
New Zealand does call for the observance of international humanitarian law in Gaza. It has been less vocal, though, about calling for accountability for war crimes, no matter which side commits them.

The International Criminal Court, New Zealand’s permanent representative to the UN has said, is “a central pillar in the international rules-based order and the international criminal justice system”.

Directly supporting that sentiment would mean calling for independent investigations of all alleged crimes in the current Israel-Gaza conflict.

Given countries it considers friends and allies do more to register their disapproval of the situation, New Zealand needs to consider whether its own current sanctions system is adequate.

The White House has begun to sanction individual Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories, accusing them of undermining peace, security and stability. Britain has also placed sanctions on a small number of “extremist” settlers. France has recently identified and sanctioned 28 such individuals.

Govt designates Hamas as terrorist entity https://t.co/b2EQyehohr

— Newshub Politics (@NewshubPolitics) February 29, 2024

However, New Zealand has remained silent, until this week declaring the political wing of Hamas a “terrorist” entity — a decision being criticised — and banning an unspecified number of extremist Israeli settlers from travelling to New Zealand.

This prompts an obvious question: if sanctions can be applied to both Russia and Iran for their actions, should New Zealand now follow the lead of its allies and take active measures to express its disapproval of what is happening in Gaza and the occupied territories?

Dr Alexander Gillespie is professor of Law at the University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The New Zealand government is shortly to announce whether it will designate Hamas a “terrorist” group in response to the October 7 attack on Israel in which Hamas was involved.

The US and most of the Western world calls Hamas “terrorists” but so far New Zealand has only designated the armed wing of Hamas as a terrorist group.

More importantly, the United Nations — along with most of the rest of the world — has not taken this step and neither should New Zealand.

• READ MORE: What is Hamas?: A simple guide to the armed Palestinian group
• The War on Gaza live news: Thousands could die as Israel blocks food, aid convoys under fire
• Other War on Gaza reports

It is for Palestinians to decide which groups they support in their struggle for self-determination but it’s important here to respond to the incessant, hysterical lies told about Hamas by Israel and the pro-Israel lobby around the world.

There are probably more lies spoken about Hamas than any other organisation in the world.

One of these is the lie that the Hamas Charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide. (For example, this was claimed in an opinion piece in The Post newspaper recently by Israeli diplomat and former ambassador to the United Kingdom Daniel Taub  — in response to which the newspaper declined to print any letters)

The truth is that in the latest Hamas charter from 2017, the organisation says

“Hamas reiterates that its conflict is with the Zionist project and not with the Jews based on their religion.”
“Hamas is not fighting against the Jews because they are Jews, but against the Zionists who are occupying Palestine.”
“Hamas rejects the persecution of people or the undermining of their rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian ground.”

Hamas accepts Israel with 1967 borders
In fact, their new charter goes further and Hamas accepts the state of Israel based on 1967 borders — precisely the same policy as the New Zealand government along with the US, the UK and most of the world!

It is clear to everyone that war crimes were committed in the October 7 attack on Israel.

Killing civilians and taking civilian hostages are war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention and should be condemned.

These crimes should be investigated by the International Criminal Court as were crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those investigations resulted in arrest warrants issued against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The same process should be followed for the October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s genocidal response. For example, arrest warrants should be issued by the ICC against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and at least half his cabinet for war crimes and crimes against humanity — including the crimes of genocide and apartheid.

As things stand there were eight Palestinian resistance groups involved in the October 7 attack on Israel and we simply do not know yet which groups and leaders were responsible for war crimes.

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

Aotearoa New Zealand must respect this right and not pander to the deep-seated racism and cheap political sloganeering of the pro-Israel lobby.

A knee-jerk reaction from New Zealand to designate Hamas a terrorist group would be a further step backwards from an independent foreign policy.

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

• Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 came after Israeli settlers had stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and after a record number of Palestinians had been killed by Israel at that point in 2023.
• Other maps and charts  — Live tracker

The toll of four months of war in Gaza on journalism is “nothing short of horrifying” — Palestinian journalists killed, wounded, and prevented from working without any possibility of safe refuge, reports the Paris-based global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

RSF has strongly condemned the “eradication of journalism and the right to information” in Gaza by the Israeli army, and has called on states and international organisations to increase pressure on Israel to “immediately cease this carnage”.

In 124 days of conflict, at least 84 journalists have been killed in Gaza, including at least 20 in the course of their journalistic work or in connection with it, according to RSF statistics.

• READ MORE: Fiji human rights activists pay tribute to slain Gaza journalists, but shunned by local media
• RSF condemns Israel over ‘silencing of media’ – 31 Palestinian journalists in jail, 80 plus killed
• Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them — David Robie
• Other Gaza media reports

Journalists are being decimated as the days of this interminable war go by, through incessant Israeli strikes from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, the watchdog said.

Journalists who had survived these four months were “living a daily hell” — in inhumane conditions, they suffered shortages of all kinds, particularly of equipment, as well as regular media blackouts, RSF said.

“In four months of conflict, Palestinian journalism has been decimated by Israeli armed forces with complete impunity, with a staggering death toll of more than 84 journalists killed — at least 20 in the line of duty,” said RSF’s Middle East desk in their statement.

“After filing two complaints with the International Criminal Court and making repeated appeals to States and international organisations, RSF is once again urging the UN Security Council to immediately enforce Resolution 2222 (2015) on the protection of journalists.

Journalists trapped in Rafah
Journalists in Gaza have no way out or any place of safe refuge. Forced to flee to the south of the enclave since October 7, the vast majority have taken refuge in Rafah, where the crossing point with Egypt is still closed and where an invasion of the city could lead to a new bloodbath.

Rafah was described by Israel as a “security zone” at the start of the conflict. Despite RSF’s calls for the Rafah gate to be opened, the Israeli authorities continue to prevent Gazan journalists from leaving and to block access to the enclave for foreign journalists.

As Gaza killings rise, so does the toll on Palestinian journalists.   Video: Al Jazeera

A chilling toll
According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), about 50 local and international media outlets in Gaza have been totally or partially destroyed by the Israeli army since October 7, in addition to the appalling death toll.

RSF filed two complaints with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 31 October and 22 December 2023 in connection with the killings of journalists and the destruction of media outlets.

In the aftermath of the killings of independent videographer Moustafa Thuraya and Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh on January 7, RSF obtained a decision from the ICC prosecutor to include crimes against journalists in its investigation into the situation in Palestine.

Two days later, RSF called on the UN Security Council to urgently address Israel’s violations of Resolution 2222 on the protection of journalists.

The struggle of journalists in the field
Against this terrifying backdrop, Palestinian reporters in Gaza are showing untold courage in continuing to report on the war.

Most have lost loved ones. Forced to move, they live in tents, with no electricity and very little food or water.

Wounded journalists have very limited access to medical care. In partnership with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), RSF has been providing grants to Gazan journalists since the start of the war to support their reporting work.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Al Jazeera rejects Israeli forces’ attempt to justify crimes against journalists

Al Jazeera Media Network has rejected the Israeli occupation forces’ attempt to justify the killing and targeting of journalists.

In a statement this week, the network has condemned the accusations against its journalists and recalled Israel’s “long record of lies and fabrication of evidence through which it seeks to hide its heinous crimes”.

• READ MORE: Israeli forces killed Abu Akleh ‘without justification’, UN inquiry says

The statement continued:

“At a time when its correspondents and field crews are making great sacrifices to cover what is happening in Gaza, Al Jazeera’s employment policies stipulate that employees are not to engage in any political affiliations that may affect their professionalism, and to adhere to the controls and directives contained in the Network’s code of ethics and code of conduct.

“Al Jazeera ensures that all its journalists and correspondents adhere to the editorial standards.

“The network recalls the systematic targeting of Al Jazeera by the Israeli authorities, which includes:

• the bombing of its office in Gaza twice,
• the assassination of its correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh,
• the killing of colleagues Samer Abu Daqa and Hamza Al-Dahdouh,
• the deliberate targeting of a number of Al Jazeera journalists and their family members, and
• the arrest and intimidation of its correspondents in the field.

“Given Israel’s unprecedented campaign against journalists, Al Jazeera urges media outlets worldwide to exercise the utmost caution and responsibility when headlining Israel’s justifications for its crimes against journalists in Gaza.”

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.

• READ MORE: ‘Criminal complaints’ filed against Israeli President Herzog in Switzerland
• War on Gaza: The US plan to revamp Palestinian Authority is doomed
• ‘Bombing all around us’ — Israeli assault hospital in Khan Younis

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.”

Since Jacinda Ardern described the state of world affairs as “bloody messy” earlier this year there have been few, if any, signs of improvement. Ukraine, China, nuclear proliferation and the lasting impacts of a global pandemic all present urgent, unresolved challenges.

For a small country in an increasingly lawless world this is both dangerous and confronting.

Without the military or economic scale to influence events directly, New Zealand relies on its voice and ability to persuade.

• READ MORE: Putin plays the annexation card, pushing the war in Ukraine into a dangerous new phase
• How will China interact with the world over the next 5 years? Xi’s new speech holds clues
• Nukes, allies, weapons and cost: 4 big questions NZ’s defence review must address

But by placing its faith in a rules-based order and United Nations processes, New Zealand also has to work with — and sometimes around — highly imperfect systems. In some areas of international law and policy the machinery is failing. It’s unclear what the next best step might be.

Given these uncertainties, then, where has New Zealand done well on the international stage, and where might it need to find a louder voice or more constructive proposals?

Confronting Russia
Strength and clarity have been most evident in New Zealand’s response to the Russian attack on Ukraine. There has been no hint of joining the abstainers or waverers at crucial UN votes condemning Russia’s actions.

While it can be argued New Zealand could do more in terms of sanctions and support for the Ukrainian military, the government has made good use of the available international forums.

Joining the International Court of Justice case against “Russia’s spurious attempt to justify its invasion under international law” and supporting the International Criminal Court investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine are both excellent initiatives.

Unfortunately, similar avenues have been blocked when it comes to other critical issues New Zealand has a vested interest in seeing resolved properly.

UN vote to ignore human rights abuses in China leaves west in dead end https://t.co/mTWo4ETubU

— The Guardian (@guardian) October 7, 2022

China and human rights
This has been especially apparent in the debate about human rights abuses in China, and allegations of genocide made by some countries over the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

New Zealand and some other countries correctly avoided using the word “genocide”, which has a precise legal meaning best applied by UN experts, not domestic politicians. Instead, the government called on China to provide meaningful and unfettered access to UN and other independent observers.

While not perfect, the visit went ahead. The eventual report by outgoing UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet concluded that China had committed serious human rights violations, which could amount to crimes against humanity.

This should have forced the international community to act. Instead, 19 countries voted with China to block a debate at the UN Human Rights Council (17 wanted the debate, 11 abstained). The upshot was that China succeeded in driving the issue into a diplomatic dead-end.

Allowing an organisation designed to protect victims to be controlled by alleged perpetrators isn’t something New Zealand should accept. The government should make it a diplomatic priority to become a member of the council, and it should use every opportunity to speak out and keep the issue in the global spotlight.

Ardern’s Russia warning: New nuclear age dawns – countries want to start and win new nuclear war https://t.co/ft03c2FAI5 pic.twitter.com/DRoA4IDRFN

— nzherald (@nzherald) September 23, 2022

Arms control
Elsewhere, New Zealand’s foreign policy can arguably be found wanting — most evidently, perhaps, in the area of nuclear arms regulation.

Advocating for the complete prohibition of all nuclear weapons, as the prime minister did at the UN in September, might be inspiring and also good domestic politics, but it doesn’t make the world safer.

With the risk of nuclear conflagration at its highest since the Cuban missile crisis, a better immediate goal would be improving the regulation, rather than prohibition, of nuclear weapons. This would entail convincing nuclear states to take their weapons off “hair-trigger alert”.

The other goals should be the adoption of a no-first-use policy by all nuclear powers (only China has made such a commitment so far), and a push for regional arms control in the Indo-Pacific to rein in India, Pakistan and China.

Pandemic preparedness
Finally, there is the danger of vital law and policy not just failing, but not even being born. This is the case with the World Health Organisation’s so-called “pandemic treaty”, designed to better prevent, prepare for and respond to the next global pandemic.

New Zealand set out some admirable goals in its submission in April, but these have been watered down or are missing from the first working draft of the proposed agreement.

This shouldn’t be accepted lightly given the lessons of the past two-and-a-half years. Transparency by governments, a precautionary approach and the meaningful involvement of non-state actors will be essential.

Similarly, improved oversight of the 59 laboratories spread across 23 countries that work with the most dangerous pathogens is critical. Currently, only a quarter of these labs score highly on safety. The proposed treaty does little to demand the kind of biosecurity protocols and robust regulatory systems required to better protect present and future generations.

As with the other urgent and difficult issues mentioned here, New Zealand’s future is directly connected to what happens elsewhere in the world. The challenge now is to keep adapting to this changing global order while being an effective voice for reason and the rule of law.

Dr Alexander Gillespie is professor of law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

An investigation by Al Jazeera has obtained an image of the bullet used to kill the network’s journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, reports Al Jazeera staff.

The photograph for the first time shows the type of ammunition used to kill the veteran Al Jazeera correspondent in the occupied West Bank last month.

According to ballistic and forensic experts, the green-tipped bullet was designed to pierce armour and is used in an M4 rifle. The round was extracted from her head.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh

The bullet was analysed using 3D models and, according to experts, it was 5.56mm calibre – the same as used by Israeli forces. The round was designed and manufactured in the United States, experts said.

In this undated photo, Shireen Abu Akleh stands next to a TV camera above the Old City of Jerusalem [Al Jazeera Media Network]

Fayez al-Dwairi, a former Jordanian major-general, told Al Jazeera the weapon and round used to kill Abu Akleh are regularly carried by Israeli forces.

“This M4 and this munition is used by the Israeli army. It is available and used by the units. I cannot say the whole unit, or most of the soldiers, but they use it,” al-Dwairi told Al Jazeera.

“When any soldier uses it, he uses it for a definite target — he wants to hunt, he wants to kill … There is no way to use it for another thing.”

Palestinian assistant Multilateral Affairs Minister Ammar Hijazi told Al Jazeera the bullet will remain with the Palestinian government for further investigation.

Abu Akleh, a longtime TV correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, was killed last month while covering Israeli army raids in the city of Jenin.

Abu Akleh’s case was sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the investigation was recently handed over to the ICC prosecutor. The status of the case, however, remains unclear.

“We think there is enough evidence with the prosecutor … that proves without reasonable doubt that the crime committed against Shireen Abu Akleh was done by the Israeli occupation and they are the perpetrators of this awful crime and they should be held responsible for it,” said Hijazi.

‘Trigger-happy policies’
Abu Akleh was wearing a press vest and standing with other journalists when she was killed.

Israeli authorities initially said Palestinian fighters were responsible for her death, circulating video of Palestinian men shooting down an alleyway. However, researchers from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem found the spot where the clip was filmed and proved it was impossible to shoot Abu Akleh from there.

In an interview, Omar Shakir — Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch — said all evidence indicates the kill shot came from an Israeli soldier.

Sherif Mansour, MENA programme coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC, that “the pattern” of killing Palestinian media workers “is well known”.

“We have documented at least 19 journalists who were killed by Israeli fire, some of them in the Gaza wars in vehicles marked as press in 2012 and 2014,” Mansour said.

“Some of them were also killed by Israeli snipers while wearing vests with press signs, away from any threatening situation, two of them in 2018. Clearly, we have a problem here of trigger-happy policies that allows this to continue.”

Shireen Abu Akleh: What happened? Video: Al Jazeera

‘Justice and accountability’
In what appeared to be an unprovoked assault at the Al Jazeera correspondent’s funeral days after she was killed, Israeli officers attacked pallbearers, which almost caused them to drop Abu Akleh’s coffin — an incident broadcast live that caused international outrage.

An Israeli police investigation into the attack concluded no one should be punished, despite finding there had been police misconduct, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said for Palestinians their version of events is being “confirmed by so many investigations”, including the latest one by Al Jazeera.

“Palestinians have been saying from day one that they know that the bullet that hit Shireen came from Israeli soldiers. The witnesses, the videos that we’ve seen from Palestinians who were there, show there were no Palestinian fighters around the area where Shireen was in,” Ibrahim said.

“Palestinians are seeking now is justice and accountability.”

‘The root cause’
A dual Palestinian-US national, Abu Akleh was one of Al Jazeera’s first field correspondents, joining the network in 1997.

Ori Givati, a former Israeli soldier now with the advocacy group Breaking the Silence, said the round that was analysed was a “very common bullet”.

“It is the bullet that most [Israeli] soldiers use during their service,” he told Al Jazeera.

“This investigation into Shireen’s killing is extremely important, but we also have to remember these incidents happen on a weekly basis.

“Our country understands that if you really look into these cases it all goes back to the root cause. It is why the system is terrified from actually conducting investigations. I haven’t seen Israel really investigate any incident.”

Al Jazeera emailed Israel’s Foreign Press Department for comment early Friday but did not immediately receive a response.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

A birth of a child usually draws out changes from people. Parents, and even grandparents, recreate themselves in a bid to better address the demands of the new addition to the family.

Julio* knew this all too well. He first became a father at the young age of 17, and went on to work odd jobs to fulfill his responsibilities. But along the way, due to mounting pressure and the vicious cycle of poverty, Julio turned to illegal drugs.

“Sabi niya sa akin hindi ko siya maintindihan kasi ako raw may maayos na trabaho at madali makahanap ng panibagong trabaho kung sakali, samantalang siya, walang ganoong oportunidad para sa kanya,” Cristina, his younger sister, told Rappler in an interview.

• READ MORE: In Duterte’s drug war, justice is ‘nearly impossible’
• Other Philippine killings reports

(He told me I won’t be able to understand him because I have a stable job and can get another job if I want to, while he doesn’t have that opportunity.)

Julio eventually separated from his first wife, and met a new woman who then got pregnant. With a new baby on the way, 39-year-old Julio was determined more than ever to change.

He planned to start a sari-sari store, buy a refrigerator to sell frozen goods, just about anything to start anew.

“Gusto niya na iyong iyong nagawa niyang pagkukulang sa unang pamilya niya, hindi na ulit mangyari doon sa ipinagbubuntis ng kanyang kinakasama,” Cristina recalled. (He wanted to avoid repeating the same shortcomings he had with his first family.)

But President Rodrigo Duterte had other plans for Julio and thousands of others who came from the poorest communities in the Philippines. Drug dependents, for the country’s chief executive, are hopeless and useless to society.

Enemy out of drug users
Duterte made an enemy out of drug users and waged a “war” that smudged gutters, roads, and narrow alleys all over the country with blood.

RealNumberPH, the government’s unitary report on the drug war, shows that at least 6248 people have died at the hands of police during anti-illegal drug operations between July 2016 and April 30, 2022, while human rights groups estimate the total death toll to reach 30,000 to include victims of vigilante-style killings.

But figures obtained by Rappler show that the Philippine National Police (PNP) had already recorded 7884 deaths from July 1, 2016 to August 31, 2020.

On December 11, 2018, Julio became one of the thousands slain. One person told his family that their son was standing outside when he and a companion were abducted by men riding a white van.

Their lifeless bodies were found not long after.

Cristina was sure it was the police who killed his brother, but they feared going public with this allegation. It didn’t help that the sole witness, who talked to them during his brother’s funeral, was also eventually killed.

“Masakit ang pagkamatay niya pero iniisip ko na lang na at least nakita at naiburol namin siya, hindi tulad sa iba na nakikita na putol na ang kamay, wala na balita na bigla na lang nawawala,” she said.

(It hurts that he died but at least we were able to find his body and do a proper burial, unlike others who were dismembered or just disappeared completely.)

Duterte’s war on drugs
This is Duterte’s war on drugs, a key policy in his administration that has been scrutinised by both local and international bodies, including the International Criminal Court.

For Gloria Lai, regional director for Asia of the International Drug Policy Consortium, the bloody trail Duterte will leave behind once his presidential term ends on June 30 was highly unnecessary and preventable.

“[Killing people] is not a solution,” she told Rappler.

“What does success look like for the Duterte administration? It kept changing over time [and] there is no way you can say there is success,” Lai added.

The President and his allies’ rhetoric in the past six years would make one think that the Philippines has become a narcostate where drug users are behind the most violent crimes. For Duterte, they steal, they kill, they take innocent lives.

The Philippines indeed has issues with the proliferation of illegal drugs, but determining how widespread it is has been hard under the Duterte administration, given the overall lack of transparency and accurate data.

Duterte himself has been dropping different figures over the years. But a report released in February 2020 by Vice-President Leni Robredo following her short stint as co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs stated that there “is no common and reliable baseline data on the number of drug dependents in the country.”

‘Keeping their grip on power’
“It really just seemed to serve the administration well… to obtain power, to keep their grip on power, because it creates fear, it creates enemies, it creates scapegoats that justify really brutal and violent actions,” Lai said, adding that the drug issue was “exploited for political gain”.

Six years into the administration, the Duterte government remains tight-lipped, if not vague, about what it deemed key performance indicators of the bloody war on drugs.

PNP spokesperson Colonel Jean Fajardo said the police used two approaches in addressing the drug problem in the country. For the last six years, it had focused on reducing supplies and targeting their so-called pushers, up to high-value individuals.

“Dalawa po ang lagi nating ginagamit na approach dito po sa ating kampanya laban sa ilegal na droga. Ito po ‘yong tinatawag natin na supply reduction strategy and demand reduction strategy,” Fajardo told Rappler.

(We use two approaches in our campaign against illegal drugs. We call them supply reduction and demand reduction strategies.)

But despite this, the PNP and its partner Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) only managed to clear 25,061 out of 35,471 barangays it identified as being involved in illegal drugs. As of April 30, 2022, there are still 10,410 drug-affected barangays yet to be cleared by the PNP and PDEA.

Spike after start of bloody operations
This means, 29.34 percent of drug-affected barangays are yet to be cleared by drug enforcement authorities. Based on data on drug-affected barangays from 2016 to 2022, the Philippines saw a spike in 2017, a year after the start of bloody operations.

From 19,717 drug-affected villages in 2016, the number rose to 24,424 the following year. The number of drug-affected barangays then significantly dropped between 2020 and 2022 — the pandemic years.

In terms of collected illegal drugs, the authorities were able to seize P89.29-billion worth of illegal drugs from July 1, 2016 until April 30, 2022. PDEA, one of the lead agencies for Duterte’s drug war, boasted that they were able to seize 11,843.41 kilograms or P76.55-billion worth of shabu or crystalline methamphetamine.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has yet to release its 2022 report on synthetic drugs in Southeast Asia. But in their 2021 report, the UNODC reported that shabu was the cause of the majority of drug-related arrests and treatment admissions in the Philippines.

For six years, authorities were able to arrest a total of 341,494 individuals. Of this number, only 15,096 are considered high-value targets.

Based on the PNP’s classification, individuals who are considered high-value targets are those who run drug dens, are on the wanted list, and leaders and members of drug groups, among others.

This means that of the total number of arrested individuals due to illegal drug offences, only 4.42 percent or around four in every 100 people arrested are high-value targets.
Dehumanizing rhetoric, actions

Drug users bacame pawns
Duterte used drug users as pawns in his bid to make violence a norm in state policy and actions, Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights) executive director Nymia Pimentel-Simbulan said.

“The legacy that he will be leaving behind would be institutionalization of state violence, this particular government has a proclivity towards addressing societal problems using a war framework,” she told Rappler in an interview on Monday, June 13.

Staying true to his violent rhetoric, the President has effectively mobilised state resources to use violence and other punitive measures to address issues. Beyond the problem of illegal drugs, this approach can also be seen in the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

If the Duterte government was serious about eradicating drugs in the Philippines, Lai said that it should’ve aimed for programs that better suit this intended outcome instead of focusing on killings.

For one, the state should’ve highlighted how drug addiction is a health problem, therefore producing better health programs. For people who use illegal drugs like shabu to stay awake to work long hours, the government should invest in programs that will keep families out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

But as it is, Duterte’s rhetoric and actions further dehumanize drug dependents, lumping them together with those who are part of the illegal drug syndicates.

“If you forced them and placed them into a list where they could be hunted down and randomly interrogated by police, or even just prevent them from getting a job or going to a certain school, you just drastically diminished their life prospects,” Lai said.

Gap in social response
PNP spokesperson Fajardo admitted that there is still really a gap when it comes to social response, as well as rehabilitation facilities to cater to drug personalities.

“Sinasabi natin, we agree on the fact na ito pong drug problem natin ay health problem. Hindi lang social problem. So ‘yong mga pasilidad kulang, ‘yong ating mga livelihood na pupuwede po nating i-offer dito sa mga sumurrender pati na rin po ‘yong mga nagtutulak, ‘yong mga pusher. Hindi po sa wala, pero kulang po talaga ‘yong efforts,” Fajardo said.

(We say that we agree on the fact that this drug problem is a health problem. Not only social problems. So our facilities are lacking, the livelihood that we can offer for the surrenderees, to pushers. It’s not that we don’t have anything, but the efforts are not enough.)

There are 64 drug rehabilitation centers in the Philippines as of 2021 — 16 under the Department of Health, nine with the local government units, and 39 privately-owned. Together, these facilities have 4840 bed capacity.

In a forum in June 2021, DOH’s Dangerous Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment Programme manager Jose Leabres said there was a need for 11,911 additional in-patient beds for 2021 and 10,629 for 2022.

Data from the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) shows an increasing number of admissions to care facilities across the country. In 2021, there were at least 2344 new admissions.

A trail of blood
Duterte is leaving Malacañang on June 30 with a trail of blood from people killed in the name of his violent war on drugs. He also leaves behind thousands of orphaned children in the poorest communities, as well as a much more stigmatised issue of drug dependency in the Philippines.

It now falls on president-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to “address all the harms done by the Duterte administration” on the issue of illegal drugs in the country, according to Lai, as well as giving justice to thousands of victims.

During the campaign season, Marcos said he will continue Duterte’s drug war, but would focus on its being a health issue. He also hinted about shielding it from the International Criminal Court.

Meanwhile, just this June, during courtesy calls with foreign ambassadors, Swedish Ambassador Annika Thunborg said there was a discussion to continue the drug war within the framework of the law and respect for human rights, among others.

PNP spokesperson Fajardo said the incoming administration should put focus on demand reduction.

“Pero ‘yong isa pa pong approach natin na tinatawag po nating demand reduction program, hangga’t may bumibili po, hangga’t may market po ay talagang meron at meron pong sisibol na panibagong players,” she said.

(But the other approach that we call the demand reduction program, until there are people who purchase drugs, until there is a market for them, there will always be new players.)
DRUG WAR DEATHS. Families of victims of drug-related extrajudicial killings and human rights advocates join a Mass at the Commission on Human Rights headquarters in Quezon City.

Not holding her breath
But Simbulan, whose group PhilRights has documented the victims of Duterte’s war on drugs, is not holding her breath, knowing the Marcos family’s track record and his alliance with Duterte.

“I am not that optimistic that it will adopt a different method or approach,” she said. “Chances are, it will adopt the same punitive violent approach in addressing the drug problem in the Philippines.”

IDPC’s Lai, meanwhile, said it’s going to be a massive turnaround if Marcos decides to do away with what Duterte has done. There is nothing preventing the incoming administration from focusing on drug issues, but it has to make sure to alter government response based on evidence and what communities really need, instead of a blanket campaign that puts a premium on killings.

Most importantly, the new administration should focus their resources on areas that would make a difference on people’s lives for the better.

“[They should] consider that in a lot of cases, the drug policies and the drug laws themselves have caused a lot more harm to people and communities than the actual drugs themselves,” Lai said.

* Names have been changed for their protection

Jodesz Gavilan is a Rappler reporter. Republished with permission.

Migrants and overseas Filipinos in Aotearoa New Zealand today called on the governments of both Australia and New Zealand to halt all military and security aid to the Philippines in protest over last month’s “fraudulent” general election.

At simultaneous meetings in Auckland and Wellington, a new broad coalition of social justice and community campaigners endorsed a statement pledging: “Never forget, never again martial law!”

“Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, was elected President in a landslide ballot on May 9 and will take office at the end of this month.

• READ MORE: How Marcos could control hunt for his family’s wealth as president
• Marcos Jr’s camp still evades issue of unpaid estate tax
• Robredo is number one victim of red-tagging, says ex-AFP spokesperson
• Other Philippine election reports

His father ruled the Philippines with draconian leadership — including 14 years of martial law — between 1965 and 1986 until he was ousted by a People Power uprising.

Marcos Jr – along with his mother Imelda – has long tried to thwart efforts to recover billions of dollars plundered during his father’s autocratic rule.

“Police and military forces should be investigated for their participation in red-tagging, illegal arrests on trumped up charges, extrajudicial killings, and all forms of human rights abuses,” the statement said.

“We call on the International Criminal Court to pursue investigation and trial of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte for massive human rights breaches in its drug war and systematic attacks against political activists, human rights advocates and anti-corruption crusaders.”

Call for ‘transparent government’
The statement called for “transparent government” and for all public funds to be accounted for.

“We specifically call for realignment of the national budget in favour of covid aid, public health and social services instead of wasting billions for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and other government machineries that aim to suppress critics of its corruption and human rights abuses.”

The statement urged the “dismantling” of NTF-ELCAC.

The Supreme Court of the Philippines was called on to “act on the petitions lodged by various persons and groups regarding the disqualification of Ferdinand Marcos Jr to run for office due to his conviction” for tax evasion.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue has confirmed that the court-ordered Marcos family’s tax bill remains unpaid and news reports say this is estimated to now total about 23 billion pesos (NZ$670 million).

The statement called on the Department of Justice and Supreme Court to provide for immediate and unconditional release of the unjustly jailed Senator Leila de Lima — an outspoken critic of Duterte — “following the recantation of the testimonies of three key witnesses”, and also freedom for more than 700 political prisoners “languishing in jail on trumped-up charges”.

The gathered Filipino community also sought an official Day of Remembrance and Tribute for all the victims of Marcos dictatorship to mark the 50th year commemoration of the declaration of martial law on 21 September 2022.

‘Truth army’ to monitor social media
“We call on all Filipinos to remain vigilant as a truth army, to tirelessly monitor and report social media platforms in serious breach of community standards, and to push for stronger laws in place for disinformation to be punished,” the statement said.

Filipinos in the two cities — Auckland and Wellington — pledged support for the Angat Buhay cause of defending Philippines “history, truth and democracy”.

Speakers included Filipino trade unionist Dennis Maga; Mikee Santos of Migrante Aotearoa; 1Sambayan Aotearoa convenor Romy Udanga; and speaking by Zoom from Manila, Senate candidate Luke Espiritu, who said the new Marcos regime would be able to achieve virtual “martial law” without declaring it.

“All Marcos needs to do is suppress dissent, and he has all the sophisticated technology available to do this that his father never had,” Espiritu said.

Northland Kakampink coordinator Faye Bañares said the new Angat Buhay NGO should not take over the responsibility of providing for the poor in the community, although the aim is to help them.

“The NGO should push the Philippine government to face their responsibility and be transparent about what they do,” she said.

Many speakers told how shocked they were in the general election over a “massive breakdown of vote counting machines and voter disenfranchisement” and the “incredibly rapid count of COMELEC transparency servers” to award the “unbelievable final tally” of 31 million votes in favour of Ferdinand Marcos Jr as president and Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter Sara as vice-president.

Social media troll farms
Denouncing the social media troll farms, the meeting critics said “all the worst lies, disinformation and red-tagging were committed against [outgoing vice-president] Leni Robredo, opposition candidates and parties who stood up against [Rodrigo] Duterte and the Marcos-Duterte tandem.”

In November 2021, the Philippines and New Zealand agreed to boost maritime security cooperation during the 6th Philippines-New Zealand Foreign Ministry Consultations hosted by the Philippines.

Both sides acknowledged the growing breadth and depth of Philippines-New Zealand bilateral cooperation, particularly in the areas of defence and security, health, trade and investments, development cooperation, people-to-people and cultural engagements.

Trade between both countries is worth about trade in goods and services is worth about NZ$1.15 billion.

It is a historic win nearly four decades after Filipinos booted his family out of power, ending a well-oiled campaign that sought to bury the past, rally for unity, and evade scrutiny.

As of 4:41 am today, partial and unofficial results from the Commission on Elections’ transparency server showed Marcos Jr. with 30,015,540 votes so far, representing 58.86 percent of total votes reported for all presidential candidates.

• READ MORE: Other Philippine elections reports

The 64-year-old Marcos Jr is set to become the 17th president of the Philippines, as he has received more than double the votes of his closest opponent, Vice-President Leni Robredo, who has garnered 14,309,524 votes or 28.06 percent as of the latest update.

He will succeed the strongman Rodrigo Duterte, winning without his outright support. The President’s daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, was Marcos Jr’s running mate, getting 30,310,743 votes or 61.08 percent.

It’s the first presidential elections since the rebirth of democracy in 1986 where the outgoing president did not endorse a candidate.

‘Spoiled child’
“He is a spoiled child…. He’s a weak leader at may bagahe siya (and he has baggage),” the outgoing president Duterte had said of Marcos.

Marcos will lead the Philippines for the next six years, and will have to steer the country into economic recovery after a global pandemic. He is now the country’s chief diplomat, who flip-flopped on standing with Ukraine amid a Russian invasion that threatens security in the whole of Europe.

“This is bad for the country. There would be no good governance as we know it. Cronyism and dynasty will thrive,” said jailed opposition leader Leila De Lima.

Marcos has promised to continue Duterte’s warm ties to superpower China, and will keep at bay the International Criminal Court investigating the President and his men for alleged crimes against humanity for the thousands of killings during the drug war.

As president, Marcos will have power over executive agencies involved in recovering his family’s ill-gotten wealth, such as the Presidential Commission on Good Government and the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG). The PCGG was still trying to recover P125 billion (NZ$3.7 billion) more in stolen wealth.

Marcos also has a standing contempt order in the United States — among other cases that he and his mother Imelda are facing. The business community fears that investors will steer clear of the Philippines under a Marcos presidency.

“Well, we’ll just have to prove them wrong if we get the opportunity and we will,” said Marcos in an interview with One PH on March 21.

Lian Buan is a Rappler reporter. Republished with permission.