COMMENTARY: By Jonathan Cook

Benjamin Netanyahu’s whirlwind visit to the United States late last month to address the United Nations General Assembly was further evidence that the Israeli prime minister is now a universal pariah.

He is being abandoned even by his closest allies.

It was perhaps not surprising that 77 nations, including a handful of European states, walked out of the chamber in protest that a wanted war crimes suspect — a fugitive from the International Criminal Court (ICC) — was being given a platform to speak on the world’s largest stage.

• READ MORE: Map of Middle East redrawn after October 7
• Other Gaza, West Bank reports

Far more notable was what happened — or rather, didn’t — away from the podium. Netanyahu spent just eight hours in the US before heading back to Israel. It is hard to believe that that was his choice.

He was denied his usual moment in the sun with US President Donald Trump at the White House, and could not even secure a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

There was no invitation to address the US Congress, and with it familiar scenes of legislators rapturously celebrating his anti-Palestinian incitement.

Israel’s former Ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, told Reuters: “I don’t recall a time when the prime minister came to the United States and didn’t meet with the president.”

Stark contrast to Xi
The shunning of Netanyahu stood in stark contrast to the reception of Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader was personally greeted at the airport by Trump with a red carpet and military flyover.

Netanyahu’s UN visit was exploited by both sides — by Israeli officials and Western leaders — to advance their separate, and conflicting, agendas.

Netanyahu is less than a month away from a hotly contested general election in which, for the first time, his failures to prevent Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023 are under intense scrutiny.

According to a growing number of recent reports, he was warned by Egyptian and Gulf leaders of a major event — an “earthquake” — coming from Gaza in the days and weeks preceding Hamas’ breakout, but failed to act.

Netanyahu had scheduled his UN speech for Israeli prime time, to attract the largest domestic audience possible. He took the opportunity to call out other world leaders as “moral cowards” and “hypocrites”.

As Israeli analyst Jonathan Ofir notes, Netanyahu also used the UN platform to smuggle in a biblical phrase in Hebrew that was designed, for listeners back home, to serve as a dog-whistle: a call for Israel to carry out genocide to the bitter end.

Netanyahu’s goal was to demonstrate to voters that he is still a force to be reckoned with on the international stage, and that he alone can make Israel safe from a world supposedly mired in “antisemitic”, anti-Israel sentiment.

Nudging Netanyahu out of office
Western leaders, by contrast, wish to demonstrate the precise opposite, hoping to nudge Netanyahu out of office by suggesting to Israelis that their leader is a spent force, that he has gone too far.

Time to be rid of him.

This may prove no simple matter. Netanyahu is the great political survivor, serving a record near-two decades as his country’s prime minister — longer even than Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion. He has used that time to whip up much of Israeli society into an ever greater, ultra-nationalist, genocidal fervour.

The current antipathy in Western capitals to Netanyahu is most certainly not based on any kind of ethical assessment of Israel’s recent actions: a three-year genocidal rampage through Gaza; the violent expansion of Jewish settlements and ethnic cleansing in the Occupied West Bank; the bombing and ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon; and the Israeli leader’s starring role alongside the US in launching a catastrophic war on Iran whose fallout has destabilised the global economy.

Washington — backed by its European client states — has been an ardent partner to these crimes, supplying the munitions, intelligence and diplomatic leverage to help Israel carry them out.

But Netanyahu now looks to be a political liability, even for Trump.

The US President, nosediving in the polls, needs a scapegoat — and the Israeli prime minister appears the only one suited for the role.

The antagonism is, in part, personal.

Netanyahu seduced Trump on Iran
A number of recent reports indicate that Netanyahu pulled out all the stops to seduce Trump, against the advice of his generals, into launching an unprovoked and illegal war on Iran.

The promise of a decisive victory persuaded Trump he could secure his place in the history books as the president who “remade the Middle East”. Once Iran was out of the picture, the US would enjoy unchallenged control over the region’s oil.

And all of this would supposedly take place weeks after Trump had cemented his command over Venezuela’s oil, following an illegal operation at the start of the year to kidnap President Nicholas Maduro.

With Iran’s defeat, and Venezuela subjugated, economic rival China would find itself utterly dependent on the US for access to the main lubricant of the global economy. Trump could avoid a direct military confrontation with Beijing, bringing it to heel simply by threatening to turn off the oil spigot.

But, of course none of this came to pass.

Washington is now in an unwinnable war with Iran that has clarified to Tehran the extent of its power over the Strait of Hormuz — and of the parallel power of Ansar Allah, its allies in Yemen, over the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Together, they can inflict unmitigated damage to the world economy.

Soaring petrol prices on US forecourts are likely to be a critical factor in the collapse of the Republican vote in November’s mid-term elections and the likely loss of both Houses to the Democrats, turning Trump into a lame-duck president.

Supremely vulnerable
Meanwhile, the war has educated Washington’s client states in the Gulf that they are supremely vulnerable to any retaliation from Tehran and from Yemen — a fact they are reminded of every time Trump orders another reckless round of strikes on Iran.

For all its military might, Washington has shown it is unable to defend its Gulf allies.

But Netanyahu is not facing a reckoning just because of his role in engineering a disastrous war on Iran.

Despite the best efforts of Western political and media classes over the past three years, the reality of Israel’s destruction of Gaza — and the murder and maiming of many tens of thousands of Palestinian children — has become ever harder to hide or rationalise.

Even among those parts of the public little interested in world affairs, the truth is gradually sinking in, aided by battles in mainstream cultural spaces that have swung conclusively against Israel.

NAZA standing ovation
NAZA, a new documentary on Gaza made by Israeli film-makers, won a record, 25-minute standing ovation at last month’s Venice Film Festival. In it, anonymised Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers document in detail how they engineered genocide in the tiny enclave. It is scheduled to be available to stream for free in November.

Ireland’s team, forced to play Israel in the Uefa Nations League at the weekend, did not hide their feelings. They wore black armbands in a show of solidarity with Israel’s victims in Gaza and refused to shake hands with their opponents. Irish captain Dara O’Shea pledged to donate his match earnings to humanitarian causes in Gaza.

Superstar musician Ed Sheeran has found himself unexpectedly painted as the bad guy for failing to stand by his support act, the rapper Macklemore, over the latter’s comments opposing genocide in Gaza.

Predictably, when faced with pro-Israel stadium owners threatening to pull the plug on the tour, Sheeran caved and dropped Macklemore. But Sheeran is reeling from a widespread backlash that clearly took him by surprise.

And leading British politicians, such as former prime minister Keir Starmer and foreign secretaries David Cameron and David Lammy, are for the first time facing serious critical scrutiny in the mainstream over their conduct towards Gaza.

Last month, a Channel 4 documentary, Britain’s Gaza Secrets Exposed, revealed that British officials had imposed a deeply flawed methodology, apparently so they could ignore mounting evidence of systematic Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

As a result, they were able to duck out of their legal obligations to take action against Israel, including by ending arms sales.

Rising tide of revulsion
Western capitals are finally realising this rising tide of revulsion at the Gaza genocide cannot be staunched.

In the US, where bonds to Israel are invariably described by politicians as “unbreakable”, 62 percent of respondents told Pew in July they had a negative opinion of Netanyahu’s government.

Meanwhile, a poll last month found 60 percent of American Jews want the Israeli prime minister voted out at the forthcoming election.

As Israel’s Haaretz newspaper observed: “Trump is well aware of the consistent, dizzying decline in support for Israel among Americans.”

Which is why he and other Western politicians are desperate to reframe the conversation. Singling out Netanyahu over Israeli atrocities in Gaza does not get them off the hook because they so obviously partnered with him every step of the way.

Instead Western leaders want to switch focus to the West Bank, where their role is more easily obscured and Netahyahu’s law-breaking is unmistakable.

Since October 2023, he, along with his self-confessed fascist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have given both violent Jewish settler militias and the Israeli military greater freedom to terrorise Palestinian families off their land in preparation for the West Bank’s annexation.

Illegal West Bank settlements role
In the West’s new, self-serving narrative, Netanyahu isn’t a pariah because he is sought by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in starving the people of Gaza.

Nor because the International Court of Justice is currently investigating his government over “plausible” allegations that it is committing a genocide in the enclave.

Nor because his government has overseen the killing of at least 21,000 children there — and most likely, far more.

Nor because he continues to violate a sham “ceasefire”, one in which Israel has killed more than 1400 Palestinians penned up in the ruins of their enclave since the fighting supposedly ended. A further 4900 of Gaza’s residents have been maimed over the same period.

No, Netanyahu is not a pariah in the eyes of Western leaders because of any of these savage crimes — crimes they have been fully complicit in.

His offence — the one they are now determined to focus attention on — is Netanyahu’s role since October 2023 in intensifying the building and expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank to expel Palestinians from their lands.

But this narrative works only if Western politicians and media studiously ignore the context: that for more than half a century, all Israeli governments sponsored settlement expansion, with the aim of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population.

Exploited the opportunity
Netanyahu is not an outlier in doing this. He simply exploited the opportunity to accelerate West Bank expulsions on the back of world sympathy after Hamas’s single-day attack in October 2023.

The most likely explanation for why Britain and 11 other Western states, including France and Canada, declared their intention last month to impose sanctions on West Bank settlements is that they had received signs from the Trump administration for the first time that there would be no serious repercussions for doing so.

Britain’s new government under Andy Burnham also dared to describe what Israel has done to West Bank Palestinians as “ethnic cleansing”. Notably, and paradoxically, the UK has avoided using the term to describe Israel’s even more brazen ethnic cleansing in Gaza — a campaign of expulsions that have all too clearly been aided by Western bombs and logistics.

Officials under Mike Huckabee, the fervently partisan US ambassador to Israel, reportedly drafted a stinging rebuke in preparation for the British announcement of sanctions. It accused London of replicating the “playbook of the antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS] movement”.

That expected line of attack, favoured by Israel lobby groups, was presumably the reason why Ed Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, went to such exaggerated lengths to publicly distance his new policy from BDS.

But in fact, no attack materialised from the Trump administration. Instead, Marco Rubio, Miliband’s US counterpart, stated innocuously: “I don’t have any comment on it [the sanctions policy] right now.”

The next day Trump appeared to buy time with a uncharacteristically non-committal response: “I want to find out why all of a sudden has that [the announcement of UK sanctions] happened.”

Trump and Rubio have said nothing more of substance on the matter.

Failure to listen to warnings
Then there is the recent flood of media reports suggesting that Netanyahu personally failed to listen to multiple warnings from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates that an unprecedented attack was coming from Gaza in the days before Hamas’ break-out on 7 October 2023.

Netanyahu has called on Abu Dhabi to deny the leaks. But it has so far failed to help out by doing so.

The two countries, among Washington’s closest client states in the region, have always appeared anxious to avoid openly defying a notoriously vengeful Trump.

In his address to the UN, Burnham noted the dilemma facing Western governments: “We live in an age of low trust in politics. If we were to continue to talk about the two-state solution, but fail to back those words with deeds, that trust will fall even lower — and our enemies will seek to exploit the alienation that follows from that.”

Burnham seems oblivious to the reality: that part of the reason trust is so low is because a succession of British governments have not only colluded in the genocide in Gaza but arrested critics of the genocide as supporters of terrorism.

Miliband demonstrated precisely the kind of hypocrisy Burnham had warned is alienating the public when he told the Labour Party conference last week — to great applause — that “millions of people in this country”, opponents of the genocide, “were right”.

The previous day dozens of protesters had been arrested outside the conference venue for silently holding signs stating: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Burnham and Miliband wish to have their cake and eat it. Neither has indicated that there is any intention to scrap the previous government’s decision to use terrorism laws against anyone who holds such a sign — or is “right”, as Miliband now admits.

Cynical theatre of distraction
What Western leaders are engaged in here is the cynical theatre of distraction.

The declarations of “You were right” and “We feel your pain”, the promises of sanctions and urgent calls for two states, amount to nothing more than virtue-signalling. They are designed to divert public indignation over Israel’s atrocities away from the complicity of Western capitals and direct it exclusively at Netanyahu.

The new spin suggests the gun-wielding, religious zealots in the West Bank settlements who have been growing ever more violent and politically powerful for over half a century — under successive Israeli governments — are solely Netanyahu’s creation.

The new spin argues that the growing confidence of these pogromists, who have long worked hand in glove with the Israeli military, is entirely unrelated to the West’s unconditional support for Israel over many decades.

In absolving themselves, however, Western leaders are necessarily crafting a new lie to deceive their publics: one that suggests the “settler terrorists” are some kind of personal Netanyahu militia that stands or falls with his premiership.

The implication of this new narrative is that, were Netanyahu to be prised from power, a more empathetic leadership would emerge, one that could be cultivated by Western powers to make peace with the Palestinians.

This is all patent nonsense.

Supremacist political spectrum
Like the Israeli public, leaders from across Israel’s narrow Zionist, ethnic supremacist political spectrum shared the genocidal logic that propelled forward the past three-year erasure of Gaza.

None dissented. All engaged in genocidal incitement.

There is no hope of their making peace with the Palestinians under illegal occupation when Israeli leaders cannot even allow their own Palestinian “citizens” — a much-oppressed minority comprising a fifth of Israel’s population – a meaningful voice in next month’s general election.

The central elections committee, a political body whose members are drawn from Israel’s main parties, voted to ban from standing all four factions representing the Palestinian minority.

Whoever wins next month’s election, whether Netanyahu again or one of his rivals, will keep the country heading on the same ethnic supremacist track Israel has been on for decades. Trump, Burnham, Macron and other western leaders understand this.

They want Netanyahu out of the way not so there is real change but simply so they can revert to what constituted business as usual before the Gaza genocide: a slower, more incremental pace to the eradication of the Palestinian people.

Rebranding the Gaza genocide
They want to be able to rebrand the Gaza genocide as one man’s historic folly, a tragic catastrophe that cannot be reversed but can be mitigated if he is gone.

They want us looking resolutely forwards, to real-estate deals and a distant two-state solution, not backwards: to their active role in levelling the homes of more than two million people – with mostly US munitions that unleashed eight times the explosive force of the atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Trump administration has already okayed the shipment of vast numbers of these mega bombs to replenish Israeli stocks, even before the result of the Israeli election is known.

Notably, the same Trump administration that allowed Netanyahu, a war crimes suspect, to travel to the UN in New York blocked the putative leader of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, from doing so.

In announcing his new sanctions policy targeting Israel’s illegal settlements, Miliband was keen to stress that it would in no way affect intelligence sharing with Israel — the kind of intelligence coordination that saw British planes carrying out surveillance operations over Gaza throughout the genocide.

And while Miliband promised a “double lock against arms exports” to Israel as part of the UK’s sanctions package, in practice not a single existing arms export licence has been revoked or suspended since.

The current fight is not against a genocidal Israeli state or for some illusionary Palestinian state — let alone for justice for the endlessly abused Palestinian people.

Engineering a reset
It is about engineering a reset in which the West gets Israel’s old guard back in charge.

Western leaders have been embarrassed by the froth-mouthed rantings of Netanyahu’s government. This week Smotrich called for Israel to unleash its genocidal Gaza policies on the West Bank — presumably using the very bombs Trump is about to ship them.

He told the Israeli media: “We should do there what we did in Gaza.”

Western leaders fear what that would do to their sinking credibility. And they have allies in Israel, among its opposition, whose vision — at least for the moment — is not Smotrich’s of a Gaza-style eradication of the West Bank.

Rather they envision continuing the current trajectory of gradually turning the West Bank’s small, surviving Palestinian ghettos, trapped in a sea of illegal Jewish settlements, into mini-concentration camps — replicas of Gaza before it was destroyed.

Those are the competing visions among Israelis for the West Bank: the absolute confinement of Palestinians in a series of cages versus their extermination.

That is what is really at stake — nothing more — in the West’s struggle to unseat Netanyahu and uphold its fabled two-state solution.

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

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Aotearoa New Zealand will be the first to kick off a Global Day of Action next Saturday marking 1100 days of Israeli genocide with a rally and march in the heart of the country’s largest city.

Many other protests will be carried out across the country in a wave of solidarity for the people of Palestine suffering from genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank under illegal Israeli occupation.

The Global Alliance for Palestine (GAFP) has issued an urgent call for support worldwide for upholding international law.

• READ MORE: Challenging apartheid, defending human rights and amplifying global solidarity for Palestine
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“In Aotearoa New Zealand, our kaupapa/purpose is to build a landmark demonstration here as part of this worldwide global mobilisation for Palestine, with demonstrations in every major city,” the local organisers for a grand coalition of activist groups, churches and solidarity movements.

“Why does it matter? This mobilisation marks three years — 1100 days — of Israel’s systematic genocide against the Palestinian people.”

Media contact Rana Hamida for the Global March for Palestine Coalition (Tāmaki Makaurau) said: “International law is not optional. On October 10, we the people of the world and here in Aotearoa, demand an end to the violence, complicity and the enabling of a system that fuels crimes against humanity.

“New Zealand has the responsibility to stand on the right side of history, and we will hold our elected government accountable.”

Ceasefire ‘fiction’
The coalition’s statement said that despite diplomatic language and the “fiction of a ceasefire, the bombing of Gaza has not stopped”.

More than 74,200 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, including more than 18,000 children, and about 70 percent of buildings in Gaza are damaged or destroyed.

In the West Bank, land seizures and forced displacement continue.

The protest coalition said the New Zealand government had refused to “act meaningfully against this genocide. This is complicity.” The following “lack of action” was cited:

• Silence on illegal land seizures — Even when 22 countries, including Australia, Britain and Canada, condemned the latest West Bank land seizure, New Zealand stayed silent;
• Refusal to recognise Palestine — The coalition had the chance to recognise Palestine alongside Australia, the UK and Canada, but refused, calling it a matter of “when, not if” — then did nothing;
• Blocking sanctions — Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick’s Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill was denied even a first reading;
• Failure to support the ICJ case — The government does not support South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which centres on Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention in Gaza;
• Refusal to ban IDF holiday visas — The government will not alter the Working Holiday Scheme with Israel;
• Ignoring Rocket Lab and Black Sky concerns — The Palestine Solidarity Network of Aotearoa raised concerns with then Defence Minister Judith Collins in November 2024; she refused to investigate. On 12 August 2026, court proceedings were filed in the High Court of Wellington challenging the government’s approval of BlackSky satellites launched from the Rocket Lab site at Māhia, for spying for Israel over Gaza;
• Ongoing military cooperation — The NZDF sent its largest contingent in a decade to RIMPAC 2026, alongside Israel and the US; and
• Denying evidence of illegal abduction and torture. The government has dismissed evidence that Israel illegally abducted and tortured New Zealand citizens and tangata whenua during the Global Sumud Flotilla humanitarian mission, including videos posted by Israeli National Security Minister Ben-Gvir himself showing him taunting and abusing detained flotilla participants.

23+ protests nationwide
More than 23 demonstrations will take place across the motu/nation on October 10, from Whangārei in the north to Waihōpai Invercargill in the south — making this one of the largest coordinated days of action for Palestine ever seen in this country,” said the protest coalition statement.

“In Tāmaki Makaurau alone, more than 50 organisations have endorsed the Auckland rally and march, which will assemble at 2pm at Te Komititanga/Britomart Square before marching to Albert Park,” the statement said.

Groups taking part include 350 Aotearoa, Alternative Jewish Voices, Amnesty International Aotearoa, Auckland Peace Action, Banners for Palestine, Bayan Aotearoa New Zealand, Council of Islamic Organisations of New Zealand, Dayenu: New Zealand Jews against Occupation, Global Sumud Flotilla Aotearoa, ISO – University of Auckland, Justice for Palestine, Kaiāwhina, Kia Ora Gaza, New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, Palestinian Forum of New Zealand, Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa, Pax Christi Aotearoa, Polynesian Panther Party Aotearoa, Stop Wars Aotearoa, Students’ Justice for Palestine, Toitū te Tiriti, and Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom Aotearoa.

The march will feature speakers spanning human rights and social justice organisations, political parties, Palestinian families and performances from local artists.

The protesters are demanding:

• Sanction Israel immediately and isolate the apartheid regime. Introduce comprehensive sanctions now, particularly targeting companies supporting illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This includes imposing an immediate arms embargo, supporting the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, and backing Chlöe Swarbrick’s Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill;
• Uphold international law and end impunity. This includes supporting South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice;
• Recognise the State of Palestine;
• End complicity in military supply chains. Halt the export of surveillance technology and other dual-use goods that aid Israel’s military operations, including the launch of BlackSky satellites from Rocket Lab’s Māhia site;
• Expel the Israeli Ambassador and stop the diplomatic cover;
• Revoke the IDF holiday visas programme;
• Permit Palestinian families to settle in Aotearoa New Zealand, as was done for Ukrainian families; and Exit RIMPAC and Five Eyes for a robust, independent foreign policy.

The Palestine Forum of New Zealand (PFNZ) has appealed to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi (NZCTU) to follow the lead of the UK trade union movement and take meaningful action in support of Palestinian rights.

The call follows a key decision by the UK’s Trades Union Congress (TUC), representing more than 5.3 million workers, which has unanimously backed a motion supporting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The motion calls for action to oppose what it describes as the “catastrophic destruction” of Gaza and Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

• READ MORE: UK trade unions back motion to boycott and sanction Israel
• Other BDS sanctions reports
• The BDS movement

It includes calls for an end to military cooperation and arms deals with Israel, wide-ranging sanctions, divestment from companies complicit in violations of international law, and support for trade union-led workplace action.

The Palestine Forum said in a statement it was time for the New Zealand trade union movement to now have the same conversation.

“New Zealand workers and trade unions have a long history of standing up for justice, human rights and workers’ rights internationally,” said Maher Nazzal, founder and spokesperson of the forum.

“The UK trade union movement has taken a clear position that solidarity with Palestinian workers cannot stop at statements. It is calling for collective action against complicity.

Consider ‘meaningful action’
“We are asking NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi to consider what meaningful action New Zealand’s trade union movement can take.

“This is not about asking one organisation to speak for everyone. It is about opening a serious conversation within the New Zealand labour movement about what solidarity with Palestinian workers and the Palestinian people should look like in practice.”

The PFNZ is calling on NZCTU to:

• publicly consider and support Palestinian-led BDS initiatives;
• review trade union investments, procurement and relationships to identify links with companies involved in or benefiting from violations of Palestinian rights;
• support measures to end military and economic complicity with violations of international law;
• strengthen solidarity with Palestinian trade unions and workers;
• support workplace and union-led initiatives for Palestinian rights; and
• raise these issues with the New Zealand government, including the need for stronger action concerning the occupation, settlements and settler violence.

International partners
New Zealand has already joined international partners in sanctions targeting individuals and entities involved in financing and enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestine Forum said in the statement that the question was now whether New Zealand’s civil society and trade union movements were prepared to build on that position.

“Workers’ solidarity has always crossed borders,” Nazzal said.

“Palestinian workers and trade unionists are part of the global labour movement. When workers elsewhere face injustice, trade unions have historically understood that solidarity means more than words.

“We encourage NZCTU to engage with its affiliated unions, Palestinian representatives and civil society organisations and consider following the example now being set by the UK trade union movement.

“The UK has shown that trade unions can act collectively. We are asking New Zealand’s trade union movement to consider doing the same.”

A delegation of Māori leaders visiting Israel under the banner of “business and innovation” faces public criticism over its timing and purpose, while questions remain about how the trip was organised and the full extent of its funding, itinerary and engagement with Palestinian organisations.

The visit comes as New Zealand criticises the Israeli government’s actions in the occupied West Bank but stops short of joining international moves to ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements.

Northland Regional Council chair Pita Tipene is among those who have visited Israel in recent days. The trip is taking place against the backdrop of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, escalating Israeli settlement activity and settler violence in the West Bank.

• READ MORE:  Labour would prioritise recognition of Palestine, sanctions on Israel
• Peters’ ‘hot air’ over Israeli settlement trade ban rules out of step with world
• Palestine Forum condemns NZ for talk, no ‘meaningful action’ over illegal Israeli settlements
• Indigenizing Zionism: Narrative claims deployed by the Indigenous Coalition for Israel to evade settler-colonial characterization — Arama Rata
• Other Gaza reports

In September 2025, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has rejected that finding.

Former delegate says Israeli ministry funded the visit
Te Ao Māori News understands prospective delegation members were told the visit would focus on “business and innovation”.

Riki Manarangi, who travelled to Israel as part of a Māori delegation in November 2025, said he heard “through the grapevine” that another delegation was planned for 2026 and volunteered to recommend potential participants.

“I wasn’t formally approached or asked to organise anything,” he said.

“I reached out to a few people I thought would be a good fit and asked if they’d be keen to be considered. Some went, and some declined.”

Manarangi said he approached several people he believed would suit the delegation’s business and innovation focus but was not responsible for deciding who would participate.

He said Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs organised and funded the visit.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs over there are the ones who organise and fund it,” he said. “They cover basics … transport, accommodation, and kai.”

Asked who helped coordinate the current visit, Manarangi described Yifat Goddard as “like the programme lead” and said she was unpaid.

Goddard, an Israeli-New Zealander, also proposed the November 2025 Māori delegation that Manarangi joined, according to an account published by the “Indigenous Embassy” Jerusalem. Te Ao Māori News has asked Goddard for comment and has not yet received a response.

The Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem said it had no involvement in the current delegation and had not been approached to help organise, recruit for, fund or facilitate it. It said it learned of the visit second-hand and through social media.

MFAT notified after delegation was underway
New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it had no involvement in the visit.

“The Israeli government advised MFAT it was hosting the group once the visit was underway,” a spokesperson said.

MFAT did not say which arm of the Israeli government contacted it, what “hosting” involved or whether it was given information about the delegation’s funding.

Te Ao Māori News has requested further information under the Official Information Act, including correspondence about the visit and details of when and how MFAT was notified.

The Israeli Embassy’s initial response did not confirm who initiated or funded the delegation, what costs the Israeli government covered or how participants were selected.

It also did not identify which Israeli government officials or organisations the group was meeting or say whether the itinerary included engagement with Palestinians or Palestinian organisations.

Instead, the Embassy said it was pleased delegates had been able to visit Israel and “see the country for themselves, rather than relying solely on the picture presented through the media”.

It said delegations travelled throughout Israel, met Jewish, Arab, Druze and Bedouin Israelis, and were free to hear a range of views.

“Israel is a democratic country. Visitors are free to ask the questions they wish, to say whatever they want, and to make up their own minds,” it said.

Te Ao Māori News has since asked the Embassy to confirm Manarangi’s account, including Goddard’s role, whether international flights were covered and which Israeli government body administered the funding. It has not yet responded to that follow-up.

The New Zealand Israel Innovation Hub declined to confirm whether it was involved in the current visit.

It described the delegation as a “tremendous success”, saying that the assessment was based on social media posts and second-hand feedback. The hub said the visit had inspired plans for three Māori Innovation and Technology Delegations in 2027.

The first would focus on Northland Māori communities and educational outcomes. The hub also invited a representative from Whakaata Māori to consider joining one of its future delegations.

Pita Tipene says he will respond after returning to Aotearoa
Tipene declined an interview while overseas, saying he had received requests from several media organisations.

“I’ve responded by saying that I’ll speak my truth when I set foot home,” he told Te Ao Māori News.

Tipene has, however, responded publicly to criticism of his presence in Israel.

“It’s horrible and gut-wrenching, and it must stop!” he wrote.

“I am not pro-Israel — I am pro-peace and humanity, as the killing and destruction is happening across national boundaries here in Gaza and in other nations.

“I’m not here to judge, but I’m not immune to the gravity of what’s happening here either.”

Northland Regional Council said it had no involvement in the visit.

Chief executive Jonathan Gibbard said Tipene was travelling in a personal, non-council capacity and the council had not funded, organised or endorsed the trip.

Gibbard said the travel was not related to council business.

Other current delegates approached by Te Ao Māori News have not responded to requests for comment.

An invitation some Māori leaders declined
Some invited Māori leaders declined to participate. Te Ao Māori News understands concerns were raised during planning about the trip’s funding, its political context and whether delegates would have opportunities to hear directly from Palestinian communities.

Manarangi said prospective delegates who raised concerns were offered meetings with representatives of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and encouraged to participate. He said nobody was excluded because of concerns about Israel or Palestine, and those who did not travel had chosen to withdraw.

“There are plenty of people over there who are openly critical of the Israeli government, no different to here in Aotearoa; that’s just what living in a democracy looks like,” Manarangi said.

Te Ao Māori News continues to seek responses from others involved in facilitating the visit.

NZ condemns settlement expansion but does not join import-ban push

Questions about the delegation come as the United Kingdom, France and Canada move to ban imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The three countries were among 12 that issued a joint statement warning that unprecedented settlement expansion and settler violence were rapidly undermining the possibility of a Palestinian state.

Israel responded with retaliatory measures against the UK, including ordering the closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem, which serves Palestinians.

New Zealand did not sign the statement and said it was not in a position to introduce an import ban before the election.

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters issued a “standalone” statement on Wednesday saying New Zealand was “deeply concerned by the deteriorating situation in the West Bank”.

“There has been a marked escalation in Israel’s actions, jeopardising the prospect of a durable peace,” Peters said.

“Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are a violation of international law. Expanding settlements undermines prospects for a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict.”

“New Zealand strongly opposes actions that advance annexation or threaten the forcible displacement of Palestinians,” he said.

“Such measures are incompatible with international law and risk perpetuating the cycle of violence and insecurity.”

A spokesperson for Peters said New Zealand had not traditionally used trade measures to address foreign-policy issues. Introducing an import ban would require a full policy process that could not be completed before the election.

New Zealand had previously imposed travel bans on 38 people over extremist settlement activity, including two Israeli ministers, with the latest three bans announced in June.

New Zealand had earlier joined an international statement specifically opposing the Israeli Government’s E1 settlement plan, warning it would divide the West Bank and further undermine the possibility of a two-state solution.

Israel faces international legal scrutiny over Gaza conduct
Israel’s conduct in Gaza is also under scrutiny before two international courts.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

The ICC found reasonable grounds to believe they bore criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.

The warrants are not findings of guilt, and neither man has been tried or convicted by the ICC. Israel has rejected the court’s jurisdiction and denies the allegations against Netanyahu and Gallant.

Separately, South Africa’s genocide case against Israel remains before the International Court of Justice. The court has not issued a final judgment determining whether Israel committed genocide.

The full funding arrangements, selection process and itinerary for the current delegation remain unconfirmed. It is also unclear how the proposed 2027 delegations would be funded, structured or opened to participants.

Republished from Te Ao Māori News by Pacific Media Watch.

A pro-Palestine national advocacy and protest group has accused New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as being “derelict in its duties” if it is unable to identify and ban products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) made this statement today following announcements by the United Kingdom, France and Canada that they would ban imports of products which originated from the settlements. Nine other countries have pledged to follow up.

MFAT is reported to have stated a ban “would be complex and require a full policy process” and so New Zealand could not do this — at least until after the general election on November 7.

• READ MORE: Palestine Forum condemns NZ for talk, no ‘meaningful action’ over illegal Israeli settlements
• NZ joins call to end Israeli settlement expansion, but not import ban
• UK, France, Canada to ban imports from Israeli settlements — NZ critical but stops short of joining
• UK bans goods from Israeli West Bank settlements in ‘comprehensive reset’: What that really means
• Other Gaza, Palestine reports

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in the statement Palestinian support groups had been urging the government to identify imports from the occupied Palestinian Territory for more than 20 years, on the basis that settlement goods were falsely labelled as a “Product of Israel”.

“Then in July 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that UN members must ‘distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967’, as a means of ending the occupation,” she said.

“That’s plenty of time for MFAT to work out how to deliver a trade ban.”

Tamimi said there was ample precedent for import bans.

“The sanctions New Zealand imposes on Russia include oil, gas, coal and gold. Other Russian imports are prohibitively tariffed.

“There were comprehensive import bans on apartheid South Africa.

“So statements, like those made by ACT Leader David Seymour, that New Zealand is ‘a trading nation — we don’t generally use trade bans to make political points’, is quite untrue.”

Tamimi said MFAT was also falsely claiming that New Zealand was sending a clear signal to Israel that New Zealand condemned settler violence, and the Israeli government must control it, and it must not expand settlements.

“The government has banned a small bunch of rabid settlers from entering New Zealand, along with two ministers,” she said.

“But it also sent a clear message at the same time, in June last year, by stating that that it was just two ministers, and the ban was specifically not ‘designed to sanction the wider Israeli government’.”

“Yes, the message is clear to Israel — the New Zealand criticism is meaningless hot air.”

The Palestine Forum of New Zealand has called on the New Zealand government to follow France, the UK, Canada and nine other countries to impose restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Twelve countries have now announced measures targeting trade connected to Israeli settlements, signalling growing international concern over the continued expansion of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

However, both Australia and New Zealand failed to join the 12 countries in their ban.

• READ MORE: NZ joins call to end Israeli settlement expansion, but not import ban
• UK, France, Canada to ban imports from Israeli settlements — NZ critical but stops short of joining
• UK bans goods from Israeli West Bank settlements in ‘comprehensive reset’: What that really means
• Other Gaza, Palestine reports

“Where is New Zealand?” asked Maher Nazza, chair of the Palestine Forum, “Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank have expanded for decades, involving the transfer of Israeli civilians into occupied territory and the development of homes, businesses and infrastructure on land claimed by Palestinians.

“Settlement activity is not simply a political issue. It has significant economic dimensions. Goods produced in settlements enter international markets, while businesses and institutions can become connected to, and benefit from, settlement activity.”

Maher said in a statement New Zealand should not be importing or supporting an economic system that contributed to the entrenchment of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

“If the government is serious about international law, human rights and Palestinian self-determination, it must move from statements to action.”

Palestine Forum of New Zealand has called on the government to:

• Ban imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank;
• Prevent New Zealand companies and institutions from supporting or profiting from settlement activity;
• Review government procurement, investment and trade relationships linked to settlements; and
• Join international efforts to impose meaningful economic measures against the settlement enterprise.

Israel furious over new UK sanctions          Video: Novara Media

Nazzal said the question for the New Zealand government was straightforward: “If France, the United Kingdom, Canada and other governments are prepared to take action, why isn’t New Zealand?

“New Zealand should not wait for others to act.”

He said that if 12 countries could take action, New Zealand could too.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories were a violation of international law and expanding those settlements undermined prospects for a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict.

“New Zealand strongly condemns violence by settlers against Palestinian civilians and calls for accountability for those responsible.”

The UK has announced sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements and says Palestinians face ‘ethnic cleansing’ in parts of the occupied West Bank. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese calls it a ‘seismic shift’ after years of UK ‘complicity’, but says it is only the beginning. pic.twitter.com/b4Vh9e2vhx

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) September 8, 2026

In Australia, independent Senator David Pocock said it was really disappointing Australia had not joined the UK, France, Canada and others in expanding sanctions on the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

“The UK PM was clear: this is about the unacceptable actions of the Israeli government, not the Israeli people and about refusing to just stand by and watch the horrors being perpetrated against Palestinians,” he said.

“Australia should show the same courage and stand for international law, Palestinian rights and a secure future for both peoples.”

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese praised the UK  government for announcing the sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements and saying Palestinians faced “ethnic cleansing” in parts of the occupied West Bank.

She described it as a “seismic shift” after years of UK “complicity”, but added it was only the beginning.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters says New Zealand joins its international partners calling on Israel to end the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, but has stopped short of joining Britain, France and Canada in banning Israeli imports.

A spokesperson for the minister said New Zealand did not traditionally use trade measures to address foreign policy issues.

Peters issued a standalone statement on the matter, following the news from the UK overnight.

• READ MORE: UK, France, Canada to ban imports from Israeli settlements — NZ critical but stops short of joining
• UK bans goods from Israeli West Bank settlements in ‘comprehensive reset’: What that really means
• Other Gaza, Palestine reports

He said New Zealand was “deeply concerned by the deteriorating situation in the West Bank.”

“There has been a marked escalation in Israel’s actions, jeopardising the prospect of a durable peace.”

Peters said the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories were a violation of international law and expanding those settlements undermined prospects for a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict.

“New Zealand strongly condemns violence by settlers against Palestinian civilians and calls for accountability for those responsible.”

‘End settlements expansion’ call
Peters joined international partners in calling on the government of Israel to “end the expansion of settlements, prevent and address settler violence, and refrain from actions that further undermine the prospects for peace.”

New Zealand is deeply concerned by the deteriorating situation in the West Bank. There has been a marked escalation in Israel’s actions, jeopardising the prospect of a durable peace.

Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are a violation of international…

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) September 8, 2026

But he also said New Zealand “strongly opposes actions that advance annexation or threaten the forcible displacement of Palestinians.”

“Such measures are incompatible with international law and risk perpetuating the cycle of violence and insecurity.”

A spokesperson for the minister said the UK-led statement referenced a “future trade ban on settlement goods.”

“New Zealand has not traditionally used trade measures to address foreign policy issues.

“They are different from sanctions. To do so would be complex and require a full policy process. We are not in a position to do that ahead of the election.”

The spokesperson said New Zealand had consistently raised concerns about settlements and settler violence for years, placing travel bans on 38 Israeli settlers and two Israeli ministers, the most recent of which were announced in June.

“This is a clear signal that this violence is unacceptable.”

This story was first published on

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned and highlighted recent attacks and obstructions committed by the Israeli military against Palestinian journalists reporting from the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, RSF says this targeted violence is aimed at preventing media professionals from doing their jobs.

It also condemned the documented violence by extremist Jewish settlers against the Palestinian population.

• READ MORE:  The Gaza doctrine – Israeli ‘journacide’ and the muted NZ media response
• Other Palestinian journalist reports

“RSF condemns the Israeli army’s attacks on journalists and calls on Israel’s allied governments to pressure the country’s authorities to put an end to these actions,” said Martin Roux, head of RSF’s Crisis Desk.

“Amidst documented violence by extremist Jewish settlers against the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers are targeting journalists, thereby preventing information from emerging from this territory, which is increasingly cut off from the rest of the world.

Against the backdrop of intensified repression of Palestinian journalists since 7 October 2023, RSF has documented key incidents over the past three months:

11 May: Violence at Qalandiya camp
Israeli armed forces targeted a group of journalists with tear gas and stun grenades while they were covering a raid on the Qalandiya camp, located between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, both territories under Israeli occupation. The attack specifically targeted a crew from the Qatari channel Al Araby.

16 May: Access to Jenin camp barred
Israeli armed forces barred journalists from entering the Jenin camp in the northern occupied West Bank while military and demolition operations were underway. According to reporters on the scene, Israeli soldiers had sealed off the area.

27 May: Journalist prevented from visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound
Saif Al-Qawasmi, a 25-year-old freelance journalist who works for the Qatari news channel Al Jazeera Mubasher, among others, was detained by police while heading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem on assignment. He was subsequently questioned about his work by law enforcement and Israeli intelligence for several hours. He was banned from accessing the site (initially for one week, and later for six months) on arbitrary grounds. This punitive access ban is frequently used by Israeli authorities against Palestinian journalists, a practice that predates the crackdown following 7 October 2023.

7 June: Live fire in Balata camp
A group of journalists went to the Balata camp, east of Nablus, to cover a large-scale raid by the Israeli army. Among them were Majdi Mohammed Shteih, a photographer for the US news agency Associated Press, and freelance journalist Sidqi Ayoub Rayyan, who works for the news site Noon Post. According to their accounts to RSF, the Israeli army fired stun grenades in their direction and then opened fire while they were attempting to cover the military operation.

16 June: Targeted attacks in Nablus and Deir Abu Mashaal
In the early hours of the night, while protecting a convoy of extremist Jewish settlers (not necessarily Israeli citizens) who had illegally entered Palestinian territory en route to Joseph’s Tomb, east of Nablus, the Israeli army forced out about 10 journalists reporting in the area (including crews from the Qatari channel Al Jazeera and the Jordanian channel Roya News) using stun grenades, thereby preventing media coverage of the event.

That same day, Motassem Saqf Al-Hayt, a correspondent for the independent news site Quds News Network, was injured after the Israeli army fired tear gas grenades while he was reporting from Deir Abu Mashaal, a village west of Ramallah where other settlers were attempting to establish an outpost.

22 July: Haaretz team obstructed south of Nablus
The Israeli army blocked a vehicle belonging to a team from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz south of Nablus. Soldiers claimed that the move was intended to prevent clashes with settlers established in the area.

On 10 August, the same Haaretz team was blocked and attacked by other settlers near a neighbouring village. This time, Israeli soldiers present at the scene refused to intervene and to protect the journalists, according to accounts.

19 journalists detained
Alongside these attacks against Palestinian journalists covering events, the number of journalist arrests in the occupied West Bank has surged since 7 October 2023. Of the 19 Palestinian journalists from the West Bank detained by Israeli authorities, 15 were arrested after that date.

Most recently, on the morning of 12 August 2026, Israeli armed forces arrested freelance journalist Mohammed Awad, who has notably contributed video work to Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Qatari channel Al Jazeera, at his home in the village of Beitunia, west of Ramallah, on charges of “terrorism”. When contacted by RSF, the army had not, as of this writing, provided information to substantiate this accusation.

Foreign journalists also targeted
This crackdown on local journalists is compounded by obstacles facing international press correspondents. French journalist Alice Froussard, a contributor to Radio France Internationale (RFI), was deported upon her arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on June 10. This followed entry bans issued against journalists Queralt Castillo, Khadija Toufik, and Alessandro Stefanelli.

RSF, with the support of its Palestinian partner Watan Academy, continues its commitment to journalist safety. In August, the organisation conducted Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT), tailored to the local context, for 20 Palestinian journalists.

• Read the full report at Reporters Without Borders.

ANJALI KAMAT: This is Democracy Now!, I’m Anjali Kamat.

We turn to the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlers are continuing to lay siege on homes in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. The siege has attracted international attention, in part because one of the homes is owned by a Palestinian American.

The US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, surprised many when he recently described the siege as a, “horrific act of terror” being committed by, “Israeli terrorists”.

Loui Ridi, who lives in Ohio, spoke to Reuters before he flew from the United States to the West Bank to protect his home there.

• READ MORE: Qusra is where Israel’s lies about settler violence hit a wall
• Palestinian victims of Israeli settler attacks face battle for justice
• Qusra siege by Israeli settler ‘terrorists’ in West Bank persists despite global outcry
• Other occupied West Bank reports

LOUI RIDI: I have a lot of emotion in Qusra. I was born and raised in Qusra. My mother, 83 years old, still in Qusra, my sisters, my brothers, my nieces, my nephews, my cousins, my friends.

ANJALI KAMAT: Shortly after Loui Ridi landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, he received a video showing Israeli soldiers shaking the hands of the Israeli settlers laying siege to his home.

LOUI RIDI: When I landed, my brother sent me this video. That’s terrifying. That just happened like an hour ago. And they’re near the soldierS. They’re shaking hands with the soldiers. That’s just happening today.

I’m going to stay in this house tonight. So, I’m terrified. I’m asking the US officials, the embassy, to provide me protection and to remove the settlers permanently from our village and my area.

ANJALI KAMAT: Then, after Loui Ridi arrived back in the village of Qusra and reunited with his brother and other relatives, he raised an American flag on the roof of his home.

LOUI RIDI: I came here to be present with him. I left my luxury home in America. I left my luxury vehicles in America. I left my wife, my two daughters. I left my business and decided to be here at my home to protect it from the settlers [trying] to steal it, and raising the American flag to send the message to the American Embassy and the US officials that I am currently under siege and I need a protection.

ANJALI KAMAT: Despite Loui Ridi’s return, settlers have continued to confront the family. In this video, a settler is seen approaching and harassing Ridi on his own property.

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: You are a terrorist settler. You know that?

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: You are a terrorist settler. It’s garbage.

You know what that means? You stink. You stink. Move. Move. Don’t touch me.

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: Don’t touch me.

SETTLER: [speaking Hebrew]

LOUI RIDI: Terrorist. You are a terrorist.

ANJALI KAMAT: We go now to Qusra, where we’re joined by Loui Ridi.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Loui. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing right now? Describe the scene. Do you still have settlers coming into your property?

LOUI RIDI: Thank you for having me.

Day four in Qusra
Yes, this is my fourth day here in Qusra, in my house, that is still under siege by the IDF and the settlers. The settlers still manage every day to pass by my house. And the IDF are present and not doing anything to them.

They’re not arresting them whatsoever.

ANJALI KAMAT: Your reaction, Loui, to the comments by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee describing the settlers as “Israeli terrorists”?

LOUI RIDI: Well, again, I appreciate Mike Huckabee condemned it, called them terrorists. But I’ve been in contact with the embassy, that nothing has been done on the ground. And actually, I asked the US Embassy to send me a team to see themselves what’s going on here in my own house, so [they] can see what’s going on.

ANJALI KAMAT: And what kind of protection have you got?

LOUI RIDI: None. I’m not getting no protection here. I’m still [in] fear for my life. I still fear for my family’s life here. The IDF not even making it better here. They’re not allowing us to leave the house. They’re not allowing anyone to come to my house freely. If we need to bring food, we have to do coordination through the mayor of Qusra, and then he has to call the Palestinian Authority, and then they have to call the Israeli authority. It takes hours, if not days.

ANJALI KAMAT: Loui, this area of Qusra has been under siege for months, and your home specifically for at least a week, if not longer. And you’ve had — when you reach out to the US Embassy, I mean, you have the ambassador to Israel speaking out about this. You are an — what are they saying in response when you reach out for help? You have an American flag on your home.

Meet Loui Ridi – the Palestinian American returns home      Video: Democracy Now!

Under attack since January
LOUI RIDI: That’s right. This house has been under attack by Israeli settlers since January this year. It’s been under siege for 13 days. We have reached the US member of Congress local office. I have reached multiple times the US Embassy that I need help. Yes, I raised the American flag to send my message to the American people and to the government of the United States that there is an American under siege by the Israeli settlers, needs help.

ANJALI KAMAT: I want to bring into the conversation Oren Ziv in Tel Aviv. He’s a reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine and the independent Israeli local news site Local Call. His most recent article is headlined “Qusra is where Israel’s lies about settler violence hit a wall.”

Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what are these lies? What did you see in Qusra?

OREN ZIV: Yeah, thank you for having me.

I’ve been to Qusra twice in the recent week. First, a week ago on Friday, with — a group of activists [who] tried to march to Ridi’s house to bring food and water and medicine, and were blocked by the Israeli army and border police, the same army and police who allow for months the settlers to attack, to murder there, to injure. Israeli human rights activists were severely injured there a few months ago. Houses were attacked and vandalised.

Amir Odeh, a young Palestinian, was shot there during the war against Iran. And this is all happening, of course, with the active support of the army and the police. So, the first time, I was there on Friday, and we were blocked as journalists, also the activists that were coming bringing the food.

And the police and the army just let the activists leave the food near a few meters from the house. And later, local MK, parliament member, Ofer Cassif managed to bring it in.

Authorities do nothing
And the second time, I actually managed to go in, after waiting for a long time outside and talking to the army. And what I could see is the same reality that Loui is describing. Despite all the international attention, the media attention, the Americans speaking about it, the Israeli army and authorities are doing barely nothing to control the situation.

The house is still under siege. Settlers are roaming around. And, you know, myself as a journalist and many people are asking: Does the army — does the army [not] want to do anything, or under the political current situation in Israel, they can’t do anything? They don’t control the situation in the West Bank.

And, you know, I think it’s a hard question, but either way, the situation on the ground is that the house is under siege. You know, the army cannot deal with the 20, 30, 40 settlers that are acting violently, attacking this property and others.

And I think this is happening because of, of course, the support from the Israeli extreme government, but because of the perception that any settler, 10 years old, 15 years old, 20 years old, can do anything that he wants in the West Bank, putting up outposts, putting a siege, killing, attacking, going to all these tours or trips and harassing Palestinians.

And soldiers are just not – they don’t think about the option to put a limit to that. And even though that the chief-of-staff talks about it and the commander of the West Bank, and I think the story gained a lot of attention because it shows the current situation of the Israeli army, that they cannot deal with five or 10 settlers.

But this kind of perception that settlers can do whatever they want and the army just has to support it is very, very strong.

ANJALI KAMAT: Oren, can you talk about this argument that, you know, Bibi Netanyahu is making, also, to some extent, Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, that there’s some sort of distinction between the settlers here — I believe Mike Huckabee called them “unsettlers” — and the vast majority of other settlers? And there also seems to be a distinction, you know, so, sort of “good settlers” and “bad settlers”.

‘Group of troubled youth’
OREN ZIV: Exactly. This is something Netanyahu — so, Netanyahu doesn’t give interviews to local media. He talks in American media. And when he’s asked about this, he always says, “This is a group of troubled youth.”

You know, sometimes he says 70, 150. But it’s very, very clear: They can act like this because of the active support from the Israeli government that gives them weapons, gives them ATVs, like the ones they raided Ridi’s house in Qusra and other houses, because of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, the establishment of more and more outposts that are kind of front bases for these terror attacks.

And they could not stay one day without the active support of the police that is completely controlled by Ben-Gvir, by the army that is controlled by the settlers and by the extreme government.

We did a story a few months ago about how the settlers, after — since October 7, they managed to ethnically cleanse dozens of Palestinian communities in Area C, mostly farming and herding communities. They just moved on.

And they say it openly, to Area — they say it openly, to Area A, to Area B of the West Bank, besieging houses, villages and town, and taking them over. And according to our investigation a few months ago, they already took over tens of thousands of hectares inside Area B and A that, according to the Oslo Accord and even according to official Israel, are under Palestinian control.

So, all this is happening with — like, this example, it’s happening in hundreds of other locations in the West Bank. The thing is, here — because even next to Abu Ridi’s house, in Jalud, the same tactic from the same violent outpost happened a month ago, that the Tubasi family was forced out.

‘Brave family’ slowed settlers
And the only difference here is that this brave family managed to slow down the process a bit with their decision not to leave, even [though] they had barely any food and water, with the violent attacks, the fact they’re under siege. They insisted on staying. He came from the US and managed to get media attention, including mainstream media, even local mainstream media, that have barely covered [the issue].

ANJALI KAMAT: Oren, I just want to go back to Loui Ridi, the Palestinian American whose home in Qusra is under siege by settlers. Loui, why did you return from Ohio to your home in Qusra?

LOUI RIDI: Well, I’d been watching all the attacks on my house, on my brother and his son, on the — live [feed] on my security cameras. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I have to stay up all night. And the situation became dangerous way when they completely blocked him off from food on August 9.

And I was talking to my brother, and I told him, “You know what? I’m going to come, and I will do whatever it takes to provide you food and supplies and end the siege, and trying to protect you.”

ANJALI KAMAT: Loui Ridi, thank you for joining us. We will continue to follow the settler siege on your home in Qusra. Thank you also to Oren Ziv of +972 Magazine. We will link to your new piece, “Qusra is where Israel’s lies about settler violence hit a wall.”

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

Still drawing international censure for his genocidal call to kill dozens of Gazans daily, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has faced fresh condemnation after visiting the construction site of a gallows where Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis are set to be hanged to death, with select Israelis gathering as spectators.

Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, posted a video to social media in which he gloats about the construction of gallows, which is being built in an undisclosed location in central Israel.

“I promised to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons — we kept it,” Ben-Gvir says in the video. “I promised to pass the Death Penalty for Terrorists law — we did.

• READ MORE: Israel builds execution chamber for Palestinians convicted of murder
• Other Israeli execution reports

“And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”

The law to which Ben-Gvir referred was passed in March by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and took effect the following month. The legislation changes the rules governing Israeli military courts in the illegally occupied West Bank so that the death penalty effectively applies only to Palestinians who kill Israelis.

Far-right Knesset members, including Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to show their support for the legislation.

Ben-Gvir also handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading.

WATCH: National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announce expansion of newly approved death row facilities, including observation booths.

‘Terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging’ pic.twitter.com/MRKJoSVD9q

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) August 18, 2026

Viewing booths
Ben-Gvir said the execution site would include viewing booths where victims’ families could watch executions, describing this as something customary in various countries and specifically citing the United States as an example.

“Terrorists deserve only one thing — death by hanging,” said Ben-Gvir, who in 2007 was convicted by an Israeli court of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organisation, whose leader he has openly honoured.

Abdullah al-Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, urged “effective international action” in response to Ben-Gvir’s comments. Al-Zaghari told Anadolu news agency that the minister’s visit to the gallows site was part of the “continued determination of the Israeli occupation system” to codify incitement against Palestinians.

Leftist Israeli Knesset lawmaker Ofer Cassif excoriated Ben-Gvir’s actions.

“This criminal thug — a sympathiser of murderers of Palestinians, a supporter of terror, and a pathological racist — is also hopelessly infantile,” Cassif told The New Arab. “Soon we will oust him from the government, and next, throw him behind bars.”

European Parliament Vice-President Pina Picierno accused Ben-Gvir of staging “a horrific spectacle that turns the death penalty into a show”.

The liberal US pro-Israel group J Street asked on X, “Are we supposed to believe, as some in the Jewish establishment would like us to, that Ben-Gvir’s words somehow tell us nothing about the country he helps govern?”

Jewish extremists excluded
“He is Israel’s National Security Minister, and he is now celebrating a facility built to execute Palestinians while Jewish extremists are excluded from the law,” the group added.

“As the old saying goes: When someone tells you who they are, believe them. When a government gives someone this much power, we have to reckon honestly with the agenda they are pushing.”

Ben-Gvir — who is under sanctions and banned from countries including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank — was still being denounced on Wednesday for advocating the daily mass killing of Palestinians, including civilians, in Gaza amid a nearly three-year war that United Nations experts, human rights groups, a South Africa-led case currently before the International Court of Justice, and many others call a genocide.

Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said on Wednesday — which was World Humanitarian Day — that Ben-Gvir’s “remarks are appalling, they’re outrageous, they’re dehumanising, they’re dangerous, and we condemn them unequivocally.”

A spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Wednesday in Berlin that Merz “strongly condemns Minister Ben-Gvir’s inhumane statements, which violate international law — they are unacceptable.”

“As the occupying power, Israel must treat Palestinians with dignity, protect their property, and ensure public administration and humanitarian aid,” the spokesperson added.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called Ben-Gvir’s remarks “unbearable and inhumane,” adding that “further sanctions could be imposed, and all options are on the table.”

In the United States, actor and activist Mark Ruffalo said Thursday on Bluesky that “Ben-Gvir is a bloodthirsty psychopath, war criminal, and one of Israel’s beloved genocidal leaders.”

“America and the world should be sanctioning, divesting, and boycotting Israel in every way until this apartheid regime falls,” he added.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams. This article was first published by Common Dreams and is republished under Creative Commons.

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

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

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

• LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Television New Zealand outdid itself last week.

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

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

Here is the complaint we have lodged with TVNZ:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is literally a deadly framing for Palestinians.

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

The report amounts to a lie.

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

What is happening right now is [the] erasure of humans, trees and stones, and anything that is Palestinian, by settlers under the support of the military.

— Muntasir al-Maliki, a resident of Kufr Malik

Palestinian Bedouins lived for generations in the occupied West Bank village of Khirbet Zanuta (Zanuta), sustaining themselves through herding, farming and dairy production.

The village was designated as part of Area C under the 1995 Oslo II Accords, placing it under full Israeli military and administrative control.

Today, Zanuta is being eaten away by Israeli outposts and settlements and destroyed by  state-sponsored violence and terror.

• READ MORE: Amnesty International accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank
• Erasing anything Palestinian: Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the West Bank Bedouin amd herding communities
• Other Gaza genocide, West Bank reports

Just 1km from Zanuta, Israeli settlers established an illegal outpost known as Meitarim Farm in 2021.

The settlers soon began a sustained campaign of violent attacks and threats against Zanuta’s residents.

They set fire to the villagers’ tents and classrooms, broke into their homes, beat them with rifles, threw stones at them, smashed their solar panels and windows, emptied their water tanks and pumped sewage onto their farmland.

The story of Zanuta reflects the fate of dozens of Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities already displaced or at imminent risk of displacement in Area C.

This report lays bare the scale and severity of the ethnic cleansing campaign targeting these communities, carried out in a context of apartheid and unlawful occupation and against the backdrop of an ongoing genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip.

The report also demonstrates — contrary to what too many in the international community suggest — that the campaign is not the product of “rogue” settlers, settlers’ organisations or “extremist” government ministers.

In other words, settler violence is not an aberration but an integral part of an organised state policy.

The escalating violence in Zanuta followed decades of systematic discrimination by the Israeli authorities, including constant threats of home demolitions to force them to leave, a common practice adopted by Israel to enforce its system of apartheid.

Zanuta’s residents repeatedly reported settler attacks to the Israeli police, seeking protection, but no action was ever taken.

When the settlers from Meitarim Farm again raided the village on 21 October 2023, this time accompanied by Israeli forces, and threatened to harm residents if they did not leave, the community knew they had no choice but to flee.

In a rare move, in July 2024 and February 2025, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the police and military to facilitate the community’s return and protect residents from attacks.

The Israeli police and military ignored both rulings. Every attempt by residents to return was met with continued settler violence and the acquiescence of Israeli forces.

Digital evidence, interviews and satellite imagery from 30 March 2025 confirm the outcome: Zanuta no longer exists — it has been forcibly depopulated and extensively destroyed.

Meanwhile, the settlers received state backing to intensify their violent campaign. In April 2025, two Israeli ministers — Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strock — held an event at Meitarim Farm where they distributed 19 state-funded all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), cameras and night-vision equipment to settlers living in outposts in the Hebron area.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich explained why:

“The heroic and pioneering settlers who live here are doing Zionism, and they need security… We are here to build with them and to settle the land…”

… while praising settler land seizures and emphasising the role of ATVs in taking over Palestinian grazing land.

The report demonstrates that the ethnic cleansing campaign in Area C is state-sanctioned, state-driven and state-implemented; it seeks to accelerate the Israeli government’s annexation agenda and settlement expansion through war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As such, the report’s conclusions demand that the international community fully confront and name the Israeli state-driven project, and act decisively to prevent the destruction of Palestinian communities and the annexation of the West Bank.

Amnesty International’s legal analysis
Zanuta is one of 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank that have faced either full or partial displacement due to settler attacks and related access restrictions between January 2023 and April 2026, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In total, approximately 5910 people were forced to leave their homes, leaving behind them vast, depopulated areas. Most of the affected communities lie in Area C, which comprises over 60 percent of the West Bank, and has been central to Israel’s territorial and demographic quest for domination for decades because of its natural resources, vital grazing and agricultural land and small Palestinian population.

In late December 2022, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party formed Israel’s 37th government in coalition with two ultra nationalist and religious political parties.

While state-supported settler violence has been a growing concern over the past three decades for Palestinian communities in the West Bank, there has been an unprecedented surge in the scale and intensity of attacks since then.

Tactics became particularly aggressive after 7 October 2023 when Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups attacked southern Israel, killing approximately 1200 people, mostly civilians, and forcibly taking 251 others to the Gaza Strip where they were held as hostages and subjected to abuses.

Amnesty International found that these acts constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In response, Israel launched a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip of unparalleled magnitude, scale and duration and inflicted catastrophic levels of destruction, displacement and starvation on Gaza’s civilian population, committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

While most global attention focused on Gaza, Israel intensified its abusive policies and practices against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, with government officials openly encouraging and supporting settler attacks.

Displacement and dispossession: war crimes and crimes against humanity
Ideologically motivated Israeli settlers have terrorised Palestinian communities through repeated raids on their homes and villages, beatings, death threats demanding they leave, persistent harassment, the destruction of property and village infrastructure, cutting off access to water and electricity, and theft of their livestock and belongings.

These practices deliberately intensified an already coercive environment aimed at forcibly displacing and dispossessing Palestinians, manifested in state policies of access restrictions, home demolitions and settlement expansion. Palestinians who have attempted to return have found their villages fenced off or destroyed, or have faced renewed settler attacks, harassment and intimidation, forcing them to flee again.

These settler attacks are the direct result of a state policy that integrated and enabled the settler movement’s vision of “Greater Israel”, an ideology that treats the area extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, including the entirety of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), as an integral part of Israel.

Senior Israeli officials in the 37th government have fully embraced this vision and explicitly encouraged, facilitated and condoned settler violence against Bedouin and herding communities as a deliberate tool of displacement with greater openness and force than their predecessors, as they pursued their goal of formally annexing the West Bank under Israeli law.

Since 1967, Israel has been enforcing its occupation through military orders and regulations.

The situation in the OPT, including in Area C of the West Bank, is therefore primarily governed by international humanitarian law (including the rules of the law of occupation); and international human rights law. The same international norms apply to occupied East Jerusalem, illegally annexed by Israel since 1967, despite Israel’s attempts to separate it from the rest of the West Bank through a regime of fragmentation and legal segregation.

In this report, Amnesty International presents conclusive evidence that these violations, perpetrated between January 2023 and December 2025, amount to the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer and the crime against humanity of forcible transfer or deportation, committed as part of a policy to ethnically cleanse Area C of the occupied West Bank by forcibly displacing Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities and expanding illegal settlements at their expense.

Amnesty International uses the term ethnic cleansing in this report to describe a deliberate pattern of conduct aimed at permanently removing Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities from specific areas of the occupied West Bank, in particular Area C.

While ethnic cleansing is not recognised as an independent crime under international law, Amnesty International uses the term in line with the UN Commission of Experts on Former Yugoslavia’s definition, which describes it as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas”.

While this report covers the period between December 2022 and December 2025, these egregious crimes are ongoing and are part and parcel of Israel’s system of apartheid, as shown by Amnesty International’s continuous documentation and reporting of the situation on the ground.

• Read the full Amnesty International report

An official of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) praised this month’s High Court judicial ruling over New Zealand Superfund “unreasonable and unlawful” investment policies towards Israeli companies — but warned that the fund management would need to shape up.

Speaking at the PSNA rally at Te Komititanga Square today in week 133 of protests over Israeli genocide in Gaza, national secretary Neil Scott also gave a verbal bouquet to all the activists and lawyers who had achieved the victory after a 20-year struggle.

He named Phil McNeale as one of the activists who began pushing for the Superfund to divest from Israeli companies funding illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank about two decades ago.

• READ MORE:  PSNA says High Court Superfund decision a victory for Palestinian rights
• NZ’s $86 billion Super Fund failed to properly address human rights, court rules in Palestine case
• The High Court ruling on the NZ Superfund policies
• Other PSNA reports on Palestine

PSNA earlier issued a statement declaring that this was an “important and timely win for Palestine” and expressed confidence that the Superfund would “quickly divest from the four companies [where] it holds investments” which were on the UN Human Rights Council list involved in building and maintaining illegal Israeli settlements.

Scott recalled that during 2020 and 2021, PSNA had called on the Superfund chief executive Matt Whineray to divest from Israeli banks.

“We know Israel cannot build the illegal colonies in the West bank without bank funding,” he said.

“Essentially, our NZ Superfund was investing in funding war crimes. On our behalf.”

‘Shameful policy’
On each communication about the “shameful” policy, Whineray had rejected the PSNA protest.

“In 2021, PSNA got a King’s Counsel (KC) lawyer to review the investments in Israeli banks and then sent a letter to then Minister of Finance Grant Robertson setting out the legal opinion,” Scott said.

“Robertson refused to respond to us. But soon after, the Superfund divested from four Israeli banks. Yes, we won then.”

However, Scott said that in 2021, just after the divestment decision, the Israeli Institute was “all over the Superfund with a flood of OIA requests — six of them”.

“A bunch of private individual OIA requests also went in,” Scott said.

“Usually, the Superfund received about 3 or 4 OIA requests a year. In 2021, it received 11.

“So, it seems as if massive pressure was put on the NZ Superfund to change its policies on ethical investments — to benefit Zionist Israel.

‘Gutting ethical investment’
“In 2022, it did just that. Gutting the ethical investment policies so that even investments in Israeli banks wouldn’t have been excluded.”

Scott said the Superfund dropped any reference to the “UN Global Compact” and the “Principles for Responsible Investment” — two of the main ethical investment policies in the world.

“It did this, sliding the changes through in the shadows without letting anyone know. Just slid it through in the shadows.”

PSNA kept on calling the Superfund to divest from the UN Divestment list. However, the Superfund responded by claiming that the companies cited “did not meet their, now secret, threshold”.

Late in 2024, PSNA decided to call for a judicial review of the Superfund’s investment in four companies.

“We briefed two KCs on the call. They agreed that it would have a good chance of winning,” Scott said.

“During the process of discovery, the KCs found that the Superfund had secretly changed its ethical investment policies during 2022.”

Who is responsible?
Scott said the PSNA was now determined to find out who were responsible for changing the ethical investment policies for the “benefit of a foreign country”.

He named a minister, chair of the board and the chief executive at the time of the change, saying that as a result of the High Court ruling, the Superfund “has a duty to reformulate the policy documents consistently with the [NZ Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001]”.

Scott praised the team responsible for winning the case: PSNA co-chair John Minto; co-chair Maher Nazzal, a Palestinian; Palestinian Rawaa Elhanafy; Rodney Harrison KC (who wrote the original letter to then minister Robertson in 2021); Francis Joychild KC; and B A Mugisho.

He also gave a final message to the cheering protest crowd: “A word of advice to everyone in the management of the Superfund — Aotearoa is our country. Not racist, ethnic cleansing, land thieving genocidal Zionist Israel.

“You work for Aotearoa. Do your job.”

May Day ‘Stop war’ rally
Among other speakers at the protest, Stop Wars Aotearoa organiser Joe Carolan appealed for support at next Friday’s May Day “Stop the fuel crisis and stop the war” rally at 6pm at Karanga-a-Hape Station.

“High fuel prices are driving workers reliant on cars off the roads. Our rightwing coalition government rules for the rich and doesn’t feel the pain of the cost of living crisis. We need solutions, not excuses,” Carolan said.

“The Solution: Free, frequent public transport for all, funded by taxes on the oil companies and the super rich.”

The Stop Wars Aotearoa coalition is demanding:

• Immediate free transport as a climate and cost-of-living solution;
• Permanent, 24 hr, frequent and fare-free transit for all, paid for by taxing corporations and billionaires; and
• Prioritised fuel for essential services, not luxury, while transitioning to renewables. New green jobs in a massive expansion of public transport and rail.

The planning and policy committee of New Zealand’s largest city today voted decisively to review its procurement policies to ensure it is in step with the UN Human Rights Council which has listed companies complicit with illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestine Territory.

Auckland Council is the local body governing a “super city” with a population of more than 1.8 million people — almost a third of the country’s total population.

The council’s policy, planning and development committee voted 14 to 2 with 4 abstentions to call for a review report by July about sanctioning UN-listed companies over illegal Israeli settlements.

• READ MORE: NZ’s third-largest city sanctions Israel over illegal Palestine settlements
• Other Occupied Palestine reports

“Israel has been stealing Palestinian land and moving Israeli settlers onto the land in defiance of international law,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal.

“The local Palestinian community and our supporters sincerely thank the Auckland councillors who today have voted for steps to refuse to procure goods or services from any of the companies involved in building and maintaining these settlements,” he said in a statement.

“Auckland ratepayers deserve to know their rates are not being used to support Israeli war crimes, as designated by the UN General Assembly, Security Council, international conventions and the International Court of Justice.

Councillor Julie Fairey moved the resolution calling for the report “on the alignment of Auckland Council policies and practices with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334”.

She rejected the arguments of councillors who opposed it by arguing that the council should “stick to its knitting”.  She responded that decisions should be made so that “the needles and the wool don’t have blood on them”.

Six local bodies have acted
The resolution was seconded by councillor Sarah Peterson-Hamlin.

Councillor Maurice Williamson voted against the resolution.

However, as a cabinet minister of the Key/English National government at the time, he stated he had supported New Zealand co-sponsorship of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 in 2016, calling Israeli settlements “a flagrant breach of international law”.

Williamson then went on to attack the UN Human Rights Council, falsely claiming it was chaired by Iran, when in fact its current president is Indonesian Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro.

PSNA’s Kathy Ross presented a submission in support of the motion.

“Already six different local bodies have taken this step — it’s good to see Auckland following along the same path,” Nazzal said.

New Zealand’s third-largest city, Christchurch, voted to sanction Israel in October 2024.

A strong contingent of supporters for the Auckland resolution were present for the debate and delighted with the result.

New Zealand has joined Australia, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom in expressing “deep concern” about an Israeli bill expanding the death penalty for Palestinians.

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters posted on social media last night, indicating New Zealand had joined the other nations, and emphasising the country’s opposition “for decades” to the death penalty “in all circumstances”.

It comes as the Green Party tried yesterday to move a motion in Parliament on the issue, but failed to get the support of all parties.

• READ MORE: Israel passes extreme death penalty law targeting only Palestinians
• ‘Dangerous escalation’: World reacts to Israel passing death penalty law
• Other Palestine genocide reports

The ACT party told RNZ it did not support the motion being put without notice, and noted the Minister of Foreign Affairs was responsible for expressing New Zealand’s position on international issues.

Earlier this week, the Israeli Parliament finalised a controversial bill that would effectively expand the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism and nationalistic murders.

The bill stipulated that residents in the West Bank who killed an Israeli “with the intent to negate the existence of the State of Israel” would be sentenced to death.

The Foreign Ministers of Australia, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom released a joint statement expressing their “deep concern” about the bill, saying it would “significantly expand the possibilities to impose the death penalty in Israel”.

‘Discriminatory character’
“We are particularly worried about the de facto discriminatory character of the bill. The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.

“The death penalty is an inhumane and degrading form of punishment without any deterring effect. This is why we oppose the death penalty, whatever the circumstances around the world. The rejection of the death penalty is a fundamental value that unites us.”

The statement also urged the Israeli decision makers to “abandon these plans”.

The Green Party wanted to highlight the issue in Parliament, and sought support from across the House to move a motion without notice.

Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick told reporters yesterday afternoon convention stipulated motions without notice needed prior agreement from all parties.

“This stops spurious motions going up and clogging the time of our Parliament.”

The motion read that the “New Zealand House of Representatives expresses deep concern about Israel’s new legislation which extends the use of the death penalty against Palestinians living under unlawful occupation; shares the concerns of Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy about the “de facto discriminatory character’ of the legislation; and calls on the Israeli Government to reverse this legislation”.

Labour, Te Pati Māori supported motion
Opposition Labour and Te Pāti Māori parties both told RNZ they supported the motion.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said his party would firmly support a motion in the House to condemn Israel’s use of the death penalty against Palestianians.

“It clearly discriminates against Palestinians — a point underscored by the fact that the law does not apply to Israeli extremists who commit similar crimes. There are major issues with the process including that it removes the right to an appeal. By condemning Israel, we would stand alongside the United Nations, EU and the UK.”

Te Pāti Māori told RNZ it supported the motion, and queried why other parties had not.

“This law further embeds discrimination into Israel’s justice system by allowing Palestinians to be sentenced to death while others are not subject to the same punishment for similar acts,” a spokesperson for the party said.

“It sits within the context of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, and the backdrop of Israel and the United States’ illegal invasion of Iran and Lebanon.”

National and New Zealand First did not respond to queries but the ACT party told RNZ it did not support the motion being put without notice.

‘Symbolic motions’
A spokesperson for the party said it noted the Minister of Foreign Affairs was responsible for expressing New Zealand’s position on international issues, and “ACT supports that approach over symbolic motions in the House”.

“If the House passed a motion every time a country passed a law of concern, we would spend more time talking about other countries’ legislation than our own.

“All MPs have the right to put a motion on notice under Standing Orders.”

In response, Swarbrick said it was “deeply disappointing” and acknowledged the point was “symbolism”.

“I can point to many different examples when the ACT Party, for example, has put forward very similar motions, evidently for the very purpose of that same symbolism, which in turn means something on the international stage.

“It felt particularly pertinent for our country to take a stand against the perpetuation of abuse of human rights with the Israeli Parliament passing the ability to effectively murder, to slaughter Palestinian hostages and prisoners.”

She said a motion on notice did not have the status of being read out in Parliament and having the backing of every single parliamentary party.

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

Israel’s Parliament has approved a one-sided death penalty measure to execute Palestinians.

It is one of the most extreme laws in the nation’s history, and will exacerbate the far-right government’s illegal system of apartheid.

Some members of the Knesset, including ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, were seen wearing noose pins in the Knesset yesterday, and celebrating with champagne on live TV after the bill passed.

• READ MORE: ‘Dangerous escalation’: World reacts to Israel passing death penalty law
• Other Palestine genocide reports

Ben-Gvir said hanging is “one of the options,” as is execution by the electric chair or euthanasia.

The law was passed with 62 votes to 48 in its final reading.

The bill drew international condemnation ahead of its passage, including from the European Union, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and Amnesty International. Human rights groups have vowed to challenge the bill in Israel’s Supreme Court.

The legislation, which has garnered broad public support in Israel, authorises executions for “terrorists” who kill “with the intent to deny the existence of the State of Israel,” according to Haaretz — effectively ensuring it won’t apply to any of the settlers who routinely murder Palestinians.

‘Confessions’ by torture
In military courts in the occupied West Bank, execution by hanging will now be the default punishment for terrorism. Only Palestinians are tried in these courts, and 96 percent of people are convicted, though cases are largely built on “confessions” extracted through torture.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians condemned the bill yesterday ahead of the vote as an “extreme escalation in Israel’s genocidal policies against Palestinians”.

“The progression of the legislation marks not just a profoundly unjust and illegal act of discrimination under international law, but a far more sinister escalation of Israel’s apartheid legal systems,” the center wrote.

Israeli Knesset death penalty for Palestinians.       Video: Al Jazeera

Israel is currently imprisoning about 9500 Palestinians, according to the human rights group B’Tselem, and about half of them are held under administrative detention.

According to the group, the Israel Prison Service has already started to prepare designated execution facilities.

B’Tselem on Sunday called the bill “another official killing mechanism” that will further normalise the slaughter of Palestinians, as Israel continues its genocide in Gaza and intensifies attacks in the occupied West Bank.

Human rights violation
“The death penalty is a total violation of the most basic human rights, primarily, the right to life,” B’Tselem wrote.

“Israel enforces a comprehensive policy of killing and oppression against the Palestinian people in all the territories it controls. The Death Penalty Law gives Israel’s apartheid regime yet another tool for advancing that policy.”

On top of Monday’s bill, the Knesset is also considering another death penalty measure to impose on alleged October 7, 2023, attackers.

According to Amnesty International, that bill would effectively expand the unilateral powers of military judges and eliminate judicial safeguards.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Stephanie Tran

The Albanese government has rejected a proposal to strip tax-deductible status from Australian charities found to be supporting illegal occupations, amid mounting scrutiny over donations flowing to Israeli settlements and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Michael West Media has identified 5 charities either sending money to the IDF or to parties associated with illegal West Bank settlements in Occupied Palestine.

The proposed amendment, introduced by Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi, would explicitly bar organisations from receiving deductible gift recipient (DGR) status if they are found to have supported an “illegal occupation”.

• READ MORE: Gulf energy sites targeted after Israeli attack on key Iranian gasfield

“The fact that people are sending money to support the war crimes of the Israeli military and to expand illegal, violent settlements in the West Bank is bad enough, but that Australian taxpayers are subsidising these settlements is completely outrageous,” Faruqi said.

“Supporting these heinous crimes deserves investigation, not a tax deduction.”

The amendment, circulated in the Senate as part of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Supporting Choice in Superannuation and Other Measures) Bill 2025, would insert a new provision into the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 denying DGR endorsement to any entity that has “advocated, prepared, planned, assisted in, financed, fostered, supported … or contributed to the establishment, maintenance or expansion of the illegal occupation”.

It would also empower the foreign affairs minister to formally declare what constitutes an “illegal occupation” for the purposes of the law.

Charities funding illegal settlements
This year, MWM released a series of investigations revealing that Australian charities are funnelling tax-deductible donations to projects linked to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law, as well as to initiatives supporting IDF soldiers.

In the Senate debate on the amendment, Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne cited the findings of the MWM investigations.

She highlighted figures showing that Jewish National Fund Australia had remitted more than $125 million to Israel since 2009, while the United Israel Appeal Refugee Relief Fund had transferred approximately $376 million since 2013 via Keren Hayesod, with a portion of these funds used for settlement expansion and IDF-linked programmes.

Allman-Payne also referenced the activities of the Chai Charitable Foundation, which earlier this year hosted fundraisers for organisations providing direct support to IDF soldiers and settlement communities, including in Tekoa and Hebron, before removing the campaigns following questioning by MWM.

“It is obviously of significant concern if there are charitable organisations in Australia that are funnelling funds to illegal occupiers and illegal settlements,” Allman-Payne told the Senate.

She noted that the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) had received 896 complaints relating to 88 charities in connection with the Israel-Gaza conflict between October 2023 and December 2025.

“Given that these donations are tax-deductible . . .  that effectively means taxpayers are subsidising illegal occupation and militarisation,” she said.

Government rejects amendment
In response, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher stated that the government would not support the Greens amendment, arguing that existing regulatory frameworks already prohibit unlawful conduct by charities.

“There is no DGR category or purpose that allows charities to support illegal activities at home or abroad,” Gallagher said.

She pointed to the ACNC’s governance standards, which require charities to operate lawfully and remain accountable, as well as external conduct standards governing overseas activities.

However, Gallagher acknowledged a key limitation: those standards require compliance with Australian law, but

do not extend to conduct under international law.

Charities operating overseas must take “reasonable steps” to ensure proper governance and compliance with Australian legal obligations, including sanctions, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws, she said.

Organisations found to be in breach risk losing their charitable registration, which can in turn lead to the loss of DGR status.

Referral for investigation
Gallagher suggested that concerns about specific organisations should be referred to the ACNC for investigation.

Faruqi said the government’s position amounted to wilful inaction.

“The Labor government clearly wants to keep its head in the sand and is looking the other way while this happens,” she said.

“This is just another example of the government’s complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

“It is two-faced for the Government to say it supports a Palestinian state while effectively subsidising its destruction.”

Minister Gallagher and Andrew Leigh (Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury) were contacted for comment.

Regulatory obligations
A spokesperson from Leigh’s office provided the following response:

“The government expects all registered charities to meet their regulatory obligations and to obey all Australian laws. This is a condition of maintaining charitable status.

“The ACNC is the independent regulator of charities and complaints involving conduct that could harm people or involving the misuse of a charity for terrorism purposes or to foster extremism are a compliance priority for the ACNC.

“The ACNC already has powers to revoke the charitable status of charities involved in serious illegal activity.”

Israel’s war on Iran is a direct result of a political culture that depends for survival upon a permanent state of war, says Israeli academic and left-wing activist Idan Landau in the interview that follows.

He observes that Israeli society on the whole has embraced a fascist mindset, “reflecting extreme paranoia and anxiety,” and thus intolerance for dissent.

Subsequently, peace is a taboo and there is total indifference to genocidal acts and human casualties. Moreover, there is very little hope for a different trajectory, argues Landau, “as long as the US and Europe continue to insulate Israel from the moral consequences of its actions.”

• READ MORE: Iran mourns Larijani and Basij chief; Iranian attack kills 2 in Israel
• As Israel keeps bombing Iran, Palestinians face growing violence in West Bank
• Trump scolds allies over Strait of Hormuz operation; UAE closes airspace
• Chris Hedges: The world according to Gaza – it’s only the start
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Landau is professor of linguistics and head of the department of linguistics at Tel Aviv University. He writes a political blog (in Hebrew) on Israeli affairs and has been imprisoned on several occasions for his refusal to serve in the Israel Defense Forces reserve.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Since the Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel, the Netanyahu government embarked on a genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, expanded Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank and thus encouraged settlers to escalate West Bank terrorist attacks, exchanged fire with Hezbollah and the Houtis, then attacked Iran in what has been dubbed as the 12-Day War, and finally persuaded US President Donald Trump to go to war with Iran.

What is Israel’s endgame in terrorising the Middle East, and how has permanent war impacted Israeli society and the Israeli psyche?

IDAN LANDAU: I think the whole point of permanent war — I agree this is the most appropriate concept to use here — is that there is no endgame. Permanent war, with ever growing economic, emotional and political costs, is exactly what keeps the Israeli right-wing in power; it feeds on anxiety, paranoia and visions of imminent destruction (interestingly, our own and our enemies’ destruction, equally vivid).

Not being able to concentrate on and fully understand what’s going on is also crucial; the Israeli public is extremely underinformed about key issues, like the fraudulent nuclear talks in Geneva, the far-reaching proposals by the Lebanese government, etc. The media — always complicit, these days criminal — bombards us with caricatures of our surrounding countries.

That said, I think there is one constant, never-changing endgame lurking behind all the upheavals: The expansionist project in the West Bank. Not just Smotrich but a dedicated section within the Likkud, of right-wing religious settlers, are working tirelessly on this project, actually from the first week after October 7.

Plans for resettlement of Gaza combined with increased settlement in the West Bank (specifically, the northern Samaria, surrounding Jenin and Tulkarem) were immediately aired and pushed forward by the settlers’ lobby together with their MK partners.

The surge we now see in ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank is inherent to the overall vision of this government, and it was stated as such even before October 7 — that only gave it a huge impetus.

The impact on Israeli society is perhaps the most depressing aspect of it all. Political discourse has been reduced to hollow slogans. Every single issue in foreign affairs in framed as either “existential threat” or “unavoidable use of military force.” There’s absolutely no room for talk about non-violent paths (“peace” is a taboo even on the left).

The Enemy is an undifferentiated mass of Hamas/Iran/Hezbollah/Houthis, in short, different guises of Amalek. Much of that, as I noted, is fueled by the deliberate absence of facts and evidence for rational conduct on the part of our enemies.

Israelis live in a peculiar state of mind: total disbelief in the possibility of normal life, clinging on to the very ideology that perpetuates this state of mind.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Israel has actual and perceived enemies. But is Benjamin Netanyahu alone the actual problem behind Israel’s permanent state of war? I mean, even most of Israeli opposition supported the genocide in Gaza and it’s doing the same thing now with the war against Iran.

IDAN LANDAU: Netanyahu is the most able consolidator of all the dark impulses of Israeli society, but of course he didn’t make up anything on his own. If you go back to Begin’s speeches in the 1970s-1980s, they also constantly invoked the Holocaust as the ultimate justification for whatever Israel does.

The Messianic drive to settle the greater Israel predates Netanyahu, as well as the overall brutal, racist degradation of Palestinians inside and outside Israel. You can go on and on — nothing is new here. At most, as you note, it is the subservience of the “opposition”; I don’t recall anything like it in the past.

If you look at the governments that went to wars in 1973 and 1982, they faced considerable opposition, within the Knesset and outside of it, on the very issue of whether the war was justified (in 1973, it was clearly preventable; in 1982, it was pure imperial vanity). None of that is left today.

Which is why the temptation of permanent war is so strong: You’re guaranteed to make the willful silence of the opposition also permanent.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: In Lebanon, the Israeli armed forces are using Gaza tactics, attacking hospitals and killing medical staff, while in Iran they have engaged in what has been rightly described as chemical warfare on account of strikes on fuel depots. Isn’t the country concerned at all about its blatant assault on international law and that it has turned into a pariah state in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the people across the globe? What happened to Israel’s labor party which combined socialism with nation-building?

IDAN LANDAU: As to the Labour Party, I always say that one should not speak ill of the dead. A handful of members of Knesset (MKs) that are obsessed with displays of liberal values and with welfare legislation when genocide is in full force and Apartheid shifts from de facto to de jure.

The other “opposition” parties are either led by generals (Golan, Eizenkot) who offer zero alternatives to military dominance, or by right-wing neoliberals (Bennet, Lapid). The only representatives of left values in the Knesset are the Arab MKs.

As to International Humanitarian Law (IHL), my impression is that Israelis are unconcerned insofar as Uncle Sam is, and it sure looks like he is, thoroughly unconcerned. The Trump administration vindictively sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) judges presiding over the Israeli case, and quite explicitly stated that IHL does not apply to the US and its allies.

There’s a lot of duplicity in Israeli discourse regarding the so-called “Principle of Complementarity”; the official response to the ICC described the “independent and robust judicial system” of Israel, which investigates any suspicions for wrongdoings. Most Israelis simply think that the rules don’t apply to us since they don’t apply to Hamas (they do apply to both parties; I already said that Israelis are shrouded in disinformation).

But even the liberals that appeal to our own “independent and robust judicial system” look ridiculous in face of the massive cover-up we witness from the beginning of the genocide; the dropping of charges against the five torturers/rapists in Sde-Teiman is but the latest instance.

Hundreds of heinous crimes did not even yield any charges.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Courageous voices against war and violence can be heard here and there across Israeli society and peace activists have organised scores of demonstrations in cities like Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem to express their opposition to the war in Iran.

Are anti-war demonstrations really seen as a threat to national security by the Netanyahu government and even segments of the Israeli citizenry?

IDAN LANDAU: These things happen and they do lift our spirit. In honesty, I don’t think anyone views them as “a threat to national security,” that’s fascist talk. The public atmosphere is just incredibly intolerant, with or without the presence of the police, with or without any legal process.

Just try to voice your opposition to the war — any war, pick your favourite — out in the street, and you’re sure to be harassed and probably beaten by random pedestrians within 15-20 minutes. So I think it is a typical fascist all-embracing violent climate, reflecting extreme paranoia and anxiety.

The mere verbal expression of “sacrilegious” opinions is seen as a personal threat to our carefully maintained peace of mind; so tenuous and feeble, that it cannot even stand to face dissent.

Point it out to Israelis and urge them to make out what it means for their confidence in what their state is doing that they must violently banish any expression of doubt and criticism (this is now the position of many journalists as well!) — well, see if you get an answer.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Israel censored reporting on the genocide in Gaza. Is the same thing happening now with the war in Iran?

IDAN LANDAU: Luckily, the IDF doesn’t control the entrance and exit to Iran. So we don’t have the brute force censorship, instead it’s the good old “filter and distort and leave out the context” censorship.

They would report civilian casualties only if forced (because it’s getting too much international media), and you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the “human shield” trick is now applied reflexively, before any facts are even known.

In this sense, as all human right organisations pointed out, the Gaza genocide has set a shocking new standard of indifference to civilian casualties: All targets are criminalised by association to your favourite Amalek (currently the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC), and we stopped bothering about substantiating this association with actual facts; declaring it so makes it so.

In this context, one can watch civilian suffering in Iran with a level of detachment and blame it all on the IRGC. We should remember, though, that the Iranian regime is no more scrupulous in its choice of targets in Israel — the war crimes are on both sides.

Yet I cannot say that Israeli media covers the wider civilian effects of the war on Iranian citizens in any serious way. Pretty much 95 percent of what we get are silly, heroic odes to our courageous pilots and genius cyber fighters.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: In your view, is there a pathway towards peace in Israel? Is permanent peace even possible for Israel?

IDAN LANDAU: Ultimately there can’t be any other solution; wars eventually end, consuming nations. I just don’t think it will be “Israel” as we now know it that will see the fruits of peace.

It will be a totally different entity, somehow letting Jews and Arabs live together as equals. That’s not possible within the current regime. Sadly, the shift to non-violence only occurs after the level of death and suffering is insurmountable to both sides.

No one knows when that will be. As long as the US and Europe continue to insulate Israel from the moral consequences of its policies, it won’t change trajectory.

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centres in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky; Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).

Idan Landau is an Israeli social justice activist and professor of linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University.

Democracy Now! speaks with Iranian Israeli political activist Orly Noy, editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call, about her recent article, “Longing for My Tehran.”

“It’s been a very emotional time since the beginning of the war, not just because we are constantly running in and out of shelters,” says Noy, “but because this time, the footage of the bombing that I grew accustomed to seeing for over two years from the genocide in Gaza was now coming from my homeland.”

Noy also comments on Israeli political support for the war on Iran, saying “the very few attempts to protest against the war were brutally crushed by the Israeli police.”

• READ MORE: Trump scolds allies over Strait of Hormuz operation; UAE closes airspace
• Chris Hedges: The world according to Gaza – it’s only the start
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is also increasing. “Up until now, our worry was about the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Now it is just about executing Palestinians, both by the army and by the settlers,” says Noy.

Transcript:

Amnesty International has condemned Israeli authorities over unleashing a series of unlawful measures deliberately designed to dispossess Palestinians in the occupied West Bank — including East Jerusalem — and to make the annexation of the territory an irreversible reality.

These decisions since December 2025 represent an unprecedented escalation – in scale and speed – in Israel’s project to expand illegal settlements.

They facilitate the takeover of more Palestinian land, authorise a record number of new settlements, expanding existing ones, and formalise registration of land in the West Bank as Israeli state property.

• READ MORE: Other Israeli illegal annexation reports

While successive Israeli governments have pursued policies aimed at expanding settlements and entrenching occupation and apartheid, the latest measures underscore how the current Israeli government has turbocharged these efforts, in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza.

“What we are witnessing is a state, led by a Prime Minister wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, openly gloating about its defiance of international law,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns.

“Despite hundreds of UN resolutions, Advisory Opinions from the International Court of Justice and global condemnation, Israel continues to brazenly expand illegal settlements, entrenching its cruel system of apartheid and destroying Palestinian lives and livelihoods.

“The unconditional support of the USA government, combined with the pervasive lack of international accountability for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, decades of crimes under international law linked to its unlawful occupation and its system of apartheid, has further emboldened Israel to escalate its illegal actions.

‘Formalising land grabs’
“This includes formalising land grabs with full confidence that it will face no consequences.

“The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action.”

— Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns.

“The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action.

“Third states have failed to respect their own legal obligations, refusing to use the tools at their disposal, such as suspension of the EU Israel Association Agreement, to deter Israel from pursuing its unlawful agenda.”

On 10 December 2025, the Israel Land Authority published a tender for 3401 housing units in the E1 area, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.

The plan seeks to expand the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and create a continuum with occupied East Jerusalem.

This would sever the West Bank in two, permanently rupturing urban Palestinian contiguity between Ramallah, occupied East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem.

Forced transfer of Palestinians
Together with the construction of a bypass road which was set to begin this month, this plan will also lead to the forcible transfer of the Palestinian communities living in the area.

While since the 1990s successive Israeli governments have attempted to implement the E1 plan, it remained largely dormant for decades due to international pressure.

Its current advancement with such speed signifies a government that is brazenly pursuing its settlement expansion agenda amidst insufficient international pushback.

Since its occupation of Palestinian territory in 1967, Israel has introduced and developed an oppressive administrative and legal architecture of dispossession and control against Palestinians.

The current government has been relentlessly accelerating this project by fast-tracking settlement expansion and land seizures.

On 11 December 2025, Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to establish 19 new settlements, bringing the total number approved by the current coalition government to 68 in just three years and the total number of official settlements to about 210.

About 750,000 Israeli settlers currently live illegally in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Retroactive ‘legalisation’
The new settlements include the retroactive “legalisation” of outposts built in violation of even Israel’s own domestic laws.

Credible media reports indicate at least three of these sites sit upon land from which Palestinian communities, such as Ein Samia and Ras Ein al-Ouja, were recently forcibly transferred following state-backed settler violence.

According to Peace Now, an Israeli organisation monitoring settlement expansion, in 2025 alone, a record 86 outposts were established, primarily “herding” or “farming” outposts” which have significantly contributed to the spike in state-backed settler violence and forcible transfer of Palestinian communities.

Protected by the Israeli military and funded by the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, the outposts have turned the lives of Palestinian farmers and shepherds, particularly in Area C, into a “living hell”.

Settlers in the outposts aggressively prevent Palestinian shepherds from accessing their grazing land, depriving them of their main livelihood, as well as seizing land by force, vandalizing property, stealing livestock and attacking Palestinians and their homes.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, 21 Palestinian communities were fully or partially uprooted in 2025 as a result of state-backed settler violence.

A mother of three from Ras Ein al-Ouja, near Jericho, told Amnesty International: “The fear of attacks forced us to put our children to bed with their shoes on, because we might have to flee at any moment.”

Freezing cold
In January 2026, she and her family were driven out in the freezing cold along with another 122 families — in total more than 600 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from this community.

A declaration by the Israeli civil administration on 5 January 2026 designating 694 dunams of land belonging to the Palestinian towns of Deir Istiya, Bidya and Kafr Thulth in the northern West Bank as “state land”.

This was declared along with a series of measures to expand control over the West Bank announced by Israel’s security cabinet on February 8 to mark a further escalation in Israel’s land grabs.

These measures include repealing Jordanian legislation still in force to allow Israeli settlers to purchase Palestinian land without oversight increasing Israeli civil administrative control over planning and construction in Hebron City and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, as well as granting Israeli authorities new enforcement powers in archaeological sites and in issues related to water and environment in Areas A and B.

On 15 February 2026, the Israeli cabinet issued a decision that amounts to annexation under Israeli law.

It allocated more than 244 million NIS (Israeli shekels) for the establishment of a government mechanism to facilitate land registration in Area C, transferring the powers of land registration from the civil administration to Israel’s Ministry of Justice.

Currently, nearly 58 percent of the land in Area C of the occupied West Bank is unregistered, according to Peace Now.

Seized Palestinian land
Israel has already seized more than half of that area through state land designations.

Palestinians face almost insurmountable hurdles to prove land ownership due to Israel’s archaic interpretation of Ottoman land laws which require Palestinians to provide an array of documents, maps and other records that most Palestinians do not have access to.

“Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it. Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions.”

— Erika Guevara-Rosas

“Land registration is yet another Israeli euphemism for land grabs and dispossession. Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it,” Erika Guevara-Rosas said.

“Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions.

“Israel has totally disregarded its obligations as an Occupying Power towards Palestinian civilians and instead has deliberately and consistently advanced its aggressive annexation agenda, in blatant violation of international law, which categorically prohibits annexation and establishment of settlements in occupied territory.

“These measures are in brazen defiance of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinions of 2004 and 2024, the latter of which unequivocally found Israel’s presence in the OPT to be unlawful.

“A subsequent UN General Assembly resolution set September 2025 as the deadline to end Israel’s unlawful occupation.

“Yet instead of complying, Israel has simply invented new ways to violate international law, further entrenching its unlawful occupation and apartheid — while the international community continues, at best, to pay lip service to Palestinians’ rights and taken no effective action.”

Republished from Amnesty International.

COMMENTARY: By Ramzy Baroud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This performance of extremism functioned as a political strategy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Protesters in Fiji and Aotearoa New Zealand kicked off the UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People today as Israel faced global condemnation over more “war crimes” against Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.

At least 13 people, including two children, were killed and 25 were wounded as Israel launched another incursion into Syrian territory in the Damascus countryside, according to state media.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned “the criminal attack carried out by an Israeli occupation army patrol in Beit Jinn”.

• READ MORE: Syria calls Israeli incursion, strikes that killed 13 a ‘war crime’
• No, there is no ceasefire in Gaza
• Israel attacks three countries
• Other Gaza reports

At Albert Park in Fiji’s capital Suva today, members of Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (F4PSN) defied police repression and gathered to celebrate Solidarity Day.

They issued a statement declaring:

“On the 48th anniversary of this day, we must be clear: Fiji cannot claim to stand for human rights while aligning itself with GENOCIDE, APARTHEID and OCCUPATION.

“We refuse to let our government speak in our name while supporting systems of colonial oppression.”

Fiji ‘not on side of Palestine justice’
The statement went on to state that in 1977, the UN General Assembly had called for the annual observance of November 29 as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

But now, Palestinians faced dispossession, military occupation, forced displacement, and the systematic destruction of their homes and lives. More than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 20,000 children, in the Israeli war on Gaza, report the last Gaza statistics.

“The world is watching genocide unfold in Gaza — entire families wiped out, children buried under rubble, hospitals bombed, and civilians starved — while governments continue to fund Israel’s genocidal campaign and shield it from accountability,” the network said.

Fiji was not on the side of justice and humanity, added the network. These were some of the reasons why:

• Fiji has repeatedly abstained or voted against resolutions protecting Palestinian rights at the United Nations, including resolutions calling for humanitarian ceasefires;
• Fiji voted against renewing support for Palestinian refugees under UNRWA;
• Fiji abstained on a resolution supporting a two-state solution;
• Fiji was the only country to publicly support Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and land annexation at the International Court of Justice; and
• Fiji has opened an embassy in Jerusalem, in Occupied Palestine.

“This is not foreign policy — this is complicity,” said the network.

“And we say loudly from Fiji: End occupation. End apartheid. End genocide. Free Palestine — from the River to the Sea.”

Powerful speeches in NZ
In New Zealand’s Te Komititanga Square beside Auckland city’s main transport hub, protesters heard several powerful speakers before marching up the Queen Street shopping precinct to Aotea Square and raised the Palestinian flag.

Journalist and videographer Cole Martin, of Aotearoa Christians for Peace in Palestine who recently returned from six months bearing witness in the occupied West Bank, gave a harrowing account of the brutality and cruelty of daily life under Israeli military control.

Describing the illegal destruction of Palestinian homes by Israeli military bulldozers in one village, Martin said: “They [villagers] put up tents. And they Israeli military returned because the tents, they say, didn’t have the correct permits, just like their homes.

“And so they demolished them.

“But when Palestinians apply for permits, they are pretty much never granted them. It is an impossible system.”

Speaking for Amnesty International Aotearoa, people power manager Margaret Taylor described the US President Trump-brokered “ceasefire” in Gaza as “dangerous” because it gave the illusion that life in Gaza was returning to normal.

“We here today are aware that the ‘normal’ for the people of Gaza is the ongoing genocide perpetrated against them by Israel.

“Earlier this week Amnesty international again came out saying, ‘yes, it is still genocide’.

“‘It is still genocide. It is still genocide.” It continues unabated.

“We had to do that because world leaders have denied that it is genocide and are using this alleged ceasefire.”

Gaza flotilla plans
Gaza Sumud Flotilla activist Youssef Sammour, who was also rally MC, brought the crowd up-to-date with plans for another flotilla to attempt to break the Israeli siege around the Gaza enclave.

About 30 other protests are happening across New Zealand this weekend over the Gaza genocide.

Global news media reports described Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, although little was reported in New Zealand media.

Several Israeli soldiers were also reported wounded in clashes at the town of Beit Jinn.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned “the criminal attack carried out by an Israeli occupation army patrol in Beit Jinn”.

Al Jazeera reports that Israeli military incursions have become more brazen, more frequent and more violent since Israel expanded its occupation of southern Syria.

Several Israeli soldiers were also reported wounded in clashes at the town of Beit Jinn when local people fought back against the Israeli incursion.

Meanwhile, the UN has condemned an incident in Jenin in the occupied West Bank as another “apparent summary execution” and warned that killings in the Occupied West Bank were surging “without accountability”.

Footage from Jenin showed Israeli forces shooting two Palestinian men in the back after  they had raised their hands to surrender. They were unarmed.

How shall we speak and act now?

For six years, Alternative Jewish Voices has spoken in an aspirational voice. This is intentional. Research shows, the voice that mobilises new political engagement is a voice of moral clarity which invites others to join the work of making a better world.

We ground our voice in facts, and today’s facts are shattering. We share the outrage that we hear. However, outrage alone does not make change. It has to be channeled forward into principled action.

• READ MORE: UN Security Council approves US plan for Gaza stabilisation force
• Other Gaza reports

Hope is resistance. AJV met last week to ask where we find that hope now, while grief and anger feel overwhelming.

With unprecedented Western permission and complicity, Israel’s genocide is ongoing. The IDF has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and decimated the built environment of Gaza.

They are queueing up more of the same in the West Bank. The tonnage of IDF poisons will affect generations. Israel has killed 271 and injured 622 Palestinians since the ceasefire.

Gazan Palestinians are living in atrocious conditions as winter closes in. Israel is preventing UN agencies and NGOs from responding, despite the International Court of Justice’s October finding that Israel is obligated to provide for Gazan Palestinians and not to impede others from doing so.

Bombed half a dozen countries
Along the way, Israel has bombed half a dozen countries which are not at war with it.

The silence of governments like ours imagines this dystopia as a new baseline. They will settle for negotiating the speed of Israel’s new crimes against the survivors of Palestine.

We utterly reject their selective amnesia — but each time we call out our complicit government, we need to call them forward and judge them against something better.

We do that by placing the value of human life at the centre of our understanding. People have laboured for a century and a half to embed a rights-based vision of human dignity and equality.

Rights are not an opinion; rights are the basis of international law and institutions. That today’s governments spit on Palestinians’ rights does not invalidate Palestinians’ rights. It raises the stakes.

Now we must fight for the vision even as we wield it.

Our baseline is a world in which people flourish with their basic needs and dignity ensured. We protest the deficits from that standard. We judge Israel and its powerful accomplices against the standard of an accountable, just peace for all who live between the river and the sea.

Daily erosion of our democracy
Even as our allies have taken the step of recognising Palestine, Luxon, Seymour and Peters cosy up to Donald Trump. We are reeling from their daily erosion of our democracy.

Our government’s position on Palestine and the value it places on our own lives follow from a single agenda. This government is harming far more people than it is benefiting. We find hope in the work that brings together a majority for change.

While Palestine has become the cement of a broad global movement, Zionism is shifting. Israel used its years of Zionist-Jewish permission to consolidate new sources of support. It is no longer dependent upon Jewish social licence.

Christian Zionism, long the majority of Zionism, is now an insider shaping American policy. Israel dedicates new budgets to influencing American Christians.

Christian Zionist influence is now being unsettled in turn by the far Right, as Zionism attracts support from the eschatological, racist and fascist extremes. Trump’s MAGA world is grappling with the rise of more radical White racist nationalism. Those extremists are seeking narrative position and influence.

In Aotearoa, Israel’s deputy foreign minister has met with Christian nationalist Brian Tamaki and Alfred Ngaio. There are five rabbis in this country, while 130 Christian Zionist clergy wrote together of their representatives’ time with Winston Peters before Peters declined to recognise Palestine.

In order to lend effective support to the liberation of Palestine, our protest needs to target the evolving structures and financial flows of Aotearoa’s Zionism.

This does not relieve the Zionist-Jewish community of responsibility. Globally, Zionist-Jewish institutions have eagerly wrapped Israel’s violence in the guise of Jewish identity, in order to place Israel’s genocidal actions beyond challenge.

Peace of the graveyard
Aotearoa’s Zionist-Jewish spokespeople still imagine only the peace of the graveyard, after which there might be a nicer Zionism.

A significant segment of Liberal-Zionist Jews seems to have turned against the war — although not against Zionism. That speaks to some capacity for change despite the institutions.

We welcome every effort to end this genocide. However, as principled anti-Zionists our goal is greater than the cessation of firing. In our own community and in Palestine, we must change the conditions that give rise to genocide. We need to decolonise the Jewishness that taught us to stake our future on the oppression and slaughter of others. There is no nicer Zionism.

To realise a liberatory Jewishness, we need new institutions with genuinely new communal leadership. We work for a future without Jewish supremacy or exceptionalism. Two-thirds of Jewish New Yorkers aged 18-44 just voted for Mayor Mamdani in one such act of qualitative, visionary change.

We will not displace this toxic new Right power by emulating their perpetual outrage. That would only turn us into the thing we oppose.

Outrage alone leaves one numb with grief and alienation. It stokes the identity politics which deny that we can live together. It leads to the despair which hardens the status quo.

We will only displace this power with an aspirational, broadly based vision of something better. We learn from the long, great works of our time: the works of peace, Indigenous rights, the common cause of dignified life in the hardest places.

Tangled roots of colonisation
That quality of holistic movement has coalesced around Palestine. We have never heard so many people acknowledge that the change must reach to the tangled roots of colonisation, racism, capitalism and fascism.

AJV brings to this our Jewish inheritance which recognises that social, ecological and material justice are inextricable. Together we will place life and justice at the centre of the work that needs doing, here and there.

In this dark time, hope is resistance and these are our ways forward.

In outrage and in aroha, we are Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa.

Marilyn Garson writes about Palestinian and Jewish dissent. This article was first published by Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices and is republished with permission. The original article can be read here.

EDWARD SAID MEMORIAL LECTURE: By Chris Hedges

A temporary ceasefire and release of some Palestinians in a prisoner exchange is not a “peace agreement” and it is far from what is needed — ending colonisation; freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in Israeli gulags (also tortured, nearly 100 have died under torture in the last two years); return of the millions of refugees; and accountability for genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

That is why this global uprising (intifada) will not stop until freedom, justice, and equality are attained.

• READ MORE: Tens of thousands return to shattered Gaza homes after ceasefire
• How Palestine fights ecocide with biodiversity and sustainability resistance

Here are brief answers I gave to questions about the agreement for Gaza:

1. How has life in the West Bank changed for you and your community during the past two years of conflict?
The West Bank has been illegally occupied since 1967 (ICJ ruling) but it was not merely an occupation but intensive colonisation and ethnic cleansing. The attacks on our people accelerated in the last two years with over 60,000 made homeless in the West Bank and denial of freedom of movement (including hundreds of new gates installed in these two years separating the remaining concentration camps/ghettos of the West Bank ).

2. What is your assessment of the new peace deal that brought an end to the fighting in Gaza?
It is not a peace deal. It is an agreement to pause the genocide which will not work because the belligerent occupier — “Israel” — has not respected a single agreement it signed since its founding. Even the agreement to join the United Nations was conditional on respecting the UN Charter and UN resolutions issued before and after 1949.

This continued to even breaking the signed ceasefire agreement of last year. I have 0 percent confidence that this latest agreement would be respected even on the simple aspect of “pausing” the genocide and ethnic cleansing going on since 1948.

3. In your view, why did war drag on for two years despite multiple ceasefire attempts?
Simply put because colonisation can only be done with violence. And the war on our people has gone on not for two years but for 77 years without ending (sustained by Western government support). Israel as a colonisation entity is the active face of colonisation. The USA for example broke similar agreements for “pauses” in colonisation with natives in North America and broke every single one of them.

Israeli military occupation on the environment.        Video: Greenpeace

4. What kind of humanitarian and environmental toll has the conflict taken on Palestinian society?
It is now well documented from UN agencies, human rights groups (like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, even the Israeli group B’Tselem). In brief it is genocide, ecocide, scholasticide, medicide,
and veriticide. (More at: ongaza.org )

5. Why do you think it took the IDF so long to rescue all the hostages?
The terrorist organisation that deceptively calls itself “IDF” (Israeli Defence Forces) was not interested in rescuing their captives (not “hostages”) and they only got people back via exchange of prisoners (not rescue).

The IGF (Israeli Genocide Forces) actually killed many of their own soldiers and civilians
on 7 October 2023 by activating the Hannibal directive to prevent their capture. The resistance was aiming to capture colonisers (living on stolen Palestinian lands) to exchange for some of the more than 11,000 political prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails. (Again see ongaza.org )

6. How significant was international involvement — particularly from the US — in reaching the final agreement?
This is the first genocide in human history that is not executed by one government. It is executed by a number of governments directly supporting and aiding (participating). This includes the USA, UK, France, Egypt, Germany, Australia etc. Many of these countries have governments dominated or highly influenced by the Zionist agenda.

Under the influence of a growing popular protest against the genocide around the world, some of those countries are trying to wiggle out from pressure in an effort to save
“Israel” from growing global isolation. Trump was blackmailed via videos/files collected by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghiseline Maxwell (Mossad agents). He is simply a narcissistic collaborator with genocide!

7. What concrete steps do you think are necessary now to turn this peace deal into a sustainable, lasting solution?
Again not a “peace deal”. What needs to be done is apply boycotts, divestments, sanctions (BDS) on this rogue state that violates the international conventions (Geneva Convention, Conventions against Apartheid and Genocide). BDS was used against apartheid South Africa and needs to be applied here also. (For more: bdsmovement.net )

8. How do you see the Palestine Museum of Natural History contributing to rebuilding and healing efforts in the aftermath of war?
Our institute (PIBS, palestinenature.org) which includes museums, a botanic garden, and many other sections is focused on “sustainable human and natural communities” Our motto is respect: for ourselves (empowerment), for others (regardless of religious or other background), and for nature.

Conflict, colonisations, oppression are obviously areas we challenge and work on in JOINT struggle with all people of various background.

9. Looking ahead, what gives you optimism—or concern—about the future relationship between Palestinians and Israelis?
What gives me optimism first and foremost is the heroic resilience and resistance (together making sumud) of our Palestinian people everywhere and the millions of other people mobilising for human rights and for justice (including the right of refugees to return and also environmental justice).

What gives me concern is the depth of depravity that greedy individuals in power go to destroying our planet and our people and profiting from colonisation and genocide.

About 8.5 million Palestinians are refugees and displaced people thanks to Zionism and Western collusion with it. A collusion intent on transforming Palestine from multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multireligious, and multilingual society to a racist Jewish state (monolithic).

Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Bedouin in cyberspace; a villager at home; professor, founder and (volunteer) director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University, Occupied Palestine.

Notes:
World Court Findings on Israeli Apartheid a Wake-Up Call: International Court of Justice Makes Clear Call for Reparations

The 7 October 2023 reminded us of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

7 October 1944! Prisoner Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize as before was not given to the any of the hundreds of deserving nominees but given instead to rightwing pro-genocide María Corina Machado. She dedicated her prize to Donald Trump and had previously aligned with the worst rightwing parties throughout Latin America as well as the genocidal regime of Netanyahu (and even asked them for help to topple her own elected government).

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is condemning Israel’s E1 settlement plan for the occupied West Bank, despite New Zealand not signing a joint statement on the matter.

Twenty-seven countries, including the UK and Australia, have condemned Israel’s plans to build an illegal settlement east of Jerusalem.

The countries have said the plan would “make a two-state solution impossible by dividing any Palestinian state and restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem”.

• READ MORE: Over 20 nations join EU, UN in opposing Israel’s illegal E1 settlement plan
• Israel kills at least 51 in Gaza, military seizure of Gaza City progresses
• Other Israeli war on Palestine reports

Luxon said he fully agreed with the statement.

“That is something [signing the stement]I would address to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but there are a lot of joint statements that we try and align with, often at short notice, to make sure we are putting volume and voice to our position,” he said.

“Irrespective of that, we are very, very concerned about what is happening in the West Bank, particularly the E1 settlement programme.

“We have believed for a long time that those settlements are illegal.”

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

New Zealand has joined more than two dozen other countries to call for “immediate and independent” foreign media access to Gaza.

Earlier this month, an Israeli strike in the city killed six journalists — four Al Jazeera correspondents and cameramen, and two other media workers.

The Israeli military admitted in a statement to targeting well-known Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas al-Sharif.

• READ MORE: When journalists like Anas al-Sharif are killed we lose access to truth in Gaza
• Other killing of Gaza journalists reports

A joint statement by the Media Freedom Coalition — signed by 27 countries, including New Zealand — urged Israel to offer protection for journalists in Gaza “in light of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe”.

“Journalists and media workers play an essential role in putting the spotlight on the devastating reality of war. Access to conflict zones is vital to carrying out this role effectively,” the statement said.

“We oppose all attempts to restrict press freedom and block entry to journalists during conflicts.

“We also strongly condemn all violence directed against journalists and media workers, especially the extremely high number of fatalities, arrests and detentions.

“We call on the Israeli authorities and all other parties to make every effort to ensure that media workers in Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and East Jerusalem — local and foreign alike — can conduct their work freely and safely.

“Deliberate targeting of journalists is unacceptable. International humanitarian law offers protection to civilian journalists during armed conflict. We call for all attacks against media workers to be investigated and for those responsible to be prosecuted in compliance with national and international law.”

It reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire, and the unconditional release of remaining hostages, unhindered flow of humanitarian aid.

The statement also called for “a path towards a two-state solution, long-term peace and security”.

Other countries to sign the statement included: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ukraine.

The Media Freedom Coalition is a partnership of countries that advocates for media freedom around the world. New Zealand joined the coalition in March 2021.

NZ silent on West Bank
Meanwhile, in another joint statement released overnight, about two dozen countries condemned Israel’s plan to expand its presence in the West Bank.

New Zealand was not among the signatories of this statement, which was signed by the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom and 22 of its international partners — including Australia and Canada.

The statement called on Israel to reverse its decision.

“The decision by the Israeli Higher Planning Committee to approve plans for settlement construction in the E1 area, East of Jerusalem, is unacceptable and a violation of international law,” it said.

“Minister [Bezalel] Smotrich says this plan will make a two-state solution impossible by dividing any Palestinian state and restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem. This brings no benefits to the Israeli people.

“Instead, it risks undermining security and fuels further violence and instability, taking us further away from peace.

“The government of Israel still has an opportunity to stop the E1 plan going any further. We encourage them to urgently retract this plan.”

The statement said “unilateral action” by the Israeli government undermined collective desire for security and prosperity in the Middle East.

“The Israeli government must stop settlement construction in line with UNSC Resolution 2334 and remove their restrictions on the finances of the Palestinian Authority.”

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

The advocacy and protest group Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has condemned New Zealand’s “deliberate distraction” over sanctions against Israel and has vowed more protests against Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ “failed policy” on Gaza.

After the huge turnout of thousands in Palestine solidarity rallies across more than 20 locations in New Zealand last weekend, PSNA has announced it is joining an International Day of Action on September 6.

Rallies next weekend will have a focus on Israel’s targeted killing of journalists in Gaza.

• READ MORE: Israel pounds Gaza, killing 81, as it begins assault to seize Gaza City
• Australia hits back at Netanyahu amid escalating diplomatic row over Palestine
• Netanyahu is on a mission to seize the Middle East. Will anyone stop him?
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement there was “an incredible show of marches and rallies throughout Aotearoa New Zealand for sanctions against Israel during the past weekend.”.

“But with [Foreign Minister] Peters obstinately running the Foreign Ministry, the government will ignore all expressions of public support for Palestinian rights.

“We’ll be back with even more people on the streets on the 6th.”

“An opinion poll released by PSNA last week showed that of people who gave an opinion, 60 percent supported sanctions against Israel.”

Shocking images
Minto said that number would have risen significantly in the past few weeks as people were seeing the shocking images of Israel’s widespread use of starvation as a weapon of war, especially against the children of Gaza.

“Around the world, governments are starting to respond to their people demanding sanctions on Israel to end the genocide.

“Yet, Winston Peters is most reluctant to even criticise Israel, let alone take any action.”

Minto said actions were vital otherwise Israel took no notice.

“We’ve seen Israel’s arrogant impunity in increasingly violent action and showing off its military capacity and intentions,” he said.

“Not a peep from our ministers over anything.

“Just on the Occupied West Bank, there are settlers freely shooting and lynching Palestinians.

New illegal settlement plans
“Israel’s Parliament has just voted to annex the West Bank, as plans are also announced for [an illegal] new settlement strategically designed to sever it irreparably into two parts.

“In Gaza, Israeli troops are reinvading Gaza City to ethnically cleanse a million people to the south and Israeli aircraft are still terror bombing a famine-devastated community.”

Minto said Netanyahu had started talking about a Greater Israel again.

“That would mean an invasion of all of its neighbours and the extinction of at least Lebanon and Jordan, which in Israeli government eyes have no right to exist.”

The New Zealand government thought that it was “responding appropriately” by going through a process of considering recognition of a Palestinian state.

“That can only be seen as a deliberate distraction from a focus on sanctions,” Minto said.

“Back in 1947, New Zealand voted in the UN for a Palestinian state in part of Palestine.

“Recognition is token now, and it was token then, because the world stood aside and let Israel conquer all of Palestine, expel most of its people and impose an apartheid regime on those who managed to stay.”

Minto said the global movement in support of Palestinian rights would not be distracted.

Comprehensive sanctions were the only way to force an end to Israel’s genocide.

Australia slams Israeli PM
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that Australia has hit back at Netanyahu after the Israeli leader branded the country’s prime minister “weak”, with an Australian minister accusing the Israeli leader of conflating strength with killing people.

In an interview with Australia’s national broadcaster ABC, Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke said that strength was not measured “by how many people you can blow up or how many children you can leave hungry”.

Burke’s comments came after Netanyahu on Tuesday launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on social media, claiming he would be remembered by history as a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews”.

Speaking on the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast programme, Burke characterised Netanyahu’s broadside as part of Israel’s “lashing out” at countries that have moved to recognise a Palestinian state.

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.

Two young Palestinians were beaten to death on their land by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank on Friday.

A funeral was held on Sunday for Sayfollah “Saif” Mussalet, 20, and Muhammad Shalabi, 23, who were brutally killed by a large group of settlers in an attack that left more than 30 other Palestinians injured.

Mussalet died from his wounds as settlers attacked medical responders, and Shalabi’s body was recovered later that evening, having reportedly bled to death from a gunshot wound while ambulances and rescuers were blocked by Israeli military.

• READ MORE: Deadly Israeli attacks kill more Palestinians near Gaza aid centre
• Other Israel war on Palestine reports

Settlers continued to roam the Palestinian farmland freely for hours.

Both young men were from the neighbouring Mazra’a Sharqiya village, and Saif was an American citizen visiting loved ones and friends over summer. His family released a statement calling his death an “unimaginable nightmare and an injustice that no family should ever have to face”.

They said he was a “beloved member of his community . . . a brother and a son [and] a kind, hard-working, and deeply-respected young man.”

Saif built a widely-loved business in Tampa, Florida, and was known for his generosity, ambition, and connection to his Palestinian heritage.

Following news of his death an overwhelming number of locals gathered at his store to share their grief and anger.

Frequent atrocities
Such lynchings have become a frequent atrocity across the West Bank, as settler gangs are repeatedly emboldened by the Israeli government, police, and military who protect and often facilitate violence against Palestinian communities.

Two settlers were reportedly detained following the attacks, but released again within hours.

Between 2005-2020, 91 percent of Palestinian cases filed with police were closed without indictment, according to the Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem, and settlers undergo trial with full legal rights and higher lenience in Israeli civil courts.

By contrast, Palestinians are tried in Israeli military courts, established in violation of the fourth Geneva Convention and largely considered corrupt for maintaining a 95 percent conviction rate (Military Court Watch).

Additionally, more than 3600 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli captivity without charge or trial, with all detainees facing an increase in documented physical, psychological, and sexual abuse — including children.

A funeral was held for the young men on Sunday in Mazra’a Sharqiya village, with thousands in attendance. The killings continue a systemic pattern which alongside military incursions, has seen 153 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the beginning of 2025 (OCHA).

UN resolution
A UN resolution last September reaffirmed the illegality of Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories, demanding a total and unconditional withdrawal within a year.

Ten months on, settler attacks have escalated in frequency and severity, settlement expansion has rapidly increased, and numerous Palestinian villages have been forcibly displaced after months of sustained violence.

Communities across the West Bank are facing erasure, and as the death toll climbs pressure continues to grow for the New Zealand government to enforce stronger political sanctions, including the entire opposition uniting behind the Green Party’s Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill.

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

A prominent academic has criticised the New Zealand coalition government for compromising the country’s traditional commitment to upholding an international rules-based order due to a “desire not to offend” the Trump administration.

Professor Robert Patman, an inaugural sesquicentennial distinguished chair and a specialist in international relations at the University of Otago, has argued in a contributed article to The Spinoff that while distant in geographic terms, “brutal violence in Gaza, the West Bank and Iran marks the latest stage in the unravelling of an international rules-based order on which New Zealand depends for its prosperity and security”.

Dr Patman wrote that New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation at home, and, after 1945, helped inspire a New Zealand worldview enshrined in institutions such as the United Nations and norms such as multilateralism.

• READ MORE: New Zealand and Gaza: Confronting and not confronting the unspeakable
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

“In the wake of Hamas’ terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, the National-led coalition government has in principle emphasised its support for a lasting ceasefire in Gaza and the need for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank,” he wrote.

However, Dr Patman said, in practice this New Zealand stance had not translated into firm diplomatic opposition to the Netanyahu government’s quest to control Gaza and annex the West Bank.

“Nor has it been a condemnation of the Trump administration for prioritising its support for Israel’s security goals over international law,” he said.

Foreign minister Winston Peters had described the situation in Gaza as “simply intolerable” but the National-led coalition had little specific to say as the Netanyahu government “resumed its cruel blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza in March and restarted military operations there”.

Silence on Trump’s ‘Gaza ownership’
“Even more striking was the government’s silence on President Trump’s proposal to own Gaza with a view to evicting two million Palestinian residents from the territory and the US-Israeli venture to start the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in late May in a move which sidelined the UN in aid distribution and has led to the killing of more than 600 Palestinians while seeking food aid,” Dr Patman said.

While New Zealand, along with the UK, Australia, Canada and Norway, had imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli government ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar ben Gvir, in June for “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians — a move that was criticised by the Trump administration — it was arguably a case of very little very late.

“The Hamas terror attacks on October 7 killed around 1200 Israelis, but the Netanyahu government’s retaliation by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) against Hamas has resulted in the deaths of more than 56,000 Palestinians — nearly 70 percent of whom were women or children — in Gaza.

Over the same period, more than 1000 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank as Israel accelerated its programme of illegal settlements there.

‘Strangely ambivalent’
In addition, the responses of the New Zealand government to “pre-emptive attacks” by Israel (13-25 June) and Trump’s United States (June 22) against Iran to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities were strangely ambivalent.

Despite indications from US intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran had not produced nuclear weapons, Foreign Minister Peters had said New Zealand was not prepared to take a position on that issue.

Confronted with Trump’s “might is right” approach, the National-led coalition faced stark choices, Dr Patman said.

The New Zealand government could continue to fudge fundamental moral and legal issues in the Middle East and risk complicity in the further weakening of an international rules-based order it purportedly supports, “or it can get off the fence, stand up for the country’s values, and insist that respect for international law must be observed in the region and elsewhere without exception”.

Kia ora koutou,

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

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

*

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

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

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

*

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

*

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

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

Kia ora koutou,

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

The US struck three of Iran’s nuclear facilities overnight, entering the illegal aggression on Iran with heavy airstrikes despite no evidence that nuclear weapons are being developed. Israel continued its strikes attacking dozens of locations across Iran throughout the day. Three were killed in an Israeli drone attack on an ambulance in central Iran. At least 400 have been killed and 2000 injured, according to the latest Health Ministry figures.

*

Heavy Iranian retaliation strikes on Israeli territories saw about 27 injured.

*

At least 47 killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza today, 18 while seeking aid. Two killed and 15 wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house west of Gaza city. The murder of firefighter Muhammad Ghurab brings the total Gaza civil defence casualties to 121, representing 14.3 percent of its employees.

Today I met a 10-year-old kid called Hassan on the streets of Bethlehem. He was looking for work. His dad had recently stopped working, unemployed like many in Bethlehem; around 80 percent of jobs here depend on tourism. He lives in al-Khader village, an hour’s walk away, but without opportunities there he had walked all this way in an attempt to help support his family.

Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank has suffocated the economy here for decades. Now, as the genocidal war on Gaza continues and Israeli aggression expands to Iran, drawing in the USA and threatening regional collapse, a 10-year-old boy takes to the streets of Bethlehem to find work.

*

Israel’s illegal siege across the West Bank continues. Large numbers of Israeli soldiers conducted extensive raids on Bethlehem’s Dheisheh camp including demolitions, arrests, and interrogations last night. Mass demolitions continue across Nour Shams camp in the north, and further arrests, demolitions, and incursions took place across the West Bank. Bethlehem’s gasoline shortages continue due to Israel’s ongoing siege.

*

Twenty five killed in a terror attack targeting Mar Elias Church in Damascus, Syria.

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

Kia ora koutou, 

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

At least 16 killed by Israeli airstrike on al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza. 92 killed across Gaza in total, a significant number while seeking aid. 15 months after the shocking “flour massacre”, Israeli forces are now committing daily massacres against Gazan residents desperately seeking food due to Israel’s policy of forced starvation. These ongoing war crimes have been met with indifference, justification, and ongoing impunity from global leaders.

Jerusalem’s Old City markets remain closed for the seventh consecutive day after restrictions were imposed under the pretext of “wartime emergency”. Meanwhile, across the besieged West Bank the occupation forces continue demolishing homes in Tulkarm and Jenin refugee camps, where more than 40,000 residents have been displaced by Israel’s months-long “military operation”.

Israeli soldiers occupying houses south of Jenin as military barracks, embedding themselves among Palestinian civilians as they have for several days in Al Khalil/Hebron.

Around two-dozen young men detained in Asakra village south-east of Bethlehem, and several more in Laban village, south of Nablus. A young man, Moataz, 22, was executed by Israeli forces in his home village of Wolja west of Bethlehem. Movement of ambulances has been affected by gasoline shortages in Bethlehem. Forces invaded Plata camp in East Nablus for the second day in a row.

*

Israel bombed the outskirts of Shabaa town, in southern Lebanon, yet another violation of ceasefire agreements.

*

An Iranian missile hit Beersheba’s Soroka hospital in southern Israel last night, with no resulting casualties — Iran claiming it targeted a nearby military site. Outrage at the war crime has highlighted widespread double-standards across Israeli society and globally. Israeli forces have destroyed, bombed, or damaged 38 hospitals in Gaza over their 20-month genocidal war on the enclave, with the World Health Organisation recording around 700 attacks on Gazan healthcare facilities in that same period. Israeli residents have erected tents, transforming an underground parking lot into a bomb shelter.

*

Several more retaliatory volleys of Iranian missiles targeted the Israeli territories throughout the day, as heavy Israeli assaults continued on Iranian territories. Israel’s reported death toll has risen to 24, with Iran’s rising to 639.

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

Palestinian advocate Issa Amro has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year for his decades of work advocating for peaceful resistance against Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The settlements are illegal under international law — and a record 45 were established last year under cover of the war on Gaza,

Advocacy against the settlements has seen Amro become a target.

• LISTEN TO RNZ SATURDAY MORNINGS: Issa Amro: Youth Against Settlements (26min)
• Five killed, many wounded in Israel after Iran fires new wave of missiles
• Other Israeli war on Iran reports

He is based in the occupied West Bank, in Hebron — a city of about 250,000 mostly Palestinian people. He founded Youth Against Settlements.

He paints a picture about what daily life is like.

“Our life in West Bank was very hard and difficult before October 7 [2023 – the date of the Hamas resistance movement attack on southern Israel]. And after October 7, life became much harder. . . .

‘Daily harassment, violence’
“So there are hard conditions. No jobs. No work. No movement in the West Bank. Schools are affected . . . There is daily harassment and violence — they attack the Palestinian villages, they attack the Palestinian cities, they attack the Palestinian roads.

“In my city Hebron, it has got much, much harder. People are not able to leave their homes because of the closure of the checkpoints. The [Israeli] soldiers are very mean and adversarial . . .

“The soldiers close the checkpoints whenever they want. In fact, the soldiers act like militia, not like a regular army.

“My house was attacked in the last 20 months . . . ”

• At least 55,104 people, including at least 17,400 children, have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza. At least 943 Palestinians, more than 200 of them minors, have been killed in the occupied West Bank.

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

War is good for business and geopolitical posturing.

Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington in early February for his first visit to the US following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he issued a bold statement on the strategic position of Israel.

“The decisions we made in the war [since 7 October 2023] have already changed the face of the Middle East,” he said.

• READ MORE: Middle East Eye’s live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war
• Iran says it will stop ‘self-defence response’ if Israel halts attacks
• Other Israeli war on Iran reports

“Our decisions and the courage of our soldiers have redrawn the map. But I believe that working closely with President Trump, we can redraw it even further.”

How should this redrawn map be assessed?

Hamas is bloodied but undefeated in Gaza. The territory lies in ruins, leaving its remaining population with barely any resources to rebuild. Death and starvation stalk everyone.

Hezbollah in Lebanon has suffered military defeats, been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence, and now faces few viable options for projecting power in the near future. Political elites speak of disarming Hezbollah, though whether this is realistic is another question.

Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE accounted for 12 percent of Israel’s record $14.8bn in arms sales in 2024 — up from just 3 percent the year before

In Yemen, the Houthis continue to attack Israel, but pose no existential threat.

Meanwhile, since the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, Israel has attacked and threatened Syria, while the new government in Damascus is flirting with Israel in a possible bid for “normalisation“.

The Gulf states remain friendly with Israel, and little has changed in the last 20 months to alter this relationship.

According to Israel’s newly released arms sales figures for 2024, which reached a record $14.8bn, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates accounted for 12 percent of total weapons sales — up from just 3 percent in 2023.

It is conceivable that Saudi Arabia will be coerced into signing a deal with Israel in the coming years, in exchange for arms and nuclear technology for the dictatorial kingdom.

An Israeli and US-assisted war against Iran began on Friday.

In the West Bank, Israel’s annexation plans are surging ahead with little more than weak European statements of concern. Israel’s plans for Greater Israel — vastly expanding its territorial reach — are well underway in Syria, Lebanon and beyond.

Shifting alliances
On paper, Israel appears to be riding high, boasting military victories and vanquished enemies. And yet, many Israelis and pro-war Jews in the diaspora do not feel confident or buoyed by success.

Instead, there is an air of defeatism and insecurity, stemming from the belief that the war for Western public opinion has been lost — a sentiment reinforced by daily images of Israel’s campaign of deliberate mass destruction across the Gaza Strip.

What Israel craves and desperately needs is not simply military prowess, but legitimacy in the public domain. And this is sorely lacking across virtually every demographic worldwide.

It is why Israel is spending at least $150 million this year alone on “public diplomacy”.

Get ready for an army of influencers, wined and dined in Tel Aviv’s restaurants and bars, to sell the virtues of Israeli democracy. Even pro-Israel journalists are beginning to question how this money is being spent, wishing Israeli PR were more responsive and effective.

Today, Israeli Jews proudly back ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza in astoundingly high numbers. This reflects a Jewish supremacist mindset that is being fed a daily diet of extremist rhetoric in mainstream media.

There is arguably no other Western country with such a high proportion of racist, genocidal mania permeating public discourse.

According to a recent poll of Western European populations, Israel is viewed unfavourably in Germany, Denmark, France, Italy and Spain.

Very few in these countries support Israeli actions. Only between 13 and 21 percent hold a positive view of Israel, compared to 63-70 percent who do not.

The US-backed Pew Research Centre also released a global survey asking people in 24 countries about their views on Israel and Palestine. In 20 of the 24 nations, at least half of adults expressed a negative opinion of the Jewish state.

A deeper reckoning
Beyond Israel’s image problems lies a deeper question: can it ever expect full acceptance in the Middle East?

Apart from kings, monarchs and elites from Dubai to Riyadh and Manama to Rabat, Israel’s vicious and genocidal actions since 7 October 2023 have rendered “normalisation” impossible with a state intent on building a Jewish theocracy that subjugates millions of Arabs indefinitely.

While it is true that most states in the region are undemocratic, with gross human rights abuses a daily reality, Israel has long claimed to be different — “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

But Israel’s entire political system, built with massive Western support and grounded in an unsustainable racial hierarchy, precludes it from ever being fully and formally integrated into the region.

The American journalist Murtaza Hussain, writing for the US outlet Drop Site News, recently published a perceptive essay on this very subject.

He argues that Israeli actions have been so vile and historically grave — comparable to other modern holocausts — that they cannot be forgotten or excused, especially as they are publicly carried out with the explicit goal of ethnically cleansing Palestine:

“This genocide has been a political and cultural turning point beyond which we cannot continue as before. I express that with resignation rather than satisfaction, as it means that many generations of suffering are ahead on all sides.

“Ultimately, the goal of Israel’s opponents must not be to replicate its crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, nor to indulge in nihilistic hatred for its own sake.

“People in the region and beyond should work to build connections with those Israelis who are committed opponents of their regime, and who are ready to cooperate in the generational task of building a new political architecture.”

The issue is not just Netanyahu and his government. All his likely successors hold similarly hardline views on Palestinian rights and self-determination.

The monumental task ahead lies in crafting an alternative to today’s toxic Jewish theocracy.

But this rebuilding must also take place in the West. Far too many Jews, conservatives and evangelical Christians continue to cling to the fantasy of eradicating, silencing or expelling Arabs from their land entirely.

Pushing back against this fascism is one of the most urgent generational tasks of our time.

Antony Loewenstein is an Australian/German independent, freelance, award-winning, investigative journalist, best-selling author and film-maker. In 2025, he released an award-winning documentary series on Al Jazeera English, The Palestine Laboratory, adapted from his global best-selling book of the same name. It won a major prize at the prestigious Telly Awards. This article is republished from Middle East Eye with permission of the author.

The New Zealand Foreign Minster’s decision to issue a travel ban against two Israeli far-right politicians is little more than a tokenistic gesture in opposing Israel’s actions.

It is an attempt to appease growing opposition to Israel’s war, but the fact that Israel has killed more than 54,000 innocent people in Gaza, a third under the age of 18, still leaves the New Zealand government unmoved.

Foreign Minister Peters gave the game away when he commented that the sanctions were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.

• READ MORE: US criticises allies as NZ bans two top far-right Israeli ministers
• UK and allies to sanction far-right Israeli ministers Ben-Gvir, Smotrich
• Why Israel’s ‘humane’ propaganda is such a sinister facade
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Issuing travel bans against two Israeli politicians, who are unlikely to visit New Zealand at any stage, is the easy option.

It appears to be doing something to protest against Israel’s actions when actually doing nothing. And it doesn’t contradict the interests of the United States in the Middle East.

Under the government of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, New Zealand has become a vassal state of American imperialism.

New Zealand has joined four other countries, the United States, Britain, Australia and Norway, in issuing a travel ban. But all four countries continue to supply Israel with arms.

Unions demand stronger action
Last week, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions demanded that the New Zealand government take stronger action against Israel. In a letter to Winston Peters, CTU president Richard Wagstaff wrote:

“For too long, the international community has allowed the state of Israel to act with impunity. It is now very clearly engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

“All efforts must be made to put diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel to end this murderous campaign.”

THE CTU has called for a series of sanctions to be imposed on Israel. They include “a ban on all imports of goods made in whole or in part in Israel” and “a rapid review of Crown investments and immediately divest from any financial interests in Israeli companies”.

The CTU is also calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.

This article was first published on Steven Cowan’s website Against The Current. Republished with permission.

The United States has denounced sanctions by Britain and allies — including New Zealand and Australia — against Israeli far-right ministers, saying they should focus instead on the Palestinian armed group Hamas.

New Zealand has banned two Israeli politicians from travelling to the country because of comments about the war in Gaza that Foreign Minister Winston Peters says “actively undermine peace and security”.

New Zealand joins Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway in imposing the sanctions on Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

• READ MORE: UK and allies to sanction far-right Israeli ministers Ben-Gvir, Smotrich
• Why Israel’s ‘humane’ propaganda is such a sinister facade
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Peters said they were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.

“Our action today is not against the Israeli people, who suffered immeasurably on October 7 [2023] and who have continued to suffer through Hamas’ ongoing refusal to release all hostages.

“Nor is it designed to sanction the wider Israeli government.”

The two ministers were “using their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution”, Peters said.

‘Severely and deliberately undermined’ peace
“Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have severely and deliberately undermined that by personally advocating for the annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements, while inciting violence and forced displacement.”

The sanctions were consistent with New Zealand’s approach to other foreign policy issues, he said.

“New Zealand has also targeted travel bans on politicians and military leaders advocating violence or undermining democracy in other countries in the past, including Russia, Belarus and Myanmar.”

New Zealand had been a long-standing supporter of a two-state solution, Peters said, which the international community was also overwhelmingly in favour of.

“New Zealand’s consistent and historic position has been that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law. Settlements and associated violence undermine the prospects for a viable two-state solution,” he said.

“The crisis in Gaza has made returning to a meaningful political process all the more urgent. New Zealand will continue to advocate for an end to the current conflict and an urgent restart of the Middle East Peace Process.”

‘Outrageous’, says Israel
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the move was “outrageous” and the government would hold a special meeting early next week to decide how to respond to the “unacceptable decision”.

His comments were made while attending the inauguration of a new Israeli settlement on Palestinian land.

Peters is currently in Europe for the sixth Pacific-France Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Nice.

US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters: “We find that extremely unhelpful. It will do nothing to get us closer to a ceasefire in Gaza.”

Britain, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and Australia “should focus on the real culprit, which is Hamas”, she said of the sanctions.

“We remain concerned about any step that would further isolate Israel from the international community.”

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

RNZ Nine To Noon

Auckland film maker Paula Whetu Jones has spent nearly two decades working pro bono on a feature film about the Auckland cardiac surgeon Dr Alan Kerr, which is finally now in cinemas.

She is best known for co-writing and directing Whina, the feature film about Dame Whina Cooper.

She filmed Dr Kerr and his wife Hazel in 2007, when he led a Kiwi team to Gaza and the West Bank to operate on children with heart disease.

• LISTEN: Go to RNZ podcast player
• READ MORE: Reports of Israeli casualties in Rafah blast and media blackout, as strikes kill 16 in Gaza

What started as a two-week visit became a 20 year commitment, involving 40 medical missions to Gaza and the West Bank and hundreds of operations.

Paula Whetu Jones self-funded six trips to document the work and the result is the feature film The Doctor’s Wife, now being screened free in communities around the country.

20 years of inspirational work in Palestine

Pacific Media Watch reports that Paula Whetu Jones writes on her film’s website:

I met Alan and Hazel Kerr in 2006 and became inspired by their selflessness and dedication. I wanted to learn more about them and shine a light on their achievements.

I’ve been trying to highlight social issues through documentary film making for 25 years. I have always struggled to obtain funding and this project was no different. We provided most of the funding but it wouldn’t have been possible to complete it without the generosity of a small number of donors.

Others gave of their time and expertise.

Our initial intention was to follow Dr Alan Kerr in his work in the West Bank and Gaza but we also developed a very special relationship with Hazel.

While Dr Alan was operating, Hazel took herself all over the West Bank and Gaza, volunteering to help in refugee camps, schools and community centres. We tagged along and realised that Dr Alan and his work was the heart of the film but Hazel was the soul. Hence, the title became The Doctor’s Wife.

I was due to return to Palestine in 2010 when on the eve of my departure I was struck down by a rare auto immune condition which left me paralysed. It wasn’t until 2012 that I was able to return to Palestine.

Wheelchair made things hard
However, being in a wheelchair made everything near on impossible, not to mention my mental state which was not conducive to being creative. In 2013, tragedy struck again when my 22-year-old son died, and I shut down for a year.

Again, the project seemed so far away, destined for the shelf. Which is where it sat for the next few years while I tried to figure out how to live in a wheelchair and support myself and my daughter.

The project was re-energised when I made two arts documentaries in Palestine, making sure we filmed Alan while we were there and connecting with a NZ trauma nurse who was also filming.

By 2022, we knew we needed to complete the doco. We started sorting through many years of footage in different formats, getting the interviews transcribed and edited. The last big push was in 2023. We raised funds and got a few people to help with the logistics.

I spent six months with three editors and then we used the rough cut to do one last fundraiser that helped us over the line, finally finishing it in March of 2025.

Our documentary shows the humanity of everyday Palestinians, pre-2022, as told through the eyes of a retired NZ heart surgeon, his wife and two committed female film makers who were told in 2006 that no one cares about old people, sick Palestinian children or Palestine.

They were wrong. We cared and maybe you do, too.

What is happening in 2025 means it’s even more important now for people to see the ordinary people of Palestine

Dr Alan Kerr and his wife, Hazel are now 90 and 85 years old respectively. They are the most wonderfully humble humans. Their work over 20 years is nothing short of inspiring.

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

Israel’s most revered jurist, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, says that he fears the Netanyahu government’s latest actions, including moves to fire the Shin Bet secret service chief and attorney-general, are steering the country toward civil war.

Speaking to the Ynet news site shortly before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the cabinet that voted unanimously to fire Bar, Barak said that “the main problem in Israeli society is . . .  the severe rift between Israelis”.

“This rift is getting worse and in the end, I fear, it will be like a train that goes off the tracks and plunges into a chasm, causing a civil war,” he said.

• READ MORE: Israeli attacks kill 5 more children; Gaza cancer hospital destroyed
• Israel’s top court halts government’s decision to fire Shin Bet chief
• Other Gaza genocide reports

In another interview, with Channel 12, when asked why he thought Israel was close to civil conflict, Barak said it was “because the rift in the people is immense, and no effort is being made to heal it.

“Everyone is trying to make it worse.

“Today there are demonstrations, then a car drives through them and runs over someone,” he said, referring to an incident at an anti-Netanyahu protest in Jerusalem on Wednesday when a driver rammed into a protester, injuring him.

“But tomorrow there will be shootings, and the day after that there will be bloodshed,” Barak continued.

Overturned sacking
Barak also told Channel 12 he would have overturned a government decision to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar if he were serving on the bench today.

The former chief justice explained he believed the ousting of Bar from the role in the middle of his term was illegitimate because the position of Shin Bet chief was not a “role of confidence” with the political echelon.

Instead, the person in the job was meant to carry out the role as it was explicitly written in legislation.

“There is authority to dismiss, but no grounds for dismissal,” he elaborated, saying he would also strike down the firing of Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, another top official whom the government is seeking to oust.

When asked about the prime minister’s tweet on Wednesday night alleging the existence of a “leftist deep state” in Israel that was working to thwart Netanyahu’s government, Barak replied: “I don’t know what a deep state is.”

“We’re not the United States, we don’t have a deep state here. We have loyal public servants here, and they do things according to the law,” he added.

Barak also appealed directly to Netanyahu, urging him to halt the process of firing Bar and Baharav-Miara, and other policies the former justice considers destructive, and said he thinks Netanyahu should be offered and should take a plea deal in his criminal trial.

‘Israel feels like it is on the brink of civil war.’   Video: France 24

‘Right for his legacy’
“I think that it is right for Netanyahu. It is right for his legacy. And it is right for the State of Israel. And I think it is possible,” he said.

“Otherwise, the trial will continue. The rift between [those] for Bibi and against Bibi will continue,” he added, using Netanyahu’s nickname.

Asked by the interviewer what he would say to Netanyahu if he could talk to him, Barak answered: “This is your policy, I am completely against it. I ask you, don’t implement it beyond what you have done today. Stop. Stop.”

“Don’t take the rift beyond where it already is,” he concluded.

Responding to Barak, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar issued a terse statement on X, simply posting: “There will be no civil war.”

Education Minister Yoav Kisch, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said in a post on X that Barak was “threatening a civil war” with his warning, and promised that “these threats will not deter” the government from implementing its policies.

MK Almog Cohen of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party said that Barak is “a reckless and irresponsible man,” who was “sent to issue a Sicilian mafia-style threat of blood in the streets and civil war.”

Well-respected internationally
Barak served as a Supreme Court justice from 1978 to 1995. He was then elected as the court’s president. He retired from the bench in 2006.

Despite Barak being a vocal critic of Netanyahu and his policies, the premier chose him to represent Israel as an ad-hoc judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the genocide case that was brought against Israel by South Africa amid the war in Gaza.

Barak removed himself from the court last June for personal reasons.

Barak, a Holocaust survivor, is well-respected internationally and is seen as Israel’s preeminent jurist.

Within Israel, he long has been seen by Netanyahu and other right-wing leaders as a leftist “activist,” who is to blame for many of the issues with Israel’s judicial system that the government’s controversial judicial overhaul plans aim to rectify.

With international media’s attention on the Israeli and Palestinian captives exchange,  Israel’s military and settlers have been forcibly displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, says Al Jazeera’s Listening Post media programme.

The European Union has condemned Israel’s military operation in West Bank, attacking and killing refugees, and destroying refugee camps while the Western media has been barely reporting this.

It has also criticised the violence by settlers in illegal West Bank villages.

• READ MORE: Israel touts US plan to extend truce for half of remaining captives in Gaza
• Other AJ Listening Post reports

Israel’s military operation in the occupied territory has been ongoing for more than 40 days and has resulted in dozens of casualties, the displacement of about 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.

The EU has expressed its “grave concern” about Israel’s continuing military operation in the occupied West Bank in a statement.

“The EU calls on Israel, in addressing its security concerns in the occupied West Bank, to comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law by ensuring the protection of all civilians in military operations and allow the safe return of displaced persons to their homes,” the statement read.

“At the same time, extremist settler violence continues throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Israel ‘has duty to protect’
“The EU recalls that Israel, as the occupying power, has the duty to protect civilians and to hold perpetrators accountable.”

The bloc also condemned Israel’s policy of expanding settlements in the West Bank, and urged that demolitions “including of EU and EU member states-funded structures, must stop”.

“As we enter the holy month of Ramadan, we call on all parties to exercise restraint to allow for peaceful celebrations,” the EU said.

Meanwhile, Israeli journalists are parroting military talking points of security operations.

Israel invades the West Bank.  Video: AJ: The Listening Post

Contributors:
Abdaljawad Omar – Assistant professor, Birzeit University
Jehad Abusalim – Co-editor, Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
Ori Goldberg – Academic and political commentator
Samira Mohyeddin – Founder, On the Line Media

On the Listening Post radar:
This week, the return of the Bibas family bodies dominated Israeli media coverage.

Tariq Nafi reports on how their deaths have been used for “hasbara” — propaganda — after the family accused Netanyahu’s government of exploiting their grief for political purposes.

The Kenyan ‘manosphere’
Populated by loudmouths, shock artists and unapologetic chauvinists, the Kenyan “manosphere” is promoting an influential — and at times dangerous — take on modern masculinity.

Featuring:
Audrey Mugeni – Co-founder, Femicide Count Kenya
Awino Okech – Professor of feminist and security studies, SOAS
Onyango Otieno – Mental health coach and writer

Nothing, but nothing, is worse than those Jews who level totally unfounded allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the State of Israel. They are repulsive and revolting human beings. Their relatives who were murdered by the Nazis – the role models for Hamas – will…

— Mark Leibler (@LeiblerMark) February 8, 2025

COMMENTARY: By Jeffrey Loewenstein

As someone Jewish, the son of Holocaust survivors and members of whose family were murdered by the Nazis, it is hard to know whether to characterise Mark Leibler’s tweet as offensive, appalling, contemptuous, insulting or a disgusting, shameful and grievous introduction of the Holocaust, and those who were murdered by the Nazis, into his tweet — or all of the foregoing!

Leibler’s tweet is most likely a breach of recently passed legislation in Australia, both federally and in various state Parliaments, making hateful words and actions, and doxxing, criminal offences. It will be “interesting” to see how the police deal with the complaint taken up with the police alleging Leibler’s breach of the legislation.

In the end, Leibler’s attempted intimidation of those who might have been thinking of going to the rally failed — miserably!

• READ MORE: Israel bombs Syria; Hamas says deal reached on prisoner release
• Barred European Union politician brands Israel as ‘a rogue state’
• Hamas handover spectacles are demo to world of ‘keeping captives safe’, says analyst
• Other Israel’s war on Palestine reports

There are many Jews who abhor what Israel is doing in Gaza (and the West Bank) but feel intimidated by the Leiblers of this world who accuse them of being antisemitic for speaking out against Israel’s actions and not those rusted-on 100 percent supporters of Israel who blindly and uncritically support whatever Israel does, however egregious.

Leibler, and others like him, who label Jews as antisemites because they dare speak out about Israel’s actions, certainly need to be called out.

As a lawyer, Leibler knows that actions have consequences. A group of concerned Jews (this writer included) are in the process of lodging a complaint about Leibler’s tweet with the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission.

Separately from that, this week will see full-page adverts in both the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age — signed by hundreds of Jews — bearing the heading:

“Australia must reject Trump’s call for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza. Jewish Australians say NO to ethnic cleansing.”

Jeffrey Loewenstein, LLB, was a member of the Victorian Bar and a one-time chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission and member of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria. This article was first published by Pearls & Irritations public policy journal and is republished here with permission.

This full-page ad appears in today’s @smh and @theage with the names of 500 Jews, many more signed but couldn’t fit onto the page!, to clearly say that they’re utterly opposed to removing Palestinians from Gaza. Notice the silence from most “mainstream” Jewish groups? It’s… pic.twitter.com/GuUqvVMWNZ

— Antony Loewenstein (@antloewenstein) February 24, 2025

Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s announcement this week that the island nation will open a diplomatic mission in Jerusalem has been labelled “an act of aggression” by Palestine.

On Tuesday, the Fiji government revealed that Cabinet had decided to locate its consulate in Jerusalem, which remains at the centre of the Palestine-Israel decades-long conflict.

According to an overwhelming United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES‑10/19 on 21 December 2017 (128-9), Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as capital of Israel is “null and void”.

• READ MORE: Palestine condemns Fiji’s decision to open embassy to Israel in Jerusalem
• Palestine and Gaza’s Hamas resistance condemn Fiji over embassy plan
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

Previous UN Security Council resolutions demarcated Jerusalem as the capital of the future state of Palestine.

The Fijian government said in a statement: “Necessary risk assessments will be undertaken by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence, in consultation with relevant agencies, prior to and during the establishment process.”

Fiji and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1970 and have partnerships in security and peacekeeping, agriculture, and climate change.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Rabuka said he “received a phone call from my friend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing his gratitude for Fiji’s decision to open a diplomatic mission in Jerusalem.”

“Even though very brief, we reaffirmed our commitment to strengthening Fiji-Israel ties,” he said.

I commend the Republic of Fiji’s government for its historic decision to open an embassy in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Thank you, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka @slrabuka, friend of Israel. Thank you Fiji! pic.twitter.com/IxCkjPnhQ6

— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) February 18, 2025

“I also took the opportunity to express my deepest condolences for the tragic events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked innocent lives in Israel.

Palestine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Rabuka’s decision and is demanding the Fijian government “immediately reverse this provocative decision.”

‘Violating international law’
“With this decision, Fiji becomes the seventh country to violate international law and UN resolutions regarding the city’s legal and political status and the rights of the Palestinian people,” it said in a statement.

The seven countries include Papua New Guinea.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemns the decision of PM @slrabuka to relocate Fiji’s embassy to occupied #Jerusalem.

This move blatantly violates international law and UN resolutions, and places #Fiji on the wrong side of history. https://t.co/5x1bCECNXO

— Palestine Australia, Aotearoa NZ and Pacific (@PalestineAusNZ) February 19, 2025

“This decision is an act of aggression against the Palestinian people and their rights.

“It places Fiji on the wrong side of history, harms the chances of achieving peace based on the two-state solution, and represents unacceptable support for the occupation and its crimes.”

The statement added that Fiji’s move “blatantly defies UN resolutions at a time when the occupying power is escalating its attacks against Palestinians across all of the Palestinian Territory, attempting to displace them from their homeland.”

The ministry said that it would continue to take political, diplomatic, and legal action against countries that opened or moved their embassies to Jerusalem.

“It will work to hold them accountable for their unjustified actions against the Palestinian people and their rights.”

In September 2024, Fiji was one of seven Pacific Island nations that voted against a United Nations resolution to end Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

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

Israeli forces have been ramping up operations in the occupied West Bank– mainly the Jenin refugee camp – to “distract” from the Gaza ceasefire deal, says political analyst Dr Mohamad Elmasry.

The Qatari professor said the ceasefire was being viewed domestically as a “spectacular failure” for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The ceasefire in Gaza was kind of a defeat for Netanyahu. Israeli media reports are calling it an embarrassment for him to have Hamas, after all these months, still very much alive and well and operational in Gaza,” Dr Elmasry, professor of media studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera in an interview.

• READ MORE:  Occupied West Bank’s Jenin being ‘Gazafied’ by Israel’s army
• ‘Spectacular failure’ over Hamas an embarrassment for Netanyahu
• Palestinians return home to Gaza ashes – if we want peace, face the truth
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

“Now what the Israeli government is doing is trying to distract from that and sort of overcompensate by escalating in the West Bank.”

Elmasry highlighted that since the ceasefire began on Sunday, Israel had made dozens of arrests in the West Bank, — offsetting the release of 90 prisoners under the agreement so far.

“This is a way for the Israeli government to show its ardent supporters and especially those on the right wing that this is only temporary in Gaza and [Israel is] still able to do whatever we wants in the West Bank,” he said.

Dr Elmasry also said indications were growing that Israel was not taking the terms of the ceasefire seriously and was planning to restart fighting in Gaza before phase two of the agreement comes into effect.

“What we have to keep our eye on is violations,” Dr Elmasry said.

“Yesterday, there was video circulating of [Israeli forces] shooting a Palestinian [in Gaza]. It’s a clear violation, but we didn’t hear any sort of condemnation from the US, [which] is supposed to be sort of ensuring that the ceasefire continues.

“The other thing we have to keep an eye on,” Dr Elmasry added, “is what happens after phase one.

“There are increasing indications that Israel has every intention of continuing the war. They’ve apparently said as much. And then we’ve got US President Donald Trump after his inauguration saying: ‘Look, it’s their war’.

“I read that as a statement that the US is kind of washing its hands — it’s not going to intervene.”

‘Starting lives from scratch’
Meanwhile, one of several Palestinian journalists reporting on the ground for Al Jazeera, Hind Khoudary, said from Nuseirat, central Gaza:

“You can’t imagine how destroyed the infrastructure across the Gaza Strip is. Sewage is filling the streets.

“In some places, there’s a lack of water. Desalination plants are not working any more. The infrastructure has completely collapsed.

“Yesterday was the first day Israel let in heavy machinery. But civil defence teams, engineers and others working [on recovery efforts] do not know where to start.

“In every single street, neighbourhood, city infrastructure is destroyed. Palestinians are going to have to start their lives from scratch.”

Journalists gathered at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital expressed outrage and confusion about the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) decision to shut down Al Jazeera’s office in the occupied West Bank.

“Shutting down a major outlet like Al Jazeera is a crime against journalism,” said freelance journalist Ikhlas al-Qarnawi.

“Al Jazeera coverage has documented Israeli crimes against Palestinians, especially during the ongoing genocide,” the 28-year-old journalist told Al Jazeera at the hospital, the most reliable internet connection in the Strip to file stories from.

• READ MORE: CPJ condemns ban on Al Jazeera – network decries bid to ‘hide the truth’
• Palestinian Authority suspends Al Jazeera operations in the West Bank
• CPJ urges Palestinian Authority to lift ban on Al Jazeera’s operations in West Bank
• Killing of five Gaza journalists by Israel strike highlights weak NZ media response — David Robie, Pacific Media Watch

Yesterday, the PA temporarily suspended Al Jazeera in the occupied West Bank for what they described as broadcasting “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife” in the country.

The decision came after Fatah, the Palestinian faction which dominates the PA, banned Al Jazeera from reporting from the governorates of Jenin, Tubas and Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, citing its coverage of clashes between the Palestinian security forces and Palestinian armed groups in the area.

Al Jazeera criticised the PA ban, saying the move is “in line with the [Israeli] occupation’s actions against its staff”.

‘Obscuring the truth’
Since the beginning of the war, about 150 journalists have been working from the journalists’ tents at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, for 20 local, international and Arab media outlets.

Journalists, including those from Al Jazeera, have been forced to work from hospitals after their headquarters and media offices were destroyed.

PA decision ‘shocking but hardly surprising’.   Video: Al Jazeera

Al-Aqsa TV correspondent Mohammed Issa said from the hospital that the PA’s ban contradicts international laws that guarantee journalistic freedom and could further endanger journalists.

“The PA’s decision obscures the truth and undermines the Palestinian narrative, especially a leading network like Al Jazeera,” Issa said, adding that the ban reinforces Israel’s narrative that “justifies the targeting of Palestinian journalists”.

“All media workers in Gaza reject this decision that silences the largest Arab and global outlet during critical times in years.”

Wafaa Hajjaj, an independent journalist working with TRT and Sahat, said the ban made her both “sad” and “disappointed”.

“At a time when Israel is deliberately targeting and killing … journalists in Gaza, with our Jazeera colleagues at the forefront, with no international or institutional protection, the PA’s move in the West Bank comes to worsen the situation,” Hajjaj said as she and her team walked into the hospital to interview the wounded.

Israel has killed at least 217 journalists and media workers in Gaza since the beginning of its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Four of them were Al Jazeera journalists: Samer Abudaqa, Hamza al-Dahdouh, Ismail al-Ghoul and Ahmed al-Louh.

‘Trust Al Jazeera will persist’
Although frustrated, Hajjaj told Al Jazeera that she was hopeful the PA would drop its ban “as soon as possible”.

“I trust Al Jazeera will persist despite all sanctions, as it has for years.”

Yousef Hassouna, a photojournalist with 22 years of experience, also criticised the shutting of Al Jazeera along with “any other media outlet” targeted by such bans.

“This is a violation against all of us Palestinian journalists,” he said, adding that Al Jazeera was “an essential platform” covering Israel’s war on Gaza.

“Now more than ever, we Palestinian journalists need international support and protection, not limitations or restrictions,” Hassouna said.

‘Critical mistakes’
Ismail al-Thawabtah, spokesperson for the government media bureau in Gaza, said the Palestinian Authority had committed two serious mistakes over the past few weeks.

“The first: the attack on Jenin and the resulting military confrontation with our honourable Palestinian people and the resistance forces, and the second: the closure of the Al Jazeera office,” he said, adding that the move represents “serious violations of freedom of the press”.

Al-Thawabtah said both incidents required the PA to conduct a comprehensive review of policies and positions in line with supreme national interests and respect for the “rights of our Palestinian people and their basic freedoms”.

As for the journalists gathered at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, they were united in their call to end the ban.

“We as journalists are completely against it. I hope that action will be taken to stop this decision immediately.” said the freelance journalist al-Qarnawi, adding that the ban hurts more than just journalists.

“Our Palestinian people are the biggest losers.”

Republished from Al Jazeera under Creative Commons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meta, the giant social media corporation, has “unpublished” Green Left’s longstanding Facebook page, which had tens of thousands of followers.

We had been regularly posting stories, videos and photographs on the page from our consistent reporting of the news and views that seldom get into the mainstream media.

But our recent interviews with veteran Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled have resulted in what appears to be a 10-year ban, imposed without warning, nor an avenue of appeal.

• READ MORE:  Meta’s broken promises — systemic censorship of Palestine content on Instagram and Facebook
• Leila Khaled on the Kurdish struggle
• Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence — David Robie

Khaled, 79, is a member of the Palestinian Council (Palestine’s parliament) and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. She lives in political exile in Jordan.

She is recognised as the Che Guevara of Palestine; she has enormous respect from Palestinians and millions of progressive people around the world.

The Facebook banning came shortly after Zionist organisations combined with right-wing media (SkyNews and the Murdoch media) to pressure Labor to say it would prevent Khaled from addressing Ecosocialism 2024 — a conference GL is co-hosting in Boorloo/Perth in June — by not only denying her a visa, but even banning her from speaking by video link.

Multiple visits
As GL reported, the excuse for such political censorship is, as the Executive Council of Australian Jewry alleged in its letter to Labor, that allowing Khaled to speak “would be likely to have the effect of inciting, promoting or advocating terrorism”.

This is nonsense.

Khaled has visited Britain on multiple occasions over the past few years. Israel issued her a visa to visit the West Bank in 1996.

She has visited Sweden and South Africa and, on one of her multiple visits, met Nelson Mandela (once also labelled a “terrorist” by the West), who warmly welcomed her.

A growing number of human rights activists, academics, journalists and community leaders have protested against this blatant political censorship. Their statements are here and we urge you to join in by sending us a short statement.

Khaled told GL the real reason for this censorship is to “make us shut up about what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank today”.

Meta has been exposed for carrying out “systematic online censorship”, particularly of Palestinian voices.

Suppression of content
In December 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented “over 1050 takedowns and other suppression of content on Instagram and Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses”.

Meta did not apply the same censorship to pro-Zionist posts that incited hate and violence against Palestinians.

HRW noted that “of the 1050 cases reviewed for this report, 1049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel”.

Other studies have described the systematic “shadow banning” of pro-Palestinian posts on Facebook and Instagram.

AccessNow, which defends the “digital rights of people and communities at risk” reports that Meta is “systematically silencing the voices of both Palestinians and those advocating for Palestinians’ rights” through arbitrary content removals, suspension of prominent Palestinian and Palestine-related accounts, restrictions on pro-Palestinian users and content, shadow-banning, discriminatory content moderation policies, inconsistent and discriminatory rule enforcement.

Social media corporations, such as Meta and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), exercise a lot of power to manipulate people’s social and political views. This power has grown exponentially as more people access their news, views and information online.

Break this power
The search for ways to break this power will go on.

In the meantime there is one way readers can break the social media bans and restrictions on GL’s voice-for-the-resistance journalism: become a supporter and get GL delivered to you.

It has always been a struggle to keep people-power media projects alive. But GL has been going since 1991 and, with your help, we will not let the giant social media corporations silence us.

Republished with permission from Green Left.

The Israeli army has raided dozens of homes in the West Bank and detained 20 Palestinians, including two women — journalist Bushra al-Taweel and activist Sumood Muteer.

Quoting witness accounts, Quds News Network reported that al-Taweel was beaten up by an officer who insulted her before she was arrested.

Today is International Women’s Day.

• READ MORE: Biden to an­nounce Gaza port as Is­rael blocks aid from com­ing by road – 20 starve to death in Gaza

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said 57 journalists have been detained since October 7, with 38 of them still in jail. The organisation added that 22 of them were detained without charge.

Since October 7, at least 424 Palestinians, including 113 minors, three women and 12 prisoners in Israeli custody, have been killed in the West Bank alone.

At least 7450 Palestinians have been detained since the start of the war in Gaza.

Female Palestinian journalist and ex-prisoner Bushra Tawil was arrested by Israeli occupation soldiers last night during a raid into the city of Al-Bireh in the occupied West Bank.

According to eyewitnesses, Al-Tawil was subjected to a brutal attack by soldiers during a field… pic.twitter.com/59aRvQLrgA

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) March 7, 2024

The Gaza Media Office has reported at least 180 journalists and media workers have been killed since October 7.

Israeli forces ‘likely’ machinegunned reporters
Meanwhile, a new digital forensic report has found that Israeli forces “likely” shot machinegun at reporters after shelling them, killing one journalist and wounding six others on the Lebanese border last October 13.

The Israeli army targeted a group of journalists including AlJazeera’s crew, a colleague from another agency was killed and two of our colleagues at Aljazeera were injured, along with several others.

— Ali Hashem علي هاشم (@alihashem_tv) October 13, 2023

An Israeli tank crew fired shells at a clearly marked group of journalists near the border, killing one Reuters reporter and wounding six others, including two Al Jazeera reporters and an Agence France-Presse reporter.

An analysis by the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), commissioned by Reuters, has found that the journalists were also targeted with machineguns, likely fired by the same Israeli forces.

“It is considered a likely scenario that a Merkava tank, after firing two tank rounds, also used its machine gun against the location of the journalists,” TNO’s report said.

“The latter cannot be concluded with certainty as the direction and exact distance of [the machinegun] fire could not be established.”

AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd, reacting to the finding, said: “If reports of sustained machine gun fire are confirmed, this would add more weight to the theory this was a targeted and deliberate attack.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has designated the political wing of Hamas as a “terrorist” entity.

New Zealand designated the military wing of Hamas as a terrorist entity in 2010.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the government unequivocally condemned the “brutal” terrorist attacks by Hamas in October, and the move had been taken after he received official advice.

• READ MORE:  Gaza faces ‘mass killing of chil­dren in slow mo­tion’ as Is­rael blocks aid
• What is Hamas?: A simple guide to the armed Palestinian group
• Why New Zealand should not designate Hamas a terrorist group
• Other War on Gaza reports

“What happened on 7 October reinforces we can no longer distinguish between the military and political wings of Hamas,” Peters said.

“The organisation as a whole bears responsibility for these horrific terrorist attacks.”

The designation means any assets of the terrorist entity in New Zealand are frozen. It also makes participation in or supporting Hamas’ activities, or recruiting for it a criminal offence.

However, Peters made clear the designation would not affect the provision of humanitarian support to Palestinians, and would not stop New Zealand providing aid to benefit civilians in Gaza.

‘Gravely concerned’
“Nor does it stop us providing consular support to New Zealand citizens or permanent residents in the conflict zone,” he said.

“We remain gravely concerned about the impact of this conflict on civilians and will continue to call for an end to the violence and an urgent resumption of the Middle East Peace Process.

“A lasting solution to the conflict will only be achieved by peaceful means.”

The coalition government has also banned several extremist Israeli settlers from travelling to New Zealand.

Peters said those banned had committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

It was not clear how many settlers have been banned and who exactly they are.

There has been a significant increase in extremist violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinian populations in recent months, Peters said.

He acknowledged the official advice provided to him had been commissioned by then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in October.

Just over a fortnight earlier, Peters had specifically urged Israel not to begin a ground offensive in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.

A day later, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon issued a joint statement with his Australian and Canadian counterparts calling for the same thing.

It included a call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the release of hostages, condemned Hamas for its terror attacks on Israel, and said Israel must protect Palestinian civilians.

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